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You Can Mentor is a network that equips and encourages mentors and mentoring leaders through resources and relationships to love God, love others, and make disciples in their own community. We want to see Christian mentors thrive.
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Zach:You can mentor. On this episode of the You Can Mentor podcast, we have Chris Cox with Back to Back Ministries. Back to Back is an international Christian nonprofit dedicated to meeting the spiritual, physical, educational, emotional, and social needs of vulnerable children and families all across the world. My man, Chris, has been with Back to Back for thirteen years. In 02/2018, Back to Back opened its eighth site and the first one here stateside in America that focuses on vulnerable children, youth, and families.
Zach:It started in Cincinnati, Ohio where Chris serves as the director. Prior to launching the site, Chris served as the director of one twenty one in an effort to resource emerging generations. The pursuit of equality and unity for all people drives Chris. He continues to train, speak, and lead in multiple platforms both locally and nationally. He is also the host of the Be The Difference podcast, which is a podcast by Back to Back Ministries.
Zach:So check out Back to Back. Check out Chris Cox, and I hope you enjoyed this episode. Share it with a friend. Give us that five star, and remember, You Mentor. Alright.
Zach:Welcome to the You Can Mentor podcast. It's your favorite mentoring friend, Zach Garza, and I am here with Chris Cox. Chris, say hello.
Chris:Hi, friends of this podcast. I'm so excited to join you, Zach, and to be part of a amazing conversation, especially for those of you who are already mentoring in this world. Thanks for showing up in the lives of others. I love this.
Zach:Man, now if anyone is tuning in, you guys have a treat today. I have a podcast, and so does Chris. So we're experts. I mean, we are just professional podcasters.
Chris:We like to talk, don't we? I'm guessing that's probably our the root of it. We definitely like to have conversations.
Zach:I'm just not sure if anyone besides my mom's listening, but it is what it is. Right?
Chris:Yeah. I feel the same. I'm wondering if your mom's listening to ours too.
Zach:Oh, 100%. Like, she does not miss an episode, sends me texts with a lot of, you know, hearts, but it's great. Oh, man. Okay. So, mister Chris Cox, he works with this ministry called Back to Back, and he has been there for a minute.
Zach:They're doing some amazing things, but I will let him talk about himself and his ministry. So, Chris, why don't you talk about yourself, my man?
Chris:Yeah. Quick background. I have been engaging in work with youth for over twenty years now. Think, what is this, 2025. So twenty four years working in localized church context.
Chris:The first eight years of my work as a professional was through a calling as a youth pastor at a local church outside of Dayton, Ohio, and then made a shift that season of localized youth ministry, I had an invitation to take what we had been doing in kind of a localized opportunity and try to join a global movement through back to back ministries. So I joined in 02/2008, a quick understanding of back to back is that it was established in 1997 as an organization that was efforting to provide comprehensive care to children, youth, and families around the world. So a first site was in Monterrey, Mexico. Now there are sites in Monterrey, in Cancun, in Linares, JuilliCon, and in Mazatlan, Mexico, as well as Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nigeria, and India. And I'd give you that backstory to share that we had not had a presence in The United States.
Chris:My goal as the as a staff member in The US in the in the first few years I was with Back to Back was to work with emerging generations to create a conversation of what it looked like to live life on mission. So I would work in schools, with churches, with nonprofit groups to talk really about what coaching, mentoring, discipling, young leaders looked like with a missional mindset of going. And then I would lead some trips to our sites, especially the the Monterrey in Mexico site. I was leading trips there. Around 02/2012, I was invited to start hosting camps and retreats for what were vulnerable teenagers in the city of Monterey.
Chris:We would rent a camp in the mountains, and we would take a 120 plus teenagers who had experienced familial separation from their family and were had grown up, at least for some season, in an institutionalized children's home, and we would talk about leadership and development within that. That spiraled into our return after one of those trips, meeting some organizational leaders here in Cincinnati where the leaders asked, why doesn't back to back have a location here in The United States and then Cincinnati? Our answer had been pretty simple for all of the years I'd been on staff until 2018, which was every time we pray about it, we end up opening a site in either another country or within the context. We feel like we're part of a global movement, but there's some aspects of youth culture and culture specifically in The United States that felt a little bit different than the work we had done internationally, but this season felt felt different. We felt like we had an opportunity.
Chris:We felt like there was a community of children, youth and families in Cincinnati that needed access to trauma informed holistic care. And so I was asked if I would launch this site, so I was able to found this site in Cincinnati in 2018 and, started building a team of social workers, coaches, and education specialists from there. So that's a little bit of the kind of history as to my journey and and where I am now.
Zach:Man, like, I feel like everyone on our podcast starts out as a youth pastor.
Chris:That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's good times.
Zach:I mean, I was the same way, you know, out of college working as a youth pastor, just coming up with games, making a total fool out of myself. But there is there is something about working in that context to where, you know, before you start teaching other people how to connect with kids, you yourself first have to as well. You know what mean?
Chris:Yeah. I think the practical access to being able to spend time with a community, whether it's younger children, I I'm not the greatest at the, you know, under 12. I'm now coaching U9 soccer, which is just making me, you know, bolster that skill set and that coaching a little bit more. But I found that the first eight years of being able to invest in youth culture as a young 20, there's a sweet spot of I needed youth ministry and youth ministry needed me and people like you and I in that season. That there's a freedom, there's a usefulness, there's a willingness to try, and there's an age of relationship that I think is really important for middle school and high school students to be able to connect with someone that they feel like is just one or two steps ahead of them, that we can start kind of establishing some rhythm and we can learn some lessons and we can learn some together, which I feel is more like here to peer relationship.
Chris:The older that I get, the more value that I see in that mentoring that no matter what season of life you're in, there's a different voice and role you can play as a mentor, and it's never the wrong time to show up or to sign up. But I learned a lot in that those first seasons within youth ministry. And I think the reason that most of us get know, that are in mentoring get kind of our our feet wet in youth ministry at first is it reminds us of what what problem we're passionate about solving. Right? Like, it's it's a place where we can come in and the community is already there instead of us having to try to go make it up or find it somewhere else, and I love those early years, and I'm also still building my mentoring strategy off of the mistakes I made in those early years.
Zach:Man, it's all about if we can learn from our mistakes, if we can be a consistent learner, a lifelong learner, I mean, the foundation of that is humility. And I just feel like the Lord loves that. Like, he loves people who are humble, who are always trying to find out ways to help others experience more of him. And so, man, I wanna ask you this question, Chris. So tell me tell me why you are so kind of passionate about not only kids, but trauma informed holistic care and all of that stuff?
Chris:Yeah. There's so many reasons. One, I would say that my my first love is Jesus and that he was about being passionate about children and youth. It was very clear in not only who he gave access to him, but also who He invited to be mentored by Him is that was very clear. And I love Jesus and the way Jesus approached life.
Chris:And so I felt like first my desire to be connected to Him feels it just resonates with the way that he had a kingdom mindset. And second, he is the first and maybe the only leader that I've studied on such a level that recognized the human response to traumatic experiences that define us over time, that don't stop, we call that complex developmental trauma, like bad things that keep happening repeatedly, they can really paralyze our ability to feel seen and known and to develop in a healthy way. And his model of kingdom life when he was on this earth was to enter into the post traumatic events of people's lives and reset their expectations of what they could believe to be true, whether it's standing at a well with a woman who had experienced loss and fracturing of relationship over and over and over through her marriages, or it was a paralytic who had watched people walk past him day after day after day, or if it was a woman who had had a bleeding disorder for forty years of her life, like all of those are not traumatic events, which are significantly different than the complexity of experiencing the pain of traumatic events over and over on a daily basis.
Chris:That Jesus was the God who entered into those moments and reset expectation and brought hope into that. And that's what I love the most about trauma informed holistic approach is I believe that it's actually a kingdom approach.
Zach:Man, it's it's so crazy. Just there are so many kids that that I've spent time with who I mean, I I'll say that I haven't had the easiest life out there. Right? Like, grew up without a dad around and, you know, experienced some things. But there's there's kids out there who are 10, 11, 12 years old, and they've experienced more in their lifetime than most people will in eighty or ninety years, it just seems like bad things just continue to happen over and over and over.
Zach:And sometimes I'm like, man, Lord, like, you have to make a way because I don't see how this is gonna get better. But one thing that the two of us kinda talked about is creating community. And you talk about feeling seen. You talk about feeling known, about inviting people into something larger than themselves, especially for a kid who might feel isolated, who might feel alone, who might feel like no one cares about them. Can you just kinda share with me Sure.
Zach:Just Yes. Tell me your thoughts on the power of community and how we as mentors can, can make that happen in a way that gives our mentees honor and worth and value.
Chris:Yeah. It's a great question. The root of what we do at Back to Back Cincinnati and the root of my personal approach to mentoring and then investing in youth culture is this statement, everyone belongs. And from a spiritual statement, think you could add to it. Everyone belongs before they believe.
Chris:That's very true of Jesus approach to a kingdom mindset is that everyone belongs. And when I come in with the framework that your belonging is not tied to your agreement with my belief system or your alignment with it, but that belonging is a context of community that we create in order to process what has made us feel isolated, alone, separated, or has made us manufacture false versions of community, and that the key to that, the root of it, is trust, and that trust is time. If I will spend time in the context of a physical location in an effort to pursue community, if I just show up with no motivation as to I'm not showing up in order to get you to want to be with me, I'm showing up to just be proximate to you. One of my friends who's on staff, his name is Michael Sickles, and he really talked to me about six years ago about the difference between being present and being proximate. And that proximate means our stories draw near to one of another.
Chris:Present is like taking attendance. Like, you and I could both be present on this podcast and that we we showed up, but drawing near to one another's story actually creates an understanding of belonging. At back to back, we have a a core phrase that's one of our our cultural beliefs around giving benefit of the doubt, and I think that's really key when it comes to mentorship and community, is if I were to give benefit of the doubt that if you if if a if an individual knew that their belief system was fracturing and hurting someone else or they had control of changing it to be more inclusive, they would. But something's stopping it. It could be theology.
Chris:It could be pain and trauma. It could be ignorance of a lack of understanding. But if we can have a conversation around belonging and saying, okay, everyone belongs in the space. Now let's set some guidelines of what we need in order for everyone to belong. It actually offsets because you might say, does the bully get to belong?
Chris:Well, if the bully is willing to buy in on belonging where the people that they bullied also need to be able to belong, then the bullying has to stop. And if the person who is introverted says, can I belong and be quiet? Yes. But sometimes we might need you to share your thoughts in order to belong. We need you to be heard, and what would it make you feel safe to be heard?
Chris:The same for the extrovert. So when we start having conversations of what would it take for all of us to belong, we start creating a framework of conversation that doesn't force submission, but creates conversation for us to create a learning environment so that we can belong more over time.
Zach:Man, and just I think often people come up to me and they're like, Zach, like, I've got this kid in my after school program. I got this kid in my and he's just a nightmare. Like, he is just causing chaos, wreaking havoc. Can I give up on him? Can I kick him out?
Zach:And, obviously, we need rules and we like, yes to all of that. But I was talking to someone about this. Mister Peter Vanacore, he's, the president of Christian Association of Youth Mentoring. They just do amazing work. But he said, we can give up on a kid whenever the Lord gives up on us.
Zach:And I'm just like, oh, man. Like, that is that that is so powerful. But us showing up and us loving and us being in their lives, it is a two way street. Like, yes, we will do some things, but we also need you too as well. And it's okay to ask kids to step up a little bit.
Zach:It's okay to ask kids, hey. I will give this, but, you know, what I expect in return is I need you to do some things too. I need you to share your heart. I need you to ask for help. And, man, I I think that is so awesome, Chris, because when you assign responsibility, you give value.
Zach:Sure. And I think that that's a big deal. So
Chris:Yeah. I think what I would add to what you just shared is that one of the things I love about the trauma informed care approach is a quote that's attributed to the late Doctor. Karen Purvis who established a TBRI, trust based relational intervention through TCU, she's attributed to saying that behavior is the response of a child who's lost their voice. And that a child wants to be as responsible for their narrative and for those outcomes as we want them to be. Something happened that is paralyzed the ability to be responsible and that a mentor that I think in the in the healthiest season, a mentor doesn't take personal the behavior that's being projected toward them because it's offensive or it's dangerous, but instead receives behavior with gratitude.
Chris:If you're willing to show me the vulnerability of your wounded self by acting out, by pushing against the wall, by punching that other thing, if you're willing to show me this wounded version, I'm willing to sit with you and to start providing tools so that we can give you a voice so that you can actually use words to talk to me about why are you so guarded. Why is your behavior so protective? Because when we recognize fight, flight, freeze, or there's the fourth one is now fawn, like, kind of behavior matching. When we see that in in a teenager's life that we're mentoring, we could unintentionally shame them into the poor into the understanding that their poor response is their fault, or we could come in inquisitive. These are the responses of someone who's in fear brain.
Chris:And I don't know how much, you know, depth you've gone into on access to brain. That's exactly right. Like, we've got access. We lose access to the prefrontal cortex when we're afraid, and we go into the amygdala part of our brain, which is the fear response, which just says throw a punch, run away, freeze and make sure people go past, or behavior match. When we say, why are you doing this to us with someone who is in that fear brain, they do not have access to the answer to the question.
Chris:But as mentors, when we go down the path of learning tools, whether it is taking deep breaths, going for a walk, holding on to something heavy because some of us need that that kind of input to calm our brain. And instead of the why did we do that, when the question says, what were you feeling when that happened, starts to allow us to become an investigator to unlock the why behind the what that is happening in the lives of a kid. So I agree. Youth want responsibility. What they also need is to know that their lack access to the part of a brain that helps produce responsibility might be in what my friend, doctor David Schooler called the middle circle.
Chris:And that's where we as mentors play is that there's kids who've had bad things happen to them. There's the resources and the relationships that they need in order to be healthy. And as mentors, if you draw a circle between those circles, that's the that's the realm that we live in, is to give access to the resources and the relationships to be healthy to the youth who need something to change in their life.
Zach:Man, Chris, that's so good. Thank you so much for sharing all that. Just a shout out. If your mentee has experienced trauma, if they have gone through some hard things, check out TBRI. It's out of TCU.
Zach:You guys have a not for profit that you guys oversee. Yeah. Why don't why don't you guys give us a little tiny bit of a shout out about that?
Chris:Yeah. I would encourage you. So Trauma Free World was actually built in a conversation with TBRI. If you think master's level or, PhD level understanding, TBRI is brilliant in that and I have learned so much. Their podcast I still listen to and is phenomenal.
Chris:Trauma Free World and if you go to Trauma Free World and Google that, you will find that what we've done is try to take what is at a master's level and give it in a context to that frontline or lay person, mentoring or, you know, access person. And we have resources from an educator training to a coaching training to leadership development that will take an understanding of complex developmental trauma and gift it to you in a way that you don't feel like you have to go down a PhD path. We've trained in over 80 countries, and I think there are over five twenty five trainers now of trauma informed care around the world through this Trauma Free World, and it's been a gift to me. I coach soccer differently, I parent differently, and I lead back to back Cincinnati differently. So I wanna encourage you just check out Trauma Free World for resources that are accessible if you're mentoring children or youth that may have experienced complex developmental trauma.
Chris:And as a generation who came out of a pandemic, I think we're almost at a hundred percent rate that we need
Zach:to
Chris:navigate the impact of traumatic experiences as part of what our mentoring is gonna look like.
Zach:Yeah. It's just an amazing resource, and it's free. So go check it out.
Chris:Absolutely. Yeah. For sure. Free ones are great ones.
Zach:Yeah. Amen, man. Okay, Chris. So we talked a lot about trauma informed holistic care. And, you know, for a person like me, I would just love to know what the heck does that mean?
Zach:And, and how how does that impact the average mentor's relationship with their mentee?
Chris:Yeah. I think that's a a great topic to have a conversation around because we we've actually been in back to back Cincinnati, differentiated the difference between a mentor and a coach. And I think that there's a really healthy approach from volunteer margin. Maybe you're working one job, two jobs, three jobs, you have margin to mentor a couple of hours a week. I think of mentors a lot like from an athletic side, I love soccer.
Chris:I think I think former players can mentor me because they often show me what their regimen and their routine. And spiritually, when people mentor me, they show me what their pathway was. Coaches are hired and trained to watch your game tape to tell you what the best version of you is and it takes themselves completely out of the context. And sometimes I think that mentors feel the unhealthy pressure to also be a coach, right? Like I'm supposed to have all this expertise and all this experience to be able to talk to you about your unique life.
Chris:Lay yourself off the hook. Mentoring is just giving of your time, your talent, your treasure, which might be your time, and I think your testimony. I think that's a key part is just being encouraged by your story is the mentoring piece. What we mean by the holistic approach is, I think all humans and what we believe at back to back is that all humans are made up of five really key components. Your spiritual, your physical, you got a educational or a learner's component, you got a social component, and you got an emotional component.
Chris:And sometimes we try to silo those and deal with one at a time. Right? Like, I don't have shoes. When I get shoes, then I can deal with my spiritual component or I don't have Jesus. I can't have shoes until I have Jesus.
Chris:Our approach from a holistic is that all five are dealt with at the same pace as we move forward because they all work together. My social felt safety can impact my ability to learn in an education space, not because I don't have the intelligence to capture the educational content, but if I don't feel safe socially and don't feel connected, I can't focus on the content. So our approach from a holistic side is to think about the child or the teenager that you're connected to with all five in mind. They're not doors that need to unlock one another. They're actually pathways that we go down at the same time.
Chris:And it helps us not judge so much as well of saying, well, why did you throw away that physical resource? Well, if we don't take the emotional at the same pace as the physical, then I might not be able to to utilize that physical resource or honor it or keep coming back to it. So we see holistic as going in rhythm together in all five of those areas and that we view mentoring as a value of here are the things I'm putting in those five buckets for myself. Not demanding that the mentor become the problem solver in all areas of a teenager's life.
Zach:So tell me if I'm seeing this right. Okay. So if a kid goes to a tough school and they don't feel safe, that's gonna impact their emotions, and that might even impact their social. Knowing that they're coming into your mentoring relationship, and they've had a tough day at school, they feel lonely, they feel scared, and maybe they don't have food. Right?
Zach:All of those things are going to work together whenever you try to teach them about the bible.
Chris:Absolutely. Yeah.
Zach:Yeah. And so for us as mentors, I absolutely love what you said earlier, Chris. We have to stay curious. We have to keep asking different kinds of questions because it's so nuanced. There are so many things that our kids are dealing with to say, oh, this kid's just acting bad because he's a bad kid.
Zach:Well, that actually isn't true. There's six or seven things that they are consistently trying to trying to figure out. And so Yeah. We have to not fix, but we do have to keep tabs on how they are doing physically. Do they have a place to stay?
Zach:Are they eating enough? On their education, how are their teachers? On their social, on all of their friends, on their emotional. Are they angry? Are they sad?
Zach:Are they and so that is a way for us to care not just about certain parts of this child, but about the whole child.
Chris:Yes. And our job as a mentor is not to take over as a therapist or a counselor or a social worker. It's to play the role of investigator slash encourager, in my opinion, from our from our our experience. I won't project that that is the definition, but I will say what I found is that mentoring is done best when we are seen as a safe person to investigate the depth of asking questions of, well, what happened just before that? Instead of warning, you know if you keep that up, you're gonna get kicked out of school and then that, you know, messes.
Chris:Well, that creates the fear element, but instead of investigating and saying, had anything happened differently that day? Because those aren't stories that you've often told me, and it's a good reminder too that trauma or a traumatic event or experience can happen. It's unbiased toward economic status. It's unbiased toward gender. It's unbiased toward ethnicity.
Chris:Now how at at at the same time, historically, we've seen that the more elements of historic or systemic bias that you have in your own life, the more, the harder the climb is. And we want to investigate in in certain environments and say, oh, well, what happened before that? What was happening during that? Instead of specifying and pinpointing a problem, we investigate and then we encourage. Those things might keep happening.
Chris:Do you think that there's someone that you could talk to at school that might help you unlock that? I love a friend of mine, Joey Taylor, who works for an organization called Bespoke and they do storytelling and mentoring in that. He he talked to me through just some conversations of story listening that I think is really key to mentoring, And that the first, no matter what is said to us, we always respond in gratitude and kindness. Thank you for being transparent with me. I really appreciate that you'd be vulnerable to talk to me about getting suspended from school.
Chris:And then to respond with affirming the story instead of one upping it. Our response of being able to respond and say the part that you shared that meant the most to me was this moment where you were trying to communicate a need and others saw you as a threat. That must have been hard. Do you wanna talk more about that? And so we affirm the story, we respond with gratitude, and then we investigate a little bit more depth, and we hold the story well.
Chris:And I think that's the key is that mentors could listen to a person like me on this call and go, well, do you need a PhD in trauma informed care in order to mentor? No. You just have to be willing to listen, ask open ended questions, and encourage that I'm with you instead of feeling the pressure of I've gotta solve you, which is the thing that we say at Back to Back Cincinnati all all the time. What problem are you presenting to me so that I can help serve you better? Because if I see you as my men's tea as the problem, then I'll end up serving the problem.
Chris:So we solve problems to serve people because if we try to solve people, we end up serving problem.
Zach:And I think that's so good, Chris. And I know one thing that I especially early on, I saw my mentee going down a bad path, and I didn't know about this stuff. You know? I just thought they were making bad decisions. I just thought that he was a bad kid.
Zach:So me me and my wife, we adopted a kid who is 15 whenever we, we we've been married just for, like, a year or so, and great kid. I mean, such a good kid. And after a couple years, he started to make these choices that weren't wise. And I knew. I was like, man, if he keeps on making these choices, this is not gonna be good.
Zach:And as I look back now, I had a decision. Do I act in faith and say, Lord, I'm gonna love this kid no matter what, and I'm gonna be there, and I'm gonna ask questions. And, Lord, I'm gonna believe that you love this kid more than I do. And I'm gonna believe, God, that if I take care of his heart, and if I nurture his heart, and if I listen, and if I encourage, then, Lord, you will in some way make make that turn out good. Yeah.
Zach:I did the opposite. I reacted in fear.
Chris:Of course.
Zach:And it's so easy as a mentor when you see your kid making poor choices to respond in fear. And as I look back now, there's a number of kinda whys as to why I was scared. One, I was scared that he would end up in jail. Two, I would scare I was scared that he wouldn't fulfill his potential. Three, I was scared that he would reflect poorly upon me and make me look bad, which is so selfish.
Zach:But I think doing all the things that you're sharing, Chris, one thing that I love about it is it's going to force you to depend upon Jesus. And you talked at the very start about the power of prayer. And it's going to force you on your knees and say, Lord, come and help. Lord, do something. Lord, you have to show up or else because you're the savior of this kid, not me.
Zach:And so all of that just makes me, it kinda reminds me of just the foundational role that faith has in mentoring, especially choosing faith over fear?
Chris:Yeah. I think you're right. I think first, I just wanna say, like, you know, good on you for saying yes to show up in the life of someone. And I think as I as as you were sharing your story, my my brain was like, I I wanna tell that young Zach, like, this young man feels so safe with you that he can process the hard things that happened in order for him to be needed and adopted. And that's one piece that we constantly miss out on as mentors and that we miss out when we pursue opening up our lives as parents is we see behavior as rebellion instead of seeing behavior as the response of a kid who's finally saying, I get to stop running and now I'm actually gonna process the pain that's happened to me.
Chris:And that in mentoring, we can see ghosting, we can see fighting, we can see all these things as a rebellion, or we can refuse to let Satan have a foothold in that, and we can reframe that and go, look, this is how safe this is, that it feels very scary for a kid for the first time to actually trust that there is a forever home, that I do have value, that I am finally seen, that someone does care about me, because all I've been doing for fifteen years is building up a protective strategy and finding some reason as to what's wrong with me that I don't have what other kids have. And we don't coach that enough. We don't coach that enough to say pain is a part of healing and processing is a part of healing. So let's celebrate that this room is safe enough for you to show me how hurt you are and for you to test the boundary in the relationship. As a team, the thing that we cling to, and I think this is helpful for mentors to cling to, is in a prayer, our prayer is to have the Holy Spirit's discernment on two stories that Jesus tells.
Chris:One, when he heard a voice crying and there was a sheep who had gotten lost, and he looked at the 99 and he could hear the voice of the one, and he would leave the community in the context of belonging to go and find the voice that's calling out. When do we leave and when do we chase? Right? Like, when does a kid not show up to our mentoring time or a group community? When do we chase?
Chris:In light of the other one, when do we pull up a rocking chair and sit it on the front porch and wait for the prodigal to come home? Both are biblical. Both are true. Both are focusing on finding what's lost. Right?
Chris:Like, you've got the lost sheep and the lost son, and the strategies that Jesus implements are different in both contexts. One says, I'll set everything down and go after you. I think the key is I'm stuck and I'm crying out versus I'm in I'm behaving and I'm acting out, but I'm not calling out for help yet. So some require chasing, sometimes it requires waiting, both are hard. And the prayer is to discern which one we do with the mentee that allows them to have the voice in their story that they still say, and yet you waited on me.
Chris:You kept showing up at the coffee house even though I ghosted you for two months. You just kept showing up in the rocking chair. And the day that I came back, you were still there. That changed my life. I was out in this community and you drove by and you heard me calling out because I didn't wanna be there.
Chris:And for some reason, you rolled up in that car or you showed up at my football game and you came to me. Right? Like, lost sheep, prodigal son, let's pray through which season we're in with our mentee. And then and let's let's find the confidence that we're about building a kingdom of belonging, not pressuring a generation to feel the shame or the pressure that they need to perform at a level to make themselves worth us investing in. You're God's child.
Chris:You're worth investing in. I'm just gonna keep showing up.
Zach:Man, I've never heard that before. That's really good. That's a really good take on those two stories. Jeez. I wanna be chewing on that one for a couple days for sure.
Chris:Yep. I've been doing it for years. As as we talked about in the in the beginning, there's nothing that I've said that actually comes out of my wisdom. Everything that I've said comes out of my failure and me figuring out how to course correct and out of our team failure in our work as guides in this story through Back to Back Cincinnati. I'm grateful for the grace that God just continues to give me and our team and that children and youth keep giving us for us to figure out what it looks like to be a Christ like presence in their lives and to keep showing up.
Chris:And that means showing up with grace and humility and truth and being able to say, hey. I handled that wrong, and I learned some stuff. And I recognize you were trying to tell me something, and I was trying to fix you, and that's on me. And those lessons have led us to kinda have this model that we see more success in.
Zach:Man, Chris, so the very last thing that I wanna end on is just we both know that you can't give what you don't have. You know? It's impossible to pour out if you're empty. And so we also talked about just how we can learn so much from all of our failures and how if we let it, this mentoring journey, hanging out with these kids will actually teach us a ton about ourselves and about our God. Has has there been something that you've experienced that has spotlighted the immense value in you before pouring out into others of keeping yourself filled up and investing in yourself and making sure that you are at your best whenever you enter into your mentoring relationship.
Chris:Yeah. Yeah. It's we call it the the making sure that our cup is full. Right? Like, if if I have this and my mind is, like, I have this cup.
Chris:If I want other people to drink from this cup, my mentee can either, like, drill a hole in the bottom to get whatever's left in it, or they can take my cup and drink from it. But the best way for them to get what they need and for me to get what we what I need is when my cup is overflowing. Right? Then I don't lose anything and they don't have to take. And that I go through an exercise several times a year where I ask myself, what would fill your cup to overflowing?
Chris:And it's changed with different seasons of life. As a, you know, single youth pastor, my list was very community and outward focused based. And I'm an I'm an introvert at heart too. I used to go to to soccer like soccer matches and baseball games. I'd buy one ticket because sitting there by myself and just watching this experience refilled me.
Chris:Then I got married and recognized that's not good for the marriage, but I'm like, hey. I'm gonna go do this without you, and my community has grown. So I will say my thought, my questions are, am I allowing Christ to refill me through his word in an authentic way and being in ministry for over twenty five years, you've gotta keep that fresh because it it can get stale. Second, am I looking to God for affirmation or am I looking to others? And then third, am I letting my family bring me joy in who they are and why we're connected?
Chris:And then fourth, am I doing something that I love that's just for me? And right now that one's that like, so I have a I love talking about scripture. I love studying Jesus. I love some podcasts that are around Jesus. I love spending social and relational time with my family and just getting time with them.
Chris:And then I love playing. I'm 46 and I still play competitive soccer as an old man and there's a lot of ice and a lot of stuff that happens afterward. And so I need to keep those things in my life that I'm not trading for the work. And when I start to feel like my passion for the work is waning, immediately, I need to go to that list and be like, oh, I've kind of sacrificed some of the things on that list. Gotta rebuild them.
Chris:Gotta get some time for myself.
Zach:Man, I heard someone say, like, one, self care is not selfish, and self care is caring for the ministry. Like, kinda in the same as you. I love playing basketball. You know? Like, I mean, if you guys have heard the podcast, people know that I'm six eight and just, like, love balling.
Zach:Like, it's something my favorite thing. And if I don't play basketball at least once a week or so, it truly impacts my ministry. It's the craziest thing. And so I'm like, man, in order for me to be be the best version of myself, I need to work out. I need to go hoop.
Zach:I need to spend time with friends. And for every person, it's different. So I I think that's so wise. What are the things that you have to do to get your cup to overflow? So thanks a lot for sharing that, Chris.
Chris:Of course. I I think it's the key. Like, I mean, the the speaking into it from a spiritual side is many of us were were told to fear these things that they would become idols and they would separate us from God. And there's a very different conversation between soccer for me, basketball for you, our families becoming our idols and looking at them as the way in which God is gifting us to find joy in life. And there's a balance, right?
Chris:Like when I if I stop doing kingdom work because I'm too busy perfecting my soccer game, I have an idol. If I stop thinking about God and I'm only thinking about my wife or my children, I have an idol. If I'm looking at the framework of my week and thinking this work is hard, this calling is tough, I find joy in being refilled by my presence and my proximity to these things, it's a healthy balance. So I think sometimes we just need to speak that out that sometimes we're we've been coached against self care because there's a feel of fear of idolatry. That's the enemy trying to take something of God and making and starving us out from experiencing it.
Chris:Instead, put it in a good rhythm so that you can be with God while you participate in the things that bring you joy.
Zach:Spot on, dude. Love it. Okay, Chris. So our time is coming to an end. Tell people how they can get in touch with you and learn more about back to back.
Chris:Yeah. Globally, if you wanna hear about what we're doing around the world, go to backtoback.org. You can find a link there to, Trauma Free World's website as well to get those resources. If you wanna know specifically about the work that we're doing in Cincinnati and even how to maybe make referrals or connect families or community groups to us, it's backtobackcinci.org for our work specific here. Just grateful for the time, Zach.
Chris:This has been awesome.
Zach:Course, man. Really, really appreciate you and all your wisdom and all of your experience, man. And, you have definitely helped us out today. So thanks a lot, and thank you, listener, for tuning in. If you can, give us that five star, share it with a friend, a volunteer, and, remember this, You Mentor.
Zach:Thanks for tuning in to the You Can Mentor podcast. Give us that five star rating and share this podcast with your mentoring friends. Learn more at youcanmentor.com. Thank you.