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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.
We want to hear from you! Send any mentoring questions to hello@youcanmentor.com, and we'll answer them on our podcast. We want to help you become the best possible mentor you can be. Also, if you are a mentoring organization, church, or non-profit, connect with us to join our mentoring network or to be spotlighted on our show.
Please find out more at www.youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You will find more resources on our website to help equip and encourage mentors. We have downloadable resources, cohort opportunities, and an opportunity to build relationships with other Christian mentoring leaders.
You can mentor is a podcast about the power of building relationships with kids from hard places in the name of Jesus. Every episode will help you overcome common mentoring obstacles and give you the confidence you need to invest into the lives of others. Find out more at youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You can mentor. Yo.
Speaker 1:Yo. Yo. Can you believe that fall is almost here? And with the new season comes new offerings from Youth Mentor. Hey.
Speaker 1:Go to our website, youthmentor.com, and check out what we have planned for the fall. We've got two big events. Number one, we've got one days, which is one day conferences coming to your state, hopefully. In the near future, we've got one days planned for Texas, Oklahoma, and South Carolina this fall. Go to our website or our social medias to check it out.
Speaker 1:The second thing is for everybody. This is an online sprint. It's a four to six week cohort where you get in-depth kind of training on mentoring. You get to meet other mentoring leaders. We've got one on mentoring one zero one, and we've got one on leading yourself and empowering others.
Speaker 1:Check out our new and improved website or find out more on social media. Remember, you can mentor, get connected, sign up today. We'd love to have you join. So share it with your staff, your volunteers, your mentoring friends because it's always better when you do mentoring together. Go check it out, and remember, you can mentor.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the You Can Mentor Podcast. This is your favorite mentoring friend, Zach, and I'm here with doctor Anthony Bradley. Doctor Bradley, say hello.
Speaker 2:Hi there. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Man, I am so excited to have you on our podcast, and I'm not trying to fanboy over here. But if there's one person that I would have on this podcast to talk about the things that we talked about, it would be you. So, I'm a big fan. You know? I'm a big fan.
Speaker 1:I'll just say that.
Speaker 2:Great. Well, I'm I'm excited for our conversation today.
Speaker 1:I was, talking to one of my office mates, and I was like, man, I've got this huge podcast today, you know, about doctor Bradley and da da da. And he's like, would I know him? And I'm like, well, I mean, I don't think you'd know him if you didn't care about kids who didn't have fathers and Jesus and mentoring and fatherhood. But for us who do, he's awesome. So it's great.
Speaker 1:Alright. So, doctor Bradley, why don't you just start us off and tell us a tad bit about who you are and what you are up to here in this world?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Again, thanks for having me on the on the podcast. I'm really excited about our our conversation today. I'm really excited about the the ministry that you have, the opportunities that you're providing to help men in training, sort of men along the way who are struggling, who come from less than ideal circumstances, it's really, really awesome, we're kind of frontline to work there and I really, it's really interesting, I kind of stumbled into this mainly by working with students and this is really something that will come to form I think a lot of our conversation today. I was raised in Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 2:I was sort of born in a idealistic time as a as a Gen Xer, and I'm I'm happy happy to say that. These those were those were good days, the seventies and eighties. Right Michael Jackson MTV etc. I was a latchkey kid of sorts and really really had a good time growing up in Atlanta. Was raised in a United Methodist Church and after high school went to Clemson University in South Carolina where I had a bit of a spiritual awakening of sorts.
Speaker 2:Was raised in the church but didn't really have a personal walk with the Lord that it was really more of a cultural thing in the South. Everybody goes to church. I wasn't against Christianity, I didn't have sort of a personal faith. It was through a college ministry, actually the couple of college ministries FCA, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and Reform University Fellowship, which is a college ministry of the Presbyterian Church of America. Was really the combination of those two things that that the Lord used to sort of awaken my heart, not only to to the gospel, but God's fathering, of of me.
Speaker 2:And graduated college and I'm with the seminary at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. And this is when it really got serious for me because I had an opportunity to do some urban ministry in inner city St. Louis. And I had really not done any kind of youth ministry before, and it's when I got really in the throes of that that I began to ask some really, really important questions.
Speaker 2:In fact, I was so captivated by some of the needs in that world that I had decided upon graduating seminary that I would either be a youth pastor, teach at a Christian school, or do a PhD because I am a professional nerd. So those were the three things that were on the table because I was just so so captivated and drawn to the work of of intervention really in the lives of of young men and women who were struggling. And turns out I graduated from seminary and got accepted to a PhD program at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia where I got to do all three of those things. While I was a student at Westminster Seminary, I also taught ninth grade Bible at Philmont Christian Academy in Philadelphia, which served both inner city Philadelphia and also the county. So it was an incredible mix of students.
Speaker 2:And it was it's one of the only cities I've ever lived where the public bus system actually takes students to public and private schools, which is really, really awesome, I thought. So I got to really be involved in teaching high school students. I also was volunteering in the youth ministry at the church I was attending at the time and also in the PhD program. So graduated, did that, moved on and really circled back after I graduated from the PhD program, worked at a think tank for a few years, and I went back to the Covenant Seminary to teach there for a few years. And then in the fall of two thousand and nine, moved to New York City to teach at the King's College.
Speaker 2:And I taught at the King's College there for about fourteen years and was also the advisor for a men's dorm community and had opportunities. For about ten years, I was a faculty advisor for this this men's dorm at the King's College. The King's College closed in the spring of two thousand twenty three, and I found my way to Grand Rapids where I worked at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. I also teach at Kuiper College here in Grand Rapids. So I'm doing both of those things and as we'll probably discuss at some point I have a new book coming out in '26 on the fatherhood effect, which is really an exploration of the data on what happens in a child's life when fathers are not fathering well.
Speaker 2:Whether the father is completely absent or at home. And I'd be interested to sort of if you'd like to kinda talk about how I got into this, I'd be happy to explore that later. But that's just sort of the overall thing about me. People often ask if I came from a broken home. I did not.
Speaker 2:I came from a very, very black middle class, a tea parent, intact family. What what I describe here finally about my background is that imagine leave it to Beaver, but the neighborhood was all black. That's basically how I how I grew up. Just everybody, parents, my neighborhood, little to no divorce. Ere I went to church, it was just kinda easy and and was was, like I said, idyllic.
Speaker 2:I mean, just such a such a fantastic opportunity to grow up the way that I did. In Atlanta, I was I was raised with the people who were personal friends and colleagues and classmates of Doctor. King. So Morehouse College, Spelman College, those are the sorts of African Americans with whom I was raised. They raised me and and I think they they they did a good job of of giving me this double consciousness where I still have great interest in issues in the community, but also sort of broader issues in the culture as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I think that's whenever I found out about you, doctor Bradley, is I think one of my mentors, actually. So whenever I was running the Mentoring organization up in Dallas, they found you on I think it was on x, as a matter of fact. And you started sending out these kinda tweets, and he would, you know, take a picture of the tweet and send it over to me over text. And he's just like, man, you you have got to get to know this guy.
Speaker 1:And I would absolutely love to talk about your book and specifically some of the data that you found because I am not a data guy. I'm I mean, for the for the lack of a better term, you know, I'm experiential. You know, I wanna go out there and do it, and I love people who whenever they said, hey. Why does this matter? They give you facts.
Speaker 1:You know, I can tell a story. I I can share from the heart, but all of the data that you found shows that there's a serious problem. And from my perspective, it is really obvious that if a kid grows up in a home without a father figure engaged, that is not going to serve that kid well. And I know that because of my own personal story, but you know that because of what science has told you. So why don't you just go into the book, some of the data?
Speaker 1:What what is kind of the narrative, and what happens when a child grows up without a father figure engaged.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So one one of the things that I I make a point of saying to different audiences is that fathers are the most important men in any community anywhere ever. And and what's interesting is that at least for me when I use the word father, I do not necessarily mean biological father. By father, I I also mean men who are serving in a fathering role to those who are in need of that level of connection. It could be a mentor, it could be an uncle, a cousin, grandfather, some other it could it could even be big brother.
Speaker 2:I mean, are some families that that that, you know, where the the oldest brother is having to basically serve as a surrogate father for for the younger siblings. So that role is really, really important, and the the data makes this unbelievably clear. I'll just give you some quick highlights from some data that emerged from the the justice department, several years ago and I can tell you that this data still holds today. For example, around 63 of youths who take their lives, who die by suicide come from dad come from homes that do not have a father. A ninety percent of all homeless and runaway youths come from homes without a father.
Speaker 2:Eighty five percent of all children that exhibit behavior disorders come from homes without dads. Seventy one percent of all high school dropouts come from homes without dads. Seventy percent of juveniles in state operated detention centers come from homes without dads. Seventy five percent of adolescent patients in substance abuse centers come from homes without dads. Seventy five to eighty percent of young men who rape out of anger, who commit sexual assault out of anger, come from homes with no father.
Speaker 2:We can also track violence and its correlation to fatherlessness and dad absence. Interesting data point here is that for every one percent increase in fatherlessness in a community, it predicts about a three percent increase in adolescent violence. So when dads are not around, particularly for boys, they act out in aggression and hurt other people. So there are some really important indirect correlations between that. And what's really fascinating to me is that when you look at all those issues, right, substance abuse and juvenile delinquency and behavior disorders, right, there are organizations who are doing fantastic jobs at working on those issues.
Speaker 2:But the root of those issues, if you really wanna go upstream, which is my interest is in working at upstream solutions, we have to look at family structure and the role of fathers in particular as a as a solution matrix. Right? As the most effective intervention for some of these issues is actually going to be a man who is showing interest in caring for and giving direction and and affection and presence in a young person's life. And what's really fascinating is that the the interventions and the role of of these things is is actually pretty light. It doesn't take a whole lot.
Speaker 2:People often think it does, but it actually doesn't. It actually has a lot to do with with presence. I'll give one quick story to illustrate this. I don't know if you've heard of the the dads on duty, which was an opportunity for a bunch of fathers got involved in a high school. I think it was in New Orleans.
Speaker 2:And in that situation, right, you had a a public school where a lot of, you know, unruly kids, there's a lot of behavior disorders and violence and things like that, classroom management issues, things like that. And one day a bunch of dads just showed up. And what's so fascinating about this, and people can look this story up is that the day the day of the dad showed up, those things just vanished. It was simply the father's presence. Now what do they do?
Speaker 2:They didn't give any lectures. There were no PowerPoint presentations. There wasn't an assembly where the dads gave a talk. They were just walking around, greeting students as they came in, walking the halls, being present, right, being available, talking to students, things like that. And just their mere presence and engagement just began to to undermine all all of those negative outcomes.
Speaker 2:Right? And so when dads are absent, we see the proliferation of these negative externalities and these negative outcomes in the lives of kids. And and I I I think that if people really were interested in developing the most effective solutions, I'd say on the one hand, yes, we need to we need to mentor youth and care about youth. We also need to mentor and reach out and care about their fathers as well for those who who have fathers who are who are still alive and and and living in in some proximity to those kids.
Speaker 1:I that that's spot on, doctor Bradley, and I I have always said, hey. Look. We can mentor these kids. We can teach them how to shake a hand, make eye contact, make straight a's. We can do all of those things, but we will never be their father.
Speaker 1:And if a kid doesn't know their father, if they don't have a positive experience with him, there is always going to be this gap that they have inside their heart, this longing to want to be one with them, you know, to hear their dad say, I love you, to hear their dad say that I'm here for you. And if you're a mentoring org out there, we have talked about this often, the power of building relationships, not just with the kid, but with their family as well. Because if you can be the bridge between that kid forgiving his father and trying to, restore the family, right, that is that is generational changing work right there. And so just a kind of a shout out that, hey. If you're mentoring kids, don't forget don't forget about their parents as well.
Speaker 1:And I I think that that's that's so important that we've remembered that it's not rocket science. Like, you don't have to have a lot. That's why we're called You Can Mentor because you don't have to be Superman. You can mentor just as you are if you just show up and do a couple things. One saying that I thought of while I heard you talking is a kid can't cannot be what they cannot see.
Speaker 1:And if a kid doesn't see a father, if there isn't a man in their life because they go to school with a bunch of, you know, with a bunch of women, which is great, They go home, and there's just a single mom. But if there isn't a man around, then how in the world do can we expect that kid to become a man who's fulfilling his potential? So
Speaker 2:Yeah. Can I can I tell you a a quick story of my very, very first mentoring experience with a young man Yes, please? And and how it's how it's turned out. So this is, my goodness, over twenty years ago. I keep referring him to it as a kid, and he's like almost 40 years old now.
Speaker 2:So I'll have to stop doing that. But here's the story. So I was I was living in Grand Rapids. I was finishing up my PhD. Was working at a think tank.
Speaker 2:And this, friend of ours from church said, hey, I got this young man who's really smart. She was in a school that underperforms. It was a low lower income serving school, but he's like, he's really smart, but he is selling a lot of drugs. And he was good at it. Right?
Speaker 2:I mean JJ was very very good at selling drugs. He learned how to sell drugs from his dad and his dad was incarcerated at the time. In fact JJ was so good at selling drugs as a tenth grader that his mother used to steal his drug money because he was hand over fist bringing in that level of cash. Right? And and the his Spanish teacher asked around our church if there if any young men would would be open to mentoring him and my my one friend said no.
Speaker 2:He wasn't and I think he thought he wasn't equipped to do it, which isn't really true. And I was like, well, sure. I'll hang out with the kid. Like, what's what's the big deal? So we just went to Denny's, man.
Speaker 2:We just went to Denny's like once a week. I took him to Denny's and I would order one meal, he'd order two. He's a football player. He would he would order two meals. He'd eat one meal and sometimes he eat two meals or sometimes he would take the other meal home and and that's all we did.
Speaker 2:I would go to his football games sometimes, right, I would take pictures, would hang out with him, phone calls, whatever, we would go to lunch every now and then. We just really formed this relationship out of Denny's, right? And what was so fascinating is that that one small act of engagement just completely redirected his experience because he had never seen a man with a college degree who had a job and things like that. And so he was he started asking questions like, well, how do I go to college? What is it like?
Speaker 2:How do I get a job? I wanna be I wanna be a professional. I had a car, and I had these professional clothes. And he was like, I wanna dress like that. I wanna I wanna have a car or car someday.
Speaker 2:So fast forward a few years, it sort of, you know, has continued. And at one point, he lived with me, for about six months, when he was in his twenties. And the the big, kinda life changing moment for him was when I took him to my parents' house for Thanksgiving. And I took him to Atlanta, and it was the first time he had seen it was like a a Norman Rockwell painting of a dad carving the turkey on the one end of the table, my mom was on the other end. All my siblings are sitting around and we're eating this really dry turkey.
Speaker 2:My dad's cutting it. And he's it was the first time he been at a thanksgiving like that where there's a dad cutting a turkey, the mom be there in, and he was just he was blown away by that. And what was so interesting is that it became aspirational for him. He's like, want I wanna live like this someday. I wanna have a house.
Speaker 2:I wanna have a family. I wanna I wanna these sorts of things, I I want these things. So we we put him in a car. We drove him around Atlanta, Georgia and let him see all of these sort of black middle class neighborhoods and he I remember him saying, wait, black people live in this big house? I'm like, yes.
Speaker 2:This is, you know, like this is pretty standard for for Atlanta. And that trip just completely changed his life because he had a new imagination for what it meant to be an an adult male. When he was in his twenties, I remember the first time he went to like a like an Applebee's and and he's like well we're gonna go there to get drunk right? I was like no we're just gonna get dinner and he was like wait what? You mean you go to a restaurant with a bar and you just like eat?
Speaker 2:I'm like, well, yeah. You don't have to get drunk when you go out. And it was these little things like that that just completely changed his his his trajectory. And and fast forward, it's been, I don't know, twenty something years of a relationship. I see him still every Sunday.
Speaker 2:He's a real estate agent. He's also working now in education. He's got a daughter. He's about to get married. He recently got baptized.
Speaker 2:His life is doing great. He has a podcast. He just wrote a book that just came out on his experience. He has a book on leadership that's come out. And I wasn't really doing all that much other than just simply hanging out with him, giving him some life advice, but I was exposing him to a new reality and that really became aspirational for him and it just completely changed the the trajectory.
Speaker 2:The one thing that I that I tell people about about mentoring is that it it begins but you should you should not expect it to end. Right? That that this is not a six week program. It's not a six month program. It's not something you're gonna sign up for for a year and then just walk away from the from the lab.
Speaker 2:You really you really need to understand that that this is something that you start, and and there will be some variance in terms of the intensity over the year. So there were some some years I didn't talk to JJ for maybe a year or maybe, you know, not even maybe two years. And then there were some times where he was once a week for six months, right? He kinda ladled in and out depending on on where he was in in his life. And and it really really changed by me doing something simple like going to Denny's.
Speaker 2:And I had no idea where this was where this was gonna go but it has really turned out to be something that he credits for really saving his life because he was headed to prison just like his father because he was so heavily embedded selling drugs. And so I really have a heart for this because my experience with it, particularly with JJ and others, I just see that you can have such an incredibly transforming experience with someone who's in need and it does not take much. Yeah. That that level of engagement is not nearly, I think, the level of required expectation that some people might assume.
Speaker 1:And my I 100% agree with you. You know, my my life was transformed because this guy who was my neighbor took me to Razoo's, and we ordered, you know, we ordered some catfish. It was and he forgot about it. I'm talking about it forty years later. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:And I think that god is so for the fatherless. You know, there's in in god's word, god god loves all of us, but he's for a certain group of people. You know? He's for the widow. He's for the orphan.
Speaker 1:He's for the fatherless. God's a father to the fatherless. He sets the lonely in families. He's a defender of the widow. Right?
Speaker 1:And so I think, personally, that god is just looking for people to be his hands and feet, to be his voice to these kids who don't have dads. And when you even start to go down that road, he puts his hand on it, and amazing things happen because he is working through our, just everyday things. He's putting his super on our natural. Right? Kind of a weird term.
Speaker 1:But but yeah. I mean, I don't think it takes a lot. But for you, you're just having dinner with a kid. For him, he's saying, oh my gosh. There's an adult who's sitting with me who's taking time.
Speaker 1:I must have worth. I must have value. And you are every time you show up, you're changing how he sees himself, which is a tremendous deal. But
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think I think sometimes and and this is by the way, this question I'm about to I'm about to ask I'm about to say is a question everyone has. Right? At some point at some point, every child wrestles with this question of do I matter? Right?
Speaker 2:And if boys in particular do not hear that they matter they will they will pursue disordered ways of trying to make a case that they do matter. And unfortunately those disordered ways of trying to secure a sense that they matter often ends up hurting other people. When girls have the same question, they often end up hurting themselves. Right? And there's something magical, if not supernatural, about the presence of another adult, particularly man in a boy's life, that their presence communicates that you do matter because I am trading off my time and my treasure and my talent.
Speaker 2:I'm trading off things that I could be doing to spend time with you. And it has a way of of of bringing dignity and humanity and and and a sense of a young man understanding that he actually is made in the image and likeness of God is being recognized by this other person's presence who simply has interest in me. So I do matter. And then once a young man discovers and realize and internalizes the fact that he matters, now he begins to act like it. He believes now that he has agency that he can he can do things.
Speaker 2:Right? He believes that he has self efficacy that he can he can make a real difference in the world but that's primarily driven because he knows that someone believes in him and believes that he is significant and that he matters. And that idea of of of mattering is is just so central to to intervening in in the life of a of a kid that doesn't have a dad. They are they are they are really trying to get that question answered. Right?
Speaker 2:It's it's a variation on the theme of of can I do anything? Right? Do I have what it takes? Am I important? Right?
Speaker 2:And and having a mentor come in and essentially communicate this. I see you. Right? I see you as you are. I see you for who you are, and and there's nothing about you that's going to make me disinterested in you because I value you because of because of the way that God that God made you.
Speaker 2:Now, when a young man understands that, feels that, internalizes that, everything changes. Right? He views himself differently, his posture changes, he's up straight, his shoulders are back. Right? And, of course, the most natural places where a lot of young men experience this is in sports.
Speaker 2:And that's why a lot of young men are so tied to their coaches because their coaches have to actually inadvertently, in their process of coaching, communicate all of those things. Right? And and being a mentor, you you have that same opportunity in in the exact same way and and can just radically redirect a young man's life and and a sense of himself.
Speaker 1:Man, it makes me think about that verse in second Samuel where it's talking about David. Right? And I just love that book where it kinda talks about the two types of men. You know? There's David and then there's Saul.
Speaker 1:And Saul was big guy, you know, but he was very insecure. And even though he was king, he didn't see himself as king. But David in second Samuel five, it says, and David perceived he was king. He finally understood it. And when a young man understands that he has worth, that he has value, that doesn't just change his life.
Speaker 1:That changes generations. You know? Because of your work with JJ, JJ's daughter is different. JJ is his entire generational line was changed because one person decided to show up, and I'm sure that there were others. And I wanna kinda use that story as as a segue.
Speaker 1:You talk often about the power of tribes and how how can we surround our our young people with as many people who are, helping them see themselves like god sees them as possible. And I'm all about one on one mentoring. That's great. But we also have people here who are doing after school programs and summer camps. So talk a tad bit about surrounding kids with a intergenerational tribe.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What the what the research shows is that every child needs multiple adults in their life, not just one important one or one significant one. In fact the research is fairly clear that every teenager needs at least three to five different adults who are speaking into their life. Now those three to five adults may be speaking into different things. Right?
Speaker 2:So one may be a teacher, an education, One could be like, you know, the spiritual adviser. Another one, like, how to change a tire. Right? But they need different inputs from from different, adults. And that's where masculine formation actually happens.
Speaker 2:It happens in a community of men, not just one on one. And and what we actually need, we need communities of men actually mentoring communities of boys together. And what happens is it's the sort of cross pollinization that happens in all of those networks where you're able to meet all of these boys' needs in different ways. I think it's really unrealistic and and perhaps I think this may be why some men feel that mentoring is too much of a burden because there may be this assumption that I have to provide everything that this kid needs. But when it's a community of men and a community of of younger men, you can redistribute those needs across across a network of of relationships.
Speaker 2:In that way, it it doesn't really come across as that much of a burden because you're doing it together. Back to the sports analogy, it's the head coach with a team of assistant coaches. Right? That's sort of that's sort of how it tends to be the most effective. And the research is really clear that the most effective mentoring is actually done in community.
Speaker 2:Not not really just simply simply one on one, but it's more like like three on five, right, or three on 12 or or something like that. And and when that happens, when that happens, it becomes a really clear message to the young men. Oh, it's not just that I'm important to this one guy over here. I'm important to these other ones. And so wow.
Speaker 2:So so maybe what this one man is saying to me is actually true because these other men are also validating and affirming the the exact same things. And that's the biblical model. I mean, that is that is sort of the history of the Christian tradition. It's a history of of living in the context of Israel. We have always had this really communal understanding that we're kind of raising and nurturing kids together.
Speaker 2:And so Timothy you know, what what Paul says to Timothy, I think is really clear where you have women teaching girls. These are plural. Right? And men, older men teaching younger men. Those if you read the passage, those were given as plural manifestations of how this works.
Speaker 2:It wasn't a man on a on a single young man and a woman on a single young woman. It was this idea that the men raise the boys together, and the women raise the young men. Sorry. The women raise the young women together, and and the research actually actually backs that up.
Speaker 1:Man, it says second Timothy two two right there.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But I think that's so fascinating because that's why I love after school kind of programs. It's like you might have a one on one mentor, but then you have you know, you're teaching the after school program. You might have a coach outside of school. You might have a youth pastor. You might have a neighbor.
Speaker 1:And so if you're mentoring a kid, use your network and introduce them to as many godly people as possible who can invest into them and teach them new things. Because I might be able to teach them about basketball. You might be able to teach them about Atlanta. You know, you might be able to teach them about the history of Atlanta falcons, Jamal Anderson, the dirty bird. You know?
Speaker 1:I'm a teach them all about the Dallas cowboys. But, you know, sorry. I had to get that in there. But
Speaker 2:And you and you will be teaching him in error, unfortunately, about about
Speaker 1:the Dallas cowboys. Them about failure, about endurance, perseverance, you know, all of those things. But, hey. For those of you guys who have the app Substack, I would highly encourage you to subscribe to doctor Bradley's Substack. He dropped one this morning or maybe it was this week about warmth, and I wanna talk about that.
Speaker 1:So one of my favorite things that I encourage mentors or or that I ask them is when a kid experiences you, what are they experiencing? Are they experiencing the person of Jesus, or are they experiencing someone who just wants to see results? And so can you just kinda speak some about warmth and why, mentoring and building relationships with this kid is so much more than just helping them go to college?
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's a that's a great question. I think I think what has happened over the years and a lot of these mentoring discussions is that we measure a successful mentor relationship by these consumeristic or materialistic outcomes. Right? It was great.
Speaker 2:Look, Johnny's going to Harvard now. Yay. Mentoring program. Right? Or look, he had us he now has a small business.
Speaker 2:Oh, this is fantastic. Right? But what the research actually shows is that the most effective intervention for predicting the sustainability of transmitting the values and the ideals that were communicated during that mentoring process is actually warmth and and affection. And that goes not just for for mentors, also for parenting. That it actually is the the secret sauce.
Speaker 2:So we're we're we're thinking about ways to show appropriate affection within a within a mentoring context. Right? A handshake, a high five, a pat on the back, the bro hug. Right? You wanna communicate you wanna communicate with your with your eyes and your facial expressions that I see you.
Speaker 2:I care about you. I enjoy being around you. There's something in the research that's called a fatherly gaze. In that fatherly gaze, if you can imagine a face that has that has the expression of enjoyment And that expression of enjoyment is communicated by looking in the person's eye and having this face that communicates, you know what? This is fun for me.
Speaker 2:You know, I actually delight to spend time with you. The idea that that you should be a drill sergeant. Right? You should give a PowerPoint presentation, make sure that you focus on on discipline. Those things are not bad, but they don't last.
Speaker 2:So when we think about what's going to really press in and change a young man's life, change a boy's life, it's actually communicating these ideas and these values, the theology, all that stuff has to be wrapped up in what the research calls warmth. So that that includes, like I said, appropriate affection. It also includes unconditional acceptance. Right? So I often tell the the young man that I'm mentoring, there there is nothing that you can do that's going to cause me to reject you.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, you could you could do something really stupid. Right? And I'm not gonna kick you. I'm not I'm not gonna kick you to the curb.
Speaker 2:You can make a bad decision tomorrow and I'm not going to to reject you because you made a mistake. Right? I'm also I'm also not going to think more highly of you because you do something great. Right? I'm just gonna love you as is and care about you as is, good, bad, ugly.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna treat you any differently in the good or the bad or the ugly. It's this idea that a young man needs to know that I do not have to perform in order to secure attachment and love and acceptance and validation. I don't have to score goals. I don't have to make straight a's. I don't have to dress a certain way.
Speaker 2:I don't have to become something in order to earn love and acceptance and affection and connection and attachment. Now that's deeply theological. That's a whole different podcast. Right? But the fact that you don't have to earn someone's love is warmth.
Speaker 2:It's also characterized by by just being a person who listens. I think sometimes with young people we take on the posture of believing we need to be teaching something all the time, right? Discipling means teaching, mentoring means teaching. But the secret sauce in all of this is actually listening and asking questions because the one who listens, the one who asks questions, you're communicating that that you you want to hear from them because you value them. And and what happens is if you become a listener as a posture, then you will become the person to whom they go when they have questions because they know that you're first before you start giving advice, you're gonna listen to them and listen to their to their concerns.
Speaker 2:Lastly here as I mentioned earlier, warmth is characterized by joy. Think sometimes we just don't have enough fun And and I think that a lot of a lot of young men, a lot of boys and young men, especially they come from really difficult challenging circumstances, they don't get to have a lot of fun. Right? They're always on alert looking out for the next threat. Right?
Speaker 2:But where's the fun? And and and for so many young men, they just need to to to experience enjoyment which is something that God wants us to do and to be. He wants us all to experience enjoyment, so we to enjoy the creation. Right? So when when you can when you combine appropriate affection and unconditional acceptance and listening and joy, that's the context of warmth.
Speaker 2:And whatever else is embedded in that is going to be sustained. It's going to be transmitted. It's going to end up being embedded into the teen years and the twenties because of those situations were characterized and defined by warmth. And again, I just wanna I wanna I wanna reiterate this. This is true for parents, not just in mentoring context.
Speaker 2:Right? This is in the home as as well. And if so if you're sort of the stoic teacher, right, the disciplinarian, the enforcer of rules, the one who brings order, and then you wonder, well, what happened? How how how come I did all the things that the the the parenting book said, but my kid is not walking the way that I expected. My question was, was were were all those things embedded in warmth or not?
Speaker 2:Right? It it really it really requires both both love and and structure in order for for kids to really thrive.
Speaker 1:Man, that's so fascinating to me. You know, as I just heard you talk about that, I'm thinking about this morning. You know, my kids are getting ready for school, and I'm barking at them the, you know, you guys gotta do the dishes before you leave and the the and I'm just like, do I need to teach my kids how to be responsible and do the dishes? Yes. That's a good thing.
Speaker 1:Right? But if I do that without warmth, without the toe the it's the tone, it's the nonverbals, it's all the things that you don't think about. It's, you know, am I patient? Am I gentle? You know?
Speaker 1:Am I kind? The fruit of the spirit. You know? Am I self controlled? Like, all of these things.
Speaker 1:And that is I mean, that speaks to me as a mentor. That speaks to me as a parent. I think so many mentors mentor out of fear. If I don't, then they're gonna end up in prison or they're gonna, you know, da da da da. And that fear creates an anxiety, and that anxiety comes out, and those kids can feel it.
Speaker 1:But this is just such such an important reminder that kids don't know kids don't care what you know until they know that you care. And so often, you show them that you care by being warm and by showing that you like them, that you enjoy being with them. So that's a good one, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I think we underestimate the power of kindness. I mean, it is a superpower in this space. Right? It it may be it may be the the father of all of all the powers.
Speaker 2:Because it what it does is it but what kindness does is it dismantles the walls. Right? What it does what what kindness does, it it disrupts the the need for self protection. Right? Kindness allows you to peel back layers to really get in and see what's actually going on.
Speaker 2:Right? What kindness does, it actually sabotages their defensive mechanisms and their knee jerk responses to self protection and their fears and anxieties about rejection. Right? So so when a when a when a young man knows and if this is mediated through kindness, when he when he knows that that, oh, I can just be myself and this person is not gonna reject me, you could teach them anything. You could show them anything.
Speaker 2:Right? They're gonna respond to anything, because because everything has been so so codified and cemented in the in the power of kindness.
Speaker 1:It's good. It's really, really good. Doctor Bradley, why don't you tell us a tad bit about your book that's coming out?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the book is the fatherhood effect. I'm really discussing in the book what happens when in the in the lives of girls and boys when dads do not properly attach to their children. It actually goes back to a lot of the data that I mentioned earlier in terms of homelessness and drug addiction and even promiscuity, academic outcomes, right? Those are the things.
Speaker 2:What the research shows now, because we have the studies to to that that demonstrate this, it would be basically based on the first few years of a child's life in turn in in turn in this discussion, we can predict things like diabetes, cancer, high school graduation, college enrollment. We can predict whether or they're gonna get a job. Right? We can also predict things like marriage, their overall thriving in terms of mental health. We can predict all these things based on these on these fatherly attachments.
Speaker 2:And so what the book is intended to do is to provide the data, and then and then also in the book, I explain how these how these themes emerge in music. Right? Because artists have been singing about their fathers, and rappers have rapping about their dads for decades. Right?
Speaker 1:Like Tupac.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Right? Like M and M. Right? I mean, James Brown.
Speaker 2:I mean, right? There's a lot of music about dads. Right? They also talk about it in movies. So the films that sort of depict what happens in a boy's life and then all the novels that have that have been written about these things.
Speaker 2:Our culture is saturated with with stories of dads that are not around. And then at the end of each chapter, I conclude by giving recommendations for churches and nonprofits to help dads be better dads for their own kids. Now it's important to remember when I when I talk about dads and fathers, I just don't mean biological fathers. So I'm really talking about more the office or the vocation of fathering. And as I mentioned before, that could be an uncle, grandfather, a mentor, a cousin, whatever.
Speaker 2:But to have that sort of fatherly role in in a young man's life is is really is really important. And let me let me let me say this one thing about about the power of of mentoring because I think I think that some people may not understand how it's world changing if you project the numbers a hundred years out. I was recently speaking at a fundraiser for a boys camp in Pennsylvania and I crunched some numbers on this because I'm a nerd. That's what nerds do. We we crunch numbers on these things.
Speaker 2:And what the what what the what the research showed is that the average person over their lifetime plus about ten years, so over about a over about fifteen years, so over over about a hundred years span of a of a person's life even after they they pass away, they're going to personally impact between 1,504,000 people. Right? So so when you when you mentor one young man, you're not mentoring one young man. You're actually impacting 2,000 people or 3,000 people and you may never see it. You may you may never live to see the outcomes of the investment that you made in that young man's life.
Speaker 2:You may be dead before their fruit is born in that, which is a biblical principle. Right? God never promised that we get to see the outcomes or the consequences of a work that we do in his name for the kingdom. Right? Abraham did get did not get to see everything.
Speaker 2:Moses did not get to cross for the Red Sea. Joshua did get to see everything. David didn't get to see everything. Right? John the Baptist got his head cut off.
Speaker 2:Right? I mean, Jesus was crucified. The disciples were beheaded. Paul got murdered. I mean, this story goes on and on.
Speaker 2:So the point is not really necessarily to see the results of of of the things that we do when we invest. But it's really trusting that God's going to use it for for years and years to come, for generations to come, and we may never we may never see it. Right? So there's a lot of power. There's a lot of social power in the act of of engaging with just one person.
Speaker 2:And if I look at all the kids in the foster system and I look at all the kids in the who were who were struggling whether they are in the suburbs or in inner cities. I mean, I've I've mentored both populations. Right? I've sort of mentored students who were in extremely dangerous neighborhoods, but I've also mentored fatherless kids in rich suburbs. Right?
Speaker 2:They have the same sort of struggles. They they worked out differently, but this is not just a poverty thing. Right? And and I'm willing to do that because I know that I'm not just impacting that one person. Right?
Speaker 2:That you're mentoring, you know, John but John's going to one day probably get married, gonna have kids, he's gonna be an employer, possibly, he's gonna be an employee, he's gonna have coworkers, he's gonna have neighbors, right? He's gonna be in a church, he's gonna be in a basketball team. So many people are gonna be impacted by this one person's life. So that investment that we have in that in this one person literally, and I I don't mean this out of you know, it's a cliche, but it actually can change the world when we do that. And if just imagine what would happen.
Speaker 2:Right? If we had an army of mentors out there in the world and they just focus on one kid, it would change the country. Right? I mean, it would literally change the country. I mean, most states only have about a few thousand true orphans and not maybe not even that much.
Speaker 2:There's only about thirty, forty thousand true orphans in the country. Right? But like this that one population alone would radically change the the country if if we just meant if we just started there. Right? It's just really incredible.
Speaker 2:I think the opportunities when you consider the how the algorithm works and and how how in in terms of the exponential impact that it can have over over the years. So I'm hoping that the fatherhood book is really going to encourage more men to want to invest not just in mentoring boys and teens but also in helping dads and others who are in those roles to also be effective in the long run and communicate and transmit those ideals and principles and values that will be sustained in a young person's life for multiple multiple generations.
Speaker 1:Man, I gotta get you on my staff. You just you just told people why we exist. That's awesome, man. I'm I am just I'm encouraged. I'm just fired up because relationships change lives, and, it's not good for man to be alone.
Speaker 1:And, I'm just super thankful for you and for your heart to share this good news, to share this gospel. So if you guys wanna learn more about doctor Bradley, tell us how to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Unfortunately, I'm I'm really easy to find. You can you can just put my name in in Google, and you'll come up with several opportunities there on Twitter or on on Substack. You can you can find me as as well. So
Speaker 1:Yeah. And just, you know, to talk about his Substack, he's talking about, you know, parenting. He's talking about mentoring. He's talking about guys and girls. He's talking about churches.
Speaker 1:It is it is very, very fascinating. So, doctor Bradley, super thankful for your time today. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. I sure hope all goes well as you continue to promote what God has put on your heart and that you helped us all remember that you ain't gotta be Superman. You can mentor.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in to the You Can Mentor Podcast. Our vision is to raise up and invest in mentoring leaders who will launch and grow thriving mentoring ministries. We do that by equipping and encouraging faith based leaders through relational connection, Christ centered resources, and collaborative gatherings. Check out our books, come to the National Christian Mentoring Gathering, and engage with our network and cohorts. You can find all this at ukmentoring.com or on social media.
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