How to Raise Kids Who Love God Without Faking It: Don Everts

Don Everts: The research showed us that if an entire core household is together, so the people who live and sleep under the same roof, if they're all together, the odds are they're eating. And you're doing a parallel activity. It's not intense, like let's just sit with chairs facing each other and all we're doing is looking in each other's eyes and talking. You're eating food. You're passing things. The waiter's interrupting. You're doing different stuff. There's something about a meal that facilitates conversation. It's a catalyst for it.
Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.
Dave Wilson: And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.
Ann Wilson: When it comes to passing our faith on to our sons, our boys, raising them, what's your biggest regret?
Dave Wilson: Oh man, wow. Well, we wrote our five mistakes in our book, but my biggest regret, I think the first thing that comes to me is when Cody, our youngest, said in college, "I wish we would have spent more time in the Bible. I don't know the Bible like I should." And he wasn't looking at you, he was looking at me. I mean, that's definitely one of my biggest regrets. You blink and they're gone, and you think of all those days and weeks that you could have grabbed a moment and jumped into the Word.
Ann Wilson: But as a pastor, his pastor, weren't you thinking, "Well, if you would have just listened at church?" Did you have that thought?
Dave Wilson: Yeah, but that's a regret. If I could do it over again, I would do a better job of that at home. What about you?
Ann Wilson: I wish I would have not been so angry and mean when they were little. I think I apologize so much to them and repented so much, but I did it too much, like, "Mom, didn't God hear you the first time when you asked for forgiveness? Why do you keep asking?" And so I lived in the shame of yelling or making a mistake as a parent.
Dave Wilson: You were mostly mad at me.
Ann Wilson: Oh, you mean that was my anger?
Dave Wilson: Yeah, you took it out on the kids, but you were disappointed in me. But that's a whole other topic. I mean, we as parents had a dream. Our sons are grown and married and we have grandkids now, but our dream was that they would be warriors for the kingdom. That was part of our mission statement.
Ann Wilson: We wrote a letter, even, I remember to our first son saying, "This is who we are and this is what we long for you, that you will walk with God all the days of your life and call upon His name and tell others about Him."
Dave Wilson: Yeah, and I think many Christian parents have the same vision and hope, and they're not sure how to get there. So we've got Don Everts back in the studio with us today. Don, welcome back to FamilyLife.
Don Everts: Great to be back with you.
Dave Wilson: And I know you're a pastor, a dad, a researcher. I'm guessing you had the same vision and hopes that we had for your kids. Two sons?
Don Everts: Two boys and one girl.
Dave Wilson: Do you have any regrets?
Don Everts: Plenty. They're highlighted by the research. Really, it feels like every research topic or book that I feel called to work on, there's something about steeping in it. So yes, regrets about not interacting around things of faith even more. And I'm a pastor, too, and I have the same thing, like, "Listen to the sermons!" I mean, they're great, right? And yet to have done more. I was a campus minister, and I didn't know what to do with little kids. There was part of me that was just waiting for them to become college students so I would know what to do with them. I don't know what to do with a five-year-old. So yeah, just wishing that I had leaned into my ignorance earlier and just was like, "I want to learn, what do you do with a five-year-old?" I mean, we made it up as we went along and God redeems that, right? I mean, He's great at taking our scribbles and turning them into beautiful pictures. I'm so thankful for that. But all sorts of conviction in working on this.
Dave Wilson: Now, did you feel, because I felt this as a pastor, and Ann expressed this a couple times to me, her frustration that I was on at church, spiritually vibrant outside the home, but came in the home, not that I was a deadbeat, but the vibrancy wasn't as strong in my home.
Ann Wilson: It's because he'd be up on stage and just praying, passionate, strong. And then I'd say, "Hey, you want to pray for dinner?" and I was like, "Hey, what happened to that guy that was on the stage? We want Pastor Dave."
Don Everts: My kids told me at one point, "You have a preacher voice. When you preach, you have a different voice." "I do not, I'm like myself, I'm the same me." "No, no you're not." For me, it was always way harder to just pray alone with my wife than it was to pray with a congregation.
Dave Wilson: Oh yeah. Don, you are speaking my language. It's the same thing. Why is that?
Don Everts: It's more intimate. For probably lots of reasons. Working on this book and thinking about what is it like to be a spiritual coach in the household, to even name that and say the research tells us it helps to have someone in the household who's initiating things, right? And who's saying, "Hey, time out, let's talk about this," or "Hey, I'm going to call a play," or whatever. You don't even have to do it well, but there needs to be someone initiating. And I think that would be my regret, would be I wish I had named that earlier, like, I'm supposed to be a spiritual coach in my household.
Ann Wilson: I thought it was interesting, too, in terms of spiritual coaches, who were the influencers? Talk about that a little bit.
Don Everts: There's some fun stuff and some sobering stuff in the research. We talked a lot and we did an oversampling of teenagers also in terms of, "Who's your favorite conversation partner?" Because the second of the three vibrancy characteristics of a spiritually vibrant household is engaging in spiritual conversations. Like if you're talking about your faith or your doubts or whatever, if you're talking about it, your faith grows.
Dave Wilson: Now, by the way, I'll just mention, yesterday we talked about the first one, which was messy prayers. And it's just Bible reading, praying around the table. You can listen to yesterday. And then you just mentioned the second one is these vibrant conversations.
Don Everts: Loud tables, yeah, talking with each other. And so the research tells us some interesting things about people's preferred conversation partners. So some good news, you guys are grandparents now.
Dave Wilson: Yeah.
Don Everts: So the people who rank the highest in terms of who are teenagers and kids most open to talking about spiritual things with most regularly and consistently, it's grandparents. Like if grandparents come into a household, that's whether they physically walk in or whether they're on Zoom or whether it's a phone call, whatever, kids are most open and want influence spiritually from grandparents.
Ann Wilson: That is so surprising to me. Amazing. Why is that?
Don Everts: I don't know. The researchers don't get into causality. They're not like, "Here's what causes that." All they know is here's what the kids are telling us. Grandparents rank really, really high. And it could be because, I mean, you know what it's like as a grandparent, you're not having to do the day-in, day-out discipline. You're not having to manage the household, which is another role. So I think maybe you have fewer hats that you're wearing. That's just me guessing. And so kids are really open to that.
Ann Wilson: We were just with our four grandkids a couple weeks ago, and it was so interesting as we get in the car and travel, I'll tell stories or whatever, but the oldest granddaughter is seven and then her brother is five, and I told this God story, this kind of miraculous God story. Every single time we got in the car for the next three days, they said, "Noni, tell us another God story." It's exactly what you said, I was amazed that they'd want to hear.
Don Everts: And it's good news. It's the people not just in the core household, but in the extended household that also affect the spiritual vibrancy of a household. It's the people inside and outside of it. We have empty nesters in my church who are like, "Well, I'm not in this game. I don't have kids at home anymore." And actually the research tells us, and actually the model of what a household is in the Bible, it's this extended group of people. People at my church when we were handling this research for the first time, the grandparents were so encouraged because they were like, "Am I consigned to have a boring, lonely, isolated household and I'm not in the game anymore?" It's like, actually, you're a key player, not just within your own literal grandparents, but families need surrogate grandparents, surrogate aunts and uncles from within the church to love on their kids and all that. So it's very inspiring for people like, you can be in the game. Other research tells us that for a young child to have their faith, the sticky faith research, you need five adults for a kid to be influencing them, to be on their team.
Ann Wilson: That's good. And I'm thinking, as you said that, I thought of the blended families where you might feel like a grandparent, like I don't really know them as well, but yeah, you can still influence.
Don Everts: You can be. Even a single, there's a single woman at our church who is a part of our extended household. She was over for holidays and she'd come over to do her laundry and all that. I'll never forget the day we were studying this in a Sunday school class and we were looking at what the Bible has to say about extended households and what households were like. And Cypress looked up and she went, "Wait a second, wait a second. So I'm a part of your household, Don?" And I said, "You are." She said, "How can I do better at that? I have a role in your daughter's spiritual faith," because she was good friends with Teata. So even for people who are like, "Well, I don't have a household," yes you do. Everyone's in those and realizing that and recognizing that, it's made me take my role more seriously with my friends' kids.
Dave Wilson: That's cool. And all three of our boys when they were growing up had mentors that sort of came into our family. I look back, they had as much influence as I did. But talk about moms and dads, because if it's grandparents, what about moms and dads?
Don Everts: So when we asked people, so this isn't preferred conversation partner, although moms rate higher there than dads do also depending on the topic. If it's talking about money, they want to talk to dad. Interestingly enough. If it's their faith or other things, they tend to want to talk to mom. But one of the questions we asked was, "Who has had a faith impact in your life?" And among the teenagers that we asked, 68% rated their mom as the number one. My mom has had a huge faith impact on me. Only 46% said their dad.
Dave Wilson: Okay, tell me why. Again, you don't get into causality, but what do you think?
Don Everts: The researchers don't tell us why. As a dad and as a pastor, I would say probably a few different reasons why dads tend to be less in the game. In some households, they're out of the house working, so there's less square footage of time. So that could be a contributing factor. I think some of it is mom's better at it, quote-unquote, she prays better, which my son told me at one point. And then some of it could just be like, I'm just going to be lazy and there can be a kind of laziness in me that says I'll just let her do that. It's easier. I'm pastoring over here.
Dave Wilson: In some ways we can get passive because they're good at it, the kids are gravitating toward them.
Ann Wilson: I remember Dave, you saying, "You're better at that than I am with the kids," and maybe you had the idea.
Dave Wilson: Especially when they were little. But at the same time, there's another aspect that's like, "Step up, Dave. Step up, come on. You can flip this a little bit." And there were times where I stepped up and then I'd get lazy and I'd step up again. And there's part of me thinking there's a dad listening, it's like, you know what, today's the day. Why don't you step into this a little bit?
Don Everts: So many dads that I've interacted with because of the book who feel like it has shown a light on something that they either have never looked at or they've had a suspicion, like I'm supposed to be doing something here and I'm golfing instead.
Dave Wilson: But I think what it is with kids, I felt this with my dad, is I wanted my dad to know me and I wanted to know my dad. So I think if a guy thinks, "Okay, I'm just going to come in and pray," I would say, no, your kids want to know you and they want you to be asking them questions of who they are and what their thoughts are. So it's that spiritual component, but it's also that relational component of "Know me." I remember our kids saying, "Dad, know my friends, their names, the girls that would hang out at our house." Remember they said that?
Ann Wilson: That's another regret. I didn't know them well.
Don Everts: I think some of it, Ann, also is we parent how we were parented, or at least we default to that. That tends to be a default. So I think some of it, I'm taking all the blame on myself too, but some of it is like if your dad never did what you just described with you and you don't have a model that that's a thing that dads should do, it takes reading the Bible to go, "Oh, I'm supposed to be a spiritual coach in my household and to be doing that." So the research is sobering, but I think in a healthy way, that it shines a light and says, how did you put it, "Okay, today's the day. Just do a little more." Like do a little bit more spiritual coaching than you did last year. Just lean in. Just lean in a little bit. And the research tells us, and this is the good news, you don't have to be great at it.
Ann Wilson: That's really good. So you guys give dads or give men just a starting conversation that you could say with your kids. What would that look like?
Don Everts: Easier things that you could do with a kid would be to say, and because I like leading out of just my frailty and my weakness, so to even say, "Hey, I'm wanting to, I should be praying more for you guys. And so I'd love each of you by the end of today, I'd love to know what I could be praying for you for." And to not ask them on the spot because they'll be like, "Whatever school," or "Whatever, that we win the game. I don't want to strike out tonight." But to give them time and say, because then you're modeling a spiritual conversation. "I'm talking about my faith and I'm wanting to lean in." So you're modeling. And then guess what happens, then at the end of the day you're like, "What are the big things that you want prayer for in your life right now?" All of a sudden you're having a spiritual conversation. You're talking about deep stuff and then you can go back to it. With my daughter, we had this code language of "I need to get a Coke." And that meant like I want some one-on-one time with my daughter.
Ann Wilson: Oh, that's good.
Don Everts: And we wouldn't necessarily go and get a Coke, but it was like rather than saying, "Will you pursue intimacy with me and engage me in some spiritual dialogue," which feels so big and it's like, "Ah, I just pulled into the driveway." But to just say, "Hey, could we have a Coke sometime this weekend?" So I'd say for a dad, do a little thing like that. Listen to this FamilyLife Today and so I want to do more. I mean, just show the elephant in the room and say, "I want to do a better job at this."
Ann Wilson: One of our friends with all girls, but he's just has this long commute, so he would pray. And so he said, "What I would do after my commute, I'd text all my girls, 'How can I be praying for you today?'" And he said that meant so much. And these girls all talk about that, "Oh yeah, Dad's praying for me. He knows what's going on in my life."
Dave Wilson: Hardly anybody's going to turn down that request. "How can I pray for you?" Even a stranger would say, "Really? You want to pray for me?" So you do that with your kids. So we mentioned these three, you know, we already talked about messy prayers. We're getting into a little bit loud tables. We'll talk about open doors in a second. But what's loud tables mean?
Don Everts: The research showed us that if an entire core household is together, so the people who live and sleep under the same roof, if they're all together, the odds are they're eating. That's what the research tells us.
Dave Wilson: Probably eating or watching TV.
Don Everts: Eating or, watching TV was number two behind eating. And that's whether it's eating in the household or eating at a restaurant. And one of the things that we found out is when conversations are happening, it's often when they're eating. And so there's something interesting because a meal is like it's a period of time. And you know it's not going to go on forever, right? There's a contract when you're eating a meal. It's not like we're going to be here for three hours or whatever. It's like a period of time. And you're doing a parallel activity. It's not intense, like let's just sit with chairs facing each other and all we're doing is looking in each other's eyes and talking. You're eating food. You're passing things. The waiter's interrupting. You're doing different stuff. There's something about a meal that facilitates conversation. It's a catalyst for it. That's what the research tells us. Now look at Scripture. How often is table fellowship where things happening around tables really key? And so that's one of the things the research tells us. So that's why loud tables is like, you have to eat. And as you all know with busy kids' schedules, eating together is like a big deal to make that happen.
Dave Wilson: It's hard to make it happen.
Don Everts: It's hard to make it happen, but even someone that you're with, some people have to say, put your phone in the basket during a meal to kind of again create a circle of time, just to draw a circle around a period of time and then talk. And so that's an easy call to action because you got to eat anyways and how do you facilitate it? When we found this out in the research at Lutheran Hour Ministries, we developed a deck of cards. We called it the Vibrant Conversation Deck. So it's a real deck of cards. You can play games with it, but each card has on it a unique question. It's just a conversation starter. And there's others of these that you can find. And just keep it on your dining room table during every dinner when we're together. We're going to do one question. And some of them, they're not all like, "How has the cross of Jesus made a difference for you today?" They're not all, I mean, there are spiritual ones, but there are others ones too. Like, "What are your biggest dreams for your life right now?" Or whatever, right? Just get people talking. So food and fun are catalysts for conversations.
Ann Wilson: We've had a lot of great dinners together and we had to be super intentional when our kids got older because they're all in sports, they're all doing things. And we've shared this before that there were times in football season that we would have dinner at 9:00 p.m. It's the only time we were all together. After practice, I was coaching. They'd have big snacks after school, but we would gather at 9:00 p.m. And we grew up with them asking those questions like, "Hey, what was your high and low today?" Which it was fun because we were just with one of our sons and he was doing the same thing with his kids. Oldest is seven, the youngest is two. But it was fun just to hear their answers. But I was sitting with another one of my friends and she had a large family, lots of kids, and she said as our kids got older, what we started doing is I would pick one person, one of our kids, or my husband or I, and we would ask a question for the night, like "Hey, tonight's your night." And they would just, and she said sometimes they'd be like, "This is dumb, I don't want to do it, what's your favorite color?" But sometimes they were a little deeper and they went a little deeper. But I just thought that was cool then to give that to your kids to participate in, but also to lead in.
Don Everts: It's a small little thing, but it makes a huge difference and it changes the atmosphere of the home. I mean, if you're talking about other things, talking about your faith seems more normal. I've found too, and I don't know why, but maybe it goes back to Deuteronomy 6, "talk about these things when you're on your way." But there's something about driving places and having conversations because you're not looking at each other in the face. You know how long the time is because you know where you're going. There's just something about car conversations too.
Dave Wilson: They call it the captive audience.
Don Everts: There you go, they can't leave. So those little ways that just in the everyday domestic ins and outs of doing life, talking about your faith in those can be in some ways even more powerful than, I'm saying this as a pastor, time in church or in a quote-unquote spiritual environment. The domestic place, the household, is this laboratory for discipleship that is messy, that can be loud, but can be so powerful.
Dave Wilson: I know that as you talk about table time, loud tables, you've got bedtime, you've got drive time, you've got meal time. Those are all critical moments for parents, for families to say, "I'm going to be intentional here." And I think one of the things we discovered, especially as the kids got a little older, is it's okay in those times the conversation can be about doubts, can be about struggles, fears. Don't feel like you have to be the perfect parent. You can say to your kids, "Man, I'm struggling right now with what God's not doing or doing in my life. You ever struggle with that?" Bam, that opens something up when a dad or a mom is that vulnerable. Then it seems to open the child up to say, "Really? We can talk about that?"
Don Everts: Absolutely. In fact, we did a whole other year of research on spiritual vibrant households.