The goal is not for the kids to like me. It's for them to grow into the people that God is calling them to be. And my role is not principally as a friend. The role as a father is very different, or a mother. And sometimes they're not going to like you. This is not about me and how I feel. It's about what is good for my sons and for honoring God. Sometimes it'll feel good, and sometimes it won't feel good.

I met Andres more than 15 years ago, when he was dating my wife's childhood best friend and with whom he just celebrated 14 years of marriage. At 60 years old, he is ahead of me in life and in parenting, and so even though we've never lived in the same city and our actual contact with each other is infrequent, I've looked up to him for a long time. As you'll hear, Andres has a lot of deeply rooted wisdom gained through his experiences as a son, a chaplain, a pastor, a coach, and of course, as a dad.

One of my favorite memories with Andres, which I'm not sure if he even remembers, is when he and his wife visited us when my wife was pregnant with our first. On that visit, he specifically sought out one on one time with me to both pray for me and smoke a cigar with me as I was about to enter this amazing journey of fatherhood. I'm not sure which came first, the praying or the cigars, but that moment is a little snapshot of how I see Andres: a person with whom every interaction teaches me more about God and life.

Shawn: Introduce yourself. Tell me your name, your age, your kids' genders and ages, how long you've been married, what you do for a career, and any other hats that you wear that are worth mentioning.

Andres: Okay. Well, my name is Andres. I'm age 60.

I'm married to Juliet. We've been married for 14 years this past August, and we have two sons, Eliseo, age 13, Felipe, age 10.

I work, as of 13 years ago, as the chaplain at the Esperanza Health Center, which is a nonprofit Christian health care center that focuses on working with the medically underserved in North Philadelphia. Historically, particularly with the Latino community, but not exclusively, and I also am an ordained pastor in the Christian Reformed Church of North America. So, I had worked as an assistant pastor for many years at our church in North Philadelphia, and then at that time went on the board of directors of the Esperanza Health Center, which was a lot smaller back then, was on that for seven years. In the meantime, we planted a church using a house church model, and then in that interim, when I stepped down from the board, after about a year, I was asked by the executive director if I would restart a chaplaincy at the clinic, which is very rare for an outpatient clinic.

I've basically been there probably 10 years longer than I thought I would, and I do some other things on our board of directors of a Christian gap year program in North Central Pennsylvania. I do some coaching of my kids' sports teams. Those are some of the main things that I'm involved in right now.

S: Where did you grow up, and what was it like growing up there?

A: Well, I was born in South America, in Columbia, South America, but we came to the U.S. when I was very young, so I grew up almost all of my upbringing in the same town in California, my whole upbringing in Palo Alto, California, which is where Stanford University is. And the reason why we came was that my father had been offered a position as a professor of medicine at Stanford Medical School. He was a pathologist.

At that time, he was doing a lot of research in infectious diseases, particularly malaria. So I grew up around a lot of people of that kind of intellectual university environment. At that time, Palo Alto was more mixed socioeconomically, but around upper middle class, middle class, some working class families in the different schools that we went to.

So it was, I would say, extremely peaceful for the most part, very kind of consistent and stable, and filled with a lot of involvement with other kids on our blocks, and also with very stable marriage by the grace of God, my parents, and not without its problems, but very stable and very good and loving providers. So I still have two older sisters who are three and five years older than me.

S: And your parents, are they both still around?

A: Just my mother. My father died in 2013 from cancer, and my mother's 92, but she's still alive. She's got some significant health problems, but she's still around, and she lives with my sister there in Palo Alto still.

S: How old were you when you moved from Columbia?

A: Around one. I should also mention that my mother was American.

A: So it's kind of a long story, but my father had come to the East Coast to do training in medicine on a fellowship at Yale and in New York City, and met my mother, who's actually of Pennsylvania Dutch background, at a hospital in Connecticut. So in that sense, there was always a non-immigrant American adult in the house.

S: You talked about how your dad related to you, and I was curious to know more about that. Did you see him relating to you and the rest of your family in a way that was different than American families?

A: Yes, although not all of the families, but I would say yes. I mean, a lot of the attitude of kids to their parents was the degree of what my father would consider disrespect that was allowed between kids and adults, let's say in general, including their parents, was much higher than what he considered appropriate. There was a familiarity, even maybe a disrespect that he did not like, and he didn't want to tolerate.

He was, and again, this is comparing to liberal Northern California, late 60s, early 70s, but he was socially more conservative, just by nature of coming from Columbia, and he wasn't religious at all. My grandmother had been a very, very devout Roman Catholic, and so I would say that that was another aspect of that kind of innate social conservatism that was definitely not the case with a lot of families that we were around.

S: What was your dad like, especially with respect to you as a son?

A: Well, again, I would say, and this is something I'm deeply thankful to God for, is that he was an absolutely consistent provider in any way that you could imagine, always fulfilled his commitments. He was someone who was also very deeply appreciative of the role of fathers.

So it was interesting, my grandmother in Columbia, the one who I said was very devout Roman Catholic, she came from a very upper middle class, even upper class, socially prominent family, people who were all professionals, engineers.

But my grandfather was not from that social class. He was basically a peasant, and so basically she kind of married down, you could say. So you wouldn't have called him, oh, he was an engineer his whole life, or something like that, because he didn't have that.

And my father told us about that, but he always was very, very clear in saying that he respected his father, he loved his father, his father was important to him. And even though he didn't have that kind of career, he had this deep love and reverence for him. So he had that value of appreciating one's father, loving one's father, and respecting him no matter what might be his deficiencies or relative lackings compared to whoever.

S: How did your dad carry himself and present himself? Give me a picture of what he was like.

A: He was a very impactful presence. People always remembered my father. He was very funny.

First of all, he had a very strong accent, even though he was very articulate, but he had a very strong accent. He was very personable, very warm, and not in a wild way, but he would tend to be the life of the social setting, wherever it was.

I would say another aspect of him was, there's a term in Spanish, Colombian Spanish, someone who is very formal. And what people mean is someone who really minds their P's and Q's, is very courteous, very respectful, does things according to protocol, doesn't treat people in a very common way or excessively loose way. People tended to feel respected by him. So, for example, when people would come to our house, oftentimes he would invite them into his office and have kind of a personal conversation to find out about who they were and ask certain questions. It was kind of a running joke over the years that someone had been invited to my father's office, and he would have this kind of more formal talk with them.

Another aspect that I noticed over the years was that he helped a lot of people. So, a lot of Colombians who would come to the United States, in particular California, through some connection would reach out to him for help about something. And he really spent significant time doing that. He didn't sort of talk about that in a direct way to us, but we noticed it over the years, and many people spoke about that over the years.

So, you know, at the same time, and this is common to a lot of, I would say, Latino men, is that my father definitely had somewhat of a problem with anger. So, there was a certain authoritarian nature to him.

Yeah, a parallel part of it was my father was very passionate about various subjects of science, nature, and if he took up a hobby, he was very passionate, involved, and consistent about it. But things that didn't naturally interest him, he would make very little effort to find anything out about it.

So, this was a point of tension with us as kids, is that he would not typically take much interest in things that were interests of ours, but weren't interests of his.

S: So, did you ever get invited into his office?

A: (laughs) Yeah, a number of times, yeah.

S: What would you say about yourself that reminds you of your dad?

A: A couple of things. One is tenacity. My father would work on things in a very tenacious way. And this has a downside also, but the good side is that you do something until it's done, or it's done and it's done well, it's done thoroughly. Now, again, I have a lot of imperfection in that area also. My problem is more not applying it to all areas of my life, I would say.

But another area is curiosity. And many people, whether medical students of his, or interns, or people who had done their medical residencies with him, always remarked that he was a fantastic teacher, which is true. Part of it was he was incredibly curious about the world.

And I would say also, in that example I gave of him inviting people in the office, of being able to focus on a particular person and what's going on with them. Focusing on them, giving them a sense of importance, I think that was something that, some good qualities that I received from him. And I think he was very old world. Very old world where you treat the older people respectfully. That was a big deal. And any transgression of that was very serious.

So, for example, even with teachers that we didn't like growing up, we had to be very respectful related to them. That old world aspect of dealing with people in a formal, respectful way was very important, which I think has rubbed off. And I would also see my father do that with people of all social categories. Not just people who are somehow, quote unquote, important socially.

S: So, your dad sounds like he was very successful in his career. Definitely seems like he made a mark in his field. Were there any habits that he had, routines that he kept, that were part of how he was able to be successful or how he did things, how he organized himself?

Was there anything that you remember observing about him?

A: Well, one thing, I met an old girlfriend of his from Colombia. I studied for two years at a seminary in Argentina later on when I was 27, 28, 29. When I was there, I connected, I remember going to dinner with her in Buenos Aires.

And she mentioned an aspect of my father, which was that she remembered he was super focused on his pathology career and the things that interested him in the research. And she mentioned that as a good quality, but it can also be a problem because there's other things that are going on around you that need some attention also. So, a habit that definitely helped him have an impact in his field was that tunnel vision. He was really focused on malaria, not in 15 other things that he could research, but that, malaria. And he got noticed because of that. And then later on, he changed and this became really the dominant thing for the later years of his career, which was radiation injury. That is, injury by radiation to non-cancerous tissues. And just, he became literally probably the world's expert on that. But there was all this other stuff they didn't focus on.

So, there's a sacrifice there because it is generally an effective habit to not try to be a jack of all trades, but try to focus on one or two things and keep at those things, become good at those things, become better at those things, become excellent at those things. But part of it is because you're not doing X, Y, and Z, other things.

S: What is it like being a son to somebody who's so focused?

A: Yeah, another good question. Well, I think one of the basic frustrations that developed over time was that for something that was interesting to one of us children, or even my mother for that matter, what was not naturally interesting to him is he would take very little time to find out anything about it. And maybe even more importantly, and I think this is a matter of the will to some extent, he would not make the effort to remember those things.

So, I'll give you an example. This happened, I remember he and I got into this fight. This was maybe when I was in my late 20s and I was living with my parents for a while, and we were watching a 49ers football game.

And I forget what it was, but he was asking some questions about what the score was or even what some rules were. And these were things that I had already told him a couple of times, and I kind of got upset. I said, I already explained that to you, and then he got really upset at me and said, well, I can't remember everything.

Now, that's a sort of a more frivolous example, you could say, because football wasn't interesting to him. And so, he felt like it was not necessary for him to put any energy whatsoever into learning about it or remembering anything, and that people should just explain it to him on demand, the way people ask Google these days. And that becomes a difficult thing to live with, because you have a sense that the person is not sufficiently interested in you or caring for you, that they would learn something that's outside of their comfort zone or normal area of interest.

And I think over time, and this is way after we were adults and saw my father, began to realize some of that, how that had affected people, particularly us as children and my mother around him.

S: How did he come to realize that?

A: Because we told him so many times (Shawn laughs), and we were able to say how it affected us.

And I realized that I had a lot of anger towards my father. And it wasn't tied to, okay, this thing happens today, and I get angry about that. It was this kind of unresolved pool of anger that I had towards my father. And that God was inviting me into, in that season of, I didn't know how long that was going to last, that I was going to live there. But since I was such close quarters, it was to intentionally spend time with my father, which we ended up setting up once a week we would get together. And I began to talk to him about how I had this anger towards him.

And we began to talk about some of the reasons why. And one of them was this, what we just talked about, was this sense over the years of him being, in my case, but it was true for other people as well, this disinterest in things that were important to us, unless they coincided with something that was interesting to him. And how that affected us.

And I would say that he listened, and it did have some impact on him. And actually, in that, through that weekly getting together and talking about these things, I would say God did a lot of healing in our relationship, and that pool of anger that I had essentially dissipated. God removed it.

And it wasn't because my father agreed with everything, but he always wanted, definitely always wanted to spend time with us. And the fact that I was saying, hey, I would like to spend one time a week of an intentional time doing, going on a walk, we can do whatever. And initially, a lot of those times were pretty intense, and he felt like he didn't agree with some of the stuff we were saying and so on.

But nevertheless, he listened. So I think that even if it was to talk about difficult things, my father was always willing to get together and have contact.

S: So your dad was a scholar, an academic, and sounded like you have, you share a lot of his traits, the tenacity, intellectual curiosity, strengths as a natural teacher. You listed a number of things that are strengths of his that also are yours. And yet you've also taken a very different career path than what he had.

Talk to me about that. A little bit, your career path, and what that has meant for you. Because I think what's interesting as a minister, is that sort of a good term to describe your career overall? I know you're a chaplain right now, but is there a good term to kind of say?

A: A pastor. Or someone involved in kind of direct Christian ministry.

S: What's interesting about that career to me is that it's not a separation like many of us have. There's our career, and then there's our commitments or our personal faith. Your career is an extension of your faith. So that's one thing that's very interesting to me. And also, your career is in a lot of ways in opposition to your father's career. Him being a man of science, and you in your career as very much a person of faith, and a career of faith. So a lot to unpack there. Start wherever makes sense to you.

A: A critical element in everything you just said is the issue of faith. Specifically, faith in Christ. So going back to the case of my parents. So my father was from a very conservative Roman Catholic background in Colombia. My grandmother was extremely devout Roman Catholic. Whereas my grandfather, he was kind of more like my father.

My father pretty much rejected any sort of faith of Orthodox Christianity in his 20s as he got into science. And was studying in university and so on, and just couldn't believe the whole idea of miracles, etc, etc. But he did not become an atheist. Most accurately, he could be described as a deist. The idea that God sort of set up the world and then lets it run sort of like a clock. God is the clockmaker, if you will. So he did pray over the years in his own way and so on. But faith in historic Christianity was not part of his life at all. Until three weeks before he died at the age of 86 when he, I would say, really truly came to faith in Christ. But that's way ahead in the story.

So growing up, my mother would not really talk about faith at all. But she did take us to the local Lutheran church, mainline Lutheran church. And we kind of went through things there. But my sisters and I, my sisters first, really came to have a saved relationship through Christ in middle school, high school, through Young Life, para-church ministry. And then I got involved in that.

And to kind of make a long story short, I would say I really came to Christ in the summer between my junior and senior years in high school. But even before that, I had kind of a Judeo-Christian worldview from being involved in the Lutheran church. But certainly after that, that became the driving thing for me in my life.

I was also very, felt very committed to somehow working with the poor. Even from before, I would say, I became a Christian. Part of that was from our trips back to Colombia and just seeing the incredible poverty in Bogotá and the southern parts of Bogotá.

But as it relates to my father, then that became a definite, another, you could say, dividing point with him, was that he wasn't interested in issues of faith. Again, he wasn't an atheist, and he always got upset if anyone described him as an atheist. But it wasn't really very important to him. But it was important to me.

And his view in terms of profession and so on was sort of that of all the fields in the world, science is the greatest field. Science is the pinnacle of all human endeavor. Within that, basic science was at an even higher level. Within that, medicine was better on the scale.

So my father kind of, he, for example, had not the greatest view of people in business because he sort of felt like they were all about money and so on.So that was kind of lower on the scale. Then lawyers, he had a very low view of lawyers. They were further down the scale.

And then what I eventually went into isn't even on the scale at all. It's not even there. The whole idea of Christian ministry of some kind, it's sort of, what is that? What do you mean, become a priest? Or what are you talking about?

So I actually think, because of my own struggles of getting focused on what I was going to do professionally or in terms of career, that if he had not been so dogmatic about science, I actually might have gone into science.

And this is where I have definitely not been like my father, which is that I have not had a laser focus my entire professional and adult life. It's actually been quite a struggle as to what am I going to do? What am I going to focus on?

So I've, you know, worked at various things, but, you know, generally kind of, you could say community and economic development. But then basically, when I came back from those two years of studying in Argentina at a seminary, which without, I wasn't going there with the idea of becoming a pastor. I wanted to learn about Latin American theology and so on.

I came back and I went through a time of a lot of depression. I experienced deep healing in a charismatic church, a Vineyard church in the Bay Area through prayer and a men's group and so on. It was really at that point that I realized I really want to work in explicitly Christian ministry of some kind.

Now, even then, I was not really thinking I would become a pastor. But some people told me later on that they began to see some pastoral gifting starting at that time.

S: How old were you at this point?

A: I was 29 or so. So I had not yet worked up to that point in explicitly Christian ministry. I had worked in more community development and teaching.

But basically, non-Christian endeavors at that point became to feel insufficient for me. There was really a deeper burning in my heart that it would be something that would really openly declare the message of salvation through Christ. Partly because of the really deep healing I feel like Christ had done in me at that time.

Then one thing led to another and it was really getting involved in our church here in North Philadelphia, Spirit and Truth Fellowship, where the elders of the church began saying, we see the pastoral gifts in you and we feel you should start going through the process of ordination in our denomination. I said, well, I'm not totally sure about this, but the elders of my church are telling me about this. They know me pretty well and there's nothing that says I shouldn't.

So anyway, I went through that. I became ordained in 2002 as a pastor.

S: Okay, so 2002 and you were how old at that point?

At that point I was... (Shawn: 38?) 36, 38. You're right. Yes. Good. (laughs) You know my age better than I do.

S: And what were you doing professionally at that point? Why did you move to Philadelphia?

A: I came here to do the MBA program at Eastern University, Christian University. I had an MBA program focused on economic development among the poor as part of Christian mission. Because starting from way back, I felt like I wanted to be involved in economic development among the poor because I really saw economic opportunity as one of the main engines for transforming the poor by their own hands into the non-poor. Anyway, so that's what brought me to Philly. And then three months after I moved to Philly, I started going to that church.

S: So you became a minister at the age of 38?

A: A pastor. Ordained pastor.

S: Ordained pastor then, which was not something that you... it was an unexpected development.

A: Yes.

S: You mentioned your dad and his scale of his hierarchy of careers and that a career ministry wasn't even on the scales. So what was his reaction to you as you're going through your 20s, not on the path to being a scientist? Maybe could have been a business person at some point, perhaps.

But what was his reaction along the way as you were developing your career increasingly toward faith?

A: Well, that's a very generous way to describe my process of developing my careers. I think from his perspective, and there is some truth to this, I was sort of aimless. And that's always been an existential frustration for me before God is, you know, why could I have not been sure about what am I going to do with myself vocationally?

So I think from my father's perspective, there was this sense of this kind of aimlessness about me once I graduated college. But when I came back from those two years of studying in Argentina, seemed to be even more aimless. Now, once I came to Philly and did this program, and then that's when you're going to be an elder.

An elder is basically a pastor. And for a long time, my father's relatives would ask me, what is Andres doing? Oh, he's a sociologist.

Because that's sort of a category that they can hang their hats on. Oh, yeah, okay, you can, you know, people become sociologists. So then, you know, he began, okay, he's, okay, he's a pastor.

And by that time, we had gone through that deep healing process in our relationship. And we just had a great friendship. Now, there were still things that were difficult in different ways.

But at that point, I think, and my father actually said, you know, he sort of had come to a sense of what were the things I wanted to do, Christian ministry. And that's good. You know what you want to do, and you're somehow pursuing it.

And that kind of all made sense. And then I would, you know, then it would be easy. My son's a pastor.

But by that time, also, my father was mellowing. And I think he was appreciating more and more just having a good, positive, regular, appreciative relationship going both ways. And also, he was appreciative, even though it's not up his alley, that this is something that is worthwhile pursuing.

And he would listen to my stories about different things. And also, he heard stories from other people about ministry I was involved in one way or another, and that seemed to have an impact on him. So he respected it.

Yeah, I could say for sure, even long before he died, he respected it.

S: So your work as a chaplain, you mentioned that you've been doing it for 13 years, which is 10 more years than you thought you would be doing it. And I think a lot of us don't really know what a chaplain does. Can you maybe start there?

What do you do as a chaplain?

A: Well, one thing what I would say as part of that is, a chaplain at a primary health care facility is a very unusual thing. But generally, a chaplain, in large terms, is a type of pastor, you could say, that is someone who is charged with sharing the Word of God, and helping to care for the spiritual lives of people, and also their practical needs to some extent. So there are chaplains in a whole variety of settings.

But the person in that function as chaplain is not leading a church. They're not pastoring a church. They're serving in this pastoral-like role in other settings.

So we know of military chaplains, sports chaplains, prison chaplains, of course hospital chaplains, hospice chaplains. Even some businesses, very large businesses have chaplains. But the general role is to help care for the staff spiritually, help care for the patients spiritually, and do spiritual outreach to patients.

And then work on what one could call special spiritual projects of various sorts. So different employees reach out for help with different things. For example, tomorrow I will be meeting with someone after our devotional time who's met with me a lot, who I've known actually for years, who has a lot of trouble in their department, a lot of conflict and so on.

And so they meet with me periodically to just have me pray for them, give them wisdom on how to deal with different issues that come up. So they tend to seek me out. There's another employee who she actually reached out to me because her longtime boyfriend and father of her children up and left the family. And she's got all these practical problems, but is also kind of seeking out, wanting to have a closer relationship with God. And so I'm trying to connect her to a local church that's very close to where she lives. So I'll talk with her again.

Now with the patients, our bread and butter way that we meet with them is we go to the hubs where people come to the waiting room, and then they wait, and then they'll go to the exam room, and they'll wait there. So what we found is a very fruitful time to talk with people because they're waiting is in the exam room because it's private. It's not, say I'm chaplain, we're obviously a medical clinic, but we're also a Christ-centered ministry. Would you be interested in talking a little bit about your spiritual life and see what happens from there?

Another one is we try to get patients connected to churches, but instead of having clinicians contact me for every single one, we realized we should make a database of churches. What we realized was our clinicians, there are several things that always come up. Just if a patient's interested in going to a church, what's the basic spiritual rhythms of the church? Secondly, do they have any addictions ministries because there's a major issue of addictions in our communities.

Thirdly, youth ministry. My teenager, I'm trying to get them to do something. Is there a youth ministry? Well, we have to look into that.

But the main thing that a chaplain does is sits usually one-on-one with people and hears their story, asks them questions, and see where that conversation, listening to the Lord is in that setting thinking, where is this person at spiritually? How can I help them? If they don't know Christ, how could I introduce them to Christ?

If they do know Christ, what Lord do you seem to be doing in their lives? What kind of questions could I ask them? Praying for people, trying to connect them to resources or to somebody else.

But a lot of just one-on-one time with people. And probably 75% of that is listening to people. And there are a lot of things that people, I mean, virtually nobody comes to the clinic planning on talking to a chaplain.

But over time, people do seek a chaplain out for one reason or another.

S: In this role as a chaplain, you sound very kind of fulfilled and in a place where you are able to apply your gifts and apply your energy in a way that has a real impact. So it feels like a place that maybe even though you've been there 10 years longer than you thought, you might be thinking that you'll be there for a lot longer. Is that true?

A: Well, one thing I can say, first of all, yeah, I've been at this longer than any other job I worked in my life. And I don't regret spending any of those years doing this. But even more than that, I would say it's been a privilege to do it.

And thirdly, if I did this for the rest of my working life, it's a pretty good way to spend your life. I feel like there are a lot of ways one can spend your life and one's life. And this is, by the grace of God, a privilege to do it this way.

I see it as a significant and a privilege and having some kind of eternal impact.

S: Another role that you mentioned that you have is as a coach of your boys teams.

A: By the way, none of this is really high level coaching. It's volunteer parent coaching for both flag football and also soccer.

S: What's your experience been like?

A: Well, I would say in general, I've enjoyed it. I would say it's been pretty stressful, especially flag football, because of a couple of things.

One is unlike soccer, you're directing every single play. The coaching on football is just so hands on and so immediate. So there's an intensity to it and a time pressure. I would say the other thing is that I feel that the coaching has brought out some of my certain sin struggles in that role. And hopefully the Lord is growing me that. But I mean, some of those being maybe taking a little too seriously, putting in too much time on it, getting ready, where it's kind of overkill. And it's out of some kind of perfectionism.

Although you kind of want to do best by the kids, especially in flag football, because I never coached it before. So I looked into all this stuff. The other thing, though, is besides the perfectionism, is I think maybe riding the kids too hard.

Part of it is just I'd have to get into the particularities of in both the flag football and in the soccer, working with relatively inexperienced kids in the two sports and who are in a lot of cases outgunned and outmanned by the other teams and wanting to get them up to speed, which you can't do in a very short period of time. So I need to push them, push them hard and give hard instruction, you could say. But essentially being positive, wanting to be positive and upbuilding and not also make it too serious. It's not really fun for the kids. So I still have a lot of growing to do with that. And also, I just I think taking losing and winning less seriously is important.

So I got some learning to do in that respect.

S: So as somebody who in your career as a pastor, certainly as a chaplain, you're no stranger to stressful, serious situations. So it's interesting. Forgive me, almost humorous to me that coaching, you didn't really mention stress when it came to your job as a chaplain, dealing with probably not some regularity, life and death, but in the arena or in the field as it is with soccer and flag football, stress does come up.

So it makes me just wonder, does the pastor show up in the coach?

A: (laughs) That is a very good question. He should. He should show up more probably than what I have.

I definitely have used that aspect a certain number of times. One of the challenges is, of course, these are children. And in the case of flag football, we weren't doing extra practices. We would just have the day of the game and practice an hour ahead of time. So it's not very much contact. With soccer, a little bit more, but there's not really that much time. That's the challenge.

A lot of the pastoring work in general, let's say in the chaplaincy, takes a lot of time with people. Because again, as I mentioned, 75% of it is just listening to people, which is very important. But that takes time. You can't listen to a person in three minutes. It's got to be a lot longer than that.

But still, there's transferability, I think.

S: Two exceptions, though, amongst all your players for whom you do have more time would be your sons. So just transitioning then a little bit to you as a father. My wife and I have always looked to you and Juliet as kind of models to follow. There's a lot of things that we see you guys do that we try to emulate because we see your boys and they're incredible boys. So we really try to understand what you guys do. So I'll just ask you, what are some of the values or habits or type of character that you specifically, or you and Juliet together, but I'm interested in particular for what is maybe particularly important for you as a dad to be imparting on your boys?

A: Well, that's a big topic.

S: It is a big one.

A: I feel as a Christian, there's no question that the greatest thing that we are stewards of is the message of Christ and the love of Christ to, in our case, the two boys. As a parallel comment on that, I think, for example, I'm really glad that they're involved in sports. I do want to be careful and I'm a little worried that sports are too important to them. Or at least, well, I'll give you an example. This happened in the flag football.

Everyone wants to win, of course. But of course, as believers, we realize that that's really not the point of things. We're reminded of what it says in Ecclesiastes. And this applies to sports above all things, practically.

\"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.\"" Or as this one high school kid in Friday Night Lights, in the novel, not the novel, the book that was written, he said, \"there is nothing as short-lived as the glory of a high school athlete.\" (laughs)

But you do want to push kids towards reaching their potential. And there's all kinds of values that can be taught through sports.

But I had this incident in this game where the games are really chaotic. So there's all this shouting and all this stuff is going on. And there's one ref. So they have a rule where a kid hikes the ball to the quarterback. That quarterback cannot run the ball.

So what happened in this game was the center handed it off to somebody and handed it off to the quarterback. All this happened very quickly. Then that quarterback ran and ran and scored a touchdown.

So then my assistant coach was just screaming, he didn't hand it off, he can't run. And the ref also didn't see that. He didn't see that they had handed it off.

But I saw it. And so I was telling my assistant coach, get back on the field, because he was on the field yelling. I said, no, he did hand it off. So they were actually going to start the next play. I went over to the ref. I saw he did hand it off. I can tell you that for sure. He said, okay, coach. So then they allowed the touchdown.

Now, a couple of players on my team were not happy about that, including my own son. Because, you know, you don't want to do something that hurts your team, so to speak. So I explained to them as a group. I explained after the game. I explained again to him that I knew that he had handed it off and that that was a legal play. I had to go and tell them. I don't care ultimately if they get seven points out of it.

A: It hurts a little bit. There's a sacrifice if you really want to put that term on it. (laughs) So I think those kinds of opportunities come up.

And then in that case, it specifically involved my son also. I told him, before the Lord, I know that that was what was truthful. And that is what is most important to me.

But essentially trying to do what I think is the Christian call, which is to look at all of life from God's perspective. As it talks about in 2 Corinthians 4, that what is invisible is the true reality, not what is visible. Now, there is a certain reality to the visible, but its significance is determined by what is invisible.

But we live in a very material world where, you know, what is palpable is what has currency. So I think there's a continual need to sort of have this, almost like the Talmud, and all its massive commentary on the law of having a spiritual, running spiritual commentary on what goes on in life. Now, this is apart from regular rhythm that I feel like we, I really am hoping we can have even more sacred rhythms in our life as a family.

So, you know, right now, for example, when I put the kids to sleep, what we do typically is we read a section of scripture, and then I pray partly based on that, but then a bunch of prayers that I'm praying most nights with them. Then they pray, they both pray the Lord's Prayer, and then some other things that they pray about. But I feel like we need more sacred rhythms.

So one thing I want to introduce, having a morning devotional, even if it's real brief, even starting maybe three days a week. When we look at kind of the revelation of scripture, even in creation, God sets up the Sabbath. So he puts himself on this, it sort of emanates from his very nature to have a rhythm that in this case is the seventh day is a day of rest.

And then he calls his people to that. He's got skin in the game. He did it first.

So that's a pretty good recommendation. You know, practicing the Sabbath. And again, generally, I think it's a time to worship the Lord and dedicate some amount of time to him.

So there's some things on Sundays that I've done outside of church that we want to keep doing. Mainly right now what we do is a 20-minute Bible reading time. So all three of us, the two kids and I, we read scripture on our own. We're sitting in the same room. And then you read whatever you read in 20 minutes. And then at the end we have a journal where we answer four questions.

One is, what did this teach me about God? How can I put this into practice? What am I thankful for based on this? And do I have any questions?

You know, they were reading through some of the wars with some of the other nations in Chronicles. And they were saying, why do all these people have to get killed? So that's an important question. It's not an easy one to answer. But you know, you kind of discuss it.

So I think some of the things are what does it look like to have sacred rhythms? Which, of course, that means I as a father need to practice that as well. The greatest thing I wish I had had from my father is that he had been a spiritual mentor or a spiritual father or a spiritual guide. And he wasn't in relationship with Christ. So he wasn't.

Now, he was in certain ways. So like I said, he wasn't an atheist. And he did have a certain set of ethics. And some of his reflections on life were deistic in nature, not atheistic.

But man, I look back and I see what other fathers do with their children in the spiritual life. And I think, yeah, I definitely didn't have that. But God was merciful. And he revealed himself to me and my sisters.

My mother also, it's kind of another story, but she did take us to church, which I think was very significant. The first thing I did out of college was I taught at a high school in inner city Boston.

And even then, I felt this, there's this drive that you want the kids to like you. But I realized, and that was good for me to have that experience, that's not the point of why we're here. They might like me, they might not like me.

The point is that they learn. And similarly, I think in the role of a father or a parent, the goal is not for the kids to like me. It's for them to grow into the people that God is calling them to be.

And my role is not principally as a friend. The role as a father is very different, or a mother. And sometimes they're not going to like you.

This is not about me and how I feel. It's about what is good for my sons and for honoring God. Sometimes it'll feel good, and sometimes it won't feel good.

S: It sounds to me that imparting on your sons an active, living faith in God is a very central point, that everything else that you do, sort of specific advice, it all comes from that, emanates from that. And maybe this ends up, this question, you know, some of the questions end up not going anywhere, really. And this may be one of those, or it may lead to something very interesting.

But I guess my question is, why?

A: Well, I would say it's, I mean, this may be a circular question and answer here, but I think it comes back to the love of God. That's the most loving thing to do with a child, I think. If one takes seriously what we know about God in the scriptures, is that God is the center of the universe. God is the great reality. God is the invisible structure of all of existence. The loving God, who most perfectly revealed Himself in Christ, is the greatest blessing that you can give to a child.

Now, by the way, I look at it, I'm trying to look at it more as you're inviting the children to this. You can't force it on them. You do, I mean, in the same way that we, we essentially force kids to go to school, whether they want to or not. We do, in growing up, have them do all kinds of things, whether they want to or not. At a certain time, take showers. Similarly, I think, in a spiritual life, there is this admonition of scripture, as parents, you do this, and it's not based on whether the children want it or not. Sometimes they will, sometimes they won't.

Now, you shouldn't be heavy-handed in it, but it's more like, I kind of think, by following these sacred rhythms, you're setting up a constant invitation to the Lord's table. In time, their late teens, whatever, they've got to then make their own decisions and they're going to continue with things. But the table has been set.

And so there is that, you know, there's that beautiful, a lot of people would say that the statement of faith of Israel, of the Jewish people, is the Shema Israel. Hear, O God, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. The great statement of the monotheistic God in the face of all these pagans, multi-deity societies.

And then it says, parents, talk to your children about this as you walk along the way. Put these words on the lentil post. Tell your children about this. Tell your children about that. It is right after that statement of faith, you are to tell the children about this.

And it's a command. It's not an optional, you know, do this if you kind of feel like it. It's the invitation to life. And we would never want to restrict the invitation to life from anyone, especially children.

S: What does knowing the love of God do for a person?

A: Well, I think it would depend on a given person. For some people, that can feel devastating. For others, it can be the greatest message they've ever heard.

But in any case, I think what it does is it calls people to the true reality. It calls people to what is their true identity or what can be their true identity. And it pulls back the curtain on a lot of other things that kind of fog the reality of life. The daily, legitimate, but daily pedestrian concerns of life, of material life, and practical life, and social life. It kind of pulls back the curtains and says there is this larger reality that is here that must be attended to. One way or another, we're going to attend to it, either by inattention or by attention. And this is the invitation to proactively pursue it. And then eventually, it transforms people's decisions in that pedestrian aspect of life.

I mean, for example, we talked about the sports. One thing I'm a little concerned about, and some things I don't have to be so concerned about, is do we have too many activities going on in the kids' lives that it crowds out the sacred rhythms?

Because when I looked at how God kind of unfolded things for the ancient Israelites, and then essentially invites people to continue that pattern, but not in a legalistic way in Christ, is there's this sacred rhythm across the course of a calendar year, across a person's life, across a week, across their family life. There's all these things that get set up and in essence, they are a way of God's outlining a life that is filled with significance and is directed towards significance and is nourished by God himself. Because, left to a vacuum, all kinds of other things will establish their rhythms in our lives.

By the way, a fascinating parable of Jesus for all kinds of things, but it relates to what we're talking about here is the parable of the sower, where there's that parable that he talks about the farmer putting out all these seeds on these different kinds of soil. The seed is the word of God. Apart from the really fruitful soil, there's these other soils that have problems. It takes some root, but then there are these problems. And essentially what makes those unfruitful is this summary. The deceitfulness of wealth, the anxieties of life, and the pleasures of life. Those three things. And man, that covers it all. They all take some kind of root, but they're not very fruitful. Because those three things have choked it out.

And so, that applies to every single one of us, and to our families, and to our children, is are we aware of the anxieties of life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and how the pleasures of life can affect us. Because they're not just ideas.

So in the case of, let's say, sports. That would go, let's say, in the category of the pleasures of life. (laughs) Which, I like sports, but they can become pretty consuming on whatever way you want to analyze it.

So, I'm trying to think that through right now, as it relates to our two sons. Obviously, as you've seen, they have a lot of interest in sports. So, one of the things I'm thinking of, we've done this sometimes, they've actually gone to visit people with me who are sick and so on, but I want to see how we're going to build in regular service. Ideally, in an explicitly Christian way, but as a way we spend time. And again, doing it whether on a given day you feel like doing it or you don't. Because it's a great calling.

It's part of who we are meant to be.

S: The way you answered that made me realize better why I was asking about how you approach parenting. Because I think it's true, there are so many things that are competing for that attention. And just as individuals, that naturally also plays out in how we parent and how we thereby, from that position of incredible influence on our kids' lives, are having them focus. What is important to them?

And I think that absolutely, there's so many things that we are going to be inclined to parent them that are along those three lines that you outlined from looking at that parable of the seeds and the different kinds of soil that they fell on. So that is very much what I was wondering.

Because I think that for myself, it's very easy. Primarily, I think, at least at a surface level, parent towards maximizing their talents and being of good character.

A: I mean, obviously, from a Christian perspective, the matter of character is intimately connected to God. Now, it doesn't mean that people, even atheists, don't have good character qualities.

You know, Mark Twain made this joke that when he was growing up, they would always tell him in Sunday school that you should be honest and you should be courageous and you should be generous and so on because if you don't, you'll sow to the wind and reap the whirlwind and so all the kids around me who were dishonest and lied and cheated, they all became state senators and congressmen and so on. They seem to do fine.

Because the thing is that it's not tied to the result. It's tied to why you're doing it.

And so, you know, you see in the book of Proverbs the famous statement that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom is in the extreme situation, you can't do it because you expect some result or it makes you feel good because it may not be a good result and you may not feel good. You do it because there is a living God that you're living for who is the greater reality. He's awesome.

And that fear there is not this fear of oh, I'm worried, you know, I'm going to go around the corner and someone's going to stab me. That's not the kind of fear it's talking about. It's this awesome respect for this greater reality.

Now, I don't know exactly how any given person can get overwhelmed in a good way by that. How does a person get to that point or how does a child get to that point? But it probably helps more to talk about him a lot than not. Again, not in a legalistic or heavy-handed way but to imbue reality with the sacredness that there is and the character for the Christian is kind of based in that larger reality. Not in a list of do's and don'ts.

Now, sometimes just for the matter of practicality you've got to remember the do's and don'ts. But if it's rooted in the greater sacred reality then it's really living.

So, for example, I remember when I was growing up well, so my, I mean, one thing with my father was this is something I had to work out with him also which was he kind of raised me with this view of not, "do your best." He believed in that, but also, "be better than everybody else at what you do" as kind of a value. Now that is not a Christian value. The first one - do your best - is. It's a sense of stewardship. The other one is kind of this sense of being greater than others and a sense of superiority or whatever, however one might play it out.

And I absorbed that a lot and I, so I remember kind of my goal what was my goal in high school was was to be the best of what I all the things I was doing and to get into a great school. And I think back, I think, man, those are some pretty shallow values.

Now, I'm not against people doing well or going to a good school but that in and of itself - as a telos, an end point value - is incredibly shallow and I don't want that for my boys.