Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 268 | Understanding the Purpose Behind Household

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Ep. 268 | Understanding the Purpose Behind Household · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  Because there's a difference too between the home being the center of economic productivity and flourishing and family rhythms. And also just like you're at home because a global pandemic.
• 0:12
  What's up, guys? Welcome to another 5-Minute Fatherhood. So I'm sure by now so many of us are really struggling with cabin fever. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about the concept of how understanding the purpose behind household can really help you find more activities to do for those of us who are at home looking for those opportunities to do.
• 0:35
  Uh, Jeff, I want to get your reaction to this great article that was written by Steven Wedgeworth. I think it was in the five minute father Facebook group that I found this. So thank you guys so much for posting articles in there. They've been awesome. But this was, um, yeah, I feel like people know what we love now. Who, who was it? Who was it? The post of that article? And they were like, I think this is a Jeff article or something. Did you see that one?
• 0:53
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. I was like, yes, it was. I still need to read it. I see some themes here. So let me just read one quote from it, and I'd love to talk about this a little bit. So Stephen Wedgworth, he said, we need to unite the concept of family with the concept of the home.
• 1:11
  The home is not simply the place where the family sleeps and recharges for its real work out there. Rather, the home should be the center of the family's work, a center of productive activity and social cultivation. A productive home should be the center of the family's work.
• 1:27
  will be a helpful corrective against the lonely and isolated home many of us are now experiencing. And it will be a corrective to the experience of cabin fever, where one feels like they are stuck at home rather than truly living their life.
• 1:43
  I love this. There's two or three things he does in this article that I found really helpful. Obviously, that connection between family and home is really helpful. That connection between home as the place where productive activity is done. We've talked a lot about that. And then he's sort of like, the way he concludes this is, this is why we're experiencing cabin fever. Because we actually don't think, the home is not where, it's not the place, the center through which we live our life.
• 2:09
  And so we feel trapped, stuck, stuck, isolated when we have to stay home as opposed to feeling like, whoa, I got so much productive activity. I can work for eight hours straight in and through the home in a way that is really great with my family. And so few of us are experiencing that. But I think this is a really awesome opportunity to try to level that up or create opportunities for that. So I'd love to talk a little bit more about that. But Jeff, how does that strike you?
• 2:38
  Yeah, I totally agree. I think a couple of things. One, let it be a barometer to tell yourself, excuse me, where you're at. So I think...
• 2:47
  If you hear this and you do feel like you're more in the cabin fever side of things, then understand like, oh, then that probably is actually trickling out into my philosophy of how I see home. And you can just use it as a barometer rather than like feeling like it's right or wrong. Use it to just kind of like smoke signal where you're at. And then what I would say is –
• 3:10
  Also understand too, that this is an enormous disruption that takes a long period of time to transition. So don't also feel like, because there's a difference too, between the home being the center of economic productivity and flourishing and family rhythms. And also just like you're at home because of global pandemic. So like give yourself some grace, but...
• 3:27
  But let this just be baby steps on a vision towards maybe three years from now, five years from now, if that makes sense. Rather than like, oh, we're all at home for two months. This needs to be now the center of everything. That might not go well. Might be a little bit too much pressure, but I don't know what you would say.
• 3:43
  Yeah, I think that's a really good point. A lot of this is really adjusting our philosophy of home. And that's what we're really hoping for during this season. It's not like you can magically manufacture or transition to a productive home in a few days or even a few weeks. But what you can do is decide if your philosophy was out of the home, out of the home. Everyone is living individual lives outside the home. That's where all productivity happens.
• 4:11
  And only rest and recreation happens in the home. If you, and like Jeff just said, like you said, it's like, that's the barometer. If that's what you're experiencing, if you feel trapped and isolated in your home, then that dial is probably set really high in terms of the activity or the center of your family's life is probably outside the home and mostly in individual activities. And so, but we definitely, as a family, we've had to think of a lot of additional ways for
• 4:41
  make our home productive. You know, our experience when the isolation hit was we had, you know, six teenagers basically in our house, you know, with 12 hours a day of productive activity that they could do. And the school system and even the homework or the homeschool stuff was taking up two or three hours of that 16 hour, 12 hour block. And so we started to create all kinds of productive activities for us to do as a family team.
• 5:11
  because we were philosophically already aligned with that. And we had a lot of those opportunities already sort of set up in the home because we did a lot of business work and a lot of ministry through our house already. But I like that barometer. And if you guys wanna like really like try to dial that up, I think that after seeing the way that this played out for your family, being kind of trapped at home, it's a really good opportunity to kind of figure out if you wanna make an adjustment there philosophically.
• 5:39
  Also guys, if you don't know, uh, we have basically a father's mastermind called integrated. It's actually one of the highlights of my year. I know I think Jeremy too, one of the highlights just of, uh, yeah, we just absolutely love it. And so it's a group of about 15 of us dads. You gotta be a business owner or kind of entrepreneur at some level, a dad.
• 5:57
  and love the Lord. You put those three things together and we're asking ourselves, how do we integrate those three things? So we spend time literally twice a year in a room, staying in a house together, but then also staying connected offline the six months in between. I'm just saying, how do we sharpen each other as business owners, as fathers? How do we integrate life and go through these and wrestle through these challenges together?
• 6:18
  Um, it's a huge gift to me and I know Jeremy and we absolutely love doing it. Uh, there's still a few slots open you can apply for, uh, at the end of this year or next year. And so just, yeah, familyteams.com slash integrated, um, is where you can check that out.