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Ep. 236 | What Proverbs Says About Building Family Culture · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  I think that these kinds of ways of when you see repeated patterns or you start to see things that you want to really cement in the heart or minds of your kids, that you try to like articulate them in a really simple way.
• 0:15
  What's up, guys? Welcome to another 5-Minute Fatherhood. So let's dig deep into one of the best passages in Proverbs that really talk about how you build a family culture. And it says in Proverbs 6.20, My son, keep your father's commandments and forsake not your mother's teaching. Bind them on your heart always. Tie them around your neck.
• 0:37
  When you walk, they will lead you. When you lie down, they will watch over you. And when you awake, they will talk with you. For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light. And the reproofs of discipline are the way of life. Amen.
• 0:49
  So the question I want to ask you guys is, how does a father command his children? How does a mother teach? Like, how does this work? And there's a really, I think, beautiful picture being painted by Solomon here that what happens often in a lot of families is the way a father commands is he actually crafts a culture.
• 1:09
  And one of the ways that we talk about that is through articulating a family mission and family values or pillars. And so when you begin to articulate those things clearly, then your kids are constantly being sort of—they're being reminded of this culture, this way. And oftentimes what a mother does is she comes alongside of each of the kids and sort of as we are all kind of—
• 1:35
  moving towards this culture together, the commands of the father, she's constantly instructing them in the way. Like, this is how this works. This is how that works. And so this is often the way that ancient families would really train up their kids, is that there would be things the father would do. And Solomon was one of the most sort of intentional by actually outlining the
• 1:59
  these in the book of Proverbs by saying, here are the things I think that are really important. And so sometimes this can be actually articulating sort of Proverbs or crafting Proverbs that you're hoping impacts the family and that your kids are constantly like, ooh,
• 2:16
  every time this circumstance pops up, I'm reminded of this proverb that my dad likes to say or that my mom is always instructing me about. So I think that these kinds of ways of, when you see repeated patterns or you start to see things that you want to really cement in the heart or minds of your kids, that you try to articulate them in a really simple way. Especially when your kids are young, if you really want it to sink in, you've got to make it super, super simple and clear for them. So yeah, Jeff, how have you guys thought through this one?
• 2:45
  Yeah, no, I love that. And I agree. I think pillars are really important, crafting these kind of family values in a way that you actually can synthesize them and teach them. You know, a good friend of mine, Joey, who I think he's actually probably, he might be listening right now. He does something, I think, where they have their kind of their pillars and their mission and kind of a bunch of their one-liners of like, our family's this, our family's this, this is what we honor, this is what we're about. And
• 3:05
  And he picks one of those every Shabbat, every Sabbath to just like talk about for a couple minutes. So it's kind of every Shabbat, you're going to get a little nugget of who we are, right? And why we are here. And you think about, man, 52 weeks a year, you know, 18 years, like that adds up to really embedding those pillars and that teaching and those commandments into them. And so I think, yeah, rhythmic teaching where you're kind of coming back to similar type things and instilling those in your kids is really, really important. And certainly within the wisdom literature.
• 3:31
  Awesome. And guys, one of the tools we want you guys to be aware of is if you're like kind of stuck on the how for a lot of the stuff that we're describing here, one of the places you can go to get a lot of ideas is the just 31 Creative Ways over at familyteams.com. So,
• 3:46
  What we do is, in our family, we walk through 31 different kind of creative expressions of how we go about trying to reflect our different values. And we do that through video. I interview each one of our kids for different segments so they can kind of walk through those creative ways. And then Kelsey and I wrote a book where we talk through each of those creative ways. And so you can check that out over at FamilyTeams.com.