Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 72 | How to Inspire a Spirit of Servanthood in a Family

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Ep. 72 | How to Inspire a Spirit of Servanthood in a Family · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  You know, all these blessings are a tool, and the question is, how are you gonna direct that tool? Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Bethke, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor. Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned. Stay tuned.
• 0:32
  What's up guys, Jeff and Jeremy here, another episode of Five Minute Fatherhood. We have a fun topic today, and that is how to inspire a spirit of servanthood in a thriving family. And the antithesis to this is kind of, how do you make sure that if you build a strong, abundant family, that your kids aren't going to turn into spoiled kids and that they're not going to turn into just kind of leeching or taking or just kind of sucking the life out of the family and the legacy, but actually disciple and pass on the legacy of service
• 0:59
  and of that last name. So Jeremy, what would you say to that? Yeah, guys, I think that oftentimes you think about building a strong family. A lot of times we try to almost, we accidentally use pride as a tool to create continuity with our team. You know, sometimes we use words like, hey, you know, priors don't do X or Y. Some of that's not...
• 1:21
  But one of the things you have to be really careful of is I really want to be careful that my kids aren't becoming proud and spoiled about the strength that's incurring into the family. And this is a tricky little phenomenon.
• 1:37
  They even think passing down any material blessings to the next generation is really more of a curse, because you're inevitably going to create the Paris Hilton phenomenon, right? Where it's just like suddenly she's just totally obsessed with herself, and there's this idea that the wealth just is for my own comfort. And a lot of that, you guys, has to do with the vision for any of the blessings you're passing down. This is spiritual blessings. This is relational strength.
• 2:03
  and this is material blessings. Whatever you pass down, the vision you give or the vision that you are really, you're encouraging with that inheritance, whatever you're blessing your next generations with, they're receiving that vision. And if the vision is, hey guys, this abundance of like stability, this spiritual strength or this material blessing really exists for your comfort and for your individual happiness and satisfaction.
• 2:31
  then you're likely going to create a Paris Hilton, or you might create a really proud and arrogant, cocky family. And so those are real risks, and those are real traps. And so how do you really begin to push against that? I started thinking about this a couple weeks ago when I overheard just somebody in a conversation say, when you work to start your kids at third base, don't let them think that they just hit a triple.
• 2:57
  I was like, that's a really good way of saying it. If your kids are starting at third base and they think – they'd look down their noses at all the other kids and say, I don't know what your problem is. No, no, no, kids. You did not hit a triple. Our family has been working for generations to get you to third base. You're welcome. You didn't earn it. But why? Why are you at third base? Is it so that you can have this incredible life and look down your nose at everybody else?
• 3:24
  And it really is so that you can serve, right? So that you can be on mission. That's why we really emphasize the importance of talking about mission. That's right. So it's important when you give your kids a leg up, you got to tell them the full story, how we got here, so that doesn't inspire pride. And one family I wanted to point out that has done this really well, I'm always on the hunt for families that are different, but there's a family, the Shriver family.
• 3:48
  If you want to look up some of their legacy, this is a really fascinating family story. So Sarge Shriver was married to Eunice Kennedy. This is one of the daughters of Joseph Kennedy, one of JFK's younger siblings. And so Sarge and Eunice have this crazy legacy as a family. So Sarge was instrumental in starting the Peace Corps.
• 4:10
  His wife Eunice founded the Special Olympics. Their son Bobby founded the whole RED campaign or won with Bono. Anthony founded Best Buddies, which has helped millions of intellectually challenged adults get jobs. Another one of their sons took over the Special Olympics as CEO, Tim. And so just on and on and on, you look at this family, they were abundantly blessed financially
• 4:39
  And Sarge and Eunice created this culture in the family of radical service. And so instead of a bunch of spoiled kids or proud kids, they really inspired their family team to become radical servants. And so I just was blown away by the fact that, hey, you know, all these blessings are a tool. And the question is, how are you going to direct that tool?
• 5:08
  Yeah, no, I love that. And what I was going to say, too, is, yeah, it's true in all regards. Like you said, spiritual blessing, emotional blessing, you know, relational blessing. But financial blessing, too, I think is just a really good picture because it's easier to measure how that should be true in all regards. And, yeah, it's like whether, you know, take Paris Hilton, for example, versus someone like the Rothschilds 200 years ago or you have the Waltons now or any type of family that's just like it's been the financial blessing has been massively passed down generationally.
• 5:36
  And you can see, even like the Waltons, I'm not necessarily like Walmart is the best company at all. I don't think that at all. But you've clearly seen that the second generation has taken the baton of the mission of the company. When someone like Paris Hilton didn't take on the baton of the mission of the company, she just took on the baton of consuming from dad's vision of the company. And that's very different, right? That there was not this passing of vision.
• 6:01
  And so to actually kind of create, I think this legacy, we have to make sure that our mission and our vision is getting passed and kind of adopted. And we, me and Alyssa, I remember when we even went to Sonoma like last year and we toured this winery and I was just fascinated because it was a fifth generation winery where it's only been owned by one family and every single generation works in it, runs it, becomes the next CEO, et cetera. And you can just tell it's because they get captured by the vision of...
• 6:27
  of what they feel like their story is to tell as a family. And so that to me is, I don't, I don't, I just think it's almost a misnomer is the wrong word. I think it doesn't really matter how much, like it doesn't really matter. You can have spoiled kids that have no money and you can have spoiled kids that have a lot of money. To me, I think that actually has zitten, like money has no correlation in my opinion with spoiled kids because I think that's a heart level. I think that's, do they have a mission? Do they have a vision? How are they raised? What do they cultivate it towards? Money can exacerbate it.
• 6:54
  or maybe not give them enough opportunity. But to me, it's not a correlation in regards to the source. And what that is, I think, is a spirit of consumption versus spirit of service, like you said, and that is the biggest thing. So dads, that's what we leave you with today. Can you say, can you look at your family and say, slowly but surely, because this is a long play, 100 year play, that you are cultivating a spirit of service in your family, in your kids, and it starts with us, guys. It starts with us, that we would be the people that would set a model of service
• 7:23
  for our kids.
• 7:27
  Hey guys, can I just ask you a quick favor? If you could just pause real quick. Well, actually after I'm done with this, so it makes sense in about for about 30 seconds and just rate and review this podcast. We can 10 X the number of dads we help through this content. If our podcast can be found by more dads. And one of the weird main things about this podcast game is that how they get ranked and how they get in front of other people essentially is because of how it gets rated and reviewed. So if you can just give a quick, honest rating and review, we would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Thanks guys.