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Transform Your Family From Nest To Team (ANNOUNCEMENT!) · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  Everything we do in society now breaks it down into the individual. And one of the things that we're advocating for that is you cannot live your life as a family as a group of individuals and think that your family is going to cohere as a team. That just isn't a thing. Like your kids will start to think of themselves as individuals and this will break the family team down. What are the individual practices that we can just swap?
• 0:20
  exchange for team practices. This is a powerful move. So we got 10 of these, and April, I'm gonna talk about one that we used multiple times as our kids were growing up.
• 0:34
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams Podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:51
  Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Guys, we got a huge announcement we're so excited to share with you guys. So we're about to launch this thing called the Family Teams Accelerator. And this really fills a massive gap that Family Teams has been struggling to figure out how to fill for the last few years. And that gap is that when families recently just hear about becoming a family team...
• 1:13
  it can be really confusing as like, what are the steps? Like what, what, how do, you know, I got lots of questions. We're all just immersed in a world in which people think about, you know, family as just a group of individuals. And we're advocating that the Bible teaches that we're actually a team. But that transformation from, you know,
• 1:32
  a group of individuals into a team is really difficult and difficult to do alone. And so we're starting this accelerator and you guys can jump in every month. We're gonna give you guys just a, we're gonna just dial really deep into one tool, one topic, one theme.
• 1:48
  that really helps families go from just being a group of individuals or, you know, kind of like a nest structure to the family to a team structure. And so this first month, the month of February that's coming up, is how to transform your family from a nest into a team. It's really kind of a big picture one. And we've got a couple of tools. And so what happens inside the Family Teams Accelerator is you get, you know, a bunch of different resources. The first week of the
• 2:16
  really walks you through some exercises, some, some, you know, some mental shifts. We're going to walk through, you know, a little bit about what that's about. The second week, we're going to do kind of a town hall discussion on that topic. And so we're going to like, you know, kind of tease out and help answer questions and, you know, go deeper into things that might be tripping you up. The third week, we're going to give you guys a video that kind of walks through all of our top tips for making that month's transformation. And in the fourth week, we're
• 2:44
  community coach family. This is often a younger family. So sometimes people look at us and, okay, you priors, your kids are a little older now. Do you remember what it was like to have a two-year-old? And we kind of do, you know.
• 2:56
  But it has been a bit. So there are a lot of families who are doing this very successfully at a really early stage. And so we're going to be introducing you guys to what we're calling community coaches. And so they're going to do a Zoom call with everyone inside the accelerator to help you guys like answer questions that might be a little bit more tactical. So and all those will be recorded.
• 3:16
  sent out to the members of the accelerator. So hope you guys can jump on that. Go to familyteams.com if you want to know more. But one of the things we're going to tease out today is, and we're going to do this every month, is before the month starts. So we're in January. We're about to go into February. We're going to talk a little bit about what's coming.
• 3:34
  and give you guys kind of a preview of what's coming up in the accelerator that month. And so whether you're in the accelerator or not, we want to give you guys access to some of these tools or some of these sort of paradigm shifts. And so you're probably going to tease this one out. So this one, like I said, is how to transform your family from a nest into a team.
• 3:54
  And one of the things we want to encourage you guys to consider is actually a family movie night around movies that specifically tell stories of families working together as teams.
• 4:06
  These are really cool. Okay, so I've compiled a list of the top 10 movies that our family has really been impacted by. That if you watch the movie, they're really describing a family working like a team. And so if you want to get access to that list, it's free. I made it into like a one pager for you guys. Go to familyteams.com. I think it's slash movies.
• 4:32
  You know, familyteams.com slash movies, just go over there and you can download this PDF of these top 10 movies. I've asked April to tell me one movie and then I'm going to share with you guys one movie that really impacted, has impacted me and our family around this topic. But April, what movie did you pick from the list?
• 4:52
  I picked The Incredibles. This movie is, well, first I'll just say as a caveat to all of these movies, we're not necessarily saying these are like, you know, the best movies in the world and
• 5:07
  And they're appropriate for all age groups and all of that. So you should use discretion as a parent to decide if your kids are ready for this movie and so on and so forth. So putting that out there. But The Incredibles, I feel like this came out in a time when our kids were starting to get a little bit older. I think our oldest kids were like maybe nine, eight or nine. And we were –
• 5:31
  Just watching a family that had older kids, I think they were kind of young teenagers maybe or older elementary in the movie, was kind of fun to watch and very relatable with the kids.
• 5:46
  Interactions between the parents were very relatable and how the kids were acting and how the parents were trying to keep them kind of under control. Engage. Yes. Engage. And then he does. Never said that to me. Right. I've never had that problem.
• 6:03
  No, no. Yeah. You're always fully present and engaged. Not true. Yeah. So sarcasm there. But yeah. So watching a father be distracted, struggling with his work life and where his identity is.
• 6:21
  lies and a wife that's has to is kind of driven to being a little bit of a nag because her husband is so distracted and then he tries to engage and he doesn't do it right so she has to correct him and like it's it was all very relatable so you could just kind of are getting to see behind the curtain a little bit of a family that's like has these struggles and yeah
• 6:45
  And yet are committed to like, you know, there's no question that they're not going to work through all this. They know they're going to work through it. But it feels hard. At one point, it feels kind of impossible. And then there's a breakthrough. And, you know, the dad kind of has some clarity on his identity and begins to...
• 7:08
  you know, lead a little bit better and is able to apologize for the way he had been. And then, you know, their marriage gets stronger. And meanwhile, the kids are kind of blossoming under the clarity around identity.
• 7:25
  Yeah, such a good symbolic. And two, like, in the history of the Disney movie canon, basically every movie that Disney ever made is really about the individual. There are some family elements, but, like, I think the pinnacle...
• 7:41
  is either the Little Mermaid, where she just wants to get away from her family as much as possible, or frozen. It's just like, let me go, basically, from family. And so Pixar comes along and makes this movie, and we're like, oh my gosh.
• 7:56
  like they actually made a movie about a family team. Each of these kids have a superpower. And then at the end, there's this moment, right? Where, I'm trying to remember how that goes, like there's a transformation moment where there's like a sudden realization. Because you see that there's individualism beginning to crop into the, you know, it really talks about this exact struggle. Every, you see every single member of the family struggling with becoming kind of individualized.
• 8:23
  But it takes like some kind of massive threat to come against the family for them to suddenly realize that we actually need each other and we're a team. Yes.
• 8:31
  And those individual talents and abilities, they need each other. They need the daughter to be the force field, and they need the dad to be really strong, and they need the mom to be able to stretch, and they need the son to be really fast. They're able to use all of their – I think one of the cool scenes is when the mom makes herself into a boat, and then the son is running on the water while the daughter is sitting in there complaining and whining. Yeah.
• 8:56
  But they need to propel into the next thing. And so they're kind of being real and being kind of attitudinal along the way. But they're starting to understand with this, oh, this is how we could work together. And it's very impactful and empowering. And at the very end, the sun, they have this massive...
• 9:23
  like a scene where it's just like one thing after another. And then finally they're safe. And the son says, Oh, I love this family. I love being a part of this or something like that. And it's just like this climax where you're just like, Oh my gosh, this is so cool. We got to watch all the struggle and the behind the scenes. And then, you know, it's to the, the fulfillment of them.
• 9:47
  Being able to – I feel like as the father kind of gained his understanding of who he was, it like unlocked the identity that the kids then had. And gave them a place to be able to unleash their individual talents and abilities. And I think that our society today is so afraid to –
• 10:11
  You know, we just want to be so individualized. And so I think that the ability to have our still be people that are unique, but to be part of a team where we're accomplishing something together with those individual talents is really cool.
• 10:25
  Yeah, absolutely. So in the actual guide, so familyteams.com slash movies, when you get this PDF, we'll give you these 10 movies plus some discussion questions. And one way to kind of do this with your kids, if you really want to have a deep discussion, sometimes like sitting through a two hour movie can be a little bit like mind numbing for discussion purposes. And so I'm a big fan of you want to actually discuss a movie, like watch the first half.
• 10:49
  and then pause and then have like the discussion. And then maybe the next night, watch the rest and the culmination. So you're kind of living inside of the movie. Where is it going? What's happening? But what are the themes that are emerging? And I mean, this is such a valuable thing to do, but you want to make sure that you have time and your family's energy to actually have the discussion.
• 11:08
  Because this movie, like April's describing, has so many symbols that you can tease out as a family and say, OK, what does this mean? Or have you guys seen this? It's just so well described. OK, so I'll give you guys one more movie that's on the list that for me has been sort of an obsession lately. So the movie is King Richard, and this is definitely not a movie for...
• 11:30
  littles so if you have middle school or high school kids they probably can handle the content um but this is a tough story in some ways um so king richard is about richard williams and he's the father of venus and serena williams who are um two of the greatest tennis players um of all time and they're great there's a couple crazy things about this movie i've watched it over and over again and i've also listened to um
• 11:55
  Richard Williams' autobiography, his autobiography, called Black and White. It's a really, really good read. And when you read that book or listen to it, you'll discover that the truth of what he went through is way, way, way worse than the movie portrays. The movie, as difficult as it is to watch, is really revealing a tiny fraction of the kind of...
• 12:21
  challenges that that Richard Williams faced. But it's one of the most remarkable stories I've ever seen in my life, because imagine this.
• 12:30
  So Richard Williams grew up incredibly poor in Louisiana. He moves to Compton in L.A., one of the hardest places, just absolutely riddled with gangs. And he watches on the TV a check, I think a $40,000 check or something, being given to a woman who just won a tennis tournament. And he looks at that and has this incredible epiphany.
• 12:54
  And he sits down and he writes like a 75 page document, a vision for raising two girls to be tennis champions. And in that document, he decides that one of the girls is going to be the greatest champion.
• 13:13
  tennis player alive, but the other girl will become the greatest tennis player of all time. Okay. So he writes this document, presents it to his wife and says, we need to have two girls. They don't have any daughters. Like they have a couple of kids from her previous relationship, but they don't have any girls. So they get pregnant twice. They get two daughters that come out and it actually happens. Okay.
• 13:40
  Like his vision, Venus Williams becomes the greatest tennis champion of her time, she became, for a season. And then Serena is largely considered to be the greatest tennis player of all time. Greatest female tennis player of all time. Anyway, I can't get over how improbable and ridiculous the story is.
• 14:10
  is the power of a father's vision. And one of the things I've been constantly trying to advocate for is that people understand that fatherhood, there's an element of fatherhood that's all about
• 14:23
  protecting. And there's another element of fatherhood that's all about provision. And a lot of what it means to be a good father has really been boiled down to these two words, protection and provision. And I've been really trying to advocate for it. There are other elements, but there's a third element that is at least as important as those two. And that is that a father has to have a vision. And that if he does not have a vision, the family will not cohere as a team. And I've never heard of an example as profound as the Richard Williams examples.
• 14:52
  of the power of a vision. There's, you know, you can go through, I told the story obviously very quickly, but that's a tiny fraction of the story. You cannot even begin to imagine the kind of things that came up against that vision. I could go on and on for hours about what the kinds of things that they endured to try to make this vision a reality. I mean, one of the crazy realities is that there was one tennis court in Compton that was completely taken over by gangs.
• 15:22
  And Richard Williams spends years trying to turn that back into a tennis court so that he has this vision can. And he got beat up over and over again. One time, like lost multiple teeth. I mean, they almost got beat to death by these gang members. And they finally gave up because they beat him up so many times as he tried to recapture this tennis court that they started to become afraid of him because they couldn't understand how how he was coming back.
• 15:49
  I mean, it's, it's, I can't, it's like that just one story. And this was actually even before the, uh, the girls were old enough to start playing tennis. And then he had other confrontations and it's just a, it's a, it's the most improbable story you can imagine. But if you ever, as a father, if you're listening to this, if you've ever wondered about the power of a vision and one of the, one of the elements that's really unique about the King Richard example is.
• 16:11
  is that Richard Williams also really embodies the power of a incredibly specific detailed vision. And this is one of these I struggle with a lot as a father. I have like vision statements that, you know, basically are can be said in a couple of sentences. I've never written a 75 page document. And so I've just recently been I just feel like I've been praying about this and like, oh, man.
• 16:39
  I just, I don't know if I'm properly leading my family with enough clarity. And I think that one of the things that's really hard for modern fathers, modern families to embrace is a vision that specific because we think that it completely collides with the individual freedom that we want to make sure that our kids have, because we believe that that kind of individuality is the highest expression of, of life. And so, and so we don't want to have a vision that specific and the
• 17:05
  King Richard movie really contrasts that. Like, um, it's hard to imagine that Venus and Serena would have had a better life if their father didn't have a vision. It's like really watch that movie and, and, and kind of pay attention to their story and ask yourself that question. Um, would they have been better off? The daughters even say that at the end, I feel like in the movie they do. I don't know if they, if that's in the book, but
• 17:32
  Yeah. Well, they're constantly talking about their father and interviews. If you go on YouTube and just watch, they're really unambiguous about this. So anyway, incredible movie. There are eight other movies on the list that we'd encourage you guys to get. So just, you know, grab that over at familyteams.com slash movies and you guys can get the discussion guide and the list.
• 17:56
  Okay, so the second play in this playbook in the accelerator for this month, we kind of go deep into taking take a weekly individual practice and decide to do it as a team instead. And we give you 10 examples. These are 10 things that we have noticed that when a family does these 10 things and the idea here isn't to try to do all 10, but to look at the list and try to pick a couple of these.
• 18:21
  And really consider the reality that basically all of the things we do, we have as families, all the tools that we have to raise children, like 99% of them are designed around the individual, right? Like schools are not designed to educate siblings together, but kids in same age groups.
• 18:41
  Sports are not designed to compete as a sibling group against other sibling groups. It's always breaking down the individual. Virtually every ministry is designed this way. Shopping is designed this way. Entertainment is designed this way. Everything we do in society now breaks it down into the individual. And one of the things that we're advocating for that is you cannot live your life as a family without.
• 19:03
  as a group of individuals and think that your family is going to cohere as a team. That just isn't a thing. Like your kids will start to think of themselves as individuals and this will break the family team down. And so we need to like consider what are the things that, what are the individual practices that we can just swap from?
• 19:22
  exchange for team practices. This is a powerful move because in one, it really does two things at once. It sort of stops the individualism from going as far, and it replaces that with an experience of team
• 19:40
  which really can transform the identity of a family. So we got 10 of these and April, I'm gonna talk about just one that we used multiple times as our kids were growing up. And this is to swap individual sports for a family team sport. Most team sports are easiest to organize around same age, same gender individuals.
• 20:03
  And so we're quite unfriendly for families to experience together. But with a little work, you can invest in an all family sports. Examples include martial arts, tennis, pickleball, and probably our favorite family kickball, which I'll explain, which didn't exist. We didn't know about this when our kids were younger, but I'm a huge, massive fan of. But April, maybe you can describe, yeah, how do we do this, this sort of swapping individual sports for family sports?
• 20:30
  Well, when our oldest two were probably maybe seven and eight or six and seven, something like that, we started having them take tennis lessons. And that was when they could still take lessons together. We found a tennis club that would do that. They could take their lessons together. And then we would go to the court once or twice a week and they could practice with Jeremy. Jeremy.
• 20:58
  and I think I was probably pregnant with somebody, and I had a little walker who had a little – one of those grocery carts, like a plastic grocery cart, and her job was to go around with her grocery cart and pick up the tennis balls and put them in her cart. And so that was a way we kind of made it a team thing at that stage, and then we –
• 21:22
  probably, I think we added, we added our third kid into that tennis, the tennis lessons. And then, um,
• 21:32
  Years later, I can't remember, I think our oldest is maybe 15 or so. So 14, 15, and then on down, Jeremy went into a martial arts dojo near us and asked the man there, the master, if he would be willing to create a private class so that he could teach our whole family together at the same time.
• 21:59
  And so we also had a nephew do it with us. So it was, I think the youngest was five up until 15 and Jeremy and I, and we all started off as white belts and then we all progressed together. And we did that for two solid years. And then our son continued on after us and, and,
• 22:17
  And went on to second degree, maybe third degree black belt. But this was Taekwondo. And so that was incredible for us. We did that twice a week for two years. And it was so beneficial in so many ways.
• 22:34
  Master, I always think it's kind of funny to call him that, but Master Fry, he was a great leader and was not intimidated to lead us along with our children. And Jeremy and I were very humbled by having to learn these things. Sometimes humiliated, but humbled, yes. Exactly.
• 22:54
  humiliated along with humbled. All the different kicks and breaking boards and all these things, we did it with the kids. And then we had to do what they call testing. So every, so often there would be a testing to level up to the next belt. And that is a performance in front of the audience of parents that are there to watch their kids do this. And Jeremy and I were up there with the kids doing it. And that was very...
• 23:22
  Praying that no one would recognize us. None of our friends would show up. Every once in a while, we had people we knew. We're like, here comes the show. Yeah. Yeah. And they're like, we were...
• 23:33
  you know, they're there, oh, we're here to watch our five-year-old. And we're like, yeah, we're here participating. So it was, yeah. So it's so good for us to learn a new skill at that age. It was really good for the kids to see Jeremy not be good at something and then be taught by someone to watch their dad learn was actually, I think, a very positive thing. They were very, they became really encouraging to us when we would have a hard time.
• 23:58
  Um, this, this guy had a, a tradition in his dojo of whenever it was someone's birthday that, um, the whole class had to do that many burpees. So when it was Jeremy and I's turn, our birthdays, the kids were not happy with how many burpees we had to do. We had to do how many burpees for how old that person was turning. We were in our forties or something. Yeah. Yeah. I think we were in our forties. And so that was, um, yeah.
• 24:26
  That was not fun for the kids. But so just so many different things we learned in that time and that we did together. And it was very bonding, bonding experience. We learned how to spar so we could take stuff out on each other. But we had sparring gear so it was safe.
• 24:43
  Yeah. Someone say. Someone say. So that was a big one. And I know there have been different times in and out where Jeremy has a pass to a gym that has like a buddy pass on it. And he would always try to bring a kid with him that was old enough. I think we had to be 13 or something like that. So some of the younger ones couldn't wait until they were 13 so they could go to the gym with dad. So just thinking about we tried running.
• 25:10
  We did. We are not running. We discovered after like two attempts that we are not a running family. Which I think would be awesome, by the way. If you're a running family, you can run 10Ks or marathons or something like that as a family. Do it. We failed miserably. Yeah. Both April and I basically hate running. Yeah.
• 25:30
  Well, it's fun to see now what this is doing with the kids because, for example, like right now, well, in the, you know, last spring or something, two of our daughters trained to do a 10K and they did that with like someone who's discipling them. And so they got to do that together and that was like a real victory for them. But they didn't think twice about that.
• 25:50
  And doing that together, they couldn't sync up their rhythms to really like train together, but they did do the race together. And then currently, our daughter and her fiance have a membership at the same gym. And they go work out together three times a week in the morning. And they take a younger sister. One of our daughters takes another daughter with her to go. So it's part of...
• 26:18
  It's a thing now. Kind of like do some kind of exercise or workout together.
• 26:22
  I love that so much. Yeah, this is an area that, again, it can be hyper-individualized. And our kids did do some individual sports. Jackson had a year of football. Kelsey had a year of basketball. We weren't necessarily against those experiences. But man, once it became a win for the whole family, we could just double and triple down on it. There's just no hesitation. Sometimes when Jackson was playing football, there was four practices or three practices a week plus a game. It was just overwhelming for a family of five kids to
• 26:51
  try to keep up with the schedule like that. But, you know, all of our kids were pretty little at the time, so it worked out. But, you know, this was massive game changer. And I think that, you know, if you're interested in, by the way, in that family kickball, we got some friends that are starting the league. You can go to familykickball.com. Our friend Jeremy Netting created these incredible rules. There's a whole podcast on the family teams podcast that I did with Jeremy. So if you want the rules of this thing, you know, look at that podcast. And I'm, man, it,
• 27:17
  It is a brilliant, it'll blow your mind. If you're looking for a family team sport, yeah, these are all great options. Martial arts, tennis, pickleball, running, family kickball. I have a friend who's trying to do a similar way of like tweaking the rules so that there could be family soccer. And I'm very interested in that. So if anybody's figured that out, let me know. I'd love to have you on the podcast. I'm a huge fan of this, this one move. There's like 10 moves that we're talking about that you can make.
• 27:45
  to swap an individual activity for a family one. But yeah, this is a fun one. I want to encourage you guys, if you're, if this is helpful, we're just a huge fan that, you know, you guys, we need to be working together to figure out how to make this transition from individuals to teams. And so we'd love for you guys, many of you guys are willing to jump into February's accelerator and get the playbook, you know, get on the coaching calls,
• 28:12
  Um, and so yeah, jump over to family teams and sign up for the accelerator. If you're interested, get more information over there. Um, and, uh, definitely would love for y'all to check out the, uh, the movie list at familyteams.com slash movies. Um, so yeah, let us know how that goes. Um, and.
• 28:27
  Man, this is, I'm so excited just to get to spend more time with y'all who are kind of early in this journey of the transformation. It's going to be so fun. We've got big plans for March and April as well that we're starting to work on the content for that, those, those playbooks. But yeah, we'd love for you guys to jump into the accelerator and hang out with us and help help kind of take more baby steps into this direction instead of like a lot of people have said, oh, this is seems so overwhelming. And so we're trying to break it down a little bit more.
• 28:57
  for y'all. Sweet. Thanks, Abel, for jumping on here today. And thank you all for joining us. Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content, and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at FamilyTeams.