Beyond the Event: A Youth Ministry Podcast
Bringing together influential voices from the CIY community to walk alongside you in your journey to maintain momentum between the mountaintop experiences of youth ministry.
Beyond the Event: A Youth Ministry Podcast
BTE4.11 Pastoring Blended Families with Dr. James and Ginger Dellaripa and Eric Epperson
Mailbag questions or topic suggestions? Text us!
Dr. James and Ginger Dellaripa take us on their journey of creating The Family Core, offering insights into the unique challenges faced by blended families and the critical role youth pastors play in their lives. Alongside some lighthearted banter with my boss's boss, Eric Epperson—from reminiscing about past improvisation antics to chatting about the NBA All-Star game—this episode is a fun one.
From the Dellaripas: When we chose to build our family foundation on the Lord, everything changed. What started as a commitment to trust Him with our home became the cornerstone of a Kingdom-centered family. Through faith, prayer, and His guidance, we’ve seen growth, healing, and purpose beyond what we could have imagined.
This foundation isn’t just for our blended family—it’s a launching pad to impact others, showing His love and grace in action.
Be sure to check out The Family Core and share it with the blended families in your ministry!
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- Email us at podcast@ciy.com
Hi, I'm Brad Warren, and this is Beyond the Event, a youth ministry podcast presented by Christ in Youth, where we help you maintain momentum between the mountaintops. Today is going to be different and awesome. We are going to be talking to Dr James and Ginger Della Ripa. They are two wonderful, lovely people who happened to both be divorced and remarried each other, and they both brought kids into that relationship and they started a ministry called the Family Core to help blended families figure out what. To help blended families figure out what life is supposed to look like when you enter into this very, very complicated and challenging arrangement. Now, if you're a youth pastor, you 100% have blended families that you minister to. We all know that. But sometimes I think maybe it would be good to spend a little bit of time intentionally thinking about those students, about those parents, about those families and how we can help them navigate something that really kind of sucks sometimes, and so that's what we're going to talk about today, but first I have the pleasure of talking with my boss, eric Epperson.
Speaker 2:Hey, hey, brad, how are you? There's no need to refer to me, as I don't think I ever literally have before. Let's refer to me as your boss's boss.
Speaker 1:My boss's boss. Yeah, I was being presumptuous.
Speaker 2:I'm kidding Dude. I would say this You're a friend first oh, that's very sweet An enemy second, Occasionally. A confidant third An accountability partner. Fourth and no longer an improv partner? No, you're a fellow improviser.
Speaker 1:We used to do that together. That was so fun.
Speaker 2:It was a good time man.
Speaker 1:I really miss, I honestly miss it.
Speaker 2:I miss doing it. I'm glad you do. It was a running siblings here in town was always such a joy for me because it allowed me not only to hang out with people I like, but also just like get up and do stuff with people. Like we sit around so many times and we talk about like, oh, we should do that. How many times have you gone like we should rent a sailboat and go around the world or we should launch a podcast or we should whatever? And Siblings was such a rare moment where somebody actually said, yeah, let's do it, yeah. So we said sure, and then we did it, yeah, and and went from there. So, uh, man, it's good to good to be with you and I know for, for, like folks that watch on youtube, um, they're able to see this, this space, the really cool space that we're in, and I think what people don't realize is that this actually you live here, this is your room it's a very small room.
Speaker 1:The camera is actually sitting up on my bunk bed, so this is cool. Thanks for having us into your apartment. Yeah, no problem, I will my studio here, um, in more ways than one. Yeah, yeah, I see what you do studio apartment.
Speaker 2:That's good. Hey, what number of podcasts is this?
Speaker 1:uh, this is 52.
Speaker 2:You got any plans for the 100th Is 52. You got any plans for the?
Speaker 3:100th Making it to the 100th.
Speaker 1:That's currently my plan. We'll see how it goes.
Speaker 2:Well, I want to say the 60th.
Speaker 1:No, no one celebrates that. Here's what I'll say. This is very meta what I'm about to say. I haven't recorded the 50th yet. Oh what? Yeah, we're like out of order.
Speaker 1:It's a whole weird thing, okay so like this is the 52nd episode, but the 50th episode that will be published. Yeah, uh, I have not recorded yet, so people already may have heard it. It's with jason french. I hope it was an enlightening conversation. I'm sure so, jason. It's the past, but also the future. It was an enlightening conversation. I'm sure so, jason. It's the past, but also the future. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Isn't that weird, something kind of like interstellar kind of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like I don't even know how to talk about it. It is not yet, and it was.
Speaker 2:So when is this? What time are we in? Right now, then In podcast time.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Vamp a little bit and I'll tell you.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean like so is it like? Have we had Valentine's Day yet?
Speaker 1:I think it's around that time.
Speaker 2:So it's happy Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1:It is Listening in real time Pastoring blended families, February 17th.
Speaker 2:Oh man, we just had the NBA All-Star game last night.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, that was probably great.
Speaker 2:Crazy that thing that LeBron did. Can you believe it?
Speaker 1:At game last night. Oh yeah, that was probably great, crazy, that thing that LeBron did.
Speaker 2:Can you believe it At his age? Still on that level? Yeah, old guy's still got it. Still got it. The Super Bowl. Wow, who would have thought the Buccaneers they did it, they pulled it off. What a man that play at the end of the game when they beat the we're going to maybe Michael will put it in later the Chiefs.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Win. The Buffalo Bills Lost to the San Francisco 49ers.
Speaker 2:Who didn't even make the playoffs this year. What a comeback. Yeah, crazy, anyway, anyway I love what you're doing, both in this podcast and just the way that you serve across the across the board, and and see how I really do love the creativity you bring to our team.
Speaker 1:Well I you've always been a really encouraging and empowering person.
Speaker 3:Oh, thanks, thank you Thanks, um.
Speaker 1:Having said that, it's time for the mailbag. Oh cool, um, michael's not here. This episode is being guest recorded by Terry Omar, who, frankly, is a legend. We need to get Terry on at some point. The story wants to be Terry wants to hear stories, I know, but I want him to be heard. But you're right, but for now I'm going to ask them all bad questions, okay, Okay. Matt Berry.
Speaker 2:He's just a general CY people or did someone? They're not actually asking me.
Speaker 1:Yes, they're not actually asking. Hey ask Eric Epperson this. This is like ask somebody on staff.
Speaker 2:That's pretty arrogant, that I would.
Speaker 1:Even that would even cross my mind. A couple people did have questions specifically for French Cause. I did tell them that French was yeah, and as they should. Matt Tibbett asked me a question for Bradley out of all the wilderness leaders that you've ever had, who's your favorite? And the answer is Matt Tibbitt.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Obviously, I see what you're saying yeah, Um okay.
Speaker 1:Now it's your turn. Uh, matt Berry. Okay, matt Berry, this is what he wants to know who was a leader that made a difference in your life? I'm going to like, as a student you know who's a leader that made a difference in your life? What did they do to help, challenge and push you when you were younger?
Speaker 2:Lots of them. It's funny. Thank you for the for this question. That was intended for anyone, but fell to me.
Speaker 1:It's kind of nice to think about that. It's really nice to think of the list of names, yeah.
Speaker 2:Honestly, was it Matt Berry? You said yeah, sincerely. That's a gift to be called to pause and think about that. Yeah, lots of names and faces come to mind. I think the one thing that would tie them all together would be there are people that saw something in me and then gave me a chance to try it Okay, and that's both in school and at church.
Speaker 2:I think about a guy named Madison Tomlinson who was like the 10th grade principal real name, 10th grade principal at Muskogee High School.
Speaker 2:He was my ninth grade biology teacher before he moved into the administration role, and I've not thought about Mr Tomlinson in a long time, but he was the sponsor for a club on campus called Teens for Christ, and Teens for Christ was a group of teens that were for Christ, but it was kind of like an FCA for non-athletes and we met every Wednesday and had essentially a Bible. It was a Bible study, yeah, but I was elected an officer at Teens for Christ for a few years in high school and what it allowed me to do is it actually gave me a space to program a Bible study on a weekly basis, to reach out to youth pastors in the community and ask them to come, give devotions and then lead my peers in a way which was wild and, I think, difficult for people to do, and a lot of people don't get an opportunity to lead peers until it's kind of too late and then it becomes a really awkward uh piece.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's easy to see how every single one of those things you just said like has created you as you are today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, uh, my youth pastor, rusty, same way, um would give us opportunities to give devotions.
Speaker 2:Rusty would also bring me with him, um to do speaking engagements, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And so not a youth trip but like and it's funny that we're talking about um blended families with um the Del Ripas this this during this podcast, because that was my story in high school.
Speaker 2:My parents divorced before I started high school and I found myself just kind of in between. My parents honored me and each other well through that process, but it was some back and forth. So Rusty would bring me along as he would go speak at youth camps and retreats, and two hour ride in the car, I sit back in the back of the room watching him speak. And then he would like bring me along as he would go speak at youth camps and retreats and, um, you know, two hour ride in the car, I sit back in the back of the room watch him speak, and then, uh, you know, drive back like some really cool discipleship opportunities, both upfront, and then you know car rides, and then I I'd say a guy named Lewis, who I would still consider a mentor, but the first year my wife and I were married. He was the, we were. I was interning at a church and he was the lead elder and I'm an I'm a youth intern. You know they're paying me, you know, 500 bucks a month or something crazy like that I was.
Speaker 1:all you have to do is end that sentence and it's still like they're paying me.
Speaker 2:They're paying me. How am I going?
Speaker 1:to spend 500 bucks a month, but you know they're paying me it's like a lot.
Speaker 2:How am I going to spend 500 bucks a month? But they're paying me and I'm just the youth intern, right? But somehow in my mind I think I need to meet with the lead elder every week. And so I asked him. I was like, hey, can we get lunch once a week? And he was like a real successful businessman and obviously understanding that he was volunteering his time at the church and leading there. But he said sure, and so we would get Charlie's chicken every week in Muskogee and we would talk about life and ministry and marriage. And he and his wife Becky are still you know, they're 20 something years older than me at this point still, but when I was 20 and now that I'm 42, they're the kinds of people that I want to be like in the next chapter. It's always nice to have that like benchmark people.
Speaker 2:But it's like, yeah, I want to, and I think it's just at every season of our life we just need to tap people on the shoulder and say, can I just hang out, yeah, with you, and um, occasionally people will say, sure, I feel like changes.
Speaker 1:often my life, people will say, sure, yeah, I've never like. I don't think it's pretty rare to be met with rejection on that.
Speaker 2:You're like I'm really busy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah like yeah, anyway, I don't know, and I think I thought you were going to talk about. Are you the one that talks about like an older woman who volunteered in your youth group? Maybe I'm making that up.
Speaker 2:So here's the deal. I'd never. I mean, I was a youth intern for a year and then I came to work at CIY Like I've never-. No, no, no, as a student, an older woman. There were these twins, uh named, uh, named mary marie, and they would show up every week, but there was no older woman that volunteered in my I don't know what is she? What was? What's the rest of that story?
Speaker 1:I don't know she just, I just felt like I don't know who I'm thinking of. This is bad radio.
Speaker 2:No, it's good, um no, we had some characters around the church, but I don't think there was an older woman. Okay, that I'm um it woman.
Speaker 1:It's funny because two of the people on my list that I would think of are both women in their 50s and 60s. One of them was the receptionist in my middle school and she was the sponsor of our FCA and just believed in me. It's like Vicky Moody just rooting for me all the way.
Speaker 2:We did. Maybe we've talked about this in some format or not. We did some big research project last year on students who are now adults, who made decisions at CIO events to go into full-time ministry, and they did it. They actually pulled it off. They made it, and so we asked them in retrospect, why did you follow through? And we gave them a bunch of things to pick from the far and away. The number one and two thing that people said this is what got me into ministry was I had adults in my church that believed in me and they gave me opportunities to serve right away. That's the secret sauce to get somebody to actually follow through with a call to ministry. And I think you would say, and I would say a hundred times over that's what did it for us.
Speaker 1:That happened in spades.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a hundred percent, yeah, yeah, so I don't think so. So we did have this one guy named John and he was a youth sponsor and he was, um, he was massive, he was like, uh, six foot eight and, you know, weighed 300 pounds, just a giant of a man. Um, and I'm gonna get the references wrong, but, um, I remember this one lock in. We did, and this was when I was a youth intern and we did a. This was like in the fall of like 2002, and we did a lord of the rings themed lock-in, and one of the games that we played was we hid little rings. We turned off all the lights in the church building and we hid a bunch of little rings all around the church building in the dark. Yeah, right, and the mission was the kids had to go find these little rings and the adult sponsors would dress up as orcs and chase them. But John was so big and such a massive man.
Speaker 2:Who's the ultimate bad guy in Lord of the Rings? Sauron, isn't that his name? Yeah, yeah, sauron. So John would, he'd stand in the sanctuary and what the kids had to do was they had to find these little rings. And what do you do? The quest in Lord of the Rings is to throw the ring into the fire. Yeah, right so, but we didn't have, you know, a cauldron of fire, so they would have to throw the rings into the baptistry, and so John stood up by the baptistry.
Speaker 1:And he's trying to defend Matumbo.
Speaker 2:So these are the man, these are the kinds of people that just kind of showed up to church and said, okay, sure, I'll do whatever, even if it's that and that might be somewhat I don't know if it's a disservice to dishonoring the baptismal, but it's what we did, yeah. Thanks, matt, no sacred gals right Opportunity to to honor some folks that made a big difference in my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is special to be able to reflect like that, Speaking of people that have made a difference in your life. Our next question is from Alex Rueda, who was my college roommate. Yeah, and a great friend, he's a tall guy too. He is a tall guy. Yeah, he would have played that role valiantly, maybe at Moved next summer.
Speaker 2:We can do that I also.
Speaker 1:I need to, alex. I'm going to have you on the show at some point. He'd be really great. I know Alex wants to know what are some things that were different about students this summer 2024, compared to last summer 2023?.
Speaker 2:Wow, they were a year older.
Speaker 3:What's something?
Speaker 2:different in 2024 compared to 2023.
Speaker 1:I feel like I feel like 2021, yeah, was so bizarre, sure, um, and it was weird and we were like social distancing and had to send groups home and students were just coming out of COVID and that really heavily impacted some of them and heavily didn't. I will say I don't know what the like stark difference was between 23 and 24, but I will say I felt that still in 2023, like the remnants of that kind of time, and 2024 was the first like really normal feeling summer. Yeah, I can't really put my finger on what that is.
Speaker 2:I think, I think there's something to that. So when I meet a college student now um, part of their story, COVID is a part of their story in a way that it's not for a um, a high school freshman, Um, you know how like, um, like in high school, back when you're in high school, and and there would be a girl who was on crutches for whatever reason and that became part of her personality, yeah, you know what I mean. It's like I got to leave class early and someone carry my book.
Speaker 2:I'm allowed to go to lunch first I can do this, I'm like I'm a girl on crutches, yeah, oh, whatever. And so you're like shut up, brittany.
Speaker 1:Whatever crutches, yeah, oh whatever, uh, and so did like you're like shut up britney, whatever um so britney she made, britney she was on crutches she was a crutches girl.
Speaker 2:I guarantee she was. She was a crutches girl. So I think there was. There was a part of it where covid and lockdown and isolation, I mean like was such a big part of, like, their adolescence. Yeah, and I look at my own kid. It was defining yeah, I got my own kid who was going to be a high school student next year. She was like oh, covid happened in third grade, yeah.
Speaker 2:And we're getting further and further away from it Doesn't mean it's still very important. It was still very impactful, but it didn't shape them in the same way that it did for a high school or just even a couple of years before. And as we move in in the next couple of years, as we get further and further away from it. I mean, when my now third grader becomes a sixth grader and starts going to the Super Start and Mix, she'll have no memory of it. Yeah Right, yeah, you know a sixth grader and starts going to the super start and mix, she'll have no memory of it. Yeah right, yeah, um. And and she was like what? Like in like pre-k, during the, during those, you know, the covid days, and she was such an anti-masker it was ridiculous. Uh, you know, I mean we like put a mask on her and she would send her to preschool and she's like I'm not wearing this faith over fear. You know it's all a hoax. I'm like shut up, just you know, come on, um. But like I think we're.
Speaker 1:That's a good thing that we're the funny thing is that is such ren's personality.
Speaker 2:You can't make me. I'm not a sheep, yeah, okay, so I I.
Speaker 2:I would certainly say that at the same time, I was struck by um last summer I think it might have been thematic and what we did as we walked through Psalm 23 and rest, I commend this generation of young people for being in tune in a way with what's going on between their ears and what's going on in their heart in a really, really profound way that I think we could learn from that. My gosh, I never, as a high school student, I never once thought about my mental health what you know, what I mean, what do you mean? I never once you know we equated our spiritual health to they'll do my quiet time and you know that's really it. But for them to think about kind of their holistic self and throwing their whole self into following Jesus is, I think, really profound and encouraging last century into kind of a post-COVID world. But then also, students really being in tune with mental, spiritual and physical health in a real profound way, I think is huge.
Speaker 2:Also, I'll say this man, I've got a teenage daughter and all her friends. Man, they're obsessed with skin, the skin care. Like it, you'd be, you'd be. That was not a thing right when we were, when we were kids, and so it's like what, like they're like, what's your skin care routine? I'm like I wash my face. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1:you know how many steps is alice's routine oh it's, it's too many and I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna talk about it because this.
Speaker 2:This exists, uh, exists well beyond, and I'd want it to. But, yeah, she's really, really great. But it is a cultural shift that I've seen where they're like in tune with those types of things.
Speaker 1:It's because of all the like get ready with me videos on TikTok and that kind of stuff. It's a lot of yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and honestly good for them, because we spent our childhood just going outside and there were still I guess there still are tanning salons, but everybody tanned in the 90s and now they're paying for it.
Speaker 1:They're walking around like purses, my goodness, I was going to say I think. The other thing that I think is I think that that COVID led to some huge behavioral issues where it's like the kids forgot what freedom was, yeah, and then they got to a week of camp and they're like I am going to light that building on fire, yeah, sure you know. Yeah, and so that was tough for a couple years there. Yeah, I feel like there were a lot more disciplinary things. 2024 didn't feel that as much.
Speaker 2:I don't know. That's how I feel.
Speaker 1:I think so.
Speaker 2:So between that and skincare, I think we got a different crop coming. I'm trying to think back all things summer 2024.
Speaker 1:It was an Olympics year, so there was a lot more patriotism, patriotism and a lot more people interested in track.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 1:Oh man.
Speaker 2:That's true. Oh man, that is true. It's like I'll watch gymnastics and go ah, I will. I will watch this once every four years.
Speaker 1:And then in four years I'll watch it again. Okay.
Speaker 2:Is that helpful?
Speaker 1:That, that was great. Okay, Um, that was a great conversation. I'm looking very forward to our next conversation with James and Ginger. You ready to go?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm here, let's do it. All right, let's do it. You're going to love these people. They really are just fantastic people doing the work. It's fun.
Speaker 1:I want to start by knowing how you guys got together. How did you start dating? Did you meet? What was the beginning? Of this relationship maybe the better question like who pursued. Who always?
Speaker 4:pushes this on me? Who?
Speaker 4:pursued who probably knows are you asking that question? Am I going to answer it now? Yeah, like who? Who made the first move? Um, james and I. Um, he came from flagstaff and started working at a facility down here in Peoria and I was working in the OR and the administration side. So his partners, who I had worked with for seven or eight years prior, said we have this doctor coming down for Flagstaff, he's going to be in our group, get him privileged like straight away and basically just so he could be a total workhorse. And so I got him privileges at the facility and he started working there and, um, I was really mean to him and he looked so it worked out.
Speaker 2:What do you mean you were, what do you mean you were really mean to him. Give me an example.
Speaker 4:Well, he came from a? Um, he came from like an academic setting. He was at texas heart for a long time and then he started the heart program up in Flagstaff. So when he got down here, um, it was like his way or the highway type of thing and the room was going to run his way. And so when he got into our facility which was a highly efficient, you know, move quickly but he wanted to make sure our room knew that it was going to run his way and so I let him know it was not, it was not, and now you're married.
Speaker 2:James did it run your way ever, or was it always Ginger's way?
Speaker 3:I had to, but yeah, no, it was her room for sure.
Speaker 1:So how do you get from that place to like hey, you want to go out Before you?
Speaker 2:say it. Let's be honest, I love that story. That's much better than the while you were sleeping story that I had in my mind of how you all met that Ginger, you came in on a gurney and James nursed you back to health, but that's fine too. That's great, it's not exactly the meet.
Speaker 1:Cute that, eric was talking about.
Speaker 3:Well, since then? No, we knew each other over the course of years. In the meantime, I was still a workhorse, and I think you were a workhorse too at your facility and really because of those workhorse personalities, both of our family lives basically fell apart and we ended up each going through divorce, you know, and divorces is false on both sides of those relationships. The short story of that is, years later, as we're both in agony, wrapping up our divorces, or it was looking for, you know, some type of release there so we could get out and enjoy ourselves a little bit, get out of the misery of being, you know, receiving law documents and wondering about court documents and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:And so I asked her out one day and, uh, I said, hey, you know, I heard you're going through the same trials. I am right now. Let's go. You know, we know each other a while, we get along really well. Let's just be friends and go out and get a dinner or something like that. And uh, she said, yes, uh, with a contingency in place, and that was because it was going to be a saturday date, okay, um, that we had to go to church, uh, before we went out for dinner, good, rule hold on.
Speaker 2:Let's pause there for a second james, james were you going to? Church and those days, or was this a new concept for you? Okay?
Speaker 4:no, and you know what he said, eric yeah I'll go with you because I want to go, but I'm pretty sure the place is going to burn down when I walk into it. Yeah, all right. Okay, that was fun I spent.
Speaker 3:I spent the weekends in the hospital, basically at that point in time. Yeah, so we went on a Saturday to church, which was foreign to me to begin with. Sure, it was the afternoon, it was a beautiful day out, sunny, bright skies. We pull into the parking lot, the parking lot's full of cars, yeah, and there's music blaring out of the building, you know today's kind of Christian music, which I wasn't familiar with either. And so you know, I was wondering what was going to be going on in there. Were there going to be crystals and symbols, and what was happening. You know we're going to be putting hands on each other, that kind of thing, right. And we go in there and everybody's into the music and we find our place with seats and the music's going on.
Speaker 3:I can see everybody's very into the worship service at this point in time, and then that settles down and the pastor gets up and serves just a brilliantly joyful, positive message for the day. And I remember looking around at first, seeing how people's attention were, you know, were they really listening to this guy? Were they talking rather than the phone? What were they doing? But they were paying attention and I began to very much do the same thing, pay attention. And I was into the message all the way and I remember he left it at a very positive, very positive place at the end of the day and he asked everybody. He said is everybody good as he end of the day? And he asked everybody said is everybody good?
Speaker 3:As he wrapped up the message and I thought to myself I feel pretty good, I feel pretty good right now, and so we walked out of there. I was a bit mystified and I wanted to obviously learn more about the church and what the whole idea about Saturday services was all about. So we went out to dinner and talked more about it and I let her know that. You know, I was really thankful that she had invited me to church and we had a great dinner that night. And you know, we parted ways, saw each other basically the next week.
Speaker 2:So I asked her out again.
Speaker 3:I asked her out again and I said you know, let's keep this going, let's keep going to church. And then, you know, get to know each other over dinner or a movie or something like that. And that's how our relationship started. Just as relationships were ending, our relationship was starting. That's how it started and it was a wonderful introduction back into the church life. You could see that everybody there was just super happy, great spirits, pastor was high energy and it was just a great start of introducing me back into life with Christ.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love a good missionary dating success story.
Speaker 2:Well, James, it's interesting you talk about this really transitional period of your life where one relationship, these relationships, are coming to an end but another one is obviously beginning, and we love the local church here at CIY. But I'm curious what you have seen now as you've built this life and this marriage together. You really did build that on the backs of the church. How has that impacted every decision that you've made now that you've been married? For? I don't know the exact number, but I know years at this point.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 4:It's been 11 years and when we so, we knew that that was going to be a foundation, because I had drawn a line in the sand and that's just how it was going to be, and he took to it straight away.
Speaker 4:So, as you guys know, the percentage of the male taking the lead and bringing the kids to church is exponential to the wife doing it and so our kids it's for our three older children it had become the foundation of their transition, because the transition day was we came home and then we went to church and so they knew that they had a very supportive youth program and we had made one move away from that actual initial church that we started in. And then, after a couple months of church shopping, my father had said why don't you try CCV and I'd like to see my grandkids. So we started doing that and taking the kids from where we live all the way out to Peoria, which is a good I don't know 35 minute drive. But it was worth it because straight away our children were like this is our church home, this is where we're going, we're not going to miss, and so it became fundamental for even our kids, which was huge in the custodial grounds that we were in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so while we were blending, you know, we were sharing custody schedules back and forth on both sides and we would have the kids together and then we would be empty nesters.
Speaker 3:So when the kids were together, they knew what the weekend was going to consist of. We were going to go to church and, like James said, ccb has really strong youth programs, so it made it just that much easier to to get them to church and then at that point it just became fun for them, like going to church was actually a joy for all three of them and it did help to solidify that, basically put our epicenter together of what our family was going to surround ourselves with, and then we built our family off of that right. We built our family off of the word of the Bible, off of prayer to Jesus and then all the activities that went along that the church can offer. So when people were, when the kids were away, and then they came home, they knew what we're going to do, they knew what our life was about and that had a very good grounding effect on bringing our family together.
Speaker 2:You got how many kids combined? Help us with those numbers.
Speaker 3:It was three, three, three originally yeah, okay.
Speaker 4:When we met it was 12, seven and 4. And then they quickly turned. Our youngest one had quickly turned 5. And then, 8 years in, we added another one which is a female, and then, a couple years later, we added our last one, which is a male. So we have 5 all together, and they just were always ours. And that's the way that they all get along. Knock on wood, they transition well, but they all are very keenly aware that Christ is at the center, and I think that that was just an easy foundation for them to build their relationships off of too.
Speaker 1:So I'm always curious about this At what point in every couple that's that's blending, does this differently, and I consider you guys experts on this. So I'm going to ask you, um, at what point in your dating relationship do you like bring the kids in? Do they like? At what point do they know what's going on?
Speaker 4:And, like you know, what I mean Start to acknowledge the weight that the other person has in your life. James and I kind of started dating him independently as a 12-year-old boy, just one-on-one with him. He knew we were in a relationship. We did not expose that relationship to the girls yet because maturation-wise they weren't ready and we weren't ready. So really a massive contributing factor would be if our oldest did not.
Speaker 4:As a teen boy he could do one of two things Like I'm going to like you or I'm going to hate you and I'm going to make it misery, or I'm going to make it okay.
Speaker 4:And so we spent a lot of time nurturing that relationship. James and him spent a lot of time nurturing that relationship. So we introduced him first to that type of environment and I think that there was a level of respect on both sides. We parallel co-parented with his biological father, so there was just that constant train of you do what you do at your house and we do what we do at our house, and there was never cross-questioning about that.
Speaker 4:And so he knew his lane, he knew how it was at his biological dad's house, he knew how it was at his at his biological dad's house and he knew how it was at home and um, and it's still that way and but the girls, we knew that we were going to have a different type of transition. So, um, bodie and James really solidified their relationship and then we moved into um introducing the girls um to this, into um introducing the girls um to this, to the situation. So when, the when I met the girls, um, we did it all together and introduced the kids um together right, but the girls knew about ginger and they knew about bodhi.
Speaker 3:You know we had had discussions about about that, that situation, um, you know, at the time we were still working out custody schedule, so, um, I didn't have as much access to the girls at that time, and so they were very curious as to what dad was up to outside of just working, um, and so I would bring her over to where I lived, uh, from time to time and, uh, I believe I met you first, right, and they met you first at that in that moment, Um, yeah, moment, um, yeah, that they that they did and I I did.
Speaker 4:We did stuff like um, I helped them decorate a room for themselves at dad's. I helped like picking out, you know, doing a comforter and a bedroom set and those types of things where it made like we were introducing that they had a home there, um, with dad, and they felt included and that they had a place and just trying to have their identity at dad's house. And so I think, like you said, brad, it's different for every family because the dynamics are so different and, statistically, your children can go from having a nuclear family and when they blend, there is an aspect of over 200 relationships that come within that, as far as, like, new mom, siblings, grandparents, cousins, extended family and all of those things.
Speaker 4:Just a swirling universe for them. So we were very intentional About trying to keep things as clean and detailed, and not messy, and open and transparent with them as we could. But again, we started it with church. It was, we were at church straight away and so they knew that that was the pillar.
Speaker 3:So when they met each other, there wasn't any turf wars or any types of jealousies, mostly probably because there were some separations in ages. They weren't one year apart or anything like that. They were coming from different backgrounds. And then there's gender differences as well, right? So I think they were just more curious to know that they had a new brother, and I think Bodhi was more curious to know that they had a new brother, and I think Bodie was more curious to know that he had a couple of sisters to now watch over, and it was actually very pleasant to watch their relationships fall into place and get to know each other.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was refreshing, and not everybody's story is that way. I think every blend has its battles, no matter what that looks like, and I think God just truly blessed us with the ability for the children to blend and it being so cohesive, because we had plenty of other battles outside of what was under our roof.
Speaker 2:So I'm a kid of a couple of blended families. Actually, Are your parents married? My parents are married 40 years and my parents eventually remarried when I was an adult. But I remember being at my dad's and stepmom's wedding and they built a wonderful life together, Really grateful for them. But this old lady comes up to me at their wedding and says I'm your new grandma.
Speaker 1:That's what she said to me and it was my stepmom's mom, and you were an adult and I was like a grown person.
Speaker 2:yeah, and I was like well, you got a lot of birthdays to back pay for.
Speaker 3:Let's get those $5 bills going.
Speaker 1:Yeah no joke.
Speaker 3:Someone else added a Christmas list. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:So you know, you never know. This is media that we're putting out to the world. You never know who's going to hear about it. You all are leaders in the blended family space, but I want you to speak to maybe a man or woman who's gone through divorce. They've got a couple of kids at home and they're thinking about pursuing a relationship, or, I don't want to say, getting back in the game. That seems really trite, but what would you say to them as a word of encouragement? To say, hey, no matter what you've been through, god can step in and redeem this next chapter and this next story, whether it's practical or spiritual. Just give that person some encouragement.
Speaker 4:Right. I think the reason why he says you know this is on you. You tell this part is because I wouldn't say that he didn't have religion in him at all, but he was away from it, which we all do in our lifetime to step away from it. I had just been at a reverse point where I had been away from it but I was back and being in relationship with God and having your Lord as your partner before you step out into these big decisions. I think that that's where it was for me is that I drew a line and I and I knew that I thought he was super duper, but if he said no to church, then it was just going to make it easy.
Speaker 4:So just putting yourself in that love triangle that if you're both starting here and you're both chasing after God, that you'll eventually come together. It's such a delicate situation that you're putting your children into that you have to keep your eyes focused on God so that he can help determine what your path is. Because you're in blended families, they say you're going to drag your whole family with it and, most importantly, that's going to be your kids. So I would say they focus on God, keep your relationship with God before you enter into any relationship outside of that, so it can make those boundaries and parameters easy for you. If he doesn't want to go, it probably wasn't meant to be. This is true.
Speaker 1:This is true. So was there? I want to talk about your ministry a little bit here. Was there like, through this process of getting to know each other and courting and getting married and blending your families? Was there like a catalyzing incident or set of incidents that you can remember, where you were like, oh my gosh, parenting like four people or six people, parenting the same three children, is hard, is going to be a difficult thing for us is hard, is going to be a difficult thing for us.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I mean when when we, when we first had everybody together in the house you have so many more schedules going on. We had different schools to pay attention to, we had different sporting events to pay attention to, dance music lessons. You know, all that came crashing down into one household, right, and she wasn't used to it. I wasn't used to it because we were adding all these other schedules into a daily mix and so we had to figure out how to make all this work right. So we were pulling calendars from Apple and Google, we were using storage space for documents, we going in the right direction.
Speaker 3:At the same time, the catalyzing moment was the fact that, oh my gosh, we need to do something different here. We're doing a good job and we're getting some compliments, kids are on time, they're well adjustedjusted, hair's done for the girls, bodhi's doing well in school, like all these types of things were looking good on the surface, but behind the scenes it was, you know, an old operator switchboard where you're just like plugging this, that and the other thing, trying to make it all look seamless. So the catalyzing moment was when we decided you know what we need to do something ourselves and make this happen. The catalyzing moment itself, specifically, was the Holy Spirit moment, when Ginge woke me up at about three in the morning, which her Holy Spirit moments always happen about three in the morning, same she likes to let me know straight away and then I forget, I go back to bed and I forget when I wake up at seven the next morning.
Speaker 1:So I keep something next to my bed, so I just I wake up at three in the morning, you need to call James.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, you need to call James at three in the morning.
Speaker 1:I am. I'm going to call you James.
Speaker 3:He's good. The Holy Spirit says we need to build an app, something that helps people organize better, which is obviously something that you have great expertise in. Yeah, of course I'm a physician, so of course there's technology in there, right. He literally said tell him no, Tell him no, Nope. Well, I mean, we had just made so many adjustments to our lives and now we're going to jump the fence and get involved in something that we know nothing about.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I was like that sounds great, hon, go back to sleep. But the next morning I wake up, I'm having my coffee, I'm going through my emails and that conversation from about three hours ago is in my head and I'm thinking about it. And I started really thinking about it and I thought to myself everything that I just told you. Well, you know, she has done a great job of keeping things organized and keeping the kids on track and I do what I can to help. So I began to think about it and I thought, okay, maybe we could build an app. I went around that morning. I grabbed all the 3x5 note cards I could find. I grabbed all the colored pencils in the house. Weeks later the kids are like where's all the colored pencils? I'm like I don't know. I don't know where they are. I started frameworking what this app might look like just throwing one card out, next card out, next card out and what would be the pillars, the pieces of functionality that would help organize these types of families, make them better connect and we came up with some features. We came up with a chat feature, a data storage feature, a calendar that's shareable. We came up with a geolocation check-in service and we thought these are the types of things that provide safety and help with communication and not allow the kids to fall in the gap when they're moving from one household to another, helps parents that no longer want to have relationships with their exes, helps them to parent better, look like the adults that they're supposed to.
Speaker 3:We drafted this up over 2019 and we call it our version one, and we found a developer who worked with us really great in a great way, and we launched it at the end of 2020 or in the middle of 2020. And we ended up on the app stores and this thing was around the world. It was on six continents around the world by the end of 2020. We couldn't believe it. We're getting emails in different languages and we're just way over our head. At this point, we're like, okay, maybe this is actually something and we better pay some attention to this. It was a bit of a glitchy product, but so many people were on it, we thought, okay, let's go back to the drawing board, let's rebuild this from the data logic layer up, improve it aesthetically, improve the user experience. And so we did that in 21 and relaunched it in 22 with a different developer, and now we have our version one out there. Again, we're six continents around the world, over 2,200 users, 35 or 36 countries at this point right now, and what we found is that people are asking us all kinds of questions. The app is a tool, but then they're now coming to us asking us hey, I got a situation and we said can I talk with you via a call? And so what we did is we set up like a calendly so we'd go through an onboarding experience with the app, but at the same time we're kind of doing some troubleshooting for some families out there. So that now has thus blended or boiled over into the ministry side of things.
Speaker 3:We got back with CCV some of the pastors in the church and we started talking about what was happening with Family Corps and they let us know that this is your ministry, guys, do you know that? And we hadn't really come to that conclusion that this was our ministry. At that point. We were just, you know, checking the boxes. We were trying to make things happen and we were noticing that people were paying attention to us and beginning to ask us some questions, but we didn't realize that this was a mission now. We were on a mission here, and so since then now we have started a ministry of our own, the Family Corps Blended Family Ministry, and we're wearing two hats. Now we're building the app out and we're now building the ministry side of things so that we can provide resources and get people the right answers that they need for their specific situation, whatever their challenges are with their blended families.
Speaker 2:So, James, you said this. So really, essentially, what the FamilyCorp app is is it's a place to help blended families do logistics right. You got a permission form that's got to go back to school. You have a shared document feature where you can dump that and both families have access to it. There's chat back and forth, so you're not trying to track people down the line you said.
Speaker 2:I really liked it's like it helps adults be the grownups they're supposed to be, or something like that. That's certainly it's amazing, right, the grownups are supposed to be, or something like that. That's certainly it's amazing, right. When you handle the logistics, the emotional level stays controllable. It becomes purely a you know, a scheduling conversation, more than a heated, a heated debate as you've, as this app has given you a platform for ministry. What are some of the major concerns that you're seeing blended families having? And I'm hopeful that maybe a youth pastor could listen in to what you're hearing and so that they could better respond to those kids that show up to youth group or Sunday school every other week and they've never really thought about why.
Speaker 1:And this isn't an if like. Obviously the statistics are insane of the number of children that are a part of a blended family. In the United States, it's probably like up to half of the students in a youth ministry.
Speaker 3:I'll give you some stats and then I'll let James talk about some of the specifics that we come across on a daily basis. So about 40% of people in the United States have the word step in their family somewhere. So that's 40% of every kid that your pastors are going to come in contact with is dealing with some type of blended family or co-parenting relationship that has other children involved in those families that aren't necessarily biologically related to From the CDC, ages 3 to 17,. You have 9 million clinically diagnosed cases of anxiety in that age range in the United States and 4.5 million clinically diagnosed cases of depression in that age range All their behavioral disorders about 4 million. And that's 2020 stats, the stats.
Speaker 3:Today.
Speaker 3:I'm not sure what they are, but if you extrapolate out kids in blended families or kids being co-parented through divorce or other types of single parenting situations, you increase the percentage of how many of those children are struggling with anxiety and depression.
Speaker 3:And this is just what we know right Clinically, what we know has been reported. So there's so many more kids out there in that population that haven't been diagnosed with these types of problems and these types of issues haven't been addressed. What we know is, as these kids grow they go from young kids to older kids, to teenagers is that if these situations aren't addressed, they turn into behavioral disorders. And these behavioral disorders are manifest with suicide, substance abuse and violent outbursts. And we're seeing that in our kids today, right, our young adult youth. We're seeing more and more of that today. Those statistics are only moving upward, more and more of that today, those statistics are only moving upward. So the app is hopefully a tool that can help to decrease the emotional lability, and then the ministry side of it is dealing with the resources for these parents Specific issues.
Speaker 4:I know that we've just come across a couple just recently. Yeah, I think the major one is communication just recently. Yeah, I think the major one is communication, the communication component between households, not only religious miscommunications. You know, usually what you see is one parent's going to church, the other house is not. So like we were talking about before we went on air.
Speaker 4:You're trying to make a trip, a one-day trip, but it's going to be a two-day trip, right, if you can imagine. These kids are not making a trip, a vacation, but they're doing this over 200 times a year for two-night overstays. So they're going to mom's for two nights, they're going to dad's for two nights, then they're going to go to mom for five nights, then they're going to go back to dad for two, back to mom, two, back to dad for five. So in that comes a Sunday or a Saturday when they're going to church. So you know for what your question was, brad. These youth pastors are receiving a child that has done probably now seven to 14 exchanges between the last time they saw him, or you know, the statistic is a kid gets to church once a month is on the average. In these circumstances, when you're dealing with kids in a custodial situation. So in the time that a pastor, a youth pastor, has seen that child, he's basically done, you know, 14 exchanges. He spent two nights in one place, two nights in one place, five nights in another place, and so all the emotions that come with it, the disorganization that comes with it, the lack of communication that comes with it, the lack of bonding that they get, because you know they only get to see new stepdad, new stepmom. They're trying to bond with them and figure out who they are and they want them to know who they are. But you only get two days, so you get 48 hours to learn who this child is and then they're back out the door. They could be gone for two days, they could be gone for two days, they could be gone for five days. So a pastor gets them and really our older children who spoke on this without a pastor, a youth pastor willing to hear their story and what makes them the way they are, they don't have a fighting chance. Them the way they are, they don't have a fighting chance.
Speaker 4:So, with all of the transition and the lacks lack of communication, lack of organization, lack of emotional attachment you're seeing these kids maybe 12 times a year, 24 times a year if you're lucky and the trauma that these kids experience going back and forth is so heavy and the emotional burden that is put on them. They didn't pick the marriage, they didn't pick the divorce, they didn't pick the new spouse, they didn't pick the siblings and everything that comes with it. It's just like getting a new coworker every two days and then trying to get an opportunity to learn who they are, find out what their needs are, and then you got to live with them and share a bathroom with them and drive in the car with them, and those children are going through the exact same thing, but they're transitioning to a different home and then you're putting them all back in a melting pot together. And so I think for student pastors, it is crucial for the children's well-being that you give the extra attention or devotion to these children to let them know.
Speaker 4:How can I pray for you? Is there anything you need me to know? Has something changed? Because statistically, even though 40% of those kids that are coming in have step and blend in them somewhere, 70% of second marriages fail that have blends with kids in them, so they may start to get attached and mom and dad give up, or mom and stepdad, mom and mom, or dad and stepmom give up. So now they're in a completely different array of problems, right? And so, again, the only foundation may be is the stake that they have in the ground in your youth program, and so I think it's just very vital for youth pastors to, you know, keep their eyes on those children that you know may identify as blended or have step in it somewhere, because there's underlying issues that if they don't get addressed they become a problem later, it's because they truly feel like they have control over nothing, nothing in the world.
Speaker 1:Everything is just handed to me.
Speaker 3:There's a mandate out there. This is what you have to do today. This is what you have to do tomorrow. This is where you're going. This is where you're going, and then there's very little time for them to feel like they have any sense of self and direction over themselves.
Speaker 1:It's so interesting what you said there, ginger, because as a youth pastor it's so easy, natural, to just invest in the students that I see 50 times a year, a hundred times a year, like proximity and time creates relationship right, and to kind of consider those kids that I see 12 times a year you hear the word a lot fringe like kind of people that exist on the outer boundaries of of my youth group and I've never really thought of that as kind of making victims almost out of students and blended families and I wonder too, what, what, as I listen to this, how we can, as youth leaders and small group leaders, let let remind students that we love seeing them, but also steer clear of any kind of shaming, whether intentional or unintentional, maybe even jokingly, to go oh, brad, where you been?
Speaker 2:I've only seen you once this month and they go. Yeah, dude, I'm at my dad's every other week. I couldn't be here if I wanted to be, and so to have some to extend some real grace that they are just so much is out of their control schedule-wise. It's a really good reminder. Anything logistically youth pastors should be thinking through as they're serving kids and blended families. I know you guys do such a great job at seeing logistics as ministry right. That's something that you all just did such a great job, I think logistics.
Speaker 4:I think when you look at when you're planning out for further resources, try to make sure that you have some way of communicating with them, where you're circling back on what was taught last Sunday, what the message was, what the goal is, what you've been challenged to do, because if these kids can only come every other weekend or maybe once a month, you know any type of message or resource or email or some way to communicate with them, to be like hey, this first week, this is what we studied, this is what your challenge is. Would love to hear from you on that. This is what we're doing in the second week, and so they can kind of forecast out. What we found is an attempt from our children on the other side, when we say they're at the others, them actually making an attempt to say, hey, can I go? Can I go? Not, can I go, you know, because it was kind of against the law to say, hey, can I? They're doing this on Saturday night, can I go and go to dad's house or mom's house?
Speaker 4:But if they said, hey, this is what they're doing at my church, Can I just go to church. It's not seeing mom or dad, but can I just go to church. Will you just drop me off at my youth group and then pick me right back up? It has nothing to do with can I see them extra, because that's the way it was looked at. Well, I don't want them to have two extra hours, but for them to say, hey, you know what my youth pastor, brad, said, that we were doing something I'm really interested in. Can you just drop me off at church? You don't have to stay, just pick me up or I'll find a ride or something.
Speaker 4:But actually giving them a runway to see you know, they might have an interest in a specific topic that you're ministering about, but they don't know if they're not there. And if they're not there, they should be given the opportunity to know what is being studied. So if they're self-driven enough that they could study it on their own and have a better sense of being with the other teens that had been taught it for the last two or three weeks, it might give just a different comfort level for them to not walk into yet another room or another environment where they have to adapt and chameleon into what's going on, that they already have some perspective or maybe some input into what your other students have had the opportunity to learn. You know two and three and four weeks out of the month.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm sure socially too, like these kids are all together every week. You know I have a group of eighth grade guys that come over to my house every Sunday afternoon and like the relational bond that is forged there is strong and I can't imagine if there was somebody that was trying to like plug into that in an intimate and real way one time a month and then we didn't see him for three weeks and then they come back and like emotionally I can, and relationally I can imagine that taking a toll as well.
Speaker 3:Right yeah, they're new every time they show up.
Speaker 1:Every time they show up. Wow, it's like being a first grader every, every transition.
Speaker 4:It's like being a first grader over and over and over again and it's not to. I know, brad, you use the word victimize. Um, they don't. The majority of them don't see themselves as victims, they see themselves as survivors because they walk into every situation going.
Speaker 4:I'm gonna have to survive this situation because it's going to change in 36 hours and it's going to change again and so and then with um, I'm sure they don't know the statistic, but trying to walk, trying to adapt yourself, trying to adapt yourself, trying to watch your parents and new step individual adapt, knowing 70% of them are going to fail so that relationship may not be stable.
Speaker 4:It has a 30% chance of them having one stable relationship on one side of the home that they can count on. So if we can continue to, you know, as your position, brad, being a foundation for them that is steady and current all the time, it's not only you know, you as a youth pastor showing the light of God, but it's being the light so they have somewhere to come back to. It's not making you a parent, but it is making you a pillar. And I happened to. Our oldest daughter was on a podcast several weeks ago and she literally said if I didn't have my youth pastors and the people that I knew loved me outside of my home, I wouldn't be as successful in what I do today without it.
Speaker 2:Just be consistent, wow, okay. So I want to talk about you two for a moment. You know this you step into this ministry that God calls you literally into. You're in this blended family. Second marriage, ginger. You've said it Statistically, the odds are against you. All that has to weigh on you a little bit when you think about your own marriage. What has God taught you in these last 11 years? What do you all do for the two of you? Right, because you know, maybe a youth pastor certainly a youth pastor is going to be serving a group of blended family kids, but a youth pastor listening to this might also, more than likely, be married. So what things have you all learned about marriage and how you work on your relationship so that everything else falls into place, flows in place?
Speaker 4:I think what we identified very quickly, because we came on the attack side so quickly that we weren't going to be separated, and so we used Mark 10, 9 as our family verse for the five of us. When we were joined, the five of us got baptized together and then we had bracelets made that said Mark 10 on it. So what God has joined together, let no man separate. And so we became kind of our own army, and that was outside of the home, but we were very, we were very diligent to say what happens under this roof stays under this roof. It's the five of us when, when we go out, we're a team and nobody's going to separate us. So we, we worked very hard at that United front. And when, like when he went to work and came home and was just trying to, you know, as dads, you guys walk in and you really kind of just look at your wife and go like what's going on? What kind of just look at your wife and go like what's going on? What am I? What am I facing here? Um, whatever it was, he always told the kids while we were blending, like whatever she says goes no question. And so our united front lasted at home too. So even our children now those older children are 27, 22 and 19 um when they have a peer or somebody say, oh well, just go ask your dad or just go, you know, just go ask your mom. And they're like that does not work. From day one they told us that wasn't going to work. So I had always said, if you say it to me good, bad or indifferent, you've said it to dad too, because I will immediately let him know. And so that became from a step perspective that became actually useful for us, because what they couldn't say to him they were able to say to me and I was able to to portray their thoughts or feelings, and the same for him if it, if it needed to come back the other way.
Speaker 4:So, um, putting up a united front straight away and I think finding a Bible verse to stand on was a big deal because it brought our kids into um. The day we got married, our kids were our best man, our maid of honor and our flower girl. So the five of us um kind of got married together and with no one else, and again, just creating that United front has has done well for us. And when we added the younger siblings in has done well for us and when we added the younger siblings in they knew they were part of the force.
Speaker 4:So, um, again I think, that united front and and not backing down away from it because the world's going to push back. Whether you're in busy nuclear family or a blended family, the world's going to push. Uh, it just pushes a lot harder on blended families because of the aspect of shame, um, church and church and people are like you're going to take your blended family that has broken, divorced, blended, all those things. You're going to take that into church. But we felt very well accepted at our church and our children obviously did too. So again, the united front at home and church when you step outside. So again, the United front at home and church when you step outside.
Speaker 1:I love it, I love it. So couple quick questions. I want to make sure, because I think that your app like if a youth pastor is wondering how can I minister to blended families, I think putting this app into their hands is like a huge way. Promoting it to your parents for sure. It's called Family Core, right available on all the app stores available on the app stores right and tell me a little bit about how they would interact with it.
Speaker 1:Like there's a free tier and a paid tier, so you can try it out right yeah, it's called the Family Core and we have a webpage, wwwthe yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's called the family core and we have a webpage wwwthefamilycorecom, and go there to get all the information about the app and then on the stores you can download the, the mobile app version. But we recommend people sign up on the webpage because then they can sign up for an onboarding session for free and we can give them kind of a tour of how the app works.
Speaker 2:Is that onboarding session with you all? Absolutely. Like via Zoom? Or does Ginger call them at 3 in the morning and say okay here, we go, let's do it.
Speaker 3:It's pretty late at night, believe it or not.
Speaker 1:What a service that's when parents are free.
Speaker 2:No hey. Brad laughs because he doesn't have kids. That is true, 5 am is the only hour of my day that's mine Go ahead. Sorry, we interrupted.
Speaker 3:It tells you about all the different features that the app provides and what it's good at doing. And then, yeah, we have a free version, so you can just be on that infinite item forever. There's a little bit of limitations when it comes to the data storage and the calendar entries. Otherwise, it's the same type of functionality. The paid version is going to have some upgrades coming soon. We haven't released that yet, but it'll be coming soon. That'll help to separate what the free version has and what the paid version has. There's some things that our customers have been asking for, and so we're going to launch some new features for the paid version in 2025.
Speaker 1:How much is the paid version?
Speaker 3:The paid version itself is $4.99 a month right now $5 a month. Cancel at any time, and it's up to 10 members per family or per account for that same low price. So one person is, the is the accountant and manager of the family, and they can invite up to nine other individuals they could invite.
Speaker 2:They can invite the co-parent, they can invite the uh ex-mother-in-law. They can invite that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay invite, yeah, the nanny, whomever is involved in managing the kids in that family. And why we encourage you to go to the webpage to sign up is because we really do want you to do an onboarding session, because there's a lot of behind-the-scenes features to the app where you can set all types of different permissions to keep personal and private information only in the hands of those people that you want to know about that information Contacts, lists, event status, geolocation, check-ins, all that. Not everybody on your platform needs to know every single piece of information. We can help people, show them how to set up their notifications and their settings properly so that they only share.
Speaker 1:You might even God forbid like a co-parenting situation where you wouldn't want that person to know where the child is at all times, or like. Is that the kind of thing?
Speaker 3:well, yeah, like a biological child here. My ex over here doesn't need to know what's going on here. They need to know about the child. I mean them. Yeah, they need the birth certificate and the social security number here. They just need that, the access to that information over here yeah, for that individual child.
Speaker 4:But what, like I think what you're you're poking at, brad, is that, um, sometimes in custodial situations, they they don't have the ability through the courts to know where that child is, but during their custody time, you, you do so. Um, the, the is HIPAA and COPA compliant, so we follow the protecting the kids and then all of your information, but it's on check-in only, so it doesn't track. It's not a live tracker. We really went for the point of encouraging kids to check in with their parents and for the benefit of blended kids is, when you check in once, if both parents have the ability to see the geolocation of where the child is, they'll both get a message across their board that the child is checked in and where they're at. So, again, not a live tracker, but it does encourage communication between the child and the and the kid. But it also gives the opportunity for the parent that that just wants to know their child is okay.
Speaker 3:They get the same check-in notification if they have the right to do so. Another example is you have the child. You take them to the pediatrician because it's your day. They get an immunization shot. You update the vaccination card. You just quickly scan the vaccination card, load it into the app, you tag the other parent on the document. They'll get a push notification that something's changed in the app for that child and then they can go and check it. So just through the push notification system you're communicating with that other parent. You don't have to call them, you don't have to text them, you don't have to email them. They don't know that something changed.
Speaker 1:The platform itself is doing that, or just leave them guessing, not communicate it at all Exactly.
Speaker 3:And then when that other parent views the document, you'll get a push notification back that they viewed it. So you're completing this circle of communication and everybody has acted like the parent they're supposed to be going all the way back to the beginning of this conversation. It just helps you better behave on this neutral platform when otherwise you wouldn't necessarily be getting along. Okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, are either of you still practicing medicine?
Speaker 3:I'm still practicing medicine.
Speaker 1:You're still practicing medicine and also doing all this. That's crazy. So, um, I want to kind of wrap up our conversation. We've taken up a lot of your guys' time, but, um, this whole conversation has been so encouraging to me around here at CIY. Um, have any of your kids attended CIY events?
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah, with CC I think they all have in some way or form.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you will have heard the phrase.
Speaker 2:I think we know them.
Speaker 1:Brad, you think I just Well, because they go to CCV.
Speaker 2:Anesthesiologists who also serve blended families. Come on now. That would mean your algorithm would pop up. You're the only one.
Speaker 3:Basically because we realize the power of the youth programs. Through CCV and then all the camps that CIY has been involved with and helping out CCV in their camps. We realize the reach that you guys have, the positive impact that you guys have. It's just I don't know what else to even compare it to. It is so valuable and every time we get a chance to bring a kid in that hasn't been involved with church before and they get to go to one of these programs that CIY is putting on, especially the summertime camp programs, I am so encouraged. You see these kids' faces light up. They love the experience and it just puts them into a whole other realm of consciousness that Jesus loves me and it doesn't matter what's going on back there, all the static back there, jesus loves me and you guys are on the forefront of bringing people who just don't know into the know and that's why we're so encouraged about CIY.
Speaker 4:Such a benefit for kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I'm a product of it. I sat in those seats and had those experiences that you're describing. So that's very generous, very kind of you to say I didn't ask that question so that you would say all of those very nice things.
Speaker 3:I'm sure you will have heard the phrase kingdom worker.
Speaker 1:Kingdom worker, though, and in my mind you guys are just apex kingdom workers, like people who aren't in vocational ministry and just had a gift I'm going to call being a blended family, a gift in this case, which I'm sure you see it as as well had a calling and just kept following God every step that he led you down this road, and I'm just blown away by you guys. I think you are kingdom workers of just the highest esteem.
Speaker 2:It's Ephesians 2.10, lived out right that God has obviously prepared these good works in advance for you to do and woke you up in the middle of the night, called you to it in the midst of already a life of kingdom work, right, like I'm convinced that the work you were doing in the hospital and still doing the hospital is part of God's plan and very redemptive in and of itself. But it's really fun to see a couple that would say why not this, why not also take this next step and see where it goes? Dr James, I do have a question for you though, if I may. Yeah, because, from what I understand, dispel a myth for me. Like you all understand the formulas and those types of things and the chemistry behind it, but there's also, from what I understand, still a lot of mystery around, like how it actually all works. Is that fair to say? Like you only know so much?
Speaker 1:Please don't answer that question. And then you kind of go. Okay, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 2:And we can cut this. We can cut this right.
Speaker 3:No we're not going to this. This is fascinating. We call them theories.
Speaker 1:There are working theories out there, okay so yeah, oh, all of a sudden he gets a little bit a little bit over here. Tell me about these theories well, it's all a mystery true enough.
Speaker 3:There there's. There's some of the some of the compounds. We know exactly how they work on the nervous system. Others, there's working theories as to how they actually produce the state of anesthesia or the state of unconsciousness.
Speaker 1:So we just know that they do work. We don't know.
Speaker 3:They are reliable and predictable.
Speaker 1:That's what I want my tombstone to say Reliable and predictable that's all scientific jargon. Another question I broke my toe yesterday dropped a sledgehammer on it. You did yes, I've been in pain this whole time. Can you send me anything? Write me a script, I don't know we can talk about that off mic.
Speaker 4:You want a bandaid?
Speaker 3:prayers are coming your way.
Speaker 1:That was a good if anybody at the, a American medical association, is listening to this. That was an emphatic.
Speaker 4:No, it was funny. Yeah, okay, no, we'll pray heavily for you, brad.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much, and you guys will be in our prayers as well. It has been just an absolute treat to talk to you guys today. I appreciate it so much.
Speaker 4:Thank you, us too. Thank you for having us. Thanks to you guys. Thank you very much Thank you.
Speaker 3:We love what you guys do, so it's great to spend some time with you.
Speaker 2:It's easy to be big fans. Keep it up.
Speaker 1:Those are two just really delightful, wonderful people Loved that conversation a lot, so we covered a lot of stuff right Broad, far reaching things. What's the one thing that, like four months from now, you think you're going to remember about this conversation?
Speaker 2:Well, the number is 40%. 40% of kids in America today have step in their family somewhere. Yeah, that's a lot. I think it's a really convicting thing to actually think through that kids are living life, complicated life, outside of the hour or two hours that they spend in your youth ministry every week, and so you ought to think through logistics. It's all about logistics. If you handle the logistics, the emotions kind of stay back and stay in check, and so let's do what we can to do that.
Speaker 1:And then I would say man, just a youth pastor, really should leverage that app and not try to be the expert but say, hey, parents, this is something I yeah, yeah, yeah, and just like youth pastor, dedicating some intentionality to these people who have step or whatever in their before their name. So, um, yeah, it was really great stuff. Thanks for being here, Eric. It's good to be here man.
Speaker 2:I mean, I said at the beginning like I just I love what you're doing and you, you and other people I recognize, but you have made this happen, and so, while the hundredth episode is still, I'll be sure to have you on, you know what? Hey, put it down, let's have me and let's get a big name for the 100th episode.
Speaker 1:What do you mean? Like Kirk Cameron?
Speaker 2:Cameron, if you're listening to this, hey, no, for real, everyone who's listening to this. There might be somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who? Knows, kirk Cameron, let's have Kirk Cameron on the 100th episode. You could get Sandy Patty, I could get. Sandy Patty and I go to the same church. Okay, I'll get Sandy Patty and Kirk Cameron.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:Everyone will be like what is this?
Speaker 1:All the 22 year old youth pastors are going to be like what?
Speaker 2:No, I like how you say Kirk Cameron, because I was going to say Bob Goff but I can just call Bob Goff.
Speaker 1:But I can just call Bob Goff. Yeah, his number's in the book. He could be on our podcast against his will. His voicemail message All right, Eric, we need to wrap up here. I'm going to have you.
Speaker 2:please close us out by reading our blessing over our listeners Thanks, thanks for this opportunity. Brad, appreciate you. May God show you grace and bless you. May he make his face shine on you. May you experience the love of Christ, through whom God gives us, gives you fullness of life. May you be strengthened by his power. May Christ himself make his home in your heart, that you would be full of his love and grace and that those you serve would see Jesus in you.
Speaker 1:Today's episode was produced by Michael Hester, Lauren Bryan and myself. It was guest recorded by the legendary Terry Elmart Holding for applause. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. In the meantime, you can reach out to us on the CIY Community Facebook group or by email at podcast at ciycom. We'll see you next time, Thank you.