Mark Hancock | The Crisis with Boys and What To Do With It

Hey, everybody, and welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I am happy to welcome Mark Hancock. He is the CEO of Trail Life USA. Trail Life USA. I'm going to let him talk a little bit more about that, but it's an interesting ministry that is, I grew up in the Boy Scouts, and so that's sort of my, the comparable I have to it. And so I'll be interested, Mark, to hear you talk a little bit about that. But we're also just going to be talking about raising boys and what it takes to raise boys, what it takes to raise boys into men. And, and that's going to be the topic of conversation today. So, Mark, thanks for being on. I really appreciate you being here. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your ministry. How'd you get into Trail Life? Yeah, I love that question, Dr. Spencer. I appreciate it. You know, Trail Life began around 2014, January 1st, 2014 is when we launched. And it was in reaction to the Boy Scouts kind of losing their way. In 2015, they began a series of decisions that they've just continued to make every couple of years to move away from the kind of organization that we knew that gave us presidents and astronauts and senators and war generals and civic leaders and good men to an organization that kind of, in our own, at our estimation, kind of began to lose its way. And we knew that a lot of churches specifically were going to have, have trouble chartering Boy Scout troops because they have to embrace everything that's part of any one of the contract with. And that would actually threaten their 501c3 status or their religious status if they have agreements with organizations that don't share their, their beliefs. And so there's some concern about that. I was not in Boy Scouts. I wasn't a Boy Scout growing up like you were, but my sons were in Boy Scouts. We're a homeschool family. And, and so, you know, I don't drop my sons anywhere. So I sat in the back of the room as they enjoyed Boy Scouts. And when I was approached by the leaders, you know, would you consider being a leader in the troop? I said, I don't really feel led to lead a boys organization. So, so here I am. It's a strange path. In 2013, 50 of us got together and started talking about, you know, who's going to do something about this. What would a Christ-centered alternative to the Boy Scouts look like? And 68 days later, 1100 of us gathered, 1100 men and 100 women gathered in Nashville, Tennessee to launch the idea of Trail Life USA. And then just three months later on January 1st, 2014, we launched. And now we've grown to over 60, around 65,000 members from all 50 states, about 1300 churches with Trail Life USA troops. And you talk about Boy Scouts, you say, you know, what's the difference? So we're, you know, and let's say that if you're familiar with Boy Scouts, then, then there's a lot of stuff that looks familiar to you. Everything from uniforms to camping to hiking to a robust awards program to handbooks to outdoor adventure to all of that. But there are two really strong distinctives between us and what was formerly known as the Boy Scouts. And one is that we are Christ-centered, which means we're unapologetically Christian. We're not just an outdoor organization that's kind of having this Christian experience. We are at our core, a Christian ministry that turns boys into godly men. If there was, honestly, if there was a better way of doing that, I would be doing that. And so we're unapologetic Christian. And second, we're boy-focused. We believe that boys and girls are different and that boys need programs that specifically aimed at their strengths and their challenges. And there's a lot in a boy that needs to be drawn out and encouraged in a culture that's shaming boys for being boys. It's like boys are some kind of defective girl or something in our, in our culture today. You know, the, the, the statistics are just shocking what it is that boys are facing in our culture today in terms of ADHD and, and challenges that they face in comparison to girls. One in three is now considered deficient and, and just shocking the way that they're, they're being measured. They've fallen behind girls in every single academic category because basically our educational system is designed for girls. Sit still, be quiet, pay attention, which is just not, boys are just not wired for. And so they've paid a price. They are leading in the area of suicide rates. 10 to 14 year old boys is the fastest growing rate for suicide. And so we're concerned about that. And we believe that boys need a program that aims specifically at them. So if that Christ-centered piece and that boy-focused piece makes a difference to you, then you don't really have a choice between Boy Scouts and Trail Life. If that doesn't matter to you, then pick the one that's closest to your house. But recognize that you drop your boy at a Boy Scout, what used to be called the Boy Scouts troop, they likely will have girls in there also and, and they're not going to be Christ-centered. So is it just so to get a better lay of the land, number one, I guess, are there still Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, you know, on that side of the fence, on the non-Christian side of the fence, do they still have separate organizations for boys and girls? They've always been separate organizations. Although the Girl Scouts brought a suit against the Boy Scouts when the Boy Scouts opened to girls. The Boy Scouts is now called Scouting America. Okay. So they're kind of collapsing that and, and allowing boys and girls to intermingle together and having the activities together. Understood. Okay. That's helpful. They initially, they initially changed their name to Scouts BSA. And now they're going one step further to call it Scouting America. And it's totally open to boys and girls and it's in the troop together. And the Girl Scouts filed suit against them because they felt, hey, that's, we're kind of specializing. But they've worked out something in, in, in that place. But neither one of those organizations are what they used to be. American Heritage Girls is sort of the counterpart to Trail Life for girls. And American Heritage Girls has been around about 25 or 30 years because the Girl Scouts lost the way a long time before the Boy Scouts did. And so American Heritage Girls is a wonderful organization, sort of our sister organization. We're separate organizations, but we work a lot together. A lot of churches will charter both. You know, one night the families will come and the boys will do Girl Trail Life and the girls will do American Heritage Girls. And the moms and the dads will find a place. Well, that's good. That was my second question because I thought there was a corollary organization, Christian organization for girls. And that's American Heritage Girls. And so you all are focused specifically on boys. And I guess, you know, the next logical question is, you know, as we're watching the challenges that boys are facing in today's culture and a lot of those stats, I'm familiar with some of those stats. We're seeing corollaries in the in the girls space, but they're very different statistics, you know, very different things happening to especially adolescent girls through social media and Facebook and all that kind of fun stuff. And so as you see it, what's the importance really of getting a boy out of, out from in front of a computer, out from in front of a screen, you know, off the iPad or the iPhone and getting them out with, you know, more hands-on experiences out in the real world, let's say. Let me ask you a serious question. 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Well, especially now, that's more important than ever. You know, COVID really did a number on boys and girls in terms of their emotional intelligence and their ability to connect and socially. We're going to be paying that price for years as those boys and girls in the school system just trying to find their way. If you talk to people who are in the business of schools, it radically has changed the way that the classroom has to be managed. And so that gave us an idea of what it looks like to have those social disconnections in a multiplied sense where kids were just in front of their computers even just doing school. But it gave us an idea of what it is, what that amount of screen time and that amount of disconnection with people has. It really makes a difference. And kids are struggling. And we do see more of that in girls than boys. And we see that girls were more impacted before and after COVID because of that. Boys had already kind of checked out of school because it doesn't feel like, you know, twice as likely to be in special education, three times more

Our amp find that now for girls, and we're beginning to see things happen to girls that are just really sad in terms of of their development and and their self-worth and those sorts of things. So it is critical for a couple of reasons. One is, you know, it's it's important for boys to be in a male-centric environment and they understand what it is that a Godly man looks like. You know, one in four boys is now in a house without a father in that household. You know, and they go to school. Seventy six percent of teachers are female. Eighty something percent of Sunday school teachers are female. So where girls may still have these wonderful role models of a woman in front of a classroom or a Sunday school room who's a mom, a single mom, who's just killing it at home. Girls may still have these examples of what it looks like to be a good and a godly leader or woman. Boys are lacking in these examples. So boys in particular need to be in those sort of male-centric environments where they see men leading, they see somebody who's built like they are, it's designed like they are in a leadership role. They just don't see many of those. And it's and they're paying a price. Men in the same way, even in the Christian culture, there's very few places for men to take leadership roles. It's pretty much restricted to sports. And even in a church environment, there's one man at the front who's leading that congregation. There's not a lot of room for leadership. And and so what Trail Life does is we provide these opportunities for men for leadership where they're leading in a male-centric environment with a band of brothers, which is really critical for men. And they're leading the next generation. And boys get to see what it looks like for a godly man to lead. And they say to themselves, okay, I, I know, I know what that looks like now. I got something to pattern myself after. And it's patterning themselves after Christ that they see in the man who's leading that troop. So it's, it's important. And the outdoors adds this other element to it because God is so present in the outdoors and it kind of levels the playing field. When you talk about that digital world, I remember coming home and my sons were, were into Minecraft and said, I'm going to do this with you, you know. And I don't have that kind of time to invest to become good at those things. So I was always, I was always lagging behind. I mean, I built a chicken coop one day and I thought I had saved the world. But it is to, to be in that, to be in that, to be in an environment where both the boy and his dad are, are at a, on a level playing field, learning something about the outdoors or that boy who doesn't have a dad is there and there's a dad like in his presence to help him and show him how, how it is that you interact with the environment. It creates this level playing field for, for men and boys and for a dad who says, I don't know how to connect with my son because I don't have enough time to learn the video games, but I can go out outside for a week. I can go camping with him. I can, I can go with a bunch of other men and boys who can go, go do some kind of adventure, whitewater rafting or rock climbing or something together. And it creates these, these vital, vital connections that you're never going to get through virtual. I mean, I love the virtual tools. I mean, we're, we're doing this virtually and we wouldn't do it otherwise. So it's something, but it's not the same as going to lunch with you or hanging out with you or, or, you know, being side by side with you, turning a wrench or hiking a trail or something like that. Those are the things that, that bring, bring magic and identity and purpose and fulfillment and satisfaction to men and boys. And so, yeah, it is important that we get out of this virtual world enough that we're able to make those personal connections. No, it's good. I, a question that always nags in my mind because I'm not an outdoorsy guy. I mean, my idea of roughing it is like a glamping sort of facility where, you know, your tent has an air conditioner and you can access one of those chemical toilets, right? I've just never been a camper. And so when you think about trail life, that sounds suspiciously like camping to me. And so how do you, how do you help guys like me who, you know, I'm not shy about physical activity. I've taken my son rock climbing outdoors. Like we love doing that, but when it comes to the end of the day, we're at the Hojo down the street, you know, how do you, how do you handle a dad who's not necessarily, even his proclivity is not to be outdoors, you know, starting a fire, making s'mores, you know, doing those sort of outdoor activities in a tent, you know, how do you handle that aspect of this? I guess like any way that you interact with your son, you may, you may find that you don't like rock climbing, but you tried it. And, or you did it together and it was hard. And there was some parts of it that weren't fun about it, but you know what? There's also that part about, gosh, you know, I backed off of a cliff and I rappelled down and that was a pretty big deal. There just are opportunities for growth and there's opportunities for adversity that we don't face in a regular world. They used to camp. We used to camp with our family before we got involved with Boy Scouts and later Trail Life. And if it looked like a bad weekend, like the weather was going to be bad, we would cancel it. But what Trail Life does is say, I can't cancel this. I'm committed with my son. Everybody's going. And you go and it rains all weekend and it's miserable and you're cold and it's muddy in the tennis gym. And you go and you just have the best time. You know, you're dealing with folks in that adversity. You get through it. And the best stories come out of that. And you know this, that stories and experiencing things with people is really what, it's the thing that makes us human and gives us a place to make these connections with other people. You know, remember that time that we got rained out or so-and-so's tent floated away or whatever. You know, you're setting yourself up for these opportunities for adversity and growth. You know, you look like a guy who probably has seen the inside of a gym once or twice. And I would say that you understand where you're going into that. This is not going to be easy. It's the part that's going to hurt. The part that's going to be sweaty. But I'm going to go and I'm going to do it because I recognize that there's a value to it. And there's a payoff. I can see the hojos and choosing that over a tent, but I can also choose Oreos over broccoli. You know what, I'm going to eat the broccoli because I know what it's going to do for me. So, yeah, it is part of saying, I'm going to choose the hard thing and I want my son to know that choosing the hard thing is sometimes what you do. And it's out of that adversity, out of those challenges. And it particularly in this generation, I believe we're raising boys and we're raising a generation of unproductive narcissists. You know, they're unproductive because we haven't asked them to do anything and they're narcissists because we haven't given them an opportunity to fail. So I can't tell you how many 12, 13, 14-year-old boys I talk to who say, hey, what are you going to do? I'm going to invent a video game and I'm going to build this and I'm going to do this. And they have all these dreams about what it's going to do. And it's like, well, can you do math? Can you program? Can you work? No, I can't really do that. So they've got this idea that they can do these things because we haven't let them. And that's why there's now more young men living at home than since we started counting that in the 60s. Because it's that failure to launch thing because now what's happening, it's the first time they get out, they go and they get a job and they got a participation trophy for playing soccer, but they're not getting a participation check from their boss. And they're wondering why they can't get paid. And so those opportunities for adversity and doing hard things and understanding that this isn't as comfortable as something else, but it's just magical and the stuff that comes out of it, the shared experience that comes out of it. And also the camping experiences where it's just everything is wonderful. We just completed in July 105-mile paddle trip along the Missouri River through Montana with 10 high school-aged boys and three other adults. I mean, just, we followed the Lewis and Clark trail. Fantastic. Yeah, it was, it was fantastic. Just beautiful. And just, you know, a week or five or six days without, without a phone, without any connection. And there were some hard parts to it. We had boys, you know, in tears at points because it was one day we paddled, paddled over 30 miles. We had to go that far to get to our next, our next, our next campsite. And it was hard. In the last couple, they finally got to the campsite and got there and somebody else had camped there and we couldn't. Now we've got to go another couple of miles. I mean, that's the last thing in the world you want to hear. Right, right. I'll tell you what, it's a lesson in life. How many times do you encounter in

So of just dealing with adversity and watching you go through something that maybe you don't even have an affinity toward, I think is fantastic. As you were talking, I'd look back on, my son had a unilateral hearing loss, which created a lot of, it wasn't learning disabilities, but it made it harder for him to learn in certain ways. And he's dealt with that his whole life. And whenever he tends to hit hard things, he just sort of goes back into, okay, I know how to deal with this. I understand what this looks like, and so I'll just walk it through step by step. And he's got a way that he deals with it. It doesn't stop him. It's just, okay, I get this is going to be hard. This is another one of those hard things, and so here I go. And so there's a part of me, you know, obviously you don't wish that kind of stuff on anybody, but there's a part of me that says, it was really good for him to have that experience, to have to work at it was actually a really good lesson. If it had come easy for him and then something comes down the road and get hard, I think it's almost a harder lesson to learn when you get older. It's much easier if you can just have those early experiences where you recognize, yeah, life's going to be hard. There's going to be some difficult things here, but we can overcome those challenges. We can find our niche. We can be in the places where we can actually excel, but understanding how to have a little bit of grit, a little bit of resilience, a little bit of, you know, pushing through this adversity is actually not a bad thing. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. That's really beautiful. I'm a story of a young man who the father was taken out of the household. There are five kids in the household. Tragic circumstances. The father was removed from the house. And the oldest son was in his early teens. And Trail Life Troop stepped in and said, Hey, we're going to pay for you guys. Went to the single mom and said, We're going to do this. She was a homeschool mom. She hadn't worked. Now she needed to go back to work and everything. And that boy, I think, was 13, 14 years old, maybe 15. The first thing that Troop did was a 50-mile hike. And he got home and he told his mom, You know, on the first day, I was so sore, mom. If I had had cell signal, I would have said, Come pick me up. Come find me out on the street. This is the second day. I thought my legs were going to fall off. The third day, we couldn't find the water source. It took longer than we thought. And I was just so worn out. The fourth day, I saw the summit. The fifth day, I stood on it. And I learned that I can do hard things. Now, if you can imagine that single mom is looking at it saying, My gosh, is there anything harder than my son's going through right now that he could be experienced with dad suddenly gone and mom working and he's the oldest of five? And she just, in fact, she wrote a letter about this whole thing. So you look at that and you say, there was a microcosm for that boy about the mountains he's going to climb. And about the, you go through that once and then you learn, you know what, I don't need to call mom after day one. Maybe there's a summit ahead if I just press through. Huge lesson. And maybe you don't get that till you're 25 or 30 or 35 when you have a work failure or a marriage failure or some other kind of thing. Maybe you don't get that, but he got a taste of something that for the rest of his life will always serve him to say, I can do hard things. And he learned it in a relatively controlled, not life or death, but it felt like life or death for him. Right. It's a moment he felt like it. Yeah. But he learned it. Now, where are you going to get a lesson like that? You know, I mean, if you go to school and you join my boys were in the YMCA basketball league where they didn't keep score. You know, I'm thinking, where are you going to learn that sometimes you lose? That sometimes somebody else does better than you. And that should inspire you to say, I want to work harder. I may not ever be in the NBA, but I can probably get better if I work at it. But if you don't have the opportunity to really work hard at something and push through, we're really robbing kids of that. And when we do things like don't keep score or, or get a participation trophy for, we're doing that to boys. Or when we do things like, no, I don't think that you should do that because it could be really hard or whatever. We're telling boys, we don't, I don't think you're brave enough to face the world. And, uh, I don't think you quite have what it takes to do hard things. That's why so many of them are go out and get the first job and then run home and move into mom and dad's basement because they haven't learned how to do hard things and work through, uh, difficulties. So in Trail Life USA, we provide these sort of challenges that are within the realms of safety and things, but we are, we are teaching boys, there's, there's hard things out there and, and, and you can, you can do hard things. And that's, that's, that's pure gold, especially someone like that single mom who needed her son to embrace that message of being able to do hard things and all of us who were each going to face our own hard things. And man, to get that lesson, uh, as a boy rather than a manis the cost is a lot less. I, I hear you. Yeah. I wonder if I were to describe the dynamic like this, what do you, what do you think of this? So when you're, you know, not allowing them to play tag, when you're not keeping score when they're playing basketball, you're almost robbing them twice. Number one, you're robbing them because you're not putting them through something difficult. There's no loss. There's no risk of failure there that they're going to have to work through. But then in allowing everyone to participate and trying to make it as, as a level of playing field as possible with no winners and no losers, you're also disallowing the opportunity to say, I could get better at this if I tried really, really hard, but maybe I'll just be better at something else. You know, like there's no real rationale or necessity to exit and go find your niche. And I think that was actually really, when I look back at my life, that was really formative for me. I was not good at sports at all. I mean, I was just bad at them, but I did find my niche elsewhere and I needed to work hard at it, realize that this was not going to be something that I even enjoyed. I didn't mind the hard work. I just didn't enjoy what I was working toward. I didn't feel like it was going to have any sort of goal or payoff for me necessarily beyond the effort. And so it's like, well, what do you replace that with? That's going to allow me to exert that effort, but also really play to my strengths and that I'm going to enjoy and that I can kind of fall in love with and do. And I would say that the, the failures helped to shape my identity. It wasn't so much that, um, you know, my parents were just like, Hey, keep playing. You're horrible. Yes, but keep playing. Right. They could then say, well, you know, you, you started playing, so you're going to finish playing, but after you're done with that, then you could find something that would be better suited to you. And this is what that might look like. Does that make sense? Yeah, sure does. You know, we're not doing a service to boys by telling, by to a boy, by telling him, Hey, you're just as good as everybody else on the team. Right. You know, maybe you're not. And that's okay, because you know what? You're really good at this over here. And, and you're right. We're robbing them because we're not giving them a sense of there's things that I'm not good at, but there's things I'm really good at because it's just like you're kind of mediocre or we're not rolling all out good and we're not going to boys are always asking three questions. They're always asking who's with me, who's in charge and what is our mission. And when we take away that sort of functional kind of thing that says there's going to be a winner at the end of this. That's the stool that really falls apart. And when we take

It also helps him to better his strengths because he's competing with teammates who are sharing that goal and that destination. And not only is he competing against the other team, he's also competing with them because he wants to establish his place in that hierarchy. I'm the best guy on the court. I'm the best guy on the field. And we are the best team out there. Really critical that boys work together in developing those kind of efficiencies, not just personally, but as a team. That's where growth comes from. If you send them out there without a goal, and without any sense of if you're better than somebody else, you're going to be rewarded somehow, you get what we've got. Sort of a mediocre commitment to doing things. But if you send them out there with this at the end of it, we're going to say not only who is the most valuable player, but we're going to tell you which team won. Now you've got those two objectives. I'm working hard for myself, but I'm also working hard with my team. And we will develop efficiencies together that will make us better as a team. We'll discover that so-and-so is a little bit better at this than everybody else, so let's make him point guard or whatever. We'll find our own strengths. If none of that matters, you're just kind of running back and forth. So all of those things are critical to helping boys learn how to develop efficiencies in their own life that says if I work harder at something, I can find my place and what I'm really good at. I love my oldest son. He wanted to swim. And in our city, the YMCA had a swim team, and the coach of the swim team was a father of an Olympic swimmer. It was Ryan Lochte's dad taught the team. And so he was at the far end of the pool. I bring my son the first day. He's at the near end of the pool. And so he has a female coach who starts him out here, and they move up the lanes as they progress. And at the end, you get Ryan Lochte's dad. So, you know, tell some jump in the pool, start swimming. And he starts swimming, and he's swimming about 15 minutes later. I'm like, are you gonna say anything to him? And she said, nope. And I said, okay. I waited another 15 minutes. I said, coach, are you going to coach him? And she stopped me and she said, Mr. Hancock, your son will automatically discover efficiencies in the pool. As he's swimming and as he's working at that, he will get better at it. And he will coach himself to where he develops his own efficiencies and begin to move through the water better because he's naturally going to adjust to that adversity, the water coming against him and the force that it takes to do it. And he will teach himself to be a better swimmer. He's not ready for coaching until he gets about three quarters of the way down the pool. Then people will start tweaking little things. Right now, he just has to swim a lot. And I thought, man, that's just beautiful. Sometimes we've just got to put boys in situations where they just get to work at it and work at it and work at it. And they will develop their own efficiencies, but they have to have a goal. And that's why we've taken a lot of those goals away because we're afraid they're going to lose and that they won't be able to handle losing. And like I said, we're subtly telling them, you're not brave enough to face the real world. And it's tragic what it is that we're doing by removing these goals and this clear purpose and objectives and actually telling them, celebrating what it is that they're really good at. And it's having a tragic effect on them. So outside of, you know, Trail Life, I mean, you know, I've raised a son. I've raised two daughters. They're turning 16, actually, in just a couple of days. And now I have a four-year-old daughter. And so, you know, I think I didn't really know what I was doing, but I do think my personality lends itself towards sort of adversity and pushing. And I am a, as my wife calls me, a relatively disagreeable individual. I sort of like the friction. And so my kids weren't going to get by with being lazy and sheltered and all that kind of stuff. I wanted them to push themselves. And I wanted to see them walk through really difficult things. And so I feel like I did an okay job at it at the very least. But what advice would you give to parents who are raising boys particularly? How do they structure these experiences? How do they allow their sons to go through really difficult things and come out the other side feeling both empowered and supported, maybe? Those are the right words. Yeah, I love that question. We actually have a book right now that your listeners can download for free at traleofusa.com called Let Boys Be Boys. And we talk in there about the differences between boys and girls. And so I'm talking about boys specific because that's what we major in. This is our space. We got boys. We get them. And I would say that you have to begin with almost an anti-cultural stance that says that boys and girls are different. And so we talk about, we start in the book talking about the biological, psychological, developmental differences between boys and girls. Some of those biological differences are obvious. Others have to do with the way the eyes are constructed, the ears are constructed, the brain functions, all of that. They're different. This isn't a social construct. It's science. And so you have to embrace the fact that there are differences between boys and girls, and we have to play to those strengths. The second thing is the importance of risk and competition for boys. They have to have that. Like we've talked about, they have to kind of have that goal in mind. And then the third thing we talk about, how important movement is in the life of boys. Harvard, I think it's, I think it was a psychologist, said that the boys have to be moving in order for their brains to be engaged. So that's why when you're sitting at the dinner table and the civil war is shaking because your son's knees going up and down, he's telling you, if you want me here, then you've got, you're going to take, you have to take this movement on my body because that's where I keep myself engaged. In a classroom, we call them ADHD. You can't sit still. He's trying to stay engaged. He's, he's, he knows intuitively that he's got to move. If you want his brain, you got to take, you got to take the motion with it. So we have to have an understanding of those things before we begin the journey with boys. And then we have to do the kind of things that you're talking about, not shy away from opportunities for, for, for difficult things. And it sounds like you were very present dad too. And we're talking a lot about that and then about how to stay present with your son in particular. You can't accomplish this thing with a phone in your face or, or you have to, you have to be present. And we're also talking with men about X-ray vision, which these are superpowers, the X-ray vision that says that there's, there's emotions behind the behavior that I'm seeing in my son. And there's something that's driving that. His purpose, his goal, there's nothing that my son gains by being disrespectful towards me. I have all the power. I can ground him. I can, I can, I can do this, all kinds of things. There's nothing he's gained by that, but what's behind that behavior. And so to have X-ray vision, to be able to say, okay, you know, maybe my son's not having a hard, maybe he's not giving me a hard time. Maybe he's having a hard time. And to speak beyond that behavior to see what it is behind that. These, these are keys in, in raising good, confident, resilient boys and girls is understanding that there's something going on and that's what I want to be in touch with. When we, when we get in that wrestling match of, of trying to match their emotional response and, and raise the level, then we lose. But if we, if we can stay calm with them, I'm drifting a little bit from your question, but I want to talk about this. If we stay engaged with them, we understand there's, there's an emotion behind that behavior. And we connect with them on that level. We're actually helping them to, to manage their emotions and develop their own emotional resilience as they go forward. You know, it only takes 90 seconds for an emotion to travel through our bodies. And if we will give it that time, if we will teach our kids to understand, Hey, listen, you're really feeling angry right now. Let's talk about that and let them sit with that anger or that sadness or whatever it is that they're experiencing, rather than dismiss it and move to a video game or to something else where we're training them someday. You'll turn to a beer or you'll turn to sports. You'll turn to something else to avoid these things. Stick with the feeling 90 seconds later, it'll pass and, and, and you'll be able to process, why was I feeling that? What is, what's going on? But these sorts of resilience lessons in the context of understanding that boys and girls are different, um are what I think we're really missing in our culture today and it's why boys and young men are struggling so much. Do you find, so my wife grew up on a farm. Her dad still owns that farm. They rent it out. It's like a cash rent thing. So he's retired, but we still go back. Like just this weekend we were, uh, I took my son back with me and we bailed hay. Um, and so, you know, we live in the suburbs, right?

because I know that not everyone has access to those kind of activities on a semi-regular basis, right? I mean, we could view it as a chore, having to go back and do this stuff on the farm, but the reality is, it's actually really great just to sort of break out of the norm, and I even enjoy it, just going back and like, hey, let's get a little dirty, let's throw some hay around, it's fun. But I'm wondering if you're seeing sort of, in this next generation, that we're structuring those opportunities out for kids in the first place, right? So you've got all of this technology around them, even schools, especially public schools, all my kids have computers that they bring home with them, a lot of their assignments are done in front of a screen. You know, there's just so much that we're moving toward a digital technology sort of realm with, and I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you see this being structured out, those sort of, some of those physicality sort of things being structured out of boys' education, boys' early young life. Yeah, any thoughts on that? Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up, and many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Yeah, and it's boys in particular, and men. You know, because men and women are different, and boys and girls are different. We engage as men, and boys will engage better side-by-side than they do face-to-face. So those kind of opportunities, when you're bailing hay next to your son, or working on a tractor next to your son, or hiking a trail, or sitting around a campfire, those are where we connect. Sitting across from each other in a coffee shop, trying to connect around deep things, that's challenging for us to manage the emotional energy that's taken when you're sitting face-to-face with somebody, eyeball-to-eyeball. We do much better side-by-side. And so that's where we find the magic in getting boys in the outdoors. They'll open up, and men will too. After the boys bed down, the men are around the fire, and they're not looking at each other, they're looking at the fire, and they're talking about challenges they're having at work or at home, or, hey, I saw the way you talked to your son. How did you build the relationship like that? I'd like to be able to talk to my son like that. So these side-by-side things, whatever you're doing, whether it's doing hay. And there's a part of me that says that maybe can be done next to somebody on a computer as you're working on a program or working through an application or something together. The key is that there's a side-by-side thing where you're engaged in something together. That's good, yeah. There's a number of ways. I mean, you can watch TV by yourself. You can watch TV with another person, but you can also watch TV when you're engaged with another person, and you're talking about the characters. You're pausing it. That it's not this kind of just blank sort of experience. So I kind of hold open that there's still opportunities in a digital world for us to figure out how to connect, but we've got to be intentional about it. It's a lot easier to do that when you're not totally taken over by the thing that you're looking at. Campfire, you can be focused on it and still have a conversation. A game on a computer or social media, scrolling through social media on your app, maybe not so much. But the key is that we find these side-by-side opportunities, particularly with men and boys, side-by-side opportunities that lend themselves to, even though you're focused on something else, you're still able to engage side-by-side. You're not old enough to remember this, but in the 80s, there was a huge emphasis in men's movements on accountability. It was like, go to breakfast once a week with a guy and sit across and have coffee and tell him, you know, all your vulnerabilities. It was a good idea, but it was like, you know, we just talked about football. We could just find something safe to engage in. But those same guys going snow skiing together, get to the bottom of the hill, hey, I saw you fall, whatever. And they developed this kind of bonds and those connections and those stories that they could tell together. And that opens them up to the kind of connections we were trying to accomplish at coffee. It's just a, so it isn't so much the thing. If we can figure out how to connect with people, perhaps it can be done in a digital world, but I just think this far easier. The kind of things you're talking about is just much easier to do that. Yeah, it's good. No, but I think it's a good qualifier that what you're really looking for are not things that isolate you from other people, that allow you to work alongside other people toward a particular task of some sort. Even your example of watching a television show and having banter going on back and forth, it's more participatory than it is isolating, you know, where you're just, you know, hey, don't talk to me, I'm watching the show kind of idea. And so that's a really good qualifier. I think that's helpful because you are in it together. You're doing it together and you can kind of figure out how to have the laughs and then build in the vulnerabilities at different places. And I think the reality is so much of what, at least I've experienced when I'm doing that kind of work is, I worked with my wife's dad on the farm when we were dating in high school and I was just the guy who they'd say, hey, there's something heavy over there, carry it five feet and put it over here. I was completely unskilled labor. I was just the mule, you know? And so I knew my limitations, but they worked around those limitations and they made me part of the group, but I knew I needed them to like back a tractor up with a wagon on it. That was never going to happen for me, right? You know, that was just not in my skill set. And that was okay. But I think it did scope out. It creates sort of a, you know, they couldn't lift and move what I was lifting and moving. And so there was this sort of interdependence that you create where there are these vulnerabilities where you don't even have to voice them. Like, hey, I can't back up a tractor. Everybody knew. I tried it once. It was not pretty. And so, you know, and it's like, it was okay. Everything was okay. And you had these interdependencies to develop. So I really appreciate that, that idea of, it's not necessarily about the activity you're doing. It's about how isolating that activity actually is. And, and can you participate with someone else in that activity? Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. It gives me a little hope for the digital age. Yeah. You know, I'm holding hope in for that is, is what I'm doing. I actually, you know, after coming out of COVID, I had a chance to talk with a John Townsend. I don't know if you're familiar with John Townsend. It very written a lot of really good books on boundaries, mental health and stuff. And I said, he was talking about doing my background. I was a mental health counselor, marriage and family therapist. So I had a chance to ask him, I said, what do you think about this kind of virtual counseling environment? And he said, well, he said, we've actually done studies on that. And we have found that he said, he said, the example I can give you is you could take a steak and you can give somebody a steak, or you can put the steak in a blender and make a hamburger out of it. And you're getting the same nutrition. So there's no difference between the virtual in person. And I thought, oh, that's a great answer. And I walked away thinking, I think I'd rather have the steak, you know? But, but he was saying the nutrition is the same, you know, actually what he said is, hey, why don't I take you out for a burger and you can take me out for a steak later on. But it won't be the same. But there's, I still would rather have the steak. So, so you may be able to say that we can make a way in this digital world to have, to have some sort of nutrition out of these engagements and draw something helpful out of, out of these, these interactions. But I can't help but think that there's something about being face-to-face. You know, one of the definitions of joy that I've embraced, it's not my definition, I've embraced it, is joy. I'll say this right, is the experience of knowing that you're with someone who, who cares about you no matter what, who's happy to be with you. That's it. Who's happy to be with you no matter what. And that brings joy. And, and so I really believe

You know, and where are you going to sit? You find your people and it's there they are, and there's a seat there for me. Just that sense that there's a place for me. There's something about, I really believe that joy is harvested in the face of other people, and I'm not sure that we can do that virtually, but John Townsend believes you can. I think there's probably, I'm with you. I'd rather have the steak than the blended steak. But I will say I grew up in online education, right? So my first job was in online higher ed, and so we had a design system that would help students learn and do what they did well online. We did see some transformative relationships through between adjunct faculty members and students. And so I'm not opposed to, I'm saying, I think Townsend is probably right in certain circumstances, but I think that's the trick. You know, if I were to look at a lot of the experiences that you're leading folks on in Trail Life and even some of the things we did on the farm this weekend or something like that, the difference between those types of real life physical experiences where we're out in the world doing things and what we often experience through digital technology is that the latter are far more controlled and leave less room for oddity than the former. Oh, interesting. So at any moment, you know, when you're throwing hay up to somebody on a wagon, you have to watch that they're not in the way. You know, sometimes the bail wires break, right? You never really know when they're getting thrown off a high stack which way those bales are going to roll. There's all these unpredictable elements within the real world that you're having to deal with. And I know that's just sort of a minor example, but it seems to me that that's part of the difference in a lot of situations, maybe not all of them, but in a lot of situations, it's that sort of unpredictability that is part of the secret sauce. I agree with you. I think seeing faces and like I agree a hundred percent with that. So I think there's a more constrained space where the digital world really does add and do basically the same job, but I would also just say that there's so much that it can't do because there is a, like I'm saying, I think there's this unpredictable element. I think when you get out and you're doing things physically in the wild, just like your story, you know, they paddled 30 miles and they had to go an extra two because someone else was at the campsite. Well, that doesn't happen in the digital world. You just make more room, right? But the physical space has its limitations. And so that's just sort of my two cents on it, I guess, not having thought that through a whole lot, but it just strikes me that that's a big part of what's interesting when you go out and you're doing physical things is that there is, it isn't as controlled as everyone would like to think. There's always more room for unpredictability, I think, than you have in a lot of the digital systems we interact with because they're designed to be fairly consistent and process-oriented and just do what they're doing. Yeah, now the real beauty in the unexpected or accidental is, you know, I mean, you're talking about cognitive dissonance. That's when we encounter something that we don't expect and our mind opens for a brief second to a new idea. And you're right, if it's, I don't know that we get that in the delivering things. You know, you're asking, we haven't practiced this, we haven't rehearsed this discussion. I have no idea what I'm going to say next, you know. So I have this great opportunity for encountering something new, a new thought that I have. But when somebody plays this over and over again, they're not going to have anything new about it. Right, exactly. Yeah, we're experiencing it in real time in real life. There's not going to be any editing. It's just going to be whatever we say, we say. You're right, as it's replayed, it's going to be the same old conversation over and over and over again. You can listen to it 20 times, it's not going to change. And I think that is part of the difference. I really do. I think that that unpredictability, that spontaneity, there is something about it in a synchronous, real life, sort of moment-to-moment situation that we just don't necessarily get when we're interacting with digital systems that are fairly consistent and rote and won't change for the most part. And you've got to wonder if that's really what life is all about, is this sort of unexpected thing. If we knew the whole thing, how much fun would that be? We're just running the program, but the unexpected. I mean, there's certain things that we have. Thank God for the foundation of his word and for the promises of his word and for a secure future. But he doesn't tell us all of it. And I think that's why I want to think more on what it is that you're saying, the beauty and the unexpected, that I think there's really something there. And I think that is missing from the sterile delivery of a lot of the stuff that we're doing virtually. Yeah, yeah. Well, Mark, we're coming up on time. We've got almost an hour and I want to respect your time, but I really appreciate you being on. And I usually ask guests one last question. So I'll ask you this question, you go wherever you want with it. But what do you think that the church needs to pay attention to today in order to be and make disciples more effectively? That is a loaded question. Yes. I love the church. I've served around the world over five continents. I've conducted huge evangelistic campaigns and worked with over 400 denominations. I love the church. But I think that where we're missing it is that kind of what it is that we've taken. We've taken the magic out of pieces of it. This isn't a criticism, but I get the sense that when a man walks into a church or when a family walks into a church, the pastor's response is, we've got this program for your wife. We've got this program for your kids. We've got this program for you. And it's somewhat taken the place of the father in that household. Because we men will outsource whatever we can. If we can find somebody to change a light bulb cheap enough, let's go ahead and do it. I'll be fine just sitting here. And so I feel like there's times that it feels like the church is, we're outsourcing our kids or our wife or whatever to the church to provide this kind of ministry. And what I would love to see is a church that sees a man as the head of the household and which should be ministering through him to the family instead of taking those pieces away from him. Because the church can do a more magical job of entertaining my kids than I can, and I'll let them. But what my kids really need is me taking a shot at it and trying to create an opportunity for them. Take them out and let's bale some hay. So I don't know, there's something in there. And I hope that answers your question. I think it does. I think that's great. Well, Mark, I really appreciate you being here. And thanks so much for what you're doing with Trail Life. Folks, we'll have links to the book that Mark mentioned that's free download on the website. And we'll put all that in the show description. So I'd just encourage you to go check out Trail Life. Find a troop that's near you. Maybe think about sponsoring one at your church. I assume churches can sponsor new troops, Mark. Is that true? Absolutely. We have 1,300 churches with troops right now. Yeah, and so where are we directing folks to? Just say the website so everybody can hear it at least. TraillifeUSA.com. Two L's in the middle. TraillifeUSA.com. TraillifeUSA.com. And Mark, we really appreciate you being here. This was a great discussion. I had a great time. Thanks, me too. All right, everyone. Well, thanks for being with us on this episode of Thinking Christian. And we will talk to you next time. Take care, everyone. Hi, friend. Are you stressed, maybe even worried about so many needs around you that you've forgotten you are worth taking care of too? Well, I'm Bonnie Gray, the host of Breathe, the stressless podcast. I want to invite you to join me as I share practical tips based on science, inspired by God's word, to help you spark joy and restore God's peace and love to your soul. Subscribe now and go to lifeaudio.com.