- In 2020, researchers asked,

"What are the best countriesto raise a family?"

They looked at 35 developed nations.

Two countries received failing grades,

Mexico, and you guessed it, the US of A.

The land of opportunity has become a land

where it's becoming harderand harder to raise children.

And as bestselling author,Jefferson Bethke points out,

it doesn't have to be this way.

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- [Narrator] JeffersonBethke is a pastor, author,

and YouTube sensation.

With his wife Alyssa, heco-founded Family Teams,

a ministry that equips families

to build up a team dynamic.

As he began to raise his own family,

he saw how the me cultureapproach drives many of us

towards ragged, stressed,and unfulfilling lives.

In his new book "Take Back Your Family",

Jefferson shares how to counterthe stress and emptiness

the me culture can bring.

- And Jefferson Bethejoins us now via Skype,

and we welcome you back to The 700 Club.

Good to see you.

- Yes, good to see you.

It feels good to be back.

- All right, well Jefferson, your new book

is about finding a completely new,

yet really an ancient way to do family.

What is the original family blueprint?

- Yeah, one of the things Idive into in the book early

is first of all, how the Western vision

for parenting and family,

even though that's our default,

meaning hyper individualistic,hyper nuclear,

so it's a lot smaller thanmore ancient cultures who have,

family to them, is 20 people, 30 people,

aunts, uncles, et cetera.

Over and against thatwe see in the scripture

that actually God's design

was what I just kind of alluded to,

this web of relationshipsthat's multi-generational

and then also has a mission

because again, in the West,

it's very easy for us to turnour families consumption-based

and it's all about how we can just

entertain ourselves,feel good about ourselves

and get a lot of things.

When the scriptural blueprint

is this multi-generational team,

who's trying to actually kind of go out

and accomplish somethingfor God's purposes.

- You know, in ancient cultures or even,

gosh, not even that long ago,

we didn't have iPhones.

I mean, you're not sittingaround the dinner table

and your kids are glued to their iPhones.

How does that affect thefamily dynamic today?

- Yeah, it's partly justthe way my brain thinks,

but I really enjoy fun research

and kind of researching

how things have changed sociologically.

And it wasn't just the phone,

but it was actually theintroduction of screens in general,

so you go back to the television,

and it's fascinating how

when you begin looking atarchitecture and blueprints

of homes around that time,

they started to morph the centering place

being the place with the fireplace,

the room with the fireplace,

to a room with a screen,

a room with a television.

So I don't think we realize

how much little thingslike that affect us, right?

Where when you're around a fire,

you're usually playing games,

you're usually singing songs,

you're usually kind of facing each other,

but yet, when you shape an entire room,

all the counters and all thechairs, to face the screen,

well that's gonna create adifferent type of culture.

Now, of course, I love screens,I love films, I love movies,

I'm not saying let's all justgo to back to fireplace world,

which I love a good fireplace, too,

but what I would say with that

is that we need to be conscious

of the actions we are taking as a family,

the culture we're shaping as a family,

and the direction we'regoing as a family and saying,

"Do we want this

or do we want to try tolive in alternatives?"

- I'm giggling because Ihave a great fireplace,

but all of my chairs in thecouch are facing the TV so.

- That's true of all of us.

- Jefferson, you say stableis where horses live.

It wasn't the home thatyou grew up grew up in.

What was your childhood like?

- Yeah, I have an amazing mom,

I love my mom, but she was a single mom

and we were kind of always on the edge

of very serious low poverty,

which almost put us on the edge

of kind of homelessnessat any given point.

So that's gonna come with its challenges,

its traumas, its difficulties,

yet, my mom's amazing,

she's a hero, she did her best,

but again, you do see glaring things

in your childhood or feel glaring things,

you know, lack of a father,lack of stability emotionally

because we're having to always

kind of patch all these holes,

but yeah it certainly affects us.

Now I'm not saying

that we need all justhave comfortable lives,

but I do think there'ssomething to wrestle in there

and I talk about

in that chapter that youreferenced specifically,

about again, God'sdesign is bigger, larger,

and on top of that, not justthe husband wife dynamic,

which obviously we know is God's design,

but again, the multi-generational dynamic,

David Brooks

in his famous Atlanticarticle a couple of years ago

critiquing the nuclear family,

and by the way, this wouldbe a conservative, Christian,

brilliant, thinking man,

what he talks about isactually the nuclear family

can kind of only be had by the rich

because anyone who's in alittle bit lower economic class,

that's actually where they need

the multi-generational living more.

And you see that by the way,

the poorer cultures you go to globally,

the more they actuallylive multi-generationally

because they need each other.

But we've created sucha culture in the west

where we don't need each otherbecause we're so wealthy,

and I mean that globally speaking,

the creation of the middleclass, 1950s, et cetera.

So these are just things

that I think we need to wrestle with.

- Jefferson in your book,"Take Back Your Family",

you talk about how familiesshould have a mission statement.

And I thought that was fascinating.

Why is that and what is yourfamily's mission statement,

if you don't mind sharing?

- Yeah so it changes and it evolves,

which I say it should,

but I start with this place of like

look at any healthy team,

a sports team, a healthy business

that's really thriving and successful,

none of those, like none of them,

you cannot go up to one of them and say,

"Hey, what are you here for?

What are you trying to accomplish?

What are you guys doing?

Why do you guys practice?

Why do you guys train?

Why do you guys work so hard?",

they'll all have answersto those questions.

You ask any of those questions to a family

and they'll say either we don't do that

or just I don't know.

I have no idea why we're here.

Aren't we just kind ofhere to hang out and belong

and just kind of have a safe, secure,

cute, friendly environment?

Well no, God wants you toliterally go on mission.

That's what it says, like Genesis,

is like go create, subdue,bring order out of chaos,

beauty out of the disorder.

And so thinking about that,

and really it's really simple,

and again, ours changes,

but our season of life hasbeen really stuck on this,

Jesus's prayer the last couple years

and the Lord's prayer,

which says, "Your kingdom come,

thy will be done onEarth as it is in heaven.

So we live in Maui, Hawaii

and so I just put in thereon Maui as it is in heaven.

So that's a really just small but easy way

for our kids and us tolatch, put teeth into,

okay, our job, our jobeveryday when we wake up

is to work as a team

and to make this place alittle bit more like heaven

in our specific location

with our neighbors,

using our wirings and ourgiftings and our talents.

Then we have what we call pillars

that goes into this a lot more detail.

They can find those on the website.

But it's stuff like that

of just give your family a direction.

And it's crazy specificallywith little kids,

how much they rise tothat, they want that.

- Wow, I'm still thinkingabout Maui, Hawaii.

- It's a hard place to live.- What a great place to live

and raise a family

and hopefully surf andall those other things.

Anyway, well, you can read even more

in Jefferson's brand new book.

It's called, "Take Back Your Family".

Wow, what a right now book.

It's available in stores nationwide.

Jefferson, thanks somuch for being with us.

God bless you.

- Thank you.

- And Gordon and Ashley will be right back

with more the "The 700 Club" after this.

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