- In 2020,

researchers asked whatare the best countries

to raise a family?

Out of 35 developed nations,

only two countriesreceived failing grades.

Mexico and you guessed it,

the United States.

So where did American families go astray

and how can we get back on track?

Well, best-selling authorJefferson Bethke says he knows

where we can start.

- [Narrator] Jefferson Bethke is a pastor,

author, and YouTube sensation.

With his wife, Alyssa,

he co-founded Family Teams,

a ministry that equips familiesto 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 counter the stress

and emptiness the Me Culture can bring.

- All right, well, JeffBethke joins us now via Skype.

Jeff, thank you so muchfor being with us today.

- Hey, thanks for having me.

- All right, well, let's get right to it.

Your book is called"Take Back Your Family."

What is the story behind that title?

- Yeah, well, I, you know,

we were trying to think of a title

that encapsulated the bookand the spirit of the book.

And I think, you know thesubtitle even gives more info.

I don't think I can remember it verbatim,

but take back your familyfrom the tyrants of, you know,

burnout, busy-ness,hustle, and sports games,

and just all this stuff.

Nuclear ideal I put on there,

which was is fun one.

But yeah, essentially Ijust think we have been,

another way to think about

when someone says take back families,

what have we been captured by

that we need to take back from,

and I just think that's thethat's the premise of the book,

is that in my research,

in kind of walking

and not only having a youngfamily ourselves and feeling it,

but then going macro and researching,

our family has been taken captive

and been captured by so many things

that are not God's designthat are hurting us,

that are leading to a lot of anxiety,

loneliness, depression in the family,

burnout, and drowning.

So I just wanted to kind ofstep into that conversation.

- Definitely.

In the book you open up aboutyour personal childhood story.

How did your experiencesgrowing up shape your ideas

of family today?

- Yeah, you know,

what's funny is I both had a good

and a bad in the sad sense.

I was raised by a single mom.

We were raised in kind of lower income.

You know, housing, foodstamps, all that stuff.

My mom's a hero.

I love her.

We're really close.

So there's the obvious parts of that,

but like where I still felt the difficulty

of no father in the home, no example,

someone to kind of disciple me

and mentor me into malehood and stuff like that,

which is a crisis in our culture,

by the way.

But then too, you know,I talk about in the book,

the solution being actually that we need

to live multi-generationallyand live as a team.

Kind of be less consumption-basedand more mission-based,

but the scriptures kindof align with that.

What's interesting about being raised

with a single mom is you actually kind

of lean into some of those things

more than other families out of survival.

Where it's like we had to stick together,

we had to live as a team. Italk about that in the book too,

where there's actually a funny thing

where most people in kindof lower income brackets

or more global familieslive multi-generationally

because they need to.

There's an element of survival

that actually pushesthem in that direction.

And in the West, we're just kind of so,

you know metaphorically,fat, sick, wealthy,

and just kind of overstuffedwith having everything

and we don't need to do that.

But I think we're startingto see the breakdown of that.

- Yeah, absolutely.

You describe the nuclearfamily as an experiment

that needs to be declared bankrupt.

What's the problem

with our current westernizedfamily structure?

- Yeah, that one was a funone that kind of, you know,

is a little bit of abomb in the conversation.

The easiest and again, the book,

that one takes a littlebit of time to tease out

'cause there's obviouslypeople mean different things

by that word,

and so I would encouragepeople to read the book,

but the quick version Iwould say of it is this.

That when you say, you know,

to anyone who lived Western culture,

Eastern culture before 1940,

you were to say whenI say the word family,

what do you think of?

You know what I mean?

Most people would havethought of immediately a group

of about 25 people.

Kind of, you know, an economic hub

or vocation that was housed in the home.

You had aunts, uncles, probably three

or four generations either inthe home or around the home.

So it was a very thriving enterprise.

And then again, you get to thethe post-World War II boom,

industrialization catches up,

assembly line catches up,

where it basically kind ofkeeps shrinking the family

to now this caricatureof two kids, two parents,

that you know,

is only a part of thepuzzle of what God wants us

to integrate into to livemulti-generationally.

You know what I mean?

I say in the book this joke where,

you know, when God wantsto identify himself,

like when he himself wantsto give himself a name,

so this is from his ownheart, his own mind.

He says,

"I'm the God of Abraham,Isaac, and Jacob."

Like he ties his name to a third,

a three generation family.

And most of us in the West, you know,

if we were to write the Bible,

it'd be the God of I don't know,

I don't know, and I don't care.

I mean, we almost can't even do that

'cause we don't connect those dots.

- Yeah, that's so powerful.

You also make a powerful statement

that God's answer to the first problem

in our story was family.

How can families today become the solution

to many of the problemsthis generation is facing?

- Well, yeah, I think it's just re,

you know, going backthrough the scriptures

and understanding that Genesisshows that pretty clearly.

That God's, one of his main, not his only,

but one of his main agentsto accomplish his purposes,

which is clear from the book of Genesis,

bring blessing and goodness into the world

to be divine priests.

I mean, to be prieststhat reflect the divine,

to be ambassadors of him,

to be image bearers,

to bring goodness and blessinginto the world out of order.

I mean, out of chaos and out of disorder.

That's the garden mandate.

But the family, he usesa family to do that.

First Adam and Eve,

and then every time itstarts to go sideways,

he recommissions a family.

So it goes sideways, obviously.

He recommissioned Noah and his family,

it goes sideways.

He recommissioned Abraham and says,

"You're going to be thefamily of a great nation."

It's always through afamily that God wants

to put the world back together.

- Absolutely.

Well, in the book you abouttreating every family member

as a team member on mission.

Break that structure down for us.

How does that work?

I follow you guys onInstagram and I believe you

and your wife Alyssa doan amazing job at this.

- Well, thank you.

That means a lot.

I would say, I mean,

another easy way totalk about that one is,

you know, we see kids asliabilities in our culture.

That's why, by the way,

and I'm not saying thatthis thing I'm about to say,

it can go both ways,

I understand,

but that's why when you know,

the smoke screen of thatis when someone realizes

they're having another baby,

usually in the West, modern West,

it's immediate fear.

How am I going to pay for it?

How am I going to care for it?

We see kids in ourculture as a drain, right?

Now we love them and they're a blessing,

but we generally see them as like,

they are sucking our resources.

They're more means, more difficulty,

you know what I mean?

More money, more drain, all that stuff.

When again, pre you know,

westernized nuclearized family,

it was where they weremission-based families,

not consumption-based families,

because if you are aconsumption-based family,

then yes,

another kid is going to consume more.

They saw more kids as more blessing.

That's why those scripturesmake sense, by the way.

Because you say, you know what I mean?

Like the scripture talksabout that. Why to be barren,

it's almost like a curse.

Now of course God doesn'tmean that in the sense of,

you know what I mean?

Right now, like God works in everything

but it shows like we think the opposite.

The West thinks if you have alot of kids, that's a curse.

Go into a restaurantwhen you have five kids

and tell me that the Westdoesn't think you're a curse.

So we've completely invertedthe model when back then again,

more kids meant more employees, you know,

that's for good or bad, by the way.

But in the pre-industrialized world,

it meant more helpers,

it meant more contributors.

So a bigger familyactually meant more ability

to do God's purpose.

So all I say with that is, you know,

there's some stuff we need toleave in the past, by the way.

So I'm not just saying,hey, let's go back there.

What I am saying is in general,

healthy thriving teamshave a lot of compatibility

with some of these patterns.

So let's take the good and leave the bad.

- Yeah, Amen to that.

Well, Jefferson's book iscalled "Take Back Your Family,"

and it's availablewherever books are sold.

We'll be back with more "700Club Interactive" after this.