The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Rev. Dr. Ken Gordon Jr., The Power of an Engaged Dad

Episode Date: September 2, 2023

Rev. Dr. Ken Gordon Jr., The Power of an Engaged Dad Dadsoffaith.com About REV. DR. KEN GORDON JR., or Pastor Ken, as he is called by his members, is a pastor, business executive, husband, father, and community leader, whose entire life has been dedicated to the service of others. A graduate of The Citadel - The Military College of South Carolina, he is a highly sought-after speaker on leadership, public service, civil rights, youth mentoring, and community engagement. ​In 2016, Pastor Ken and his wife, Leslie, founded the House of Light Church in Burlington, NJ where they established a Divorce and an Outreach Ministry. After much prayer, God led Pastor Ken to develop the Dads of Faith Ministry. The couple, now living in Birmingham, AL, are continuing God’s work for Couples, Divorcees , Youth, and those who have "hearts hurts". Their church, the House of Light Church (HOLA) is focused on showing love, serving others, and letting their light shine through their good works.​ In 2018, Pastor Ken and Leslie launched the "Commitments with Ken+Leslie" show. This weekly two-hour show aired for two-years on WXJC Radio FM 101.1 ~ AM 850 Birmingham/Huntsville AL, and focused on providing hope, healing and help to those who are divorced or going through divorce and those who are in fruitful or dysfunctional relationships. Stay tuned for Pastor Ken and Sis Leslie's next media venture! ​ Pastor Ken and Leslie have four "adulting" children, two beautiful grandchildren, and live in an empty nest, with their chocolate Cockapoo.

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look at you kind of funny uh the chris fosh show loves you even if your mother-in-law doesn't uh so we have an amazing gentleman on the show we're gonna be talking today about his amazing insights about fatherhood life uh, visions of his success, and what he does to inspire and motivate other people. But in the quick meantime, guilt and shame time for the plugs, go to goodreads.com forward slash chrisfoss, tiktok.com forward slash chrisfoss1, and youtube.com forward slash chrisfoss,

and linkedin.com forward slash chrisfoss. He is an amazing gentleman and inspiring. We have Reverend and Dr. Ken Gordon Jr., or as some call him, Pastor Ken, on the show with us today. He is called by his members as Pastor Ken, and he's a pastor, business executive, husband, father, and community leader and author, I should mention as well. He's got several books that you can find on Amazon. His entire life has been dedicated to the service of others. A graduate of the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina. He is a highly sought-after speaker on leadership, my favorite term.

Public service, civil rights for citizens, of course. Youth mentoring and community engagement. I'm just adding your bio mentoring and community engagement i'm just adlibbing your uh bio your uh pastor i'm just adding stuff so someone have a sister write it down and add it to later anything i say is important uh in 2016 pastor ken and his wife leslie founded the house of light church in burlington north Jersey, which is kind of in the north, where they established a divorce and outreach ministry. After much prayer, God led Pastor Ken to develop the Dads of Faith ministry. The couple now living in Birmingham, Alabama, are continuing God's work for couples,

divorcees, youth, and those who have hearts, hearts. Their church, the House of Light church uh otherwise known as hola is hola uh is focused on showing love serving others and letting their light shine through their good works welcome the show uh ken how are you hey chris i'm doing great what about you i am doing awesome and just to add labs there you go now We have some fun with people on the things. And just to make sure, we decided on the show we were going to refer to you as Ken. I want to make sure people don't think I'm being disrespectful to your title. No, no, no.

Call me Ken. That's what my mother named me. There you go. Does she call you Kenneth when she's angry or Ken? She calls me Ken Jr. when she's angry. Uh-oh. It's always good to know when mom's tone turns. That's right.

That's right. So, Ken, please give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs and get to know you better? Yeah, dadsoffaith.com is the primary place to find me with my books. And as an author, if you're looking for my church, it's hoflchurch.org. But the primary place to find me with the books and as an author is dadsoffaith.com. There you go. And you've written several books, Divorce Basil Dad, The Love of a Father, Pancake Dad, Bad Dogs, and Ice Cream Dad. We mentioned before the show,

now I'm doubly hungry. I want ice cream and pancakes. I don't think I've ever combined those two. You ever combined ice cream with pancakes? You know, use the ice cream as a stirrer? But you know, the International House of Pancakes, they do it. All right, you and I are going over there after this. You and I, after the show. We'll go right over. That's a little far for them, so they need to support your show now.

I know. I want to check on that. I expect one. Call the attorneys! That just gives me a good idea. So, welcome to the show. Congratulations on the book, the work you've done in your life. Give us a 30,000 overview of, in your words, of who you are and what you're about and what you do. Yeah. At the very heart of who I am, I'm a dad. A dad who has failed more than I've succeeded. A dad who has gotten it wrong more than I've gotten it right. A lot of people say, well, you wrote a book, so you must be an expert. No, I wrote a

book because I kept failing and I wanted to chronicle my failure so that other men didn't have to keep doing it. But I care enough to keep trying. And that's really at the core of who I am. There you go. And sometimes the teachers are the biggest students absolutely learn we learn so much like i read i when i was writing my book i was like wow uh this uh i could learn a few things here about there you go all the other people that do uh so it was pretty discovery so tell us about your hero's journey where how did you get through uh in the life what was uh like being raised? What made you want to become a preacher and get into the line of work that you were in?

Yeah. So, you know, my upbringing was really in church. Both my parents were very, very religious. I know it's a bad thing nowadays to say, you know, that, you know, well, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual. Well, my parents religious so uh so we were in church a lot I come from a long line of of uh of preachers and ministers uh on my mother's side my grandma my grandfather my uncles uh on my dad's side you know my dad himself my mom as well uh and so I just kind of grew up seeing that and it was kind of you you know, told to me, oh, you're going to be, you know, a preacher, a minister one day. And I'm like, yeah, I don't think so. Because I'm just not that person who believes that everybody is going to hell. I'm not

that person who wants to judge everyone and wants to look down my nose at everyone. And that just wasn't my thing. And so, you know, when I became of age and I went out on my own, I didn't really want anything to do with the church because I was just so tired of the tradition, the judgment, the performances. I was just sick of it. And, you know, and I found this thing called grace and this thing called grace says, you know what? In spite of who you are, in spite of what you've done, God still loves you. And he loves you for who you are because he made you. And, you know, he doesn't make any mistakes. So whatever weaknesses I have, whatever issues I have or problems I have, God knows those intimately because he created those and he knows them. And he put them in my life so that I could figure out how to depend more on him. And so that that's what really informed my journey is a journey that's informed by grace, a journey that's informed by learning to love myself first. And through that, I can love others. And that that really is kind of how I came along.

And I had I had a great father. I'm not a statistic. I'm an African-American man that was not raised in a household without a dad. I was raised in a household with a dad and with a very engaged dad. And that kind of, he modeled to me what good fatherhood really looks like. And he made me want to be a great father. There you go. So I imagine somewhere in there, you start a family. At one point, you had your church. What made you flip the switch to setting up a church that seemed to be a little more focused on the dads of faith ministry? was a father, I was a dad. And, you know, as I kind of, you know, as I kind of walk that road, that very, very difficult road, I might add of being a dad, and many of you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's a hard way, it's a hard road. And people always say, oh, there's no book, there's no manual, and there's really not. And, you know, and you're being judged, we're being

judged by our children. And then in a lot of cases, even worse, we're being judged by the children's mother, trying to tell us what it means to be a man. And I have this saying, Chris, that I believe that it takes a man to raise a boy into a man. I truly believe that. But I also believe that it takes a woman to teach him the kind of man he needs to be. And so, you know, so as I was kind of as I was coming along and really kind of trying to understand the kind of man, the kind of father that I wanted to be, you know, my children came along. I suffered through a divorce. And as I was going through my divorce, I was trying to figure out, you know, I'm a preacher. I'm not supposed to be here. You know, it's, you know, everybody tells you it's wrong to get a divorce. It's terrible. And, you know, you're going to

hell. It's a horrible thing. But OK, I'm here now. So how do I get out of this? How do I do this in a way that honors God and then honors my kids? And so I started looking for books to read because I'd love to read. And I started looking for books to read and I could find books by psychologists and psychiatrists, but they were not people of faith. They certainly didn't espouse it. I could find books by these mega church pastors who write 10 million books a year, but they haven't been through divorce. So how did they say to me, a man going through divorce who happens to be a pastor, how did they tell me when I'm at that moment where I literally hate her and I literally don't want anything to do with her. And I hate the fact that we had children, children together and all these other negative emotions. How do you tell me how to come out of that when you've never

been there? And so, uh, you know, in that moment, I had a very close friend of mine who said, Ken, if you can't find it, write it. And I'm like, I don't I don't have time for that. And, you know, and people make time for what's important to them. And so I began to write it down. It became so cathartic for me as I began to kind of, you know, write into the pages who I was and how I felt and what mistakes I made and what I do differently and what I do better. And it just became cathartic. And that my very first book, Divorce But Still Dad, that's where that came from while I was on that journey, trying to figure out how to how to do it the right way. In the midst of that, Chris, I figured out that I'm like sitting there writing one day and I'm writing about my kids. And I'm like, wait a minute. God, I love my kids. I mean, I love my kids. And I don't know any men in my life that I know who don't absolutely love their children.

What they don't want is they don't or what they have is they don't like the children's mother. They don't they don't love her anymore. They don't want anything to do with her. But they have not figured out how to separate the two. And so in the midst of that, I wrote my second book, which was Love of a Father, because I just people have been tricked and fooled into believing that men don't love our children. The problem is, for a lot of us, we haven't figured out how to separate the love of our children from the hatred or dislike of our ex. Definitely. That's the bottom line. Definitely, especially in a divorce situation because divorce is just so hard.

We want to talk today about the power of an engaged dad and what a difference that makes in the life of children. One of the things that I believe in is, as you mentioned before, you know, we're biologically built to have a masculine feminine frame or a man and a woman in the home or a fight. Let me put it differently. Because we, you know, we have people that can play different roles, but there is always a masculine feminine. And there are things that we learn from the masculine feminine roles in a relationship how those two roles work together how they make a average or successful relationship work i don't

know if there's any successful relationships really um you just didn't i think success is the measurement of success is we didn't murder each other for 20 years um but you know what i mean it it shapes them the the the i've been dating for 55 years and i've i've i've seen all of the fallout in fact i've seen i'm like a i'm like this weird dipstick where i've seen the whole curvature of culture over the past 30 to 40 60 years uh i've seen uh the effect that sex in the city had on culture i've seen the effects of you know what we're in now where we're in this hot girl summer stuff that's very weird on tiktok and i've seen what not being raised without a good mother or a good father or both uh can do and i'm now now at the point of my life i'm seeing the end of life. I'm seeing what it looks like, the ugliness, the loneliness of people, the destruction of their lives because dad didn't hug him enough as a kid, or maybe mom didn't hug him enough as a kid.

So what's your thoughts on that? Am I far off base or am I close? No, I think you're absolutely close. I do have to just say this to you, that the banging on the desk thing, I can't help it. I'm a preacher. You know, I was big. So I'm going to keep my hands up here now. There you go.

There you go. You are spot on because there is absolutely a very noticeable difference in people who were raised in a one parent household. You know, regardless of what the what the dynamics are, if there are two people in the household and they both assume the roles of, you know, of a mother and of a father or of a masculine and feminine, whatever way you want to say it, then so be it. But when you have a household where where there's only one and what's even more dangerous is if that one thinks that they have the capacity to fulfill both roles.

That is really dangerous. Oh, I am. You know, I'm a single mom, but I'm also the dad to know you're not. Oh, I'm a single mom. But, you know, my kids give me a card on Father's Day because I'm the father. No, you're not. And so there's a difference, right? There's absolutely a void there. There's absolutely a difference. You know, I'm not I'm not going to try to play to the audience by by talking about a void when the mom's not there, because the truth of the matter is, the majority of the time, that's not the problem. The majority of the time, the mom is right there. The majority of the time, it's the dad being there. But what's even more, I think, insidious and what I really focus on is in the cases where the dad is there, he's present, but he's not engaged. So yeah, Chris, to your point, there's absolutely a difference and you can see it. It's noticeable. I can have a conversation with someone for a brief time,

and I can tell you if they grew up with a father, and I can also tell you the kind of father they grew up with, whether he was engaged or whether he was just present. Yep. And also true, we're going to focus on the father today, but also true of mothers. I see what it's like in a man who has had mother abandonment. I see the relationships that he'll choose and the women that he'll choose. I've seen these sons of single mothers who see a mother who struggles and and is he's constantly helping her he's having

to wear the pants of the family be the be the protector of the home and then he goes out and he dates and wives up and gets some relationships with fix fixer projects he sees his mother struggling so he thinks this is what you're supposed to do as a man, find broken women and fix them, which is, you know, there's a whole different quandary you end up that way. So how do we become, how do you define engaged father? And how do we get down that road if we're a father? Yeah, great question. You know, as I really began to think about what can I contribute, what can I say that's not already being said? How can I contribute? Too many times people jump in and they add to the to the narrative something that everybody's been saying. But one of the things that I really found is that I'm looking at all of these reports and these statistics that are talking about, you know, the dads, you know, these people have dads in the home or or, you know, X number of people don't have dads in the house and all of that. And it just began to resonate with me. You know what? It doesn't matter if they're in the house because a lot of men are in the house.

But the whole time they're there, they're in front of the television with their remote control they have their cell phone that they're texting and they're on tiktok and they're on tiktok and they're on you know whatever social media or they're on their game boy or they're playing their nintendo or whatever that the thing is nowadays uh you know you know um um you know i don't know you know call of duty modern war exactly you know they're doing that and that's what they're doing. So, yeah, they're present in the household, but they're not engaged. What an engaged daddy is, I submit, is someone who puts down the phone, puts down the remote, puts down the the you know, the the what do you call the little joystick thing. They put that down and they turn their focus to their children and they get to know their children. They get to know who are your friends. They get to know what you like, what you don't like, what kind of music do you like, what's your favorite pancake, what's your favorite ice cream or whatever it is. And engage dad as a dad who knows his children and not a dad who knows he has children. There you go. And there's

so much that fathers and mothers are doing in today's work. I mean, sometimes when you want to come home, you kind of want to tune out a little bit. In fact, men are notorious for, we need to kind of sometimes downshift and decompress for a bit. How do we balance that when you come home and maybe have that little sort of shifting over, if you will, to, you know, being disengaging from work and kind of having some clear space to think and not choke everyone to death when you meet them. That's usually how I want to come in from the traffic of work. And then still move to what you've talked about. You know, I think it's a couple of things.

I think, first of all, you're absolutely right. I think there has to be a transition. There has to be a time when you come in and you transition from high-powered executive like you think you are over to high-powered superhero dad. But here's the thing. You don't get to choose

that you can do that for the whole night. You don't get to choose that it's going to take you, you need an hour, leave me alone. You've got to figure out, you know, none of us live in the world by ourselves, right? And we have to figure out what works, not just for us, but for the community in which we live. It will be a wonderful thing if we got to just behave based on it being our world and our world only. We don't get to be the person who is the only one living in the world. And so I say that because maybe if you have children, maybe you need to use your drive home as your transition period. Maybe you need to park, maybe your drive home is only five minutes. So all right, park in your driveway or up the

street if you need to, and take five minutes to just decompress. But here's the thing, you don't get to tell your children when you come in and they're so happy to see their dad, you don't get to say to them, leave me alone. I need to decompress. I mean, these are your children. This is your legacy. And I think a lot of men forget that this is your legacy. You will not live forever, but what you, what you pour into your children, what you saw into your children. Oh, it does because it, it lives in the next generation. And then it gives them the seeds that they're going to plant into their children in the next generation and so on and so on and so on. And so I would say a very selfish way of looking at it, which is what we as men have got to get out of, is leave me alone. I need a minute.

Well, if you need a minute, then drive around the block before you come home there you go into the house come in ready to be a dad to your children because they need you when you come in the door not when you get good and ready for them there you go well the old days everyone just go into the bar and got shit faced and then showed up that's still you said the old days well i don't know are they still going to the bars i don't know yeah they are they don't really have bars anymore, it seems. They have clubs. But they have these great little neighborhood bars that you see when you go to these cities

that are just great little decompressed places. And maybe not coming home. I don't want to advocate for coming home drunk either, by the way. So there's that. There's that. And that's definitely some tools that people can use to take and do that because I know when I come home, I want to decompress and I don't want anyone

near me, but I'm lucky enough that I have two dogs and, uh, you know, I'm not being overwhelmed with whatever the thing was. Um, you know, uh, in my day and age with my mom, you know, it was, it was debriefing my dad on all the horrible things we'd done through the day because we did them and uh and then you know the instructions on uh which which way to beat us uh senseless which we probably deserved um but there's that my mom's gonna hate me for saying that uh but i mean it was what it was we weren't the greatest of kids and you know kids need some discipline every now and then a bit of a butt kicking sure um you know

how does this translate in divorce because you you've talked about divorce and and how this goes through divorce is really hard for a lot of people i've seen the back end of it with your dating people that have come out of divorce and uh you know uh newsflash they're not always happy about the whole thing. Yep. And how do you learn to get along with, how do you learn to be engaged if you're a divorced father and maybe you don't have visitation rights except on weekends or something? Yeah, and I'll tell you this. I mean, it's difficult, and I certainly don't have the answer for everyone out there, but I truly believe that. So there are some things that I believe fundamentally happen that a lot of us overlooked. For a lot of women, a lot of women, in my opinion, and this is just

Ken Gordon's one opinion, take that in 50 cents and you might be able to get a cup of coffee somewhere. But I believe for a lot of men and for a lot of women, the reason why women respond the way they do is a reaction, not an action. If you don't have visitation rights, then in many cases it is because you have treated the mother of your children so terrible until she is looking at how she can get back at you. And this is how she does it through your children. When I went through my divorce, in the very beginning of the divorce, I went and got a high-powered attorney that specialized in protecting men that had things that they wanted to protect, right? And men who wanted to win in a divorce, and that's who I hired. But as I got into it, it got so nasty and so ugly so quickly. I was just kind of like, is this really what my children want? I mean, I'm prepared to

rip their mother apart. I'm prepared to say all these horrible, terrible things and to paint her in a way that makes her look terrible. But then I started thinking about it. Wait a minute. My children are 50% me and 50% her. And while I may not necessarily like her anymore, half of who she is is who my children are. So if I tear her apart, I'm actually tearing away at their own self-esteem and that their own identity. So wait a minute, let me rethink this. So I took a step back and I'm like, wait a minute. Okay. Now I am going around my house, putting sticky notes on all the things. And I'm like, you're not getting this. You're not getting my big green

egg. You're not getting my artwork. You're not getting. And all the while, the most important thing for me is my children. And they're watching all of this and it's ripping them apart on the inside. Right. And so I truly believe. So what I did was I sat down with their mother. I said, listen, I know, I know that we're not happy about what's going on. I know you're not happy about this whole situation, but here's the thing. We can either spend our money on attorneys and spend our money on therapists, or we can figure out how to be civil to one another. We can figure out how to share and co-parent. And by doing that, we're not going to get back together. And you're going to have to deal with that. But at least we're keeping our children at the center of what we're thinking about. I was fortunate because when I did that, she said, okay. Now, this is the same woman who, when we very first got started, told all of our friends when she was done with me, I was going to be penniless living in my mother's garage. But because I sat down and said, listen, I know that part of what this is, is you're afraid that I'm going to

try to break you. You're afraid that I'm going to take all the money and leave you with nothing. You're afraid that I'm going to leave you living in squalor, if you will. But no, I have an obligation not only to my children, but I also have an obligation to you as well. And I think if a lot of men would take that attitude, I think that a lot of women would not do what we think is unthinkable and that separate us from our children. Does that work in every case? No. In some cases, the damage is too deep and it's too far gone. And in those particular cases, and it's a case by case basis, you have to figure out how you can get through. But at the end of the day, Chris, I truly believe that a lot of women are reasonable. And what their greatest concern is, is how are you going to treat

them? How are you going to lean into your responsibility as a father and make sure that the child support is there on time every month? Are you going to lean into your responsibility and co-parent? Are you going to lean into your responsibility and understand that whether you're paying child support or not, there are still a lot of things that child support won't cover that you need to own up to and lean into and be a real dad? There you go. And you're totally right. I've been on the receiving end of dating women who have children and i've seen what both a toxic ex-husband or toxicist wife can do and i've seen the damage it does to the kids where i've had to sit down with kids and go look your mother and dad love you very much and this is kind of the going and they're not behaving well

they still love you it's okay i've had to take fathers aside and go look i'm not trying to replace you you are still their birth father. Nothing can take that from you. We are not competing. I am not trying to say I'm better than you in any way. The last thing I want to do is try and replace you in any way, shape, or form because I've seen your kids and they're poorly raised. No, I'm just kidding.

I always love when little kids would always say to me, you're not my dad. I'm like, you're damn right I am. Yeah, exactly. Get the hell out of you for one. Trust me, you can tell. Hey, can I say one real quick thing? Because you hit on something that I want to talk about. Please.

In the book, Divorce But Still Dad, one of the things that I did is I asked my daughter, who at the time was 12, if she would write a chapter in the book, two fathers, letting them know how children feel when divorce comes to their door. When she wrote it and I read it, I promised myself I would not try to do any editing on it at all. But when I read it, I literally cried because she was so honest and so forthright. There are a lot of men out there who really need to understand where their children's heads are and how they're feeling and get out of this martyr syndrome where you want everybody to feel sorry for you and get out of this thing where you're so concerned about protecting what you have. And you need to really think about how this impacts your children. Yeah. It's really easy to get whipped up in the emotional of it. And

attorneys, you know, divorce attorneys aren't much better too. And they make their money off of the long game. I'm not saying, I'm not saying divorce attorneys are bad or bad people, but you know, I mean, many of them have what they call nuclear options, accusing the father of things he didn't do. You know, it becomes a winner take all sort of mentality and let's destroy the other person. And like you said, that person is still your thing. The importance of fathers is so, runs so deep. And biologically, we are designed, I don't care what anybody wants to say with some sort of social construct or culture or some bullshit that someone fed you, we are biologically

designed to have a masculine and feminine train us and teach us. And the feminine teaches us emotion, empathy, uh, and, and softness and, and,

and, and, and things of that nature. And masculinity teaches us logic, reason, accountability, courage, all those different traits.

My, my father father i've heard it said a synopsis so keep in mind it's a it's a it's not all encompassing but a synopsis of you know mothers mothers teach uh love and fathers teach how to live life because your father teaches you and your mom will you know anything goes wrong your mom will hold you she'll she'll assure you she'll she'll she'll care about you for everything oh those bad people your father will, you know, anything goes wrong, your mom will hold you. She'll assure you. She'll care about you for everything. Oh, those bad people. Your father will give you kind of ass kicking lessons about life because he's trying to prepare you for life. Life isn't fair, son.

Yeah. You know what? There's some discipline here because if you don't get this right, you're going to go in life and they're going to really kick your ass unless you listen to your old man. Yeah. So any thoughts on that? Yeah, I completely agree with that. And it goes back to this whole thing in my book, Love of a Father. When I wrote the book, people immediately start trying to go, well, are you saying that a father loves more than a mother? No, I'm not saying that. Here's what I'm saying. I'm saying that a mother does not love their children more than a father. A father does not love his children more than a mother. They love them differently. And they love

them differently for good reasons, because each of them has a role in the development of that child. And absent that person's engagement, there is a noticeable gap in the way that they will function in their adult life. And there's no doubt about the fact that fathers teach their kids how to handle tough times. They teach them how to, you know, how to, how to survive, how to be independent, how to get up with that, with that broken arm and still walk in the house instead of laying in the middle of the street screaming. You know, I mean, so there are a lot of very valuable lessons that a father teaches that I can tell you right now. I can meet a man in my life and I can tell you immediately if he had a dad in his. There you go.

And I daughters, daughters with fathers as well. The you know, I've there was somebody on the show a few weeks ago, a month ago, two ago ago and she was talking about the bad choices and men that she made did she date me probably um but she was talking about the bad choices of men she made coming right out of the gate and and you know uh and and i said to her i said you didn't have a father in the house you grew up she goes how'd you know i'm like because you were he didn't set the standard for you as to what kind of man you should seek out he wasn't guiding you he wasn't he wasn't being an example of the sort of man that you should seek so what you were looking for was a father figure of any man and attention and and all that sort of other stuff you know there's there's

and people are like well this is cultural and yeah this is your opinion but but but but a father not in the home is there's statistics and data that back this up. I'll run this up and down if you don't mind. And these are from the USDHS, which is, I think, the Department of Human and Health Services and the Bureau of Census. 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes.

85% of all children that exhibitaway children are from fatherless homes. 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes. 85% of you sitting in prisons. Our prisons are filled with fatherless children. 80% of rapists, I have to say that on YouTube, motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes. 75% of adolescent patients in chemical abuse, fatherless homes. 71% of high school dropouts from fatherless homes. 75% of adolescent patients and chemical abuse, fatherless homes. 71% of high school dropouts, fatherless homes. Teenage pregnancies, 71% fatherless homes.

70% of juveniles. These are, and you suicide. These are stats because not having a father in your life, giving you those lessons of life and teaching you boundaries and teaching you boundaries and teaching you how to be a man, or if you're a woman, what to seek in a man, make an incredible amount of difference, as you can see from the stats. Yeah, absolutely. And I love those statistics because they're real. People go, oh, you can make numbers mean anything you want. And yeah,

you certainly can, but when the data is overwhelming like that, but there was a comedian and his name is Sinbad. And I was listening to his standup one time and he said something that has just resonated and stuck with me. He said that the reason why you have a lot of these people out in the world that don't care about getting arrested, that don't care about going to jail, that don't care about police, that don't care about any of that, is because they grew up in a home without a father. He said, because your father is the person who teaches you fear, and your father teaches you to be afraid of an authority figure. And he said, it was the fear that my father put in me that made me recognize the value of being afraid of an authority figure. And I thought about that. I'm like, wow, that is so right. Because, you know, I mean, my dad, you know, my dad is 78.

I think it is. And my dad, my whole life, I was afraid of that man. I mean, you know, in my mind, he was he was he was huge. He was a big guy. And I was I was I tell people all the time I was afraid of my dad till I was like 67, 68 years old. And I'm not in my 60s yet. There you go. Oh, I get it. There's something to the fact that when you have a dad in the house and your dad teaches you healthy fear and that respect that comes along with it. I think there's something to be said. And I think there's a lot of, of, of young men and women out in the world right now who don't fear anybody or anything because they didn't have a dad in their house that scared them to death. Yeah. He teaches accountability, self-actualization, hard work. You know,

my dad taught us hard work. You know, my, my mom was loving and kind and she'd be like, no, you don't have to do that here. I have some ice my dad was like get your ass out and do the lawn exactly and and and i really you know i hated at the time i didn't like it uh i didn't like mowing lawns and doing yard work and doing chores and stuff but he taught me how necessary they were and and taught me skills-based stuff that i needed to do hey chris but but but didn't he do this too didn Didn't he go, and after you get done cutting that lawn, you have plenty of energy, you're young, go find five other lawns to cut and charge them $10 to do it. And I did that. Yeah, actually. Yeah. And that's what a dad does, right? Yeah. In fact, he helped me start my first company technically by going and he was,

do whatever that company you learned that I used to have when i was a kid go do that yeah um now how does one of the things we uh been kind of leading in here a little bit here is how do we know uh what manhood's about what are the characteristics of a good man in manhood and masculinity yeah and let me just say this is such a subjective question for a lot of people. And so when I wrote Divorce But Still Dad, one of the things that I looked at is I was like, okay, wait a minute. You can't talk about divorce without talking about how you got there. So you got to talk about marriage. You can't talk about marriage without talking about how you get to marriage. And that is your selection process. So I talk about that in the book. But then I say, you can't talk about that unless you talk about what being a man is

really about. And so I chose, and this is just me, I chose to look into the scriptures, the word of God, to define what manhood was. And what I pulled out of that was what I call a protector, a provider and a priest. So for me, my definition when I'm talking to people about what is manhood, manhood is learning to be a protector, a provider and a priest. And fatherhood is being a protector, provider and a priest. What does that mean? Well, a protector is not just protecting your family from what's outside. A lot of times we have to protect our families from ourselves. We have to protect our families from when we get home and we need that transition time and we're salty. Back to the bar. Exactly. We have to protect from that. We have to protect our families, sometimes from ourselves. A lot of times for men, we can be very curt in the things that we say. We can say things without a real awareness

of how they hurt and how they cut. And so sometimes being a protector means protecting your children from your mouth and from the things that you would say to them. Then we talk about being a provider. Okay, yeah, great. Go home, go and bring home the bacon. I get all of that. Hand it to your wife and tell her to fry it up in a pan. You know, you ought to fry it up in a pan yourself, but whatever. But I tell people it's more than that. Being a provider is being a provider of love, being a provider of validation, you know, being a provider to your children of helping them see, you know, what what empathy looks like in the male version. You get it in the female version all the time, but they need to know what love looks like in the male version. You get it in the female version all the time, but they need to know what love looks like in the male version. They need to know what

validation looks like in the male version. And we as men, a lot of times we focus so much on wanting our families to have all these great things, a big house, a nice car, country club memberships, three or four trips a year for vacation. But we fail in being a real provider for the emotional needs that they have. And that is one of the things I say, you know, as a man, a man learns how to protect, even if it's from him. A man learns how to provide the soft things. They learn to provide love. They learned, you know, when I was growing up, I had a dad who hugged me. I had a dad who would kiss me. I had a dad who love. They learned, you know, when I was growing up, I had a dad who hugged me. I had a dad who would kiss me. I had a dad who would say to me, you know, I love you, you know, and, you know, you can do it.

And I'm proud of you. You know, I'm proud of you. Those words are something that a lot of men never utter. But as a provider, you have to. And then the final thing is a priest. Now, here's how I look at the whole issue of a priest. Everybody has different religious philosophies and theologies and everything. But the one thing that I believe to the very core of who I am is regardless of who you call your deity, regardless of who you call your God, the fact of the matter is we all need one. And we need one because having a power greater than you gives hope. And that hope is something that matters. When people grow up without hope, I'll never forget I was doing mentoring in Chicago on the south side of Chicago. And I'll never forget talking to this young man who just said to me,

I don't care what happens to me tomorrow. I'm going to be dead anyway in two or three years. When you don't have hope, then you've been robbed of the very essence of who you are and what makes you want to go. And so we as as fathers, we can't be the biggest thing in our children's lives. We have to point them to something even bigger than us and something to aspire to. And so I believe by being a priest that you take your family and you teach them the value of a relationship with a higher power. And when I say a higher power, I'm not talking about their mother. I'm actually talking about a real higher power that helps. So the mother-in-law is here. That helps engender hope. And I think those are the things that really make a father. I think

inside of, you know, one of the things I said to my kids and my son in particular for years is, you know, you're a man when you learn to own responsibility. You're a man when you learn to be independent and not make excuses. But I think you can find those things inside of being a protector, a provider, and a priest. There you go. Let me ask you this. When you say be a priest, is that be a leader could also be interpreted as be a leader? Yeah. As long as you are leading them to something, a recognition of a higher power that provides hope, then absolutely. Just being a leader by itself, I don't think it accomplishes what I'm talking about for being a priest. And when I say be a priest, I'm not saying you need to go to seminary.

I'm not saying you need to go and be a preacher. I'm saying you need to guide your family, lead your family in the recognition and understanding of a higher power. Because here's another reason why. Because you need to teach your children humility. Humility is a value that will take them so far in life. And when you have people who never teach their children the value of humility, the value of understanding that you don't have all the answers, of understanding that your way is not the only way, I think that that really matters. So I think the whole issue of being a priest for me

is helping them understand humility and helping them understand that there's something greater than them and giving them purpose, helping them. And there's a reason they're here and there's something they're meant to do and kind of what is your why and what is your dash? There you go. Purpose is so important, especially for men to find in the life. You know, women, women can be mothers. They can give birth to children, and they're designed to be more familial. Men need a purpose, and they need to find what that purpose is in life, whether it's to be a great father or be great kids.

But they need to have their journey as to what they do. And that's why we're built differently. I mean, I think the biggest problem we have in our society right now is we think that either sex can do the do what the other sex does or even reframe it to masculinity and femininity you know i've studied masculinity and femininity a lot and they're they're designed to be a puzzle piece that matches together and there are certain attributes like we've talked about on the show, that each of them do. And without the masculine and feminine, it's inherent in most relationships.

There is always going to be the feminine. There's always going to be the masculine. There's always going to be that power dynamic inside of a relationship. And we need to respect that both those dynamics are what make a human being or help build a a good human being and without one there's this lack and uh and and like i said i've lived a long enough life to to see the fallout from it you know i i've i've met people who've who seek attention from men consistently because their fathers didn't hug enough or spend enough time or weren't in the home. And a woman will go forth and seek attention from all men to try and fill that void of not having a father.

Absolutely. And the choices they make, the children they bring in this world, the relationships, marriage, you know, between men and women, I mean, just bad choices. So I'm glad you put this out there. I'm glad we had this brilliant discussion. Final thoughts before we go out. Yeah. You know, I think for me, one of the things that I learned in my life of being a great father or trying to be a great father, and by the way, I don't think I am. I don't think I'm a very good father at all. I think I'm a guy who's just failing forward and trying to be better every single day. You know, if you ask my daughter right now, who's not speaking to me I think I'm a guy who's just failing forward and trying to be better every single day.

You know, if you ask my daughter right now, who's not speaking to me, then I'm a terrible dad. If you ask my son right now, who, you know, I just showered his son with a bunch of gifts, I'm a great dad. So, you know, don't look at me and my relationship with my children. Like I'm the definitive, you know,'m the definitive expert on this, being a dad is a day-to-day, every single day kind of a, I don't want to call it a job, but it's a responsibility. And some days you get it right and some days you don't. And the thing that I value so much is, I was fortunate enough to marry a beautiful woman. And we've been married now, you know, a couple of weeks, it'd be nine years. I was fortunate enough to

marry a beautiful woman who herself was divorced and who dealt with a really ugly divorce, but we were able to come together. And by the way, in the beginning of my book, Divorce But Still Dad, she actually wrote the foreword to women to say, hey, if you're dating a man who's divorced, these are the red flags. So she wrote that to kind of give them some red flags. But I bring her up because the thing that she has really helped me understand is to be a really great dad, to be a really great father, it's not a solo kind of a proposition. You need the help of a good woman. You need the help of a good spouse, a good mate. We don't operate by ourselves and become great by ourselves. We operate by iron sharpening iron. Some days I get

it right. Some days I don't. And when I don't, I need someone who cares enough to say, you know what, you probably should have done that differently. And so the thing that I would just remind everyone is none of us become great by ourselves, but it takes others in our lives who care enough about us to help make us better every day. There you go. And you alluded to something earlier too. We need to make better choices on who we mate with. And also realize that sometimes the choices of who we think is good for us to mate with is because we didn't have a father or maybe we didn't have a mother in the home or different issues that complicate those. Because I guess we try and replicate our relationships that we learn from our parents that was imprinted and inspire parents. And so we try and replicate those and uh and resolve uh those issues of some of those parenting but you know a lot of times you can't resolve it because you know like i love my

parents they were great parents but they shouldn't they had no business being together i remember i remember when our mom called us and and said and we'd all left the home by that point they stuck it out god bless them and uh they called us up and they said hey you know we've decided after 20 plus years or whatever we're getting divorced and we're like oh we're finally glad you guys came around to it and they were like they're like what are you upset i'm like no we've been waiting for this for like 10 years for you guys to catch up to us you know um yeah yeah we're we're on board we're just we just been waiting for you guys to us, you know? Yeah. Yeah. We're, we're, we're on board. We're just, we just been waiting for you guys to, and you know what, thank you for bringing that up because that brings up a really good point. All those people out there who are in a failed marriage, but you're staying there

for the kids. You act like you're doing the kids a favor, but your kids know that you need to get out. My children tell me all the time. Now, dad, I've never seen you this happy dad. I'm so glad that you got the divorce because now you are a wonderful person now you're happy or whatever don't stay for the kids because trust me the kids see that you need to get out yeah seeing seeing a man demoralized walked on disrespected yeah not being able to set boundaries is a is is a bad relationship um there there's some people in this life, both men and women, that are just toxic.

They're broken. They haven't resolved their issues. They haven't spent the 20 years in the psychiatry office to do the hard work. Yep. And, you know, so choosing better and being better is good.

Thank you very much, Ken, for coming on the show. Let's get a plug for your.com and your books, etc., etc. Yeah, absolutely. You can find me and my books at dadsoffaith.com, D-A-D-S-O-F-F-A-I-T-H.com. That's where you will find Divorce But Still Dad. That's where you will find The Love of a Father. That's where you will find Pancake Dad. That's where you will find Ice Cream Dad. And that's where you will find bad dogs. So those are my five books. I'm in the, I'm in the

midst of, of adding to the children's series. I call it the engaged kids, children's series, pancake dad and ice cream dad are the first two books. The next one coming out is pizza dad. And then after that one date night dad. So just stay tuned. We continue to put more books out there, but we appreciate your support. Dads of faith.com. There you go. The Pizza Dad. That sounds like a guaranteed winner there. Maybe Taco Tuesday Dad. Can't wait to tell you about that one. There you go. Taco Tuesday Dad. There you go. Can't lose with pizza and tacos, man. Cannot at all. You're right. If you ever meet somebody who doesn't like pizza and tacos, like you should- Ice cream.

Or ice cream. There cream there you go pancakes i mean why hate pancakes what do pancakes do to you uh so there you go a wonderful discussion ken thank you very much for coming the show we really appreciate it thank you for having me i truly enjoyed it there you go and thanks amount is for tuning in we've truly enjoyed having you as well hopefully you learned something today and educate yourself and made your life better. And if you didn't damn it, go read, listen to the show already. Go to good reason.com.

For just Christmas, YouTube.com. For just Christmas, LinkedIn.com. For just Christmas and tick tock.com. For just Christmas one. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other.

Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time. And that should.