The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - "Kid’s Bible in a Year with Teddy"

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

How do we keep our children close to God? So many of us fear that our kids will lose their faith. Others are suffering because their children have left the Church. Today, Jeff addresses this issue and also welcomes a very special guest named Teddy. Teddy shares how his faith has been inspired and how his love for Jesus continues to grow. Snippet from the Show In order to raise saints, we too must strive to be saints. We must live a life that we want our children to live. Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit ascensionpress.com/thejeffcavinsshow for full shownotes!

Welcome to the Jeff Kaven Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together in living as activated disciples. This is show 331, Kids Bible in a Year with Teddy. Welcome, my dear friend, to the Jeff Kaven Show. I'm Jeff, and here we talk about things related to the Bible. discipleship, learning to share Christ with other people, cultivating, cultivating an atmosphere of the word of God and obedience to it in the home. You know, I get so much email and so many questions you name it about life. But one of the consistent questions that I get year after year is a question that maybe you've thought about. And that is, how in the family do you, keep the tradition going. How do you get your kids to get it? You know, I've been to a lot of

meetings before where people came up to me after I was done speaking and they had tears in their eyes and they said, we have eight kids. They're all gone. And none of them are in the church today. And they're really crushed and broken as a result of it. And then the, you know, the next question is always, well, what can we do to get them back? Well, there's a lot of things that you can do. We've had some shows on that in the past, but I want to talk to you today about how can you begin to prevent that? And it really starts in the home, and it starts when kids are young when they begin to imitate us. So today, what I'm going to do in the first part of the show is I want to share with you some of the things that your kids can see in your life that

will give them answers and a path to follow in the future when they need to have their questions answered you know sometimes kids that are young they don't have any questions they're just sort of out there living and going 100 mile an hour down the road but there comes a time in their life where they start to ask some serious questions and your example while they were growing up can become literally a treasure chest and i have seen this over and over where parents really set a great example for their kids growing up and then their kids kind of wandered off and the parents were obviously very bothered by that, but their kids ended up coming back to the faith. And in a lot of the stories that I hear, it was due to some repetitious discipline, repeating

discipline in the parents' life that ended up bringing them back, like reading the Bible on a daily basis. They found that when their kids were really searching and they were mature now as adults, they started to pick up that Bible just like dad did or just like mom did. So I want to talk to you about that just for a few minutes here. And then I'm going to introduce you to a phenomenal young man who watched his parents, listened to what they listened to, and actually developed the kid's Bible in a year. His name is Teddy. He's nine years old. And I'm going to bring him on in the second half of this show. And you get to meet him. We'll talk to him a little bit. his dad about that, you know, and how that ended up taking place. So, by the way, if you do

want show notes, you know the drill. If you haven't got them, get them today. And all you got to do is type my name, Jeff Kaven's, one word, and then send it, text it to the number 33777. Can't get any more biblical than that. 33777. And we'll get you the show notes in perpetuity on and on. And I give a lot of good notes. I really do. So what about this issue of your children imitating your life or grandparents? Your grandchildren imitating your life. Tell you a quick little story.

It's so cute. My grandson, Frankie, he's a very observant kid, very observant. And when we all meet at the family cabin shared among a lot of people, he will show up. And for a long period of time, when he would show up, I would be in the back, out in the woods there, as I, I would be out there on the picnic table in the back, and I would be studying scripture. And I'd have two or three Bibles opened up and some notes in my computer. And he would come out and he would look at me. Now, I had pencil markers, or colored pencils, I guess we'd call them, and about 12 colors. And I would be marking my Bible in a systematic way that meant something to me.

He would come out and he didn't know how to read at that point. And he would look at me and say, Grandpa, what are you doing? I said, well, I'm marking some things in the Bible that really mean a lot to me. You know, like, he said, like what? And I said, well, the words that deal with Jesus and who God is, that's purple. Yellow is for discipleship and orange is for evangelization. Blue is for Mary and hope. And light green is for liturgy in the mass.

And I just gave him a meaning to all the colors. Well, the next time he came out to the cabin, he had one of these real small Gideon Bibles that you can get at a hotel. I don't know where he got that one, but I'm not going to ask. And it was the New Testament. And he came with some colored pencils. And he ran over to my table when he arrived and said, Grandpa, look, look. And he showed me his Bible and his colored pencils. And he opened up that New Testament, and he marked some of them in color.

and to foster this, you know, you could say, hey, buddy, what are you doing? You're going to ruin that Bible by doing that. I said, okay, that's fantastic. Now tell me, what did you mark here? He said, I don't really know because I can't read, but he was going through this imitating, and I wanted to foster that. I wanted to take that moment as a cherished teaching moment. And it has grown since then where he would come over and he wanted to mark more.

and I got him now to the point where I pick a verse, tell him what it means, and then ask him what color, and he can highlight it then. Well, there's no doubt in my mind that when it's all said and done and I'm pushing daisies, that if he gets one of my Bibles and it's marked up with the color-coded system, all of it's going to come back to him. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if he ends up marking his Bible when he becomes an adult. In fact, I'd be willing to bet on it that he will. Why? Because Grandpa did. And what colors? Well, what colors of Grandpa used?

And who got Grandpa's colored pencils after he died? You did, right? Your grandchildren are your children. And so that's one example there of setting an example for kids and grandkids that they may follow someday. Now, if you just look at Bible reading in general, how many times? times have your kids or grandkids actually witnessed you sitting in the chair in the morning or night and reading the Bible? How many times have they ever had the pleasure of observing you reading the Bible? If not, it's about time. It's about time that we start setting an example of

reading the Bible. Now, our girls growing up, they saw us reading the Bible quite a bit. And our grandchildren know that if they sleep over at our house, they're going to have devotions in the morning with us. So we get them up and we read the Bible in the morning and we even taught them about Lexio de Vina. Other 12, 8, and 5 right now, but we taught them about Lexio de Vina. So reading the Bible can become a very powerful thing. Number two, listening to the Bible in the car or a podcast in the car. When parents listen to scripture in the car or podcasts about the faith, you'd be surprised at how much these kids get from it. I get letters. I get letters. and people at conferences all the time telling me that, yeah, we play your great adventure CDs

for the children when they're, when they go to sleep at night. I don't know how I think about that. People are using my teaching to put people to sleep. Maybe, hmm. Well, you could do that. You could do that. But in today's show, I got Teddy just ready to come in here in a moment. And that's what happened in his life.

He saw his parents and listened to his parents listening to Bible in a year, thought to himself, I could do one of those for kids, and he did. So, praying in the morning is something your kids can see you do when you're seeking God, especially in the times when you might be struggling. Daily Mass. Your kids know, you go to Mass. That's an example for them. You take them with you.

Anointing your home with Holy Water. previously i told you about a man by the name of barry over in philadelphia who does that every single day and his kids know it and it's become an example for the family i prayed the erronic prayer for all of my girls before they went to school every day may the lord bless you i put my hands on their head and said may the lord bless you and keep you and cause his face to shine upon you and give you peace and i prayed the whole blessing on them every single day and they would say dad i got to go quick the bus, give me the blessing. So I pray the blessing on them. A dinner prayer is something also on a daily basis. Inviting your friends over to the house for a barbecue or a get-together on some semi-regular

basis. Your kids get to know that mom and dad have other Christian friends who come over. An anniversary, a special time in their life can mean a lot. Like, for example, I know one guy. Every single one of his children who reaches, I think it's 16 years of age. he takes him on a one week Camino, walk of the Camino to St. James, and every single one. You say, oh, man, that could get expensive. Well, it's a flight and some, and, you know, a hostel and food. But think about it. They're just about to become adults, and you're going to spend a week on an adventure with them, and you can walk with them all day and talk. You can pour into them the best things in your life. Maybe you're not going to go on the Camino, but you could go on a camping trip.

or a long hike with something tied into it that's a lot of fun for them. Maybe a novena. Maybe you have a regular novena you pray, taking them to confession. And we can't leave out the rosary, praying the rosary at special times. A lot of families have a family rosary at the same time every day. These are all things that kids notice, and they may imitate. Now, I want to encourage you to set up something in your life, even if you don't have kids, set up something for a nephew, a niece, something that is repeatable, that kids can take

as, yep, that's what Aunt Susie always did, that's what Aunt Helen always did, or Uncle Frank, he always did that, you know. I remember in the summers that Grandma So-and-So would take us out to the Dairy Queen and then afterwards to go to the lake and she'd take out that rosary. Bishop Paul Dudley, my hero, in the Twin Cities, since passed away, he talks about every single morning his mom picked up the little black book of prayer picked up her rosary and took her long walk out to the road from the farm and that's where she prayed every day when when he took me on a tour of his childhood farm he showed me the road he basically imitated it he's a priest now

he really imitated it huh so those are some things that you can do now i'm going to take a break when i come back i want to uh i want to introduce you to teddy and his father, and get a little background on how this started and what Teddy did to develop the kids' Bible in a year with Teddy. Teddy had this idea. They checked with Ascension, said, can we do it? And they said, go for it. So he did. And he's over 20 episodes now. We'll learn a little bit more about that. You're listening to The Jeff Kaven show. Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz. I want to let you know about an exciting announcement that could revolutionize the way you listen to the Bible in the air and the catechism in the

Ascension has released a new Bible and Catechism app called the Ascension app. No, here's what you get. In this app, you get the entire text of the Great Adventure Bible. This is incredible. You also get the entire text of the catechism of the Catholic Church, as long with the Catechism in your podcast, the Bible and your podcast, and transcripts for each episode. If you're like, I'm tired of listening to that guy, I just want to read it. There's complete transcripts from each and every episode.

One thing that makes this app incredibly unique is that it includes special features that make connections between the Bible and the catechism so crystal clear through color-coded references and all these links. The hyperlinks are amazing. I tried it out and I'm like, oh, my gosh, it kind of has changed the way I read through the catechism, kind of changed the way I read through the Bible. These features will help you navigate the Bible and catechism even more seamlessly so you can get more out of your experience.

Also, the app provides almost 1,000 answers to Bible questions. The people who listen to the Bible in the year, they wrote in with their questions. almost a thousand answers, and those answers come in the form of audio clips, video clips, as well as resources excerpted from some of Ascans' published works. If you want to download this app for free, super simple. Just go to the app store and search for Ascension app. I am telling you, if learning about the Bible and the catechism is important to you, then this app will change your life.

Over the last few years, there has been, I guess you could call it a revival in some ways of Bible study among Catholics. And part of the reason for that has been the Bible in a year podcast. The Father Mike Schmitz did with Ascension Presents, and I helped him out. And of course, we used the great adventure Bible timeline system to develop Bible in a year, where we went through the entire bit of scripture from Genesis all the way to Revelation, but we did it in chronological order and helped people along the way. And so many people have written in and have mentioned that that it's changed their life and for the first time they feel like they have the keys to get through the story and we know that teens are involved we know that single people are involved

married people are involved priests religious all kinds of backgrounds but recently it was brought to my attention that one young man by the name of teddy who's nine years old was so touched by the podcast in bible in a year that well he made his own he made his own show up kids Bible in a year with Teddy. He's nine years old. He joins me today on the show with his father, Sean, and I want to welcome both of you to the show. How are you? Yeah, good. Good. How are you? I think the first voice was Teddy. Sean, you were the second voice, right? That's right. It's so good to have both of you, both of you with me. You know, the story was written not too long ago about what Teddy had done, and he put together the Kids Bible in a year

podcast. I want to ask you, Sean, first. Tell me a little bit about your family and your walk with the Lord and how this ended up happening. Well, my wife, Stephanie and I, we've been married for 11 years now. Teddy is the first of six children that we have together, three boys and three girls. And Teddy has always shown a very deep love for the church, for God, for Scripture, for the Eucharist. And my wife and I were listening, you know, like so many millions of people around the world, we're listening to the Bible on a year podcast featuring yourself and Father Mike. And, you know, Teddy would listen in with us because he just enjoys hearing God's word.

And some of those episodes just aren't suitable in nature for children. And so some of those episodes we'd have to skip for Teddy. And so he had the idea that he'd like to do his own podcast. podcast. And so, you know, we wanted to support him. It took a little prodding and convincing from him for us to do the research and find out how to make a podcast. So this is a first attempt for your family at podcasting? That's correct. And did you listen to Bible in a year in the car mainly? Yes. Yeah, in the car or in the living room in the evening. We would listen to it on our phones. Well, that's fantastic. Well, Ted,

Eddie, you're the one I really want to talk to today. You're nine years old, right? Yes. And how did you get an idea to put together a podcast called Kids Bible in a year? Do you remember when you first came up with that idea? Yes. Tell me about it. So I wanted to make a podcast after yours and Father Mike's podcast. And my mom and dad said yes, so they set up a podcast.

on Spotify for me to do and spread the word of God for kids. Oh, that's wonderful. Had you ever worked on a podcast before, or was this the first one? Yes, this is the first one. And how long did it take you to get used to using the equipment? About five episodes. About five episodes. That's good.

What was it about the Bible in the year that you liked so much? Would you remember any of the things that Father Mike talked about? or that were mentioned on the show where you thought to yourself, I like that. No. Okay, but you definitely wanted to, you wanted to spread the word, right?

Yes. Okay, and so tell me a little bit about the show. How many episodes do you have? Because I know this is on Apple and other places where you can find really good podcasts. How many shows do you have now? 21. 21 episodes so far.

And you started in Genesis and how far have you gone as far as in the Bible. Do you remember? I'm in Exodus now. I just got in Exodus. You're in Exodus. So you really are going through this and covering a lot of the stories. Yeah. Wow, that's amazing. So how do you prepare for each show and tell me about what each show sounds like? What do you do on each show? I prepare by writing a prayer and talk about what I read in the Bible before. We picked it up.

I record it, and then my mom and dad put it out online for people to listen to it. Okay. So are you reading part of the scripture and then talking about it? Yes. Just like Father Mike does? Yes. Oh, that's fantastic. Tell me, you know, you're nine years old.

and I know that your friends must know that you're doing this. What did you tell them? What did you tell them you were doing? I was making a podcast and they should listen to it. And they should listen to it. What did they say after listening to it? It was awesome and incredible. It was inspiring to them.

That is what we want, right? Yes. That's what we want. You know, Father Mike and I, we worked on the Bible in a Year podcast, and that's exactly what we wanted from other people, as we wanted them to like it. We wanted them to think it's awesome. And we wanted them to get to know Jesus more than ever in fall in love with His Word. Are some of your friends reading the Bible with you now that weren't reading it before? I think so. Isn't that neat? Yes. That's what we really love too. We love getting letters like that or emails where people say, I never read the Bible much before. But after listening to Father Mike and you, we're reading it all the time now. That's what we wanted as well. I think that that is fantastic. Now, let me know, how did you come up with the name for the show? It's Kids Bible in a year with Teddy. How'd you come up with that? My parents inspired me to do a podcast, so they came up with the name, and I said, yes, the name.

That is so cool. I love that. Now, let me ask you this, because now you're a podcaster, and you're a Bible and a year guy now. Is there any story in the Bible? that you particularly like. You really like, you know, one story or two stories a lot. Which ones? Um, I like when Abraham is actually sacrificed his son. Oh, yeah. And when Jesus is crucified. Uh-huh.

Say, can you say that again? You, that's the story. That's, that's Genesis 22. That's when Abraham is going to sacrifice Isaac. And then what did you say after that? Jesus is crucified. Oh, you drew the, you drew the relationship right there. you got them together. That's so good. And that's, you know, that's what we're hoping that people will do is that they'll read the Old Testament and then they'll think about how Jesus fulfills every aspect of that Old Testament. And you know what, Teddy? A lot of people think that the Old Testament is kind of boring. They don't get it. But when you start to see Jesus fulfilling everything or completing everything in the Old Testament, then it's actually very exciting. It's kind of like a

puzzle that you're putting together and you're always looking in the New Testament for how Jesus, you know, fulfilled the Old Testament. Do you have a favorite character? Jesus. Yeah, you can't go wrong there, can you? Yeah. That's what it's all, that's what it's all about. What do you like about Jesus? How he died for all of our sins. Mm-hmm. Yep.

And he showed everyone that he could be baptized to. Sure. Show him how it was done. Mm-hmm. I couldn't agree more. That is fantastic. Well, you're kind of a little Father Mike. You're nine years old. What do you like about Father Mike? You've been listening to him for quite a while now with your parents in the car. What do you like about him? How he kind of does like the same order. Okay. Same order. He is following the same order as you pretty much. How about the way

Father Mike talks and he shares with you a little bit. Do you, have you learned from him and you take a little bit of that into your show? Yes, I have. What have you taken? Like the prayers, I've taken part of the prayers and part of my prayers. Sure. That is fantastic. Sean, you must be very proud.

I'm extremely proud and inspired. You don't see a lot of nine-year-olds doing podcasts that are imitating Father Mike and myself. absolutely not there's a lot a lot in this electronic age of you know video games and computers and everything else and you know teddy just picks out god's word and that's that's what he clings to you know he we like to share the story you know when he goes to bed at night oftentimes we go in and we find him with a with a headlamp on reading reading his bible at night the real bible The real one, yeah. Yeah, the new Catholic and Survivor Bible.

Oh, okay. And do you write down little notes, you know, to yourself thinking about shows in the future? That's what Father Mike and I do. We prepare for the shows by writing down notes sometimes. Do you do that? No. Okay. You probably can remember it better than us.

Yeah. That's good. So, Sean, what are the other kids doing? What do they think about their brother? they've all found it quite exciting to see him you know he's been you know featured in some articles and you know on some news interviews and so they think it's pretty cool when they see their older brother you know on the news or even when they hear his podcast you know we'll play it in the car and you know even our youngest one who's um about uh 19 months old now uh even she gets excited

when she hears Teddy on the radio. Sure. And what's beautiful about it is that that's going to stay on the Internet for a while now, you know. And it'll give people an opportunity to go through the Bible with you, Teddy, in a year from now or two years or three or four, even ten years from now. People will be able to go through the Bible, you know, with you in a year. Sean, I have another question for you, and that is how, from your point of view, How does Teddy break down the scripture so that kids can really understand the story? Well, one thing that's been really helpful is, you know,

we received permission from Ascension Press to utilize the Great Adventure Kids Catholic Bible Chronicles, which does a really good job pairing down the stories. I believe there's around 70 Bible stories where it pairs down some of those harder things that would be for most kids to discern and puts it in indefinitely. the context in a distilled form so he can share that and understand the story, understand how the story may be connected to others. And then he's able to relate because of how well that pairs it down for kids, he's able to relate that to his daily life.

A lot of his talks that he gives after reading the story are, you know, he comes up with that script. So there are things that he can understand and apply. Well, that's a great combination when you take the Bible, or we could call an adult Bible, the regular Bible, and then you take the children's Bible that Ascension puts together. Those 70 points really are the major points that we use in the Bible timeline that we teach to adults and teens. And when you take those and really look at them to a child's eyes, the truth comes out. And I think that it's very, very powerful. You know that we used to have people

that would use the teen Bible timeline, adult groups. They'd use the teen Bible timeline saying that's where we're at right now. We want to get a hold of that. And I think that, you know, you can learn so much from a child as well. And maybe there's some adults out there that are learning from Teddy. Teddy, what do you want to be when you grow up? A priest. You do.

You want to be a priest. Now, is that something that you've thought about for a long time? Or is that something that just came up after doing a podcast? Kind of a long time. Oh, you have been thinking about this for a long time. All right. I've got my own chalice. You have your own chalice.

My investments. You do. And so do you practice mass? Yes. You do. I did too as a kid, but I didn't have all of that. I couldn't convince my parents to buy me a chalice or vestments. But that's wonderful that you do.

And you know, practice makes perfect. You might end up being a priest someday. You've got a lot of time to discern and ask the Lord what he wants you to do in your life. But who knows, maybe podcasting is going to be something you do in the future as well. Most people don't start as young as you. Yeah. Good. Well, boy, this has been really, really good.

Teddy, what would you say to my audience out there in the podcast world? What would you say to them about Jesus? How would you encourage them? You should also listen to my podcast and Father Mike to go more in faith. Okay, that's it. Do you want to be encouraged, my friends? Listen to Kids Bible in a year with Teddy. And that is, of course, on Apple and in all other places that good podcasts are found.

Teddy, I can't thank you enough for joining me today on my show. And I'm going to continue to pray that God will use you with your friends and the young people who will listen to your podcast. And I pray that God will give you wisdom and discernment and knowledge. I'm going to pray for those things for you, okay? Thank you. Okay. And Sean, thank you so much for for allowing us to talk to Teddy. And I appreciate all the work that you're doing with Teddy and all the kids in your family. Do you have, as we close, do you have any words of wisdom, Sean, to parents who might have kids that are, you know, one to 12 years old or so. And they just need a bit of encouragement or a word of advice on how to get their kids engaged in the faith. What's worked for

you and Stephanie? Honestly, what's worked for us is, you know, a good prayer life, praying with your children, taking them to mass, ensuring that you're, you know, following the sacraments And, you know, really the power in the Eucharist, the power in God's church, and really just the power and prayer can really make all of the difference in our children's lives. And as much as we try to instill faith in our children, you know, our children have a connection with God as well. And it's been inspiring to watch that connection grow with Teddy. He certainly has a love for God. And, you know, we've learned a lot from Teddy. That's fantastic.

Well, Sean, thank you very much. And Teddy, thank you. And hope you guys have a great day. And maybe we'll check back in in a year or so. And I'm certainly going to pass this show on to Father Mike. And I'm sure he's going to enjoy listening to you, okay? All right. Thank you very much.

All right. God bless you. Well, my friends, that is Sean and his son, Teddy. I hope that that was a blessing to you. And I want to thank Teddy and his dad and his mother, Stephanie, who was not with us today. But isn't that inspiring? A young man, a boy who sees his parents, listens to his parents and says, I want to do that myself. Who knows how far this kid's going to go?

And I encourage you to pray for him, whatever he ends up becoming in life, pray that he becomes fruitful in his walk with the Lord. You know, that's how priests are born and they're formed oftentimes by imitating their zealous parents, their parents who love the Lord. Now, I'd like to end this by lifting up all of our kids and our grandkids and praying for them. And I know that in some situations, you're going through quite a battle right now, and you've reached out to me and let me know about that. And I want to lift everybody up to the Lord as we close this out. Lord Jesus, we pray in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and we lift up all of the kids and grandkids of grandchildren of those who are listening with me today.

We lift them up and we ask, oh God, that your hand would come upon them, free them, captivate them, hold them in your arms, draw them to your heart. May they hear the beat of your heart, oh God. May they be drawn to the example of their parents, even at a time of need, and adopt. the things that they have learned to come to know you in a deeper way. Lord, prevent them from harm, give them protection in their innocence, and draw them deep into the mystery of the Trinity. We pray this in Jesus' name, and we ask for the intercession of our mother. Hail Mary, full of grace.

The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. and at the hour of our death, amen. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Look forward to talking to you next week.