Parenting: Benjamin Leonard

Minister of Children at First Baptist Church Kearney, Abraham Leonard, interviews his own father, Pastor Benjamin Leonard, on parenting. Benjamin shares his beautiful, educated, and practiced insights with the world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hello, welcome to the Kearney Kids Parenting Show. I am your host, Abraham Leonard, Minister of Children at First Baptist Church Kearney. I am so glad that you have joined us. Well, welcome to the show, the most influential father in my life, my very own father, Pastor Benjamin Leonard, coming at us all the way from Kabul, Missouri. How are you? I'm doing pretty good and excited to be on the podcast with you. Well, could you tell us a little bit about your family? Of course, I'm a part of your family, your ministry, and just how you're doing.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03

Well, my family consists of my wife, Valerie, who is a manager at the local coffee shop and who is my partner in crime and pretty much everything that we do together. I'm grateful for her and our ministry. Here and all that she does but most importantly for her ministry to our three boys of which Abraham you are the oldest and then Jeremiah and Josiah all of them are teenagers or above. And so this is a new time in our family with lots of milestones as we have the baby of the family getting his permit and they're in high school or now you are in college. And so family life has changed quite a bit this year for us. And so trying to navigate that, but feeling very blessed and love watching the three boys grow up, each in their own very different and unique interests and personalities, yet undeniably brothers. And so grateful for that part of our family. As far as ministry goes, I'm in my 11th year at First Baptist Church of Kabul, where I am the senior pastor here and have been for a long time. We're a I like to say we're a small church and a big building, and so 40-something years of deferred maintenance and trying to catch up on that over the last 12 years, as well as reach a community in which we have a past for mistakes that we've done and things of that, but also a present with the last 12 years of seeking to the best of our ability to Amen. Amen. watch out the youngest one has his permits stay off the road that's right that's right although if we're honest he will be the least crazy of the three boys in the car so um i'm not not as worried

SPEAKER_01: 3:37

so well that's good to hear um well to start off i want to start off with something kind of light do you have any good parenting memories maybe a couple of your favorite parenting memories

SPEAKER_00: 3:49

Well, my favorite parenting memories all surround gospel conversations with each of you boys. And I can think of one with each of you. And thinking through those are always special to me, whether that's taking you to the evangelism workshop and having that conversation or Having conversations sitting on the edge of Jeremiah's bed or talking to Josiah while driving him to a practice somewhere and about those deep things. And so those are some favorite memories for sure. But as I think back, obviously there was a time that you were extremely into fitness. And some of my best memories are those early, early, early mornings in which you'd wake me up at 5 in the morning to go work out at the gym. And we'd spend time together and talk about life and school and everything. and things of that nature. And I'd see you, uh, accomplish new goals that you'd set for yourself. And, um, those are some of my, my best memories. Um, and the same could be said of, of your brothers as well. Um, and watching them, um, uh, accomplish new things and being able to, to be a part of that, uh, with Jeremiah, most of my best memories come with music and, you know, uh, uh, Him and I cruising with the windows down and the music blaring and laughing together about that. And with Josiah, you know, being in the gym, throwing the ball around, helping him rebound balls and having deep conversations. So a lot of my good memories are surrounded around gospel conversations and just private opportunities where I get to be with you boys. and and doing that um i also would say that um one of my favorite parenting memories would be um us hiking in colorado together as a family and uh that journey and i don't know it was just kind of a milestone i felt like we'd all kind of come to a place where we each uniquely had something to say and offer, but we were growing and experiencing things together, and we were away just as a family. And so those are some of my best parenting memories.

SPEAKER_01: 6:30

Well, I want to kind of go into something a little bit harder now. Could you tell us about some hard times that you have had as a parent and how you've overcame those hard times?

UNKNOWN: 6:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 6:45

Well, my hard times as a parent have probably centered around a couple of things. They've centered around you boys and the hard times you're experiencing. So walking through life with people. bullying you boys or treating you poorly. And, you know, as a dad and my sinfulness, I just want to go and yell at that kid that's, you know, doing something or, or, you know, I want to just fix it. And I couldn't, I couldn't fix it. And so walking through seasons, it felt like, and which, I saw you guys, the boys struggle with hard relationships with other people. That, that was, that was difficult for me as, as a parent and knowing how to do that, how to walk through it and not take charge and, and those kinds of things. Yeah. But then I'd also say another bit of the hard times that I've struggled with is seasons where I allow other things to distract me from my priority as a parent. And whether that be work or hobbies or something else, and then you look back on those seasons times that you've missed and there's a feeling of guilt um there is a sense of you know how do i make this right um what do i do about these things and and how do i how do i fix this you know and and ultimately you can't have that you know i grew up in an era um in which you watched pastors abandon their families for the work of ministry um And that's not a problem just for pastors, by the way. So if there's listeners that are listening that are faithfully serving the Lord by being godly workers or bosses or business owners, it applies to them too. But I saw that. And honestly, I feel like that pressure was still on pastors even today, where there's kind of an expectation that, the family comes second. And yet scripture says that if a pastor doesn't manage his own household well, that he's not fit for the ministry. And so finding those seasons in my life where I was distracted by building projects, and so I'm dedicating literally every spare moment and the time that I was spending with you boys was putting up and down scaffolding to work on windows in the church or sweeping the floors of the dust to get ready for the next Sunday morning while we're working on stuff or that was a failure on my part. And it's a failure for my family as a whole to And the way I treated my wife during that time and not being there for her. And I'd add to that, you know, just other times in ministry in which I allowed work, ministry to get in the way of those things. And so the question then is how do I overcome them? Well, I could never have that time back. And so the only thing I can do and could do was to ask for forgiveness and to try to explain to you boys why that was wrong and ask for your help in the future and to commit myself to making family a priority during those times. That was just one example. I mean, I feel like we kind of as individuals kind of go through ebbs and flows where It's new temptations, new distractions. But learning this Sunday, I preached from Psalm 78. And in Psalm 78, the ass tells them that he will not hide the dark sayings, but will tell them to the coming generations. And the verses that follow are all the mistakes of their fathers and grandfathers.

UNKNOWN: 11:41

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00: 11:41

And I think it's important that when we fail as parents, that we confess that to our children and teach them to learn from those failures and mistakes and not to make them themselves, but to learn from them that the next generation would see the glory of God greater. I mean, that's kind of the point of the rest of Psalm 78. And so, yeah, all that to say that the hard times in my life or in my parenting life have been helping you boys deal with the sin of other people and helping you boys deal with my sin and, and how we interact with those things. And so, um, I think all parents could, could learn, learn from that. It's important to be honest about those things. So, um, does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01: 12:37

Yeah. Yeah. That was good. Some good things. examples of hard times as a parent. And of course, you're a pastor. And so those may look slightly different for everyone, but kind of as you explained, that's applicable to everybody. Anybody can struggle with putting their work first, whether like you said, that's being in the business world or maybe that's, you know, we see that as a common theme throughout parents. Or

SPEAKER_00: 13:06

I'd say even hobbies too, like not just... Not just work, but when you, you know, oftentimes I feel like we do hobbies to distract us from the difficulty of life or things like that. And so then we can begin running to those instead of, so that could be any form of hobby that we turn to over and against our responsibilities of being faithful as a husband and father.

SPEAKER_01: 13:39

take you know weeks weeks on weeks sitting in the woods instead of being home not saying that being in the woods at all is wrong but instead of being home with their families at all and they'll completely abandon their families or you can see that with a lot of different hobbies where they'll they'll neglect their family oh i need i need time away maybe that's watching tv playing video games whatever it is we see that even yeah that's running rampant in our world so That's really good. If you were going to go back in time, back to when I was born, and you were going to give yourself some parenting advice before becoming a father, you were going to tell yourself, you know, this is what you need to know, Benjamin. What would that be?

SPEAKER_00: 14:28

Well, I had a really good professor in school that when you were born, he was... talking to me about the funnel of parenting and how um you know authority is one of the the best things that you can teach your kids and um you know how you know we wouldn't have question and answer time with you guys um and you know you being the oldest we'd have to often remind you of you know you're not your brother's authority and so we talked a lot about authority and but he would talk to us about authority and instruction and obedience and he would talk about it in the form of a funnel in which you should be most restrictive when a child is younger and as they grow and mature you should give them more and more and more freedom and that was incredible advice for us because when everybody else even ourselves wanted to laugh at times of disobedience, we knew that that had consequences in the future. That disobedience at three may seem cute, but that same disobedience at 13 would be devastating, right? And so I was so grateful for that advice. But one of the things that I struggled with in that process, if I could go back and tell myself things was, When it comes to things that are non-disciplinary, it's okay to let you fail. It's okay to let a child grow from failures. I mean, all throughout Scripture, we're told that failure, struggling, difficulty is meant to produce something in us, right? Yeah. And I think I took that same mantra of... of discipline and tried to apply it to just life in general of things like if you were working on a project, it's okay for it to not be perfect. You know, it's okay for it to fall apart or for you to make a mistake or things of that nature. You know, growing up in a pastor's home, I think one of the temptations is, you know, things aren't cheap and money isn't growing on trees, right? And I said this about you on Sunday, so I'll confess it now. I've never known a child to break more things than you. You had a unique giftedness at breaking things. And so rather than allowing those to be mistakes that you learned from and the cost, you know, dad would freak out over things replacing something or you know things like that and the money associated with that and we've had a lot of trash cans and trash can lids in my oh my goodness uh hard on the trash can lids um but uh if i could go back i i would tell myself you know what it's not that big of a deal and there's a greater education in the failure and in the brokenness and just the consequences of not having something or not being able to do something and learning those things. I think that's what I think. You kind of gave me a heads up on a few of the questions here, and that's kind of what I was thinking through. If I could go back, there's more important things in those moments to teach. The other thing I'd probably tell myself is, to not lecture in the moment. I am the king of wanting to lecture you boys when you make a mistake. And, and I, and I don't think it's wrong. I still don't think it's wrong to use a failure as an opportunity to teach. Yeah. Um, but when it's immediate, oftentimes it comes across not as teaching, but as angst and bitterness and anger and, and, And I wish I would have told myself, give yourself some more space between the teaching moment and the instruction. Just for me personally. Some dads, that may not be an issue. When Josiah's a dad, he's so easygoing. He may not struggle with that like I do. But I just wish I kind of would have... would have taken a little bit step back and grateful for your mother to remind me of that and be like, Hey, you probably need to give them a little bit of space and then, and then come back to it. So,

SPEAKER_01: 19:27

yeah, that's, that's really good. I want to end on a, on a wider note. I've got a lot of different answers doing these podcasts interviews, but here it goes. I'm kind of curious to see maybe a little nervous to see what you're going to say. Could you give us a funny parenting story? What's maybe your favorite funny parenting story?

SPEAKER_00: 19:53

There's so many, Abraham. And since you're hosting the podcast, I don't want to throw you under the bus or anything, but there are so many. And thinking through... Some of these things, there are some things that are funny now that weren't funny then. You know, to go along with the theme of all the other questions you've asked, my friends used to always say I was the most patient person they ever met. And I always say that's because they knew me before I had children. And, you know, we used to camp a lot, and camping was always a thing, and I can remember, you know, funny stories there. I can remember the time that, you know, it started pouring. We have a fire going and it's and we're cooking. And I tell you boys to grab all the stuff and bring it underneath the stove. The tarp, you know, there that were there and, you know, I'm thinking things like chairs that are fabric and, you know, the things that might get wet. Right. And it might matter. But what do you do? You go and grab the grate off the fire. and hand it to me in the middle of a storm because you're worried about the, the great getting wet. Um, um, and of course, you know, everybody that was there says that was my Hulk moment, which I threw the great and I'm not worried about the great it's raining. Um, you know, a failure on my part in which I have to confess and repent. And, you know, we kind of laugh about it now, but then it probably, uh, wasn't as funny as it is now. I can still picture it in my head a little bit. I'm sorry, son. I really am sorry that that's the memory. No, but I can remember it actually came up the other day on your mother's video memories or picture memories as we were going through them. I can remember as a kid or as a toddler, you loved food. And so some of my favorite memories were, this picture comes up, we had this weird alley kitchen and you could go out either side and we had the baby gate on both sides, and your mom would have to sneak into the kitchen to start cooking dinner. Because if you knew she was cooking dinner from that point forward, you would stand at the baby gate and shake it and say, eat, eat, like you were Baby Hulk. And so those things, or I can remember at the same time, same apartment, your mother and I are sitting at the table eating, you're in your little high chair, and all of a sudden the kitchen table collapses. And... We realized what you had been doing underneath the kitchen table. You had been taking the nuts off the bolts that held together the kitchen table. And so the kitchen table fell apart on us. Of course, you were only two and we didn't realize that's what you were doing underneath the table. You always just like to hide underneath there like it was your little fort. And so we didn't think anything of it. But you were two, three years old and taking apart things. And so... Those are some of the funny parenting stories I can remember that I think of often.

SPEAKER_01: 23:53

Well, those are pretty good. And I think that's a good note to end on today, a light note to end on today. On behalf of all the listeners and myself, I want to say thank you for being on the show. We really appreciate you agreeing to join. to doing this. Thank you for joining me. I hope this was an encouragement to you. Please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with the people around you.