FamilyLife Today®

Jenifer Johnson: Our kids, especially when they end seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade, tenth grade, eleventh grade, they need their dad. Mama does a lot of work up until those ages, but then Dad really needs to step in because girls have hormones and so do moms.

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: And I’m Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave Wilson: Today we get to talk about the easiest thing in the world to do: be a parent.

Ann Wilson: And not only that, but discipling as a parent. Discipleship, because you know this about me. This is my jam. I love this topic of discipling our kids. I like to read about it. I didn’t do it all that well.

Dave Wilson: She likes to tell me how to do it. That’s what she’s excited about. You’re the dad; you do that. We’ve got Barrett and Jenifer Johnson in the studio. This is your lane. I mean, you’ve got a lot of lanes, but this is a big one.

Barrett Johnson: We were in the car coming over here. It’s one of those cars that has the auto-correct if you change lanes without putting your blinker on. The car corrects you. I hate that. So this is not necessarily our lane. Literally, my tendency is to get out of the lane and maybe somehow God nudges you back.

Jenifer Johnson: And have your teenage daughter saying, "You’re not using your blinker!"

Ann Wilson: But this is a great topic and a great book. You’ve written other books that we’ll talk about later, but this disciple book, this discipleship, it’s actually called *Disciple Them Like Jesus*.

Barrett Johnson: Just a little low bar. I came up with that title or that whole premise twenty years ago and worked with our publisher to come up with it. Twenty years ago, God gave us a vision of this based on my golf game. I’m a golfer.

Dave Wilson: Wait, you’re a golfer. There’s one question when you have a golfer in here. What’s the handicap?

Barrett Johnson: I’m the worst golfer I know. I love to play, but I’m terrible. But I thought to myself, if I could just learn to emulate Tiger Woods' swing perfectly, how he moves, if I could just copy him exactly, I’d be a pretty good golfer.

That turned into a thought of, if we want to be good disciplers of our kids, which I believe is important, passing on the faith to the next generation, let’s find a good model or good example. Who can we think of in the history of mankind that was a pretty effective discipler?

I think we can all agree that Jesus did a pretty good job. He took twelve boneheaded guys—he’d be a zero handicap, a scratch golfer there—but he took these normal guys and they changed the world. So if we can disciple our kids in some way, shape, or form like Jesus did, we’re barking up the right tree.

Dave Wilson: What is your ministry? What do you guys do?

Barrett Johnson: We served in the local church as youth pastor and a family minister through Texas and Atlanta, Georgia for twenty-five years. But we started this nonprofit. I blogged under the name Imperfect Normal Families Only. So we became INFO for Families. That was the blog website, INFO for Families. Let’s just make our ministry INFO for Families.

Dave Wilson: I have found in forty-five years of ministry as a pastor and in family and marriage ministry, most parents have never sat down before they had kids, or even with kids, and said, "What are we trying to raise?"

Ann Wilson: Of course the secret's Jesus, but the secret is, I don’t know what the goal is. If we’ve never articulated it, we don’t know what we’re trying to do because then you’ve got to work back from that goal to say, what’s our strategy? So let me ask you, what would you say the goal is for a Christian parent?

Barrett Johnson: We think parents sometimes, like Stephen Covey said years ago in *Seven Habits*, we spend our life climbing the ladder only to realize the ladder's leaned up against the wrong wall. I think that’s a perfect question. When we teach this stuff live and encourage parents in the space, we ask them to sit down and write: what is your goal as a parent? What’s your objective?

The top three answers out there in the world are: I want my kid to be happy, I want them to be secure, and I want them to be successful. Those are the three goals. I think parents spin their wheels and spend all their energy towards that.

Ann Wilson: Why is that the wrong wall?

Barrett Johnson: Those are not bad answers. Happiness, successful, secure—those are not bad goals. But I think they’re incomplete because they’re rooted in what’s going to make me happy.

We shift from that to this conversation about looking in the Bible cover to cover. Let’s find every verse in there about what God says parents are supposed to do. There’s honestly not a whole lot in there. We’ve got this big, thick Bible. There’s certainly plenty of teaching in there, but there’s not a lot of, "Let me go to the Bible and see all the things that God says parents should do."

But there’s a whole lot in the Bible about what’s important to God. What we see fundamentally as important to God is that we, as followers of Him, walk closely with Him, commit to glorifying Him with our lives, and join Him in His big agenda of transforming this world into heaven on earth, into His kingdom being made.

That’s His value system. God has entrusted these youngsters with us for eighteen to twenty years of influence. I believe the fundamental goal of parents, the responsibility, is to make disciples. It's to take advantage of that twenty-year window we have to help them to fall in love with Jesus and get caught up in His amazing agenda for their lives to join Him in something bigger than themselves.

Ann Wilson: Well, let me ask you this. You have stage four cancer. You said you started this book twenty years ago, but then you came back to it. I’m wondering, and I want you to tell us about that journey, but I’m guessing as a parent, you feel that with a passion now. And with eight grandchildren?

Jenifer Johnson: I really feel more passionate about them because all of my kids are raised and I did my very best unto God. I wasn't a good mom, not a perfect mom. I would take back so many things that I did. But eight grandchildren that we want them to know their Pops and we want them to know Jesus.

Dave Wilson: What are your names with them?

Barrett Johnson: I’m Pops, which is a reasonable grandfather name.

Jenifer Johnson: My maiden name is Bird, B-I-R-D. The worst last name to have to grow up with. Birdie birdie in the sky, why’d you do that in my eye? All that kind of stuff was traumatic for me. So it was so nice to marry a Johnson and my email is Ladybird Johnson. We’re from Texas.

She wanted to be Mama Bird because that was my great-grandmother. My first grandson called me Beeba. He made up my name, Beeba. He couldn’t get out "Mama Bird," so I’m Beeba. I wonder when we’re in public places and they’re saying, "Beeba, Beeba," what people think. Am I the nanny? Am I the help? What’s a Beeba?

Dave Wilson: So how long ago did you start the cancer journey?

Barrett Johnson: I've been healthy all my life. I’m fifty-seven years old. Never had a problem, never had a cavity. I’m flawless and perfect in every way. I haven’t had a few cavities, but not in the last forty-five years.

Three years ago, I discovered a tumor on my salivary gland. We removed it and biopsied it. It’s something called adenoid cystic carcinoma. Four in a million people get it, so it’s very rare. It can be aggressive at times with some people, and it’s turned out to be aggressive with me.

Not a lot of research on it because it’s so rare, so there’s not a lot of detail on it. I’ve had to work really hard to find treatment. We removed it, we radiated it like crazy in the spring of 2023. About fifty percent of cases, they do that and you go live your life and you’re fine. The other fifty percent, it tends to metastasize to your lungs and then jump off from there to other places.

About a year and change after my treatment, we found it in my lungs and the last year and a half it has now spread to four organs and I’ve got it in about six different bones all over my body. So I’ve got stage four cancer and the prognosis is not good.

The blessing is today I feel good and the treatment I’m on right now is keeping things suppressed. But the treatment studies we look at from MD Anderson, God bless the treatment I’m getting and the doctors caring for me, but most of the studies show this will work for a while, but maybe not long-term.

But praise God today, I feel good. But to your question, Ann, there’s now an urgency on my life. I have to live like we all need to live, like our days are numbered.

Dave Wilson: And honestly, when someone says, "You know, we’re all going to die one day," I say, yeah, it’s true, but I’ve got a clock ticking on me more than most people do. Jenifer, how has that changed your marriage?

Jenifer Johnson: I hang on him. I’m embarrassed if we have arguments, which we do—still just dumb stuff—and I’m just like, we have to stop ourselves. There are just no words.

I thought it was so sweet when you said you don’t even mind his snoring anymore. Because he’s breathing. We have been given that gift of knowing our days are short. We have vacationed a lot more. Our kids are like, "You’re going on a trip again?" But we just have had so much fun in the last few years together.

Barrett Johnson: For me, it’s been three priorities, and maybe the principles of this book have driven that. I want to have quality time with my girl. I want to pour life and truth and legacy into my kids and grandkids. And I want to do whatever kingdom work God gives me opportunity for.

To live is Christ, to die is gain. Paul is in prison writing this. I know that when God takes me home, I fear for my people that I’m leaving behind, obviously. That concerns me every single day. But to live is Christ. I want to live every day.

Back to the original question, Dave, the message of this. I think this is a fundamental purpose of parenting, of grandparenting: to leave a legacy that matters. Steve Farrar said years ago, my favorite quote in the world: "I’m probably not going to know my great-great-grandkids, but my great-great-grandkids are going to know me. They’re going to know me not because they met me, but they’re going to know me because of what I leave with my kids and my grandkids and what they pass on to the generations that come behind them."

God help me, passing on a legacy of faith is what I want to do. You said that earlier. I started writing this book twenty years ago when my kids were young. I got about maybe halfway through writing it and God said, "Stop writing. Because you’re not allowed to write anymore about what you think parents should do with their kids until you start doing it better with your own children." Have you been there and done that?

I laid it down. It was in a Word doc in my computer for twenty years. And this six-month window in the spring of 2023, when I was aggressively fighting cancer and going to radiation every day and not able to eat real food, on a liquid diet for two months because I couldn’t swallow, I think God just said, "You know what? You still stink."

In a loving, gracious way, maybe you’re not any better at this, but Jesus certainly was a model. So tell people what Jesus did and let’s use Christ as our model for making disciples. You can articulate that message.

Dave Wilson: As you are walking through a cancer journey, I’m just wondering, is there fear?

Barrett Johnson: Fear hasn't been a driving force, to be honest. Obviously, I don’t fear death. I fear leaving those behind that I love, obviously. But I think I fear running out of time. That’s probably it.

Jenifer Johnson: I have so much fear. My sweet counselor, the first book we read through together was on fear because out of all the emotions, the biggest one is fear.

This has been my boy and my husband for thirty-seven years. I moved from my parents’ house to a dorm room to a tiny apartment with my husband. I’ve never been alone. I’ve never lived without him. And I just don’t want to. You could interview thousands and thousands of people who would say this is the kindest man and most godly man I’ve ever met in my life. It’s true. It's one of the reasons why I married him, because I dated Christian guys that didn’t live for Christ in college. I was like, man, this guy behind closed doors is a Christian and he is a strong lover of Jesus.

Ann Wilson: That’s a compliment after being married this long.

Dave Wilson: Well, well done. You could be at home living in fear under your roof, but you’re out spreading the message of discipleship with our kids.

Jenifer Johnson: We want to speak, we want to get it in, we want to talk as much as we can. If I have to push him in a wheelchair to talk, I’ll push him in a wheelchair. I’ll do whatever it takes until the day he dies. We will profess Christ with every cell of our body.

Dave Wilson: I just met you a few minutes ago. It feels like you’re sprinting. You’re running, you’re not slowing down. The pace is fast.

Barrett Johnson: When there’s a running-out-of-time urgency, it causes focus. Those days I have where I feel like I wasted time today, those are moments I won’t get back. When time is short, clarity becomes everything.

Jenifer Johnson: So then we struggle or we watch a dumb show together just to be next to each other. I literally don’t want to be away from him for a night. I don’t want to go spend the night somewhere by myself with my girlfriends as much as I love them, but I just can’t even stand being away from him.

Ann Wilson: And I’m sure you feel that same sense with your grandkids. How old are the grandkids?

Jenifer Johnson: We’ve got a seventh-grade boy who owns my heart and my every fiber of my being. I took care of him when he was first born. We have a very tight bond and I’m so grateful that he’ll come up in front of his seventh-grade friends at church and hug me and run to me, practically.

Barrett Johnson: Then we had six girls in a row. Twin girls in there. And then the last one is another boy. We have bookend boys so far. He just turned a year old.

Dave Wilson: One of the questions we get most often this time of year is, what study should we do with our small group? Honestly, if you haven’t done the new *Art of Marriage*, it’s been refreshed, redone, and it is awesome. You should do it. Give it a shot.

Ann Wilson: You can do the *Art of Marriage* and maybe you want to do a parenting study. We have the *Art of Parenting* or *Vertical Marriage*. They’re all video studies and workbooks, and they’re on sale right now through the end of August—twenty-five percent off.

Dave Wilson: I like sales. So go to FamilyLifeToday.com/shop, pick out whichever small group study you want to do, and go watch God work in your life and even more importantly, in the lives of those that you’re leading. FamilyLifeToday.com/shop.

Okay, so if we’re going to disciple like Jesus, where do we start?

Barrett Johnson: I think it’s taking a good look at who Jesus was and not who we are. We truly can get our alignment wrong and the goals wrong and the focus wrong. Let's say, what was important to Jesus? We see that Jesus, in three years, he transformed because of who he was, obviously, he transformed the lives and the focus and the patterns and the commitments of these twelve guys and they changed the world.

It starts with seeing Jesus as our example. Obviously, Jesus wasn’t a parent, but he was one who was committed to making disciples. So I think it first starts with us as parents realizing my objective. Parenting is discipleship. Period. Everything else is superfluous.

Help your kids do well in school and help your kids be good friends—well, all of those are extensions of God’s big agenda to help them be followers of Him. So if you’re a parent, you’re a discipler.

The model or the paradigm, I think that’s the hard part as parents. We think, okay, go and be a discipler. Your job is to disciple your kids. Now, go do it.

Jenifer Johnson: That would freak me out. What does that mean? What do I do? Until I read this book and then it makes me feel like the pressure's not so high. But the number one thing is us walking with Jesus ourselves.

When they were young, they all had to spend a quiet time in their rooms and I would, too. Sometimes I’d fall asleep and dream, I was so tired. But a lot of times I was reading God’s Word, I was reading parenting books and stuff and I just thought, this is scary because I’m home with them more than he is.

I wrote the foreword to this book. We know a lot of people in ministry that could have made it fancy and we could have asked these precious people that we’re friends with to forward it, but I asked Barrett if I could just because I’ve read so many parenting books by men. And I’m just like, you’re not at home in the trenches changing diapers, figuring out what we’re going to have for dinner, breaking up fights between my kids who would argue with each other.

But it came down to me being in my bedroom. A lot of times I’m not a morning person, so it was more of an afternoon thing. We all take a break and I would just cry out to God.

I am telling you the one thing I want everyone to know that I think that we have lost in our Christian faith is listening to the voice of God. He really does speak. I took something to Him one day and my nose was in the carpet. I wasn't even just on the ground, I was my nose was in the carpet. And He told me what to do.

I want moms and dads to know you’re not doing this alone. Jesus has been so specific with us and spoken to us and that is for everyone. Jesus is for everyone and wants to have a relationship with you. And then you parent, and then you make mistakes and His grace covers over.

Dave Wilson: Are you willing to share what He said?

Jenifer Johnson: I had two kids that were arguing really bad. It was a boy and a girl. They were in high school. I just went to my room and God said, "Have my child pray over the person that they’re not speaking to well." Because I said, "You’re not answering to me anymore. You’re answering to God. And you’re old enough to understand that and I know that you walk with God and have received Him as your precious Lord and Savior."

But it turned the table because that person's not answering to me; that person's answering to God and they’re humbling themselves before the person that they have not treated oh so well.

Making our kids understand, look, I’ve done what I’ve done, not done it perfectly. Unto God, I feel like I’ve done the best job I could. We’ve even talked about how big is your toolbox that you had for parenting. I think our parents had like an Altoid-sized toolbox and I think my toolbox was kind of one of the smaller toolboxes in Home Depot. But again, I just had to ask God for help and know that I can’t do this on my own.

Dave Wilson: What do you, as moms and wives, need from us as husbands and dads?

Jenifer Johnson: This is the most important thing and I hope every young mom hears this. Our kids, especially when they end seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade, tenth grade, eleventh grade, they need their dad.

I think Mama does a lot of work up until those ages, but then Dad really needs to step in because girls have hormones and so do moms. My friend Chrisie gave me a robe from Singapore. They were living in Singapore and she gave me one for Christmas and on one side it’s blue and really pretty, like oriental embroidered. And then you turn it inside out and it’s black and it has a dragon on the back of it.

When I got it, one of my children said, "This is awesome, Mom! On the days that you feel good, you can wear it on the blue side, and then when you don’t feel good, you can wear it on the dragon side." Mom’s got the dragon robe on! Run!

I still have that robe; I’ll never let go of it. But I thought that was a compliment to teach my kids that I make mistakes and I have made terrible mistakes with my kids being older.

But anyway, back to your point, dads. Barrett would be gone for a week of summer camp. He was a youth minister for so many years and then a family minister. But when he would go away to camp or a mission trip, we would fall apart. I’m not joking.

One day I’m like, what is the deal? And the Lord said, your kids need Barrett. Not that he wasn’t going to stop doing his job for it, but just really focus on it, especially with the girls. I think we had a hard time and Dad did it better than I did because I’m so emotional.

Barrett Johnson: With the daughters, I think their mom's important, but Dad’s got so much to invest in teenage daughters. But for dads, once our girls kind of go through the turn and become little women and get curves, dads feel awkward.

Shameless plug: we wrote a book called *Meet Me in the Middle*. That’s a book for dads and daughters to tee up conversations, these coaching conversations you want to give to your kids as a dad, your daughters. But it’s just awkward. How do you get there? The book becomes the bad guy to introduce content and then as a dad and daughter you can talk about it.

Jenifer Johnson: And I think, too, we as women, as moms, we long for our men to step in and disciple. And that’s it, because we do feel the weight of it if we’re home more. So for a dad to say, "Hey, let’s do this together. What’s the plan?" that just gives me a sense of, like, I can just breathe. I’m not alone.

Dave Wilson: Barrett and Jenifer Johnson were a hoot. But man, they are facing some things that's every person's nightmare and they’re handling it really well. They are running hard to the finish line and discipling their kids and grandkids still.

Their book, *Disciple Them Like Jesus*, you can get it at FamilyLifeToday.com. Just click on the link in the show notes. Actually, we have their other books there as well. I’d say get them all. And they’ll be back with us tomorrow.

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