Yeah, That's My Dad Yeah, That's My Dad

We live in a broken world. It's broken in the sense that things don’t work the way they were meant to. It's broken because of our sin. The infinitely good and glorious God of holy love who created this world had to unleash his just judgment on it because in response to sin. Had to. And that means that our lives in this world are necessarily filled with sorrows and sickness and for all of us, eventually, death.

But we also live in a redeemed world. Through the gospel, Christ has overcome sin, dealt with its curse in his body on the cross, and secured a bright and happy future for us where sin and its effects are gone forever. 

What’s so cool is that world that has, in a sense, invaded this one. And so we can say with Christ’s Apostle Paul: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed.”

That gospel truth informs how we think about and engage with sickness right now. 

We know that our bodies are mortal and susceptible to all kinds of illnesses. Nobody skates free of that. But when we do get sick we don’t despair. We pray of course, rightly, for healing. God can do that if he wants. And we embrace by faith all the common grace of modern medicine. But deeper than all that, we know that God is sovereign over every cell in our bodies and that He superintends sickness to humble us and grow us and prune us and change us and loosen our grip on the garbage of this world. 

That doesn’t make it easy to live with physical pain, but it does animate us with a hope that carries us through. 

For my dad, this reality came fast and furious when in his 70s he was diagnosed with Stage Four prostate cancer. In this episode, he talked about walking through the ups and downs of illness.

Whether you call them Grandpa and Grandma or Nonno eh Nonna or Abuelo y Abuelita, every grandparent ever will tell you the same thing without hesitation: there is nothing happier than grandchildren. 

This is a proverbial truth. And I mean literally. In Proverbs 17, super wise Solomon says it like this:

“Children’s children are the crown of the aged.”
You feel that?

Grandchildren are the crowning joy and validation of a life well lived.

A cherry on top of a killer sundae. 
A Gatorade bath at the end of a super bowl win.
A magnificent sunset culminating a happy beach day. 
A crown.

That is what grandchildren are in a man’s life.

And not just because you get to buy them Richie’s Slush, or take them to see the fireworks, or let them watch two straight hours of SpongeBob, but because you are given another chance to model for and share with your own flesh and blood the goodness of God and grace of His gospel. 

Don’t ever forget that when the Apostle Paul was encouaring young pastor Timothy to hold fast to gospel truth and throw himself with no fear into the difficult work of leading Christ’s church in Ephesus, he said to him, “Don’t forget that your confidence in Christ is not new, It dwelt first in your grandmother Lois.” 

Isn’t that beautiful? 

God works through generations, and if we live long enough to become grandparents, he lets us see that faithfulness all the way to the last chapters of our lives.

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If there was a world championship belt for most fun, most involved, most present papa, my dad would have held it. Let’s just say that he fit right in with his grandchildren.

In this episode, I asked him to talk about that, and about the unique relationship that he forged with each of his 8 grandchildren, oldest to youngest. 

Every dad has at least one funny story of their son or daughter coming home with a big surprise.

"We're having a baby."

"We’re buying a house."

"We're moving to Dubai. Or New Hampshire. Or Texas. (God forbid.)

For my dad, one of those surprises came at the very turn of the century when I came over to tell him that I felt called - unmistakably - to plant a church seven miles north of one of the least Christian cities in America.

That church would eventually become Seven Mile Road, and we built is on 5 gospel convictions, one of which we called "supertight community." What we meant by that was that we believed that the gospel is not just about showing up to church on Sundays. And that even a casual reading of the New Testament shows that Jesus’ church was marked by a beautiful, messy, holy closeness. Those first Christians knew each other’s names, stories, sins, strengths, weaknesses, issues, dreams, fears, all of it. Life lived long-term in tight-knit and transparent community: that’s what we are shooting for at our church.

And nobody - nobody - has embraced and modeled that conviction more deeply with more people than my dad. 

In this episode, I asked him to talk about the ways that God redeemed a really hard church experience with the sweetness of being a part of Seven Mile Road​.

In 1992, my dad went prodigal.

He was reeling from the awful treatment he’d received the hands of narcissistic church leaders. Anyone would have been.

He was disoriented by the departure of both of his sons to college. That nest got empty fast.

Everything he had worked hard to build ministry wise was over, gone, finished, and he was staring down a totally unknown future.

But rather than leaning hard into God and into his marriagr, this man - who for over 20 years had served God from Brooklyn to Boston with all his heart, and had helped hundreds of broken people heal through the power of the gospel, and had done it all, literally, arm in arm with his wife - came totally unhinged, walked away from any semblance of gospel community, and strode into a brief but sinful, foolish, irrational connection with different woman.

That this would happen - that my dad would sin, bad - should surprise exactly none of us.

Gospel people, even the most earnest of them, are not immune from blindspots and folly and sin.

In fact, the opposite is true, we are blind foolish sinners to our core, by nature and choice, in desperate need not only of the one-for-all forgiveness of our sin that comes through Christ’s work on the cross, but also of the ongoing help of the Spirit to walk in the sanity of holiness.

As Ray Ortlund often says to pastors, we are , all of us, about three minutes from moral and ministry failure.

Scripture makes this abundantly clear: sans Christ, there are no perfect people.

David, whose heart was dialed in with God’s. broke the entire second table of the law in one reckless weekend. Coveteousness, adultery, murder, theft, false witness. He hit the quinfecta of sin. 

Peter, the rock on whose confession the church was built, went so racist so fast that he won’t even eat at the same table with the Gentile Christians. 

Euodia and Synteche, who were gospel friends and sisters on mission, got into such a heated, nasty, public beef that Paul had to call them out by name in one of his letters.

The gospel is not for good people who somehow manage to keep it all together their whole life.

The gospel is for bigtime sinners who need bigtime grace.

Thankfully, God gives this grace - grace that convicts, grace that forgives, grace that restores.

In this episode, I asked my dad to quietly walk through that darkest two years of his life. I did not interrupt him. I didn’t even stay in  the room actually. It was just him, alone, bearing quiet and honest witness to the heart of God to prodigal sons like him, like all of us.

Episode 6: Parkway

Every true and genuine Christian ever loves not only Christ, but His church.

This should be obvious, right? When Christ saves us, He doesn’t save us by ourselves for ourselves. 

He saves us into a family, the historical and global community of the saints. By grace, we become members of Christ’s body, not only dependent upon Him as our head, but intimately and necessarily connected to one another.

This means that the Christian life is a “we” endeavor. You can’t live this thing out listening to your favorite preacher on your airpods while you walk the track. It's gotta be lived out in real-life, flesh-and-blood, face-to-face community.

And so gospel-centered Christians always love their local church. They given themselves to knowing and being known by the people, submitting to the pastors, benefiting from the means of grace, and loving whoever Christ brings to them.

Nothing could be more healing than that.

And yet church can also be a place where harm is done.

Of course, no church is ever going to be perfect. How can it be when it is filled with and led by sinners? So we should all have really patient, understanding hearts and really thick, humble skin when it comes to being a part of a church.

But sometimes a church moves from spiritually imperfect to spiritually abusive. Its shepherds prove to be hirelings who are out for the advancement of themselves and their brands and their self actualizations at the expense of the people

When that happens, inevitably, the people get hurt. 

My dad’s experience of throwing himself fully into the life and mission of our church in Revere in the 80s was the ultimate mixed bag of church life: so much gospel healing in him and so much healing though him in others, but also some hurt.

Bonus Stories from the First 5 Episodes

We are halfway through Season 1 of the Yeah, That's My Dad Podcast, so we thought we'd share one bonus story from each of the first 5 episodes. Enjoy!