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Most parents feel overwhelmed trying to raise discipled kids in a culture drifting away from biblical truth. But what if the secret isn’t more effort, but clarity on the destination?
In this episode, Josh Boteet, lead pastor, author, and father, reveals how intentionality transforms the chaos of parenting into a purposeful journey of discipleship. From the wild twists of his own past to practical daily actions, he shares how ordinary moments—whether playing I Spy, praying at mealtime, or navigating culture’s default—can become powerful opportunities to point children toward loving God, loving others, and enjoying family.
You'll discover:
- The simplest way to turn ordinary routines into spiritual conversations
- How to define a clear, achievable destination for your home—without needing a seminary degree
- The truth about cultural drift and why intentional parents push back against the current
- Practical tools like biblical anchor statements and questions to embed faith naturally into everyday life
- Why asking for forgiveness and modeling vulnerability are transformative acts of leadership
This episode emphasizes that parenting isn’t about perfection—it's about progress, authenticity, and showing your kids a real relationship with Jesus. Whether you’re feeling ill-equipped, overwhelmed, or stuck in the cycle of routine, Josh offers encouragement: it’s never too late, and you’re the primary disciple-maker your children need.
Perfect for Christian parents seeking to align everyday moments with eternal purpose, this conversation will inspire you to lead confidently, practice grace openly, and cultivate a household rooted in Christ's love.
Are you ready to move against the cultural current and create a legacy of faith? Tune in and discover how your ordinary day can become an extraordinary spiritual journey for your family.
Let me know what you think of this episode?
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Thank You for Listening, I hope you enjoyed this episode and that it encouraged you. Please like, share, and leave a review.
00:30 - Sponsor And Guest Introduction
01:22 - Why Parenting Against The Current
03:22 - Turning Theology Into Tools
04:42 - Stories, Coauthor, And Diverse Families
05:55 - The Home Discipleship Gap
07:23 - Josh’s Journey To Faith And Ministry
11:08 - Defining Discipleship And Setting Destinations
13:56 - Pushing Back On Culture’s Drift
15:38 - I Spy: Seeing God In The Everyday
19:12 - Simple Anchors For Kids’ Fears And Anger
21:22 - Don’t Parent Alone: Build Community
24:20 - Teaching Prayer: Rhythm And Relationship
27:35 - Modeling Repentance And Forgiveness
32:49 - Prepare For Faith Conversations Early
36:22 - Make Faith Talk Personal Not Private
37:39 - Final Encouragement And Listener CTA
WEBVTT
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Hello everyone, thank you again for joining us in another episode of the Your Tour show.
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This episode is sponsored by the Odati Audio Group, which inspires and not least to discusses, testimonies, and teachings, equipping listeners for meaningful conversations.
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On today's episode, we have discussed Boutique, who is the lead pastor of 180 Life Search in West Half, Connecticut.
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He previously served as the net-gang pastor at Sky Life search, where he led and developed the leaders of the kids, students, and young adult ministries.
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He holds a master's in theology and has been a part of the relational discipleship network for 10 years.
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Leading discipleship trainings, both in the US and internationally, regularly teaches on equipping parents, empowering disciples, training leaders, and helping families embrace their role as primary disciple makers.
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His passion for family discipleship is shaped by his personal experiences as a father, and as years is working alongside parents as they raise up tiny disciples.
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He and his wife, Jenny, live in Connecticut with their two children, Lillia and Eva.
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Gosh, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
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Hey Dorsey, thanks for having me, man.
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I'm excited to get to dive into it.
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Absolutely.
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So I what inspired you?
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So you you you do a a discipleship group called Parenting.
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What and how did you come up with that name?
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Yeah, I I didn't have the name until we were halfway through writing the book, but really it was just this tension born of like parents, when when you're when your kids are born, what it feels like is it feels like you're drowning.
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And you're just trying to, you're just trying to tread water, try to try to survive.
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The tension though is if you're treading water in a current, you're being taken by it.
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And there is a current in this world.
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And so really just trying to set up parents to be one, aware of the current, and two, aware that there's an intentional better option that we should be moving towards.
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And that was born out of me wrestling through that personally, and then as a pastor, and then really just realizing that, man, this is a this is a bigger issue that we need to figure out because we as parents were meant to be the primary disciplers of our kids.
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Can you tell us a little bit more about the book and what made you what made you start parenting against the parent?
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Yeah, so the book is really aimed at young families who are trying to figure out intentional tools and resources to be able to disciple their kids strategically.
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I think that's one of the challenges in church world is we can say, Dorsey, we can say these really like theological things, and it sounds great, but it stays in the clouds and it doesn't meet the people on the ground.
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And so the the book was kind of built out of, man, I've I've heard the things, I've heard disciple your kids.
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I've heard like we need to shepherd their hearts, but what does it actually mean?
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Yeah, what's it what's it look like?
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Like, how do I actually make this happen?
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So the book really goes through different practical tools, like creating a destination that you're aiming at, um, how to look for the fingerprints of God in the day-to-day, how to be vulnerable, how to build biblical community, like the the key essentials, I would say, for a parent to be able to lead um not just their kids, but to lead themselves.
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Uh, because you can only lead somebody to where you are.
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So that's really what the book is aimed after.
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And again, built largely off of a lot of my mistakes and a lot of wisdom from other parents who are further along than I am.
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So you so you wrote the book based on your own experiences and what you and what you were dealing with in your own life and with your own kids, is that what I'm getting at or what I'm hearing?
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Yeah, kind, kind of.
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So that's that's part of it.
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I'm a storyteller by nature.
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Like that's how God built me, which means that I like to use stories to convey messages.
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So a lot of it is like, hey, man, this is where I messed up, or this is where there was a kingdom win in my home.
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But there was also just another component where I am I'm one parent.
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My co-author is the best dad that I've ever met.
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And so he's got four kiddos of his own.
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Uh, and so shared some of his experiences.
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And then on top of that, we partnered with other parents within our disciple-making churches because one, they're they're aimed at discipling others, and two, how does that translate into the home?
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And asking them because there's different dynamics that I can't personally speak to.
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So the single mom.
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I I could come up with a couple principles, but that's like I'm not in that, or like leading a blended family.
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There's all kinds of different dynamics.
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So we we sought counsel from other parents in those different situations and dynamics who were thriving at discipling their kids because we wanted to reach as many parents as we could and to empower them on this mission.
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With what you've been through in writing a book and your experiences with it, have you found it?
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Have you found that it's difficult for other parents to disciple their kids?
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Yeah, I think that was one of the tension points of the book was parent after parent after parent was coming up to me saying, Josh, we've got adults in the church discipling other adults.
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Like we're crushing it, but it's not translating into our homes.
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And so what do we do?
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There's this big tension.
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I I think for most parents, it's I've never I wasn't discipled as a kid.
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And Dorsey, I don't know if you were, I wasn't.
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And so then it's the I need to lead my kids to a place that I was never led to myself, which is hard and it's scary.
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And the thing that I keep going back to in my conviction was there's a difference between not knowing and not going.
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Just because I didn't get the full picture when I was a kid doesn't mean that I'm not still called to to lead my family there, which means that we need to figure it out.
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But for most, maybe not most, but for many parents, that question mark, the uncertainty, the doubt, the feeling disqualified, looking back at their past and saying, Man, like I'm not good enough, or I don't have a seminary degree or whatever, because you don't need any of that.
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But we say that stuff and then it leads us to not act, which is part of the problem, is we don't feel qualified and we forget that God is the one who qualifies us.
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Absolutely.
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It's like that old King Dog, you know, he he qualifies to, he doesn't call it qualified, he qualified to call.
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Yep.
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Yeah, that's exactly it.
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Can you tell us a little bit more?
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I know I read your bio, but tell us a little bit more about yourself and you know what you do and and your background.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So I grew up in a house that we didn't we didn't do the whole Jesus thing.
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We did a little bit, but it was more like visiting.
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We were Jesus adjacent, is what I would call it.
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Like we were nearby, but not quite there.
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And so I believed that my value came from everything that I did.
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So it was the touchdowns, the girlfriends, the GPA, the whatever, any achievement that I could unlock.
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I thought that's what my value came from.
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And I applied that same mindset on God.
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Now, like I always believed in God.
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Uh because I just because I can't believe, like you can't convince me that this happened on accident.
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Uh, but who is God?
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That was the question.
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And how did he view me?
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Well, I thought he didn't view me very well because I didn't have anything to offer him, which led me to like really a downward spiral, led to going full-on prodigal son in my college years, got swept up in alcoholism.
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And and what that did for me was it led me to a place of standing in the aftermath of the me problem, the aftermath of me going my own way and realizing that I couldn't be the solution to my own problem.
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And so I started seeking God and trying to figure out, like, hey, what does this look like?
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And eventually gave my life to Jesus after I looked at the evidence and I was like, this is just overwhelmingly clear.
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Gave my life to Jesus, and when I did, started getting discipled by other men.
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And as they were walking beside me, I started walking beside other men and then eventually got married.
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We had our first, we had our daughter Lilla, and when she was born, it just ripped me in half in a way that like like the best and the hardest way, because I was like, man, there's like nothing I wouldn't do for this girl.
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And at the same time, I was like, but I have to figure out how to how to shepherd her heart.
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And so I started going to other parents who had young adults that loved Jesus.
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And I went to their parents and I said, Hey, what did you do?
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Like how did you how did you lead your kids to the type of garden living that we're meant to have, a relationship with Jesus?
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And piece by piece, bit by bit, I started to figure it out.
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I started to make huge mistakes and then learning from those mistakes and growing.
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And and so it really started this shifting in me simultaneously becoming a pastor, which was wild.
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That was so like not my plan at all.
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I did not want to do this.
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People would bring it up, and I was like, no, that's great.
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Like I've already got a plan.
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I got I got this whole like I'm gonna be a firefighter, that's what I'm doing.
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Like I was training, I was working in EMT as an EMT, like I loved it.
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And then God just like, like He does for me.
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He's just like, man, that's that's that's cute, but that's that's not where I'm calling you.
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So begrudgingly, I I entered into the ministry, and honestly, God has been incredibly gracious in that.
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But throughout that heartbeat is how do I equip people to make disciples?
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And the primary place that we're meant to make disciples is our home.
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Like we see that over and over again in scripture, and that's also the weakest space that we have for it.
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But if we can do that, kingdom ground can really be taken.
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Why do you think it's so difficult for parents to disciple their kids?
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Is it that they don't have, you know, is it that they're not disciples themselves?
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Is it that they don't know how to disciple?
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Are they afraid of that word disciple, you know, discipleship?
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Yeah.
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Well, yeah, I think part of it is common language is is challenging, right?
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So when I say discipleship, one of the things we spell out in the book, we get our definition of a disciple from Matthew 4.19, uh, someone who has following Jesus, being changed by Jesus, committed to the mission of Jesus.
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The problem is if you go to any church and you say, Do you believe in discipleship?
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If they are a real church, they probably say yes, right?
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Like there, there's no discrepancy there.
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But then if you ask, so what does that look like?
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Sometimes usually you'll get a very vague answer that's unclear.
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Uh, you might get multiple answers from different people.
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There's not clarity there.
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And I think that's one of the issues is we might all agree, yes, we're called the disciple our kids, but what what does that actually mean is a different story.
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Uh and so I would say that's the big piece of it.
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That the aim of discipleship is meant to be maturity in Christ.
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That's what scripture points to, with the intent of reproducing that in others.
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Like that's what discipleship is aimed at.
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And what we need as parents, and really just even as just Christ followers, is we need a clearly defined destination that we're moving towards.
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Because if we don't, what happens is we're just being swept away by the current.
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And the current could be any number of things.
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It could be your level of exhaustion, it could be the culture that you live in, it could be just that your kids are driving you crazy and you're not being very patient in that moment.
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But we're meant to push back against the current towards a destination.
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Uh and so I'll say the destination that Jenny and I have defined for our home through a lot of conversation and a lot of prayer is threefold.
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It's we want our kids to love God, love others, and enjoy us.
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That's it.
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It's that simple.
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But which means that everything we do and everything that we choose not to do is pushed through that filter.
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Like, do we have dinner together as a family every night?
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Well, does it help us move to the destination?
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And yes, do we attend church every Sunday?
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And you're like, well, Josh, you're a pastor, it doesn't matter.
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Like we were doing this.
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This was a commitment before that.
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Yes, we're gonna do that because it points to the destination.
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Am I a soccer coach?
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I've never played soccer in my life.
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Yes, I'm a soccer coach because that goes to the destination.
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And then there's the other piece of we limit the extracurriculars that our kids can't can do.
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Like the rule is you can only do one at a time.
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Uh, and the reason isn't that we don't want our kids to do fun things, it's that we don't want to busy Jesus out of our schedule because we're moving towards a destination, which means that we're gonna say no to some things, and we're gonna say no with intentionality, not to squander their hopes or dreams or their excitement, but to say, hey, there's something better than playing soccer every day of the week.
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And his name is Jesus, and let's move towards him.
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How do you define the cultural grift?
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And why do you see it as a problematic for family today?
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Yeah, I would say it's a problem pretty much always.
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The point being there's a design and then there is a default, right?
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And so the design is how God created the world.
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Like the world was created good, like piece after piece after piece.
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He said, It is good, and then he creates man, and it is very good.
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And then there's the problem, right?
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He realizes man is alone, and he says, Well, it is not good for man to be alone, and so he creates Eve, and it's just this beautiful scene of the design, and then sin comes in, and the design of the world and the default of the world are broken into.
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Uh and now the default is moving away from God, it's moving away from intentionality, and it's moving away from what we were designed to be.
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And so that's that's the that's the drift of culture, that's the current.
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It's moving to the default.
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I'll give you an example.
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I get home from work, and my default, if I'm not being intentional, is I want to go get swallowed up by my couch.
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Like I just want to like sit in that thing, sink in, and never move for the rest of the night.
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My family's not meant to get my leftovers.
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I'm not just a provider.
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I'm actually meant to be a leader, a disciple maker, a partner, which means that as badly as the current draws me into the couch, I need to make tired weight and give an extra piggyback ride and have the intentional conversation for the 15th time with my seven-year-old, because the current was never meant to dictate how disciples move.
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And the current is really not what we're moving towards, that we're moving against it because eventually there's gonna be a garden city that we get to be a part of where, like, man, like we get new bodies, and these these joints aren't gonna hurt anymore in the way that they do, and we're gonna get celebrate and rejoice in perfect relationship with the king of the universe, and finally the default and the design will be back where they were meant to be.
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But it's not so right now.
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Yeah, we mentioned about discipleship, and you talk about you describe parenting as a spiritual journey.
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What does taking back discipleship in the home look like for you in the day-to-day life?
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Yeah, yeah, I think there's a couple key pieces day-to-day that we do.
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One of them that we we talk about in the book is something called playing I spy.
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Uh, we get it from Deuteronomy 6, where Moses is talking about when they go across the Jordan and there's there's this monument made of 12 stones.
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Like when you walk by it and your kids ask, hey, what is that?
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Tell them when you're lying down, when you're traveling, what the Lord has done.
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And so for us, we play a game called I Spy, where we're constantly looking for the fingerprints of God in the everyday.
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And so sometimes it's just celebrating that God, that God painted a sunset for my daughter to see and that it's beautiful and it's good.
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Uh, and there's other times where it leans in even further than that.
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There was, I was driving my daughter to school one day, and uh, and we were talking about my favorite football team, the Miami Dolphins, who are a disappointment to fans everywhere.
00:16:35.409 --> 00:16:38.849
I I hate them, I hate them right now, but anyway, not the point.
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So we're talking, and she's a Dolphins fan too, because she's my daughter and she loves me, so she just kind of follows my lead.
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And they had cheated.
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And so because they got caught cheating, we lost some draft picks.
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And so I was talking to her and she was like, Why did they cheat?
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And I was like, Well, they wanted to do or they wanted to win more than they wanted to do the right thing.
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And she goes, I don't understand, like, why would they do that?
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And in that moment, we could have kept talking about football, but I chose to talk about sin and how there's a drift for all of us, and how like every single one of us at times will want to do the wrong thing, even though we know it's not right, and even know that there's a better God-honoring option.
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But we were playing I spy and engaging in a conversation that was bigger than a football team that always lets down my hopes and dreams.
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Uh, an easy way for parents to do this, because you might feel ill-equipped at first.
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I'd say, parents, good way to start is man, at dinner, every night.
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We do this every night when we've got guests over, it doesn't matter.
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They know Jesus, they don't know Jesus, we don't care.
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Like you're playing I spy with us if you're in our house, and we're glad you're you're there to do it.
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So we just ask the question, we say, Where did you see Jesus today?
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And we go around the table, and our daughter answers, and then she picks who's next.
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And eventually we even answer for the dogs.
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We don't answer for the cat because the cat come on, it's a cat.
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But we have fun with it.
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Uh, we play I spy together, and I think that's a big piece for families is identifying the divine in the everyday.
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And if we can start doing that, and really not just doing that, but teaching our kids to do that.
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That's a key part of discipleship.
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With that game, when when I think of that, when I think of what you just said with team gigas, you know, every day or you know, in the things of every day, you know, sometimes it's, you know, I maybe I'm making making it too spherical or too, you know, spherical, but what is it one example that you can give me where it's very simple and be and I could be, and my listeners could be like, okay, I understand what he's saying in that example.
00:18:54.210 --> 00:18:57.090
Yeah, the identifying like Jesus in the everyday.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, I would say an easy example is when my daughter has a nightmare and she comes upstairs.
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Well, one, she runs to her dad, which is exactly what we're meant to do with with Jesus.
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And so she she runs upstairs.
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Uh, she has a conversation.
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Honestly, she she actually runs to mom for that because dad's a hard sleeper, and she goes to her, and and what do they do?
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They they pray.
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Uh, and then we have in our home anchor statements, statements that like scripture is sometimes a little bit too hard for a young mind to memorize, at least early on.
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And so we use biblical anchor statements to to root our kids in scripture.
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And so one of them is actually verbatim scripture, which is love casts out all fear.
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Perfect love casts out fear.
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And so when our daughter runs upstairs, they they pray together and they say, Love casts out all fear.
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What does that mean?
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And she talks about well, I need to remember in my fear that my my heavenly father has my back, that I'm I'm with him, and if I'm with my dad, I've got nothing to be afraid of.
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Kids get that, and so using opportunities like that, fear is a big one.
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Like my daughter, fear like my son, not that way.
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Like he like he's the kind of kid where he's like, I'll find out if that branch can hold me when I climb to the top of the tree.
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Like, we're actively budgeting for ER bills for my son.
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And so he's different, like it's it's less the fear stuff, and it's more hey, when you try to lash out, he's he's two and a half, and when you try to hit because you didn't get your way, it's it's getting him to slow down and say, hey, it's okay to be mad.
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This is another anchor statement.
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It's okay to be mad, it's not okay to be mean.
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And that again comes from scripture.
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And so we we say that and he repeats it.
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He can't say that one on his own just yet, but he repeats it, and then he takes some deep breaths and we pray.
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Like it's all like every instance that we have of teaching, coaching, and directing our kids is an opportunity to look for the fingerprints of God and what God says is good and true and beautiful for our families.
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What are some of the challenges, common challenges Christian parents face today, and how can they overcome them?
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Yeah.
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I'd say one of the big challenges is I would say parenting alone isn't just hard, it's bad.
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Like we weren't meant to parent in isolation.
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And that is that's really common these days.
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And when I say parent in isolation, most people have friends, but we are with technology, we are the most connected and disconnected generation that's ever existed.
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