Heath Lambert: It is the week of Father’s Day, and we are happy on the podcast this week to be honoring dads, and we actually want to try to help dads. Our guest on the podcast this week is Dr. Mac Brunson who is the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida and I am excited to have him on the podcast this week to talk about ministering to busy dads because he has been one. And in fact, I would want you to know very personally something that I’ve said to him before that in 2015 when he asked me to join him in the ministry here at First Baptist, I said yes. One of the reasons I said yes is because his son Trey is a good friend of mine and his son Trey has nothing but wonderful things to say about his dad. Trey grew up with his dad, he has worked with his dad, and he loves his dad more now than he did before. I have said to Dr. Brunson that I wanted to come work here because I knew he was a good pastor, because I knew he was a good dad, and so we are happy to have Dr. Brunson here with us this week.
Dr. Brunson, there can seem to be a biblical tension between two texts of Scripture for dads. On the one hand, you’ve got 1 Timothy 5:8 that says if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for members of his household, he’s denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. And then you’ve got Ephesians 6:4 that says to fathers, “Don’t provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord.” So, you got, “Dads, you got to work hard, and be a provider.” and “Dads, you got to work hard and bring your kids up.” Dads can feel like those two things are in tension as they’re pulled in two directions. When your kids were growing up, you were busy in ministry pastoring a mega church and the First Baptist Church of Dallas and yet you’ve got these kids who love you. So, you’ve been successful in work and ministry. You’ve been successful as a dad. What did you do in your family to balance those two realities?
Dr. Mac Brunson: Well, you know, it’s not easy but I see those two texts not in competition with each other but really the foundation of being a good father is that you do provide for them and that you do rear them. You can do those two things, be busy, and still do a good job with your kid. Now, I’m not in any way saying that I’m, you know, an example of a good father. I hope and pray I was. I can tell you, Heath, I had a great example. I had a dad who was at your door at 6:00 in the morning and said, “You’re burning daylight, son. What are you doing? You’re going to sleep all day? You know, it’s 6 o’clock.” and he was a hard-working man and yet at the same time as providing he raised the three of us and provided for my mom and our family very well and was a strong spiritual leader in the home. So, I don’t think men have to look at that as a tension there. I think those are two great foundational pillars for the home and for a man’s life.
Heath Lambert: Was there anything practical you did in your life, in your ministry, in your work at home, to sort of keep some balance? Because particularly in ministry, you’ll have some pastors use their family as an excuse to never get any work done and you’ll have other pastors use their ministry as an excuse to never be at home.
Dr. Mac Brunson: Yeah.
Heath Lambert: And so how have you avoided those two realities?
Dr. Mac Brunson: You marry well, that’s what you do. You marry well. A lot of that is true because a man can get so locked into his work that he just shuts out the rest of life. And my wife has been there all along saying, “We are going to be at this football game. We’re going to be at this softball game. We’re going to be at this wrestling match.” I’ll tell you one thing that I did that really helped me. I was pastoring a church in North Carolina, large, we were just blowing and going and having really growing pains. I let them elect me as president of North Carolina Baptist State Convention, the second conservative ever elected, and then you’re a dad, you’re a husband, you’ve got a family. So, what I did was I got me a marker board with three different calendars, and I would put three months up there, and in green I would write what I needed to do for the church, in the red I would write the convention, and in the blue I would write family. I scheduled in family. My wife stood in there with me, and we would put up day by day what we had for those three months so I could look up at a glance and if the church came and said, “We need for you to do this.” and I had it scheduled for in blue I knew that was the family and I said, “I can’t do that, I’ve got a scheduling conflict.” Same thing with the State Convention. It really helped me, and my wife saw to it that we were not going to miss, and we didn’t, we made it to everything. We got all of that in and it’s important for a dad to be there. But, put it in your calendar. Write it in.
Heath Lambert: Yeah, that accountability of just I’m going to put this on the calendar and that becomes sacred at that point.
Dr. Mac Brunson: That’s right. You don’t have to tell them what it is. You don’t have to say, “Well I got a thing with my family that day.” You just say, “Hey, there’s something scheduled at that time. I can’t do that.”
Heath Lambert: Now, where you were in North Carolina and in Dallas, and in that phase that you’re describing, is where I am now, it’s where a lot of dads—we got dad’s listening all over the country in numerous other countries and they’re listening to this this week because they’re going, “I’m there. I got these little kids running around. I got soccer and basketball, and ballet, and art shows, and school things to do, and school projects to work on.” They’re in that phase that you’re describing. You aren’t in that phase anymore. You’re in the grandparent. You got grandkids coming out of your ears.
Dr. Mac Brunson: Yeah, yes.
Heath Lambert: So, give me and guys like me some perspective on how these tensions change as you move on through the years.
Dr. Mac Brunson: Well, you know, you’ve often heard it said, “Well, you can spend quality time if not quantity time.” and then they flip that all around and say, “Oh, no, it has to be quantity time and not so much the quality time.” Well, let me tell you it has to be both depending on the situation. There were times I needed to spend some quantity time with each child. And there were times that I could get by with spending just a little quality time with them. Now, I’ve got grandkids. I’ve got number eleven on the way. Listen, let me tell you. You think children are demanding, you just wait until you get grandkids, they get real demanding. And they get their way a lot more than the children did. So, you just learn to balance. You learn to balance your time. But, you be sure. And I think that part of distinguishing, “I need to take a day or two and be, or I can take 30 minutes or an hour and spend with this child.”
Heath Lambert: One of the things that I appreciate and love about you so much is that you want to be an encouraging person, you want to encourage folks, and it’s easy for me to imagine there’s a dad in India, or a dad in England, or in Colorado, and he is listening to this because he’s reaching out for a lifeline of encouragement. And he’s going, “My work is killing me.” Maybe it’s ministry, maybe he works in a factory someplace. But he’s going, “My work is killing me, my kids need me, and my wife is going, ‘Honey, we need more of you at home.’, but my boss is going, ‘Buddy, we need more of you here.’” If you’re going to encourage a guy who feels trapped in the middle of those two extremes, what would you say to him?
Dr. Mac Brunson: Well, one, Heath, I would tell them this. Get that concept of being trapped out of your mind.
Heath Lambert: Okay
Dr. Mac Brunson: Because you can talk yourself into, “Poor, pitiful me.” You know, we all have 24 hours in a day, and we all have great responsibilities regardless, if you pastor, you know, a church, or if you are a steel worker, or if you are a farmer. So, you look for ways to do things. I’d take my boys or my daughter along with me a lot of times when I’d go visit in the hospital or when I would go and visit somebody or something like that. So, there’s some ways that you can work that, and some dads can’t do that, maybe sometimes you can and it’s good, they get to see what you do.
I’d be sure that I’m listening to my wife. She is a good barometer. She’s a good barometer of what’s happening in your life. I’d be sure when I’m at work, I’m giving up work all my time. I’m giving it the best of me. I’m giving the man, you know, 60 minutes in an hour. And then, when I’m home, I’m home with them. I don’t drag my stuff in. Now, that’s a little harder to do as a pastor because we can’t just drop stuff down at the door and pick it up the next morning, but when you’re with them, be with them, let it be their time.
Heath Lambert: That’s good. One last thing and it’s a little bit of a different topic. You speak with great affection and respect for your father, and I’m just convinced that one of the most important ingredients in being a dad is having a good role model and a father yourself, not all of us had that. There’s some people who didn’t. And you can be a good dad in spite of that. But I know that you speak with great respect and affection about your dad. Just in honor of Father’s Day, what’s a great memory that you remember with your father?
Dr. Mac Brunson: My dad was a big man. He boxed Golden Glove. He went in on the invasion. He went in, I think, that first day in at Utah Beach. His first cousin went in at Omaha. He went in at Utah. His first cousin was killed, and he survived. Dad went through there. Unloaded patent Cherbourg, followed him into Paris and wrapped up really at the Battle of the Bulge, went up through Belgium, and was there at the end of the Battle of the Bulge. He was always fair. My daddy was fair. I can’t remember, but maybe a time or two, where he said, “I love you.” Maybe one or two times, but you knew that he did. He came from a different generation, but he loved the Lord. And he was just a living application of Scripture. No matter what came up, “Well, the Bible says this about that.” No matter what happened, “Well, it says that.” and he was constantly that way with Scripture. So, he just kind of put it into the family. “This is the Word of God.” But he was a man’s man, but he honored my mother, was very good to us, you know. We idolized him. The three children just idolized the guy. He was bigger than life to us. Now, a lot of guys, and I’ll say this quickly, a lot of guys look back and say, “You know, I’ve not been the dad.” But you know what, you can recover now. Right now. You can recover this minute and become the dad God would have you be. You can’t undo the past, but you know, thank God we can be forgiven for the past and you can start over, and you can start over right this moment and God will help you be the dad that you should be, that He wants you to be, that would honor Him in your family.
