If you knew the span of your life would be thirty years shorter than you expected, what would you change? In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by special guest Isaac Botkin, discuss the inspiring legacy of David Fry, who recently passed away at age 54. When diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two years ago, David didn’t meaningfully change much of how he was living his life. That’s because he had already been living like he was dying, making the most of his time by carefully shepherding his family and investing in his local church.  

David’s memorial service was a stunning and beautiful witness to his earnest faithfulness, as his six sons and two daughters all proclaimed scripture after scripture their father taught them They testified to his active and loving involvement in each of their lives. David gave up financial gain to have more time to teach and walk with his children in God’s word and point them to Christ—an encouraging and convicting example for all dads to take to heart as they lead their families. 

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. And today we're here to talk about fathers who walk in the ways of the Lord with their children and how there are fathers actually in the world who have a legacy of true treasure embedded in the hearts of their children. So that's what we want to talk about. Jason, how about that?

I can't wait. Yeah. We've been talking about fatherhood for a long time. We sure have. And we have one of our dear friends with us, Isaac Botkin.

Isaac, we met when you were in your teens, and I just have to say, it's been a joy to know you. It really has, and your family. And now you're out there, you got kids all over the place and what a sweet meal. Time passes, it does. Time passes, yeah.

Hey, so tell us about yourself. All right, Well, so we met when I was a young, unmarried man, and you got to know our family and my father, and we just were talking the other day, just about some of the changes that we've seen generationally. And so now I'm a dad, now I have kids, and we're, yeah, we're seeing interesting things in the generational differences between our parents' generation and our generation. But my dad was a lot like a lot of dads in the early homeschooling days. He quit his job so that he could have more time to be around us kids and start a business so he could have a little bit more freedom.

Technically a little bit less financial freedom but more actual time with us And we knew a lot of people who were in that boat at the time, and I've kind of followed in his footsteps. I work for a company called T-Rex Arms that my brothers and I started almost 10 years ago, and now we're employing homeschool grads. So it's kind of an interesting thing that's happened over the last many years. Many years, okay, I'll give you my perspective on it. There was a moment in my life that was so riveting.

We were doing the first National Center for Family Integrated Church conference in St. Louis. It was kind of the launch of this organization that has become Church and Family Life, and I was giving a message on fatherhood. I was told to give a message on that, so I did. And sometime during the message, there were about 700 men in the room, almost all men.

And I said, how many of you ever had your father read the Bible to you? And I was very clear, ever. And probably 10 or 15 or I don't know how many hands went up in that ocean of men. But these were men who didn't want to do that. They didn't want to live that way.

It was a group of men that really wanted to get a handle on what it meant to be a father. We were preaching Deuteronomy 6 and Psalm 78 and Psalm 127 and 128. We were going through all the heavy-duty fatherhood texts in the New Testament and the Old Testament, Ephesians 6 and so forth. And what you had are—there actually was a revolution of fatherhood, and you had men that were living totally differently than the previous generation. My generation, the generation of my fathers, fathers—it was almost impossible to find any father in my generation who was reading the Bible, having family worship.

And So there was this revolution that took place. Now, 18, 20 years later, now the children of those fathers are grown up. That's you. That would be you. And hey, we were at a funeral for one of those men last weekend, our dear friend David Frye passed away after, I guess it was a two-year struggle with cancer, and he died at age 54.

And we were in that funeral and it was the most thrilling and of course very sad for us too, but it was thrilling in the sense that his children all got up, Six of his sons got up and just testified to the word of God. They quoted the word of God. They said, this is what our dad taught us. This is what he left behind. This is what we're carrying in our knapsack.

And then his two daughters did the same thing. It was, and this father was, he was a happy, principled father, you know. He was just very practical and gracious and forthright. He wasn't a Wallflower either, but he was a very kind, bold man. So there we were.

So how did you experience that funeral? Well, I was incredibly blessed to have, I've known David Fry for a while, I think we probably met him, you and I, at roughly the same time. But he moved about two and a half years ago to Tennessee and was working at T-Rex with us. And so he had about six months working with the company before his diagnosis. And so the most amazing thing about his testimony is probably that when he got that initial diagnosis, which was actually, I believe, six months.

Two to six months was what the doctors gave him, and he really didn't change any part of how he was living his life. I think the only thing that he changed was his diet. He didn't change how he was using his time at work. He didn't change the time that he was giving to the church. He didn't change the time that he was spending with his children.

He was already doing all the things that he wanted to do. And obviously as time went on, he had less energy, but he still was, David Fry was a man who had already been living like he was dying, making the most of the time and being a good steward of the opportunities. And so when that diagnosis came in, nothing really changed day to day. And because I was able to work with him almost every day, I could see that very clearly. And because he went to church with us and was involved in the church, I could see that very clearly.

And a couple of his sons work at the shop and were close and so I could see some of the family involvement very clearly and could just see that that didn't change. It was an amazing testimony to get to see that. And then we prayed obviously for miraculous healing and there wasn't a really obvious clear miraculous removal of the cancer but but he was uh he was given two years and just was constantly overflowing with joy and hope and proclaiming the blessings and glory of God and everything that and everything that he did every time you asked him how he was doing he wasn't just oh I'm hanging in there or I'm doing great It was specific blessings or things that he'd been meditating on, time that he'd been able to spend with his children, things that, yeah, just everything that he was already doing, I guess got highlighted by the circumstances and it was wonderful to be able to see that every day especially as a young father and so that's gonna I that's gonna be tremendously impactful for me, much as I hate to use that word, I can't think of a better one.

I think it's also gonna be huge in our in our company. He came along at a very unique time in our company. He personally hired about half of the people who are here. We prayed for him as a company. He kept coming into work.

He had a phenomenal testimony. I think that he's gonna have a massive impact on the people here too in the company. Christians, non-Christians, everybody is going to just, I can say this with confidence, look back and say they were tremendously blessed to be here at the same time as David Fry. Isaac, it's really interesting, the observation that you made that his life didn't change substantially because he was doing what he thought he should be doing. I actually had written in my notes, had he known what the future held?

Meaning most of us expect that we're going to have a longer life than David Fry ended up having. So what if he had known, you know, 20 years ago that his life would be cut shorter than we imagine that we'll have. He actually made those changes at that time so that when it became apparent that it was likely that his life would be cut shorter, He didn't feel like he needed to make tectonic shifts in his life because the investments he was making were the investments that he thought he should make, even if he had a short life. I praise God for that. No, amen.

We should order our lives that way. Well, you know, that's what he did. He was an executive in Toyota. He was working in the Toyota factory, and he ended up leaving that job because he wanted to pour the treasure of the Word of God into his children and his wife. He left that job kind of like what you said, Isaac, earlier.

You know, guys left their jobs and their economic prospects dropped, right? He went and started a landscaping company and started mowing lawns with his kids, and just sowing the Word of God into his family life. And he just kept doing that, but he was investing the treasure in the right place. Scott, you were talking about that first conference in St. Louis, maybe two decades ago, and how you and other men were working through the flagship family passages.

I just want to read a bit of Psalm 78. It's one of those flagship passages and apply it. Psalm 78, starting in verse five, For God established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children, that the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God and not forget the works of God but keep his commandments." So all of us As parents who know the Lord, one of the biggest things we desire in life is that our children would know the Lord, that they may set their hope in God. David Fry invested towards those things and actually got to see with his own two eyes his children set their hope in God. And the scripture passages that these children were reciting at the funeral were just absolute expressions of what you just said.

They were all passages of scripture that build your hope in God. It was such an encouraging thing. I told his children and his wife, I said, David Fry was the father we always preached about, and the Father I always wanted to become. And he just, from my perspective, he just did that beautifully, and I'm so thankful for men like that. Hey, by the way, St.

Louis, we had that conference in St. Louis, and there really was a revolution of fatherhood that took place, and thousands of fathers really took that mantle. But we're going back to St. Louis this year for a conference in that exact same room where I asked those men to raise their hands. It's called the Build Well Plant Conference, Build Well Plant, a conference on cultivating family life.

We're gonna talk about everything family life. I can't wait to get into that same facility that we met in in St. Louis, October 26 through 28. So Isaac, hey, maybe you ought to come, huh? You should write it down.

Yeah, we'll give over, make you a deal to come, you know. I missed that conference. I was out of the country at the time, but I have so enjoyed getting to go to a number of the conferences. That was probably where I met David Fry first. I don't know if it was an NCFIC conference or a different conference, but just have really been blessed over the years to go to these conferences and see, you know, not just the teaching from the conference, but to get to know people who are new to the faith or new to some of these ideas or people that, like David Fry, have been really consistent for years and years and years.

And you know, as a young dad, getting to see older dads and talk to them about what they're doing and struggling with and how they learned and overcame things, I probably have learned more in the hallways of some of these conferences than from the speakers. You're not supposed to say that, Isaac. No, you're supposed to. I know, the keynotes are very important. I think that everybody should make sure that they get those and buy the mp3s after.

Exactly right. No that's so true. You know, real men trying to hack it out, trying to figure out how to be fathers the way that God has designed them is really important. And a lot of that happened at those conferences. Hey, I think there really was a revolution of fatherhood that took place, and men completely altered their lives to do that.

So there's nothing better than walk-along, talk-along discipleship. Just quote another verse, Deuteronomy 6, I'll limit it to just verse 7. Deuteronomy 6, 7, you shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. I don't think it's a controversial point that that's the best way to go about imparting the knowledge of the Lord by the grace of God to your children. But no one needs to be under any illusions.

It's expensive. It can be very expensive financially, and even if it's not expensive financially, it's expensive in how you allocate your time. To walk with your children during large blocks of time, during most of the days of your life, will cost you a lot. But we're here to testify that we've seen men who have paid the price to do it, and They're not sorry that they did it. They're glad that they did it.

And they got the children to prove it, largely. This generation is different. Isaac, we were talking about this. That generation of fathers, you know, 15, 18, 20 years ago, now has sons and daughters, and they're getting married and they're having children. They're all over the place at our church.

They're all over the place at your church and at your church. They're in their 20s and 30s, and they've got three, four, five, six, seven, eight children by the time they're in their mid-30s. And so there they are. And what we used to say way back then is we prayed that our children would stand on our shoulders. In other words, our children wouldn't start where we did, but they would start with a head start on our shoulders.

Now we've seen that take place, and So many of these sons and daughters are so much further ahead than I was, than we were when we were their age. And I mean economically, knowledge of the Word of God, stability, wisdom. Of course there are some exceptions, but largely that's what I'm seeing among those men who genuinely made their family life centered on the Word of God. Yeah, it is really interesting. We were talking a little bit about the financial side of things, but I remember homeschool conferences when I was a kid very vividly.

Everybody was looking for deals. This was kind of pre-internet. It was pre-Amazon. It was pre-eBay. It was hard to figure out what homeschool curriculum you can get.

So everybody was selling used curriculum and nobody had any money to buy it. And I've been to a couple of conferences recently where I'm talking to the other guys my age like hey what's going on what are you struggling with and like well we just crossed 80 employees and I'm trying to figure out like how we do this and how we do that like the the the preparation that our dads have given a lot of us for life and business, being home-schooled and being able to start businesses and do stuff is really paying off, I think, in a financial way. I talked to so many guys at these different conferences who have started businesses like their dads did, but they're not small landscaping businesses. Some of them are very large. Some of them are extremely successful.

And the Lord has really blessed T-Rex. We're not a huge company, but we have about 80 employees, and that has all happened in a real short amount of time. God has just blessed this company in a ton of different ways. And yeah, our parents prepared us for a lot of that. And the teaching of other men in the homeschool circles prepared us for a lot of that.

And then people like David Fry who had experience with some of these bigger companies that he had left for very serious theological reasons, came along and took us under his wing in other ways. So many of the things that our parents prepared us for are paying off. Even some of the things that our parents left so that they could focus on us, even some of those talents are being realized now in these new situations and circumstances. It really is just phenomenal to see and to consider. Isaac, with what you're describing, there are some risks that go along with that.

It can almost lead to the reverse trend, where now the blessings that God has put in your life also come with demands that make it hard for you to do what your fathers have done, which was to clear out time to buy up the time to spend with their kids and have their kids walk with them. Absolutely. I feel that struggle all the time. With the business success comes financial freedom, but finding the time to leisurely come back from the funeral was hard. There was a lot of pressing stuff here in the shop.

The temptation for distractions is huge and then for some people there is that temptation that also comes with the financial success as well. I think that the founding of America, that's huge. The sheer prosperity that came out of the early colonies was a massive temptation for our forefathers, children and grandchildren. So I think that there are a lot of phenomenally dangerous things to be aware of and I'm looking at you guys, please keep an eye on us. I can tell that we will have tons of blind spots.

We may be standing on the shoulders of our fathers and grandfathers, but there's gonna be a lot of blind spots that other people can see, and we'll need help keeping an eye out for those. I'm confident of that. Yeah, that's really true, and the Bible actually warns about this kind of situation. In Deuteronomy, Moses talks about when you go into the land, you're going to get very prosperous, and then you're going to forget God. That's one of the vulnerabilities.

Another vulnerability is to throw off many of the good things that actually have helped to create the success and the stability that your generation has. So there are vulnerabilities. Getting things right in your marriages is so critical. Getting things right in your local church life, those things are really critical. Filling your heart with treasures from heaven so that that's what's coming out of you in your family life, allocating enough time to actually shepherd your wife, shepherd your children, Those are things that the younger generation just needs to make sure they don't lose track of those priorities because they were right.

They were beautiful. Jason, you were reading about them. So here's my parting shot, and it's a question and a challenge to fathers. Fathers, if you knew today that your life was going to actually be 30 years less than what you've been imagining, You'd have three decades less than what you hoped you would have in terms of lifespan. What would you do today?

You would take action today, I'm sure. What would you do today? No one knows. We don't know. If you make those changes now, you won't be sorry if you get the longer life.

Yeah, that's so true. I've got my eyes, my heart, my prayers really on that younger generation. In fact, I'm going to tell you about a book that I've written you've probably heard about. It's called The Family at Church. And this book, How Parents Are Tour Guides for Joy, I'm really encouraging the younger generation to squeeze the greatest amount of good out of their local church life.

20 Days to Transform Your Local Church Experience. That's the subtitle of this book. But I wrote this book for busy fathers and mothers, particularly young families. And my hope for this book is that a couple will read a chapter at night and take 10 or 15 minutes and just see how they can shepherd their children through the whole experience of local church life, through the preparation for the Lord's day, through the preaching, through the fellowship, through the singing, helping your children engage in Lord's Day activities and all that kind of thing, that parents would really rise up, they power up. Because to lead your children to the rivers of living water actually takes forethought and it takes effort to do it.

And your heart needs to be full of the love of God to do it. And I think one of my great concerns for this next generation is that they fully understand how important a local church is, and they help their children squeeze the greatest amount of good out of that experience. And I will say that's one of my greatest struggles, perhaps, because, again, I think my parents set a phenomenal example and they made a ton of these things just really ingrained habits which are wonderful. So I do a, I'm not bragging here, I'm just saying I do a very good job of reading the Bible to the children every day. Amen.

And stopping there, unfortunately. Turning it into an opportunity where there is really clear communication about what this means to them. And we're talking young children who are very curious and have a lot that they can learn from these things. They're not old enough where they're digging a lot of stuff out themselves. But same with the local church.

My tendency is to follow these habits really well because they're, thanks to my parents, ingrained in me and to miss the opportunities. So I thank you for pointing those out. It's really key. Yeah, and we can consider our friend David Fry. He did that so cheerfully and so carefully.

I praise the Lord for men like that who got caught up in a revolution. May there be another one. Amen. Okay, Isaac Botkin, thank you so much for joining us. I love factories.

I used to own a factory and I want to go see your factory. I love machines. Anytime. Yeah. Yeah.

We do vacuum forming, we do drilling and cutting and bending and a lot of hand hardware, but the automation is super, super fun. Sounds great. Okay. Hey, and thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Hope you can join us next time.

Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us. Go to churchandfamilylife.com. See you