Strong-willed from the start, Chad Roach got more spankings in a day than all his sisters, combined, got in a whole month. This led his mom to quip that he’d turn out to be a Martin Luther or Al Capone. Entering his teens, Chad’s sin confronted him at every turn. With much anguish, he repeatedly cried out to God till he finally found peace, realizing that Christ was more than able to save him. Around this time, his dad took over his daily education, mentoring Chad in business. This mentorship—along with that of Kevin Swanson—instilled in him the desire to focus his life on three callings: entrepreneurship, non-profit work, and church ministry. While once a dishonorable son, Chad now enjoys a sweet relationship with his parents, working alongside them in various businesses.  

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Enjoy the pleasure of talking to Chad Roach, giving his life story. He's going to be preaching at our conference coming up, Build to a Plant, and also a very special men's breakfast to speak about manhood, calling, productivity, the kingdom of God, the church, all these things. I hope you enjoy the discussion. Okay, Jason, so we've got Chad Roach to tell his life story.

We love to hear these. Isn't that fantastic? You know, Chad's one of the easiest guys to talk to and talk with, So this will be great. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, no kidding.

And the story of God's working in his life, and he's going to be working to the end. But I knew Chad a long time ago, just before we started broadcasting, he said, you've known me since I was a runny nose kid. That isn't completely accurate. He wasn't that young. Now he's a hairy faced man.

He was like in his teens. And I just so appreciate, I've just appreciated this guy. He's a dad, he's a husband, he's a deacon in his church, he loves his church. He's the son of Bill Roach, just a very respectable man that I've also appreciated very much too. And just the way that the Roach family has governed their lives together.

Super duper interesting. So Chad, here we go. Your life story. You know, thanks for having me with you, Scott. This is gonna be fun.

Yeah. So, okay. So you were at one time a child. I sure was. So tell us about your childhood and the things that unfolded.

You know, I was homeschooled, like many people in our circles, and that went well. And I enjoyed it overall. And and And yet, like the classic thing that happens when homeschooled boy meets homeschool mom and strong wills and strong opinions and back and forth. And so by the time I was in my kind of early to mid teens, I would just say that wasn't working well. And so my father, who had a little business at the time doing insurance sales, and he just had his office, and he was selling insurance, and he was doing his thing.

And my mom came to him and said, hey, it's your turn to take Chad. I've gotten him as far as it's gonna go. The train, this is the final, it's the final stop at the sign of the train. He's getting off and you're taking over, right? And so my dad did.

So he took me, so I've got 14, 15 years of age. I took my homework in with my dad every day into his office and studied in a little office beside him, finished my kind of high school years there. And I would, of course, you know, in a homeschool environment, you study quick, I'd be done with my school work by lunch. And I would work with my dad from lunch until dinner every day. And so that bond sort of started, and my dad started teaching me things about business.

And that fundamentally turned into him teaching me about sales and customer service and teaching me to do cold calling. And what sort of in retrospect ended up being the beginning of a mentorship, which then led to a life of entrepreneurism, and it went on to start many other dozens of companies and so forth after that. In retrospect, where the story all started was a strong-willed son not honoring his mother, and then dad steps in to save this thing from total dumpster fire. And That ended up actually being the point in the trajectory to something really sweet and wonderful. And if you were to now fast forward that story 20 years later, I'm now in my mid-30s and I have five children.

Several years ago, we purchased 80 acres of land, subdivided it into 10 acre lots. And I built a home right by my parents and my sister and her five children built a home right by us. And there's another brother-in-law and there's 16 cousins all within walking distance. And my parents just living right by and being involved. I've never lived more than a mile away from my parents during my entire marriage.

We've been really close together. And that's just been one of the sweetest stories that like I could ever imagine. And so just neat to see God taking that journey and starting from something that seemed very tenuous indeed to something exceedingly sweet. You know, I'm very close to my parents. My dad's one of my best friends.

My mom and I get along great now. And we see each other pretty much on a daily basis. You know, Chad and Deborah, my wife, did the same thing with my son David when he was young and he was down here in these offices since he was really young. We work together. We've actually worked together probably every day since he was nine years old or ten years old.

And I love it. It's just a joy. We've had some sort of parallel, parental experiences and even, you know, family experiences with property. So tell it, talk to us about, when did, when did you first understand that God was really working in your life? Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a great question. And it happened for me slowly. It happened over time. I don't ever remember a day where I did not believe God existed.

But I remember at key moments, these moments of clarity and conviction of sin, I remember being a tough child. My sin confronted me all the time. I was just constantly getting spanked. That was frustrating. I constantly disagreed with my parents or would do naughty things to my sisters.

I just remember that tension and just being frustrated by like, life was not good. And so that recognition of sin led to a period of years in my early teens of deep conviction over sin. And I remember being exposed to some of the Puritan writers and being very deeply convicted by these Puritan writers. And so I would read John Bunyan or some of these other guys that were writing, or J.C. Ryle, some of the Puritan paperbacks.

And I just remember being deeply convicted by them, in part because it was speaking to the tension that existed in my own soul. And my background is just grew up in a Baptist kind of general Baptist background, and not much of an appreciation for exactly understanding salvation, how God's hand works very well as a child. And so not really understanding even like salvation, is it like a sinner's prayer? Like what do I need to do? And then we were starting to be exposed to reform theology in my teenage years.

And it actually created a crisis in my own heart as to whether or not I was saved because I was like, oh man, I don't actually understand salvation quite like I thought. Like I know I got sinned and I know that I need Jesus, but like struggling with assurance and some of these various other aspects. And I just remember like waking up in the middle of the night and just crying out to God, God, I want your salvation, but like how do I know if I have it? And I was 15 years old and it was just like heavy on my heart for weeks after weeks and I would ask my parents and they're like, well, you gotta just keep praying, crying out to God. And I remember like one night in the middle of the night, I would wake up and like at two o'clock in the morning, I would go grab the hymnal and I would like find blessed assurance.

And I would like read and like sing this to myself in the middle of the night and like go back to bed and it didn't help. I'm like, I would like to know that like this salvation is for me. And finally, like in a moment of desperation, I just prayed, God, I have done everything I can find in your word to cry out to you for this salvation. If you want me to be saved, you're just going to have to save me. Good night.

And I've never thought about it since. And I think it was just a moment of understanding and I couldn't have articulated it in a systematic theology at the time, but it was a moment of understanding for me that like, if God is going to save someone like me. He's going to have to do it. And I'm just going to have to trust that. You know, this must infuriate the devil that God all of a sudden turns the light on and it's done.

And so, and I, I'm not, I don't even know that like, if I were to look back, say, oh, that was a point of conversion for me. I think that was just me understanding and just wrestling with like, this is not me. This is gonna be God all the way. And I loved him and clung to him before then, but I just stopped striving at that point in time and just became a peaceful son in my father's lap. And God started using that as a moment of working in my life and change.

I'd say after that, there were key moments of deep areas of repentance and conviction that God would give me. I had to go to my parents when I was 17 years old and confess. I wrote a two-page paper and just confess different sins that God was convicting me of and told them I wanted to reset my relationship with them such that I was giving them honor and respecting their authority and not fighting them so much. So God was just slowly working through these things. And There was no overnight changes in my life, but God continued to just build a trajectory of more and more faith, more and more clinging to him, and more and more walking and experiencing the freedom that Christ brings to a sinful soul.

What were some of the good things that your parents taught you about raising children that you're doing now today? Yeah. That's, that's a great question. I think my parents helped me to be keen in observing, the, display at a young keen in observing the display at a young age of disobedience and self-will and just kind of that fleshy, sinful, foolish heart that exhibits itself in the heart of a child. And being keen from that from a young age, I think most of the war of the trajectory for raising children is set and wrestled through and battled through in the first few years.

And that's not to say, you know, my oldest, you know, I haven't graduated with any kids, I don't have any grandkids. And so like, I'm not the fount of all wisdom in this, but like life has been much more peaceful in our home as a result of like really digging in earlier in the early years. And there's a lot of sweetness that comes from patiently and gently guiding a nine-month-old, a 18-month-old, a two-and-a-half-year-old through loving discipline, pointing them regularly to the gospel, to their need for Christ, and not coddling child-directed behavior in the home, and truly making Christ, His Word, His truth, and the parents' commands to be the center of the child's direction and energy and focus during those early years and to set them on a path and a trajectory towards wisdom. God has to say from the inside, but there's a lot that parents can do in helping work through the foolishness that's bound up in the heart of a child. And a lot of that has to do with loving and gentle discipline.

I'm thankful that my parents gave it to me and my children receive plenty of it as well. Can we say like a big massive amen to that? Amen. Go early, go hard, go early, shape the tree. Yeah.

That's the time to get it. So Chad, tell us about how you met the woman who would become your wife and why you married her. Yes. So Mine was not a simple story. I kind of joke.

Some people say, well, third time's the charm. For me, it was like ninth time was the charm. For some of these guys, they're like, well, there's only one girl and I talked to her at 18 and we decided to get married and it was just a beautiful, easy, simple story. That was not my story. My story was groanings and yearnings and longings and prayers and fastings and twice I was shipwrecked and once bitten by a snake and you know.

But at the end of it all, it was a girl that, you know, I was in, you know, going to church with the whole, the whole blessed time. So you know, I think there's a couple things. I love my wife. She's a godly woman who follows heart after Christ, and I married her because she loves Jesus. And I figured if she can give her all in her strength and the apple of her eye to following the Lord, then like we can figure this out together.

But God brought us both to that moment through a moment of profound humbling and disappointment in other relationships that we were pursuing. And God basically humbled us both simultaneously in other relationships that we were pursuing. And then when that happened and God had our hearts ready in a humble and a quiet place, I think we both saw something in each other that we wouldn't have otherwise seen before. In some ways, our families weren't very similar. Certainly, we were at least to the extent that we were in the same church.

But like, in other ways, our families were maybe a fair bit different in terms of our culture and background. And it wasn't perhaps like a natural thing. But like, when God gave me a heart to see her heart for the Lord and vice versa to her. It didn't take long. It was just, frankly, honestly, from the first time I had a conversation with her that was more than 90 seconds long to the time we were married was a period of time of less than six months.

What a sweet story, Chad. I really, I do love your story. And you were an item of prayer between Deborah and I for actually, for years. I was an item of prayer for many people for the first few years, because they loved me. For the next few years, it was because they loved me.

For the next few years, it was because they wanted me off their prayer list. Well, whatever, right? Whatever. Jelle, it happened. It's great.

And you do have a, you just have a super neat wife. And I have a great wife. She's a great mom. We have five children. She does a great job raising them.

She has a heart for the Lord. We have one single prayer request in our lives that everything takes a very distant second to, and that's that we would see all of our children and their children in the kingdom of heaven in that great day, and that not one would be missing. And we're both laser-focused on that. And there's a lot of tears, a lot of joy along that journey, But we want to have a family for Jesus and be faithful in that. And if we can be successful and happy in that, then business, business, who really cares about some of that stuff on the side, That's what we're honing on.

Your mom and dad were key influences. Who else? Yeah. So my pastor and pastors in my life were key influences. So I spent the majority of my adult life and many of my teenage years under the tutelage and mentorship of Kevin Swanson, who's a pastor in our church out here in Colorado.

And, you know, I really am a product in many ways of mentorship, primarily the mentorship of my father, but very close second to that would be of Kevin Swanson. And actually early on, I remember someone asking me the question at 15 years old, Chad, like, what do you want to do when you grow up? Like, what do you want your life to look like? And I don't say this, I'll say this to Jason. Jason, at the time, I said I would like to be like Scott Brown, a little bit of business, a little bit of nonprofit ministry, and a little bit of local church ministry.

And so for the last 20 years, I have had that sense of a tri-vocational calling, local church, nonprofit work, which in my case is homeschooling, home discipleship, mentorship. We're involved with generations of ministry that is a proponent of these things all around the world. And so, those three things are what I wake up every day and do. And I love those. And it's been very clear to me since I was in my early teens that that was what I was interested in.

And the mentors that God has brought me into my life, brought into my life, have centered around some of those various things. So in some case, pastoral ministry and other cases like business mentors. And I'm very thankful for those. I sort of had a pretty informal formal academic education, didn't really spend a lot of time in formal academic institutions, but I'm very, very, very fond of and keen on mentorship and what it does in the formation of a young person. My life is a reflection of the Godly men that poured into me, and I'm grateful for them.

John Beeke is another pretty significant influencer. We often listen to his preaching and teaching if we're not perhaps, you know, listening to some of our own local pastors. So. Were there any important books that shaped you coming up? There were two by J.C.

Ryle. When I was young, Thoughts for Young Men. Don't say that. Jason almost worships J.C. Ryle.

I love J.C. Ryle. It just makes me so happy to hear you say those words. Others along the way are always ready by Greg Bonson on the topic of thinking through a biblical philosophy of thinking and thought epistemology. That was very important for me.

And then I was informally mentored in kind of some different seminary level of training from Kevin Swanson and very much enjoy and appreciate history, both church history and just history in general. And so, and then occasionally on the side in the more business context, I enjoy geopolitics and have read some just fun and interesting books about how globalism is coming to an end in our current era. Too much fun, too much fun. That sounds great. Okay, plans, prayers for the future.

How do you, how should people be praying for child Roach and his family? That's a good question, Scott. My prayer, as I said before, is that, I would be faithful to raise my children to, love, obey and serve the Lord, not just sufficiently, not just to be saved, but better than I. And that was my parents' prayer for me. My parents said, we just want our children to do a little better than we did.

And when they started homeschooling us, they said, look, they may not be the smartest in the world, we may not be the best teachers, but if they can love the Lord and serve him a little bit more than we did, then that will be successful to us. And I have the same prayer for my children and I pray the same for mine and for the children of others as well, is that we could see a godly seed build on the generation of their parents and just a little bit of growth. I understand that I don't have all the gifts in the world and neither will my children. But if they could be a bit more faithful than I was, then I think we could see a little bit of progress in the world. So that's my biggest prayer.

Yeah, do I wanna see reformation sweep over this country? Do I wanna see a return of vibrancy of local churches? Do I wanna see blooming and fruitful family economies and a return of the concept of business productivity, return from this sort of corporate, financial, mega macro thing back to local fruitful families loving God and being faithful and all things. Yeah, I want to see all those things, but they're all distant seconds to the first thing. Love it.

So if there's a 10 year old boy out there who's just like you were when you were 10 years old, what would you, what do you want to tell him? Well, I would say, show me your mother and let me lay hands on her and pray for her. First thing I would do. And then what? And then the second thing I would say is Give your heart to honor and humility.

Honor and humility. I was not a humble child. I still struggle regularly in this area and ask God to give me humility and then he does. We were talking before the session went live today about some ways that God has just deeply humbled me again in my work in the last few weeks. These are good things.

Learning to lean into humility And when God brings those trials, when God brings the discipline and correction of your parents, when God brings difficult things, to get comfortable being humble, and then to honor and to really lean in and to set your heart towards wisdom. I don't know how that happened in my life except it was the grace of God and probably the context that my parents built for me. But I really, when I was raised by my father, I didn't have many friends. I spent my life with older men and had a desire to be like them. And so I would tell a 10 year old is like, be with the men that you wanna be like.

Don't think so much about your friends, your airsoft games and your schoolwork. Those are things are good. But be with the older men that you want to be like. And who knows, you might end up being like them. Chad, you had two of the greatest men in your life, your father and Kevin Swanson, And these are humble men.

They are humble men. And praise the Lord that you learned from them. You listened to them. And what a joy it is to see you now in your mid thirties, after all these great years. It's been a joy to be an observer, you know, from afar, and sometimes actually really close along those years.

Yeah, we just so appreciate you. And hey, thank you for telling your story I hope a lot of people listen to this and are encouraged by the biblical foundations that exist in the discussion So thanks for joining us. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Jason And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. I hope you can be with us next time.

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