When push comes to shove, who’s really shaping you in your walk with God? Sadly, most Christians today have “ten thousand instructors,” as Paul wrote, “but not many . . . fathers” (1 Cor. 4:15). The truth is, it’s far easier to look to popular podcasters to guide us, rather than seeking out the interpersonal influence of godly mentors as personal shepherds. But that’s not what the Scriptures prescribe. In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by special guest Bill Roach, give this earnest charge—stop stoking superficial manhood and womanhood through man caves and social media chatter, but seek out faithful shepherds who will spur you on to godly living. 

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Today we're going to talk about fatherhood and the Church spiritual fatherhood. Paul says that though you might have 10, 000 instructors in Christ, you don't have many fathers among you. We want to talk about how to cultivate that and how to facilitate it in the local church. Hope you enjoy the discussion.

Jason, everybody knows there's really a dearth of spiritual fathers in the Church. You have particularly lots and lots of young men who, they don't have anchors, they don't have men who are really shepherding them spiritually. And of course, there's a lack of fatherhood just generally, you know, biological fathers that are engaged in their kids' lives. But the Apostle Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 4, 15 through 17. I'll read it.

For though you might have 10, 000 instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Therefore I urge you, imitate me. For this reason I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful son in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways in Christ as I teach everywhere in every church." It's a temptation for churches to rush to the alternate pattern of spiritual fathers not being the physical fathers. And of course, that is such an important part of the equation.

But the original design by God is actually that physical fathers would also be spiritual fathers, and they could reap the benefits of the position that God has given them as a biological father in order to become a spiritual Father if God would give grace and bring salvation. So I'm glad we're talking about this with Bill Roach today. Yeah, Bill, I mean, you and I particularly, and of course Jason as well, for two decades have been talking about a revival of biblical fatherhood and been very concerned about it trying to be revived ourselves, right, over the years and to be really reformed according to Scripture. So you've got these two categories of fatherhood. You have a father who's really called to be a family shepherd, who's called to be a spiritual father.

And then you have this other category in the church where men also are spiritual fathers. So what are your thoughts, Bill? Well, you know, Scott, The most important event that we do, we do a lot of events at Christian Home Educators of Colorado, but the most important event we do is the Father-Son Retreat. In fact, we think it's so important, we do two of them, you know, back to back. You've been out there with your sons and your grandsons, but this by far has the most impact.

And it's because it is the greatest need out there. The father, the spiritual temperature of the father is weak right now. And Satan is going so hard after the dads that we feel like we just had to bring in these important truths that dads really important. And even the scriptures tell us, listen, if dad's not doing well at home, You don't even think about bringing them into the church. So we have to shore up the dads.

Yeah, and I think a big part of that is urging fathers to be students of the Bible, who teach the Bible to their own children. When you get a father on that track, it changes his life. So we have Ephesians chapter 6, which is a direct admonition from the Apostle Paul to fathers, and you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." So here you have the Apostle Paul, who's the same author of 1 Corinthians, exhorting biological fathers to also be spiritual fathers. And there's such power there because the position of a father in a home affords you so many advantages to pour into the spiritual life of children. So one of those advantages is simple math, meaning hours.

You know, the person who has the hours wields the influence. So when we go to Deuteronomy 6, it's actually a call to maintain the hours, to keep them within your own purview so that you can have the influence and use it for godliness throughout the day from morning till night. You know, the Apostle, he's making a distinction between two different kinds of personalities. One, he says you have 10, 000 instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers. So he's making a contrast to people who have, you know, some kind of input in your life.

And the language that the apostle uses is sort of someone who's acting like a guardian, you know, he's just taking care of this person, but not like a father. There's the way that a father takes care, and there's a way that just somebody else who has some kind of responsibility. So he's making a distinction between these two different kinds of personalities. And I also think he's, the implication here is there's a shepherding aspect of it. He's not just the teacher in the home, he's not just the provider, but he is the actual shepherd, and he needs to take that shepherding part, that fathering part, very serious, just like the Heavenly Father does for us.

And while was there a new wrinkle in this in the internet age where people have a sense that their pastor is a talking head who's a great preacher. So I thank God for great preachers and powerful preaching of the Word of God, and it would be hard to think that we could have too much of that. But that's not the same thing as a spiritual father. And for people who think that it's enough just to hear powerful preaching piped in and not have the actual interpersonal influence of mature, godly men who are acting as spiritual fathers is a tremendous mistake. Well, and it goes further than that because you have so many young men and women.

They do have local church pastors, but they're not actually their shepherds. It's these three podcasters have become their shepherds, and they're being moved and shepherded by podcasters, but they're not really shepherds. They're like these 10, 000 instructors in Christ. It's not the same as having actually a spiritual father. I think it lacks the accountability and the relationship aspect that must be part of any teaching.

That's why I think Paul said, I'm gonna send Timothy to you and show you how this does, how this works. Timothy's my spiritual son. He's gonna show you what it's like to be not only learning and teaching but in being in relationship with somebody. I think this is what's so important about, like myself, I've attended a Bible study for ten years plus. That meets every Friday at my office.

But these aren't just guys that, you know, maybe I work with stuff. These are the same guys that I see on Sunday morning that are my brothers in Christ and I go to church with. So we're talking about things on Friday morning with lots of accountability. And then we talk about it again on Sunday. We're in covenant with each other, and it's important that we're studying together, but we also have the relationship together.

Matthew Henry says, whatever other teachers they had, Paul was their spiritual father. He first brought them off of pagan idolatry to the faith of the gospel and the worship of the true and the living God. He was the instrument of their new birth, and there claimed the relation of a father to them and felt the bowels of a father toward them. So this is very invasive kind of fatherhood where you have a man who was used of the Lord to bring someone into the faith and then to carry that man on in the faith. That's very different than having a talking head, Jason, like you were talking about.

Right. And the danger, too, comes, you know, like My elder, Josh, leads our Bible study. And when he starts talking about an application and maybe a certain sin, I'm looking him straight in the eye and said, Josh, you know that I struggle with this. And so there's no hiding there when you're in relationship with these guys. Nat So here's a test.

We were actually in our family talking about this around the table the other day. How rare it is to find someone who will actually plow through the awkwardness and take the risk of telling you things that are hard, will be hard for you to hear, and that might cause you to resent, but things that you need to hear, even when they know you don't want to hear it, that you need to hear those things. Shaitan are the wounds of a friend. Exactly. But because the position of being the person who's willing to bite the bullet and speak those things is often so thankless.

It's getting more and more rare that a person is actually willing to do it because they're not willing to pay what's likely to be the price on that. But a spiritual father will. A spiritual father will bite the bullet and tell you what you need to hear, even if they know that you don't want to hear it. So, hey, I need that in my life. We all need that in our lives.

And we need to seek out spiritual fathers who have gone before us, have been through the wars, who have successfully navigated the challenges that we're having, and can actually help us identify places where we're off track. And when they do, they're not too scared to tell us. Right. You know, I think also, Jason, it's so important in this time and day and age, because Satan has done such a tremendous job of creating a stupor over men, whether it's surrounded by work or surrounded by the sports or surrounded by all of their friends. There's just a kind of a sleepiness among men.

And if you don't have friends around you and other men that are kind of there to shake you and say, you need to wake up. You need to see this. What's going on. You need to see what's going on in your life. You need to see what's going on in your family.

And I say this to you in love. We need that because Satan has created this sleepiness among men. So true. So how do we in the church cultivate men like this? How do you prepare men to be actual spiritual fathers?

Well, I think it's obvious that you go to the qualifications for eldership, and one of the things that is required of church leaders is that they have honed the skills needed to successfully shepherd in the church, successfully shepherding in a home. So, churches need strong, vibrant, spiritually vigorous biological fathers who have honed to those skills under their own roofs. But when we identify men like that, we need to be encouraging them to then pour out the things that they've learned even beyond their own roofs. I think we also need to cultivate humility in men too, Scott. If you keep going on In chapter four, verse 18, Paul says, some are arrogant as though I were not coming to you, but I will come to you soon if the Lord wills and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power.

And I think this call to humility is so important for dads, especially in the home, right? There needs to be a humility confession of sin that's coming from dad first, right? If the only sins that are talked about in the home are the children's sins or the wife's sins. And dad is not confessing his own sins. The first opportunity that those children have to leave their home, they're going to be out of there if everything is, the blame is placed on them.

So dad needs to be first and foremost in confessing that he creates the culture of confession and humility in that home so his children can say, okay, this is a place where people sin and then they go to the cross and it gets forgiven and then we can have a joyful time around the dinner table. Dad must lead with that culture, and that will only come with humility. You know, you don't want to create your children to be liars, right? 1 John 1-8 makes it very clear that if you say you don't have any sin, you're a liar. And the last thing we wanna do is to teach our children how to be liars.

We hate lying in the home, but oftentimes we set the example of lying by not confessing our sins. And it really presents a huge challenge because if the older men are not humble men, then when they go to the younger men who are proud men, because typically young people are more proud. You know, trials and tribulations, hardship, heartbreaking things, it tends to dampen your pride. You know, nobody ever is able to get rid of their pride, but there is a process that God works in men's lives through rejection and various troubles. And that's supposed to create a humility.

But if an older man doesn't have that humility, he will inflame the pride of the younger man and make it and make that discipleship process much, much more difficult. The Bible says that the glory of a young man is his strength. Well, I'll tell you, the non-glory of this old man is his lack of strength. God has a way of humbling us by taking that strength away. But boy, I told my son-in-law Danny just the other day, I said, because he talked about how God was humbling him and making him realize that it wasn't in his strength that he could do things, but that he needed to rely on the Lord.

And I said, you know what, if you learn that lesson in your thirties, then you're going to be so far ahead of me. It took me to get into my fifties before I learned that lesson well. So a couple of exhortations. One, squeeze the most that you can out of your biological father. Two, identify spiritual fathers.

So you may have a biological father that is less than ideal. Squeeze all the good that you can out of it. His decades, his extra decades of life, will give him areas where he can help you. Even if he can't help you in every area, he'll be able to help you in some areas. Go get it from him.

It's one way that we can honor our fathers by drawing out from them the things in areas where they can help us. If you have an ideal biological father, it's almost inexhaustible what you can get out of them. Secondly, identify spiritual fathers beyond your biological father who can help you in ways that you need and are willing to invest in your life. Amen. The spiritual father that Paul points to here, right?

He says, Timothy is gonna come to you. And what's he gonna do? He's gonna remind you of my ways in Christ. We need men around us who are gonna remind us because we forget the ways of Christ and we need those brothers who are going to be there in that Hebrews 3.13 kind of way, right? The exhortation that we need daily.

Yes, it's really true that I need about 24 hours for my heart to start to grow cold. And I need that exhortation first from my wife, because that's the one I'm with all the time, and then from these other brothers who are willing to come beside me and exhort me because there's a danger, there's a battle, and my heart could grow cold in less than 24 hours. You know, another thing to add to this, there's, if you need a spiritual father, and of course everybody does, It's really important you understand how that works. If you need a spiritual father, you need to seek him out. What older men understand is that if you're not seeking them, then you're not really going to be open to receiving from them.

And don't expect that older spiritual father to chase you down, because he's got to know that you are hungry. It's the hungry people that find food. And, you know, mentors understand that unless there's a seeking, there's really not going to be a receiving. So if you need a spiritual father, seek him out and chase him down. Well, okay, so we're living in a world where there aren't very many spiritual fathers.

We know how to build them in the Church through the Word of God, and particularly even raising up spiritual fathers from our own children, that we would raise children, particularly men who understand what it means to be a spiritual father. But it's a tremendous lack. You have the same thing with women. It's very difficult to find true Proverbs 31 women. It's difficult to find true Titus 2 women, the older woman.

The world is lacking of true spiritual fathers and true spiritual mothers, And I think we should do everything we can in our local churches to cultivate spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers. Amen. You know, we do that Father-Son Retreat, Scott. You've been to our father-son retreat. I mentioned that.

What usually happens on Saturday night, the last night, talk to men, and they're so full of new ideas and the things that they were doing wrong, they want to go home and correct, and they're excited about it. I always exhort them and say, here's what I would recommend to you when you go home. Don't go home and on Monday morning sit down with your family and give them the 10 things that have been done wrong and how you're going to correct them. Spend the first week just confessing to them the way that you have failed and that God is working on your heart. And let these things ruminate inside you.

And then maybe after a week or two or even a month, you might come back and talk about things that will change. But let them go deep into your heart, confess that you haven't been the dad you've been, and then God will give you plenty of time to make the change. Don't just go home and start telling everybody what to do. Amen. Amen.

Well, there you have it. We need spiritual fathers in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. May it happen in our churches and in your churches, those of you who are listening. And thank you, Bill. Thank you so much for joining us.

It's always a blessing to talk to you. Dr. B We're listening to Joel Beke's sermons on Jonah. Wow, what a powerful, powerful series. But I was thinking about Jonah, he's going down into the bottom of the ship, right?

And then the waves are crashing. He just wants to get as far away as possible from everybody. And kind of a Proverbs 18, one way, right? Where a man seeks to separate himself. That's the battle.

But I was thinking, I don't know why I thought of this. I said, Jonah went down into his man cave, right? He just wanted to get away from everybody. And I think we got to get to the place where we're replacing man caves with prayer closets. And we need more Bible studies and maybe not sports bars around where men go to.

Amen. True. Yeah, that is so true. Okay. Well, thank you so much, you guys.

And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Hope you can be with us next time and hope you can join us at Ridgecrest next May, 2026 for our national conference, Manhood and Womanhood, the Glory of God in the creation order. Church and Family Life is proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture by helping build strong families and strong churches. If you found this resource helpful, we encourage you to check out churchandfamilylife.com