The Divorced Dadvocate: Divorce Support For Dads
Dads face unique issues during and after divorce. We identify and address the issues relevant to divorced/divorcing dads and create an action plan to survive and thrive!
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The Divorced Dadvocate: Divorce Support For Dads
252 - REPLAY: Love Hacks: Building Life-Giving Relationships
Jude is joined by the author of Love Hacks: Ten Skills For Making Your Relationships More Life Giving and pastor of Restoration Church in Denver, CO, Ron Johnson. They discuss how divorced dads can have a healthier relationship after divorce by learning what they want in a woman and relationship as well as how to create a deeper attachment the second time around.
Let’s break it down—what you can control, what you can’t, and what to do about it.
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Hello and welcome to the Divorced Dadvocates, where we help dads create a healthier and less traumatic divorce. My name is Jude Sandvall and I'm your host, and today we are going to be talking about love hacks. But first I wanted to thank everybody who has been downloading and listening to the podcast. We are approaching 10,000 downloads, which is absolutely amazing, at least for me. So I'm not Joe Rogan, but for me, 10,000 is an amazing milestone and I appreciate everybody that's listening. And let's just continue. The community is continuing to build share like this, share it with other divorced dads and let's keep the momentum going. We've got some workshops coming up another class August 22nd so let's just keep it rolling.
Speaker 1:So today, my guest is known for his commitment to making disciples and planting churches. He has personally started four churches in the urban centers of San Francisco, california, and my hometown of Denver, colorado. He currently pastors Restoration Church here in Denver, which has been instrumental in starting over 40 traditional churches and, in 2019, was counted among the top 10 multiplying churches in the US by Outreach Magazine. He has a BA in psychology from Wichita State University, a master's in divinity from Golden State Seminary and a master of arts in biblical counseling from Colorado Christian University. He's married to Carissa and is the father of five children. And if that all is not enough, he is the author of the newly released book titled Love Hacks 10 Skills for Making your Relationships More Life-Giving. Please help me welcome Ron Johnson.
Speaker 2:Hey, so great to meet you, Jude. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:You did a great job building your podcast.
Speaker 1:Hey, I know, I know that that happens in about one minute with Joe Rogan and some of these other guys, but hey, that's been a year long, about a year long push here, which you know it's, it's baby steps, but that's okay, that's, that's exciting, we're just it's. I'm just so, so blessed and then so, absolutely ecstatic the growth and the community that's starting to build.
Speaker 2:I appreciate what you're doing. I mean, I'm a divorced dad. I remember being a single dad and how over my head I felt all the time, and so what you're doing is really important and there's a huge need for it. So thank you for serving us.
Speaker 1:Well, it's my pleasure and on that note. So, love Hacks, you just released that no-transcript. So you know, maybe tell us a little bit about yourself and then maybe a little bit about that kind of the just prep things for talking about the book sure, yeah.
Speaker 2:So uh grew up over the country, became a christ follower at 16. I was pre-med in college, felt called to go into ministry. Just a weird night where I had probably too much caffeine but uh made a huge pivot, didn't even go to church but started just doing all the ministry. And then uh met my, my fore. She was the girl next door and met her through a friend and then we married at the age of 23. So pretty young. We were married for 26 years and have three amazing kids to show for. Our marriage had a very difficult marriage.
Speaker 2:Discover, discovered pretty early on about some of the mental issues that she faced and weathered five affairs over the course of 26 years that she had. I coped and medicated myself with just trying to be successful in ministry. I got more love at work. Usually I came home. That was a big issue on my side of the fence. I came in with not a whole lot of tools when I came to emotional intelligence or understanding what I was dealing with, and so we we did our best and got a lot of counseling. I got that second master's degree you mentioned earlier trying to figure myself out, trying to stay in my own marriage.
Speaker 2:We probably spent gosh maybe 60 70 thousand dollars on therapy trying to figure us out.
Speaker 2:And then, uh, finally she, uh, she found somebody else and decided to call it quits, so got got divorced, uh, which had been uh, nine years ago, no, like eight years ago got divorced and then thought I'd never get married again. I kind of made a vow. I went out with a really wonderful woman but you just tell, she wasn't able to attach. She'd gone through a lot of difficulty in her previous marriage. Her husband left her for somebody else. So I thought, man, I'm not going to get hurt again, I'm not going to date, I'm just going to love my church. I'm going to plant a lot of churches, I'm going to hunt fish, I'm going to buy an Airstream and dine a trailer with a dog just go out that way.
Speaker 2:and uh, and they got out of the plan. So I had immense group single guys were all divorced. I go, hey, you guys have to teach me to be single again. And they go well, make you a deal, we'll do that and you help us grow in the ways of jesus. One of the guys in that group introduced me to carissa. So I go, well, prayed about for two weeks. I go, all right, I'll I let her back in the water and go out with her.
Speaker 2:And uh, the rest of the history fell off very quickly. Super healthy woman, never been married, uh, younger than me. And thought about that in my list of what I want and don't want to do about the age. But uh, you know, guys are we can quickly adjust to being with somebody younger than us. Sure, we do. So we got married five years ago and we have two great kids, a two-year-old and a three-year-old.
Speaker 2:Never thought I'd be a dad at 58 again. But here I am. Wow, keeps you young. Yeah, it's either aging me or making me younger, I'm not sure, but maybe both, I guess, but she's been a joy. Or making me younger, I'm not sure, but maybe both, I guess, but she's been a joy Like. Our marriage is really great, very, very strong. I mean I tell people all the time I can do anything with Carissa, I can clean toilets with Carissa and it's a good day and I think it's this guy's grace and gift in my life. And, yeah, a lot of healing took place from my therapy and doing divorce recovery groups and just time, but she's been the key catalyst to my healing.
Speaker 2:Just having somebody who knows me, sees me and loves me the way she does.
Speaker 1:That's phenomenal. So so I what I really? I really appreciate the love hacks book because it's something after reading I thought, oh, I I wish I had this in my twenties, right Before I got before well, actually before that, with my teens maybe, when I started to date, and because, like so many men, I didn't have anybody that really taught me how to date, taught me what to think about, what to look for in your 10 love hacks are really that it's a guide for, okay, this is kind of a step-by-step process to kind of you know, and it's not in intimate detail, but kind of what you need to be thinking about when you're dating, before you start to make that commitment. So my question, my first question, is so was it after your healthy relationship with Carissa that you were like, okay, now I kind of got this figured out, maybe I can write some of this down? What kind of prompted you to write?
Speaker 2:Thank you for asking. I got to think back so I did a series at restoration called love hacks. I've done it twice now. So I did it three years ago and several people go. You need to turn that into a book. That was really, really helpful. So I go and I've been asked to write books in the past.
Speaker 2:I've never considered myself an author. Candidly, I don't consider myself to be much of one. Now I'm more of a leader and a church planning catalyst. I love pastoring people. People kept saying you need to turn that into a book.
Speaker 2:I sent the manuscripts to India, I had them transcribed, then I literally worked like five to 10 minutes by three or four days a week right up until I published it, cause I just didn't have a lot of time. I got married, got kids. You know I've got a lot of responsibilities, but I think what prompted it was kind of what you just said. I wish I had this kind of a book when I was younger. And then I thought I would love to have this book right after I got divorced, because I have a chapter on divorce, remarriage and I just watched a lot of my friends go through a divorce and then make the exact same mistake like basically married the same woman with a different hair color and right back in the same place, and that is the most painful thing to watch.
Speaker 2:It's one. It's hard to go through one divorce divorce, but to go through multiple and for the same reasons, right. So I thought I'm going to write a book and talk about things like you know what to look for in a maid and you know how to, how to, how to think about intimacy in a different way and and talk about really what I've learned is the bond, is the marriage. I look at my previous marriage. I realized we never had a bond Like that. Deep attachment was never there. So we kept trying to rekindle something that didn't exist, right.
Speaker 1:So those are some of the motivating factors for me.
Speaker 1:Right. So there's 10 love hacks. The one, when I was reading it and when I was listening to you, that struck me was the most was the one that you just just hit on a little bit was, uh, was your third one, which building intimacy and and how you describe that with the difference, uh, the different strands, and and how that creates. Talk us through that just a a little bit, because I think it's incredibly important, particularly for those of those men that are interested again in getting into a relationship but are very afraid of making those same mistakes like you did. Now, you know, those are the ones that are much smarter than me, that are listening, because I did what you described like get back in the next relationship.
Speaker 1:Pow, you know, bang your head against the wall. Get in the next one. Bang my head against the wall until I finally figured out oh yeah, I'm the common denominator. So I started figuring myself out and then now I'm finally healthy, where I can get into a relationship. But I hear from a lot of men oh, I'm a little bit afraid. What are some steps? That one I really, really liked. Talk with us about that a little bit. Let me get right to it.
Speaker 2:I'll get to chapter three. I'll get a little context. So, on that note, I wrote I think it's chapter one. I don't have the index in front of me where I went to look for to mate. Yes, I had a lot of guys have the wrong list, so I'm trying to get some help with getting the right list. I think you know I had my list partly on point, partly off, and like, for example, I went out with somebody who was healthy in so many ways but not emotionally healed yet. So give me a little checklist. But the reason chapter three was written was because of my experience that led to chapter two.
Speaker 2:I went to my therapist one day. He'd seen us. He was our marriage therapist. He knew my ex really, really well. We'd seen him for every decade and there's things you can say to somebody after their marriage is over. You cannot say to them when they are married that first, because every therapist wants to keep the marriage together if they're a good therapist, unless it's a super toxic and unhealthy, of course. And he told me you were never really married. I said we're married for 26 years. The formula says I got to pay alimony for 13 years. What do you?
Speaker 1:mean you're married.
Speaker 2:Like to have known that before I went to court and he said, uh, no, you never had a bond. I go, wow, see, and I just kept asking questions what is bond? What's the nature of? Why is it so important? And he said, yeah, you kept trying to rebuild something that never was there. It's like when're gonna rebuild the fire. But you know, spark, because you never had one. It wasn't like we didn't have an attraction, we didn't have things in common and we never love each other, but that deep attachment he said that was not there. That had to own part of that. But I also, because of the abuse in the past, my ex, I don't, she just couldn't't give her heart in such ways to truly attach. And then he said, you know, you should do some Bible saying this.
Speaker 2:So I went to Genesis, went back and I've been reading all the passages in divorce, remarriage. And I went to Genesis 2.24 because there's a principle in interpreting scripture. It's called the principle of first mention. Anytime there's a first mention of a topic, you go okay, this is a direction for everything else. And I know some of your listeners are Christians, some are not, and some of them have the Bible and some don't.
Speaker 2:But if you look at, you can look at Genesis as being a theological treatise, or you can look at it archetypally, if you're not a Christian, if you want. You got the first marriage, you got Adam and Eve and you have this sort of this purpose that is given to them. It's like a teleological principle. Here's what the purpose of marriage is for a principle. That's in Genesis 2.24. And it says for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh. So, being a nerd, a Bible nerd, I got into the Hebrew very in-depth and the word there for united it is debak, and debak in Hebrew means to bond or to attach, and so what is being said there is the bond, is the marriage. Before there was wedding ceremonies and the institutional marriage and the multi-billion dollar wedding.
Speaker 2:You know that sort of sector of society out there I would see a couple like some penultimate couple and they'd be talking about whatever the upside of their diet or something, and then he would see how there was an attachment between the two of them and he'd say, okay, now that's what I'm talking about, that's marriage. They've got this deep, deep bond. Yeah, we still need vows and we need to sign up license, because that kind of protects the bond, it sort of validates the bond, it picks the bond public, but the bond precedes the vows, and that's what really is marriage. So then the next thing is one flesh. So the result of the bond is a one flesh relationship. One flesh means intimacy. So I began to think about that. What's the meaning of a? One flesh means intimacy. So I began to think about that. What's the meaning of a one flesh relationship? It's obviously a sexual metaphor, but it's way more than that.
Speaker 2:And so as I began to unpack the scriptures and look at what it means to have an intimate relationship, I came up with six strands, like a rope. Yeah, and need all six strands to have a strong marriage. And the the cool thing is, you know, the intimacy is what creates a life-giving marriage. But most guys, when they think intimacy, first they think of sex. Then they might think of something else, like, hey, a buddy to go to games with, or a partner in life. That makes them less lonely. But we need a more full-orbed understanding of intimacy. And the cool thing is, as intimacy grows, the bond gets stronger and so the relationship gets stronger. The bond gets stronger and so the relationship gets stronger.
Speaker 2:So the six strands of the rope, as I try to articulate them in the book, are, you know, first of all you have the intellectual strand, like a mental, intellectual connection. You talk about things that are interesting to you, whether it be, you know, a hobby you share, or maybe you you're into wine or politics, whatever. But there's got to be an intellectual engagement in order to have intimacy. Then there's the physical strands. The physical strand is not sexual, it's touch, it's affection, it's being near each other. There's a law called the law of propinquity. It states that the more time you spend with somebody, the more likely it is you're going to become more affectionate towards them, the more emotionally connected to them. Then there's the emotional strand, which, if you look at most of the research now on attachment, like I'm talking about, like oh gosh, what is his name now? The guy that wrote Seven Principles of Marriage?
Speaker 2:Why Marriage is Gottman, john Gottman Most research indicates if you don't have a deep emotional connection. Sue Johnson, her research indicates the same thing. She's written a book called hold me tight. The emotional connection is so critical to strengthening the bond, like being known and knowing the other person, being able to read their feelings and being able to develop the eq to have a deep emotional connection super important right. And of course you have the sexual connection. All the research indicates if you have a strong emotional connection, the sex is going to take care of itself.
Speaker 2:All the therapists like to say this that all the therapies that are designed to focus on technique are very non-efficacious. They don't really lead to good sex. If it's the emotional connection sex is going to happen, then let's see what am I forgetting here? What I call the missional strand of the book Having a common purpose, a common common mission, is really important. And then the spiritual connection, like right, there's research that indicates that if you share intimate requests on a regular basis like preferably daily and pray together, you have less than a 1% chance of getting a divorce. So there's research like George Barna.
Speaker 2:He's a researcher on the West Coast. He did a bunch of research. He found that couples that do that on a regular basis, preferably daily, have less than a 1% chance of getting a divorce.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's phenomenal. So at least you had a list of wants, right, which is the first thing, right? I just and a lot of guys are just, oh, she's good looking, right, or you know she's really hot, let's go out. And then they get stuck in that, right, you get stuck in that. And there's a book called the Tactical Guide to Women and I've got it right here by Sean Smith, who's actually out of Denver, colorado also, and he talks about that also of like understanding who you are and what you want, and your list of wants, which you referred to also, because you can't really, it's kind of like going shopping for anything for a car, right, if you don't know that you need a truck or a car or whatever, how are you going to go out? You're just going to go out and like the first car that you see, you're going to buy it. Not that we're. I mean, that's kind of a generic analogy, right?
Speaker 2:Not that we're comparing women to trucks, or they do in some country songs.
Speaker 1:But we're not saying that at all, it's just the philosophy and idea around that. But then once you do building that attachment and all of those different attachments that you just described. And so to take what you're saying is, you described it as the four strands, as a rope, and if you look and you pull apart a rope, you've got different strands like that, and if you pull them up, if you pull each one apart, each one itself is not very strong, but when they twist them together and then you pull each one apart, each one itself is not very strong, but when they twist them together and then you pull them, it makes it much, much stronger and builds a tension on that that is very, very strong for a very long time, lest something breaks or something.
Speaker 2:I think those strands should inform our list. So I actually had a list of 48 qualities, which is pretty psycho yeah, she's got to be phenomenal.
Speaker 2:Well, I had five non-essentials and then, uh, no, I had 43 non-essentials and five essentials. Okay, my essentials were informed by my understanding of intimacy not completely, but I go, okay, uh, must be able to attach. Like, a lot of women cannot attach, they give the hard way over and over again. And us guys, we gotta take some responsibility for this. Like we, a lot of us, are serial women damagers. Candidly, we we go in, we know how to like, woo and and seduce and then get what we want. Then we go, hey, moving on. Well, that happens often enough to a woman and she's like I'm not giving my heart to any guy, cause they all do the same thing to me. So right, yeah, but a lot of women just flat can't attach that they're just so broken. Unless they do a lot of work, they don't attach. So I go, can she attach they really truly love and pursue God? And then I had a few other things. I honestly didn't just love me but liked me.
Speaker 2:But I needed both, I think my spouse tried to love me, but I don't think she really liked me my first spouse. So I had my five qualities. I had a bunch of just goofy stuff that I could take or leave, like loves to backpack, likes to travel. So I go hey, this is nice to have, but I don't have to have these things.
Speaker 1:Right and being intentional about that and then being intentional about the attachment part of it, I feel is huge also, and Scott Stanley's got a great book called the Power of Commitment along those lines. That talks about being intentional and writing a list, having things, understanding the six strands that you need to develop and then going forward in developing that for the, for the relationship, as opposed to like I described and like I was guilty of, right as dating. She's really good looking. I like being out with her. Oh, you know, let's date some more. Oh, we're going to have sex. Oh, we're having sex. Oh, we're. You know we're going to move in together. Oh, you know not.
Speaker 1:And then he calls it backsliding. And then it gets to the point you're like well, let's get married. Oh, well, that's, you know, that's backsliding, that's not. That doesn't build a solid relationship, that doesn't build intimacy, that's not commitments. None of that is. The is a recipe for a, for a successful marriage, and that's what. That's what I did. So what? What are some of the challenges that you see for for men and women in general, or or divorced dads also, in building that, those strands, and and creating that, that intimacy and that bond?
Speaker 2:we just described the most common pattern. You see again men and women, yeah, either before they have their first marriage or after they're they've been divorced, or kind of back in the game is. That's the exact pattern. You find somebody you're attracted to, so okay, well, great, you got an attraction. Strand attraction is important. We tend to overrate it, as guys, we kind of want the nines and the tens or confuse it as love as love.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we think we think attraction is love and often than just to be frank, you know, a lot of the nines and tens have not had to work on their character or their emotional intelligence or their spiritual life and so lacking a lot of the tools that guys really need to have a really important or like a really life-giving bond with somebody.
Speaker 2:So we go with attraction, then we get sexually, you know, involved and when that happens, tons of research on the physiology, tons of oxytocin it's related, you know released. We start bonding to somebody at that level without having those other strands of connection. So if a sexual connection we have, an attraction we might enjoy doing certain things together. We got a golf buddy, for example, a biking buddy, but we, we, that becomes the uh, the primary currency of the relationship and then we don't develop the strands that are actually going to help us sustain and mature a marriage and mature the love of the marriage, which are the emotional, spiritual and intellectual strands and the missional strands. Like we have the same values, are we heading towards the same goals, like right? So I would say, you know, become self-aware of these different types of intimacy that are important for a marriage and then put that on your list yeah, so am I.
Speaker 2:Is this woman emotionally healthy? Do we have a common purpose? What's her spiritual life? Do I have a spiritual life? Does she have one? We have a common path we're on spiritually.
Speaker 1:Right is they're not being self-aware and understanding yourself or this. You know these strands of this process that you need to go through. So, with that said, then, what are some tips or some ways that men can overcome that, particularly in a society right now like you? Now, you and I are talking about it, and maybe some in our world are talking about that a little bit, but I'm not seeing commercials out there for build intimacy or learn how to bond. It's more of the quick dating or get on the dating site or whatever you alluded to how to woo or whatever. Those are the ones that you seem to see out there. So how do you overcome all of that what I would say nonsense and wrong messaging to get to this and really dig into this and build what you want, because it's painful. If you don't, you're going to keep, like you said earlier, keep reliving the same relationship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say divorce guys, which is your audience primarily don't waste your pain and become a learner Like the guys who get divorced but they don't learn, they don't look back, they don't take responsibility. It's like what did I do? How did I contribute? How did I get there? How did I get in the marriage? And then, how do I even get there? How to get in the marriage? And then what did I do? That wasn't so helpful during the marriage. You know, just owning stuff, not to go beat yourself up. But you know, if you don't, if you don't learn, you're going to repeat the pattern yeah most guys don't like to read or they're not.
Speaker 2:Like they learn in the areas where they they value things the most. Like they'll go to seminars to excel at work.
Speaker 1:Yeah work them to motorcycles.
Speaker 2:They'll get motorcycle magazines, you know, or youtube stuff if they hunt. You know they'll watch meteor right, but most guys don't get super excited about learning about relationships, right, it's just it tends to be more of a female value than a male value. But if they're gonna have a life-giving marriage, which I think we all want, we gotta be learners. That's why I commit you to because this podcast guys will listen to podcasts way before they're going to read a book like mine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but whether I wrote my book with guys in mind, that's where I kept the chapter short, the book short and I did an off-the-air version so guys can listen to it while they're going to work Exactly kind of go well, how do guys learn and how can we create tools that make it easier for them to access knowledge and become more self-aware and aware of what it's going to take to build a good marriage in the future?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's perfect. So, and I find that guys going through divorce and I know that you've alluded to this and I know that this was mine my experience is it's incredibly painful and you're almost, I describe, as being broken wide open. So it's a great time to do that self-reflection and try to understand what it is that you brought to the table or didn't break through the table, what those behaviors were that you need to understand in order to be successful the next time around, which is the first thing that you said.
Speaker 1:And then do the work right. Just do the work. Don't get distracted, don't you know? There's a million distractions out there too. On top of all the wrong messaging, there's the distractions. We could be distracted from the minute we wake up to the minute we go to sleep every single night.
Speaker 2:So that's yeah, yeah, I agree One of the reasons I'm a Christ follower is because I believe God uses us to the minute we go to sleep every single night. So that's yeah, yeah, I agree. One of the reasons I'm a Christ follower is because I believe God uses us and does his best work through us and through us in the lives of others, not in spite of our weaknesses and mistakes, but because of them.
Speaker 1:So you and.
Speaker 2:I both have gone through divorce. We both made our mistakes. We made bad choices, but we're trying to learn from it so we can help other people. Right and I, we want to redeem the mess, and so I, I, I want that for every guy Like, yeah, you get a divorce, you take a major self-esteem hit, you feel like a loser. You wonder if you're spoiled goods you know and and, but you can turn into something really beautiful if you do your work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it can be an opportunity. It can be a 2.0 opportunity for a different life. And you describe and every time you talk about Carissa and you know your second marriage. It's beautiful because there is the ability to have that a second time around. And I know guys listening out there. Some of them might be just going through it right now and go are you crazy? Opportunity. This is terrible. I don't ever want to deal with this. I don't even want to set myself up for this. But if you do the work, if you do pay attention, if you do make the effort, there is the ability to learn from it, just like anything that you might fail at the first time. And hopefully we're not getting in a ton of relationships and marriages. So you know we do it a handful of times in life. It's not like, well, we're learning another skill where we do it 10,000 times to become proficient at it, right, so hopefully you haven't dated 10,000 women before you get married.
Speaker 1:I mean that would be exhausting, but I mean maybe, but you would probably become pretty proficient at it. Right, and try to understand. We don't do that. So we've got to give ourselves a little bit of grace and also know that if we do put the effort in that it's you can be successful again. You're proof of it. This book and again the book is love hacks. It's 10 skills for Making a Relationship More Life-Giving, and we'll put a link in the show notes to that too, but you can buy it on Amazon Last. Where can people connect with you, ron, and where can they find a book and reach out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you get the book on Amazon and it's. If you do read it, please review it. I'm trying to get my reviews up right now. All right, I'm not a views author, so self-published reviews or everything but Amazon is the best way. You can follow me on Amazon. You can follow me on Facebook and on on Instagram. And then our church is rstchurch, so all my content, all my messages are on there and our team and you know, and there's guys who are looking for a community, a really healthy community, where they can grow spiritually. If that's something they feel like is a felt need in their life here in Denver, come join us. If you're at another place in the country, you can join us online.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and on that note, just briefly tell us about the simple churches that are part of RST, because I know that's a cool thing and I've started one with the Divorce Dad edition of the Simple Church and, you know, just share with us a couple of minutes about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, yeah again, you can learn more at rstchurch. We have a whole page on Simple Church and it's pretty helpful describing what makes it work and how to start one, how to be in one. But during COVID, after we made the pivot digitally and kind of got our act together there, since we couldn't physically gather, we began to evaluate are we really making? Are we creating ministries and making true disciples of Jesus? Because if you're truly a disciple of Jesus, you're going to be distinct, you're going to stand out. There should be more love, there should be more joy. There should be, like, things that you do that other people don't do and things that you do that people are curious about, like where you help the poor, you care about your friends, you're just, you're a little lighter on your feet, you're less anxious. We go, we're not doing a great job at all those things, honestly, and so we began to evaluate our ministries and even our small groups, which are great, but they really weren't creating that much transformation. So we were very unhappy with that. So we go, let's try something different. I did a bunch of research in third world settings about like why are these Christ followers so fired up and why are they attracting so many people to Jesus and I realized most of them don't need a big building, they don't have any computers, they don't have access to books, they need little gatherings, usually in homes. So we go. I don't know if we can replicate that. So a simple church is very simple. You have a handful of guys you can meet face-to-face, although most are still meeting on Zoom. It's just easier to traffic that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:And then we ask seven questions what are you grateful for? What's challenging you? Did you do your I will statement, which is an accountability question. I'll get to that in a minute. That's looking back. We look up, read a short passage of scripture and we ask two questions, because we have a lot of non-christians in our several churches, so the questions are very generic what's to say about god? What's it say about us?
Speaker 2:Last two questions we look ahead and this is where we get traction. What's your I will statement? If you assume there's at least some truth in here, how can you apply it to your life? What will you do because of this information that could lead to you becoming a better person, or if you're going the way of Jesus, more like Jesus? Last question Give me what you know about your faith right now? How can you share what you're learning with other people? So seven questions no preparation. Everybody shows up. They know the agenda. It takes about 45 minutes, usually to an hour. I've got a bunch of CEOs in my group. We meet once a month for an hour. Most of them meet like twice a month. Yeah, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic, and while we're going through the divorce and a lot of guys listening, we talk about the mental, emotional, physical and making sure you're taking care of all of those things. But that fourth leg of that stool is the spiritual part of it, and what I'm finding is this is a great opportunity for so. You don't have to, you don't drive to, you're not spending the time, you just, and you're spending it in a community with whomever you choose, like ours is other divorced dads, but there's other different communities too. So it's really, really phenomenal, it's really awesome.
Speaker 2:It's a spiritual growth accelerator at the end of the day. Just a story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they can find more information at rstchurchorg rstchurch.
Speaker 2:RST stands for at rstchurchorg, rstchurch. Rst stands for restoration and church Got it. You can get a lot of content there.
Speaker 1:Awesome, awesome. Ron Johnson, the book is Love Hacks. Go buy it. It's an easy like you can probably. I could probably fish with one hand and read and like in an afternoon of fishing and reading, I could get the book done and hopefully also catch some fish so well done.
Speaker 1:It's like like perfect. If you've enjoyed this and found any value in it today, please, like Ron said, go and write some reviews of the book. Review the channel, subscribe like. Share with everybody. The more that we're sharing, the more people we're we're reaching and helping out. Ron, thanks so much. The more that we're sharing, the more people we're reaching and helping out.
Speaker 2:Ron, thanks so much. It was a pleasure Take care my honor. Thank you so much.
