Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
118. The Role of a Man & the Rite of Passage Our Sons Are Missing
In this powerful conversation, Jason and Lauren Vallotton unpack one of the deepest needs of our time: the restoration of godly masculinity. Drawing from personal stories, biblical wisdom, and their experience walking with men and families, they explore why a man’s role in the home matters more than ever—and how the next generation is suffering without clear markers of maturity and initiation.
Whether you're a father, mentor, or just a man asking deeper questions about your purpose, this episode will stir your spirit and point you toward courageous leadership. It’s also an invitation to join the movement at this year’s BraveCo Conference, where men are being called up, healed, and commissioned.
In This Episode:
- Why men matter in the home
The emotional and spiritual covering fathers provide—and what happens when it's missing. - What sons need from their fathers and male mentors
Identity, blessing, and challenge. The sacred elements of healthy male initiation. - The pain of passive or absent masculinity
How a culture without rites of passage has left young men lost, angry, or apathetic. - Stories from the field
Real moments of breakthrough, father wounds healed, and identity restored at past BraveCo events. - Why the BraveCo Conference is different
It’s not hype—it’s holy. A sacred space where men return to the Father, face their pain, and rise into purpose.
Join the Movement:
The BraveCo Conference isn’t just a weekend event—it’s a call to rise.
Register now for the conference and be part of a movement that’s raising up healthy, whole, and wholehearted men!
Check out more about BraveCo here!
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We're the valetins and we are passionate about people.
Speaker 1:Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection.
Speaker 2:But that's not always what comes easiest.
Speaker 1:We know this because of our wide range of personal experience, as well as our years of working with people.
Speaker 2:So we're going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage, entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health.
Speaker 1:Welcome back everyone to Dates, mates and Babies with the Ballotons. We're glad to be here with you this morning.
Speaker 2:We sure are. My husband just got back from a week-long trip. The kids and I were home and we I'm proud to say we held down the fort very nicely, but it's always fun to have him back Good job babe, we're glad you're here.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad to be back. Honestly, I had a fantastic time in Colorado. I put on a long-range shooting event and got to hang out with some really incredible men, but, man, I'm tired.
Speaker 2:Yeah, jay needed a little extra hour of sleep in today. He did.
Speaker 1:It's true, and big congratulations to you today.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Yes, you finished your manuscript, your book.
Speaker 2:I did. Well, I finished the first draft of my first book, which is I'll give you a little teaser, folks. Yeah, come on babe. It's a little half-life memoir and I think it's especially going to hit home for women in particular who have gotten to that spot in life where you're realizing life isn't going exactly how I thought it was going to go, or you're young and you're looking ahead and it's encouraging to hear from somebody who's a few steps ahead and get a glimpse into, kind of how to navigate later seasons of life. So it was very fun to write, very cathartic, very emotional, yeah, but in a huge accomplishment, something that I've wanted to do most of my life. I've wanted to do something like this, so it feels like a huge deal.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's such a win.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, congratulations.
Speaker 2:Thanks. At some point, maybe when we're closer to the release, we'll talk a little bit more about that. Oh yeah, We've got a long ways to go, folks. We're just going to begin the editing process we're just scratching the surface, but today's topic is equally as important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very important.
Speaker 2:And if not more so, Guys, today we are.
Speaker 2:It's funny because this week is Mother's Day, on Sunday is Mother's Day, but today we're going to be talking about men, and part of the reason why we're going to emphasize the role of men in today's episode is because for us we have one of the most important events of our year coming up in June and our nonprofit, BraveCo, which Jason leads, is a men's discipleship movement.
Speaker 2:We host a conference, a Braveco conference, at Bethel Church in Redding, California, every summer and as we're leading up to that event, we can't kind of help it. It's just at the forefront of our minds, like the absolute importance of the role of man and this year in particular and Jason's going to kind of unpack this a little bit later but the important of an initiation for young men into manhood by their fathers and the men around them. So that is something that we are emphasizing greatly. I say we because I feel it in my heart I won't be there because women aren't allowed but at this men's event. These are the emphases that we're kind of feeling and carrying for this year and we're excited to kind of unpack a little bit more about that as we go through this episode and we'll make sure that in the show notes there's a way for you guys to check out the registration page. Why don't we kind of dive into like, why is this topic so important right now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I mean in light of Mother's Day. They say that the best indicator of, or best predictor of, a healthy family is a healthy mom. And when you're looking at raising healthy kids, if you have a mom who is present and fully able to pour her effort and energy into the kids, that's the best predictor.
Speaker 2:Of healthy children.
Speaker 1:The best predictor of a healthy wife is a healthy husband.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so when we really look, at.
Speaker 2:It's a bit of a domino effect, folks. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you don't have a present healthy father, you can't have a present. It's very hard to have a present healthy mom, totally. And so I just think there's so many families out there that are really struggling because dad doesn't know, or he's not home, or he's unequipped, untrained for really the role that God's placed him in. God had a very specific design when he created humankind. Yeah, the design of family, the design of. He created humankind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the design of family, the design of families. Very specific.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's incredible, and when we look at it, you know most men weren't raised in a home where they were welcomed into manhood.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Women have a very natural progression. When a woman hits puberty, she starts her period and that is very much an indicator of you are now transitioned into womanhood.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But men don't have this moment.
Speaker 2:There's not a marker.
Speaker 1:There's marker, yeah, in time, in which they go welcome to manhood, welcome to. Not a marker. There's marker, yeah, in time in which they go welcome to manhood, welcome to being a man. And so to me, because of that, you have a whole bunch of men who have grown up but they've never grown. Or maybe I should say they've grown old but they've never grown up. They've never say they've grown old but they've never grown up.
Speaker 1:They've never stepped into who God's called them to be and therefore when, for a lot of men, they get married and have these big misconceptions around what the role of a father is and because they've never seen it. It's never been modeled for them. They've never seen it. It's never been modeled for them, they've never been taught it. They don't feel like a man yeah and a lot of the men that that I disciple. They start out going. I don't even have a clue what my role is sure it's never been modeled to me.
Speaker 1:I've never seen it yeah and so when we look at, like, the actual role of a man, it can be broken into actually three different parts it's to protect, to provide and to promote. The challenge is that when we look at those three different definitions to protect, provide, promote most men think that they're doing that because of what they've seen modeled for them. If I can take protect, for instance, and the protect portion, a lot of men would think about their guns and their ammo and their ability to fight. As men, we have this fantasy. So, you know, as men, we have this fantasy. We have this fantasy of like somebody's going to break into my home and I'm going to step up and I'm just going to handle it. Or somebody touches my wife's butt and I'm right there to, like you know, be the punisher to deliver some justice and therefore I can protect my family. And, okay, great, If you can't protect at all, that's not a great thing.
Speaker 1:When we look at men, a thousand years ago protecting the perimeter was absolutely a massive part. Sure, Like actually physically being able to fight for your land, protect your women and children massive. But in today's day and age, protect doesn't look anything like it used to look.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:And yet we face a battle that is every bit as or more dangerous than what our ancestors faced, that protect role. You have to start thinking spirit, soul, body. And for fathers out there like, yeah, it's great if you can do the physical, protect, but if you can't protect spirit, soul, body, then your family is very much vulnerable, very uncovered and set up for failure. The enemy that we're fighting today doesn't come through your front door. It comes from being emotionally disconnected. It comes from the pain of not having a present father or mother yeah it comes through social media.
Speaker 1:It comes through not having a powerful ecosystem of love, connection, correction, direction, health and love in the family.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:And so the father sets that tone of protection. I'm protecting my eyes, I'm setting a culture in which I value and I model integrity. I value and I model honesty. I value and I model delayed gratification for my family and I'm showing up, I'm setting the tone and I'm leading the charge. And therefore, my sons, my daughters, my wife, they value purity and honesty, and that's not an easy thing to do. No, that's showing up every single day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:When we look at the provide. I know we're going to get into a bit more about sons and fathers when we talk about provide, but I just like to talk about the role.
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 1:The provision piece. Men often think about their jobs. Right, like I bring home the bacon and get a haircut, get a real job is for sure the baseline. Like if you can't eat, then you know. There's a lot of bad things that happen when you're starving physically and when there's not enough money to pay the bills. And we've been there. We have been scrapping for lots of different seasons. We've been at paycheck to paycheck, living like that, borrowing money from our parents. There's no shame in that, but to me that's just one very small portion of the provide.
Speaker 1:We're going back to body, soul, spirit. So I want men and women to start thinking out of, get away from just the practical and get into the spiritual, the emotional and the physical. Because when you start to talk and look at, what does it look like for a man to provide body, soul, spirit for his family? Well, we've talked so much about this before that we're the ones that get to wire our kids. We're the ones that get to instill and impart and pour into them the values, the belief systems. Though we are building a robust confidence in our children in sense of identity, in purpose, and that is a carefully constructed framework that we're pouring into our children through intentionality, through time, through stories, through prayer, through examples.
Speaker 1:I have a plan for my family. I have a plan for my daughter. I have a plan for my family. I have a plan for my daughter. I have a plan for my sons, I have a plan for how I'm going to lead them in the way that God has called us to lead. And so that provision is sure, it's financial. But, man, what is my spiritual plan for my family? What's my emotional plan for my family? Edie came home from school yesterday and on the way home I was asking her about school.
Speaker 1:And I said what was one high Edie and what was one low, what was one fun thing and what was one hard thing. And so she said my fun thing was playing with one of my friends.
Speaker 2:I can't remember which friend it was.
Speaker 1:And then she went in to tell me her hard thing, my hard thing. I can't even remember what she said, but then we got into the car and she said, dad, I felt lonely today. I felt squished.
Speaker 2:Yeah, squished.
Speaker 1:I felt sad.
Speaker 1:I felt joy. She's been given a framework in which she can start to understand her emotions. We are instilling into her not just hey, these are your emotions, but a value. We want to partner with you. We want to hear where you're at, we want to understand. Here's where it starts. Dad really seeks to understand, mom really shows up for mom and is present and is modeling it to the kids and to the family what it looks like. My role is to provide for you emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually a place where you feel safe, where you feel seen, where you feel known, where you feel?
Speaker 1:cherished and loved, and that's a challenging thing. Yeah, loved and that's a challenging thing. If I can do that for you, it gives you I literally infuse into you the capacity to now give that to our kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so good. I think about the cultural moment that we're in, and it's really interesting because right now there's a generation of men who we say we're living in the most fatherless generation that's ever existed, in that men are not at home because they don't want to be, children are being raised by single parents. Divorce rates are high they have been for a while and so what we're seeing is that that generation of men who weren't actually fathered in their home they're now starting to have children of their own.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's true.
Speaker 2:And that is a very interesting cultural dynamic, and for me, what it does is it. For me, what it does is it highlights the absolute necessity for churches to actually implement discipleship for men 100%, because if there are boys who are now having children who were never fathered in the first place, then this is where you start to have an epidemic problem. This is not just one generation, this is where it becomes like generations deep, and so let's talk a little bit about what churches can do, what faith communities can do, to actually support this generation of men that didn't have not only did they not have fatherhood modeled for them, so they're walking through their own stuff, but now they're having to figure out how to father their own children. I don't know. I think it's worth talking about why a discipleship model is so critical.
Speaker 1:Well, there's 380,000 Christian churches in America. Less than 10% have a men's ministry. So this is research which is on the foremost of Christian research. So when we start to look at the people who are supposed to be strong, who are supposed to be saving the world, they aren't actually being poured into. You can't teach a man how to emotionally connect to his kids on a Sunday morning.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:We have taken and I'm a pastor, so pastors have taken this idea that a Sunday morning teaching is sufficient. If I have really good Sunday morning teaching, that's sufficient to lead, to train, to grow a community in my church. And the truth is it's not. You can't do that. You can't win on Sunday and lose Monday through Saturday. It doesn't happen. And so, ultimately, what I love about where we're going is Jesus's ultimate model was discipleship. It was come, follow me, I will make you fishers of men. I will show you a model. I will inspire you. I will teach you how to hit this target. Men want to hit a target. We've been designed to hit a target, but if a man doesn't have a way, if he wasn't shown a way to hit a target, he will find a target to hit.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Which is the success at work, which is chasing a woman, which is, you know, trying to whatever. He will go off on his own path, sure, in order to feel successful, yes, so it's wildly important that now, as pastors, that we go okay. The best indicator of a healthy church is healthy men, and here's why If a woman gets saved, it's like 17% of the time the whole family will get saved. If a man gets saved, it's somewhere around the 84, 85% of the time the whole entire family will get saved.
Speaker 1:The man was designed to lead. He was designed to be on the forefront, controlling the temperature of the home and his family, setting the way, paving the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, creating a space for women and children to thrive and be fully who they are supposed to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so a man brings peace to chaos. That's my role. I come home from Colorado. You've got a week's worth of things that you want to talk about. I don't have a week's worth of things I want to talk about.
Speaker 1:And I have a few days worth of tears stored up over said things, yep, and you're waiting for me to handle those, for those to land and for me to come in and build a sense of security, a place where you feel safe, where you feel seen, where you feel known, to help us get back in center and moving forward. That's a man's role. And so, all of a sudden, when, as a pastor, the most strategic thing that you could do is to go, how are we pouring into our fathers? How are we setting our men up in discipleship? What are we doing to initiate our young men, to give them a place to serve?
Speaker 1:to give them a place to be known, to give them a place to be seen, to give them a place somewhere where they can achieve something. And if we do that, then all of a sudden you have a place where all these men begin to rise up, they take ownership. What is the most attended church service of the year? At least in the top two.
Speaker 2:I have no idea. Well, Christmas and Easter is what I would say.
Speaker 1:Mother's Day.
Speaker 2:Oh is it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That makes sense.
Speaker 1:Mother's Day why? Because when a mom wants a favor from her kids, when she can get her kids and her husband to do anything that she wants, what does she want them to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, go to church.
Speaker 1:Go to church. What's one of the least attended days of the year? Father's Day. Father's Day, what do the men want? They want a reason to get a day off, a reason to go fishing, a reason to go do something with their buddies. Honestly, it's because we have a whole generation of men who are uninitiated. Behind every hurting man is an uninitiated boy. We don't have men right now that had virtues and values poured into them. Listen, if you can get one thing, get your family in church where they're being discipled.
Speaker 1:Get your family in community, get your family, and so all of a sudden we have a, and we really do. I was at a place where recently, where a whole bunch of leaders were arguing about whether or not women should be allowed to preach in church, and that's fine. My dad wrote an incredible book on that. My whole thing is right now is you have women who are leading the charge in church because men aren't stepping up.
Speaker 1:I believe that women should be allowed to preach in church. My whole thing is you have women who are taking the place that God created man to take, because men are off somewhere else, uninitiated, licking their wounds, trying to find ways to get out of being in church, because there's no vision for a man right now. There's no leadership for a man right now. There's no leadership for a man right now. There's no discipleship for a man right now. So we've got a massive problem that we have to fix.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the problem not being that women are leading in church, the problem being that men don't want to be in there. However, related, unrelated, because actually, statistically, men are largely still leading all churches. That's like statistically a thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but if you look at men's attendance it's so far down.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent Okay. So one of the reasons why I really like the fact that we host, that you host this conference every summer is because I think when men haven't seen it done, they don't actually know how much value there is in it. And so it's an invitation right. It's like okay if you're in that small percent of churches that actually do have a thriving men's ministry. And we're talking like small percent, because even if men have a men's ministry, there's a stat that says even fewer of those think that they're actually thriving.
Speaker 2:Less than 8% think that they're doing a great job 8% of the 10% right, think that they're doing a good job. So chances are, if you're a guy and you're in church, you haven't seen this done well in a way that actually gives you vision, purpose, a sense of like okay, this is where we're headed, this is what's possible. I think conferences are amazing because a conference, though it is a step out of your real life into a weekend experience somebody has to cast vision for you, somebody has to light the fire, somebody has to give you an idea of what's possible so that when you go home, you know what you're aiming at, you know what to implement, you know the questions to ask, you know the holes to fill. And we're feeling specifically an emphasis this summer on the initiation portion of the event. We have a vision, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we have a plan for every man we really do. And it's what I love about Braveco Our events and our conferences. It are a catalyst unto discipleship and I'm going to talk about the 300 really quick in a second, but I just want to lay out just our conference really quick because I traditionally don't love going to conferences. I hate, sitting there.
Speaker 2:I love conferences.
Speaker 1:Jason's like, not the conference guy, because I'm a man, I want connection, I want to bond, I want to feel like I'm on a team. I want to feel like I'm accomplishing, achieving, and I want to feel like I'm being poured into. And so traditionally men's conferences have been sit, listen, wander around, hide. But our conference isn't like that. Every man that comes is a part of a team. You have a team of 50. You've got leaders and co-leaders. You've got team colors. We do most of the ministry inside of the teams, which it gives you this incredible ability to connect with men, to pour into each other. But also, every single man that comes is, like every guy that leaves has had a prophetic word You've been poured into, you've bonded together with the men in your group. It's really powerful.
Speaker 1:You sit together and rotate through the seating. So it's really cool. We do massive team challenges and competitions to build that trust and camaraderie and community in the groups, and then our speakers have a theme. So from start to finish, we really do have a plan for every man. We want men to actually get instilled into them what it is that they came for.
Speaker 1:So our speakers aren't just speaking what they want to. It's not random, it's very, very powerful. Our theme this year is the Life of David Be as Bold as a Lion, and I'm really excited about it. But I'll tell you, last year we implemented a rite of passage for young men 12 to 18 years old, and I'd seen it done before at another men's conference, so I saw the power in it and we brought it here. Yeah, and I'll tell you I don't know that I've ever seen anything more powerful in my life. Actually, pastor Bill said it was one of the most powerful things that he's ever seen was that rite of passage. And then what we did with the boys after and our rite of passage is a 3.1 mile Tough Mudder course. It's hard.
Speaker 2:It's challenging.
Speaker 1:It's a picture of what boys becoming men will face in their life. But you have these young men who are embarking on this journey. That's hard and all these really powerful men gathered around this course pouring into them, believing in them, cheering them on, and they've been in their group all week long so they've given them prophetic words. They've prayed over the men, the young men. They've worshiped next to them, they're part of their tribe and now these boys are going to go and they're going to do this really hard, challenging thing. For a lot of the young men, it's the first time in their life that they've really felt another man pour into them, another man believe in them, be next to them when they're struggling.
Speaker 1:It's one thing for me to pour into my boys. It's a whole other thing for these other powerful men to look at my sons and our sons and say you have what it takes Right, you can do it. All week long they've heard these other men talk about their struggles. They've watched these men get vulnerable. They've watched these men pray over each other. They've watched these grownups face their own fears. To be honest, it's wild, and so I really felt. This year God challenged me to believe for 300 young men. We had, I think, 89-ish young men that went through our rite of passage last year and I really do believe this year the call is to get our fathers to step up and to bring young men.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love that men go to the conference. There's so much in it for a man, but to me there's nothing greater than when you bring someone else. You create a moment that will mark a young man for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So incredibly powerful. The stories, the testimonies that came from it last year was just insane. It really was. My dad was crying Just watching these young men.
Speaker 1:What we do afterwards is we give all these young men a knife and a medal. They get a medal for finishing the Rite of Passage and they get a knife and we talk to them. The value of the knife the knife is it enables you to. It symbolizes the ability to provide for yourself and also protect yourself. The knife is only valuable if it's sharp, if you maintain it, if you learn how to keep it sharp. It's also only valuable if you have it on you. So there's a whole bunch of men who have put down their ability, who have never honed their skill set and therefore they're not sharp, they're not ready and able to protect and provide for themselves. It's just a reminder to these young men of what they did, what they're facing, what they're going through.
Speaker 2:What they're capable of.
Speaker 1:What they're capable of yeah. And so, anyways, we have an incredible plan for these young men. If you're a father out there and you're listening to this and you've never created a rite of passage, you've never taken your boys or your son on a rite of passage, this would be an incredible investment into your relationship. If you're a mom out there and you're like, ooh, my sons have never been through anything like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is an incredible investment into your family, into these young men, into the relationship, and from there we invite every single man into our Brave Code Discipleship program. It's free, so when they leave the conference we have a discipleship plan ready for them to jump into. That's really, really phenomenal. So we're not just saying see you later, have a good time, I hope that you continue on your own. No way, we have a way for them to jump into community, jump into brotherhood. We've had thousands of men go through our Braveco year-long course. It's just been really, it's been phenomenal.
Speaker 1:And so pastors can take the, they can take our course back to their home church. They can lead their men through it. Again, it's free and they can continue on the journey.
Speaker 2:That's good when people go to register for the event. If you're a man bringing a boy, then you'll register for two individuals. And there will be a spot in registration where you'll be able to indicate that you do want your son to move through the rite of passage portion.
Speaker 1:Yeah or yeah. We don't force the young men to do it. It's something that you know they get to decide to do. Yeah, but I really do. If you're a wife, if you're a husband, really pray, think through. Is this the season to sow in to my son or into another young boy? We had lots of men last year. Bring boys that were not theirs came from a single mother home or another father who couldn't make it. Yeah, we had lots of dads that brought two young men.
Speaker 2:So powerful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was really incredible. So you can go to bravecoorg to sign up. Our conference is June 11th through the 13th here, bethel Church in Redding California.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's powerful. I cannot wait to hear the testimonies. Oh, I know they're wild afterwards, they are so wild. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1:Guys, thank you so much for listening and really hope this podcast episode bless you. For all those moms out there, happy Mother's Day. We love moms. Next week, babe, we should. Out there, happy Mother's Day, we love moms. Next week, babe, we should do an episode on Mother's Day or on mothers, the power of mother.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mother's Day. In hindsight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's okay, but we love you guys. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Please share this. If you believe in the power of raising and discipling strong men, please share this. Share this on your Instagram platforms, social media, share it with a friend who you think would love to hear it. So thank you guys.
Speaker 2:We'll see you next time you.