Insights from Steve Ward on Proactive Parenting and Spiritual Growth

Mr. Steve Ward, the founder of Steps Ministries, has a wealth of experience in helping individuals prevent addiction. He also aids in their spiritual growth. Ward shares invaluable insights into the intricacies of addiction. He discusses its impact on families and the importance of proactive parenting. Steps Ministries was founded eight years ago. It is a unique nonprofit. The organization is dedicated to helping individuals improve their lives. It also helps them deepen their relationship with God. Steve Ward explains that the organization provides a variety of resources. These include online courses, videos, podcasts, and articles. All are aimed at promoting personal growth and addiction prevention. Ward emphasizes the connection between emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being, asserting that these elements are intertwined. He believes that by following God’s principles, individuals can lead happier lives while mitigating the risk of addiction.

The Challenge of Addiction

Ward candidly discusses the complexities of dealing with addiction. He describes it as a compulsive habit. This habit can develop over time. He notes that addictions can stem from various sources, including mental health issues and societal pressures. Ward shared a striking statistic. Three out of four teenagers will try some form of an addictive substance. This alarming trend highlights the need for proactive measures to address the issue before it escalates.

Proactive Parenting Strategies

One of the core messages from Ward’s discussion is the importance of proactive parenting. He introduces the PACE framework designed to help parents navigate the challenges of raising teenagers. PACE stands for Preparation, Awareness, Connection, Education, and Steps. Each component is essential in equipping parents to effectively support their children:

1. Preparation: Parents must be ready for the changes that come with adolescence. They need to understand that their children will face new challenges and temptations.
2. Awareness: Being aware of a child's social circles and emotional state is crucial. Parents should know if their children are exposed to drugs or alcohol. They should also be attentive to signs of anxiety or depression.
3. Connection: As children grow, maintaining a connection becomes more challenging. Ward emphasizes the need for empathy and open communication, urging parents to listen more and scold less.
4. Education: Parents should seek resources to better understand the nuances of teenage behavior and addiction. Steps Ministries offers tools and information to aid in this process.
5. Steps: Having a plan in place before problems arise is vital. This plan should outline how parents intend to support their children through life's challenges.

Key Takeaways

Steve Ward’s insights on addiction and parenting highlight the importance of early intervention and proactive measures. By fostering an environment of connection and awareness, parents can play a pivotal role in preventing addiction in their children. The PACE framework is a practical guide for parents. It empowers them to navigate the complexities of adolescence with intention and care.

In a world where addiction is a pressing concern, Steve Ward’s work with Steps Ministries provides hope. It also offers practical solutions for families. By embracing proactive parenting and spiritual growth, we can create a supportive environment that encourages healthier choices for our children.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today we are blessed to have a special guest on the 40 Days of Reconciliation podcast, Mr. Steve Ward, who is the founder and executive director of Steps Ministries, non-profit ministry with the goals of helping people improve their lives, draw closer to God and prevent addiction. You're welcome, Mr. Steve.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Thank you so much, Manuel, for having me. It is a blessing and an honor to be here, and I'm looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

You founded Steps Ministries. Would you like to tell us what this is in full and what exactly you do?

SPEAKER_01 0:38

So uh later I can get into how and why we founded it if you'd like, but let me tell you just a little bit about what Steps is. We're somewhat of a unique ministry. We've been in operation for eight years. We provide resources that can be online resources, such as courses or videos, or podcasts, or articles, but also digital resources that we push out. We're on social media with Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and others. We produce resources to try to help people, as you mentioned before, improve their lives, grow closer to God, and prevent addiction. My my history with substance abuse and recovery and 15 years of research since then have kind of shown that those three things are intertwined. Sometimes people have crises that come into their life. It might be a mental health issue such as depression or anxiety or loneliness or hopelessness. Or it could be some form of an addiction. It could be alcohol or some form of drug or even a behavior that's addictive in nature. And very often people wind up in these traps and then aren't quite sure what to do in their lives and their families are disrupted. So sometimes we'll encourage them to go through a recovery process to try to get better. Well, my family was exposed to a lot of those issues and a lot of recovery, and I thought rather than waiting until people's lives, you know, crash and become a disaster of a sense, why don't we help people learn how to live life effectively earlier? And the way you do that is there are practical steps we can take so that emotionally and spiritually and mentally we're living life effectively. And guess what? Those align with God's principles, right? I mean God designed us, He designed the world, and He actually has a lot of suggestions about how we can live life effectively. So when we when we follow those steps, you know, a we'll be happier in the short term, we'll be pleasing God in the process, and also in the long term, it will tend to help us prevent serious issues from from tearing our lives apart.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Well, thank you so much for this work that you're doing. Would you like to tell us, share with us one addiction case you have handled and how easy it was handling it?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yeah. One is I I don't think I would ever describe dealing with addiction as easy, but I'll explain. In other words, addictions tend to be a very powerful influence on our lives. Right? We normally develop them over a period of time. They generally don't show up very quickly. We develop them over a period of time. And the definition of an addiction is a compulsive habit that we repeat over and over again that has negative consequences, but we find it hard to stop. Again, common addictions are alcohol or drugs of various sorts, but again, I mentioned we can be addicted to a behavior. There are people who are addicted to pornography or gambling, or even addict you can be addicted to a to a behavior such as anger or control or people pleasing. But uh you know, we work with individuals, we work with parents, we work with teenagers, and we also help equip organizations. Kind of um a classic situation, I think, where you see a lot of it is we do a lot of work with parents. Uh when I was, you know, nine years ago moving, I was moving out of the business world and deciding to found this new ministry called Steps, uh, the youth pastor of our church came to see me. And he said, Steve, I kind of know the direction your ministry is going to go on, right? I mean, based on your family's experiences, you know, you now feel called to help people prevent those problems from happening in their lives. He said, But what I I really implore you to do is that you also do some work for parents. He said, in the local school, let me tell you what the normal situation is like. When kids become teenagers, their lives are changing, and they are often have anxiety, they feel left out of the group, they want to fit in, they're under a lot of pressure. And these days, I I'll certainly address the United States, right? It's it's true in a lot of parts of the country, but certainly in the United States, drugs and alcohol are relatively easy to get, either legally or illegally. You can get them from friends, you can get them over the internet, or in some cases you can go into a store and buy it. So, teenagers, a lot of teenagers struggle. In fact, three out of four teenagers will use some form of an addictive substance. That that doesn't mean they will become addicted, but they will try it. And so what my youth pastor said to me is in our local school, a lot of these kids are drinking alcohol, and a lot of them are smoking marijuana, because that's just become accepted. It's almost there's so many kids who do it that they don't even think it's that big a deal anymore. He said, but the problem is is very often they go from those substances to something worse, such as opioid-based pills, or maybe from there even to something as as bad as as heroin or something along those lines. He said, and then their lives absolutely come apart. He said, so that's happening to a significant fraction of our kids. Not the majority, but a significant fraction of them. And he said, now look at the parents. This is all new to the parents, right? And and and most parents are are are already busy raising a family and keeping down a job. He said, but most parents are one is they don't know what to do in those situations, right? It's new to them. They don't know what to do. The other is they're, frankly, kind of embarrassed or ashamed about it. So they're almost afraid a little bit to let their friends or other people know what's going on because it it makes them look like their family's not in great shape. So they get embarrassed or ashamed about it. So they don't know what to do, they're embarrassed or ashamed. So what do they do? They they keep things to themselves, they hope it's just a phase their kids go through, and they don't do anything specific about it. Well, that's not the right way to approach it. You know, you you really have to be proactive and thoughtful in dealing with it. So but if we take those parents and just say, hey, here are some reasonable things you can do, just as part of your parenting. You know, we have a process called PACES. That's P-A-C-E-S. And each of those letters stands for for a concept and a step. The P is for preparation. So for parents, we say, if your kids are you know becoming a teenager, or if they are now or they're will be soon, you need to be prepared for that stage. Right? We talk about the challenges their kids are going to be facing, that their kids are gonna be changing. So parents need to be prepared that the teenage years are different than the earlier years. The A and Paces is for awareness, which says one is you need to be very aware of what your kids are being exposed to. Are they being put in positions which are tempting to them? For example, do they have friends who use drugs or who drink alcohol? Or are they going to parties or situations where they'll be exposed to that? But also be aware of what's going on inside of your son or daughter. Now, do they have anxiety? Are they depressed? Do they feel left out? Do they feel alone or even hopeless? So that's what the second step on awareness is about. The third step is the C in PACES. It's called connection. Very often, when our kids are young, it's natural for for the way that parents interrelate with them. It's fun, right? But as as they become teenagers, they're forming their own personality. They tend to separate themselves to a greater degree from their parents, and it becomes harder to stay connected to kids when they're teenagers. And that's a lot of that is very natural. But that means parents need to be more thoughtful about it, right? You you need to move from a state you need to handle a teenager differently than you handle you know a young child, right? You can't just in an autocratic way order them around and tell them what to do and what's right and wrong. You want to be more empathetic. You want to try to connect with them what's going on. You want to listen a lot more and in some cases, you know, yell, preach, or scold less. You really want to be to know what their world is going on and connect with them there. That's kind of what connection is about. The fourth of the five steps is the E in PACES. It's for education, which is because your kids are going through something new and you're being presented with different situations, you probably need to pause and go and and maybe get online resources like Steps provides to get educated on what do you do if if your son or daughter is early in the stages of using drugs, or what do you do if if you can't connect them with him more? So you get educated. And then the final step, the S and PACES, is the S is for steps, which means you need to have some kind of a plan. Complicated, but it's before your son or daughter gets into trouble, do you have a plan that shows the steps you want to be taking as a parent to walk with them through life? So that's a process called PACES, which we which we call PACES for parents. And I I know that's um a long way, but I was trying to answer a lot of your questions in one story to say I've worked with hundreds and hundreds of parents. And every situation is different, but they also face a lot of commonalities. And that road that their teenagers go down has a lot of similarities to it. You know, it it starts by their son or daughter has something that that is hurting them inside, or they're exposed to a temptation, or there's something you're they're yearning for. In other words, there's a need in their life. And maybe spiritually they're not at a point where they immediately turn to God on it, they turn to something else, right? And and an addictive substance or an addictive behavior makes them feel better for a little while. And if their friends are doing it, it helps them fit in. So they feel better for a little while, and but and so they keep doing it. And then at some point they can't stop. So that those steps of progression that teenagers go through are not unlike the steps of progression an adult goes through. And and the main message I'm trying to send is you don't have to be a recovery expert or a counselor or a therapist to help someone or even to help yourself. You just we we we call our parenting approach proactive parenting, which just means you need to be proactive and intentional about it. You need to be more aware. You need to be getting educated and work at your connections. So we just we urge parents in this case, but also individuals, to just to be more thoughtful about how they're going through each day and how they're coping with life's problems so that they make good choices rather than bad choices. Like I said, there have been hundreds of parents who've been at various stages of that story I just told. So those cases are very typical.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

How do I identify cases that need your attention?

SPEAKER_01 11:16

That's a good question. I'll say two ways. One is STEPS is sort of unique, right, in that we aren't what I call a recovery organization or a treatment organization, right? We don't have a facility where we bring people in and help them deal with drug abuse as an example. In fact, we're not even primarily attempting to be a coaching organization, right? We're what we're trying to do is to prepare prepare resources that help other people before problems occur. So the audiences we try to reach are parents of teenagers or preteens, right? Because by definition, the teenage years create a higher degree of risk. So we proactively try to reach out to parents of teenagers and preteens. We also have some resources that if there's an organization, say if if your your church or your community group has a youth group for teenagers, we have resources where you can work with those teenagers to help them develop life skills so that spiritually and emotionally and mentally and socially they just learn how to live life the right way. So that's a second audience, right? I said parents of teenagers, teenagers themselves. And uh the third is individuals who are already in pain to some degree, or those that are around them, but maybe it's not, it hasn't become a crisis yet. So those are really I I think the big audiences, and and we try to reach people proactively ahead of time and help educate and inform a lot of people so that some of them will take advantage of the of that and and then not go down that road. Rather than picking individually who is it that's already struggling in. Does that does that make sense? Yes, it does.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Do parents look for you or you look for them?

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Both. In other words, they can look for us. For example, any parent can go to our website, which is lifeimproventeps.com. Lifeimprovementsteps.com. And on the top menu or on the main home page, they'll see, hey, I can click on this box and learn more about parenting. And they'll actually see ten easy-to-use online courses there that are parenting young kids, parenting teenagers, parenting in a crisis, biblical parenting, grandparenting, you know, so so parents can find us. We also seek to find them by we're on social media, for example, uh Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. We're on a couple other channels as well, but those are probably the biggest. So we try to reach, in this case, parents and other individuals where they are. And the third thing we do is we try to support other organizations. Right? If if there is an organization that deals with parents and families and youth, or if there is an organization that is either a mentoring or a coaching organization that helps people live life better, you know, we're glad to share our resources with them to help them help the people they serve. So I I think those are the three ways. One is people find us on our website, the other is we reach out to them digitally through social media and other means. And the third is we work through organizations which are helping people and equip those organizations.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Listening to you, there are so many insights that listeners are going to get, but also there is a lot more from your website, which you've already mentioned. And one thing that really was impressive is teaching parents not to be authoritative, but rather learning from your teaching how they should relate with the children so they can improve their influence. And I wanted to ask you how do you connect with institutions that have greater relationship? I mean greater influence with the youth, the young people, like mean maybe the the churches, do the local police institutions link with you? Then the final question is on that is how are you operating physically only in the United States and the rest of the world is connected online? How do you work globally?

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Yeah. Uh I'll answer the last one first and then go to the other one. Um physically, we only operate, I would even say, probably mostly in the state of Alabama, which is southeastern United States, because that's several hundred several hundred miles in any direction, so there's only so far we can go. So, in terms of doing a class or teaching or speaking in person, we tend to operate in that area. But the good news about online, about the internet, right? So our online resources and and digital resources we send out can help anybody, right? Any anyone anywhere in the world, right? Anyone who has access to the internet, right, we can serve. So that's the answer to where do we operate. In terms of reaching youth directly, my answer there is a little bit different than what I gave to Parent, because our primary way to reach youth is to try to help and equip organizations that are already helping youth. For example, a lot of churches will have a youth group of their teenagers who get together, and maybe there is an elder or a youth pastor who looks after them. Or sometimes there's a community organization that gets teenagers together. Or in some cases there are people who like to mentor teenagers. So someone, those organizations which are trying to help teenagers, in those cases, we would supply our resources to them. And they can use them in a classroom type environment, or they can use it in a small group, or they can even use them in a kind of a one-on-one mentoring environment. So we actually are are not trying to do much to reach teenagers directly, but in in those cases we try to help organizations that are helping teenagers.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Yes, yeah. Perhaps at this point, do you have one praise incidence that you know really this worked effectively that you could share with us?

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Well, the one that's easiest and closest home to me is frankly to talk about my own family. You know, um, my wife and I have two sons, and three of the four of us struggled with substance abuse and some form of mental health issues over the years. Right? I was an alcoholic for many years. My wife struggled with alcohol. And our older son, when he became a teenager, got into both drugs and alcohol because of the people he was hanging around. So at times for our family, it was very dark for us. It was hard. But now it led me to change my life and leave the business world and start a nonprofit ministry. So it put sent me in a whole new direction because I got so excited about the fact that recovery actually works. And you can not only treat some of these issues, in many cases you can prevent them. And that God is so omniscient, right, that he knows he designed us, right? So he knows what is best for us to live. And then if we follow his guidance and live right on a day-to-day basis, we'll tend to avoid those things. So every day I I feel blessed and thankful for that. I I think my wife would say the same, right? There was a time when our boys got old enough to to leave the home when uh sometimes for moms that can't that can become a period where they they may face some depression, right? Because their sense of purpose has been their kids for a while, and if the kids are gone, you know, it's hard to find it. So she went into a a period of depression and and she used alcohol to feel better for a while. But now she's a a joyful person who's very engaged in recovery and in helping other women. And then I I'll close with what is so exciting to me is is our older son. You know, for for ten years he struggled, and it it was very, very hard. There there were times when we didn't know what was going to happen with him. But for about the last eight years or so, he's he's been doing great. And uh he is now working and being extremely productive and has a great job. He got married about three years ago, and a year ago he gave us our first grandchild. And so he's a wonderful dad and a wonderful son, and and he's and and he and I will have this conversation before. And and I would want anyone who's listening who may be struggling to listen to this. I you know, I'll say to my son, I say, You know, son, you have now become the man that God created you to be, not just in spite of the problems you faced, but in many cases because of them. In other words, God in his wisdom can use what seem to us to be our deepest trials to shape us in ways that can be absolutely transformational in nature. So for anyone who's struggling, or if you're close to someone who does, I yeah, I hope that you'll know these few things. One is it's okay not to be okay, but you don't have to stay that way. If you have depression or anxiety or an addiction, you may feel a sense of shame. And that may tend to to make you feel so bad that you want to continue your habit and you don't reach out for help because you're embarrassed about it. Millions and millions of people are struggling these days. You're not that unusual. Everybody's struggling, but they just hide it from others. So it's it's okay that you're not okay, right? God knows right where you are, but you don't have to stay that way, and there are steps you can take to move in the right direction. I also want to encourage you that even though your situation may seem desperate, there are millions of people who have been right where you are. Not the exact same circumstances, but the same types of problems, and millions of them have gotten better. And the third thing I'll say is you you can have hope, right? You can have a realistic assurance of a positive future because there are things you can do to move in the right direction. Other people have done it, and God knows exactly where you are. He will be with you every step of the way, and he will walk with you, you know, as you learn, you know, day by day, step by step, to deal with those issues and learn to live life better. So for those people who are struggling or you know someone who is, life can get better. There's nothing magic about it that we can do, right? God is supernatural, he God can do what he wants to do. But normally it will take a period of time to work our way through these problems. But if you hang in there and persevere and keep taking small steps in the right direction, life can get better. And when it does, you'll look back and it will become just a sense of thankfulness for you. You know, that through God's grace you've you've gone through that. And you'll also find that you're now a different person. You know, that you're more humble and caring and compassionate of others because of what you've been through. So I hope that's encouraging and giving hope to anyone who's struggling.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Very much. And as we come to the conclusion of this podcast, once more, kindly, where do we find these resources? I know you've already done that, but if you don't mind, just please once more.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

I'm glad everybody wants to take steps to improve their life, right? So just remember lifeimprovementsteps.com. It's all all together. So it's L I F E I M P R O V E M E N T S T E P S dot com. Lifeimprovement Steps.com.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

It's been a pleasure hosting you on the 40 Days of Reconciliation Podcast. Thank you so much, Mr. Steve Ward. Thank you. I've enjoyed it. Thank you for having me.