Learning to Father: Storytelling, Scripture, and Discipling Kids (with Dr. Jerry Pattengale)

What happens when we have to learn fatherhood without having experienced it ourselves?

In this episode, I’m joined by scholar and author Dr. Jerry Pattengale for a thoughtful conversation about parenting, storytelling, and helping kids grow to love the Bible.

We discuss:

• Learning how to be a father after growing up without one
• Why storytelling and imagination matter in discipleship
• Helping kids engage the Bible in meaningful ways
• The role of history, artifacts, and immersive experiences in shaping faith
• How parents should think about shows like The Chosen with their children

Dr. Pattengale also shares practical wisdom and encouragement for parents who want to faithfully disciple their kids—even when the journey feels difficult or unfamiliar.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome to Discipling Kids Podcast, where practical parenting meets practiced theology for families and ministries discipling kids for Christ. I'm your host, Pastor John Scheller. Welcome back to Discipling Kids. It is a thrill to have you, Dr. Jerry Padingale, with us today. So, Jerry, you are a professor at Indiana Wesleyan, and in your career, you've been a pastor as well as a founding scholar, a leader, and a director of education at the Museum of the Bible. You have been and currently our media consultant for popular shows like The Chosen, David King of Israel, and you're on the board for Christianity today. You have written many books, articles, and have been interviewed countless times, and you're a husband and a dad. And it's just a thrill that you would give your time to talk to us to help us understand how we can help kids know, understand, and love the Bible. And so as a parent, as an educator, a former pastor and a museum and media scholar, you have a lot of experience to help us. Something that I've heard you talk about and I and I've heard shared as well is that you grew up not having a present earthly father. And then suddenly one day you became a father. And we have many, many listeners, many people in our congregation who uh have a situation where they they didn't have parenting modeled to them. And now they're parents and they're there there's some pressure there of wondering, am I doing this right? How do I do this right? Um, what should I do? And I was wondering if you could help speak to us about your experience and what would be your hope and encouragement uh for individuals finding themselves in this situation.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

I grew up in a family with eight children and found out later actually um my father actually had a second family that we didn't know about. And and so we were poverty stricken and he uh a smart man, everyone liked him, and all of a sudden he disappeared, and then my mother was destitute and had to move away with someone who um was going to take care of her in another part of the state. And so four of us were homeless, so we we kind of grew up a little bit that way. It wasn't really traumatic. So for me, my advice in that is my my my mother was a good mother. I mean, my mother really was a disciplinarian and everything. And so but suddenly being a dad without being a dad, um, I've had to learn from other people. I have surrogate fathers. I've had people that have helped me. And so if that's where you're at, you know, you need a surrogate father. You do. Mine is Carl Knupp. Carl Knupp is a banker who lost his only two children. He lost them at 17 years old, three years apart, both of them at 17, one uh to cancer as a devout Christian, shared till the day he died, and the other was killed by a drunk driver. And so I met him borrowing money to buy my first house when I was moving in to um uh go to Miami University of Ohio. And so I would say you need to find a surrogate father. Uh don't look to your pastor to be your father. Uh you really need someone else to be your. It might be a pastor, it might just happen that way. But you need a spiritual leader, and that might be your pastor, it might be somebody else. And I also have been in accountability relationships my entire adult life. So we have regular times where we talk about what's going well and what's not going well as a parent. And so I just I think it's a routine of responsibility. And so uh I've had to be intentional. I don't get it all right. You know, one one part of my dad's story, my dad shows up, he'd been gone for 20, 30 years, hadn't seen him. Found out he has cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, and a heart issue out of nowhere. I get a call, he tells me one day on a phone, had he'd never called me. I get a call. And his name was Jerry too. And the last thing he said before he hung up, he was at a VA hospital, he had been a veteran as the highlight of his life. And he said, I love you. And then he hung up. It was it blindsided me. I never want to blindside my kids with love. They're gonna know I love them until the day I die, not the day I die. I sat down, I was so dumbfounded. I'm working two or three jobs, remember I was homeless. I if I didn't have a plan B, I had to make it. I wrote him a long letter, mailed it. We still used surface mail back then. The funeral came, I had to pay for the funeral. You know, so you have a destitute father, someone had to bury him. He's a vet, so that paid for a lot of it. We still had to pay for some things. Some of the kids got together. All eight of us kids are close, so we're we're still all together. And here's um I got back home and the letter came back with not enough postage. And so the rest of my life I live with not being able, my dad did not know what I really thought. And even if I told him I loved him in the letter, and I just threw it away. I was so frustrated. I wish I'd have kept the letter. So I I think as you, as a parent, you need to uh make sure your kids, you know, have a relationship with you where uh you talk back and forth, and I keep every note that they write. Hopefully they keep the notes I write. The other day my wife and I had some notes from our kids when they were younger, and they're amazing, the discussion. I've had more wonderful discussions with my kids before they were ten than I had with my dad before he died at fifty-five. And thanks be to Christ. And, you know, from the time each of my siblings f accepted Christ, their lives changed. And they're all good parents. And so we're all stepping in for where, you know, we didn't didn't have a father.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

So And how did that inform your relationship with your heavenly father?

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Aaron Ross Powell, that's a great question because I I I feel like I'm more reliant on God to do those things. I'm just trusting him that this isn't all a crock. You know, because all my eggs are in one basket. I mean they are. And, you know, like Borden, the missionary, you know, no no regrets, no recourse. You know, he knew when he went out. And and and I haven't quoted that for 30 years, I think. Um and so and that's the way it is for me. It's like I'm into this.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

I've heard you say that people need to seek out a surrogate father or parent. How has that played out in your life as you're a surrogate father, you and your wife, to others?

SPEAKER_00 7:01

As I went through college, I I started to come across, and my wife and I, um Cindy, we came across a lot of kids who are in similar situations, were their dads, were their druggies, not so much alcoholics these days, but druggies. And they were alone. We have a few families in Marion, Indiana. It's mainly my my wife who spends time with them. I'm with them in Wallet, if you will. But Amy Sherman helps me here. Amy Sherman has uh sp done a lot of talks across the world based on the verse that when the righteous prosper, the people in the streets rejoice. If you're listening to this and you have a full-time job, you're able to go out and eat when you want to go out to eat, you're able to put new tires on your car before they really need to be done. God's given you a position to help at least one family, to get to help one mother. These mothers don't decide suddenly to have a child, it just happens. They make a bad decision. The hardest thing for us in helping them is some of them make the decision over and over again. And they just have cycles. We've had some of these mothers we help get saved. My wife said something to me the other day, and maybe this will help you. But we were dealing with one of the young mothers who had made another bad choice. And she was coming back around and and she said, You know, Jerry, when I die, do you know who's probably going to be at my funeral? All these girls. Because even though they've made mistakes, they have at least had an example on knowing that it's a mistake. And in each situation, eventually they will come around and apologize and they will start to get right again. So that they don't have a plumb line other than my wife. And me when I'm present. So we have the kids in and it comes with a cost. One time we had a a a young mother in and um she invited her brother, and next thing you know, we're robbed. My oldest son lost a three carat diamond he inherited from his grandfather. It shows up at a pawn shop, and I found out ten years later whose name was associated with it. And so sometimes helping comes with a huge cost financially. And so I I just think you need to be ready to do that and love them. And and they become of the age of accountability. We have one young man we've helped a lot, Cindy helped him since he's five, and he made some bad choices, and he's in jail. And his his the mother of his children is someone that she helps a lot. Again, I help him in Wallet, and she helps him personally. Um because she has no place to turn, and but my wife is there for her. We'll be in another part of the country or the world, and we'll get a phone call. It might be, I can't get to work. I I need a ride to work. And so we try to help them find uh a way to work. I I think the best thing we can do is they can get attached to a church, and it may not be the church you go to. A church is a systematic response to recurring need. And it's for our salvation and our edif, you know, and and and to to learn and to grow, it's also to help the community. And if they're not attached to a church and they're just going to welfare programs, which are helpful, if they're not attached to a church where they're not only getting help with things they need, they're not really getting the education to help transition into helping other people. So, um, you know, there are joys that come with it. There's joys, there's fun moments. There, one of them's now in college. You know, she's somehow figured out enough to help get in college. So yeah, it's frustrating. Uh, John, the other day, one of them was excited, they got a car, and we found out they bought it from a loan shark with like 25% interest after their first late payment. And you just want to go and wring the neck of that person who sold them the car. It's just greed. Instead of helping someone in need, and so you can't expect everyone else to have the same compassion. That's what's hard. And so you have to help them. My wife does all their taxes for them, and then tries to help them be responsible when they usually get a tax check back because of their income bracket. So, yeah, there are ways to help.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

So, in one of the many books you co-authored, the world's greatest book, The Story of How the Bible Came to Be, in it it says that most kids, and a quote here, are addicted to sports, TV, sugary food, or video games. It was said of young William Tyndale that his mind was singularly addicted to the scriptures. So, how do we raise up new Tyndales? How do we help kids not just understand the Bible, but actually grow to love reading it and sharing it with others?

SPEAKER_00 12:11

It's a great, great question. And I wish I wish you could just all go and live with our son and daughter-in-law who live in Mishawaka or Wacaroosa, Indiana, because I think they put into practice something that's just amazing, is their entire day, their schedule, everything is singularly around biblical principles. And so they just do that. They just they have a principle if you're doing chores, they have a principle if you're uh only have screen time, is they try to understand why they're doing things. And they're homeschooled, not everyone can homeschool, and they're both highly educated, not everyone's highly educated. My parents didn't go to high school. So so they just have they they just have a regiment and principles. And so when you're trying to figure out how you can do it, it takes a regiment to do it, it takes a willpower. A lot of people listening to this, if you're like uh my mother, um, so we had eight children in our family, she's just trying to survive. She's just trying to survive. I love the book uh by the fly lady. Uh it's called Just Wash Your Sink. Uh Clean Your Own Sink. And so at the end of every day, if your sink's clean, you feel like you've at least accomplished something. And you know what? Ever since I met her when I was speaking somewhere, I clean our sink at night because I go to bed thinking that sink is clean. And when rate we raise our kids, it's like there's a regiment that we follow that we do our best in the time that we have. You know, in the Greek there's a couple words that we know if someone's a younger child or an older child. And you also have to realize when is your child making that transition? And I think they're k they're different. You know, when you think Mary had Jesus as a teenager, you know, kids are capable of a lot earlier than what we think they are. And so I would start there. You need a regiment, you need to start treating them as more mature than they actually are, because we have a society where we've created, we've really created the teenage years in America. American culture has done there's a whole litany of literature about creating teenagers in America. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

I think the word teenagers showed up in the English dictionary in the 40s.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

I think you're right, yeah. And you know, they um they've done a lot of studies on this about, you know, how it's not that we've spoiled students. There's actually it's there's actually a lot of healthy things that can happen. And and so without getting too deep here, right real quick, is this like have a regiment. Just have a regiment and say, okay, we're gonna just if you just go over to your wall and say, here's how we're gonna break up our day, here's what we're doing, and here's why we're doing it. It's that simple, and have them go through that. And there comes a time where your child can decide whether to leave or stay. And for most of you listening, that's a long time from now.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

So consistency, building in those habits as a family.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Yeah, consistency. And here's what I say. So I've done a lot of developing of organizations, is that preparation is the manifestation of dedication. So if you're dedicated to your kids, you're going to be prepared. Preparation thwarts frustration. A lot of the frustrations that we have in raising our kids and our families is we just haven't prepared for that moment as well as we could. And then preparation also facilitates inspiration. And so I think if we can work at that, and it takes too. Now, a lot of you listening to this, you may be in a marriage where your husband simply cannot help, or your wife simply cannot help if she is traveling a lot. Um so you're all in different places. But if you just if you can go at to the end of the day, John, and say, What have we prepared well today? One thing. And so whatever it is, and that's you say that's going to be a mark that we're going to do a difference. I used to tell our kids nighttime stories, and sometimes I was so exhausted, and I just was trying to get by without doing it. I'm just being honest with you. And you know, I write for a living in in all these books, and I'm writing a novel now on the magi. I you know, their fondest memories are when I would go in and tell those nighttime stories, and I would make them the hero in every story. So no matter what the story is, they would sneak into the narrative, and by the end, they would be the hero. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

As you have pointed out in some of your writings, we have the world's greatest story in the world's greatest book. So tell me more about storytelling and how to capture the imagination of a child.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Aaron Ross Powell That's a great question. You know, I do a lot of speaking on how to hook an editor. I ought to give one on how to hook a child. This isn't a religious book, but mustache baby. I mean, from the time they opened that book, we have read that book so many times. No, that's you you're listening, hey, that's not a Christian book. It's a pretty clever book. I mean, I don't know if you've ever read Mustache Baby, but the title made you smile. It did. And so you have these babies that have this one baby that has a big mustache, and all the way through he gets in trouble and everything. So from the time they open that book, they're hooked. So how do you do that with something that hooks them within the first few pages? And so when you're trying to capture them in the story, I remember even in my own story nights, at first, if I didn't start them off with something, they would fall asleep. And so I try to hook them early with something that's that's kind of funny, outlandish. Um, so hopefully that that helps.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

So as I mentioned, you're a media consultant, and and you have said that series like the chosen, they're a tool for engaging people with the Bible. What should parents and caregivers be aware of when using something like that to help their kids understand scripture?

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Well, that's a it's a good question. So my actual consulting is with the chosen partners with Mystery Box. Mystery Box is phenomenal. So I was over a project, The Road to Emmaus. If you go to the museum now, there's a new movie, and it's phenomenal. Here's what I would recommend. I think you should have your kids watch them. I it's a big debate because it's not scripture. Last night in this very building I had a long talk with someone who used to work on Broadway talking about, you know, at what point do you use them, what point don't you? You know, really great discussion. I think it's pretty simple. You just have them read the story first, watch the documentary and see where it's different, where it's not, and what they learn. You know, if they don't read the story first, they don't know what license has been taken. The young woman I talked with last night from China, one of the difficulties in China is that they haven't had the Bible and all they see is the film. So they think that James the Lesser actually has a limp. You know, so the rest of their life they think that he has a limp, and it's not that it really changes the story, but it is just a dramatization. And so, you know, that's the difference, is it's a tool, but at some point they need Bob Hoskins and One Hope to give them scripture or the Gideon. Somehow they need to get the scripture, or you know, and they're delivering that digitally now. So that's what I would say is have them have 'em read it, have them listen to it, or have them have them listen to it, take notes as they're going.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Tell me why it's important to be showing our children and sharing with them artifacts.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Well, what's going to happen is uh they are going to uh uh eventually grow into um wanting to explore other other people's views. And so you need you need to help them um to be able to wander on their own, but you also need to make sure they're grounded. And what what I would say, I don't know if this answers directly, is you and I have been to universities where there are standard scholars that you study. Those kids could never digest that. Many of their parents can't. There, you know, they haven't been to Bible school. They many of them can, but if they're like my parents, there's just no way they ever could have understood a Bruce Metzger or even Yamauchi's simple stones and scriptures. It just wouldn't be something that they would want to read. Or Hard Sayings of the Old Testament, or Josh McDowell's evidence that demands a verdict. I mean, that's a pretty simple book, but there there's a new way to do it now. Um Wesley Huff has a series of short videos that have pretty good graphics. I mean, they're they're illustrations and there's maps. I don't know if you've seen the of them, but they're, you know, they're they're all over now YouTube. Ever since he was on Joe Rogan, he's suddenly famous. Well, he's famous because, like yourself, he's had good training, and when he was thrust into a podcast with uh a liberal commentator, he totally dismantled him. He said, Oh, that's you know, that Signe I Bible you're talking about is actually Sineeticus, and it's right behind me. I've got a copy. And he pulls it off and starts talking about. It's actually pretty funny. I met Wesley, he's a good guy, and he's young like you, and he's buff, and and so they they just they enjoy this, the youthfulness of someone like that. And it's not because it's Wesley Huff, it's because the team around him has helped in digestible bites with a lot of graphics to just unpack it. So that's one source you can have. Another source, so the parents need to know this before the student. Uh I'm on the board for something called Bible Journey. Bible Journey has hundreds of videos shot in Jerusalem in Israel with Tim Laniac. Tim Laniac is the main spokesperson now for our daily bread. He helped found the big campus in Charlotte for Gordon Conwell Seminary. He's Harvard PhD. And yet he is so approachable. I just was awed with him earlier today, that you could go on Bible journey and you can get certain segments of it free, totally free. And so you have video, you have very simple teaching, and you can walk your kids through that. Well, Dr.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Panningale, thank you so much for your time. It's been a joy to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

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