The Amazing Influence of a Grandparent

The Amazing Influence of a Grandparent

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Don Pettersen

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 7/7/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Jamie Mitchell:

Good afternoon and welcome to Stand in the Gap Today. I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell, director of church culture at the American Pastors Network. The mind and our memories are a funny thing. My wife and I were on a trip to my ancestral country of Scotland and we were walking around the towns where both of my grandfathers were born literally three houses away from each other in 1890. We were looking at the sites and especially the beautiful shoreline of the Northern Sea. And then I had this amazing feeling sweep over me. My mind raced back to sitting in my grandparents’ dining room in Queens, New York with Pop Mitchell drawing pictures of lighthouses and telling stories of being a fisherman in his hometown. That one memory opened up a floodgate of all kinds of conversations and thoughts I had with my grandfather, things that he had said to me and what was really important to him, like his Thompson Chain Reference Study Bible, which sat right next to him on a small table next to his favorite chair.

Wow, those vivid memories. It drove me home how some 57 years can pass and the impact of a grandparent could still have on a grandchild. And that’s our topic today. We believe that grandparents can have an amazing influence on the generation that follows them. And instead of accepting the notion that there is this widening generation gap, the truth is grandparents may be our secret weapon to bridging the gap and seeing lifelong, personal, and most importantly, spiritual impact occur on young people’s lives. My guest has devoted his last number of years of a long dedicated service to Christ to helping grandparents effectively impact the grandparents, their grandkids’ lives. Dr. Bob Peterson is a return guest to our program. He’s the founder and president of Legacy Imperative, a ministry to equip grandparents, but also really the whole family on how to reach young people. Bob, it’s always great to have you with us, especially when we’re talking about what I know you love to talk about and that’s grandparents.

Welcome again to Stand in the Gap.

Bob Petterson:

Hey, I’m glad to be with you, Jamie. I’m glad you were in Scotland. I was in Scotland last year too. It’s a great, great place to be.

Jamie Mitchell:

Yeah, it’s beautiful. Maybe we’ll have a program about the spiritual condition in Scotland in the past, in the future. But Bob, I want to get some foundational thoughts about grandparenting. Why grandparents and why right now is their ministry to connecting to grandkids in this younger generation so important for us to leverage for the sake of Christ?

Bob Petterson:

Well, Jamie, I’m going to give you five good reasons. Number one, the Bible tells us to do it. The Bible’s God’s word. And when God tells Christians to do something, we should do it. Number two, it’s ethical. It’s ethical. We receive a great heritage of faith and its values from those who came before us, our grandparents and those before them. And we stand on solid foundations because they built those foundations in their own blood, in their own sweat, in their own tears. And we have waiting behind us generations yet to come who are going to inherit when we leave them. And so I always think that to refuse to give our lives to passing on that legacy of faith is a betrayal of those who came before us and an unspeakable cruelty to those who follow behind us. The third reason is it’s very practical.

80% of those surveyed, those kids under 40 would ask, who are your favorite people in the world? We’ll say our grandparents. I mean, our parents are coaches. The parents tell them what they have to do. They set the rules for their life. They’re training them for adulthood. I’ve never known a coach who ever communicated unconditional love, but we’re their cheerleaders. And it’s a lot easier to love a cheerleader than a coach. The fourth reason is it’s really, really practical. I mean, not only practical, but it’s effective. We have three quarters before our fourth quarter of life where we got experience, learned wisdom, where we learned how to live life. We made mistakes. And that gives us a backlog of wisdom to pass on to our kids. We’ve got the time, we’ve got the resources that we didn’t have when we were younger. And finally, it’s imperative.

It’s imperative. I can’t say this strong enough. There’s 170 million people under the age of 40 in America today. Gen Zs and Alphas before them. 170 million. That means that they would be if separated out, the seventh largest nation in the world. And only 2% of them know the Lord as their savior or have a biblical worldview. And they have a lot of values that are not corresponding to biblical values. And so it’s imperative. It’s imperative that we do this.

Jamie Mitchell:

Bob, I guess that some of what you and Legacy Imperative, a fitting name must do is to help grandparents overcome a myth that I hear a lot. And that is, “Well, my grandkids don’t want to be around old people. ” Can you dispel in the few minutes we have left here, we need to dispel that myth. And you’ve touched on it a little bit, but that myth that our kids don’t want to be around old people. Is that really true? Well,

Bob Petterson:

Maybe some old people, Jamie. My grandkids think I’m a geriatric rock star. They love to be around me. They love to be around me. But statistically, again, go back to what I said earlier, 80% of those under the age of 40 say that their grandparents are their favorite people of the world in the world. And statistically, and we’re seeing a lot of research to show this, increasingly adult children and our grandchildren are complaining that their grandparents aren’t in their life enough. We’re seeing increasingly in this country, particularly among baby boomers, baby boomers hate to get old. They hate to admit they’re old. They want to recover their youth. And so many baby boomers are about the business of being young again. They move to the Southern climes. They move to gated communities where they can golf, where they can… They Botox themselves. No, nine billion dollars last year spent by baby boomers Botoxing themselves and making themselves look younger.

They’re not taking time with their grandkids. I hear it all the time when I go around the country. I ask young people, “Do you love being with your grandkids? Grandparents? I do. ” “Do you get enough time with your grandparents? “”No, they’re busy. They’re off somewhere. They’re living somewhere.” And so I would tell you, it’s a total myth. The kids don’t want to be with their grandparents. It’s an absolute myth.

Jamie Mitchell:

Bob, it’s so funny. And I’ve shared this with you and you’ve done it as well. We’ve both in this past year, we’ve made moves to be near our grandkids. I’ve moved to Indiana, you moved to Pennsylvania, but we positioned ourselves so that we can be with them. They just dropped by yesterday afternoon. We were watching their dog and they came by. They love being with Grammy and Papa because we experience fun. We engage with them. And you’re exactly right. It is a myth. Kids will come close to us. Friends, we’re just getting started. Today is all about encouraging and challenging our grandparents to determine the ways to reach and impact their families. When we return, we need understanding on who our grandkids are. What’s happening with this generation? Why are they unique? Why are they different? What are they facing? We as grandparents have a responsibility to study them, to understand them, to embrace them and to learn how to get into their lives.

Don’t go anywhere. Today is all about grandparents here. Stand to the gap today. Well, welcome back. Bob Peterson from the Legacy Imperative is our guest and we’re looking at the amazing influence that grandparents can have. Bob, I know some grandparents try to share how tough they had it when they grew up. We usually exaggerate experiences like I walked them miles to go to school in a snowstorm uphill and probably some of that is our upbringing that was a challenge. Yet today’s generation has a whole host of challenges and they are being bombarded on every side of the culture that we live in. I think it would really help those listening, especially our grandparents, if you can help our audience give some understanding of who our grandkids are and what influences are shaping them.

Bob Petterson:

Well, I think Jamie, you just talked about parents exaggerating or grandparents exaggerating. My dad not only walked up a hill to school, he walked up a hill back to home. So we hear a lot of that. But one of the things I got from my grandparents that I got from my parents and my aunts and uncles, I got values. I had time with them. They told stories. When we got together for Thanksgiving and Christmas, we didn’t have mobile devices to distract us. We actually believed that the Puritans did not create Thanksgiving so we could watch the Dallas Cowboys play the Detroit Lions. And so simply to say we had a different upbringing. Things were simpler. We weren’t bombarded twenty four seven by social media. And so our kids are lost. They’re getting a thousand voices in their ears at all times. And fads come, changes take place in a dizzying rate today.

Our kids frankly, don’t know who they are. They don’t know why they’re here. They know very little about God. And I know three things about myself. I know number one, I was created in the image of God. He set my gender. He set my identity. He set my sexuality. I knew that growing up. I know that I am terribly flawed, that I’ve fallen into sin. And I understand why when I get discouraged with this world, as C.S. Lewis said, it was because I was made for another world. I understand that people lie, that there’s deception out there. I understand those things from my growing up and I understand that I’ve been redeemed wonderfully by Jesus Christ. And he’s about the business of changing me into the image that Adam had with God before he fell. I know those things. They’re foundational things. Our kids don’t know those things.

Therefore, the prey to the lie. C.S. Lewis said, unless you know the straight line, you will never know the crooked. Our kids don’t get a straight line. Therefore, they don’t know the crooked. That’s where our kids are. They are prey to the voices out there. The voices, the deception of we know as Christians, that it’s the prince of darkness. It’s the father of all lies who’s behind all the lies they’re getting day in and day out. That’s where our kids are at. It’s pretty frightening.

Jamie Mitchell:

Bob, what you just did is what we believe here at American Pastors Network and Stand in the Gap. You just laid out a biblical world view, which was masterfully done in regards to creation and fall, redemption and the aspect that through God’s power, we can have a redeemed restored and eternal life. And that is missing in our kids’ lives. But as grandparents, we know that our lives were simpler, but what are those complex things that are in today’s generations that it would just be helpful for us to grandparents to fully ascertain and understand?

Bob Petterson:

And that’s what I want to tell grandparents everywhere. We need to be empathetic. We don’t need to get angry, upset at our kids, or even the people who are grooming our kids to think differently than how we were groomed. And we were groomed too. We were groomed by different values to think differently. My kids, my grandkids, for instance, and I’m a victim of what so many grandparents today are. And that is that 90% of evangelicals have one or more kids that have walked away from the church. Now they may say they still believe in Jesus, but they’re no longer in the church. That means that three or four of our grandkids on average are lost because they are not being brought up in a Christian education. So who educates them? My grandkids spend at least, when you count the time they’re in school and the time they do homework, they are captive to the educational system in America, which has them from 40 to 50 hours a week if you count their homework time, what they’re required to read in their homework.

That’s number one. Number two, social media bombards them with lies and untruths, culture influencers that they listen to, that they believe. They may not know why they believe what they do and they don’t, but they can parrot it. I sat with my granddaughter who’s nine years old this week and she was parroting talking points about gender identity, which were not biblical talking points about abortion, which are not biblical, but that’s the stuff that’s feeding into her mind. And even if you homeschool your kids, they go online to get information, Google or wherever for their homework. It is almost inescapable. So if we’ll spend a ton of time with our kids as much as we can to show them the straight line, they will never know they’re crooked.

Jamie Mitchell:

Bob, do we as parents, but as grandparents, do we address that with them? Do we engage and we either point out for them? Because it sounds like what I’m hearing is they have all of these avenues that are flowing into the minds and the hearts of our grandkids. It’s almost, as you say, inescapable. They’re going to be touched by it. They’re going to be influenced at some level. Is it worth our while to talk to them about that, to address that, to ask them questions about that? To ask them what is influencing them and what they’re hearing and what they’re believing? How do we engage with that level so that our kids will know, “Hey, grandma and grandpa, they know what’s going on.”

Bob Petterson:

Well, this is wonderful stuff because I always tell people, like Moses, Pharaoh will eventually get our kids. Moses was weaned. He was breastfed by his mother and I think he received the gospel of that day from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But then Pharaoh got him and he was trained by Pharaoh and he forgot those things. But there came a point in his life when he remembered them. That’s what I want my kids to know. I want them to know the truth. So I want to feed them the truth. I want to help them know the truth, but I’ve got to do it in a different way than we used to do it. I tell people, like the other day, my daughter began to spew these things. And I asked her, “Where’d you get this? ” She’s in the third grade and she’s already getting taught transgenderism in the third grade.

And so here are the things that you don’t do as a grandparent. First of all, you listen. Don’t lecture, but listen. Listen to your child. Listen to their heart because if you listen to them, you earn the right to talk to them. Secondly, ask questions. And I kept asking her… I knew she was parroting this stuff. I knew she didn’t understand it. So I asked questions about, “Well, what do you think the implications are of that? How do you know that? What about this? What about that? ” Thirdly, I didn’t get angry at her. I didn’t get angry for thinking the way she did or even those who groom her to think the way she did. I remained calm and I listened and I asked questions. And then I shared, “Well, this is how your papa feels. I didn’t say I’m right and you’re wrong.

This is how papa feels. This is what papa believes about this. ” And she listened. “I’m glad I was born a boy. God shaped me to be a boy. “And I always point to God with her. “God shaped me to be a boy in the womb and he shaped your mama to be a girl and she gave birth to you. ” And I went on and on. And then she looked at me and said, “That’s pretty cool, papa.” So I think a lot of it isn’t just that we have… And then the one other thing we may be talking about in the next segment and this really important, brother, to all those that are listening, we find as we go around the country, most grandparents that we’ve talked to who’ve been reading the church all their life are pretty ignorant about biblical facts. And they’ve not thought through how do I present those biblical facts and relate them to culture today?

They are ignorant of Bible and they’re ignorant of the culture, but most of them have drunk in the culture and they’re thinking culturally today. So we started out by saying we’re going to teach grandparents how to talk to their kids. We are increasingly talking to grandparents first because unless you know what you believe, you have no basis to talk to your kids about what they don’t believe.

Jamie Mitchell:

Bob, you are so right. And we’ve talked about this in the last five or six years. I have been thrusted into the world of senior adults and people who have grown up in the church. And I was shocked at the lack of biblical understanding. And it’s not the excuse that they got old and they forgot. They had never heard some things that there was such a dearth of and lack of biblical knowledge, biblical contact, biblical information. And you can understand why their children started to walk away from God, but you can understand why if they could get themselves equipped biblically, they can make an impact. Friends, I hope you’re seeing what is happening in our world today and what your grandkids are facing. And as Bob says, have empathy on them. And so these young people who are not only your grandkids, the ones in the church that you attend, they need to find a way to connect with us.

And they will because they want to connect with the older generation. They want to be around grandparents and we have an opportunity to pass on to them a biblical worldview. Now what happens if they do walk away? How do you bring back a prodigal? I want Bob to share some thoughts on that. I think you’re going to be encouraged to lean in, especially if your loved one, if a grandchild or a child has walked away from Christ. Stay with us. Don’t go anywhere. Well, Bob Peterson is my guest today and we’re looking at the ministry of grandparents and what kind of impact they can have on their families and how they are strategically positioned to reach the kids of today. Bob, one of the saddest stories is when you hear about a wonderful Christian family and one of their kids walks away from the faith and they’ve been nurtured throughout their lives.

It breaks the hearts of the parents and of the grandparents. And as I have looked at your website and resources, you speak a lot about bringing them home and helping prodigals rediscover their faith. A couple of questions that I want you to weigh in on, can you give any insights on why kids who are brought up in a Christian home, they attend a Bible believing church, maybe even attend a Christian school, and then they walk away from their faith. I know that the answer, the question why is broad, but can you give us some insights on what may be happening when that occurs?

Bob Petterson:

Sure. Well, first of all, Jamie, we need to believe our theology to understand it. And I’ll go back to the story Jesus told about the prodigal son. And actually there were two prodigal sons. The prodigal son who went to the far country and wasted his life and riotous living. But there was the other prodigal son who stayed home. And you can be a prodigal son while you’re still in the father’s house. A lot of Christians in the father’s house who are prodigal. To be prodigal is to have your heart be far from the father. The young man was far from his heart of holiness. The older brother was far from his heart of grace. And so we need to understand number one, our children were born sinners. So we need to…

Their faith often when they grow up is what we tell them, what Sunday school tells them, what the Christian school tells them. If they’re in a Christian school, what homeschooling tells them if they’re in a homeschool situation. They are the product. And even the kids that are in secular schools are just parroting what they hear. You talk to most kids, they hold to the same, most kids, at least when they’re young, hold to the same political views their parents hold to the same religious views. But I believe there comes a time when every kid has to set down his faith for a moment, maybe only for a moment, a faith crisis, because it’s not really his faith often. It’s his parents’ faith. It’s her parents’ faith. And then when they pick it up, it becomes their faith. And there comes a point, Jamie, where every kid has to decide, is this my parents’ faith or is this my faith?

Do I hold it? Because God has no grandchildren. He only has sons and daughters. Everybody has to have a personal relationship with him. So one of the things I tell parents is, okay, be prepared for that. There’s going to be a moment perhaps for most of your kids, and you hope there is a moment when they put your faith down and pick up theirs. That’s number one. Number two, understand that your kids are sinful, even though they’re born again, perhaps. They’re still sinful. I mean, I’m still sinful. I think you are, Jamie, even though we’re born again and therefore the call of the far country is always there and it’s always attractive to us. Even Adam and Eve before they fell with all they had in the garden to eat were attracted to the forbidden fruit. It’s our human nature. So we have to be prepared for that and understand that.

One of the things I tell parents is be very careful that you don’t allow the devil or even your own flesh to make you feel guilty about your kids going off into the far country. Some of the greatest heroes in the Bible, Moses’ grandchildren led the people of Israel into idolatry. Damiel’s kids were wicked judges. David’s kids were all messed up. A lot of great men and women of God who have served unfaithfully have had children that have gone off to the far country. And oftentimes people get paralyzed by that and they feel guilty about that. And then they want to enable their kids because they feel guilty their kids are where they are. They feel it’s their fault. Those are important points. But what I would say are two main points. If our kids are in the far country, let the far country do its work.

Remember the far country did its work in the life of this young man. It attracted him. It promised him all kinds of things and it took everything he had. And when he lost everything, his friends were nowhere to be found. He ends up in a pig pen fighting the pigs for cornhusk to eat. And then the Bible says he came to his senses. What a lot of Christian parents do is we enable our kids to remain in the far countries because we’re afraid if the far country destroys them or if it reduces them to a certain point, we’re going to have to jump in and bail them out. It’s going to cost us way more in the end. So we enable our kids. We can’t enable our kids when they’re in the far country. We have to trust that God is with our kids even when they’re in the far country.

And then the second thing is he remembered. He remembered his father’s house. He remembered the grace that his father had toward the servants of the house. And he said, I would be better to be a servant in my father’s house where there’s love and grace than I would be to have friends in the far country who let me down. And he came home. So I tell parents, love your kids unconditionally. And grandparents, we have a great opportunity to love our kids unconditionally. We don’t have to play by the rule. I’m not your parent. I’m your friend. And so that is a very cool position we’re in. So therefore, if they go anywhere when they come home from the far country, they’re probably going to come to our house. And so that’s what I tell people. Love them before they get in the far country. When they get in the far country, don’t enable them.

And above all, don’t let the devil make you feel guilty so you’re paralyzed by where they are.

Jamie Mitchell:

Bob, you just had a flashback of a memory. I can remember my son in college and we having a major, major conflict. It was a major conflict. We didn’t have many, but we had a major conflict. Don’t you know he jumped in his car and drove two hours to his grandparents’ house to sit down with them and try to sort this whole thing out because he had never been in conflict with us, but he went to his grandparents to seek solace, to seek wisdom. I think he was trying to get them onto their side, but you’re exactly right. Bob, here’s a follow up question. What does work? And I use that word carefully, what does work when we’re trying to win back a prodigal? You’ve given us some good outlines, but have you seen any other keys that would be helpful, especially for a grandparent who this does affect greatly, but are there keys to that as they maybe start coming around or they start showing that they are looking for help?

What keys could you give a grandparent today when a grandchild completely walks away from the faith they once were a part of?

Bob Petterson:

Well, I can tell you a few things. I can tell you first of all, what you shouldn’t do. You shouldn’t nag, cajole, lecture, guilt your kids. That’s never going to work. Okay. I just have a newsflash for everybody out there and we need to keep that newsflash in front of us all the time. There is a Holy Spirit and we aren’t the Holy Spirit. And so the first thing I say is pray. Pray, pray, pray for your kids. I believe that prayer will do more for your kids than all your nagging in the world. When Jesus was on this earth, he started out with about 20,000 people, ended up with 120. I don’t think a church in the world would hire a pastor who had that kind of a record. But when he left, what has he been doing for the 2000 cents? He’s been praying, interceding for lost children and found children and millions have come to the Lord through Christ’s prayers.

His miracles, his substitutionary atonement, all he did for us was essential for our salvation, but his prayer is what has brought us to salvation. So I say to grandparents, pray, pray, pray every day. I pray for my kids every morning. I pray for them passionately during the day because that’s what’s going to bring them home, the Holy Spirit, not us. Loving them unconditionally. That doesn’t mean we accept what they do. That doesn’t mean we affirm what they do, but there’s a difference when we affirming them personally as people in the image of God, maybe fallen, maybe far away from God, but they’re still his sons and daughters. They’re just the lost sons and daughters to love them the way Jesus loved the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the down and outers of his day. We love them when they’re in the far country. And then we live a godly life as an example.

They see us. This is why we can’t compromise our faith. We don’t have to put them down But we can’t agree with them. We can’t say, “Oh yeah, that’s right. Oh yeah, I agree. I understand. No, this is my North Star because they’re following the lights of passing ships and those passing ships are leading them to shipwreck lives. So they have to see in us that we have a North Star. And when their life has been shipwrecked and they don’t know what to do next, they’ll go to the people who have a North Star. And so love them unconditionally, pray for them. Don’t nag them and love them and stay true to what you believe. Don’t compromise. Ever, ever, ever compromise what you believe.

Jamie Mitchell:

Bob, we got about a minute left, even less. But the fact of matter is I’ve thought to myself, one of the failures that I had of many as a pastor that I wish I had a chance to go back and that was to have a place in our church’s ministry where parents who had wayward kids, prodigals, kids that had walked away, a place for them to come on a regular basis with other parents and other grandparents and just cry out to God, boy, what a need in the church today to have a place. I would call it parents in pain prayer meeting where they could come on a regular basis. Friends, I’ve ministered over the years to heartbroken parents with grandparents, with wayward kids. We need to be praying. Hey, when we finish up, I want Bob to share some of the resources that Legacy can provide Imperative can provide for you and the support that we need to be effective parents.

Don’t go anywhere. One more segment left here on Stand in the Gap today. Well, this has been an insightful program as we have had Bob Peterson from Legacy Imperative with us. Bob, before time slips away, please tell our audience how they can find you and what resources you have and how could they have maybe a Legacy Imperative ministry or event at their church or area. Give them some insights that will help them understand more about your ministry.

Bob Petterson:

Well, Jeremy, I’m always glad when I’m on a radio talk show and I get a chance to do a commercial for Legacy Imperative. I founded this ministry several years ago with the idea that we were going to help grandparents teach their grandkids how the cow ate the cabbage, biblical truth. What I discovered in the process is those grandparents did not know the biblical truth themselves. They did not know what was going on in culture so they could apply the biblical truth they did know to culture. They did not have a grasp of apologetics so that they could apply these truths in a wonderful way like a Charlie Kirk did at one time. And so we began to change the way we were doing our materials. And so we put together what I call a superstore and one of the best websites ever. And we are now filling the shelves with what we call hot button issues and other issues that the people are wrestling with today.

One of the problems we have in our age today is not just that kids don’t know the Bible, but those who grew up in the church are deconstructing their faith. You see it on TikTok all the time. They’re abandoning their faith. And so we’re teaching apologetics to grandparents so they get how to deal with the questions that cause their kids to abandon their faith. And so apologetics is really key. I would tell you, Jamie, if you ask the average church kid, why do you believe God exists? They couldn’t tell you. Why do you believe the Bible is the word of God? They could give a good answer to that. And if they can’t answer those basic questions, when they go off to college or they get involved in social media and with cultural influencers, they’re dead meat. They will not be able to answer their questions.

They’ll be led astray. So we’re teaching grandkids, parents, how to know those things, how to know how to talk to their kids. And so we have a whole plethora of different film series and we’re making more all the time. We have 10 times more than we had a year ago and we’ll have even more just simple videos and they’re great. They’re interesting. They’re Hollywood good. And so that’s where they can go. We also do summits where we come into your church from a Friday night through a Saturday afternoon sessions where we call people, grandparents to action, where we show them what they can do. We give them hope and encouragement and practical answers. They go away fired up. We’ve seen churches change dramatically when grandparents get away from just fighting the culture war and the political war and get involved in spiritual warfare for the lives of their kids.

And we have a thing called connecting hearts. We just come in for a Friday night and we do a Friday night at your church and talk about our kids. And we have a session where we just let you ask any question you want about anything you’re facing on LGBTQ issues, gender issues. How do I talk to my kids about faith in government? Navigating that. Almost every issue you can imagine are thrown at us and we have answers. And so those are all the things we do. You can go on our website, you can find out on our website where to go to talk to people to schedule these programs. So anybody that’s interested, let me know. Our website is legacyimperative.org. I want to repeat that, legacyimperative.org.

Jamie Mitchell:

Bob, as you were talking, I’m thinking to myself, I’m laughing here because you say that kids aren’t challenged spiritually. And we have young people who by the time they leave high school and maybe even middle school are doing computer programming coding. So it’s not that they don’t have the intellect or the ability yet I have heard many pastors and youth pastors say, “Well, we don’t want to teach them inductive Bible study. It will be way over their head.” Now listen, I got one question really I want to ask that I want to glean your wisdom. You were a pastor for years and you had many grandparents in your congregation and probably legacy imperative flowed out of that ministry. But as pastors are listening today, Bob, give me a few things that they should do immediately if they want to be a good support to grandparents to be able to ignite their ministry to their grandchildren.

What would you say to a pastor? Give them two or three practical things that they could do.

Bob Petterson:

The thing they could do is get in touch with us. Have them come in and help them develop a program for grandparents. That’s the first that they can do. They’ve got the greatest mission force in the world sitting in their church. And many of these older people feel neglected. They feel abandoned as the churches move to try to reach the next generation as they ought to. But a lot of these churches don’t understand that their grandparents are one of the best tools, one of the best mission forces they have to reach grandkids. These kids today aren’t going to church, most of them. And they don’t go more than an hour or two if they go to church, but they’re in their grandparents’ home. They’re there at Thanksgiving. They’re there at Christmas. They’re there during family reunions. They’re there way more than they’re in church. So why not train your grandparents first and foremost to be missionaries in their own home?

They don’t ever have to go to Africa, India. They can do it right where they live. And that’s what Legacy Imperative is about, training a massive mission force that’s available that has time, resources. So do I sound excited about this, Jamie? I am. And I think that’s the first thing pastors need to do is look at the older people, the people in the fourth quarter and train them. And we’ll help churches do that. The second thing that pastors need to do is they need to stop feeding pablum to their people and to their kids. My nine-year-old came to me a few weeks ago and said, “I don’t think that John F. Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald. I think it was the people behind the grassy hill.” And they should begin to tell me all the angles that the bullets had to go through for Lee Harvey Oswald.

Now, I wouldn’t have expect that from a nine-year-old. I couldn’t have done that at nine years of age. My grandkids are getting all kinds of stuff, all kinds of conspiracy theories, all kinds of thinking on social media. I know that my grandkids can handle talking about who is God? Why do you believe in God? Why do you believe the Bible is true? We are not giving our kids solid apologetics. We’re not arming them to face an enemy who is so powerful. If he deceived Adam and Eve, who were not falling into sin yet, who only had a Bible that could fit in a fortune cookie, one verse, and they fell. How are our kids going to stand on a word of God that’s as big as our Bible? They’re falling in sin and they’ve got twenty four seven bombardment from the enemy.

Jamie Mitchell:

Wow.

Bob Petterson:

Pastors have to take responsibility for teaching their kids and most pastors are not doing that today. We are not equipping our young people.

Jamie Mitchell:

Amen and amen, brother, you are singing our tune because we see this all the time. I’m right now teaching the Truth Project at our church on Sunday nights for parents and their kids. And I have just a small, small sampling of those families there. How they desperately need that apologetics, that biblical worldview, that teaching that will last a lifetime. Thank you, Bob. Thank you for your vision, your empowerment, your equipping and deploying grandparents to reach the next generation. Make sure you check out Legacy Imperative and start getting ready to reach your families. We not only need wise, loving and equipped grandparents, we need courageous ones. So it fits every day. I say the same thing. I’m with you. Until tomorrow, live and lead with courage.