Fathering With the End in View: Notes From Our Fifth Year Together

Previous Week In Practice

Year five opened outside, under a tent on the grass, with twenty-five men standing in a circle against a gray morning — a new record for us. There was no prior week to report on, so we did the next best thing and went around the circle: names, our children’s ages, how long we’ve been at the school, and one good thing from the summer. A month overseas with family. A mission trip to the Dominican Republic. A scratch-off board of surprise adventures, everything from an amusement park to a Frosty at Wendy’s. A new puppy, which one dad accurately described as another newborn.

It sounds like small talk. It isn’t. The single practice we ask of every man here is the reason we spend the time: get coffee or lunch with another dad from this circle sometime this year, away from Friday morning. The meeting is the front door; the friendship happens outside it. One father said the best conversations he’s had with men in this group happened over chips and salsa, nowhere near a Friday.

That’s the practice we carry into year five. Everything else sits on top of it.

The Question That Started This

The group began with a dad who realized he didn’t know the other fathers in his child’s grade. Something had come up — the kind of thing you need to talk over with another kid’s father — and he had no relationship to carry the conversation. That gap bothered him enough to do something about it.

Around the same time a few of us read The Intentional Father by Jon Tyson, and the same conviction landed. For one father the arithmetic was stark: his oldest was fifteen. What am I actually doing on purpose before he walks out the door?

Five years later the tagline still says it best. We are an encouraging community of intentional fathers sharing stories and resources to disciple children in Christlikeness. Every phrase is load-bearing. We gather to spur one another on, because “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together” (Hebrews 10:24–25) is as true for fathers as for anyone. We want to father on purpose rather than by drift. Nobody here is the expert. And the target everything else aims at is the long obedience of Deuteronomy 6:7 — teaching our children “when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way.”

Most of us admitted the same thing: there is no other place in our lives where men gather specifically to talk about being dads. It comes up sideways in other rooms. Here it’s the whole point.

Begin With the Day They Leave

The exercise men keep coming back to years later is this one. Picture the day your child leaves your home for good — the door closes, the car pulls away, and they are on their own. Now answer four questions honestly:

• Who do you want them to be? What character has taken root?
• What do you want them to know? What convictions can they defend?
• What skills should they have? Money, work, conflict, a household.
• What experiences should they have had while still under your roof, where failure is survivable?

Then work backwards from that day to this one, and ask what a father has to build in between.

Jesus taught the same arithmetic in a different setting: “Which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost?” (Luke 14:28). We count the cost on houses, careers, retirement. Fewer of us have ever counted it on the one project with an actual delivery date.

A few weeks back, one father who has walked kids all the way to graduation told us what the far end of the journey looked like from inside his own home. None of us has this figured out — which is rather the point of standing in a circle.

Planned Emancipation

The companion idea is what we call planned emancipation: your child’s freedom should expand on purpose, year by year, so that independence arrives as the result of a plan rather than the shock of a birthday.

One dad described it as a game of Risk — each year your child claims more territory of responsibility, and you deliberately hand it over. A chore, then a decision, then money, then a walk to a friend’s house alone, then a schedule they own. The goal is not to hold the board. The goal is to lose it well.

Scripture is not sentimental about this. “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth” (Psalm 127:4). An arrow is not made to stay in the quiver. It is shaped, straightened, and then released — and the whole point of the shaping is the release. A father who never lets go hasn’t protected his arrow; he’s wasted it.

Over five years we’ve come at the practical side from every angle: age-appropriate independence, the blessing a father speaks over his children, screens and phones (and now AI, which could eat a whole year), pornography, catechism, money and chores, morning routines, our own emotions, and unity with your wife — because two parents pulling different directions will out-teach anything either says.

Casual but Deep

Someone described the group as casual but deep, and that is exactly right.

The format is simple. A dad puts a topic on the table for five or ten minutes, asks a question or two, and the room does the rest. We open by asking what someone actually tried since last week — success or abysmal failure, both are useful — and we close by naming what we’ll each put into practice before we meet again. James was blunt about why: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22). A meeting that only makes us think has not helped our children.

The bar for bringing a topic is deliberately low — not a presentation, a PowerPoint, or a teaching. One year a dad simply said he struggles with coming home stressed from work and taking it out on his kids, and that became one of the best mornings we’ve had, because half the room was living it. A paragraph of honest thought is plenty. “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17) asks only that you show up with an edge, not a lecture.

Expectations are low by design. We meet every Friday there’s a full day of school — no teacher work days, no half days — and nothing builds sequentially, so come when you can. One of the men who helped start this group put it well: you’ll remember maybe five percent of what happens here, but that five percent, repeated week after week over years, will change your family. Your children will be better parents because you became a better one.

Actionable Steps for Dads This Week

1. Do the leave-home exercise on paper. Set aside thirty minutes, picture the day your oldest walks out for good, and write four short lists: who you want them to be, what you want them to know, what skills they need, what experiences they should have had. Don’t aim for polish. Aim for honest.
2. Pick one gap and name the next step. Choose the single biggest gap between that day and today, and write down one concrete thing you’ll do this month to close a little of it.
3. Hand over one piece of territory. Choose a responsibility your child is ready for and hasn’t been given — a chore they own start to finish, a decision they get to make badly, an errand alone — and hand it over this week. Then keep your hands off it.
4. Schedule coffee with one dad from the circle. Text him today and put a date on the calendar. This is the one ask the group makes, and the one that turns a meeting into a brotherhood.
5. Bring your own topic. Think of one thing you’re wrestling with as a father — not something you’ve solved, something you haven’t — and offer it. Sign up for a week, or just tell one of us. Your unsolved problem is likely half the room’s unsolved problem.
6. Bless your children out loud. Before the week is out, speak a blessing over each child by name — that they would “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” and “be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). They should hear their father ask God for their souls.

May the Lord bless you and keep you, and make his face shine on the home you are building.