442 | Gamifying Family Values, Manmaker Challenges, and Founding Father Faith PART 2 (Tyler Van Eps)

Rhythms & HabitsFamily VisionBrotherhood & Mentorship
Written By Jeff Zaugg

Episode Description

What if your family values were something your kids could actually touch? In Part 2 of this paddleboard conversation, Tyler Van Eps shares how he turned a Jenga set into a discipleship tool, why physical discomfort opens the door to spiritual growth, and what it takes to build a legacy of courage in your kids. Plus, he unpacks the question God placed on his heart: what is required to be a founding father?

  • Tyler Van Eps is a husband, father, and intentional family leader passionate about making spiritual formation tangible. He and his wife, Shelly, practice quarterly whole life stewardship reviews and have built family values their kids can see and touch. Tyler is also the creator of Manmaker, a series of high intensity gatherings that challenge men toward biblical manhood through physical and spiritual growth. He and his family live in Minnesota.

    • You can only control the outcomes so much as a dad, but you can control the inputs. Zoom out to a 90 day view to realign your family direction.

    • Purpose, vision, and value language is abstract for kids. Make your family values tangible with tools like Jenga blocks and card decks so your kids can see, touch, and speak them.

    • Your family values will stay the same, but the language needs to match the season your kids are in.

    • Men grow through moments of physical and spiritual discomfort. Gatherings like Manmaker sneak spiritual vulnerability in the side door.

    • Think in decades, not just weeks. Ask yourself what you need to be doing today to have a strong relationship with your kids as adults.

    • Your kids will face fear, but you can build a reservoir of courage into their heritage that they can tap into for the rest of their lives.

  • Tyler Van Eps: It started with Shelley and I looking at whole life stewardship on a quarterly basis. It's the same format we do on a weekly basis, but zooming out to ninety days at a time and saying, “Hey, there's only so much we can change in the middle of a month or a week, but we have more ability to change things in a ninety day window if we feel like we're misaligned.”

    Jeff Zaugg: Also the reading, learning, and listening to business principles where you're prayerfully asking, “What's the takeaway for the dad life?” I don't think that's super common, and I love that.

    Tyler Van Eps: That was a conviction going back to probably 2020 or 2021. I realized I'm so dialed into what success looks like in my career. I can get to the end of a quarter and tell you if I'm on track or off track on anything, but as a dad, it's all feels. You can only control the outcomes so much, but there's so much you can control as far as the inputs—the activities, the thoughts, and the time. It's a time stewardship thing. That you can control.

    Jeff Zaugg: Just to pause on that—it's all feels, and let's call it 95 percent of the time in the short run, the feels could feel like we're not making progress. So there's the need for a vantage point of ninety days, or a year, to align direction. But then there's speaking. Our kids pick up if we speak death, or even think it—there's science around this. Thinking discouraging thoughts like “I'm missing it” or “I can't” is settling, versus the pioneer mindset of, “No, actually—ninety days. Look what could be possible if we realign and go that way.” I think it slips into conversation all the time in my family. My wife and I will speak the current feels out loud, which truly is planting seeds of discouragement.

    Tyler Van Eps: A hundred percent. That's incredibly insightful. I've definitely sensed that, but I would not have articulated it that way. That gives words to the reality you experience when you can name the season that you're in—or the season you want to be in.

    Jeff Zaugg: I've had guys decline joining me for a podcast conversation because they're in a chapter that feels discouraging, and I can see it with a different vantage point. If I was going off my feels, I would have quit at episode three. But it's the growth and what is possible. Let's talk for a moment about gamified growth. I'm thinking Manmaker, I'm thinking Jenga blocks. I've seen you gamify growth in a few tangible ways. Let's go Jenga blocks first.

    Tyler Van Eps: It's funny, because that's something sitting next to our kitchen table that we haven't touched for six or eight months.

    Jeff Zaugg: But it was a launch tool, right?

    Tyler Van Eps: It was. For us, it was trying to take our values and make them tangible—what do they look like?—and giving our kids a chance to speak into it. “Hey, what does it look like to follow Jesus?” We attached those to behaviors, and they said, “Okay, we read our Bible. That's one of the behaviors that demonstrates this is a value to us. We're part of a local church. We worship together.” So we worship together, we pray together, we read the Bible, and we're part of the church.

    Jeff Zaugg: So the behavior goes on the same block as the value?

    Tyler Van Eps: We took the blocks and color coded them—Fight for Family was red—so each value had probably five or six blocks that were behaviors for it. Early on, just the process of taking a permanent marker and writing on all of them was helping them cement it in their minds. Even the exercise of saying, “What does this look like? What does it look like for us to live with enthusiasm? Think of some ideas and we'll write them on the blocks.” Now it sits in a little acrylic case. I wanted it as a centerpiece, but from a design perspective that got nixed out of the centerpiece of our kitchen table. It's still sitting on the shelf right next to our table.

    Jeff Zaugg: So that exercise of ordering a set of Jenga blocks—and I had thought you used the exercise to help you actually create your values, but the value creation was you and Shelly, which makes sense. Many of us are stuck right there. We're all thinking we need a crest on the wall designed by an artist, and then three years go by and we haven't actually created our values or our mission. How would you encourage the dad feeling stuck with mission, purpose, and values?

    Tyler Van Eps: That's always been something I've been drawn to, so it was easy for me to have energy and momentum for it. But the language is something we wrestled with a little bit, and I think we'll continue to. Shelly and I did this when we were married, and we chose catchy, branded language that gave us energy and felt meaningful for the season we were in as newlyweds. Once our kids came along and their language and vocabulary grew, we noticed the underlying values were still there—the things we aspired to and espoused as a family—but we needed language that matched the season of our kids.

    Jeff Zaugg: Gosh, that's awesome. Okay—how often does an eagle fly twenty-five feet in front of me?

    Tyler Van Eps: Multiple times. This has been sweet.

    Jeff Zaugg: I think it's probably the same eagle. When I was training for a triathlon, it would perch along here, fly in front of me while I was swimming, and land again—like a little watchman watching over me. The distractions are good on paddleboard podcasts.

    Tyler Van Eps: That's where “Live with Enthusiasm,” “Follow Jesus,” and “Fight for Family” became language that our kids understood and resonated with more.

    Jeff Zaugg: And it's anchoring the huddle. Even if it's going to evolve over time, having something that is yours—that anchors a weekly huddle and a direction of growth—is still positive.

    Tyler Van Eps: Definitely. And beyond the Jenga blocks, I also created a deck of cards with our values on it. That was a Christmas gift—I'm trying to do one family Christmas gift each year that's associated with the values. We've done that a few years in a row.

    Jeff Zaugg: So you got a deck of cards printed?

    Tyler Van Eps: Online, yes. What I noticed with the kids is that purpose, vision, and value language is really abstract for kids, so I'm trying to figure out ways to make it tangible.

    Jeff Zaugg: That's back to the gamified—something you can touch.

    Tyler Van Eps: Yep. Early on we would play Jenga, and for the first couple rounds it was, “Hey, when you pull one out and it has a behavior on it, I want you to say either a way you've seen one of your siblings do that, or a way you've tried to do it yourself.” Those were ways to have fun with it, make it tangible, and remind them of those pieces.

    Jeff Zaugg: Before we go into the other gamified growth area—Tyler, I admire your heart for fatherhood and family and your heart for your kids. Truly, when I think of the friends I want to be like in this area, you are one of those friends. I have so much respect and gratitude for you. Not perfection, but you're bringing your full heart to this area. So who's upstream? It could be an author, your dad, a grandparent, a mentor. Is there anyone you'd want to call out—“I learned this from this person,” or “I'm grateful God put this person in my life”—who has shaped the dad you are today?

    Tyler Van Eps: Well, right back at you with all the DadAwesome resources. Fathers for the Fatherless—the bike ride—was in some ways inspiring for Manmaker: the difference it makes to pursue spiritual growth and spiritual formation together, doing hard things collaboratively in community. That has played a huge role over the last four or five years. So what you're doing—right back at you. I would also say Vince, my mentor and friend, has played a major role, and I'll be leaning on him a lot more for the teenage years. He's described conversations to me—especially the more corrective conversations. He'll tell funny stories about the first time he got a call from one of his kids' friends' parents about an intervention and the way he approached that, or the first ding or little accident with the car.

    Jeff Zaugg: Truck—he told me a story about a truck. We had him on the podcast twice, so I can link back to those. And it's because of you that I've been connected with him. Vince Miller. And then?

    Tyler Van Eps: Lately, Terry Lyevsky, who I think you've met.

    Jeff Zaugg: He served on our board for the first three years. Tell me more about what you've learned from Terry.

    Tyler Van Eps: Terry's opening my eyes to parenting adult kids and the way he's being intentional in that. For Christmas every year, he sincerely prays and considers a gift he can give his kids that's an investment in their growth and their character. He'll look at mentorship opportunities, mission trips, or other things like that. That's been really inspiring. It feels so far away in a lot of ways, but zooming out helps. I started a practice I'd never done before: a decade vision. We think so much in three, six, and twelve month windows, and at most we think one year, three years, five years out. But I was challenged for the first time to think in a decade: what's something you want to accomplish this decade in your growth and personal character? The more I zoom out, the more it helps me in the smaller, short term things. When I think about wanting a strong relationship with my kids as adults, what are the things I need to be doing today to set the tone for that?

    Jeff Zaugg: When you see a mentor—and Terry is a friend-mentor to me because he carries himself so young, but he's got adult kids—when someone is savoring fatherhood in a chapter that's a decade out and treasuring it, it rewrites the narrative that says you launch your kids at eighteen and fatherhood is basically done. I love that—being inspired and having seeds like that. You're not putting them into practice today, but they do shape today. Anyone else, or any other resources that have shaped how you approach your family?

    Tyler Van Eps: I haven't interacted with it as much in the past few years, but a lot of John Eldredge's work has been really insightful for me, probably more so for the father-son relationship. Brooks is seven, so we're still in the more playful times. It's all formative, but it's not the more sophisticated formation time yet.

    Jeff Zaugg: Okay, I mentioned Manmaker, and I just retold the story of being in the Moundsview High School wrestling room. Talk to me.

    Tyler Van Eps: It's funny—we've got another one. I'm doing another one at the end of July.

    Jeff Zaugg: What's the focus of that one? Or are you allowed to say?

    Tyler Van Eps: Ooh, that's a good question…

    Jeff Zaugg: Hold on to that one. You've done how many? You've done this for several years, with no pressure to do it every week or every month—you've scattered in these events. What's the purpose? What's the hope?

    Tyler Van Eps: Five or six of them now. I can sometimes get bored in traditional church environments—sitting in small group circles and things like that. I was reflecting with a friend and mentor recently, and I use this term—I think AI actually helped me find it—chronocentrism. It essentially means we think our time is the center of history, that our time is the most important time. I got so annoyed with it, especially through COVID. The phrase “now more than ever”—the more I heard it, the more upset I got. I understood it was a call to urgency…

    Jeff Zaugg: Victim language, though?

    Tyler Van Eps: I think it was a little bit of victim language and a little bit of manipulative language—“if you don't respond now.” And I thought, no, that's not what I get from Scripture. I appreciate urgency—the time is short—but I look more at Esther: “for such a time as this.” There's an appropriate sacrifice, an appropriate obedience, measured for the time God has placed us in. But we're recognizing with our kids that the times are different than they were ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Technology is changing so rapidly. All of this is getting around to this: I think there's a different moment for the church when it comes to discipleship and spiritual formation, and I was sensing that especially in men and fathers. Everything from biblical literacy—do we know our Bible? Are we reading our Bible?—to a Barna study that found the most under-practiced spiritual disciplines in the Western church are fasting, tithing, and Sabbath. So few church-going men practice any of those things, and those are all sacrificial things. That was part of Manmaker: I want these moments where we ramp up the intensity a little bit—

    Jeff Zaugg: Or a lot at times. For a short period of time, though.

    Tyler Van Eps: —and it immediately puts you in a space of both physical and spiritual discomfort, and a little bit of vulnerability. But for men, the physical discomfort almost overrides your awareness of how spiritually uncomfortable you might be.

    Jeff Zaugg: You almost sneak it in the side door, because the physical has all the focus.

    Tyler Van Eps: Yeah. So we've done cliff jumping. We went out under the lights on Maple Grove's football field. We went in Moundsview's wrestling gym. We cut down trees with axes and hauled big logs around.

    Jeff Zaugg: Carried the logs up a hill. The jiu jitsu in the wrestling room—I was very uncomfortable being pinned. I think they use the word “mount” in jiu jitsu. Meanwhile, a stranger is praying prayers of life and blessing over me while I'm very uncomfortable. It was so good, and so unexpected.

    Tyler Van Eps: That's been the tone of it. The next one is going to have a boxing theme. I think it'll be really similar to the jiu jitsu one in some ways, but the idea behind it is reflecting on biblical manhood—looking at a man in the Bible. In the jiu jitsu one, it was Jacob wrestling with God: trying to take a vision God had given him and wrestle it into reality amidst all the fears he was facing about going back to face his brother and his homeland. How do you take the vision God's put in front of you, and how do you wrestle it into reality?

    Jeff Zaugg: We actually did that. You asked us what we were praying for, to say in front of the whole group. That also took vulnerability—saying, “This is a vision I have.”

    Tyler Van Eps: And, “Are there things you need to wrestle your way out of?” When you've got a professionally trained jiu jitsu guy…

    Jeff Zaugg: Yes—it was both sides. And he had never… it was a friend of a friend?

    Tyler Van Eps: Yeah. He reflected on it afterwards, saying, “Man, I'd never been part of anything like that. That was a special experience.”

    Jeff Zaugg: Tyler, I've had more crystallization around our mission at DadAwesome being a heart level mission. Intentional fatherhood—helping dads be awesome—could easily stay at the head level of tactics. But at the heart level, what God's called us to is hearts toward heaven, hearts toward home. It's two directional. And what I experienced in those two hours with you and those men—I didn't know most of them—was very much toward heaven and toward home. It was uncomfortable. They didn't know ahead of time; they were told to bring gym shorts and a water bottle. You keep it a secret, you drop a pin—this is the location. Things men do not expect from a men's group: mystery, doing something so far outside the norm. Dislocated shoulders—didn't you get injured?

    Tyler Van Eps: Did, yeah.

    Jeff Zaugg: There's our eagle again. Manmaker—I refer to it as building an accountability loop, a framework that's going to help me bring to fruition something I care deeply about. You want to keep growing versus settle. Stay a pioneer, keep pressing deeper into friendships. You've created a mechanism of growth that has created core memories—jumping off a cliff, cutting down a tree and carrying it on your shoulder, bloody hands. Anyone listening could create a local chapter of something like that, and they don't ever have to say they stole it from Tyler.

    Tyler Van Eps: I've shared the Google Drive folder probably a dozen times with people—“Hey, here's the format I do it in.” The funniest story about it: one of my buddies had been part of two of them, and we had the third one coming up. The mystery of it is really funny—he ended up having a dream, a semi-nightmare, the night before. “Dude, I had a dream that we were in helicopters and our challenge was jumping between them.” Even the anticipation it built was awesome. So much of our culture around spiritual formation is pre-planned, pre-packaged curriculum. It's very controlled, very safe, and sanitized in a lot of ways.

    Jeff Zaugg: It's wonder. It really is wonder.

    Tyler Van Eps: Personally, I wanted an environment where it felt like, “I don't know what's going to come out of this.” For the football one—I don't know when a guy's going to step up to that blocking sled. I don't know what he's going to say right before he pushes it ten yards downfield.

    Jeff Zaugg: Wow. Well, this is where I want to come in for a landing on this conversation—I've loved this lap and a half around the lake with you. I'm going to invite you to pray over all the dads. But is there anything else on your heart that you'd want to deposit before you pray over us?

    Tyler Van Eps: Man, I've been wrestling. We're coming up on the Fourth of July—two hundred and fifty years of our nation's history—with all the marketing and messaging you receive around that. I've been reading a lot, and I think God prompted a question in my heart about three months ago: What do you need to be a founding father? What is required to be a founding father? I'm thinking about that in the context of a nation, but also in the context of a family, a community, or an organization. What's required to have a founder's faith—founding father faith? As I've read history and books on America's founding fathers, the thing that has impacted me most is, first, the level of biblical literacy in all of them—Scripture was just flowing from them every time they opened their mouths. And the level of sacrifice—how many of them lost homes, families, lives. “I regret that I have but one life to give.” The level of sacrificial faith and obedience—that's the biggest thing I've wrapped my mind around recently.

    Tyler Van Eps: I want to be remembered as a good husband, a good father, a follower of Jesus. But if there's one thing I care about that surrounds all of that, it's that I want to be remembered as a courageous person—not a reckless person, because that can be a temptation as well—but courageous. And I want that to be in my kids. I can't control whether my kids are afraid or scared of something, but I always want them to feel that somewhere in them—somewhere in their heritage, somewhere in their spirit—they've got a reservoir of courage that they can tap into.

    Jeff Zaugg: Wow. Could you pray anything that's on your heart—a short prayer of that theme over the dads?

    Tyler Van Eps: Lord, thank you for the gift of being a father—for being able to watch our kids grow, to watch them explore, to watch them discover. God, thank you for the small ways they show courage every day with new things, just part of being kids and learning about the world, learning about relationships, and everything else. Thank you for the example that you've given us. Thank you that you are a good Father who loves to give good gifts to your children. God, I pray for every dad that's listening—I pray this for Jeff, for myself—that we would be courageous men. As Jeff talks about with the ministry of DadAwesome—hearts toward heaven, hearts toward home—it takes courage to do that when so many things try to pull us in other directions. So for each and every dad, I pray the courage to turn their heart toward heaven and their heart toward their home, and that they'd begin building that legacy of courage in the lives of their kids, Lord. Thank you. Thank you that you, Jesus, set your face resolutely toward Jerusalem, toward your sacrifice, toward your own death, out of love for us, flowing from a love of the Father in heaven. Give us that courage to set our faces resolutely toward our home and toward heaven as well, Lord. In your name, Amen.

    • "I wanna be remembered as a good husband, a good father, a follower of Jesus... I wanna be remembered as a courageous person... I can't control whether my kids are afraid or scared of something, but I always want them to feel that they've got somewhere in them, somewhere in their heritage, somewhere in their spirit, a reservoir of courage that they can tap into."

    •  "I'm so dialed into what success looks like in my career... I can tell you if I'm on track, off track on anything, but I have no idea how it's all feels as a dad... you can only control the outcomes so much, but there's so much that you can control as far as the inputs." 

    • "I want these moments where we ramp up the intensity a little bit... it's immediately putting you in a space of both physical and spiritual discomfort and a little bit of vulnerability. But for men, the physical discomfort almost overrides your awareness of how spiritually uncomfortable you might be." 

    • "I was challenged for the first time to think in like a decade thing... when I think about wanting to have a strong relationship with my kids as adults, what are the things that I need to be doing today to set the tone for that?" 

    • "Personally I wanted an environment where it felt like I don't know what's gonna come out of this. I don't know when a guy's gonna step up to this blocking sled. I don't know what he's gonna say right before he pushes this thing down ten yards downfield."

 

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Jeff Zaugg
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441 | Follow Jesus, Live With Enthusiasm, and Fight for Family (Tyler Van Eps PART 1)