TLP 91: Our One Year Anniversary and You

Today is a big deal. It's our one-year anniversary, and that means a ton of presents for you.

One-Year Anniversary and a Word of Thanks

Welcome to Truth. Love. Parents. Where we use God's Word to become intentional premeditated parents. Here's your host, A .M. Brewster.

Hello, friends. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today is a special day for me and the rest of Team TLP, but it's also a pretty cool day for you, too. On Thursday, September 21st, Truth. Love. Parent will celebrate its one-year anniversary, and we're starting the party early.

To be honest, I'm having a very difficult time feeling like we've been doing this for a year. I feel like the time has flown faster than Apple's new iPhone will fly from the shelves. It doesn't feel like a year to me.

Of course, as I've always said, my emotions only matter when they contradict reality. So here we are a year later. So please allow me to share just a thought or two by way of reflection, and then share with you what the coming year promises and what special opportunities await you at TruthLoveParent .com.

The Mission of Truth. Love. Parent

When I founded TLP last year, I did so with an overwhelming desire to glorify my God by helping His children learn how to parent the way He designed. And that's the mission of Truth. Love. Parent. We strive to magnify God by teaching men and women to be intentional, disciple-making parents.

We've been called to be vibrant ambassadors for Christ in our homes, and as we learn to do that from God's Word, we want to help you learn to do the same in your family. And every step of the way, God has allowed TLP to continue publishing.

Most of you know about the momentous blessing God gave us back in February, and if you don't know about that, please listen to a TLP snippet number four entitled, We Won. It is a great story. Now during this time, our audience has grown to include you and many others from nearly 90 countries.

I've met and corresponded with a number of you from various corners of the earth, and I'm daily amazed at how God is using you to introduce us to more premeditated parents. When you suggest our podcast to a friend, you're doing more than a thousand PR companies and ad campaigns could do.

So we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being a part of our global mission to serve families with the truth and love of Christ. We also need to thank those of you who've chosen to bless us by giving financially.

Your contributions have enabled us to do many things we wouldn't otherwise have been able to accomplish. If you haven't yet clicked the link to see our Patreon page, may I humbly request that you do? It's in the description, and it's on nearly every page of TruthLoveParent .com.

There at Patreon, you'll find many of our ministry goals and find out how even the smallest gifts from you can be used by God to connect His parenting truths with hurting and searching families. I've mentioned before that our show has been heard in a number of countries that are anti-God and anti-Christianity.

That means that people in China, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates have tuned in to TLP. Even if you donated only $1 a month, you'd be playing a part in helping us to show the world how the gospel can revolutionize their families.

Supporting the Ministry Through Patreon

Now, I want to move past this talk about finances. I believe God will introduce us to the right patrons at the right time. But let me share one other way your gifts help us to minister to families. When you go to the Patreon page, you'll see a handful of projects we're working on.

They include free ebooks, full-length parenting books, and video curriculum. Your gifts enable us to produce these resources and get them into the hands of moms and dads all over the world. The project I'm currently working on, but I just don't have the resources to finalize yet, is called Quit! God's Cure for Family Strife.

We plan to offer it as a free ebook to anyone who joins the TLP family. So, thank you for considering the part that you might play in supporting TLP financially. Okay, so speaking of this thing called the TLP family, I want to transition now to what our one-year anniversary really means for you and your family.

Joining the TLP Family and Receiving Updates

Many of you have visited TruthLoveParent .com, but if you haven't been there in a while, and actually if you're only there a few days ago, I'd highly suggest you get back there as soon as possible. We know that everything starts small, especially on the internet, but it's our goal for TruthLoveParent .com to become a hub for all things biblical parenting.

To that end, we are constantly adding new features to our site, and we have multiplied that addition tenfold in the past week. One of our newest opportunities is what we call the TLP family. All you have to do is navigate to TruthLoveParent .com and sign up.

It doesn't cost anything, but when you become part of the TLP family, you'll receive valuable email updates when we release our new blog posts, episodes, and our parenting resources. But as we expand our resource library, you'll also receive special discounts, holiday and birthday deals, and receive access to unique competitions just for the TLP family.

But don't worry. Listen, we do not want to just fill up your inbox with a bunch of spam and junk mail. That's not the kind of thing that we want to do. In fact, at first you may wonder if you're ever going to get an email from us anyway.

We only want to send emails when we're sure that you want to know what it is we have to share. But here's the part that really excites me. I'm part of a bunch of parenting groups on Facebook. In fact, perhaps that's where you and I were first introduced to each other, but there seems to be a reoccurring theme.

Generally, only the moderators really post. Everyone else just kind of sits back and watches. Sometimes a hurting parent will post and ask for help, but again, most of the parents in the group just sit back and watch.

It's often not very engaging atmosphere where people are genuinely being built up in the faith and encouraged in their parenting. In fact, there are some groups that I'm the only one who ever posts and I'm not even the moderator.

Well, when you sign up to be part of the TLP family, you also receive access to our closed Facebook group called the TLP family. This group was created to give you a place to meet other intentional premeditated parents who love God and his word.

Our desire is that you will dive into the discussion, ask questions, encourage each other, give hope, point each other to the Bible, and pray for each other. Yes, the moderators and I will be interacting, but we don't want to be the ones who are moving along the discussion.

We want you guys to have a place where you can talk and you can ask questions where you can go in there and be a blessing to somebody, share an article you've read, or something like that. I'm part of another closed Facebook group.

It's the launch team for Natasha Crane's new book. And you know what I love about it? Nearly everyone on there is engaging. They're asking questions, answering questions, sharing prayer requests. It's really is amazing, but it only works when people invest.

And though Natasha asks fantastic questions that pull things out of us, it's amazing how many people are just offering information on there that have been a blessing to so many of us. Listen, if we can't have each other's backs in our parenting, what do we have?

I would love for the TLP Family Facebook group to be teaming with parents, sharing their victories and their defeats. I'd love to see people posting encouraging and edifying helps. It would be amazing if we all started praying for each other.

So when you sign up on the website, that's what you'll get. And I hope that excites you as much as it does me.

A Tour of the Website and Its Resources

All right.

So now let me go ahead and take you on kind of a walking tour of the rest of our site, just to point out some special opportunities for you and your family that maybe you didn't know were there. First, obviously, our podcast is featured there.

Of course, we highly suggest that you subscribe on iTunes or your favorite hosting app and be sure to rate and review us while you're there. In fact, our podcast and reviews pages on our site include instructions for reviewing us on iTunes because it's not the most intuitive process.

Moving on, we also have a page where you can find all of our social media sites. There's a page that connects you with our team of TLP counselors, both giving you the ability to email us questions, but also potentially connect with us face to face.

Many of you have taken advantage of that ministry and we really love interacting with you guys on that. Now, please know it's free to email a counselor and ask a question. It will always be free because we are here to serve God and to serve families.

There's also a page where you can learn about having a TLP speaker come to your church, teachers' convention, camp, couples' conference, whatever. Now, I want to pause here for a moment and say that my favorite times are interacting with premeditated parents face to face.

Whether it's over Skype, after a workshop, or just grabbing some hot chocolate at a coffee shop, I thrill to connect with parents and see God working in their lives. I love counseling everybody, but interacting with people who want to change and grow is so refreshing and invigorating.

So if you're looking for a speaker for a parent seminar, teen camp, or if you're interested in introducing Victory Academy for Boys and Truth Love Parent to your church, just click on the speakers tab on the website.

Parenting Tools, Favorite Resources, and the New Parenting Course

Okay, so lastly, our fullest page is called Parenting Tools. It is filled with so much and we have plans for a lot more in the future. There, you'll find our blog, Taking Back the Family, where we post original articles on marriage, parenting, and family.

We also publish free show notes and transcripts of all of our podcast episodes there on Taking Back the Family. Then there's a number of pages dedicated to our favorites. We provide you links for the best parenting blogs, like Natasha Crane's The Christian Mom Thoughts blog, our favorite podcast, and our favorite books.

And we have a way for you to suggest your favorite blogs, podcasts, and books to be added to the list. Now, I have to say that we take these lists very seriously. We're not just going to randomly put books and titles and podcasts and blogs up there just because someone says, hey, we think this one's good, or just because it gets a lot of reviews.

We want to make certain that everything that we suggest to you, everything that we put on our best list, is something that we can stand 100 percent behind. Which means that the material, the article, whatever it is, has to 100 percent align with God's word and our understanding of it.

That's the key. It has to push you to God. It has to encourage you in his truth, not just be filled with man's opinion and fluffy little ideas about parenting. So you'll find that our lists are relatively short right now.

We want to add to it. We want it to grow and we want you guys to suggest things. But just know that it's going to grow slowly because we want to take the opportunity to read the book, peruse the articles on the blog, to listen to the podcast before we put it out there and say, hey, this is one of the best parenting resources we could give to you.

And the final parent resource I want to highlight is the TLP Products tab underneath the Parenting Tools tab. Those are the projects that I kind of shared with you earlier that are listed on the Patreon page.

This is where our parenting books, courses, curricula, and the videos will eventually be available. Now, there's not much there now, and that's why we need your help. But to start things off, our very first Truth Love Parenting course has been posted.

Officially, it doesn't become live until the 21st. But if you're listening to this episode before the 21st, all you have to do is click on the parenting course called 25 Days to Becoming a Premeditated Parent and you'll get immediate access to enroll for that course for free.

Basically, it's a parenting course formatted in email. Each weekday for 25 days, you'll receive an email with a lesson and life work assignment designed to help you grow in the area of being intentional and premeditated in your parenting.

I will say this is not just an inspirational note or a helpful parenting tip delivered to your inbox every day. These lessons are robust in many ways, and the curriculum has been crafted to really challenge and stretch you.

I've had some people testing it for the past couple of months, and some of the feedback I received is that it was far more than they imagined. Some of them also felt like they had to really push themselves to stay on target with the due dates.

But here's the thing. It's an email course. You can follow the due dates or archive the emails if you get behind and then work through as you finalize the life work. It doesn't have to be a burden. And if you're the type of person who wants to take it to the next level, you can sign up to have a TLP mentor.

There is a cost associated with that because your mentor will actually walk with you every step of the way as you work on and complete each assignment. They'll provide an extra layer of accountability.

They'll be available to answer questions via email. They'll personally read each assignment and provide invaluable feedback. And they'll even have opportunities to connect with you via phone or Skype to help you with more of the challenging assignments.

Looking Ahead to the Second Year

Now, if you couldn't tell, we wanted to really provide you valuable assets that would point you to God and sharpen your ability to parent to His glory. And really, this is just the start. If you're listening to this in 2017, you have the opportunity to be in on the front lines of this movement.

We're celebrating our first anniversary and we hope to be around for you until your kids have kids of their own. Welcome to the TLP family. Thank you for entrusting us to speak into your experience and may God receive all the glory and honor for what we do.

Now, we don't have any episode notes for you today, but your assignment is to get over to truthloveparent .com, join the TLP family, sign up for 25 days to becoming a premeditated parent and check out the other amazing resources.

And we hope you'll stop by our social media and wish us a happy birthday on the 21st. On our next episode, we'll talk about Christian Parenting 101. We're getting back to basics on Friday. I thought it was appropriate way to start off our second year.

Listen, parenting is a really big deal and it's so easy to fail. That's why we need God and faithful preachers, counselors, teachers, and friends to constantly drive us back to Him. We love you all and we look forward to seeing you next time.

Truth, Love, Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional premeditated parent. Join us next time as we search God's word for the truth your family needs today.