Todd Holmes and his two oldest sons on what it actually takes to raise kids who walk with God: lived example, consistent standards, and no soft parenting.
My wife Katie is usually on this podcast with me, but she's in preparation for our ladies' conference, so I brought in my two oldest sons instead. Bryce is 24, married to Olivia, and on full-time staff with us at River of Tri-Cities Church in Johnson City, Tennessee. Ethan is 21, in his third year of internship at the Bible college, spending most of his time evangelizing on campus and building up Bible studies. Our youngest, Blake, is 17 and homeschooling, probably hoping to play professional basketball and golf simultaneously. I'm not sure what God has planned for him exactly, but he's living it out.
We sat down to talk about one of the questions I get more than almost any other: how do you raise kids who actually turn out? I don't have all the answers and I'm not pretending I was a perfect parent, but I've got three young men who love God and are walking it out. That counts for something.
The verse we quoted most in our house was Joshua's declaration: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." We had it on a rug in the garage. You couldn't walk into the house without stepping on it. Bryce made the point that it's worth reading carefully — Joshua said me and my house, not just my house. It starts with the man himself. That distinction matters more than most parents realize.
If we didn't know what to do, we could always look at your life to see it.
A lot of parents want their kids to live according to the Word but don't do it themselves. You've heard the saying: don't follow what I do, follow what I say. That doesn't work. Kids are watching constantly, and they will find the gap between what you preach and how you actually live. Bryce and Ethan both said the same thing independently — they always had a clear picture of what obedience to God looked like because they could see it in front of them every day. That picture removed every excuse.
Equally important was who we surrounded ourselves with. The people closest to our family walked at the same level we were walking. Other ministers, other families — not all of them held the same standards, and the boys saw that. When they tried to use those families as a comparison point, the answer was always the same: we're not raising their kids. We answer to God for how we raise you, not how we raise anyone else.
One of the things Ethan brought up that I think is exactly right is the idea of consistency as a setup for life. A standard in the home isn't about being harsh or rigid. It's about giving your children a foundation they can build on when you're no longer making their decisions for them.
There wasn't an excuse that we didn't know what to do. We didn't know what was right. It was very plainly put before us.
We went to church every Sunday, and we didn't just attend — we participated. The way we were at church was the way we were at home. There was no version of us that showed up for services and then did whatever at the house. That consistency is what Ethan is describing when he says the standard set him ahead. When he became an adult making his own choices, the habits and convictions were already built in. He didn't have to construct them from scratch.
Compromise for convenience is what destroys a standard in the house.
The little compromises are what get people. A movie that's "probably fine." Sitting in the bar area of a restaurant because it's easier than waiting for a table. Those things seem small, but they teach kids that the standard is negotiable under the right circumstances. We didn't go trick-or-treating. We didn't sit in bar areas. We turned movies off when they crossed a line. We weren't watching what couldn't pass the Philippians 4:8 test — whatever is pure, honest, just, of good report. That was the filter.
We also weren't religious fruitcakes about it. We had a Christmas tree. We celebrated Christmas and Easter — we just kept the actual meaning front and center. I read the Christmas story from Luke 2 before we did anything else. Easter was about the resurrection, not the Easter bunny. You can be in the culture without being consumed by it. Knowing where the boundaries are is the skill.
I'll just say it plainly: my wife and I are against soft parenting. Kids need to know what the boundaries are, and there have to be consequences when those boundaries are crossed.
One thing that drives me a little crazy is parents who count. You know the move — the child does something wrong and the parent starts, "One... two... two and a half..." All that teaches a child is that they don't have to obey immediately. And delayed obedience is disobedience. God doesn't count for us. He doesn't say, "Take however long you need to change your attitude." If I'm going to teach my sons that God expects immediate obedience from us, I can't spend their childhood training them that obedience is optional until three.
The boys got spankings growing up. All three of them. Bryce probably led the household in that department, though Ethan maintains there were times he got caught in the crossfire — "guilty not by association, but because I was there," as he put it. And Blake, being the youngest, had the advantage of watching his brothers figure out where the lines were. Every subsequent child gets the benefit of the first child's learning curve. That's just how it works.
You also have to separate mistakes from sin. I didn't punish my sons for making mistakes. If a kid loads the dishwasher wrong or takes the trash out imperfectly, you correct it — you don't discipline it. But when a child deliberately does what they know is wrong? That's a different conversation. I knew I was going to get a spanking and I did it anyway. My boys knew they were going to get a spanking and they did it anyway sometimes. That's human nature. What matters is that the consequence came, was consistent, and was connected to a clear standard.
Here's something Ethan said that I want to highlight because I think this is where a lot of otherwise good parents miss it. You can live a righteous life in front of your children. You can have a standard in the house. You can bring them to church faithfully and guard what they watch and say. And still lose them — if you never push them toward their own relationship with God.
"Those who just think it's all right to live off of their parents' faith, their relationship with God, don't end up going very far in the things of God."
At some point, your faith cannot be their faith. They have to get into the Word themselves. They have to pray themselves. They have to seek God themselves. We pushed for that constantly. Not just: here's how we live. But: you need to be developing your own walk with the Lord, because eventually you will be making decisions without us in the room.
That's what we're seeing bear fruit now. Bryce and his wife Olivia leading the young adults ministry. Ethan building Bible studies on college campuses and in leadership at the church. Both of them at 24 and 21 equipped to lead because the foundation was built early and the personal relationship with God was cultivated alongside the family standard, not instead of it.
One thing I want to be clear about: we never told these boys they had to go into ministry. The expectation was always that they would serve the Lord — whatever that looked like. If Bryce had decided he wanted to be an electrician and was doing it as unto the Lord, that would have been fine. If Ethan wanted to go into business, same thing. The goal was never to produce preachers. It was to produce men of God.
Bryce said he never felt pressured into ministry. Ethan said the same. They landed in full-time ministry because that's where God led them, not because we told them that's what we needed them to be. There's a difference, and kids feel it. Pressure toward a specific outcome is not the same as holding a high standard for how they live.
Blake is still figuring it out. He's got the golf and basketball ambitions working alongside whatever God is building in him. I'm watching that one with some interest.
What I know is this: the fruit is visible now. At a wedding two days ago, people who hadn't seen these boys in years were stopping me to say something about the men they'd become. At a businessmen's retreat in the Pacific Northwest, Ethan and Blake were holding conversations with highly successful businessmen without a trace of awkwardness, giving as good as they got, carrying themselves with confidence. That's not an accident. That's what happens when what's inside a person matches how they were raised.
The fruit takes time. You don't see it when they're eight. But you will see it. And when you do, it tells you everything about what was actually going on in the house.
