Parenting: Dr. Hershael York

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Listen as Dr. Hershael York shares his thoughts about parenting with parents around the globe.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_02 (00:00):
Hello,

SPEAKER_01 (00:11):
welcome to the Kearney Kids Parenting Show.
I am your host, Abraham Leonard,Minister of Children at First
Baptist Church Kearney.
I am so glad that you havejoined us.

(00:37):
Please welcome to the show, Dr.
Herschel York.
We're so glad that you're ableto join us today.
Could you tell us a little bitabout your family, your
ministry, and just how you'redoing?

SPEAKER_00 (00:48):
Yeah, I am married to Tanya, have been for 44
years, and we have two sons,Michael and Seth.
They're both in ministry.
Michael is a pastor in Ashland,Kentucky.
Seth is the director of a reallylarge Baptist camp ministry.
of what's called CrossingsMinistries here in Kentucky.

(01:09):
And he's the director of theirCedarmore camp.
Crossings has about 10,000students come through in the
summer.
And then they have a lot ofretreat traffic as well
throughout the year.
And so Seth directs that.
And he is a deacon at Buck Runwhere I was pastor for 20 years.

(01:33):
And now I'm just a member.
And we transitioned to Dr.
Chris Parrish as the pastor, andI'm traveling every week pretty
much now.
So, yeah, Tonya and I are doinggreat.
We're really enjoying this stageof life.
By the way, we have fivegrandchildren.
Michael is a parent of Henry,and Seth is the father of

(01:59):
Stella, Herschel III, becauseI'm actually a two, Harper, and
Jenny.

SPEAKER_01 (02:06):
Well, that's awesome.
To start off, could you justgive us maybe, well, a lot of
people have a lot of goodparenting stories, and it sounds
like you've been doing it for awhile, but do you have maybe one
or a couple of your favoriteparenting memories that you
could share with us?

SPEAKER_00 (02:24):
Man, I have so many.
I really enjoyed pretty muchevery stage of my son's life.
You know, older teen years werea little tough, but they were
great kids, and I just reallyenjoyed them.
I think probably one of myfavorite things, I made the
determination when they wereyoung that I really wanted to

(02:49):
just keep their heart with me,especially through adolescence
and young adulthood.
So I told them each that whenthey turned 11 that I would take
them on a trip anywhere in theUnited States they wanted to go,
just me and him.
And when they were 16, I'd takethem anywhere in the world.
And my sons are really, reallydifferent.
They're nothing alike.

(03:11):
They both look like me, but theydon't look like each other.
It's really strange.
And Michael was sort of thebrainiac kind of kid.
And at 11, he wanted to go toChicago to see Wheaton College.
He wanted to...
Me, Kent Hughes, who was pastorof College Church and an author.

(03:34):
He wanted to see the SheddAquarium, the Natural History
Museum, and Moody Church.
And we did that.
That was Michael at 11.
Seth wanted to go to Orlando forall the obvious reasons.
And at 16, Michael wanted to goto London to see the British

(03:55):
Museum.
The Lindisfarne Gospel, theBritish Library, and London in
general.
And then I wanted a side trip toLiverpool.
He was a Beatles fan.
And so we did that.
And Seth wanted to go fishingfor peacock bass in the Amazon.
And we did that.

(04:15):
Yeah, and we went to Sioux Fallsand fishing for peacock bass in
the Amazon.
Just had a great time.
And both of them, they're now...
42 and 40, and they could stilltell you every detail of those
trips.
They really mattered in theirlives.
I used them to sort of tellthem, okay, here's what's going

(04:35):
to happen.
You're 11 now, here's what'sgoing to happen as you get into
your adolescent years.
And then when they were 16,here's what?
Manhood.
You're on the threshold ofmanhood.
Here's what that's going to looklike and what it needs to look
like.
It was really incredible.
And I have such a closerelationship with both of my

(04:56):
sons.
And I did with my dad.
My dad went home to visit theLord in 2009.
So, man, just what a sweet andprecious stream of grace.
So those would be among myfavorite things would be my
trips with my son.

SPEAKER_01 (05:10):
That's cool.
I can remember a lot of timeswhen it was just me and my dad
and how special those memorieswere to me.
And so that's really cool.
I want to kind of move to maybesome hard times that you've had
as a parent and how you'veovercame them.
Do you have some of those thatyou could share with us?

SPEAKER_00 (05:30):
Yeah, there were a lot of really difficult
challenges.
One is when they were two andfours, when I was on staff at a
church in Lexington, Kentucky,it was my family's home church,
my wife's home church, and I wason staff there for seven years.

(05:50):
but I really felt the Lordleading us to go to seminary.
And so we packed up and moved tothe Memphis, Tennessee area.
We actually lived in EasternArkansas, the Arkansas Delta,
Mississippi Delta in Arkansas.
And we didn't know anybody.
And we, to go from a really,just a super support group to an

(06:14):
area where you don't knowanybody and you don't have
babysitters and Also, we didn'thave money.
You know, I left a comfortablejob.
We lived in a church parsonage.
We were really well cared for.
And I go down, I didn't have ajob.
I didn't have the prospect of ajob.
I didn't know anybody.
And just going through, youknow, we had one car and every

(06:36):
day, you know, I had to go fromwhere we lived in Arkansas
across the Mississippi River toMemphis, where I went to the
seminary at Mid-America, BaptistSt.
Louis Seminary, and Leave Tanyaalong with those school boys.
They had health issues when wegot there.
Mosquitoes were so bad, my sonMichael actually went into

(06:56):
anaphylactic shock from so manymosquito bites.
We had to take him to Le BonheurChildren's Hospital.
Seth had a very similar thinghappen.
Yeah, and just navigating all ofthat, being a parent, being a
student, not having a job,financial pressures, not knowing

(07:16):
anybody.
But man, the Lord was sofaithful.
And, you know, we just did whatwe needed to do.
And they were hard.
And yet, you know, it's likemany people will say, I
wouldn't, you know, I wouldn'ttake a million dollars for it,
nor would I take a milliondollars to go through it again.
You know, the Lord really usedit in a marvelous way in our

(07:40):
lives and in our parenting.
But that was hard.
You know, there were There wereother kinds of challenges in
there later, you know, in theteen years and those kinds of
things that a lot of parents gothrough as your kids struggle
with.
Do I believe this because my dadbelieves it or is this really my
conviction?

(08:02):
You know, man, just stickingwith them through bad decisions
and all that, you know, that wasobviously a challenging time,
but the Lord was really graciousin that too and Again, today at
42 and 40, they look back on itwith nothing but gratitude.
And us too, we're grateful theLord was gracious.

SPEAKER_01 (08:23):
That's really neat how the Lord shaped you through
all those hard times and how youguys grew through that.
So if you're going to go back intime before you had a kid, what
kind of parenting advice, maybesomething that you've gleaned as
you've been through parenting umor you're still going through

(08:46):
parenting but as you've beenthrough a lot of parenting um
what would you tell yourself nowthat you kind of wish you knew
before you started

SPEAKER_00 (08:56):
so much uh you know i i don't i don't have like
major regrets like i i totallyblew it or something i have a
lot of small regrets things thatyou know i just grew i was i
think i was too harsh I was nota strict parent in the sense of

(09:21):
making them sit around on theirhands but they had high
expectations and I don't feelbad about that I feel bad that
sometimes when they were justbeing kids I would act in an
intimidating way instead of amore loving way

SPEAKER_02 (09:43):
I

SPEAKER_00 (09:44):
look back and just sort of used the authoritarian
parent posture more than just,hey, let me explain to you why
this is not good.
Now, I'm not one who thinks thatparents need to just always

(10:05):
treat their kids.
There needs to be consequencesand all that, but I think that I
erred on the side of beingauthoritarian, not merely
authoritative, and not alwaysexplaining myself.
It was just like, because I saidso, a little too much.
I look back at that, and I wish,like all of us, I wish I could

(10:30):
know then what I know now.
I wish I could have mellowedearlier than I did.
And last night was funny, I wastalking to one of my sons last
night, He was talking to meabout an issue they had to deal
with with somebody.
And as he was telling me, Isaid, hey, as the guy you got
this from, let me just tell you,what's your tone as you say

(10:51):
that?
You know, tone matters.
And I said, you need to take thesort of the verbal chest bump
out of that.
And I recognized it because hegot it from me.
He heard it from me.
And he said, thank you for thatadvice.
And he texted me the day that...
He used that advice and it wentwell for him.

(11:12):
I wish that I had figured thatout a little bit earlier as
their dad.
Neither one of them complainedabout it, but I look back at it
and think, wow, I should havebeen a little gentler, a little
kinder in the way I correctedthem.

SPEAKER_01 (11:29):
Yeah, there's those kinds of things.
My dad's a pastor as well, andI'm able to message him and say,
hey, I'm dealing with I'mdealing with this.
Can you, can you give me someadvice?
You've dealt with this before.
And so it's neat that youmentioned that, um, a lot of
people kind of despise having tobe a pastor's kid, but I

(11:50):
actually kind of, there's somany things about being a
pastor's kid that are helpful.

SPEAKER_00 (11:55):
I was a pastor's kid.
My sons are pastor's kids andall of, all of us love it.
I love growing up.
My dad's son, my sons would tellyou that same thing.
Uh, and, uh, Even when one ofour sons went through a time of
bad choices and stuff, he neverresented being a pastor's kid.
He didn't resent the Lord or thechurch.

(12:16):
You know, he just sort offigured things out.
And, you know, one time, I'lltell you this.
One time, one of my sonscomplained to Tanya, my wife,
about people's expectations ofbeing the pastor's son.
And Tanya said, let me just takethat off of you right now.
You don't ever need to concernyourself that you're the

(12:41):
pastor's son.
Don't do anything because you'rethe pastor's son.
It's far greater than that.
You're a son of a king.

SPEAKER_01 (12:51):
Amen.

SPEAKER_00 (12:51):
That's awesome.
And you need to do everythingyou do because you're a son of
the king.
And she just took it.
It's not about your dad.
It's about your heavenly father.
And That really resonated withboth my sons, and it still does.
They do it with their kids, sameadvice.
And she's exactly right.

(13:13):
The fact that you're a HerschelYork son is of no real
consequence eternally.
The fact that you're a son ofthe Most High God, that matters.
And that's the way you need tolive.

SPEAKER_01 (13:25):
That's awesome.
Yeah, I really like that advice.
As we kind of draw thisconversation to a close, do you
have any good, funny parentingstories for us?
I

SPEAKER_00 (13:40):
got a lot.
So, Michael, our oldest, wasreally precocious.
He was a brainiac kid.
I'm not making this up.
He knew his colors by the timehe was 13 months old.
He graduated high school at 14,went to college.
I made him wait until he was 16to go to college.
He was just way ahead of thecurve on that kind of thing.

(14:03):
So I tell you that becausepeople don't believe he would be
this precocious.
But when he was five, actually,yeah, he was five, I became
pastor of my first church therein Eastern Arkansas while I was
in seminary.
And the sanctuary was upstairsand they had this old rickety
elevator just big enough reallyfor a wheelchair.

(14:27):
Tanya had fallen and like brokenher tailbone.
And so walking upstairs wasreally hard for her.
We got, we got to church.
I was a brand new pastor andMichael and Seth there, you
know, and I said, look, mama,your mom and I are going to take
the elevator upstairs.

(14:47):
And one of our deacons wasthere, Larry Fowler.
I can't forget.
I said, you come upstairs withbrother Larry.
And we're going to take theelevator.
Michael said, I want to come.
I said, it's too small.
And I really wanted them to beour deacons and people to get to
know our kids.
And I had my reasons for wantinghim to go upstairs with Larry.
And I said, no, you come withbrother Larry.

(15:09):
He'll bring you upstairs.
We'll meet you up there.
And Michael, you know, he knewhe'd push it as far as he could
push it, but he was pouting andacting unhappy about it.
I said, we'll see you up there.
We closed the door.
Push the button.
And this elevator was like theslowest thing in the world.
You know, just rickety, ricketybouncing back and forth.

(15:31):
And they beat us upstairs.
They went up the stairs and wereliterally waiting for us when
finally these doors opened.
And Michael was standing thereby this deacon.
You know, I wanted to make agood impression on my new
church.
And I just said to Michael, Isaid, I said, Michael, do you

(15:52):
know why I'm so hard on you?
And he goes, yeah, because youhate children and you're not my
real father.
Five years old, he can come outwith something like that.
And I was like, well, there goesmaking any good impression on
these people.

(16:12):
You know, it's like, you're afive-year-old and saying that
kind of thing to you.
But it was just really, it wasfunny.
And I had such a good time beingmy dad to my sons.
I still do.
One thing I learned is you'renever done.
I used to think when they werelittle that, hey, when they're

(16:34):
18, you're done.
Uh-uh.
You're never done.
They always want your advice,your counsel.
You always worry about them,their decisions, and then the
grandkids come along.
You want to be there for them aswell.
So, It's an ongoing thing.
I've realized that until I'm oldenough that they're taking care

(16:56):
of me, I'm still the dad, andthat's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 (17:03):
Yeah, that's really awesome.
Well, on behalf of all thelisteners and myself, I want to
thank you for being able to beon the show today.

SPEAKER_00 (17:12):
Well, it's my delight, and I pray the Lord
uses it, and thanks for coming.
considering my opinion, worthasking.

SPEAKER_01 (17:21):
Thank you for joining me.
I hope this was an encouragementto you.
Please follow the show, leave areview, and share it with the
people around you.