Jesus-First Family Blog

This blog is about a journey now over 35 years in the making and a destination that seems more evident every day. Here is 2026, I know that God has called me to create a business that is also a ministry. This is His business and I am doing my best to be a good and faithful servant. Not perfect, not even close. I am a work in progress. Perfection is not my earthly goal, only progress.

The pictures above were taken by my Mother and Father outside a little house in a suburb of Kansas City. My Mom tells a story of how they put me behind the front door while they stood outside to watch a tornado pass nearby. It’s funny what people get used to. Tornadoes are no big deal to country folk. My younger brother, Jim, was stylin in the white tennis shoes. This is where the roots of Sabbath Day Productions, LLC were established. A young Mid-Western family going to church.

My love for family was clear to me from a young age even though our little family experienced the drama, the destruction, and the devastation of alcoholism. About 7 years after this picture was taken, divorce became a reality for our little family. This too is part of the catalyst for SDP. The enemy of our souls is after families and especially those going to church. I could be wrong about this, but I believe parents who understand the schemes of the enemy will be better prepared to withstand the spiritual attacks on their families.

“Little children (John's reference to new believers in Jesus Christ), you are from God, and have overcome them (the ways of the world, the fleshly desires, and the demonic powers); for He who is in you is greater than he (the enemy) who is in the world.” 1 John 4:4 ESV (words in parentheses added for clarity)

A quick side note: I occasionally add clarifying words and phrases in parentheses when I quote scripture based on the context and encourage you to read the verses before and after and possibly several chapters prior to get the full context.

“When Jesus went ashore He saw a great crowd (over 5,000 people) and He had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” Mark 6:34 ESV

Jesus’ heart is for people. He desperately wants them to follow Him because He is the good shepherd (John 10:11). But they follow no one in particular. They are helpless and without good spiritual leaders. Will talk about the concept of Jesus-First Family Coaches later but it does have roots in the heart of Jesus for people to be led by faithful mentors.

I believe my heart for ministry for Christian families comes in large part from these and many other personal experiences. For the past 4 years, I have been walking down the road of disciple making with the Lord. In February, 2022, our Pastor encouraged us to teach our home community groups on disciple making and he pointed us to some excellent resources by Josh Howard, currently the Regional Director of Central Asia, NewThing Network. In 2015, Josh launched a ministry in India called “Ignite” which saw 20,000 churches started in about 8 years. As I studied and taught these lessons to our community, I realized that Josh had a system for getting the gospel message to small towns in India then equipping a lay person to be a pastor of what amounted to a house church. Keep that “house church” idea in mind.

Here we are in the summer of 2026 and over the past couple of months it has become clear to me that the original 12 followers of Jesus, spent every day with Him. You must stop your mind long enough to take that turn in. Who does that??? People in America, and in most Western cultures today, simply do not leave their nine to fives to follow an upstart preacher. There is much more here than I have time to unpack in this first blog, but suffice it to say that those 3 years of eating, sleeping, and living with Jesus were essential for the apprentices to become like Jesus and to carry the message of the gospel to the world.

So you may be asking, “what does this have to do with family?” The family is where we have life together 24/7 365 for 18 or more years. The believing family has always been God’s plan for growing His family - it is where family love is the secret sauce for training children in the ways of Jesus. Love causes children to inherently trust their parents and love causes parents to do their best for their children. Although not true 100% of the time, children generally imitate the ways of their parents.

The core mission of this blog and Sabbath Day Productions is to teach parents how to live with Jesus so their children will learn from the most important people in their lives by example. We believe families need faithful shepherds and the local churches are full of them. Unfortunately, the shepherds - we call them Jesus-First Coaches - have not been taught how to lovingly support parents in the key areas of spiritual growth where they need. In fact, most Christians who have been in the church more than 10 years could not put together a list of three of the key spiritual formation practices that Jesus Christ modeled for us. To best teach the parents we have begin by determining their spiritual practices and the strengths and opportunities for growth. We have adopted the nine practices of Jesus identified by Pastor and Author, John Mark Comer in his best selling book, "Practicing the Way - be with Jesus, become like him, do as he did" to create a spiritual formation survey to identify strengths and opportunities for growth. With an idea of where a parent might need loving support from a Family Coach, we expect to help parents live with Jesus in ways their children will learn how life with Jesus looks.

Future blog posts will include how church leaders can inspire senior believers to become Jesus-First Coaches as we provide educational materials, digital products, YouTube content, and workshops. In turn, we will devote the lion's share of our blog posts to Jesus-First Parent educational materials, digital products, YouTube content, and workshops. Our purpose is to provide frameworks for applying the spiritual practices in the home primarily centered on a weekly set aside time of rest, family connection, and gratitude toward the author of our faith, Jesus Christ, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. This Sabbath time can be as simple as a few hours on a Saturday evening. It is during this time that most of the spiritual practices can be lived out in the family.

We will dive into the John Mark Comer book and ministry resources as well as several other prominent authors in the area of family ministry, mentoring, family discipleship, and building faithful habits. Here is an initial list of books and authors we will share insights with you.

• "Family Ministry" by Dr. Josh Mulvihill

• "Small Is Big Slow Is Fast" by Caesar Kalinowski

• "Little Habits Big Faith" by Christie Thomas

• "Stop in the Name of God" by Charlie Kirk

• "Practicing the Way" by John Mark Comer

We're excited about the "good works" God will do in your church and family as we develop Jesus-First Families!