Herb: Ryan, share a little about what you’re doing in ministry now.
Ryan: I have recently taken on the position of Vice President of Broadcast at Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk. So I am responsible for all aspects of broadcast, be it terrestrial and AM/FM, or digital – which we’re expanding – and then, for the future, I’ll be responsible for different types of broadcast, such as videos. I’m just trying to wrap my head around it now. And I work with my dad on other projects too, such as the film series we’re doing together.
Herb: What’s the film series?
Ryan: In 1978 my dad released his first film series. It’s called “Focus on the Family Film Series.” It predated the radio ministry, “Focus on the Family.” My dad had been traveling a lot. He was writing books, ministering to people, working at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, as well as serving as a professor of pediatrics at USC.
But his dad wrote him and said he was so proud of him but he was also concerned with him being on the road a lot while having two little kids. He told him that it doesn’t matter how successful he got, if he lost his kids, none of it would be worth it. And Dad took it to heart and he cancelled all of his future speaking engagements.
My grandfather had done the same thing when my dad was sixteen. He was a traveling evangelist. He was on the road most of the time. And when my dad was sixteen, he was kind of testing the waters with my grandma and she called my grandpa and told him his son needs him. So he cancelled four years of engagements, took a small pastorate and was there for the remainder of the time my dad was at home. And look at my dad now. It made all the difference in the world.
So that’s when he made the “Focus on the Family” film series. Today, everybody has video. Back then, it was the first time it had been done. At the time, it looked like it was career suicide. It looked like he would never again reach the heights that he had already achieved. And the exact opposite happened.
By the mid eighties, eighty million people had seen the film series. That was one third of the U.S. population. So I found a copy of it about five or six years ago. I had never watched it. I didn’t have a wife and kids. I was newly married and our first child was on the way. So I watched it six years ago and it’s just unreal how good he is.
He was forty-three – I’ll be forty-three this year – and I have spoken more times than he had at that point in our lives. I had been on the road more than he had. And yet I knew when I got to be forty-three that I wouldn’t be as good as he was.
He and I are naturally competitive with each other and everything else in life. And I thought about it and I realize why: he had graduated from college, he had been an elementary school teacher, a junior high teacher. He had gotten a PhD from USC. He had been a school counselor, a district counselor. He had been in private practice. He had been a professor of pediatrics at USC. He taught at Point Loma. He was on staff at Children’s Hospital. And at that point had written six or seven books – all by the time he hit forty-three! So his depth was unreal. And I just won’t be able to achieve that kind of depth. And it really does speak to how powerful that series was.
About six years ago I had been watching the series and giving it to friends and they were watching it. The copies had been long out of print. So I told Dad we should release some of the old ones. But he thought no one would want to see it because it’s thirty years old. But we are going ahead and re-releasing three of the originals along with five new ones – I did one, he did four. It’s called “Building a Family Legacy” and it comes out next year. Oh, my goodness, he is amazing. He was so good at forty-three and now in his seventies he is just on another plane. It’s going to minister to so many people.
Herb: You’ve been talking a lot about your dad, so I’m going to ask the obligatory question: What are the pluses and minuses of growing up with a famous author and radio host like Dr. James Dobson as your father?
Ryan: Let me first say, the pluses far outweigh the minuses. The pros are overwhelming against the cons. My sister and I were asked to write a book a few years back called “Growing Up Dobson” and I kind of think the publisher wanted a tell all and I thought it would really make people mad because we think he’s a good dad. He’s an exceptional father. And I think people want angry and angst ridden, that kind of stuff. Was I a teenager? Sure. Was I an angry teenager? Like every other one, of course I was. But that’s it – like every other one, I was a regular teenager.
The hard part was growing up in a bubble, in a fish bowl, under a microscope, in the spotlight. And my sister struggled with that differently. As an adult, with kids of my own – I have a little boy who’s six and a little girl who’s seventeen months old- I lived in the spotlight from the time I was in the sixth grade on.
And so I know what they’re going to experience already because I’ve experienced it myself. And so I’m very aware of it. And I parent differently because of that. But as an adult, I look back and my parents were just as unprepared for fame as they were to help my sister and I deal with fame. Who would expect eighty million people to have watched seven hours of your teaching? And in the mid eighties, Dad had seven of the top ten Christian books at one time. That’s never happened before, it’s never happened since. They were totally unprepared for it.
And, really, looking back, they did a great job. There was a massive rumor that my mom had cancer. And they kept that from my sister and I. They were getting letters all the time for cancer treatments, offering sympathies, asking how they were dealing with it and how could they help. Someone just made that up. There was a big one that my dad had been unfaithful to my mom. And they were sending her letters of disgust at my dad. They kept that too from my sister and I.
And then there were things they couldn’t keep from us. You can’t protect your kids from everything. What I appreciate most is that their expectations for my sister and I didn’t change with fame. Their goals for us were always the same: “We just want you to love the Lord. I don’t care what you do for a career, we just want you to love the Lord.”
Everyone else had expectations. That’s where I struggled and I’m sure where my sister struggled. “O, you’re James Dobson’s son. You should look this way and this is what your career will be and you shouldn’t ride a skateboard and how dare you wear a black t-shirt and is that really a skull?” and all those kind of things. But my parents never put that kind of pressure on us. They still don’t to this day. They just don’t.
Herb: You’re able to speak to a younger generation. How is this generation different from the generations your dad has spoken to?
Ryan: Let me give you the bigs. There’s a ton of them. It’s harder now because of culture. The general culture fifty years ago expected girls not to get pregnant if you’re not married. And if you do, it’s a shameful thing. Girls were sent away to live with an aunt, or something like that. It’s not that I desire to shame people if they’ve made a mistake. Obviously, if a sixteen year old gets pregnant and grows bigger and bigger, she knows the mistake she made. I’m adopted. My birth mom was seventeen. She had to drop out of high school. I’m pretty sure she knew she had made a mistake. So we don’t need to heap that on. And yet, culture helped people behave better. And people accepted the advice of experts as experts.
Today, everyone’s opinion has equal weight and shouldn’t. If I go to my cardiologist and he’s talking about a ventricle in my heart and I tell him I disagree – I don’t get to disagree. I’m not a scientist. I didn’t go to med school. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t care how much I’ve read on Google, I still can’t explain the complexities of the heart the way a cardiologist can. And yet people say they disagree and somehow that means something.
They do that with my dad: “Well, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Really? Are you sure? Because he’s got an earned PhD from USC and he was an elementary school teacher and a junior high teacher and a school counselor and all those things. He has decades of experience. He was a statistician also. When he wrote Bringing Up Girls that was based on thirty-five hundred pages of research. That’s an expert. He knows more about what little girls need biologically, physiologically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually – he knows more about that than I do because of his history and background.
And when he gives advice, it needs to have more weight than currently it does. It’s hard to talk to people who are much more apt to ask their friends for advice than they are to seek out expert counsel. Really, cultural is the biggest one. Our culture doesn’t believe in absolute truth. It’s very hard. There are right and wrongs. There are social norms. Now people say anything.
Herb: You’ve done some work with men’s ministry. What are the key elements to your approach to men’s ministry?
Ryan: My approach is that being a man is important. Esquire Magazine this year had a series of articles in support of manhood stating that men being men is important. It’s important for society. It’s important for relationships. We are not equal. We are different. It’s a beautiful thing. And the differences make us stronger. They’re just now recognizing that.
The feminist movement has done some good things. But it’s been at the expense of other good things. Instead of just building women up, it has torn men down in order to build women up. The stereotypical guy traits – the aggression, the risk taking, the more baser side of humanity – have been seen as a negative.
Men should be more calm and peaceful and shouldn’t be fighters – shouldn’t be guys. And it’s just not true. It’s really not. John Eldridge wrote Wild at Heart and I thought it was brilliant. I think some people had a hard time with it. They thought he was telling men to be irresponsible. I don’t think so. I didn’t read that and I know John and I don’t think he believes that. But it’s important for a guy to be a guy.
My wife and I dealt with that when we were first married. I used to ride a motorcycle. And she would tell me to be safe. And I’d tell her no. But I will try to not get hurt. That’s what she meant. She didn’t mean “Be safe.” A safe guy wouldn’t have asked her out. A safe guy wouldn’t have gone on a blind date. A safe guy wouldn’t have asked her to marry him after three weeks. None of the things she was attracted to could have been classified as “safe.” And she now knows it’s important for me to be a guy and have guy friends and do guy things. I don’t ride a motorcycle anymore because the Lord asked me not to.
So when I approach men, I want them to be men. It’s okay to be a leader. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, I don’t believe the whole subservient thing -that a woman is to submit to her husband. I don’t hold any of the negative connotations that that implies. I don’t think husbands ought to rule with an iron fist: “I’m a guy and you do what I tell you to do because I’m a guy.” That’s just ridiculous. Christ didn’t exhibit that.
I think there has to be a leader. You can’t have two captains or two cooks. My wife and I rarely get to the point where a decision has to be made that the two of us disagree on. That is such an exception to the rule. And yet, in those times, she has deferred to me. But to be honest, it’s harder. Then I’m a hundred percent responsible for the outcome of the situation. And I care about her so deeply that I struggle with how to handle it, It’s so much harder.
And I think that culturally, as we talk about the roles in marriage, I don’t think women really have a hard time with that. I think if you explain it that way, the majority of women would approve if they have a relationship with someone they really believe has their best interest in mind and would die for them. I think guys thrive in that arena.
Herb: I’m interested in your book, Humanitarian Jesus, and the struggle Evangelicals have with social action and how to minister to people in need. Do you feel that the church is making any strides in this area?
Ryan: Absolutely. Definitely. I think it’s a both-and. I think some are making great strides because the gospel requires service and if you’re a Christian, service requires the gospel. They go hand in hand. And that’s what we were trying to accomplish.
Christian Buckley, who really is the primary author of that book, he did the work there, is a brilliant guy. He’s actually a death row appeals attorney in California. There are only twelve, as far as I know. He and his dad are two. They’re the only two Christians – the only two conservatives. The only two that actually believe in the death penalty and also don’t believe those men aren’t getting a fair shake and feel it’s their Christian duty to uphold the law to give them as fair of a process as possible. And that’s what we believe.
If you?re going to preach the gospel, you’ve got to meet people’s needs. You can’t give the Four Spiritual Laws to a drowning man. I’d give him a life vest and tell him why you gave him a life vest. Because there’s a reason we’re saving people: it’s to save them eternally. So, yes, I think churches are making strides in that area. They’re trying to combine both and I think it’s much more appealing.
I think we need better PR because the church does so much great work. But the problem is doing better PR would actually take funds away from doing good work. So I think maybe we get characterized in an unfair light in that way.
Take Chick-Fil-A. Look at the reaction to that. There was this big meme on the Internet that showed a picture of people lined up at Chick-Fil-A with the line going around the block and the caption asked, “How many of these people get this excited over a soup kitchen?” Guess what? Most of them do. The oldest homeless shelter organizations–gospel rescue missions — in the United States started over one hundred years ago. The church primarily has been the agent of change in taking care of those in need historically throughout all of history. We just don’t get great PR for it.
Herb: Wasn’t Lee Strobel, the famous apologetics author, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune? I believe he came to Christ because he saw that the people who were doing the things that needed to be done for the poor were Christians.
Ryan: People say the same thing when I talk about abortion. They say we focus on abortion, but aren’t doing anything about the young moms. I tell them that the overwhelming majority – not fifty one per cent – but the overwhelming majority of adoption homes and adoption agencies are Christian. The pregnancy resource centers that are in every state in our nation and around the world are Christian. We’re doing a lot about it. Are we perfect? Of course we aren’t. People do dumb things in the name of the Lord. But I think we’re trying real hard.
Herb: I went on a mission trip to Joplin, Missouri, with a group of Christians after the tornado devastated that city and I was astounded at the number of Christian groups. You could tell, because the church vans and buses were there – hundreds and hundreds of Christians – and this was months after the tornado hit. It was very impressive.
Ryan: We have here in Colorado Springs, Samaritan’s Purse. It has a ministry that helps people literally sift through their ashes. So a year ago, when three hundred and seventy homes burned in this area, the majority of our staff here at Family Talk volunteered with Samaritan’s Purse to go to people’s homes and sift through their ashes and try to recover keepsakes and minister to the people who had lost their homes. That’s what we’re all about.
Herb: You mentioned Samaritan’s Purse. What other organizations would you say are doing a good job of combining social action with the gospel.
Ryan: Oh my goodness, there’s a ton of them. The Salvation Army – unbelievable. Their history is unbelievable and their current work is unbelievable. The Pregnancy Resource Center movement is the hands and feet of Jesus Christ working with people who are in crisis and in need. Samaritan’s Purse – what a treasure Franklin Graham is. What an absolute treasure. It is unconscionable that the Pentagon would uninvite him to pray there on the National Day of Prayer. He has a son in the armed forces deployed overseas. He gathers these little boxes to give soldiers gifts. The guy is all about a servant’s heart.
There are so many organizations. There really are. We interview them here at Family Talk. Kids Around the World builds playgrounds in impoverished areas and they bring food in. Jesus Food sends food to needy areas. Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola was once the bloodiest prison in America. Warden Borro Kane became warden of Angola State Penitentiary and his mom told him he was responsible for the eternal souls of those men and he must act accordingly. AWANA has moved in there. They have a thing called Returning Hearts – most of the men in Angola will never see freedom. The men with life sentences will not have that changed unless their conviction is overturned. There are groups of people who are teaching the dads in the prison how to be a good dad from prison.
And once a year they fly, bus, drive the children of inmates in with volunteer chaperones for every single family that comes. And they give them a day to interact with their kids. It is the most heart warming and heart breaking thing you’ve ever seen. They have an arena with the inmates in the bleachers and they walk these kids in one family at a time and they call out the name of the inmate and the inmate stands up and walks down the stairs and they meet in the center of the football field. And they have a whole day of activities.
And I’m not saying this to disparage non-Christian organizations that do good work, but that’s what Christians are doing. Chuck Colson left a legacy of prison work with Prison Fellowship. You could write volumes of the work that Christians are doing in the worst areas, in the most impoverished areas, in the dumps around the world. Most third world countries that have dumps have communities that live there and sift trash. There are fires and the smoke is horrid. Christians are the ones that go there and bring shoes and the gospel to people who are hurting.
The guy who started Crocs – those crazy, injection molded, horribly ugly shoes that are so functional they’re ridiculous – they gave away three million pairs of shoes in India. Three million pairs! And they didn’t even tell anybody about it. And the reason they did that is because in order to go to school in India you have to have shoes. In the caste system, the people are so poor, they can’t afford shoes for their kids and therefore their kids never get an education. And the caste system stays the same because you can’t rise above that without education. This guy found out about it and decided to send three million pairs of shoes. They went door to door and handed them out without making a big deal of it.
Herb: New Commandment Men’s Ministries has a burden for helping men minister to widows and single parents in their churches. How well do you feel the church is serving widows and single parents?
Ryan: I think they’re doing a good job. I think they’re trying to get better at it. I think that’s a giant portion of our society. We’ve recently had Linda Dillow here and Ron Deal. Linda wrote The Smart Step-Mom, Ron wrote The Smart Step-Dad. We did a series of programs on step-parenting on Family Talk and we talk regularly about it. We’ve got a couple of single moms that work here and I wonder how they manage. I know when I get sick – I had the flu last year with high fever for multiple days – I still help out at home a little bit. Laura’s got two kids to contend with. And I remember wondering what single parents do when you have the flu. You don’t get to stop being a parent. You can’t just go to sleep for ten hours. You still have to get up and take care of that child, provide for them, get them to school, and all the things that it takes to do that.
It’s why the Lord commanded us to take care of the orphans and widows and the sick. And I think we’re getting better at it. I do. It’s really funny. The church is a funny organization corporately, and this is a huge stereotype – but there’s the problem of not wanting to glorify the sin as you help the people who are suffering the consequences of that. And sometimes single parents happen because they get left. Sometimes it’s not their mistake, it’s somebody else’. We don’t know. And I think we’re moving beyond that.
I think the pregnancy resource movement is a great example of that, where there used to be the idea that they made their bed, they’ve got to lay in it. And I think now we’re looking at it from the perspective that there’s a young life involved and the girl is pregnant. Someone got her pregnant. There’s another life that’s involved. There are two sets of grandparents who are involved. You’ve got generations of people affected by this one incident that’s going on. We need to minister to all of them. And I think they’re doing a great job at it.
Herb: What is the legacy you want to leave?
Ryan: Most important, I want my kids to love Jesus. The truth is, I am not a big deal. In the records of history, I’ll be a blip on the radar because there are men like my dad. Let’s be honest. I started off speaking as a career in 1994. I did that as a career full time until 2010. Sean McDowell, Josh McDowell’s son, and I have been friends for years. You want to talk about someone who is going to be remembered in history, Sean McDowell is a genius. His father, Josh, is also a genius. And, I’m telling you, he did something right in Sean. He’s has got a PhD, a double masters. He’s taught high school, he’s a husband, author, and – like me – runs a ministry with his dad.
And Sean and I have talked because he gets what I get. He will go some place to speak and they’ll talk about Josh. And they’ll do that with me. They’ll talk about James Dobson for five or six minutes when they introduce me and they’ll say: “Dr. Dobson has a son and he’s here today! Welcome Ryan Dobson.” I’m forty-three this year, so I’m learning to be more mature. My immature side started speaking in 1994 and, you know, I wrote a book and I’ve spoken hundreds of times and I’ve had my own ministry. And in my pride and my ego and my insecurities, for a while there, I was like, “Hey, I’m not just James Dobson’s son.”
My goodness, how stupid. Really? My dad has ministered to literally millions and millions of people. He deserves every single bit of praise he gets. He would be so embarrassed if he heard me say that. He would say, “Ryan, I am no big deal.” He believes it. But he is! He’s a really, really big deal. He didn’t waste the resources God gave him. He pours over his ministry. He agonizes over our budgets. He’s never taken a salary since 1976 – not one day at Focus on the Family, not one day at Family Talk. Instead, he donates a majority of his income to these ministries, and who knows how many other ministries. I find that kind of stuff out all the time. He deserves a thousand times more than he gets. And one of the reasons I work here, one of the greatest joys I get as a part of working with my dad, is I get to tell everyone how great he is.
Psalm 69:6 says, “Let not what I do bring shame upon those who serve the Lord.” I want my legacy to honor the Dobson name. When the film series comes out, part of it is a tribute to my Dad’s great grandfather, who prayed for generations of Dobsons to serve the Lord. And I hope my legacy is honoring to the Lord. That’s what I want.
Learn more about Ryan Dobson’s ministry and books here.