Role Models

Nine-year-old Kaden is a Michigan boy undergoing treatment for a cardiac condition at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital. He recently had his dream come true when he met his hero—astronaut José Hernández—through Make-A-Wish Michigan. The emotional and inspiring meeting was the result of a heartfelt wish to connect with the man whose story helped Kaden find strength during his medical journey.

“Everything was amazing! Thank you! Kaden had a blast. My cheeks never hurt so much from smiling so hard,” said Kaden’s mother, Michele, describing the joy the experience brought to their family.

Hernández, a Mexican American engineer and former NASA astronaut, flew aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-128 in 2009. His life story was chronicled in the memoir Reaching for the Stars: The Inspiring Story of a Migrant Farmworker Turned Astronaut and the Amazon Prime Video film A Million Miles Away. Both projects showcase his remarkable journey from farm fields to outer space. That resilience deeply resonated with Kaden, who has adopted “never giving up” as his personal motto.

The special trip included VIP access and a guided tour of NASA. That was where Kaden was able to explore the wonders of space science alongside his inspirational role model. “Wishes give kids the strength to keep fighting and bring joy to their families,” said Make-A-Wish Michigan, the organization that made the meeting possible. Kaden’s wish was also featured at the nonprofit’s Wish Ball Grand Rapids event, helping raise over $652,000—and counting—to fund future wishes for other children across the state.

To date, Make-A-Wish Michigan has granted more than 12,000 wishes, each designed to give critically ill children hope, joy, and the motivation to keep moving forward. For Kaden, meeting José Hernández was more than a dream come true—it was a life-affirming reminder of what’s possible when you refuse to give up.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Encouragement from others can be a divine provision for endurance in trials.

In what might be Ohio's most bizarre drug bust this year, law enforcement officials doing a traffic stop were surprised to discover a raccoon named Chewy sitting in the driver's seat, casually holding a meth pipe to its mouth.

Police detained motorist Victoria Vidal after a records search showed her license was suspended, and she had an active warrant for arrest. Their traffic stop uncovered a veritable drug buffet - crack cocaine, meth, and three used meth pipes - but the real star was the furry suspect. “Thankfully, Chewy the raccoon was unharmed,” police confirmed, adding they even checked if the owner had “the proper paperwork and documentation to own the raccoon.”

“While our officers are trained to expect the unexpected, finding a raccoon holding a meth pipe is a first,” a department rep quipped. Vidal faces multiple drug charges and a citation for driving with a suspended license, but Chewy walked away without so much as a warning, proving that in Ohio's criminal justice system, raccoons remain Ohio's most wanted—and least prosecuted—outlaws.

In the meantime, let’s hope that Chewy gets the help it needs – or failing that, that it finds a better human role model to emulate.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Creation; Responsibility; Stewardship - The Bible teaches that humans are given dominion over animals, but this comes with a responsibility for their well-being. This story reminds us that our actions can influence those around us, even animals who are keen observers, and they often replicate both positive and negative actions they observe in their environment.

Models who look like Jesus are in high demand in Utah. That’s because for a growing number of people in the state, a picture isn’t complete without Him. They are hiring Jesus look-alikes for family portraits and wedding announcements. Models are showing up to walk with a newly engaged couple through a field, play with young children in the Bonneville Salt Flats, and cram in with the family for the annual Christmas card.

Bob Sagers was walking around an indie music festival in Salt Lake City when a friendly stranger approached and asked for his number. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a Jesus look to you?” the man asked, according to Sagers, a 25-year-old who works as a cheesemonger at a grocery store. It wasn’t a pickup line—the man’s wife was an artist looking for religious models. “I didn’t really get that a lot,” says Sagers, who is 6-foot-5 with dirty-blonde, shoulder-length hair and a beard he says gives Irish and Scandinavian vibes. “I make for a pretty tall Jesus.”

And so it was that Sagers began a side hustle as a savior. Since being recruited about four years ago, Sagers has posed as Jesus nearly a dozen times. Others have done so far more often, charging about $100 to $200 an hour to pose with children, families, and couples at various locations in the Beehive state.

For the newly sought-after models, the job can be freighted with meaning and responsibility. Look-alikes find that people expect them to embody Jesus in more ways than the hair and beard. Some models said they feel like a celebrity when they don the robe—and get treated like one too. (One felt compelled to remind an onlooker he wasn’t the real Jesus.) Others said they’ve had their own semireligious experiences on the job.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Every follower of Jesus may not look like Jesus, but we are called to act like Jesus!

Yet another study shows what should be obvious: teenagers need to spend time with dad. The study tracked over 200 families and found that time with both parents starts to decrease when kids reach the age of 15. But the University of Pennsylvania study also found that the time teens spend with their dads has critical benefits.

A CNN article stated, "The more time spent alone with their fathers, the higher their self-esteem; the more time with their dads in a group setting, the better their social skills." The article also said that time with mom helps too, but there's just something special about time with dad.

The researchers conjectured that one-on-one time with dad "may develop higher general self-worth [in teenagers] because their fathers go beyond social expectations to devote undivided attention to them."

The message is clear: dads can make a huge difference in their kids' lives.

Models who look like Jesus are in high demand in Utah. That’s because for a growing number of people in the state, a picture isn’t complete without Him. They are hiring Jesus look-alikes for family portraits and wedding announcements. Models are showing up to walk with a newly engaged couple through a field, play with young children, and cram in with the family for the annual Christmas card. Some charge between $100 to $200 an hour to pose with children, families, and couples at various locations.

For the sought-after models, the job can be freighted with meaning and responsibility. Lookalikes find that people expect them to embody Jesus in more ways than the hair and beard. Jai Knighton has posed as Jesus a number of times. He says, “portraying Jesus can be tricky.” One person who hired him wanted him to be “the most Christlike person you can be, or people will be able to tell through the photos that it’s not real.” Others were more relaxed, asking him to smile and enjoy himself.

Knighton said he tried to portray Jesus in a way that’s similar to how he is depicted in “The Chosen.” Knighton said, “Stoic Jesus is intimidating. A Jesus who smiles and pats you on the back is much more relatable.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Christians should keep in mind that we represent Christ to those around us. What image of Jesus are you presenting?

Living in Hollywood is a challenge. Growing up as a child actor almost guarantees a life of dysfunction. Without a strong father, Ron Howard could have taken the path of least resistance. But his father was there from the beginning, protecting, loving, guiding.

There was a time when Dennis the Menace was a hit as a troublemaking, mop-headed boy. “Leave It to Beaver” featured boys who rubbed adults the wrong way. The wisecracking, annoying trope was all the rage. It’s also how the character of Opie was originally written.

After the first reading, Rance Howard, Ron’s father, sat down with Andy Griffith and gently encouraged him to make Opie’s relationship with his TV dad a little more tender and innocent, a little more real, like his relationship with his own boys. Andy listened and took the suggestion to heart. When shooting started, Opie emerged as a new kind of television boy, a kid who had a special relationship with his father, who helped his son through life’s challenges.

Seeing a boy own up to his mistakes and a father own up to his — traits influenced by Rance and Ron — created an honest relationship that families still look to today. Ron Howard says of his father, “He stood for something that people could recognize as integrity. And we benefited from that.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Looking up to your father is a powerful force. We need wise fathers as role models in life. Fathers who love us and help us learn from our mishaps.

Michael Hoffen is a new author, and like him, the central character of his book is a teenager. But there’s quite an age gap between them—about 4,000 years. That’s because Hoffen translated an ancient papyrus from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom and brought to life the true story of a young Egyptian from ancient times named Pepi. In the papyrus, Pepi’s father, Khety, is intent on getting his son a job in the royal court.

Young Pepi wonders what career path he should choose, an important matter still contemplated today by millions of teenagers forty centuries later. His father Khety takes him on a long journey up the Nile to enroll him in a school far away from home. Along the way, Khety explains 18 other terrible jobs Pepi could end up having to work at if he is not hired as a scribe.

Hoffen, who has been translating ancient texts since middle school, became fascinated by a 4,000-year-old or so piece of literature from ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom known as The Instruction of Khety.

Under the guidance and collaboration of his two co-authors, Egyptologists Christian Casey and Jen Thum, Hoffen spent three-and-a-half years translating hieroglyphics into modern-day prose and gathering images to tell the story of Kheti and Pepi.

He then published a book called “Be A Scribe! Working for a Better Life in Ancient Egypt.” In the book he describes just how little the human condition has changed in thousands of years and shows readers that working for a living has never been easy!

Possible Preaching Angle:

Parents still want the best for their children, and teenagers face important decisions as they set out on their career paths. This story shows how little parenting has changed across thousands of years. The record of an Egyptian father giving life advice to his son mirrors the same instructions that Solomon gave to his sons in Proverbs, “Listen, my sons, to a father’s instruction; pay attention and gain understanding. For I give you sound teaching…” (Prov. 4:1)

American Protestants are keeping their children in the faith at a higher rate than Catholics or the una­ffiliated. The biggest influence: mothers.

Children Of Two Protestant Parents:

80% are still Protestant

13% are now unaffiliated

2% are now Catholic

Children Of Two Catholic Parents:

62% are still Catholic

19% are now unaffiliated

16% are now Protestant

Children Of Two Unaffiliated Parents:

63% are still unaffiliated

29% are now Protestant

7% are now Catholic

Children Of A Protestant Mother And Catholic Father:

49% are now Protestant

25% are now unaffiliated

14% are now Catholic

Children Of A Protestant Mother And Unaffiliated Father:

61% are now Protestant

29% are now unaffiliated

2% are now Catholic

Six-time Super Bowl winner Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots parted ways in January 2024. This sparked a lot of commentary on the coach’s legacy. Offensive lineman Damien Woody played for the Patriots from 1999 to 2003 and was integral in helping the team win two Super Bowls. Speaking on ESPN's morning talk show First Take, Woody explains how Belichick went the extra mile to help him reach his full potential, on the field and in life:

I tell people this all the time. Every moment I stepped in that building in New England it was like game day every day. You had to be mentally and physically prepared to be in a grinder. That's the type of environment that Bill had in New England. He always made sure that everyone was uncomfortable. Because we know that when you're uncomfortable that's when the greatest growth comes about within you as a person. So, it should surprise no one the level of success that Bill and the New England Patriots had because of the environment that was there.

But I remember Bill back in my early days. "I think it was like 2001, Bill Belichick put an anchor in our locker room. That anchor signified how much overweight we were as a football team and how much dead weight we were carrying around that was keeping us as a team from getting to where we want to go. During my playing career I always had problems with my weight. So instead of reaming me, Bill went out of his way to set me up at a program at Duke University. Paid for it himself. I was down there for two months. This man came down to North Carolina multiple times to check on me to see how I was doing.

That to me speaks volumes about the man. And so, like I sit here today just processing and I'm thankful for every lesson that I learned there because I've been able to carry that not only through my playing career but just through my life in general.

Mariska Hargitay has been playing the same fictional cop role for over 500 episodes of television, spanning over 25 years. Hargitay plays detective Olivia Benson on NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She’s been doing it so long she can practically do it in her sleep.

So, it came to no one’s surprise last April when a little girl spied Hargitay, filming an episode wearing a realistic looking police badge, and mistook her for an actual law enforcement officer. Given her public persona, it was not surprising that Hargitay halted filming on the episode to make sure the little girl got the help that she needed.

The girl had become separated from her mother in a playground in New York City and witnesses say Hargitay took 20 minutes to find her mother and console them both upon their reunion. When asked about it, Hargitay insisted it didn’t take a whole lot of convincing. She said:

There’s a thing: WWOBD, “What would Olivia Benson do?” The fans would always talk about it, and one day it hit me. I have those moments where I’ve sort of slipped into her. If there’s a crisis, I just take over and lead like that. Being strong and fearless.

Hargitay has good reason to feel secure in her role; a month prior, the show was renewed for a record-setting 26th season, besting the previous record for the longest-running primetime live-action series in American television history.

Possible Preaching Angle:

We become what we practice; when we practice deeds of righteousness, we become more likely to live as righteous people. Being a disciple of Jesus is not just about knowing rightly but doing rightly.

According to a survey, 37% of Americans think billionaires are terrible role models, and 49% said they have overall negative feelings towards them. And the heat is felt most prominently by the big-name tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos.

But despite the negative feelings, people still admire and look up to some of these individual figures. And it’s not because of just their financial success; a 2021 study found that people who stand against a class of extremely wealthy people still tend to admire individual billionaires like Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

Margaret O’Mara, a professor of history at the University of Washington, says “The secret of Silicon Valley has been the storytelling.” She describes intense admiration of tech billionaires as kind of “a religion of entrepreneurship.” With the lack of presence of other role models and declining faith in other institutions like the government or churches or even science, people want to find a myth to believe in that will give them comfort.

When you have these really exciting stories of the startup company in your dorm room or garage that then becomes this trillion-dollar company, this exciting rags to riches story really fits into an American narrative that predates Silicon Valley. Those stories are exceptional, to be clear, but I think the fault is presuming that anyone can do this.

Another story within the tech billionaire narrative that appeals to masses is that of disruption. O’Mara said, “This is a nation founded on revolution, so being a rebel, not bowing to authority and being your own boss is kind of cool.”

Richard R. John, professor of business history and journalism at Columbia University calls the hype surrounding tech billionaires a cult of personality. He says:

A cult of personality is the deliberate glorification of a specific public figure. Throughout history, cult of personality hype of billionaire figures has usually been propagated through journalists and news media. But with the founding of social media, it grew massively through its unprecedented reach. It’s no longer regional, it’s now national and even international.

In a fascinating article, writer Tim Grierson walks us through the history of the TV dad and shows how each dad reflects the values in America at that time. Below you will see the summary of each era of TV dad.

• Mid 1950s - Jim Anderson (Father Knows Best): Father Knows Best preached a wholesome, slightly square domestic normalcy that placed the dad at the top. His job is to go to work and make a living, enduring his little tots when he comes home at night. Everything's perfect, and nobody has any major problems.
• The 1960s - Steve Douglas (My Three Sons): Steve Douglas was the friendly, noble single dad to three growing boys. What was mildly edgy about the show was that his character was a widower, allowing Americans to see a nontraditional family dynamic on TV. My Three Sons at least started to reveal the cracks in the idealized American portrait of father-mother-and-cute-kids.
• 1970s - Archie Bunker (All in the Family): This was a father who definitely didn't know best—more accurately, he represented an outdated worldview that was quickly being shoved aside by a new (and, for him, frightening) order.
• Late 1980s - Dan Conner (Roseanne): Dan was a new kind of father: vulnerable and sweet, henpecked by his bossy wife but still hopelessly devoted to her. Dan was a man constantly ashamed of his inability to give his family a better life, but always trying to compensate by being as good a guy as possible.
• 1990s - Homer Simpson (The Simpsons): In Homer, The Simpsons found what is, to this day, the perfect modern-day TV father: drunken, well-intentioned, utterly worthless, prone to anger, always at a loss for the right thing to do or say.
• 2000s - Tony Soprano (The Sopranos): Tony Soprano is the prototypical breadwinner and head of the household; except he's so hobbled by inner turmoil and “business” concerns that he's on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
• 2010s - Bob Belcher (Bob's Burgers): In Bob we see the overextended modern dad in all his rumpled glory, just trying to keep his head above water in all aspects of his life.

A father’s influence on their sons is profound. As young men, we look first to our fathers to help lay the foundation for our own future growth. They help us distinguish between right and wrong. They encourage our strengths and nurture our struggles to prepare us for the future.

But fathers aren’t perfect. Sometimes opportunities to teach life lessons or impart simple skills get lost in the chaos of life. And it’s easy to look back with longing and regret at those moments.

The point is to not dwell on mistakes. Rather, it is to learn about what you might want to prioritize as a father. So, what do their kids wish their dads taught them when they were still young. Here are five things they said:

1. How To Be Present

“I wish I had learned from my father the importance of experiencing life, moments, and relationships over working for the dollar. Make your living but be present. Cherish family because time is the one thing you can't get back.”

2. How To Know My Worth

“My father never taught me to be confident in myself. He was abusive and manipulative and I would doubt whether any actions or decisions were the right ones. One thing stands out in my mind is that I must cherish my own children and never make them feel inferior.”

3. How To Fix Things

“My dad was one of those guys who was very mechanically inclined. If I could go back in time to being a kid again, I would have asked my dad to take time to bring me in on some of his repair jobs. It would have given me much needed confidence when working with my hands, which happens a lot as a dad.”

4. How To Care

“My dad wasn't very present during my childhood. He was a traveling businessman and was gone 2-3 weeks of every month. The biggest thing he never showed me was how to care for the people I love.”

5. How To Problem Solve

“My dad was very much a ‘Let me do it’ kind of guy. He wanted to fix the problem rather than help us learn about it. I appreciate what he was trying to do, but I think it hindered my ability to think for myself while I was growing up.”

High fives, fist bumps, and words of encouragement are given freely by the Flash Dads. The Flash Dads program was launched seven years ago by Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky, and there are now several dozen members. The men go to elementary schools across Louisville and line up to greet students, cheering them on and getting the day started on a positive note.

Participant Roger Collins said, The Flash Dads are "community members showing up for students who sometimes don't have anybody showing up for them." Another member of the Flash Dads, James Bogan, heard about it through his grandson, and signed up so he could surprise him one day at school. "It's contagious and I've been doing it ever since," he said.

The Flash Dads take their duties as role models and mentors to heart, and Bogan said the students know "we're not just there that day. We're there whenever you need us. It's not a one-day thing, it's a lifetime thing."

In his newsletter, blogger Aaron Renn reflects on the crucial role of mentors:

One of the core functions of mentors is to [tell you the things] people are already thinking and saying about you behind your back - and helping you overcome them. A Financial Times profile of American Express CEO Steve Squeri shows how a mentor did this for him.

Squeri is the grandson of Italian and Irish immigrants and the son of an accountant who worked nights and weekends at Bloomingdale’s department store to make ends meet. During his studies at Manhattan College, Squeri lived at home. He had never been on an aircraft until he joined a training program at what is now the consulting group Accenture.

Four years later he moved to Amex. There, his Queens accent and cheap suits stuck out so badly that an executive took him aside. He said, “You have a really sharp mind, but the rest of you needs a lot of work. [Senior managers] tend to use all the letters of the alphabet when they talk.”

The mentor took Squeri shopping, arranged for [speaking] lessons and even organized sessions with a cultural anthropologist so the younger manager would feel comfortable when he was sent to the group’s overseas offices. Squeri says, “I’m an example of how anybody can get to the top with a lot of hard work and having people that run the company that … are looking at individuals broadly and not judging books by their cover.”

Renn comments: “This mentor saw a diamond in the rough guy and made it his business to polish him up. This sort of thing is worth its weight in gold. [But notice how] good mentorship gets uncomfortable.”

Over the last 20 years, research has consistently shown that fathers have a unique way of engaging with small children. Horsing around is more common with fathers than it is with mothers, especially as infants grow into toddlers and preschoolers. Studies show vigorous bouncing, lifting, tossing, and chasing take over from more gentle play, and this roughhousing leads to better self-control and school readiness as children turn five. The father’s rough-and-tumble play is also connected to better gross-motor skills in the child, regardless of the father’s income or education level.

A vast study, published in the journal Pediatric Research in the summer of 2023 adds weight to the idea that a father’s hands-on involvement underpins a child’s later ability to self-regulate and problem-solve. A research team from Japan sampled 28,040 children. At intervals of six months, from one month of age to their third birthday, each child’s mother was asked to rate the father’s participation in early child-rearing, including feeding, changing diapers, bathing, dressing, playing at home or outdoors, and putting the child to sleep. Japanese fathers are typically less involved in child-rearing than North American fathers. But when the researchers examined the children’s milestones at age three, they discovered that children whose fathers invested more time in their care showed better gross and fine motor skills, problem solving, and social skills than children whose fathers were not as involved.

There was no difference between the language skills of kids with involved versus aloof fathers. The lead researcher concluded that “the risk of developmental delay in children with highly involved fathers was 24% lower.”

Researcher and author Rodney Reeves has been studying trends in how men are faring in America. Here’s how he summarizes one of his troubling statistics:

One [statistic] stopped me in my tracks was from a 2018 survey conducted by Pew. The sample size was small, and made use of a word-association methodology, so I haven’t cited it in most of my work. But I still wonder about it. Every single respondent thought that “masculine” was a negative term when applied to women. That’s not surprising.

What was shocking was that most people—four out of five—thought the term “masculine” was negative when applied to men. (The term “feminine” was not mentioned often enough to make it into the analysis.) This finding is consistent with another survey finding that half of men, of all races, think that society “punishes men just for acting like men.”

Hall of Fame NFL quarterback Steve Young has found a new way to be around the sport that made him a star--coaching his daughters in flag football. Flag football will make its debut at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. It is growing immensely because it combines the strategy and athleticism of American football and makes it less violent. Instead of being tackled, ball carriers are stopped when one of the small Velcro-enabled flags at their waist is removed.

Young said, “I was blown away at their sense of, ‘Oh my gosh, I no longer love football because I get to watch it. I now love football because I get to play it.’ And the difference in the emotion that they had, it just shocked me.” He later said, “It was just so much fun for me to relate to these fresh new feelings.”

Young coaches his daughters Summer and Laila on their high school flag football team, the Menlo Knights. After losing their first game after Young was recruited by former NFL player John Paye, the Knights went on a 15-game winning streak. By the end of the season, the Menlo Knights were playing on the main field in front of a big crowd with announcers.

Young has two sons and two daughters and says:

My boys have taught me more about life and didn’t play football, but I can’t tell you what they meant to me to be their dad. But my previous life wasn’t a part of our home very much until this last couple of months. My family life is sublime. I would want nothing more, honestly. But the fact that it does connect with my previous life in kind of a way that brings it home to me and then it’s my girls, it hits in a soft spot.

Possible Preaching Angle:

One of life's greatest joys is modeling a life of faithfulness and commitment to your children and guiding them as they attempt to follow your example.

After being in rock music for a season, Bob Carlisle's mood began to change in the mid 90's. He said, "I like anything that's done honestly and genuinely. Right now I'm more introspective and trying to write my own music." This led to Bob writing more about his family on his third solo album, Shades of Grace. Carlisle said, "I wanted to reveal more of myself as a father and as a husband. If I'm not nurturing my family, I have no business traveling."

The most inspirational song Carlisle recorded on the album Shades of Grace was a sentimental ballad about his daughter titled “Butterfly Kisses,” written for her 16th birthday. The song itself takes the listener through different stages of his daughter's life--of first being a child, then a teenager, and finally becoming a wife. The lyrics are extremely poignant and meaningful for all fathers.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Bible teaches the importance of nurturing and guiding our children through the different stages of their growth, including the more challenging seasons (Prov. 22:6; Eph. 6:4). Let's ask God for wisdom and strength to nurture our children through all their stages of growth and development. Let's ensure we give quality time to understand them, walk with them, and to pray for them.

Editor’s Note: "Butterfly Kisses" by Bob Carlisle is still a popular song today, even though it was released over 25 years ago. As of 2023, the song has over 100 million streams on Spotify, 200 million views on YouTube, is the 14th most played song on Christian radio, and is the 22nd most played song at weddings.

At one point, U.S. Men’s Soccer Team star Christian Pulisic was dropped from the starting lineup by head coach Gregg Berhalter. Pulisic said, “There were moments when he benched me and I wanted to kill the guy — I hated him, I was so angry. But then the next game comes along, and then I find myself in a better place. The way he handled a lot of situations, I have to give him a lot of credit.”

Pulisic said that he developed an understanding for Berhalter’s coaching methods during his first camp under the coach. In that camp, Pulisc suffered a slight injury. After getting a scan on the injury, Berhalter summoned Pulisic for a meeting. The coach suggested that the injuries may have happened because Pulisic wasn’t training with the intensity at which he played in games. Pulisic was taken aback at first, but eventually he took in the advice. He said:

It changed the way I look at training, even today. ... Listen, it wasn’t easy, and it took me a little while, but I said “Let me take this onboard,” and since then I’ve been in a much better place. It’s things like that. The way that he deals with players, you can tell he is passionate, and he cares about his players. He’s not going to tell you it easy, or what you want to hear, he is going to tell you what he feels is going to improve you.