"When Church and Life Collide: Finding Practical Faith" with Cecil Taylor

Cecil Taylor shares his journey from small-town Texas pastor's kid to international businessman and broadcaster, weaving together lessons from football, faith, broadcasting, and parenting to help listeners live authentically in every area of life.

• Growing up in small Texas towns where football dominated community life
• Learning mental toughness and discipline from being "the smallest guy on the team"
• Building a broadcasting career from local football play-by-play to national sports networks
• Pioneering women's sports coverage through "The Women's Sports Hour" in the 1990s
• Developing the concept of "seven-day practical faith" to counter compartmentalized Christianity
• Addressing disillusionment with church by acknowledging imperfection while encouraging perseverance
• Creating the "unison parenting" approach to help parents present consistent messages to children
• Sharing colorful life experiences including singing for President Johnson and winning a hip-hop competition
• Encouraging content creators with the reminder that "your message is needed by someone"

Check out Cecil's Practical Faith Academy podcast and his book "Unison Parenting" to learn more about living authentically in faith and parenting.

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Chapters

• 0:59 Meet Cecil Taylor: From Small Towns to Global Business
• 3:40 Texas Football Culture: Small Town Heroes to Stadium Giants
• 9:14 Broadcasting Journey: From Local Radio to National Networks
• 14:52 Women's Sports Evolution: Coverage and Growth
• 22:28 Living a Seven-Day Practical Faith
• 31:54 Surprising Stories: Presidential Performance to Hip-Hop Champion
• 35:55 Unison Parenting: Getting Parents on the Same Page
• 44:15 Final Thoughts: Your Message Matters

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:40

welcome back to one-on-one with mr. Of course I am your host. Mr U In studio with us. Cecil Taylor, I know your name Long morning. Taylor's in the house with us today. Author, former broadcaster, head of the Practical Faith Academy. He's a parenting expert. He does a lot of stuff, so great value by having you in the box with us today, man, thanks for being here.

Speaker 2: 1:03

How are you? I'm well, thanks. I'm excited to be with you. I think we have a lot to talk about. I'm ready to get to it.

Speaker 1: 1:10

We got plenty to talk about. I want to make sure we have enough time. I'm going to give you as much time as I possibly have to do this because there's so much about your life that's so interesting, so many layers to you. I think it reminds me of me in some ways. I got so many layers, I can talk about 10 different topics, and I think that's good for podcasts. Sometimes it might be hard to navigate, but we're going to have fun with it. So, customarily, I ask all of our guests that are coming in for the first time describe your upbringing, your childhood. What's life like for young Cecil? Talk about that a little bit for us.

Speaker 2: 1:42

Yeah, I was a pastor's kid in small towns. My dad would move around to some of the different small towns within South and Central Texas. So in fact in my first 18 years I only lived two years in a town with a traffic light. So that's how small things were. And I went from there later to the University of Texas, which I had classes bigger than my high school, and then from there I moved up to the Dallas area and, believe it or not, I wound up eventually being in international business where I was traveling a lot to to multiple countries. I never would have imagined that when I was a small town kid it was a big thing just to go to the nearest big city and then to imagine going across oceans to different places. It's just amazing. So if you had told me what would happen in my life when I was a little kid, I wouldn't have believed it.

Speaker 1: 2:42

Wow, I got got questions immediately and this is kind of off the cuff because we didn't talk about this in our pre-interview chat. But you've been from texas. Well, you and I are big sports fans. We'll talk about that a little bit, not the context for our full conversation, but can't help it. I'm a sports guy, you're a sports guy. We're going to touch on being from texas. I know, I know the football is huge in Texas. Explain to me what it's like to live in Texas with that, not a stigma, but I guess that identity, that football is so large. Why is it so large in Texas? Why is it a big deal? Talk to me about the financial ramifications of it, if you can Get into it a little bit for me. Why is that a big deal in Texas?

Speaker 2: 3:21

It really started in the small towns because it was the main sport that people enjoyed. Baseball was big, but football was always king. I played football and I was the smallest guy on the team but I had to be the toughest guy on the team, right? So if you're the smallest, but the whole community shows up, the whole community is behind it. All through the towns there's people wear ribbons and put stickers on their cars and the windows are painted in the stores and the town shuts down on Friday night so everybody can go to the football game.

Speaker 2: 3:55

When my mom had little kids and I was small and she felt like the weather was bad, we would still park outside the end zone. It was like a chain-link fence and you could watch the game from the end zone and if there was a touchdown you were honking your horn and that kind of thing, right. That's how I grew up. The kids in elementary school were underneath the stands with a paper cup wadded up like a football. They were playing their own football game down there, dreaming of the day that they would be on the varsity and all the guys on the football team were the heroes to everybody in town.

Speaker 2: 4:32

And then you start to multiply that. As Texas gets bigger, more population comes in, more people acclimate to that and the stadiums started getting bigger. And now there's a state championship television for, you know, in the playoffs. I live in a county where we have this is a suburb of Dallas we probably have eight football stadiums with more than 15000 seating. So that gives you an idea that's. That's bigger than some small colleges. In fact, in my county two of the national title games for the lower divisions are played in this county. So that gives you an idea that the college football you know the lower divisions are played here. So football is football is king, yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:17

I can see that I always, always wondered is that real or is that just a perception? Is that a real thing? But I mean, I hear about all of the guys that even come out. I'm a big fan of college and the pros so I kind of follow all this going on. And all these little small schools, these small high schools man, they seem to take it really seriously. Like this is like is it kind of like football is their only way out of where they live? Is that the idea? Is football their only way out of where they live? Is that the idea? Or is it that the parents have kind of ingrained in them that football is the route we want you to take, it's the most lucrative route, or is that also a misconception?

Speaker 2: 5:56

There's always a percentage that think their kid's going to get a scholarship and they're going to go to the pros and all that. But statistically speaking I think people realize that's a very small percentage, like two percent. I think it's the competition and the things you gain out of football. I tell you what I wouldn't be as disciplined in my life, I wouldn't be as tough minded in different situations if I hadn't played football. It gave me a mental toughness when you push yourself to go farther than you think and to go up against somebody bigger than you and find a way to compete. I got a little story there's. There was a guy who played on an opposite team, who there were these brothers, the Stoddard brothers. They both went to UT, texas Longhorns, both went to the pros. David Stoddard was a lineman for the Broncos, les Studdard was an offensive lineman for the Eagles. Well, in high school I told you they were there, what? I don't remember those guys.

Speaker 2: 6:54

Oh, you don't remember those guys? Well, yeah, yeah, they're like in the. You know they played in the pros in the 80s, so it goes back that far.

Speaker 1: 7:04

Okay, that's my time frame. I don't remember them.

Speaker 2: 7:08

Yeah, well, studdard, yeah, studdard, Studdard, david and Les Studdard. Well, in high school Les Studdard wasn't an offensive lineman, he was a tight end and I was a safety Guess who guarded him. At one point the other coach they noticed we seem to have a mismatch here. We've got like a 6'5", 200-something pound tight end and we've got this scrawny little safety on the other side. Why don't we just you remember the old pop passes where they just throw it right over the line of scrimmage to the tight end. They ran the pop pass eight straight times, starting at their 20, and every time it was me hitting him low and hanging on until the rest of the wolves could get on him and pull him down. And you know, every time I mean like my brain's getting rattled right and at some point I hit him and the referee goes touchdown. I'm like were we near the end zone? I had no idea. They found a mismatch. That's my claim to fame. I was tackling a future offensive lineman in the pros.

Speaker 1: 8:15

Those dump passes, man, if you can make it work, you can do it every time.

Speaker 2: 8:20

You just throw it up high.

Speaker 1: 8:25

Probably bigger than the linemen, the D-lines. That's probably why I work so well In the pros those jump passes. They're not going to work as often for sure, because the linemen are huge. Now you spend time not only in sports, which I love, and you also talked about the time in broadcasting. I want also talked about your time in broadcasting. I want to get into your time in broadcasting a little bit, share one of your great achievements in that area and some of the stories you got. And then I want to hear that playoff take you got. You said you got a hot playoff take. I want to hear all of those things. Let's start with the broadcasting. What got you into broadcasting? What you experienced there in your time doing that?

Speaker 2: 9:05

to a broadcaster what what you experienced there in your time doing that. Yeah, you know, I started in these little towns. My dad was doing tape, delayed football, play by play and and I really wanted to get into it and do some too. So uh, I asked him hey, can I do a quarter with you, like I could do the color and then do a quarter play by play. And so we did it. You know, we kind of shifted around. I remember between the third and fourth quarters we're shifting back so he could do play by play. And I said, well, how was it? He goes, it's depressing. And I said what do you mean? He said you're already better than I am. So I really, I really love the play by play and I wound up doing some small college football and that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 9:41

As far as play-by-play was concerned, I did everything from football to volleyball to dirt track racing I mean just all kinds of crazy stuff when you're working for radio stations of different kinds. But I eventually got more into the sports talk end of it. And I was working for a national radio network. But the way I got there was that I had started a Dallas show called the Women's Sports Hour and I had a female partner and we covered women's sports and nobody was really covering women's sports at the time, but it was a rich time because this was in the nineties. So we were, we were talking to people like Nancy Lieberman, christy Yamaguchi, we would have Nadia Komaneci on the show. We had like the 96 women's basketball team that won the gold. We had, you know, cheryl Swoops all kinds of those.

Speaker 1: 10:32

Oh my goodness, Wow yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:35

And eventually what happened was we went up to this new national network that was called Prime Sports Radio but eventually turned into Fox Sports Radio, and I remember that, yeah, yeah. So so what happened was the the way we auditioned is they said, hey, we'll let you try out for four weeks on a Saturday morning and if you pass the audition then you can be on our show regularly. Okay, on our network. So the first week we had some author first on, and then we shifted over and we were going to have an Olympic gymnast, dominique Dawes, on with us. She was on the Olympic team, so Dominique was like at a football game or something and she was trying to call us from a payphone at the station at stadium and the signal kept dropping and all this and finally and it was terrible sound I finally just said you know how it is.

Speaker 2: 11:31

I just had to say, okay, no more, this isn't radio worthy, so let's just cut it off and let's talk the rest of the time. So we had 20 minutes to go and an hour. That was unplanned and my partner and I just kind of whisked through it and afterward the producer talks to me, says rough, rough day, huh. And I said, yeah, I'm really sorry, and he goes. You handled it like a pro. I don't need to hear three more weeks. You're hired. So we were on the national network then.

Speaker 2: 12:01

So I'm really happy that I've seen how women's sports has grown today and a lot of the people I used to interview gino ariyama and, uh, people like that when pat summit was was riding high at tennessee and tara vanderveer at stanford and I'll see different names of people that actually don staley, who's a very famous college basketball coach yeah, national titles she was playing in those days so I interviewed her back in those days. So it's kind of fun to see how the sport has evolved, how much more popular and widespread it's getting, and just feel like we had a little tiny piece of that.

Speaker 1: 12:43

I love that man. What's your view?

Speaker 2: 12:47

on women's sports today. Yeah, I think they've got a great opportunity because the WNBA is now being promoted a lot more than it was. You have a couple of people that are stars is now in Dallas and is that first round rookie pick last month. She wants to always take her teammates along with her for some of her sponsorship deals, so she's trying to not just make money on her own, she's trying to bring others along and I think that's a great philosophy that you see, let's see if all boats can rise and I see a lot more male players now supporting WNBA or women's soccer or what have you right Really coming through with that? So that gets attention when somebody like Patrick Mahomes shows up or something like that. So I'm very upbeat on it. Women's sports is great for girls. It is something that gives them confidence. They have lower pregnancy rates, they have lower rates of getting into trouble in various kinds of ways. They build such self-esteem and they probably learn some of those things, like I learned that mental toughness they can carry through in your life.

Speaker 1: 14:02

I'd love for the WNBA to have a little bit more promotion. We've talked about it on multiple shows. When I had my sports flagship show earlier last spring, we could never tell when the season started. We didn't know what station they were going to be playing on. I found out by accident because one of the stations that I watched like some of my choir drummers on, they advertise the game for the WNBA. That's how I found out. When the seasons are, when they play, they don't promote very well. So that's something that they've got to work on. But there's definitely a movement taking place and I love to hear that's good for the young ladies. That's really, really inspiring. I love that part, man. So what would you say is your greatest sports achievement in your time of broadcasting? Let's just see what the broadcasting part. What's your greatest sports achievement there? Would you say?

Speaker 2: 14:54

Well, I think getting from a small town radio station all the way on to a national sports radio network was really big and probably the biggest. I'll name a second one. I was pretty creative when you're doing small radio stations and things like that, you're trying to find angles for things. So I had tickets for the 84 Olympics and I called up this local station and there were a couple of local athletes there was a high jumper, female high jumper, and then there was a coach who was in charge of the women's sprint relay team and I said, hey, I've got tickets to the Coliseum to see these events. How about I string for you, how about I do live reports from the stadium all the way through on how they're doing in each round and that kind of thing. And they said, yeah, so I wound up calling in from the stadium and basically being an Olympic reporter. So it worked out really well. You know I got to do Olympics.

Speaker 1: 15:49

You know Olympic reporting, I love you, though, if you don't mind sharing maybe tips or tricks of the trade. Some of our friends that are part of our listenership. They're content creators and podcasts like myself, and many of them are good friends of mine, and their desire is to get more in-depth when it comes to sports. They want to do more, potentially do sideline reporting. They want to do more stuff from the booth.

Speaker 1: 16:16

Tell me how it is a trick of the trade. Excuse me, or any tips you can offer, because you went into that as a young kid and you were sitting there basically doing color commentary. How did you learn how to do that? How did you, how were you able to quickly adjust and be able to, you know, analyze what you see and call it with any kind of tips and tricks you use to do that? Talk to me behind the scenes a little bit about how you became, did the broadcasting so quickly?

Speaker 2: 16:45

Well, I've always believed in preparation, right? So let's say you're going to do a football game, I want to know in advance, like, how should the game go, how do I expect it to go? And that's after doing a lot of preparation, right, trying to understand as much of the stats and the personalities, talking to the coaches, whatever, in advance. And then you have a narrative to start with, but it's unscripted, right? A game is unscripted, so you have a narrative that either the game follows the script or it doesn't follow the script. And then either one is a story Wow, this is playing out just like we thought, this team's dominating the line of scrimmage, whatever. Or wow, the passing game really opened up. We never expected that. 300 yards in the first half, right? So that was one thing I would do as a color and a play-by-play guy I did both is to really think about in advance and being very well prepared. I had stats in my head ready to go.

Speaker 2: 17:44

If I was play by play a lot of times, I had some kind of shaky color commentators. I made them look good. I would have stats that were written down that I would set them up to say you know, maine High School is pretty good on third downs, right. And I'm pointing and they go oh yes, they've converted 47% on the season. You know they look like a genius, right. And so it's not just making yourself look good but it's making the broadcast look good. But let me tell you the one best tip anybody in the industry gave me, and I think it's a good general tip. So I had I got to be the color commentator next to a guy who is the news director actually on the NBC affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth talk about a connection, right. And so that guy was doing play-by-play, just kind of having fun, and I'm doing color commentary, trying to come up, and at one point I said just talk about the business in general news, sports, everything.

Speaker 2: 18:43

How do I succeed in this business? And he said there's a lot of good people who are also average people. I was like I don't understand that. What does that mean? He goes.

Speaker 2: 18:54

It means they have a lot of talent but they're just average in the way they put it out there. They're just average in the way they are able to enact their craft. They don't put in the way they put it out there. They're just average in the way they are able to enact their craft. They don't put in the work, they don't distinguish themselves in any way. They have a lot of talent, but they're not that much better than anybody else. And the people who succeed are the ones who do extra, the ones who find a way to take their talent and be unique with it or be more perfect with it or what have you. And I think that applies to podcasting. It applies to a lot of different things. I've always tried to apply that advice, frankly, in anything I've done in life. How can I stand out more? Because there's a lot of good people out there. How am I going to make my mark?

Speaker 1: 20:25

That's incredible advice. I love it. All right, we spent almost 20 minutes on sports. There's a shocker, huh. So, cece, you had a hot playoff take you told me about you wanted to run a hot playoff. Take by it Go for it brother, let me tell you it was yours, man.

Speaker 2: 20:41

This applies to the NHL, where they just had the blowout in game three. It applies to whatever happens tonight with Oklahoma City and Indiana, and that is the playoff series doesn't start until game four. Doesn't start until game four.

Speaker 2: 20:55

The reason is you take all that skirmishing and everything they're trying to figure each other out and almost every and statistically speaking, any sport. It's 90 percent of the time it's two games to one when you go into game four. So that means the narrative is either it gets tied up and now you've got a three-game series or one game, or one team gets pushed to the brink because now it's three one. So game four is the one that really matters. I don't even pay much attention to the playoffs in a series until it gets to game four. That's when it starts, that's when it's on.

Speaker 1: 21:30

Okay. Well, I can't do that in football and in baseball, which are my two favorite sports.

Speaker 2: 21:37

Yeah, Baseball to an extent. Yeah, yeah, baseball to an extent right.

Speaker 1: 21:43

Depending on the length of the series. Right, I can't wait to game four to get invested. I got to be in all in or not. But let's get on sports. I'm having too much fun there and we can spend a whole lot of time there. I don't think we should do that. So let's move on to some other things that are really impressive about your life and what you've been doing.

Speaker 1: 22:03

We talk a lot about offline, about, you know, just the struggle that people have in their faith, living their faith practically, if you will. In your estimation, this is something that's a really important question for me personally too. But in your estimation, what does a disciplined lifestyle for a believer look like? Because we meet people all the time like you kind of want to mention, with the sports analogy, the advice you got in broadcasting. You got a lot of people who are good, do good things, I'm saying, but I guess in a lot of ways they don't stand out. I think that's applicable here too, not that we're trying to stand out in Christ and in our faith per se, but just doing the good and kind of just steaming the water and doing things blanket-wise. A lot of people do that and they think it's good, basically playing the minimums. They think it's okay. What does a disciplined lifestyle?

Speaker 2: 23:00

look like for a believer in your estimation. Yeah, I founded Cecil Taylor Ministries to teach Christians how to live a seven-day practical faith, taking Sundays into the rest of the week. People would tell me I can do this Christian stuff on Sundays, but it's really hard the rest of the week and the first thing we think of is the spiritual disciplines prayer, bible reading in particular. Those are important, but you shouldn't stop there. We should be looking at how we can be followers of Jesus every day, in whatever we do and whatever we find ourselves. That doesn't mean you walk into your workplace and you know you're just handing out pamphlets or something like that. But people can find out that you're a Christian in a lot of different ways and sometimes it's a little comment like, oh yeah, church this Sunday, this funny, funny thing happened. Or yeah, I'm headed over to do this volunteer work at my church this evening and not to brag, just to kind of toss it out there. So people know your context right, so that they understand where you're coming from. But what it really is about is having that discipline and intentionality. I think you have to be intentional. We have to do things on purpose or else we don't get them done. So we have to be on purpose about how can I be kind.

Speaker 2: 24:19

What does kindness look like in my life? What does it look like to address different life situations as a Christian when there's a crisis? For example, there was a time I was out of work, we were dead broke and I told my kids I had three kids at the time, will still do and I said people are watching us. They're watching us because they've seen us in the good times. Now, how are we going to behave in the bad times? What is our family really about in the bad times? Just being conscious from the beginning that our life could be a witness in the midst of me going 14 months without a job, right, that kind of thing. So how do we take scripture and Sunday mornings and all that and apply it to this situation in our life today?

Speaker 1: 25:09

I can definitely relate to being out of work that long. I know that, as a matter of fact, it was longer than that almost two years. I totally get that. That's powerful. What does it mean to live a seven-day practical faith? What does that actually mean? Break it down? For those that may not be acquainted with the idea of faith at all, what's that look like?

Speaker 2: 25:27

Yeah, I think one of the problems, frankly, that people have with Christians is that we don't seem to walk the talk. It seems like we talk one thing and then we do a second thing. Right, I think that is. You know, the book of James in the Bible talks about being double-minded saying one thing, doing another. We can't be double-minded. We need to be the same through and through.

Speaker 2: 25:54

So to live a seven-day practical faith says I don't just go show up for church on Sundays.

Speaker 2: 26:00

In fact, I live in a part of the country where church is kind of a sport. A little bit of the time that people show up to be seen, a little bit of the time that people show up to be seen right, not always because that's the right. You know they're there for faith, it's there for they're there for social or to make friends or to be seen or whatever. And so how do we get from that kind of Christian-ish kind of lifestyle to being through and through Christian seven days a week? And so I think that's what it is is. It's being true to what we think is our true selves and being true to God, being true followers of Jesus every single day. So when I ask people on my Practical Faith Academy podcast. What does it mean to you to live a seven-day practical faith? Sometimes they point to tips like hey, pray more, that kind of thing, but most of the time it's some variation of how can I be the same person in all situations and be a follower of Christ all the time?

Speaker 1: 27:03

That's a powerful question, man. What would you say to people who are disillusioned with what the church looks like right now, what the church is putting out as far as, like you said, behavior, morality, et cetera? What would you say to somebody who's potentially listening and watching right now, disillusioned with church?

Speaker 2: 27:23

Well, sometimes I'm disill. Want to hear it over here. Yeah, sometimes I'm disillusioned with it too. I think that what you need to know is, first of all, there are a lot of churches and a lot of flavors of church. So if you have one that you encounter that you don't have a good experience with, just know that there's many, many more that are options that may be harder in a small town, but in most cities there are alternatives that you can seek right.

Speaker 2: 27:59

So that's the first thing. The second thing is that if it doesn't feel like somebody is loving God and loving neighbor, then I'm not sure they're following Christ as much as Jesus would want them to do as far as revealing who he is. So you have to understand that church is full of imperfect people. That's the biggest thing that I got out of my head very early on. My dad was a pastor. Let me tell you, when you're the pastor's kid, you see it all and you see the sour underbelly right of what is in the church. I have no illusions about how church can be, but I also know that's because people are broken People. Even when they're trying to do the right thing, do the wrong thing, and so there has to be some patience and grace and realizing that you're not going to encounter perfect people and if you do just get into a toxic situation, then go find another path, because there are people who are sincere in the way that they give and sincere in the way they live.

Speaker 1: 29:14

I'm just trying to end the show. Talk about parenting and some of your literary work regarding that. But one more question about your podcast, practical Faith Academy podcast. Talk to us about why you started that and what you learned from it since you've been doing it.

Speaker 2: 29:24

Yeah, I started my podcast. I was a longtime adult Sunday school teacher on Sunday mornings and just kind of did that thing. And when I started a podcast I figured, well, I'll just basically do Sunday school lessons, and it was a lot of me talking out at everybody. After a while I started realizing, wow, you know, God gave me this gift of talking to people in sports and in news environments. I loved interviewing people. Why am I not doing that in my faith and in my podcast?

Speaker 2: 29:56

So I converted over to the Practical Faith Academy theme and I bring people alongside me A lot of times. They're authors, Sometimes they're not, Sometimes they're just your average Joe. I just interviewed a guy who I found on Facebook, who happened to go on this pilgrimage walk in Spain, and I wanted to talk to him. Why did you do that? What was that like? What did you get out of it? So I want to find out how people implement faith in their corner of the world and what some of their ideas are that they could share with other people about living a seven-day practical faith. And that's what the podcast is all about. I do it twice a month and I'm just so happy with the people who come on. They're not always super articulate, but they're faithful and it's great to listen to them.

Speaker 1: 30:45

I love this man.

Speaker 2: 30:46

This is awesome.

Speaker 1: 30:48

I love podcasts like this because it's kind of almost like what we did with our brand Start it off rapid fire, throwing stuff out, and then kind of morphed into more of a let's walk together, more of a walking alongside. Let's kind of go together in faith and kind of just build connection and relationships. So we kind of morphed into and relationships, so you're kind of more into that, especially through this show, uh, and of course, with our inspiration station, uh broadcast as well. So this is pretty awesome, man. A lot of interesting stuff about you. Man, you sung a song for the president of the united states. You're in the book of world records. We don't have a lot I, I want to get an appearance, and so I just had to put that out there. Because that's two of three very interesting facts about you. The third one is the one that I want to talk to all of them really briefly, but the third one blows my mind you won a local hip hop dance competition.

Speaker 2: 31:46

And you know what's even better, mr you, I embarrass my daughter in the process, isn't that great? That's the full exacto there. What started as a?

Speaker 1: 31:58

president man.

Speaker 2: 32:00

Well, I was six years old and the small town I was living in was Johnson City, texas, when LBJ was president and he didn't belong to our church. He was in a different denomination but he wound up visiting our church on Palm Sunday on the same day that he went off and signed legislation at his old school that opened up civil rights education for people. So on that same day he came, on Palm Sunday and nobody knew he was coming. And I'm sitting on the front row with my little classmates and we get up to turn around to sing some song for Palm Sunday and there's the president right and he came up, shook our hands afterward and I get a lot of joy out of telling my wife, who is a professional singer, guess which one of us actually sang for the president.

Speaker 1: 32:51

Yeah, that was oh, come on, okay. So what was the world record? You wrote Mac in a Guinness book. What was the world record?

Speaker 2: 33:02

I was in a service organization in college and we did a fundraiser for I think it was for leukemia, and we set up at the municipal auditorium in Austin where people could try to break world records and I was part of a world record of the number of people crammed into a pickup truck. So we set the world record with 64 people in a pickup truck and my job was I was in the cab with about 15 other people and my face was down at the bottom right where they closed the door. I was upside down in the cab so we could fit well and they had to close that thing right on my face. And if that doesn't make you claustrophobic, nothing will. But I got through it, okay. Okay, Do you remember the song that you won, the?

Speaker 1: 33:45

hip-hop dance competition with Daz. Do you remember the song that you won the hip hop dance competition with your dad? Do you remember the song that you actually danced to?

Speaker 2: 33:56

I think they did some. They just had some music track in the background. What happened was it was a dance competition and my daughter was in this dance club and they were the judges had to take some time to evaluate. So they brought all the dads up who were foolish enough to get up there and said we're going to do this hip-hop dance competition and I noticed like everybody is standing at the back of the stage and they're introducing us and everybody would kind of get up and kind of dance a little bit and then back up.

Speaker 2: 34:24

When it was my turn, I I come running up to the front of the stage, I slide on my knees and I'm like, yeah, and so I won the crowd over right away. Well, what I didn't realize was I thought that was like it. They go OK, there's two dance, we're going to narrow down to you and this other guy, and you guys got to go three rounds of dancing and hip hop. So we were really breaking down. By the end. He was doing the robot and I was doing the calisthenics, so we didn't have much in our bags, but somehow they just liked me and I wound up winning it and my daughter was so embarrassed she laid down on the floor in the back of the auditorium so she didn't have to see. Meanwhile, my son said that's the proudest I've been of you in my life.

Speaker 1: 35:15

Oh, my goodness, I love it, man. Great story for the family reunions. I love it. I love it. Excuse me, we don't have a whole lot of time left, but I want to spend that on parenting. I think we had too much fun. Is what I'm getting from all of this. You wrote a book on parenting, if I'm not mistaken. You have several tons of parenting books out there. It's kind of the thing. What makes unison parenting different from the other books on the market right now?

Speaker 2: 35:50

Yeah, that's a great question. I think the thing that's unique about it. There's a couple of unique things. One is, first of all, instead of being just my own opinion or purely academic research although there's some in there it's based on a lot of experience and not just mine. So I taught parenting classes in my church for 15 years to a total of 700 families and I would roll out these parenting ideas and then they would play back to me how those went. I also spent 30 years in my church working in volunteer youth ministry. I got to know teens very well. I got to see the results of all kinds of styles of parenting right. So there's a lot of background and experiences and anecdotes, those kinds of things that come out of that experience. But the other thing towards the end of that 15 years of teaching, I started realizing how much friction there is between parents. A lot of the times they might show up at the class together but they were not on the same page.

Speaker 2: 36:54

And I started teaching this concept of unison parenting Now, unison is when in a choir everybody sings the same note at the same time. And I asked my wife, who does some compositions, why does a composer choose everybody sing the same note at the same time, instead of harmony, and she goes you do it when you want to emphasize the message. Hey, as parents, we want to emphasize a common message to our kids, and so we need to sing same note, same time, same page. So what I teach in the book that is unique is, in addition to a lot of great parenting advice based on all those experiences, there's this foundation underneath where I say here's how you get on the same page, here's how you stay on the same page because there's pitfalls, and here's where the pitfalls are that you might get off. And then how do you get back on track when you make a mistake and you're not on the same page. So that's what the book's about this combination of great parenting advice and then watch out for the unison parenting angle.

Speaker 1: 37:58

It is a book only for Christians, or can anybody? Can be applied to anybody. Who's parenting for young kids, for teens, older kids, who's?

Speaker 2: 38:10

it targeted for specifically, if you can answer that. First of all, with the Christian aspect, it does come out of a Christian context and that's in the subtitle. However, the book just won a secular competition for parenting and family and I think that validates my view that the principles in the book, although they come from a Christian context, can apply to any family, and there's one chapter of the book that's out of the nine that is pretty related to religion and there's little devotionals in there, but the rest of it is just great parenting advice. So if you're not a Christian, take a read of it anyway, because I think you'll get a lot out of it. So I forget what the other thing was you asked me on top of that.

Speaker 1: 38:56

But it doesn't apply to any parents. One day I asked but also, is it talking to our younger children?

Speaker 2: 39:03

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:03

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:05

So the way the book is structured, it's really for parents to start any time, wherever they are, and they need to start getting on the same page, even if that kid's in diapers. But it's really for ages four through 18. The first half of the book is on parenting fundamentals. How do you do all this? You just apparently stuff and start bringing that kid up, because I spent so much time with teens and that's such a big question for many people. The back half of the book is about the teen years and in the first half, even as we're going through fundamentals, we start doing some building block things to make the teen years easier. So even if you've got a kid in first grade, third grade, fifth grade, you want to read this because you're building to where, when they're age 14 and 16 and 18, it's going to go easier.

Speaker 1: 39:54

Makes sense, makes sense. I love this man. This is really good. You mentioned something about opposition parenting. My mind went to a different place, because we had major challenges raising our daughters. But what is opposition parenting? What is that?

Speaker 2: 40:08

Well, the opposition parenting is where the parents oppose each other, sometimes not even realizing they're doing it. It's almost subconscious, but then it starts coming out more graphically. So let's take the easiest example, but I could list you 20 different scenarios. But the easiest example is one parent grew up in a strict household. The other grew up in a lenient household. So the one who's strict starts acting strict and starts pulling this way. Well, the lenient parent says you know, we need to balance things out, bring it back to the middle. So I'm going to do things really lenient to counteract that strictness. Well, it doesn't work. You know what happens next.

Speaker 2: 40:46

You can probably guess that strict one says whoa, what's happening here? Too much leniency. They go harder towards the strictness, then the other one goes harder towards the leniency, and now you've got a tug of war going on. You've got two sets of rules in the house, the kids are confused but they learn how to play it and you've got a huge mess, a huge battleground. That's opposition parenting. And so I have a technique of lean in, not away, which is in some of my materials and so forth. But the idea, the basic idea, is let's find a way to work together instead of working against each other, and this can apply to a lot of scenarios. How about nutrition? Right, the one wants to eat healthy, the other one says, ah, let them eat fast food. You know, you could just go on down the line. Academics, important, not important, yeah, all that kind of thing makes sense.

Speaker 1: 41:37

Just got a couple more questions for you to be close episode. We had so much fun. Sorry we have to stop, but you know we're up against it now. But even how would you, or even would you convince a parent to pivot if they've been winging it for years as far as their parenting style? I would convince them to pivot yeah.

Speaker 2: 41:58

Yeah, my catchphrase is for the sake of the child. There's so much damage you can do to a child and I really talk about what the best parenting style is, compared to three other major styles that are wrong, that just do this long-term damage to kids. I just saw something real quick. I saw something in the paper the other day. A man didn't really want to have the second kid. It was a daughter. She's four, has an eight-year-old boy. He wants to spend all the time there. The four-year-old girl is already picking up that I'm not worth anything in this household. He's doing major damage to that girl, even at age four, because he doesn't want to have something to do with her. So, for the sake of the child, we get over ourselves In a divorce situation. If you're angry with each other, it doesn't matter. For the sake of the child.

Speaker 1: 42:44

Oh, I love that. I love that I actually got two more questions. This last question is the one that primarily asks all of our guests. They know when they come in. I'm going to close the show with this question. If you're not in your current vocation, that means you're not a parenting expert, cecil. You're not writing books. You're not podcasting over at PFA. What's Cecil doing with his life? You can't pick broadcasting either. What's Cecil doing with his life? And you can't pick.

Speaker 2: 43:09

Broadcast to eat it. No, it isn't. I tell you, it's my dream and I don't know if I can figure out how to do it. But, believe it or not, I really want to own and operate a mini golf course. My grandfather and I used to play mini golf together. We shared that and we would talk about if we had a course here's what we would do and we really seriously considered doing this. And you know, he got to where he was too old and passed away and and so I've always kind of carried that torch that I would like to do what my grandfather and I set out to do. So maybe someday I don't know I probably can't afford it in the big city. I'm probably going to be in a small town with a, you know, a little quarter of the big city. I'm probably going to be in a small town with a little quarter of the downtown area that I set off for doing mini golf or something. But anyway, that's what I'd really love to do. It's just a little fantasy.

Speaker 1: 43:58

Hey, who knows, it could definitely happen, man. That's what's going on with us, man. We got people who are authors and speakers and bloggers and even experts about this you know the genre that are watching and listening to this show. What would you say to encourage them, whether it be in faith in parenting, in facing their broadcasting career? What advice would you give to them? And after we're done with that, we'll go ahead and jump off.

Speaker 2: 44:21

Go ahead your message is needed by someone. Whatever it is, your message is needed. You don't know who it is, you may never know who it is. You may feel, whatever it is, your message is needed. You don't know who it is, you may never know who it is. You may feel like, whatever it is, you're just talking into the darkness, into the ether. But somebody needs what you have to say and hopefully they will find it. It's your job, of course, to try to promote and things like that so they'll find it. But have faith, whatever it is, it doesn't have to be Christian. Have faith in yourself, have faith in your message. That that is needed.

Speaker 2: 44:56

Quick example Lynn Austin, famous Christian fiction writer. She was on my podcast. She had written 40 books. She's in Fiction Hall of Fames. So she was saying that she was about to retire and a prisoner a female prisoner wrote her and said I read your book in the library and I decided, based on that book, not to kill myself. And Lynn said maybe all 40 books, maybe all the fame I got, everything that happened in my life was to reach that woman. You have someone who needs to hear your message out there. So keep, keep going, keep going.

Speaker 1: 45:28

You have someone who needs to hear your message out there. So keep going, keep going. That's an outstanding story, man. Thank you for sharing that man. Ladies and gentlemen, cecil Taylor, author of Unison Parenting and host of the Practical Faith Academy podcast, don't forget to jump in with us, man no-transcript, if you don't mind doing that. When we get offline, we can find you really easily find your work. Reach out to you if they want some advice on parenting or even on faith. So look for you to do that for us and for all the viewers and listeners. Thanks for listening and watching us once again. The Show's going well and you're a big part of it. This is about you and it's made for you. So thank you again for watching and listening. Have a great day. See you soon, mr U. We're out.