Happy Masters Week to those who celebrate!

The Masters, held annually in Augusta, Georgia, is one of the four major championships in professional golf. With its iconic green jacket, unmatched beauty, and history of tradition, the tournament truly is the best that golf has to offer.

But while the $21 million purse tournament gets all the attention Thursday through Sunday, there’s a special tradition that occurs the day before the tournament: The Par 3 Contest.

As Masters.com describes: “Of all the traditions at the Masters, none is more endearing than the annual Par 3 Contest. This beloved event… is above all a family affair. Wives and girlfriends, children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews-all happily serve as caddies. The sight of toddlers, outfitted in miniature Augusta National jumpsuits, toting a light bag or tending a flagstick more than twice their height brings smiles to onlookers near and far.”

Do you doubt them when they say, that “none is more endearing”? If so, I dare you to watch this video and continue to doubt:

What makes this “Day for Family” so special? Is it the white jumpsuits? The kids with accents all around the world? The happy smiles and carefree laughs?

Or, maybe, is this Day for Family so special because it’s become rare for parents to involve the whole family in their daily lives?

Think about it: if you’re a typical Westerner, you get up on Monday morning, put your kids on a school bus, drive to work 30 minutes away, work for 9 hours, drive 30 minutes home, take your kid to a ball practice where they spend an hour or two playing with kids their age, then drive home to eat dinner with the family (the only time you spend together as a whole family), and put them to bed.

On Saturday, you may drive them to a birthday party or a dance competition or a soccer tournament where they spend the whole day with you watching from afar. On Sunday, you may drop them off at a children’s ministry while you go to “big church,” only to pick them up and take them to a friend’s house to spend more time with their friend than they’ve spent with you all week.

When I step back and think of the way we live, where American parents spend less than 6% of the day playing with, caring for, and helping their children, I can’t help but wonder: Is this the way God meant for life to be?

Unfortunately, I don’t think so.

Until the Industrial Revolution, families spent most of their time together. I think this was God’s design for the family. God made human children to be dependent on their parents for a very long time—longer than many other animals’ entire life span. Why would He do that?

One reason may be because God wants parents to spend a lot of time with their children. Maybe God knows that children learn best from their parents and that a parent’s responsibility is to raise their children in the way of God.

In Deuteronomy 6:6-7, God instructs the Israelites:
“These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”

In other words, God is saying, “Spend a lot of time with your children so that you can raise them well.” Yet we as parents have outsourced time with our kids to daycares, schools, extracurriculars, churches, and friends.

What happens when we start separating parents and children 23 of the 24 hours in a day? We have children who don’t know how to thrive in the world.

Look at almost any statistic on the state of children or young adults—mental health, spirituality, friendship, etc.—and try to convince me that we’re successfully training young people to thrive in the world. When we do come across a statistic that seems to indicate that young people might be thriving, it’s newsworthy because of how shocking it is.

What if we could change this?

We can’t turn back the clock and undo all the ills the Industrial Revolution introduced to society. It might be too much of an ask to homeschool your kids or find a job that doesn’t take you away from the home so much or choose extracurriculars that you can also be involved in. But we can begin to reverse the trend of being separated from our children. In fact, studies show that we are beginning to reverse the trend. So how do we continue spending more time with our children in, what I believe is, the way God intended?

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Let me offer a few examples:

I’m guessing that nobody reading this blog will have the opportunity to invite their children to caddie for them at the Masters’ Par 3 Contest. But you can start to invite your children into whatever it is that you do.

I’ve written previously about how we can, and should, integrate our children into our work. We can also do that with our hobbies.

Take, for example, golf. Kid Caddie has made a stroller attachment that “transforms your stroller into a push cart so you can bring your kids golfing.” Rather than leaving your family for 4 or 5 hours on a Saturday morning to go searching for errant tee shots make birdies, bring them with you! (Depending on their age, you may find your errant tee shots even quicker.)

In between binge-watching Par 3 Contest content, I stumbled upon an Instagram post from a golf apparel company that attempted to humorously tell wives to leave their husbands alone when they’re watching the Masters this weekend. The juxtaposition of the content was itself humorous. Multiple times a week, we get to choose to bring our families together or pull our families apart. The choice, so often, is up to you.

Have you tried integrating your family into your hobbies? And if not, why not? Maybe it’ll make things less efficient or enjoyable or peaceful for a year or two. But if you could zoom out 20 or so years, imagine the joy of being in your later years of life when your kids ask if you want to join them for a round of golf or some other hobby that you’ve enjoyed together for decades.

Talk about a good life.

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Another way we can do this is bring our children alongside us in our work, when appropriate. One way I have done this as a pastor is take my daughter on a couple visits with parishioners that I know would be filled with joy while she played in their home.

Just a couple weeks ago, as my wife and I were prepping for our small group we co-lead, my 18-month-old daughter wanted to sit in my lap. My wife wisely grabbed her a disconnected mouse and handed it to her as I used mine to prep our group. Even at such a young age, you can invite your children into the work you do.

You could bring your child to a board meeting or have them sit in the back of a presentation you’re giving. You could even bring them with you on a work trip.

Someone who has taught me a lot about integration is Jefferson Bethke, who recently took his son with him on a speaking gig to Liberty University. Think about the countless opportunities he had to connect with, disciple, and train on a trip where his son got to be a part of his dad’s ministry.

Think about how many opportunities you could have to connect with, disciple, and train your sons and daughters if you began to integrate your family into your life.

How many of our children are tired of watching from the sidelines and silently crying out: Mom? Dad? Can I join?

God has given you so many opportunities to say yes.

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I write a lot about integration, particularly integrating our families and integrating our faith into our daily lives. If you’d like to read more, check out some of my other posts about family and faith or subscribe to receive new blog posts in your inbox!