I am excited to finally announce a new project I’ve been working on! This new resource is a ministry opportunity that I hope and pray will be an excellent tool for dads.

Announcing… DeliberateDads.com!

I want to share with you a little bit of my vision, and the history of how it came about. I also want to give one luck person a DeliberateDads shirt. More on that in a minute.

Some History

This has been a long and arduous road.

It all started a few months ago.

Last summer, while at camp, I witnessed a man bringing his son to check him in. The entire time he was there with his son, more than an hour, I saw him speak to his son only one time. The rest of the time, his phone was stuck to his ear and he was chatting amicably with someone else the entire time, completely ignoring his son. His only words to his son were when his son failed to pass his swim test. The dad’s response was “You’d better pass it tomorrow.” The phone went back to his ear, and he left.

That really bothered me. His son was in my cabin, and it was obvious he was starved for attention; we had a few rough issues with him during the week because of that. But once we got past that, he had a great week!

But the image of that dad completely ignoring his son was etched permanently into my mind. I just didn’t know how I could help him.

Just a few weeks later, I saw a blog post by John Saddington about the niche he saw for good dad blogs.

That post stuck in my mind and wouldn’t leave. All kinds of ideas started popping into my head, unsolicited. After a couple of weeks, I decided to check into some details.

I have to admit, I was kind of like Gideon. One of my first items to check into was to see if the domain name I wanted was available. My prayer went something like this: “God, if it’s available, I know you want me to do this. If not… whew!” I started looking around. To my surprise, the only option I was even interested in (DeliberateDads) was available… in .com, .net, .org, and .info extensions. So I bought them.

My next thought was to protect that idea. So I went back and looked for DeliberateDad domains, without the plural “s” on the end. All four extensions were available for that variation as well. So I bought them.

By the way, all this is happening around 2:00 or 3:00 AM. This was bouncing around so much in my head that I couldn’t sleep.

I was now the proud owner of eight domains with nothing on them. Now to find the right WordPress theme.

I had purchased a theme framework that I intended to use for another site, so I decided to give it a shot here. After a month, and multiple incompatibility issues with some key plug-ins I use, I scrapped it and started over using Standard Theme, which is the framework I use here. I was reminded why I bought this theme in the first place. It’s simply the best option I’ve found.

After rebuilding the site, I was more satisfied than I could have imagined with the way things were turning out.

I developed my basic structure, transferred a few posts from here, wrote a few more, and now it’s ready to unveil!

My Vision

As a father of six (almost), the topic of dadhood is never far from my mind. I don’t want to be just a dad. I don’t even want to be just a good dad. I want to be the best dad I can be for my kids.

I want to be able to share resources that I find that help me out. I will read, watch, explore and find as many great helps for dads that I can and review them, posting links so you can purchase your own. When possible, I hope to convince many of the publishers to offer a free copy or two through DeliberateDads.

I want to share my experiences with my kids. My goal is not to create a nice synopsis of my weekend getaway or last year’s vacation. No, I want to share opportunities that I find helpful to my dadhood journey, and maybe you will also.

In 2013, I’m planning to launch the Dadcast, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping dads become the best dads that they can be.

I want to be available to help you become a great dad in any way possible. Whether that comes from the resources and articles I share on DeliberateDads, or it comes in the form of speaking to your church or organization, I want to be used by God to build dads into great dads, in any way that I can.

A Give-Away

In order to celebrate the launch of DeliberateDads.com, I am giving away two Polo-style shirts with the DeliberateDads logo embroidered on them. One will be given to a randomly selected commenter on this post. The other will be selected randomly from the commenters on the Grand Opening post at DeliberateDads.com. That means you’ll have two opportunities to win, although you can only win one of the shirts.

I can vouch for their comfort. I ordered one already to see how they looked, and am greatly impressed with the level of quality and style. Made of a soft pima cotton, these shirts come in a navy blue color, with the DeliberateDads logo on the left chest area. The style is slightly different from the shirt shown here.

In the near future, you will have the ability to purchase these shirts, along with fleece jackets, hats and more! That’s pretty exciting!

Here are a few more specifics of the give-away:

• You must leave a comment in the comment section below telling me about the best example of a dad you know/knew.
• You must retweet this post on Twitter or on Facebook, with a link to DeliberateDads.com. You can use something like this: I just entered to win a DeliberateDads.com polo at the DeliberateDads.com Grand Opening! Enter to win: http://www.deliberatedads.com.
• The winner will be selected at random from the comments section of this post using an automated generator, such as Random.org. Comment as many times as you like, however, each person will be entered into the contest only once.
• Once the winners have been selected, they will be contacted, asking for a shirt size. I will then order the shirts, and deliver them to the winners when I receive them from the embroiderer.
• The contest will end at midnight on Sunday, December 9. The winner will be announced on Monday, December 10.

In Closing

I would like to ask a favor from you. Would you consider passing around a link to DeliberateDads.com to any dads you know? Whether that is in the form of a link on your site or blog, or a blurb in your church or organization newsletter, or a post on your Facebook or Twitter stream, or even just by word of mouth, I would greatly appreciate your help in spreading the word about what I hope and pray becomes an excellent tool for building a generation of dads who are focused on being the best dads that they can be. Thanks for your help in this.

Also, if you subscribe to this blog by email or RSS, consider subscribing to DeliberateDads as well. There will be some great stuff posted there in the coming weeks. You should see my list of ideas and topics! I’m pretty excited about it!

Who is the best example of a dad you’ve known? Is it your dad? Or someone else? You can share your thoughts in the comment section below.