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Welcome to The Carpenter’s House
I came up with the idea for The Carpenter’s House primarily because I wanted to create a stable environment where (especially disenfranchised) kids could go to feel safe, could learn to do cool projects and be productive, become entrepreneurs, learn a trade, whatever. There are currently 75 million children in the U.S., and roughly 25 million of them, or one out of every three, does not have their biological father living in the home. And for single mom families, where there is no father at all present, biological or otherwise, in the United States in 2021, there were around 15.62 million families with a female householder and no spouse present.
As I thought more about the concept, I realized that the skilled trades labor force (carpenters, plumbers, electricians, welders, machinists, woodcrafters, etc.) is dwindling as the rate of retirees is increasing faster than the rate of entrants and trainees coming in to the force, because over the years there’s been such a strong push for kids to get white collar jobs, that the kids don’t want to “dirty their hands” with manual labor. And so high schools stopped teaching wood shop and auto body & engine shop, meaning now kids leave school having no idea that some are gifted with the hand-eye coordination that they could parlay for skilled labor and trade jobs – jobs that often pay better than white collar jobs, and come with less if any education financial debt.
I also realized that the U.S. has a very high suicide rate among those citizens of the United States who took an oath to lay down their lives for you and me. Specifically, the VA 2022 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report reveals an average of 17 combat vets killed themselves, every day, in 2020. That’s 6205 veterans who take their own lives every year and bring with that, massive mental devastation to their loved ones.
So my mission, my goal at The Carpenter’s House is to address all three of these issues. 1) Provide a physical place for the kids to come where there will always be someone there, meaning the kids will have some level of stability in their lives, for the first time ever for some of them. 2) Train them on whatever they’d like to learn, and help them to understand the things they create will be wanted by many social network followers (they’re going to learn to be entrepreneurs), meaning they can make a living, and will be set to segue directly into the skilled trade labor force. 3) Invite vets to come to help teach the kids, so that the vets will find meaning in life again – that missing raison d’etre. Every human needs a sense of purpose and belonging, and it’s especially fulfilling when that purpose and belonging stem from being needed by others. Simply put, the kids need the vets as much as the vets need them.
And there is fourth mission, or goal that underpins all of this, namely everyone needs Christ, and everyone certainly deserves to be exposed to Christ and the Gospel – to at least once, hear the Good News. Everything I plan to do at The Carpenter’s House will be done with the subtle but consistent underpinning of exposing the kids to biblical truths – imprinting a lifestyle and work ethic focused on serving others, on love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and finishing well – finishing each project well, and ultimately finishing life well.
The only goal beyond all this is an indirect goal, which is to make The Carpenter’s House a repeatable play, namely my hope is some of the kids we rescue from fatherlessness, as they mature, will have a heart to do the same for other kids like themselves, and we just plug them in and launch a new location. So my hope is ultimately they will take the torch and have a heart to start their own Carpenter House locations in other places around the country and around the world.