In this episode of Restoring Education in America, host Priscilla Rahn sits down with Casper Stockham, an award-winning Christian television broadcaster and marriage coach. Casper shares insights into the challenges faced by Christian marriages and the critical role education and family play in society today. Discussing the founding of I Am Love Builders, he highlights the importance of creating Christ-centered marriages and the impact of strong family bonds on children. Listeners are taken on a journey through Casper’s transition from a decade in politics to leading marriage retreats and coaching sessions that emphasize the need for God-centered solutions. As
00:00:03 Introduction to Restoring Education in America
00:00:16 Excalibur Classical Academy and the Importance of School Choice
Welcome to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. She’s a master educator and author leading the conversation to restore the American mind through wisdom, virtue, and truth.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to Restoring Education in America. I’m your host, Priscilla Rahn, and I’m so excited that you’ve decided to join the conversation today. So this fall, there is a new private classical school that’s opening for kindergarten through third graders. It’s called Excalibur Classical Academy. They’re opening in the Centennial area. Their mission and vision is restoring America’s heritage by developing servant leaders who are keepers and defenders of the principles of freedom for which our founding fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. So if you’d like more information, if you’d like a tour, please go to their website, ExcaliburClassicalAcademy.org. Or if you’re looking for a great place to teach, I know they would love to see your resume. So reach out to Excalibur Classical Academy. The importance of education can’t be overemphasized. Right now, parents are looking for great options for their children. School choice is critical, but the foundation of the family are great parents and strong bonds between mom and dad. And my next guest is going to come onto the stage, who’s going to talk all about the importance of family, Casper Stockham. Hi, Casper.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hey, it’s good to see you again.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s good to see you, my friend. You and I have been in the trenches together for so many years.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, we have.
SPEAKER 03 :
And now you and your beautiful bride are doing wonderful work with husbands and wives. And I really want to dig into the great work that you’re doing. You are an award-winning Christian television broadcaster, producer, author, and marriage coach. You and Cheryl founded I Am Love Builders and created the God-Centered MVP Love Hub. I love that. For over 18 years, you have equipped couples with practical tools to deepen commitment, strengthen communication, and build Christ-centered marriages designed to leave a lasting legacy. But your most important job is, besides being husband to Miss Cheryl, is dad and grandpa. Wait, great-grandpa.
SPEAKER 02 :
And great-grandfather, yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, so what’s your grandpa name?
SPEAKER 02 :
You know, he’s only three, so he hasn’t called me anything other than to point, hey, you, you know.
SPEAKER 03 :
I love to ask grandparents if they have a unique grandpa name other than grandpa. I’ve heard a lot.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, my grandchildren are in their 20s now, and they just call me grandpa.
SPEAKER 03 :
OK, well, that’s traditional and that’s a classic name. And so and it fits you. So I love that. So I’ve been watching you grow from politics to you’ve always had this ministry in you, but now it’s a full time thing and you’ve started your television show. Talk to me about the journey away from politics and more into this ministry work.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, so it’s interesting because 18 years ago, Cheryl and I started I Am Love Builders. And when we first started, we were only married for like four years. And we were trying to give advice to people about marriage and relationships and being happy and stuff. And they’re looking at us like, what do you guys know about being married for four years, right? But we were really trying to help a lot of couples at that time. And then as some of your audience may know, you know, I made a diversion into politics for like 10 years into politics. In retrospect, it was actually a good thing because that 10 years gave us seasoning on on all the training that we’ve been doing with couples prior to that. So my last political endeavor ended about five years ago. And Cheryl and I looked at each other like, okay, now what? And we said, you know, we need to revamp our marriage ministry and put that back on the front burner. And for the past four and a half, five years, that’s what we’ve been doing. So we’ve written now going into our fifth book. We have a TV show and a second season of our TV show called Winning with Love. We do marriage relationship coaching, retreats. We’re deacons at our church. We’re over in the marriage ministry at our church. So we do retreats for our church, and we want to do retreats for other churches as well. So, yeah, we’ve been pretty busy.
SPEAKER 03 :
So Casper, people might say, oh, well, Christians, they don’t need counseling. They’ve got it all figured out. God is blessing everything in their lives. But I’m sure that, you know, you realize that that’s not the case. What are some of the themes that you’re seeing as you’re counseling couples that are repeating themselves over and over?
SPEAKER 02 :
I wish, our hope and prayer is that Christian marriages and relationships look totally different from the world. But the reality is they look no different than the world. They have the same exact problems, unfortunately, and they’re not seeking God for the solution. So Cheryl and I have been so saddened by that fact. The world should look at Christian marriages and say, man, I don’t know how you guys do it. You say, well, we know how we do it. We have God, right? But they should look at us and say, man, you guys always seem so happy and this and that, but that’s not what’s happening. So Cheryl and I are committed. In fact, our first book was Divorce-Proof Your Marriage, and we’re committed to helping couples literally divorce-proof their marriage. And our take is that with God, all things are possible, and you can definitely divorce-proof your marriage if you both are following the triangle, right? And at the top of the triangle is God. If you’re both focused on that, then things work a lot better.
SPEAKER 03 :
so when you look at folks that come to you by the time they’ve come to you they’re pretty much in crisis and they’re hoping for tools and a lot of them have children and you know why why is it so important to keep marriages together especially when children are in the picture
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, it’s critical because that’s God’s design and desire for husband and wife to be together. And if you have children, those children are looking up to the father and mother for guidance. Well, these days, if you’re in a broken home or blended family or whatever, there’s no unity at the top. And that causes all kinds of challenges for the youth. We talk about in our workshops and trainings that if you are not loving your children properly in a healthy way, they’re going to look for that love and guide it somewhere else. And they’re going to get it somewhere else. And unfortunately, that’s in the street. It could be a street gang or whatever. But the street gangs, they know how this works. They don’t just go up to a young person and start slapping them around. They go up to a young person and they show them love. They show them caring. They give them things, gifts and whatever to lure them in. That’s how predators do it. That’s how it works. But we can keep our children in our home safe by showing them the love in the home. In other words, don’t hesitate to hug your child. Let them know they’re loved. Let them know you care about them. Let them know that you’re there for them. And it sounds a little cliche, but you need to do that as often as possible because if you don’t, the world will.
SPEAKER 03 :
So Casper, going back to those young people, eventually they’re going to grow up, fall in love, get married. What are some messages that you can give to young people to prepare them for that moment as they’re looking for a spouse? What are some of the things they should look for and think about?
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s a great question. And the world tells us to just to be selfish. In other words, it’s all about you. It’s all about what you want, not about the other person. And what we’re finding is that a lot of people are going into these relationships with a very selfish, very unforgiving attitude to where at the first sign of a fight or first sign of any kind of struggle you know they’re out right because it’s easy to get it’s easy to get into a marriage and it’s easy to get out so right you just go down to the courthouse and 250 dollars later you’re done so there’s there’s not a lot of forgiveness in these relationships there’s not a lot of removal of self When you become married, you literally become one entity. Now it’s two sides or two parts. But you’re still, it’s not me anymore. It’s not I anymore. It’s we. So everything you do has to be from a we perspective. You know, I don’t make any big decisions in my life without my wife knowing about it and us discussing it and coming into agreement upon it, right? I don’t just go out and buy a new car and come home and say, oh, honey, I got a new car today. Like, whoa, what? You know, so young people going into marriages is funny because we we have training on everything. We have training on what is different. You know, we have school. Right. But in school, they don’t teach you how to have a relationship, a healthy, happy marriage or relationship. They don’t teach that. They teach all kinds of crazy things, which is why we have private schools and charter schools and everything else, because the public school system is not teaching really any useful information for our children growing up, and they grew up with a very skewed version of the world and reality, and that’s why we have these challenges.
SPEAKER 03 :
So talk a little bit about what you and Cheryl have created as far as your retreat. So you have your private counseling sessions, you have your retreats, you do workshops, but let’s talk a little bit about each one of those. So let’s start with your retreats. How do you break that down?
SPEAKER 02 :
So we have like a two-day retreat. We can do up to a five-day. We have enough material to do two weeks worth of retreat stuff, but we typically keep it like on a long weekend, Friday night, Saturday, and maybe into Sunday. And we just do our trainings, and then we have fun in between. It’s not just all lecture. There’s breakout sessions. We play some games. We do a lot of things, and we give them free time as well. So for our church, For example, we’re going to Breckenridge in May, I think the middle of May, and there’s gonna be some free time. So there’s time for them to go and enjoy the town, all kinds of things like that. So it’s just a really, it’s a time for couples to kind of reconnect, right? You’re removed from your home environment, you’re in a nice location like Breckenridge, Colorado, and you get a chance to reconnect with each other. Just go for walks and just hang out. in town and go to a nice dinner, things like that. So it’s just an all around great event for couples.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s a great idea. Go up to the mountains and get away and be in some nature. It’s so beautiful up in Breckenridge. If someone wanted to hire you for a counseling session, first share your website and what’s involved in like the intake process.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, so they can go to iamlovebuilders.net. And if it’s a one-on-one coaching session, we can do it online or in person if they’re here in Colorado. If they’re out of state, we typically won’t do a one-on-one out of state because it wouldn’t be cost-effective to do so. Our first conversation is free, right? For the first hour, we don’t charge anything. We’re just trying to figure out what’s going on because each marriage, each relationship is different. So we have to find out what’s really going on. And then we would recommend maybe a two-week, four-week, or eight-week, or 16-week course that we would take them through, depending on how severe the situation is.
SPEAKER 03 :
So for someone who might be looking at different options for counselors, what do you do differently than maybe another counselor?
SPEAKER 02 :
What makes us different? Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
What makes you different? Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. So first of all, we’re not counselors. We don’t have a counseling degree. We have different certificates from different coaching and relationship courses. But we’re not counselors, so we don’t go into the psychology of what’s going on. We just know that when it comes to communication, there’s some tools that we use to help them get through that process. When it comes to finances or forgiveness or whatever, we use a lot of those tools. We also, all of our training is based on the Bible. If they’re not Christians, they’re not really going to be able to relate to what we’re saying. Hopefully, if they’re Christians, they will relate to what we’re saying because everything that we teach is from a biblical lens. You know, so we just like to have fun. In fact, our tagline is, if you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right. So, yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Keeping that fun and that spark. That’s really, really critical, you know, because. Yeah. So you started a TV show. Talk about that. Start from the very beginning to where you are today.
SPEAKER 02 :
When we were leaving politics and transitioning into back to marriage, marriage coaching, relationship coaching, we decided to write a book called Divorce Proofing Your Marriage. And it’s been out for about four, four and a half years, five years now. And in the process of writing that book, our PR person, she recommended this other couple that’s also doing marriage and coaching relationship stuff to write the forward to our book. So we chatted with them for like an hour, two hours through Zoom because they live in Florida and we live here in Colorado. the name of Eric and Shakisha Heilig, and they are also TV producers. And we’re like, okay, we don’t know what that means, but let’s just go ahead and get this forward done for the book. After they wrote the forward, I reached back out to Eric. I said, hey, Eric, tell me about this TV stuff that you guys are doing. And he told me about it. He told me how it worked. And he said, you know, you guys really could have your own TV show. And I’m like, man, that’s not even part of our thought process, but it started to become part of our thought process. And he said, you need to talk to Zandra Evans. Well, Zandra is the founder of Zandra TV out of Dallas, Texas. And so we did. We set up a Zoom call with Zandra. And I always joke around with people. I said, if you don’t want to be on TV, then don’t talk to Zandra. because she will have you on TV for sure. So we talked to Zandra and we’re like, man, it’s a pretty hefty financial commitment to do that, to be on TV. So we prayed about it and fasted. I mean, we were really, not torn, but just like, man, this is a, you know, God, this is a big commitment. I don’t know how we’re gonna do it, but if you want us to do it, we’ll do it, you know, because we’re trying to be obedient. But it’s a, you know, it’s a heavy lift. But anyway, we decided to do it. That was season one. I mean, we’re into season two now. But we went to Dallas and filmed season one. And it was really for, season one was really about couples. And season two, we decided to branch out and also include some singles into the mix. So single two is both couples and singles. And we did a lot of training as well. Cheryl and I did a lot of training on the show. So it’s a nice mixture of interviews, training, talking to couples, talking to singles, and what we call a love talk that was part of the show. So it was pretty cool. yeah it was almost like a game show uh it seemed like break it down for those people who haven’t seen any of your episodes yeah the first season when we love it was literally a game show in fact we had this card game that we created for the show and it’s just like a regular card deck you know ace king queen whatever but in the center of each card There were questions, kind of like a newlywed game, right? So you ask your spouse questions and they have to answer it and hopefully get it right. So we had that as part of the first season. So we had the couples that were interviewing, we had them also play the game show. We did not do the game show for the second season, but the first season we definitely had the game show on there. It was a lot of fun.
SPEAKER 03 :
So with the singles now that you’re talking to, are these folks that are looking for love or have been in relationships and now divorced? Who are you talking to these days?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, so it was singles, and it wasn’t like a dating-type environment. It wasn’t pop-the-balloon kind of deal. It was just us having conversations, and it’s happened to be women this time, all women on our panel. And we just asked them about what’s it like being a single female in a Christian environment. Because, again, this is a Christian network, Christian show. We’re not talking about what the world thinks about dating. We’re talking about… How do you do that as a single Christian woman? So we just had great conversations with the single folks that came on our show.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. So what are you hearing? Because like when you you talk about pop the balloon, I find that hilarious. It seems like we have more Christian women out there than available Christian men. And, you know, we keep teaching these young girls what to look for. And then they say, I can’t find the kind of man that you say I should wait for. Are you seeing that? Are we depleted of strong Christian alpha men?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, the short answer is 100%, which is why I wrote the book Mastering Adam. It’s the biblical Adam, because I’m also looking for some good, solid Christian men. For me, I’m saying we need those men out there. They need to be out there and out front, if you will, leading the charge. And I’d love to see more solid Christian men, single or married, out there leading the charge. So that’s why I wrote the book Mastering Adam, to really get a handle on what does that look like? What does the male man in society look like today, but also a Christian male man? What does that look like? So that’s why I wrote the book Mastering Adam. And then Cheryl followed up a year or two later with Mastering Eve. So those two combined, we have a series now called Mastering Adam and Eve now.
SPEAKER 03 :
I love that, you know, because the world does send these terrible messages to young people. And especially in this age of digital, girls are looking at these airbrushed women and thinking they have to be a certain way. And they’re doing their TikTok videos to get clicks and likes, forgetting really what their purpose is. And this is the problem. especially in public education, where the government-run schools are putting dresses on our boys. And, you know, they’re feminizing our men to where young girls can’t find a plethora of strong, alpha, godly men. I mean, we have legislators down at the Capitol here in Colorado leaving God out of the pledge. I don’t know if you heard that. But when you can’t even find men who love God, it makes it really, really challenging. So I’m sure you’re seeing the same thing. Fortunately, your children and grandchildren are not in the public education system, but you have a grandson, great grandson coming up. What do we do? What’s your message to parents who want to protect their kids and raise up strong, godly Adams and Eve’s?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, it is a challenge, especially today when we typically have a two-income home. Both parents are working or trying to afford living life, right? So it’s hard, but we need to take the time to spend more time in our children’s lives, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, whatever. We need to spend more time in their life and not allow them to just grab a phone and go into their room and close the door, right? We need to be present, right? in those situations. In fact, I would even recommend not even giving them a phone until they’re in their teens. Because if you do, you know, you’re really allowing the world to just control them at a very early age. Unfortunately for me, my great grandson is in North Carolina and I’m here. So as he’s growing up in that situation, I’m hoping and relying on his mother and and grandmother to really keep him on track. And they’re good women, so they should. But again, I’d like to be there for him as the only male in that situation, because I have three daughters and three granddaughters. He’s the only male for me in my line. So yeah, it’s tough.
SPEAKER 03 :
So when you think about tips to give to young married folks, like what are one or two pieces of advice that you would give to very young married couples?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, obviously they need to get our books right. But but beside that, before they get married, they need to go through counseling, some kind of counseling with a really it doesn’t have to be a certified counselor. person or whatever but they need to go and start at the church ask the church if anyone in the church does marriage coaching or counseling and go through that process and also don’t be afraid to ask a lot of questions of your spouse right ask them where they grew up how they grew up make sure you get to meet their parents if their parents are still alive you want to find out as much as you can about them before you say I do. You don’t want to wait till you say I do and you find out, oh my God, their family are a family of drug dealers or whatever, right? You don’t want to be surprised by any of that. Now that doesn’t mean that just because their parents are this way that they’re going to be that way as well. But it gives you an indication on how they’re going to handle conflict, for example. Because some men handle conflict differently than others. And if you look at the man, if he didn’t have a father figure, then he’s going to handle conflicts different than if he had a father figure. So you just really need to be intentional about finding out as much as you can about your future spouse as possible before you say, I do. You also want to seek a good match, right? You don’t want to just, a lot of people sometimes, women specifically, do this a lot, is they’ll see a guy and they’ll say, you know what? He has some challenges, but I can clean him up, right? I can pull his pants up, I can comb his hair, I can get him a job, you know, those kind of things. They want to clean that person up. No, you want to find that man in the process of being the best Adam he could be already. You don’t want to turn it, you can’t turn your man into an Adam anyway. He’s got, it’s between him and God for him to do that. So don’t try to fix him up or clean him up. Wait for him to be that way if you’re going to get together. And then seek a good match. You want to be on the same page. In the Christian realm, we talk about equally yoked. You want to be equally yoked with that person. It doesn’t mean that you guys are 100% lockstep on spirituality, but you need to be close enough to where there’s no conflict. In other words, if you are a Christian and you marry someone that’s Jewish, now you’ve got to try to decide which spiritual walk you’re going to be on, right? So those are things to just be aware of.
SPEAKER 03 :
So, okay, so you’ve written Mastering Adam, you have Mastering Eve. What are the titles of your other books?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, so we have Divorce Proofing Your Marriage, we have Mastering Adam, we have Mastering Eve, and then we have a companion book called Mastering Adam and Eve. So that’s the set. And then we’re working on a new project. We just started working on this about three weeks ago. And this is probably going to be our biggest project because it’s going to give us material for study guides and work guides and stuff for churches. And it’s called the Marriage Constitution. And it’s going to be live the 4th of July of this year. But we’re going to have pre-copies before that. You’ve written books and stuff. You know how this works. You can actually get copies before the launch. But the launch is going to be on the 4th of July, and it coincides with the 250-year anniversary of America. So we have 250 commitments that married couples need to make to have a happy, healthy marriage. And we have five pillars. So we have covenant. We have family. We have marriage. freedom purpose and legacy so those are the five pillars and underneath each pillar are 50 commitments that couples need to make for that well that is beautiful where can people watch your tv show yeah so um we really want people to join us in the love hub in our mvp love hub and they can go to imlovebuilders.net and click on join our free mvp lovehub community now right now it’s free but at the end of the month priscilla and those doors are closing the reason why not the mvp lovehub but the free door is closing we’ve been building it out for the past 60 days and at that time it was free because we just wanted people to come in and click on stuff and And check out the videos and everything else. But there’s a lot of content in there. So it’s going to cost to be in the Love Hub. But right now it’s free. So if your listeners go there right now, they can probably get in before the end of the month and be in there forever. We’re also going to be providing, well we have a Facebook group right now, MVP Network on Facebook. And that is always going to be free, obviously.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, Casper Stockham, thank you so much for sharing your ministry with my listeners. We got to land our plane. We’re out of time. But we’ll have you back on with Miss Cheryl soon. And to my listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. Catch me next time. And remember, educating the mind without the heart is no education. So seek wisdom, cultivate virtue and speak truth.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thanks for tuning in to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. Visit PriscillaRahn.com to connect or learn how you can sponsor future episodes to keep this message of faith, freedom, and education on the air.
