Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1368 ｜ They Told You the Bible Was Banned From Public Schools. They Were Wrong. ｜ Joel Penton

00:00:00.560 LifeWise Academy is a program that allows students in public schools to learn about

00:00:04.980 the Bible in an off-campus setting if they and their parents want them to.

00:00:09.600 While it should be accepted by public schools across the nation, it might not surprise you

00:00:14.040 to hear that some schools that celebrate, say, Pride Month don't think that LifeWise

00:00:20.120 Academy is quite inclusive enough.

00:00:22.760 Joel Pitten, who started LifeWise Academy, is here today to talk about that program and

00:00:27.140 also their battles with some of these progressive, secular public schools.

00:00:31.500 We've got all of this and more on today's episode of Relatable.

00:00:44.020 Joel, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

00:00:46.600 For those who don't know, can you tell us who you are and what you do?

00:00:49.440 Yeah, well, thanks for having me.

00:00:50.860 My name is Joel Penson.

00:00:52.180 I'm the founder and CEO of LifeWise Academy.

00:00:55.140 We provide Bible education for public school students during school hours.

00:01:01.100 I'm also the husband to Bethany, and we have six wonderful children.

00:01:06.540 One of them is off the camera right now.

00:01:09.400 I know, and he's awesome.

00:01:10.940 And y'all have a little baby that y'all welcomed just a few months ago.

00:01:13.900 So congratulations.

00:01:15.140 Thank you.

00:01:15.540 Baby Victor is amazing.

00:01:17.060 Yes, we saw y'all a few months ago, and your wife was very pregnant.

00:01:20.720 She was a trooper at the altitude when we saw y'all last time and I'll have the baby.

00:01:25.920 So sweet.

00:01:26.580 So fun.

00:01:27.280 Okay.

00:01:27.520 Tell me about LifeWise.

00:01:29.120 How in the world is there a Bible education that's allowed in public schools during school hours?

00:01:35.860 Well, in part because it's not technically in public schools.

00:01:39.500 What everybody knows is that decades ago, our nation systematically removed the Bible from the public school day.

00:01:46.280 However, few people are aware that in 1952, the Supreme Court ruled that public school students can in fact receive Bible education, religious instruction, if the program meets three criteria.

00:01:58.340 If it's off school property, privately funded, and students have parental permission, it's called released time religious instruction.

00:02:07.420 That's a mouthful. That's the legal term.

00:02:09.360 But again, very few people know about this.

00:02:11.840 It's been kind of under the radar, underutilized for 70 years.

00:02:16.780 We learned that this was a thing, was possible.

00:02:20.280 And so we created LifeWise Academy to be a plug and play program that any community could

00:02:25.540 implement to, again, teach their local public school students the Bible during school hours.

00:02:30.440 I want to do just like a mini history lesson.

00:02:33.280 Y'all have a documentary that, you know, I feel like I'm someone who kind of knew the

00:02:37.340 history of public education, but I learned some things specifically about a woman named Madeline

00:02:42.900 O'Hare. Was it O'Hare or O'Hara? O'Hare. Yeah. Madeline Marie O'Hare. Yeah. And I didn't know

00:02:48.680 about her that she was kind of one of the people in the 20th century that was kind of pushing for

00:02:54.080 this idea of a neutral worldview of public schools, that religion has nothing to do with

00:02:59.780 what we learn or how we conduct business. You can kind of have your little faith over there,

00:03:05.060 but don't bring it into the public realm at all. And her worldview really had an impact on how

00:03:11.000 public school was shaped in the last half of the 20th century, right?

00:03:14.920 Yeah, it really did, which is sad because, as I'm sure many of your listeners know,

00:03:20.680 our public education system was not only founded with the Bible as central to it,

00:03:25.560 the Bible was the motivating factor for education even existing. I mean,

00:03:31.240 The first law around education in our nation is the old Deluder Act in Massachusetts that explicitly said that communities need to teach their children to read so that they can read the Bible.

00:03:45.620 So the reason for education was to get people to the Bible.

00:03:49.220 And so it's very sad that the Bible was eventually taken out.

00:03:52.420 And as you mentioned, Madeleine Marie O'Hare was a central figure in this through a lawsuit in the mid-1900s that basically saying, yeah, we need to completely remove Bible reading.

00:04:04.700 We need to remove prayer from schools.

00:04:07.480 And it was much of that that led to where we are today. 0.97

00:04:10.820 And let's talk about that foundational assumption there.

00:04:14.360 I hear this a lot when it comes to politics.

00:04:16.840 Don't bring your faith into politics.

00:04:18.800 It's the same kind of thing.

00:04:19.980 Don't bring your faith into a school. 0.98

00:04:21.420 And the idea is if we remove Christianity, that things will become neutral, that we'll have a neutral place from which we can teach students. 0.89

00:04:29.780 But that's just not true.

00:04:31.800 We can't really have a neutral worldview, right?

00:04:34.820 No, you can't.

00:04:36.060 Everybody has a worldview.

00:04:38.000 And, you know, George Barna talks about worldview as kind of the operating system.

00:04:43.400 We'd like to think that, you know, there's just all these different subjects.

00:04:47.100 There's history and there's science and there's math and there's all these different things.

00:04:50.900 And, you know, religion is one and you could you could just remove it and just not talk about it.

00:04:55.540 But the truth is a worldview isn't just like one of the many.

00:04:59.840 It is the central thing.

00:05:01.200 It's like the hub of a wheel that gives order to everything else.

00:05:04.400 It's the operating system that makes sense of all the different softwares that you could say.

00:05:09.360 You could say history is a software and science is software, but the worldview makes sense of all of that.

00:05:14.020 And so to say that you could just be neutral on that or you could just remove that really doesn't make sense.

00:05:19.060 Yeah, there are a lot of assumptions when it comes to evolution, which of course is taught that we evolved from monkeys. That's not a neutral position. That says something not only about who we are physically, but also what our worth is.

00:05:33.440 I mean, if we really came from nothing, if we all exist because of chance and then evolved

00:05:38.240 from animals, well, that's a very different presupposition that that's going to offer

00:05:43.000 someone about humanity than the idea that we were created by this God who cares for

00:05:48.740 us, made us a particular way for a purpose, and who loves us.

00:05:53.240 I mean, neither of those are neutral, but they're going to lead to different outcomes.

00:05:57.360 Yeah, you're right.

00:05:58.620 They're not neutral.

00:05:59.160 And what we've tried to do in our secular education system is just to remain silent on some of the key things about God, about eternity.

00:06:09.860 However, silence isn't neutral either.

00:06:13.080 To send a child, and there are many parents who feel this way.

00:06:16.200 I mean, LifeWise exists because parents want this.

00:06:18.360 Parents want Bible education for their students.

00:06:20.780 And many parents recognize to send their child to school for 25, 30 hours a week where they're

00:06:28.180 learning so many things and there's never a mention of God. There's never a mention of the

00:06:33.100 Bible. That's not sending a neutral message to their students, right? It's sending a very clear

00:06:37.680 message, which is that those things aren't important, that potentially they're not real

00:06:42.540 is the message. And at minimum, they're not important. Yeah. Tell me about starting LifeWise.

00:06:48.560 what inspired you in the first place? Yeah, good question. I never intended to,

00:06:53.380 that's for sure. Well, I came to faith when I was in high school, a small town, Northwest Ohio.

00:07:01.800 The Lord made me to be an evangelist. I just wanted to share the gospel. After hearing the

00:07:05.240 gospel and being changed, I wanted to share it with anyone who would listen. And so I even found

00:07:10.500 myself preaching in my home church to fill in for my pastor and preaching in churches around town.

00:07:15.560 that I continued when I was in college, I played football at the Ohio State University. That's how

00:07:21.340 you pronounce it, the Ohio State University. And that gave me a platform to speak. And so I actually

00:07:26.800 had a career in full-time speaking, doing evangelism around the country and youth events.

00:07:32.820 And that's what my intention was for my life. I was going to speak. I founded a speaker's bureau,

00:07:38.320 but the Lord rocked my world when in 2018, I was in my hometown and a guy named Tim

00:07:44.400 ran into me and said, hey, Joel, we'd like your help with our release time program in town.

00:07:51.320 And I said, Tim, what's that? Is that like a prison ministry? Like what's release time? And

00:07:55.620 he said, no, it's this program where we pull kids out of the public school during the school day,

00:07:59.820 we teach them a Bible lesson, and then we take them back to school. And I said, I think that

00:08:05.200 sounds illegal. I don't think you're allowed to do that. And he said, no, it's real. And he told

00:08:09.260 me about the Supreme Court ruling. And he went on to explain that their goal was to have 30%

00:08:14.260 of the kids enroll. They started this program in 2012. By the third year, they had 95% of the entire

00:08:20.400 public elementary school enrolled in this program. And they started to, for one, see all the impact

00:08:28.600 of the word of God in the lives of students. So they also started to ask, why doesn't every

00:08:33.160 community have a program like this? If a community can support a McDonald's and a library and a YMCA,

00:08:39.120 you would think the Christians in every community would do this.

00:08:41.760 I tell people the day Tim asked me that question is the day I gave up sleeping because that question

00:08:48.620 haunted me. And I thought, man, unless I'm missing something, unless I'm confused,

00:08:54.300 this might be the single greatest missed opportunity of the American church to reach

00:08:59.380 the next generation. And I just started wondering, has anybody really tried to put this in a box?

00:09:05.120 Has anybody tried to make a release time program that's repeatable, scalable, kind of plug and play?

00:09:11.340 because I recognize the barriers to entry are very high.

00:09:14.060 You got to basically start a private school.

00:09:16.180 You got to find a facility and transportation and all the details.

00:09:20.060 And so I started doing some research and found that, no, it didn't look like anybody had done that.

00:09:23.860 And so I actually went to the group in my hometown and I said, here's what I think you need to do.

00:09:29.580 You asked for my advice. Here it is.

00:09:31.280 Take everything you're doing, but change it all.

00:09:33.680 Make it repeatable, make it scalable.

00:09:35.020 And I think it'll spread.

00:09:36.380 And they said, we don't want to do that, but we think you should do that.

00:09:39.460 And so in 2018, I was kind of voluntold to get involved and that's kind of how I got started.

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00:10:57.580 what was it like when you took those very first steps to try to scale this

00:11:07.380 well what was nice about that was we knew the assignment we knew that this concept already

00:11:16.760 works because it had been proven in my hometown so the nature of the task was scale and so we knew

00:11:23.560 the first step was, well, after getting our fundamental, what we're committed to of gospel

00:11:29.700 centrality, excellence, and being community driven, making everything repeatable. And so

00:11:36.500 we started with a proof of concept. We launched two pilot programs in Ohio. We had no idea what

00:11:41.980 we were doing, you know, just were able to address each thing as it arose. And, but with everything,

00:11:48.180 every issue that came up, we knew the solution we develop needs to not just work for this community.

00:11:54.220 It needs to work times a thousand. And so we got started with that in 2019. And

00:11:58.480 I've just continued that until now when we're really serving schools all across the country.

00:12:03.260 So tell me exactly how it works.

00:12:05.900 How it works is, well, on the most basic level, you know, the logistics are that

00:12:11.900 a student, a parent will sign up their student in the same way a child-

00:12:16.700 advertise. So like, do y'all go to a school district and you start advertising? Do you pick

00:12:22.460 like local parents to help you or how does that work? Yeah. So how one gets started, we have a

00:12:27.020 10 step process to start a local LifeWise program and we're committed to being completely community

00:12:32.640 driven. And so the first step is through a signature campaign. You can go to our website

00:12:36.580 and you can look up any school district in the nation. And we say, show us 50 signatures. It's

00:12:42.940 like a petition, communities petition us to engage. And so first the community collects 50 signatures.

00:12:49.780 And then once we see that, we say, okay, next step, form a steering committee, form a planning

00:12:54.280 team. And now we'll communicate with you and walk you through the process of planning. And then

00:12:58.860 we have several steps along the way, but we meet with the school, we present the plan.

00:13:03.380 90% of the time, the school agrees to the plan. And then we walk them through a T minus plan of

00:13:08.300 hiring a director, finding teachers, a board, and then ultimately signing up students to

00:13:13.540 participate. And then you pick the kids up in a bus. That's right. And you take them to

00:13:19.780 some off-campus site. That's exactly right. So we tend to serve elementary schools. We do have

00:13:26.600 middle and high schools. We start at elementary and a student will sign up. The parent will fill

00:13:32.140 out a permission slip. And then once a week, each student can attend. So in the same way,

00:13:36.380 a kid gets art class once a week, music class once a week, they get LifeWise once a week. And yeah,

00:13:41.260 we pull up usually in a big red LifeWise bus, a class or two gets on, takes them down the road,

00:13:48.180 usually to a church. Sometimes it's next door and they can walk. They get a Bible lesson,

00:13:52.180 they come back and we pick up another group. Just as an illustration, our largest program

00:13:56.760 is a town in Northwest Ohio. And the elementary school has a thousand students in the school,

00:14:03.480 900 of them are in LifeWise.

00:14:06.040 And so five times a day, five days a week,

00:14:09.740 a big bus pulls up and two classrooms at a time get on,

00:14:14.140 go down the road to the YMCA.

00:14:15.740 That's where they hold their classes.

00:14:16.980 They go into two classrooms, get their lesson, get back on.

00:14:19.520 It comes back and it just rolls.

00:14:21.920 It takes an army of volunteers, but the community loves it.

00:14:25.420 I mean, almost all their children are being taught the Bible.

00:14:28.540 Tell me an example of the kind of Bible lesson they're learning.

00:14:31.860 So we partner with an amazing curriculum called the gospel project. It's a life way publication

00:14:38.480 and it takes students through the entire Bible over five years. And so we tend to serve grades

00:14:45.040 one through five. So a child will start Genesis one in first grade. And by the time they finish

00:14:51.120 elementary school in fifth grade, they've been through the entire Bible. And every lesson we

00:14:56.020 talk about a threefold kind of framework and that's head, heart, hands. We start with head.

00:15:00.500 What's the information on the page? What does the story say? And then heart, we take a step back

00:15:06.240 to say, how does this Bible story fit into the bigger picture story of the gospel message? And

00:15:12.500 so we're talking about redemptive history. We're pointing about Jesus as the true hero of the

00:15:17.980 grander story every single week. And then further hands, we discuss if we rightly understand

00:15:24.100 this passage, if we rightly understand the gospel, how does it transform our character?

00:15:28.520 How does it transform what we do?

00:15:31.120 Have you ever had a child come through this program that you know of whose parents were

00:15:35.000 not Christian?

00:15:36.160 Maybe they just signed the permission slip because their child wanted to, because his

00:15:40.520 friends were going, but they really didn't have a Christian background either.

00:15:46.520 We see that very regularly and perhaps more often than not.

00:15:50.840 It's possible more than what you just described describes more than half of our students.

00:15:57.700 And we hear it so, so often, you know, the stories and they flood in, they truly flood in because now we just eclipsed a thousand schools served over 60,000 students enrolled. And the stories of the child who went home and said, hey, my friend Johnny gets on a big red bus every week. I want to go on the big red bus, you know, and then the children who come home and say, hey, I'm at LifeWise and I'm learning about this.

00:16:25.620 why don't we go to church? Why don't we learn more? And we just see story after story of

00:16:31.300 families getting reconnected to church. In fact, it's in the documentary, a family that

00:16:37.780 the daughter came home and she said, why aren't we talking about God here? And so they started

00:16:42.820 going to church. And by the end of the story, there's a family of nine that have all been

00:16:47.540 baptized and they're members of the church. And so it's very exciting to see it's normalizing

00:16:54.780 faith and faith conversations in schools and communities where it had been marginalized to

00:17:02.100 a great degree. You know, you have, you see kids carrying their Bible around because it's one of

00:17:06.760 their textbooks. You see those kinds of conversations and you do see families re-engaging.

00:17:11.020 Yeah. I heard a story in the documentary that just really touched me about this boy

00:17:15.880 who just sat down with one of the volunteers, one of the people working at LifeWise Academy

00:17:21.820 me and just kind of broke down and talked about the hard things he had going on at home. He didn't

00:17:26.380 think he was going to see his dad again because he was in prison. Just a very unstable home life.

00:17:31.060 And it sounds like this is kind of a refuge for a lot of kids too. This is not just a place for,

00:17:36.280 you know, like all of the church kids whose families already have it together. This is also

00:17:40.700 a place for people who maybe don't know God, they haven't heard the gospel, and who really just need

00:17:46.140 a place of stability. It's definitely that. And that's one of the reasons we,

00:17:54.300 you know, public educators, when we approach them, sometimes, understandably, there's some

00:17:58.540 hesitancy when we come and say, hey, we want to take your kids down the road to the church and

00:18:03.820 bring them back. There's a hesitancy. But once programs are up and running, you regularly see

00:18:09.500 educators understanding the value and being so thankful and so grateful. And it's in part because

00:18:14.860 of what you're saying, that this is a way for the community to really engage kids. And a lot of kids

00:18:20.560 who are genuinely hurting kids who maybe don't have the best home life kids who they need more

00:18:27.340 and educators are being asked to do more and more these days, you know, and, um, if you get them

00:18:34.200 alone, uh, you may hear a public educator, like a superintendent or principal say something like,

00:18:39.360 you know, these days it's not enough to educate kids. We have to be their parents as well.

00:18:43.580 And this is a practical way to engage the church community to come alongside and provide some of those intangible supports.

00:18:52.760 Yeah. And yeah, we see like the story you mentioned just today while I'm sitting in the lobby, I got a message of a story because they come in every day of a girl who tragically her mother just passed away, a LifeWise student and about a conversation she was having with the LifeWise director saying how she is going to, she can tell her father's hurting and she's going to teach her father to pray as she was taught to pray in LifeWise because she thinks it will comfort him.

00:19:21.020 And yeah, that type of engagement, we just, we weren't seeing before as part of the school day.

00:19:27.660 And now we are.

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00:20:22.300 That's goodranchers.com, code Allie. I would love to, I know this kind of puts you on the spot,

00:20:31.480 but just to hear a couple more stories of testimonies of kids that stick out in your

00:20:35.620 mind. I'm sure you have a ton in your head, but are there any that stick out as just you look

00:20:41.680 back and you're like, I need that reminder from God that what we are doing really matters and

00:20:47.920 that lives really change because of LifeWise. Yeah. Well, how much time do we have? Plenty.

00:20:54.380 In fact, we just produced a LifeWise Stories book that because our directors, once a month,

00:21:00.900 they fill out a form that just gives us some data, enrollment, different things. And one of

00:21:04.960 the things they indicate is if there are any stories that they've seen lately. And so every

00:21:10.880 month they come in. And as a staff at our headquarters, we read them all. We take turns

00:21:17.240 reading them. Um, and we pray for the prayer request and the stuff that comes in is, is

00:21:24.060 amazing. Um, even the little it's, it's the little ones, the simple ones that get me like

00:21:31.440 the girl who came into life wise. And when she was handed a Bible and she opened it,

00:21:36.900 she said, wow, the pages are so thin

00:21:38.740 because she'd never held a Bible before

00:21:41.220 and she had never seen Bible paper

00:21:43.060 that we're so used to.

00:21:47.280 Regular, the stories of kids that walk in and say,

00:21:49.880 I've never been in a church before.

00:21:51.300 This is what a church looks like.

00:21:52.480 The kid, I just heard one of the kids

00:21:53.720 who had never seen stained glass windows from the inside

00:21:56.960 and he was saying how beautiful they were.

00:21:59.500 Like he had only seen the outside.

00:22:02.620 But then of course, the stories of lives changed.

00:22:06.740 I was preaching in a church East of Columbus and a family came up to me and

00:22:11.960 they said, Hey, it's so nice to meet you. We're here because of you.

00:22:16.080 And I, and I thought they meant they came to hear me.

00:22:19.100 Yeah. And they went on to say, yeah,

00:22:21.620 our daughter came home and told us about how she was so engaged with life wise

00:22:26.320 and she wanted to get connected to a church. And so we,

00:22:28.280 we started bringing her here and now we've all been baptized.

00:22:31.240 We're members of the church and we just wanted you to know that that's why

00:22:34.700 we're here and it's just story after story one more yeah um this is an early one a little boy

00:22:41.880 who interestingly named christian who his mother tells the story that she got the a postcard about

00:22:48.500 life wise and she put it so in such a way that i think a lot of parents would say that she said

00:22:54.280 oh bible education bible-based character education this couldn't hurt and i think that's where a lot

00:23:01.280 of parents are. They're like, oh, Bible. Yeah, let's broaden their horizons. And same type of

00:23:07.300 story. Christian starts coming, he falls in love with Jesus. He's asking his parents about it. He's

00:23:12.100 bringing the Bible back and they're doing Bible stories at home. Family gets connected to a church

00:23:16.720 and now they're members of the church. The mother is in a Bible study with the LifeWise teacher and

00:23:23.720 they're financially contributing to the local LifeWise program to help it keep going. It's

00:23:28.540 just really exciting. That is awesome. You said about 90% of schools work with y'all when you

00:23:34.180 reach out. What about that 10%? What happens there? Yeah, more than 10% of the time there's

00:23:42.280 hesitancy, right? So there's maybe extended conversations, but there are some, it depends

00:23:47.320 on the state whether or not the school can decline. So we talk about the state laws as

00:23:55.180 may or shall. And some states have no law at all. Some states have a law that says schools may

00:24:01.180 release students, but then there's now about 20 states. We've seen an uptick. We've been a part

00:24:06.700 of that, of laws that say, if a student requests this, a parent, then you shall release them.

00:24:14.320 Those that there's not, I mean, it's rare, but a lot of times there's just hesitancy among the

00:24:22.340 superintendent, you know, they'll say there's not enough, maybe there's not enough time in the day

00:24:26.520 or they'll just maybe not be responsive for one reason or another. In those situations,

00:24:32.780 we encourage the community to continue to pray, continue to grow the grassroots effort. And we

00:24:37.860 trust that eventually that no will become a yes. Yeah. Tell me about the pushback you have gotten

00:24:44.320 because you do have some opposition. We do. We do. There are those who don't.

00:24:49.940 Where's that coming from?

00:24:52.240 Yeah, it's a little bit all over.

00:24:55.080 I mean, it's a very vocal minority, right?

00:24:58.720 I talk about the 10-10-80 principle or maybe 10-80-10.

00:25:02.960 And that's, I think 10% of the people out there are so in love with what we're doing

00:25:08.000 that they will give money to it.

00:25:09.840 They will volunteer.

00:25:10.820 They will get it going.

00:25:12.800 And there's 10% of people that for whatever reason, they do not like the Bible.

00:25:17.100 They do not, they see it as regressive or something and they, they don't want anybody

00:25:23.680 to have access.

00:25:24.200 And even though it's optional and they don't have to sign their own child up, they don't

00:25:27.760 like that anyone can sign their child up.

00:25:30.460 And so they go on attack and they go to school board meetings and say things and they post

00:25:35.780 things online.

00:25:36.320 At the end of the day, a lot of those efforts actually help us.

00:25:39.420 They have, but, but, but it's out there.

00:25:42.940 With that said, 80%, I think, are in the middle,

00:25:46.660 and they're just living their lives, right?

00:25:48.300 80% of people are just trying to get their kids to school

00:25:50.780 and to soccer and all of that.

00:25:53.260 But the opposition we see, yeah, we've had a program

00:25:57.180 that was shut down, that the school board kicked us out

00:26:00.180 after we'd been there two years.

00:26:01.700 The beautiful part of that is that in many ways

00:26:04.040 that sparked the statewide legislation

00:26:06.600 in the state of Ohio changing.

00:26:08.600 And so that one program, us getting kicked out overnight,

00:26:12.220 it opened up about 80 other school districts because the law changed. We were experiencing

00:26:19.480 some challenges right now, just outside Seattle with a lawsuit, but I don't know where we figure

00:26:25.520 this is part of it. Yeah. I was actually about to ask about that. So that's Everett public schools

00:26:30.740 in Washington state. You guys are suing the school district because they're not allowing

00:26:36.400 participation despite parents wanting this and the superintendent actually says i do hold animus

00:26:42.980 here's thought seven i want to make it very extremely abundantly clear that yes i do in

00:26:49.900 fact hold animus towards lifewise academy it just became really concerning for me as a parent then

00:26:56.460 um when my students needed to seal up their bibles and hide them at school

00:27:02.260 okay so that's troubling obviously this is not the case everywhere but you've got a very secular

00:27:10.780 progressive state in washington you've got the superintendent outright saying no i i actually

00:27:16.480 don't like them yeah well this what's kind of nice is this exception kind of proves the rule

00:27:23.720 in that we so rarely see this right we're going to be serving 1100 schools this school year and

00:27:28.920 this, we have one instance of, to this extreme, but yeah, we have a situation that unfortunately

00:27:34.340 a program that's been up and running. We had dozens of families involved, lots of students

00:27:39.640 going very well. And the school board, so that in fact was a school board member and

00:27:45.420 they, you know, have some policies now that are frankly, they're quite transparently discriminatory

00:27:51.860 and aimed at LifeWise Academy.

00:27:54.480 So whereas every other club or class that I've ever heard of,

00:28:01.840 you sign your kid up at the beginning of the school year,

00:28:03.980 you fill out a permission slip.

00:28:05.300 That's what happens everywhere we serve.

00:28:07.760 Well, they changed it so that the parents have to walk in a permission slip

00:28:12.060 each and every week.

00:28:13.140 Yeah.

00:28:14.300 So that, in any case, that was-

00:28:16.760 They're just trying to create more obstacles to make it more difficult.

00:28:19.420 That's right.

00:28:19.880 Yeah, put obstacles in the way.

00:28:20.840 And then the one that is most dystopian is if we give a child a worksheet, maybe they colored a picture of Moses or something, or a Bible, when they go back to school, it has to be in a sealed envelope, which again, we're not aware of any policy like this for other organizations.

00:28:40.280 And so we did not seek to make a big thing of this.

00:28:43.940 There is a lawsuit now, but we tried to handle this very quietly.

00:28:46.460 So first we just reached out to the school and said, hey guys, you can't, you can't really do this. This is discriminatory. They weren't responsive. And so then we got our friends at First Liberty involved and they sent a letter. Again, we wanted to be quiet to say, hey, we don't want you to have egg on your face. Just, just take it back to the fair policies.

00:29:06.820 and the response was what you just heard the school board member what's what's wild is that

00:29:13.440 the the letter we sent said we believe you hold animus which you know they're supposed to say no

00:29:20.080 we don't and and then he said at a school board meeting into a microphone that he does hold

00:29:24.240 animus which you know our first liberty really appreciated that yeah thank you for just going

00:29:29.300 ahead and saying that and making our case for us because of course that is the illegal discriminatory

00:29:34.100 part of it is that you're not supposed to be showing preferential treatment or animus, right?

00:29:38.940 You're supposed to be impartial. That's exactly right. And so we, what do we want? We just want

00:29:43.780 the policies to go back to normal. You know, we're just looking to be treated as anybody else would.

00:29:48.380 Yeah. And I think people forget, or maybe they just ignore the part that this is completely

00:29:53.800 voluntary, that the parents get to decide if they want their child to go to this or not. And I

00:30:00.440 really feel like someone like that, as rare as that might be, but he's showing his hand that he

00:30:05.300 actually thinks that he knows better than the parents. That's exactly right. And back to your

00:30:10.760 point about neutrality, we've often said that that's really all we're, genuine neutrality is

00:30:16.540 what we're looking for. To require it, you could say, to require Bible education, you could say

00:30:23.760 it's not neutral, but to prohibit it is also not neutral. All we're asking for is that parents

00:30:30.160 would have the option to enroll their own child.

00:30:33.320 Yeah.

00:30:33.780 So how can people pray with y'all through conflict like that?

00:30:38.280 Even if it is only 10% of people, it's still conflict.

00:30:42.020 It's still opposition.

00:30:43.760 And ultimately that is time that kids are not learning from the Bible.

00:30:50.860 And so how can we help you guys through that best?

00:30:55.640 Well, you said it, prayer.

00:30:57.900 we would love for others to join us in prayer to link arms with us um especially for our local

00:31:04.620 leaders um you saw the woman um we have a couple ladies in everett washington sarah and darcy who

00:31:11.640 are amazing yeah i mean they are just the best the sweetest the most dynamic um you know cream

00:31:19.360 of the crop and but they're in the midst of it fighting through this you know they got kids who

00:31:23.320 are signed up that now can't go, or there's all these obstacles in the way. And so that they would

00:31:28.120 have perseverance, that they would be encouraged. Pray the same for our team, but also pray for

00:31:34.340 those that are opposing us, right? As a team, we always say, the first thing we want to do is pray.

00:31:42.380 Next thing we want to do is we want to look in the mirror. If there's opposition, well, yeah,

00:31:45.880 are we doing something wrong? Are we not saying things the right way? Could we be more winsome?

00:31:49.500 So, um, you could pray that, that we would be reflective and, you know, doing everything we can. And then ultimately we want to pray for our opponents. Like we, this is a spiritual battle. We're not fighting with people. Um, right. You know, this is, um, about truth. And so that we would pray for the hearts of those who, for whatever reason, um, wants to stand in the way of kids having access to the Bible.

00:32:19.500 A very fitting sponsor for today is Freedom Project Academy.

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00:33:29.860 What do you want people who are outside of your organization, not in public schools?

00:33:34.540 Someone like me. I went to a Christian private school, very thankful for that.

00:33:37.860 my children are going to get a Christian education. And so there's a lot that we only

00:33:44.380 hear secondhand about what's going on in public schools. What do you maybe wish someone like me

00:33:50.200 could know or see about these kids and what they're learning from y'all and just the experiences

00:33:56.520 they're having? Well, I think someone like you, Allie, that I would like you to know is that 90%

00:34:02.640 of kids attend public school. And so I think I would just want to emphasize the great need,

00:34:09.820 the great opportunity. So 90% of kids go to public schools, less than 20 regularly attend church.

00:34:15.500 And so there is an ocean of students in our nation. In fact, there are 50 million public

00:34:21.820 school students in our nation. Those are our future doctors. Those are our future leaders.

00:34:28.960 Those are our future community members. And I would ask, can you think of anything more important than reaching them with the word of God?

00:34:40.540 And so I would just want the message to get to any of my Christian brothers and sisters and say, there are many important things that we need to do.

00:34:48.920 right? And I would say this is up there among them. And to say that it really is a great

00:34:56.360 opportunity in that the Word of God is doing what the Word of God always does. As students

00:35:01.560 are being exposed to it, it's going to work in their hearts. Kids are coming to faith.

00:35:07.340 One of the fun things is that Christian kids are being emboldened, right? They don't feel like 0.99

00:35:13.700 they have to be on the sidelines anymore, right? They're bringing their Bible, they're engaging

00:35:17.620 their friends. And so, yeah, I would just want to put out the invitation to link arms.

00:35:21.880 Yeah. What are all of the ways that we can get involved and help, even if we don't have kids

00:35:28.160 in the public school district ourselves? Yeah. And I'm a homeschool dad, by the way. I'd say

00:35:34.500 that there's a lot of people, private school, homeschool families that are behind this effort,

00:35:40.940 because it's a lot of the same worldview issues, worldview convictions that lead one to

00:35:47.460 homeschool or private school that lead one to get involved in this movement. And so the ways to get

00:35:51.740 involved, the best way is locally, right? I would invite everybody, just find out the status of your

00:35:56.360 local school district. We now have at least one signature from more than three quarters of all

00:36:03.100 school districts across the nation. And many are gaining, you know, that 50 signatures and beyond.

00:36:08.980 So if you can get to our website, find out the status of your local school district. Maybe it's

00:36:12.780 just signing your name. Maybe it's spreading the word. Maybe it's sign up to volunteer. And if you

00:36:16.620 are a public school family, it's enrolling your student. Yeah. That's awesome. Okay. Tell me

00:36:21.740 one, your biggest prayer request for everyone who is listening or watching to pray right now.

00:36:28.040 Oh boy. I have to narrow it to one. Um, well, if you, if you have to expand it to two or three,

00:36:36.160 it's okay. You can break the rules. Well, I'll, I mean, I'll share the one that I just shared at

00:36:40.280 at an event we had over the weekend and that, um, is that we, that we would not drift that we,

00:36:48.560 as a ministry, we are committed to the gospel message of Jesus. And we do not want to drift

00:36:57.100 from that. And we live in a world where there's always pulse, right? And, and we also live in a

00:37:02.520 world where that is the rule is that gospel centered ministries do end up drifting so that

00:37:08.500 That we would not drift, and even more so that we would not drift from the Lord himself.

00:37:13.080 That as we do grow exponentially, and now we're in 30 some states and however many schools,

00:37:19.620 that we would be close to the Lord and close to his heart and that we would be, as Moses said to the Lord,

00:37:29.460 if you don't go with us, we don't want to go.

00:37:32.880 Don't take us.

00:37:33.680 Don't send us.

00:37:35.200 We would say the same thing.

00:37:36.420 We want to be with the Lord in all this.

00:37:38.140 Amen.

00:37:38.500 And, okay, where can people go to learn more, sign up, volunteer?

00:37:42.740 Yeah, so you can go to lifewise.org, L-I-F-E-W-I-S-E.org.

00:37:46.620 You can click find your school, find any school.

00:37:48.500 You can learn more a few different ways.

00:37:50.640 But one is you mentioned the documentary.

00:37:52.640 It's now on Angel.

00:37:53.860 So it had a-

00:37:54.580 It's really, really good.

00:37:55.720 Thank you.

00:37:56.380 Emmy-winning filmmaker.

00:37:58.780 Yeah.

00:37:59.620 And so it's on Angel.

00:38:01.040 It's even, you're able to share it with those who don't even have Angel accounts.

00:38:05.180 It's one of those pieces.

00:38:07.400 And it's not only just about life-wise, although that is an awesome part of it, but you'll

00:38:12.600 learn a lot just about our public education system, how this is impacted, how people think

00:38:17.580 about education, but also how we think about worldview.

00:38:20.800 And you can see the evidence of that literally in every single sphere of society, this mistaken

00:38:26.380 belief that Christianity can be compartmentalized into this tiny corner of your life.

00:38:31.520 So just in general, whether you have kids or not, this is a documentary that you want

00:38:36.160 to watch. Yeah. That's maybe the best way to learn more, right? And great experts interviewed

00:38:41.440 in that, George Barna and Kelly Shackelford. Elisa Childers, yeah. Many, many others. So

00:38:46.560 that's on Angel, our website. I've got a book out, but... Yeah, no, tell us about your book.

00:38:51.860 Well, it's called During School Hours, and it's, I mean, it's meant to clarify this opportunity

00:38:56.540 and to amplify it. And it, in some ways, is like the documentary. It tells the story of

00:39:01.280 how the Bible was removed from public education really lays out the, why it's important that we

00:39:06.480 reinstall Bible education for public school students and exactly how to do it. And so it

00:39:10.880 goes into the LifeWise story. If you, if you, if you jump on the website and you like what you see,

00:39:16.240 if you watch the documentary, you like what you see and you want to go deeper,

00:39:19.540 check out the book, but you can get the basics from, from those other things.

00:39:22.740 No, no, no. Don't undersell it.

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00:40:31.320 I think a deep dive into this is so important and to really know the heart behind the organization,

00:40:37.860 because if you're going to invest your time and your prayer and your money into an organization,

00:40:41.540 you want to know the people behind it and the heart behind it and the impact that it's having.

00:40:45.960 and you've got like testimonies in the books.

00:40:48.320 You've got stories of how people's lives

00:40:50.380 were actually changed, not by you,

00:40:52.880 but by the gospel, by the word of God.

00:40:55.920 And it's really hard to think of

00:40:58.100 a much more important mission field

00:41:01.460 than like you said, the future generations 1.00

00:41:03.680 who are like biblically illiterate. 0.98

00:41:07.520 I mean, our adult generations are biblically illiterate.

00:41:10.780 That's something that George Barna talked about

00:41:12.360 in the documentary.

00:41:13.180 and this is trying to remedy that.

00:41:16.540 Yeah, yeah, it really is.

00:41:18.420 So yeah, those are all ways to learn more.

00:41:20.380 I mean, to your point, one more story if I can.

00:41:23.660 I was visiting one of our programs around Christmas time

00:41:26.320 and the teacher said,

00:41:28.120 we're gonna learn about,

00:41:29.240 we're gonna learn the Christmas story today

00:41:30.980 and we're gonna learn about Jesus' earthly family.

00:41:33.800 Who can tell me the names of Jesus' parents?

00:41:38.020 And this was the first year the program was up and running

00:41:40.180 and in a room of 20 some kids, not a single hand,

00:41:42.740 A single kid knew Joseph and Mary were the names of Jesus' parents.

00:41:48.540 And so to your point, the opportunity is so great.

00:41:52.820 Yeah.

00:41:53.260 And just, I know now we're getting into kind of like another tangent just for a second,

00:41:57.380 but even from a non-spiritual perspective, to understand the classics, to understand

00:42:03.660 so much of history, you have to understand Christianity because it's been the central

00:42:09.020 part of Western civilization.

00:42:10.360 So again, that's not a neutral position to say, I'm not going to tell kids about this

00:42:16.160 very important part of American identity.

00:42:18.220 No, the most influential book ever written, certainly the most influential book in the 0.89

00:42:24.800 Western world, to ignore it, it's silly.

00:42:28.440 It's not neutral. 0.99

00:42:28.820 It's absolutely silly. 0.96

00:42:29.600 And not only that, and again, not to tangent, but how kids with Bible education fare better 0.90

00:42:36.420 mental health, academics, you know, behavior, drug and, you know, the resistance to drug and

00:42:42.560 alcohol, all of those things, there's every possible reason, even if you were to reject

00:42:48.320 the spiritual claims, there's still every imaginable reason to get kids into the Bible.

00:42:53.940 Wait, can you tell us more about that, about the statistics, what the statistics show about Bible

00:42:58.860 education and the mental health of kids? Yeah, well, I mean, and there's some pretty

00:43:03.080 new stuff out from George Barna and Arizona Christian University that shows the number,

00:43:10.180 well, for one, Gen Z numbers of mental health are off the charts in terms of mental health problems.

00:43:18.140 And the strong inverse correlation between those with a biblical worldview and those with mental

00:43:25.720 health issues is very compelling. And this supports what's been decades of research that

00:43:33.060 shows, yeah, when, when kids, when anybody of any age has Bible in their life, has Christianity in

00:43:38.720 their life, they fare better in all these ways. And now we have third party independent studies

00:43:42.940 that show just with our program life-wise, you see when a school implements it, you see attendance

00:43:47.740 increasing significantly. In fact, there's a net increase in class time. So even though kids are

00:43:52.880 being pulled out of school, they're in school more because they're showing up for school that

00:43:57.260 much more and behavioral problems dropping in a major way. So again, it's just, unless you have

00:44:08.160 some sort of almost dogmatic opposition to scripture, there's every reason to support

00:44:18.820 something like this. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense when you're in line with your creator,

00:44:22.640 other things start falling into place too.

00:44:25.000 Of course.

00:44:25.500 Yeah, amen.

00:44:26.020 Well, I'm so thankful for what y'all do

00:44:27.900 and that you said yes to being voluntold what to do

00:44:32.080 to lead this organization and to bring it to scale.

00:44:34.620 And of course we know that's just the Holy Spirit.

00:44:37.020 It's what God does and we just get to be vessels of that.

00:44:40.560 But what a privilege and what an honor.

00:44:42.700 And my audience is definitely going to be praying

00:44:44.960 and hopefully supporting in lots of other ways too.

00:44:47.540 Well, I appreciate that and appreciate you

00:44:49.240 and all the work you do.

00:44:50.980 And yeah, I'm grateful to be a part of an amazing team.

00:44:53.280 We say LifeWise is a movement of God by the people of God, and he's raising people up

00:44:57.420 to do it.

00:44:58.140 Amen.

00:44:58.460 Well, thank you so much.

00:44:59.560 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 06, 2026

Ep 1368 ｜ They Told You the Bible Was Banned From Public Schools. They Were Wrong. ｜ Joel Penton

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