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00:21:07.000We worked through all the junk you got to with Utah department of bag.
00:21:10.000And, um, and so, uh, you know, a hot minute later, the chef is nominated for like a James
00:21:15.580beard award, you know, real outstanding, you know, culinary accomplishment.
00:21:19.800and he and you know literally within a month fisher flying to new york city for this event
00:21:26.380and so the little this little productive hobby we're trying to break even turned into essentially
00:21:33.080a small business and now we're uh with this with this family that we leased the farm from it's now
00:21:37.320more of a partnership where he's helping with production and i do a lot of marketing and sales
00:21:41.560and then the families are just in you know we're just involved so the chef rode your coattail
00:21:46.560to the awards yeah i mean like the fish did most of the work
00:21:52.220yeah yeah yeah i think don't tell him i said that you know you think providentially um i think some
00:22:01.940we we've slept uh slipped and fell into a lot of these kinds of things uh and i just sort of
00:22:08.540attribute that that's the kindness of god you know we're just kind of we're trying to do yeah
00:22:13.540push into good things as a family. We're working together. We're trying to build something.
00:22:18.120And just all of a sudden, just things tend to happen. It's like, man, you know.
00:22:22.560It's wild. Like, I think people underestimate that. They think that they have to have
00:22:26.92040-year outcomes planned out, reverse engineered exactly, when it's so much more about
00:22:33.940embracing the principle. Okay, if God really made the world this way, I'm supposed to do
00:22:39.680something for my kids and for their kids. And, oh, the industrial revolution did this to the
00:22:45.100family. That's not good. We should try to return. Well, let's make a commitment to trying something,
00:22:50.980putting our sales up. And God just seems to be faithful in bringing the right breeze, right?
00:22:57.480Bringing the right opportunity and taking you somewhere. And it's going to be different. I mean,
00:23:01.100you couldn't have reverse engine. You couldn't have planned all of that ahead of time
00:23:04.360in all those twists and turns the chef winning the award and the property with the right springs
00:23:10.880and you know but god knew exactly what he was going to do in the family and it was just if you
00:23:17.320could have sat around and done nothing and gotten your w2 and yeah yeah hey kids go to college
00:23:23.260figure it out you get a career maybe i'll i'll help you i'll give you some advice along the way
00:23:27.220but it's like i just think if more families it's why i'm excited for the book if more if more men
00:23:32.380would be one to the idea and then also have some of the practical pointers of like, here's the
00:23:39.120idea, but then here's what it looked like for us. Here's maybe some next steps. Here's some
00:23:42.540counsel that you might take to put your sails up. Like God, we can forget that we have a father in
00:23:49.760heaven who is overseeing all of it and that he actually is for us. And he loves to bless these
00:23:56.780kinds of things in ways that we don't predict. So that's one of the things I love about this
00:24:01.700books. It's not just theory. It's not just a roadmap on 10 ways to build an internet sales
00:24:06.780business or something like that, replicate my formula, but it's just good principles,
00:24:11.640good practice. Yeah. Yeah. When Eric approached me about writing a book of this nature,
00:24:16.840it's kind of interesting to, to, for me to think of where, where do I start at or how, you know,
00:24:22.780how, how did we get to where we are as a, as a household? Um, and you know, the, the title of
00:24:28.260the book is, is the productive household. And, and that subtitle is it's, it's a primer, uh, on
00:24:34.720the rebuilding the family economy in an age of fragmentation. But, um, the, I, when I say the
00:24:40.840productive households, so I, I, I sort of think about, uh, first Timothy three, four, uh, and
00:24:47.140managing a household. Well, in fact, I think you could have just, I could have entitled that a
00:24:51.180well-managed household, uh, because I think it's good to start with the principles and then figure
00:24:56.080out where where those principles lead. And so what I try to do in the book is start with with
00:25:00.740principles. You know, I think what was life changing for Paige and I early on in our marriage
00:25:05.840is just the idea is the Bible is authoritative and everything it addresses and it addresses
00:25:11.000everything. And with that, you know, sort of presupposition in our mind. And so so we start
00:25:16.020with principles and we think where what are the what are some tools to help us fulfill that? And
00:25:21.620So at the end of the day, when we started with principles, what we got to are like a tool, a tool on a tool belt would be something like a family business.
00:25:30.140And so the book's not so much about family business or family economy, all, you know, so much so is here's principles that got us to this place.
00:25:40.080And so First Timothy three, four, well-managed household.
00:25:44.440I think of Aslan, my oldest daughter, your daughter-in-law.
00:25:57.020When the Apostle Paul told Timothy to manage, you know, what you're looking for in an elder quality guy is they must be able to manage his household.
00:26:08.140That managed household well is pregnant, like Aslan's pregnant.
00:49:23.780Just that is the point of a family economy is to be generous.
00:49:26.820but when you got people working for one another uh they're thinking about the their siblings
00:49:32.500behind them what do we need to do to start creating more you know more business more
00:49:38.460you know what uh then you just then what happens if you get five or ten or twenty families or 50
00:49:46.060families in a congregation that are beginning to think this way yeah and i just think in a hundred
00:49:51.400years um when when people you know we're when i say we're making sacrifices we're not putting
00:49:57.340money in a 401k like so we can retire when we're 65 that to me that's not a great sacrifice to
00:50:03.300instead take that money and put it in a business for my children and we'll we'll figure out how to
00:50:08.380live we're first generation in much of this so we'll figure out how to how to get by when we're
00:50:14.080old and i think our our adult children will will step in it but you but you know what i mean like
00:50:18.700uh what it's it's really not that the sacrifice that i'm making i'm only winning well i get time
00:50:25.620with my you know i'm just getting more and more time with my that is the wild thing right it's
00:50:30.120like you can phrase it as sacrifice and you're right in some sense it is but also i think the
00:50:35.420same thing i'm like i get to hang out with my son and my daughter-in-law all the time soon a
00:50:40.040granddaughter and you're just like yeah this is really tough people spend it's funny we build a
00:50:45.680life that we then have to spend five to $20,000 once a year to go on a vacation to escape from
00:50:51.540to like all get together and do anything. And instead, hear me out. What if you built a life
00:50:57.500where you just get to be with the people you like and actually be shaped all together into the image
00:51:04.260of Christ? What if we did that instead? Well, it's also interesting, I think, because I've
00:51:09.080watched my boys when Benjamin started working for you. You know, at first we were having
00:51:14.080conversations he's like well you know i didn't necessarily like dream of like running a dog
00:51:17.980kennel i don't know how that'll be well like just try it see how it is um and then getting that
00:51:24.100aspect that taste for him of like family integrated work and you know being around his
00:51:29.660you know eventually his wife and and now even like hanging out with his brother at work
00:51:35.020you know and he said since then he's like it's kind of weird like it's never the thing i would
00:51:40.160have like gone to a guidance counselor and got the advice to go do but it it's amazing i get to
00:51:45.820be with the people i love um even in again work that is just normal everyday life you know type
00:51:51.220type of thing people think that like the magic happens that where you find yours the satisfaction
00:51:56.800of your soul is in the particular task you're doing yeah i have to find the job that's like
00:52:01.340exactly fitted to my inner child and that will be and it's like for most of human history people
00:52:07.680like, what are you going to do? I'm going to be a blacksmith. My dad was a blacksmith. My granddaddy
00:52:10.920was a blacksmith. My great granddaddy was a blacksmith. And it's like blacksmithing is just
00:52:14.580people need nails and horseshoes and stuff. So that's what I'm going to do. That is not the
00:52:20.460thing that fulfills you working hard because you were made to work, taking dominion. You were made
00:52:25.960to do that. Loving your neighbor in economic terms. You were made to do that. Having a family
00:52:30.180and raising them. You were made to do that. Worshiping your God. You were made to do that.
00:52:33.620that's where all the glory comes in it's being a human being it's not just well i have to find
00:52:40.920some bespoke vocation that is yeah like somehow going to tickle you can edit that out if you need
00:52:50.320to we don't even or you can keep it it's just honestly a great honestly i don't even know what
00:52:54.380it means yeah who knows yeah i think it sounds illegal that's one of the things too i think
00:53:00.520is really cool as opposed to what you said sorry I had to get that in there um man no I just think
00:53:10.820about like the generational aspect to of you know okay so take my son's like it's not even 20 years
00:53:17.120old yet you have one track where it's like go to college like I've been there I've done that I went
00:53:22.640to college went to seminary spent my 20s uh really working like I don't know 12 an hour jobs you know
00:53:29.780that afterwards you're like, why did I go to college for this? Why did I have to like pay
00:53:33.720money to do this? Like a well-trained monkey could do this. I don't get it. Uh, but also like
00:53:41.520with people who hate you, like people, bosses throughout that whole, my probably until I was
00:53:46.740like 34. So it's like 14 years of my life with people who are literally treat you like you're
00:53:51.820a discardable cell phone. And I was just thinking about this one day. Cause I was like, wow, you
00:53:57.580know adam is like really you know he's really generous with my son and with aslan and then you
00:54:02.680think like oh yeah like it's really silly but you just think in plain but then you think well because
00:54:10.500he loves them like you would treat people that you love a certain way yeah yeah and i think
00:54:16.700fundamentally like that you could do that economically like the economics could be an
00:54:21.060expression of love right the whole again oikonomos that you know the household is the place where the
00:54:27.380economy is happening and thriving. Yeah. It's, it's interesting. Like, uh, the sort of the
00:54:33.160blessing comes from all kinds of different angles. We were just talking about the boys, but, uh,
00:54:37.780like with, with, uh, with, with your boys, you know, um, and your middle boy working with Ben
00:54:43.680and I, I watched Gavin's my oldest and I just, you know, I, I watched them interact with their
00:54:49.440younger brothers. They're just your younger siblings in general. They're, they're now
00:54:53.640disciple helping disciple you know during those you know times where they're because they're
00:54:58.100together all the time so they're just naturally looking you know to push one another in healthy
00:55:04.700ways and build up and yeah and man you got a strength here and i could come in and and it's
00:55:11.060just a there's there's just a whole lot going on once this once the ball gets rolling that you
00:55:16.800just you know i stand back and i just i didn't i didn't expect that to happen but that is that is
00:55:22.100really beautiful um yeah you do need time together to make it happen yeah there's just something
00:55:27.520yeah um yeah the way the generations begin to uh to work together and feed off one another
00:55:35.000it's it's it's a nice yeah it's it's beautiful and i think unique oh yeah unfortunately yeah
00:55:41.940unique yeah like we were reading in the cold open it used to be pretty normative actually
00:55:46.280uh one thing i want to ask you about is particularly with daughters because this is one of the
00:55:51.860It was one of the cool things that I saw just being a part of and around the household was they're not necessarily, you know, out at the dog kennel all the time, but they're part of a productive household.
00:56:05.680So walk me through how you view like the daughter's role.
00:56:09.380That's obviously tied very much to your wife.
00:56:11.760But why is that so important as a part of the inner function of the productive household for the ladies?
00:56:19.120You know, when I think of my girls, I often think the psalmist would talk about them being corner pillars.
00:56:25.020You know, their corner pillars are not only beautiful, but they actually hold the palace together.
00:56:32.520So, yeah, there's a weight to them, but not to negate the beauty.
00:56:38.980Um, and so, uh, and I'm so, so grateful.
00:56:43.540My, uh, my wife Paige, she, she embodies the, the, you know, the whole domestic life, the
00:56:50.300sowing into the generations, uh, she finds great value and purpose in that instead of
00:56:57.000being pulled out of the household and has for years.
00:56:59.600And it's, so it's sort of beautiful to witness that we've been married for nearly 28 years
00:57:04.160and to see her flourish and grow and, um, just embody the word that way.
00:57:08.800And so, uh, model helpmate. Um, and then I, I view my girls, my daughters as they're, they're
00:57:16.280helpmates. They're, they're, they're learning to be helpmates, but they're helpmates to me. And
00:57:19.880sometimes, uh, that's filling a hole in, in business stuff and helping out here and there.
00:57:25.980And they might, they might go to the kennel. Uh, they, uh, my, my girls went to the farm this
00:57:31.140morning to take care of some responsibilities there. So they are doing some of that. That's
00:57:35.540So what I would call more maybe vocational or business oriented, but 90% of their time is spent making that home beautiful, hospitable.
00:57:45.760It is, they are, they're baking and cooking and cleaning and teaching and educating.
00:57:53.240They're loving our church fam, you know, they're, they're, they're creating environment that just you want to be a part of.
00:58:01.780And so, uh, uh, yeah, so they're making things beautiful.
00:58:07.040And I just say that for us, the glue that holds everything, they know it.
00:58:11.040I think one, one of the things that the men have to do heads of households is I think
00:58:16.500they have to celebrate what is, what the beauty of the homemaker, uh, the beauty of the help
00:58:26.620And I mean, you know, so I want to you'll you'll you'll have a hard time coming in my into my home where I'm not celebrating womanhood and all that it brings to our household and church family and so forth.
00:58:41.420I just think I think you have to talk about it a lot and keep it in front of your own your own people and just in general.
00:58:48.440Yeah. People have a totally wrong view of what conservative patriarchal Christianity and its proponents actually believe about these things. They think that we have this view of women that is very low and very limited where that's like, it's all about limitation. Oh, she can't do that. She can't be involved in the making of a dollar.
00:59:12.120And it's like, no, no, back up. Hang on. No, no. She was made to be a help. So she was made to be a
00:59:18.880helper, a suitable helper to a man. You hear that as a hugely limited thing. This is actually a
00:59:26.360glory. So the normal operation of the world should be, she grows up in a household with a godly mom
00:59:32.240and a godly dad. She's learning how to be like the godly mom who is helping the husband. And
00:59:37.400there's a lot of economic productivity in that house. And so mom is helping with the economic
00:59:41.720activity as well. Like that's, you can't find a clean line in scripture between the economic
00:59:48.180activity of the house and like cooking, cleaning, clothing people. It's read Proverbs 31. So she's
00:59:54.980supposed to grow up doing that, which does look like she's also her father's helper in a lot of
01:00:00.060ways as her mother's understudy. And then at some point she's transferred to a worthy godly man
01:00:06.060whom then she is the helper for that man and that obviously has massive economic implications as
01:00:13.840well as what we consider the more classically domestic sorts of things so it's like when you
01:00:19.880look at all the skill sets that a godly older woman has who's grown up in this it is what would
01:00:26.880it cost to replace her yeah i mean my wife i couldn't i don't think like i did the math because
01:00:33.400we were buying life insurance it's pointless it's pointless like yeah she has life insurance policy
01:00:38.880now but i i've told her like it's pointless to try if i had to think of for the for all of my
01:00:45.140children now till they're grown and up and then even beyond that if i had to replace you
01:00:49.580a million bucks wouldn't do it it would be it'd be it'd be a million bucks a year it'd be half
01:00:55.440a million bucks a year just to think about all the different roles uh that are being fulfilled
01:01:00.340i also think there's this glory i every time i see aslan uh of course she is she is pregnant
01:01:06.840she's you know any day now but the coolest thing in the world like i say this to her every time i
01:01:12.200see her i'm like you're like making a person that is wild yeah yeah a whole person and we're gonna
01:01:20.060meet her soon but like that is incredible and and i also think it's really cool watching like these
01:01:26.760phases you know as we're you know going through the courtship process but like so she's in a
01:01:31.780productive household that entire time yeah and then she's uh you know married to my son and
01:01:37.800then they start just immediately it's like a seamless from productive household to productive
01:01:42.940household yeah and and it's just wild to me because i've seen the opposite where you know
01:01:47.340it's really hard a lady will go be single uh for 10 or 15 years do a career yeah and then her
01:01:53.880transition back into like the home and household duties is like excruciating absolutely oftentimes
01:01:58.680and and i think well what if we just didn't do what if we cut out that whole middle part that
01:02:03.660we made up yeah and we didn't do that instead instead of doing that we didn't do that yeah
01:02:09.300and the other the other thing i just have to say this is like when you actually look at the ladies
01:02:12.820in these situations when people say to me oh so so your women don't work and i just think
01:02:18.620my head almost exploded the the capacity of these women like i'm thinking about page page could be
01:02:25.800an interior decorator because she is one she could be like a professional cook because she is one
01:02:30.460like you talk about all of it you know about education nursing yeah i mean you would have
01:02:36.820to pay her to be a full-time teacher and a full-time you know chef and you name it like
01:02:42.540all these things instead of paying my wife we compromise and i just i don't pay her at all
01:02:47.540but i provide everything she needs and then we just live together and we share all of the money
01:02:53.560and it works great it's it's crazy it's wild yeah it's a new idea i've come up and then you have
01:02:58.100dinner and then you sit on the couch at night and you put all those little kids to bed and she goes
01:03:02.740oh babe like we did a good thing we we did it that's how we feel when the kids go to bed right
01:03:08.600we made people we did it and they're still a lot yeah they're still here they are and then one of
01:03:12.720of them comes in and I threw up four in the morning. That was, uh, that was early Sunday
01:03:17.000morning. Uh, yesterday we get the, I threw up entrance into the room and then, and then it
01:03:24.100came out the other end for another one of them, but it was great. It was great. Love them. Love
01:03:27.900all the people. People are great. Yeah. But I was just like, yeah, what, how much would it be to
01:03:31.740call a nurse to come in? And I'm sure it'd be a $25,000 a second or something like that. You
01:03:37.360know, it's how they charge today. So you just can't, when everybody's working together,
01:03:42.500you're not worried so much about where the one activity begins and ends.
01:03:47.540Like where we think about it as you have your job,
01:03:50.340that's where all the money's made. And then you have your house.
01:03:52.720That's where you, I don't know what you do. You watch Netflix there.
01:03:54.820And then you have the school or the daycare and that's where the kids are
01:03:57.780taking care of. And it's like in a real productive household,
01:04:01.180the way God made it, the lines are really, really blurry between everything.
01:04:06.020I was actually going to say like, so we've been in the community for,
01:04:09.280i don't know four or five years now um and you you know you've been in productive household
01:04:14.400somebody said to me recently because you know here we have the church we have businesses we have
01:04:18.740families friends all this stuff everybody is like very intertwined and close and particularly as you
01:04:24.460start talking about your own kids and families somebody said to me recently they said um isn't
01:04:29.720that a conflict of interest and i kind of chuckled and i was like my whole life is a conflict of
01:04:34.800interest nepotism is what i do here every day you think if i have the choice between hiring
01:04:40.300some random person and my son i'm supposed to be like let's be real um excuse me did we
01:04:45.880did we interview you know 70 people from all different you know ethnicities and like you
01:04:51.500know religions and i mean like of course not oh we don't have a seek yet we should probably hire
01:04:55.680yeah we're not doing this in the press uh but yeah anyway it's just interesting because
01:05:00.580there's challenges to that but there's also like a richness to that tapestry
01:05:05.300when life is intertwined it almost adam made me think of i was reading an excerpt about the
01:05:11.860stonewall brigade and they were like do you know why they fought so well together and he said all
01:05:17.960of them virtually were related to each other they had bought bread from each other they had
01:05:23.860shared dinner tables they had worshiped together for generations and so they were like well why
01:05:31.000did they fight that way because they were fighting for ken yeah and for their brother in christ and
01:05:35.060their sister in christ and again and when the men went to fight they were thinking of well all the
01:05:39.860ladies back home that like we grew up with yeah of course we would defend their own right you know
01:05:44.220that sort of thing that can sort of be some of the value of productive households within a community
01:05:49.580as well. Yeah. Yeah. And to, uh, both these points, you're talking about, uh, they're like
01:05:57.120strict lines and who's doing what you're doing. I would only say to the, to the point that, um,
01:06:03.520the sufficiency of scripture is driving our household. And so we do have a clear understanding
01:06:08.280of what men do, a clear understanding of what women do. Like God actually gives gender specific
01:06:13.800commands, you know? And, and so I would say even, uh, although there are a productive household,
01:06:19.200there's blurred lines like it's not like hard uh you know my girls aren't going to lift anything
01:06:24.600super heavy i'll tell you that right you know but i mean i'm just i'm just generally speaking though
01:06:29.700yeah um like the beauty of of roles and responsibilities yes they marry one another
01:06:35.680you're not necessarily doing the same kinds of things yeah but they're they're married to one
01:06:40.940another you know as a husband and a wife is and so um there's things my sons do that my girls don't
01:06:47.940and vice versa um and in some things that yeah they just blend super super nicely yeah but that's
01:06:54.880actually what causes that to flourish at the end at the end of the day because there's real
01:06:59.300leadership and there's real submission and there's you know there's real order um and so yeah yeah
01:07:06.040you're not tight you're not tossing a dice and saying who's in charge today right who's gonna
01:07:10.400be no like it that you have and they're they're all of these roles come out of like where we miss
01:07:16.400this in making it arbitrary they come out of the nature yeah god made the husband the father the
01:07:24.440man the son to be a thing and so he's going to do things that are consistent with his being
01:07:29.760and same with the mother wife daughter sister she was made to be a certain thing and it when you
01:07:37.240when you start thinking about it on a certain level you realize how absurd it would be to
01:07:40.740think otherwise eric does not have a womb yeah neither do i but i mean that's true you cannot
01:07:47.620knit a person again that thing you're talking about yeah none of us present company can do that
01:07:52.320it's why literally can't it's insane that that can happen and at the same time and i don't know
01:07:57.520if you know this they also have feeding mechanisms like they can feed the infant before and after
01:08:02.320it's insane through the belly button the first time we told our kids that they were like no
01:08:06.220they thought we were pulling their leg the baby eats and breathes and not through the belly button
01:08:11.700they're like you've fooled me once dad like you've fooled me before you know i'm actually telling
01:08:19.240the truth and at the same time men have things that they can do that like my wife and i were
01:08:26.040talking about this this very week about how like the difference between a household or a marriage
01:15:49.780And I will make an argument in the book that I actually think it's false ideologies that's kind of leading us to highly fragmented families from both children to grandparents and so forth.
01:16:03.320And I just would like us to rethink why are we doing what we're doing?
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