The King's Hall - September 01, 2023


Winning Your Children's Hearts, Confederate Monuments, Cultural Transmission, and Christian Education

Mentioned
Be the Blessing Man: A Roadmap to Joyful Fatherhood Fathers Help Their Children Marry Well

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 24 minutes

Words per minute

180.08

Word count

15,258

Sentence count

891

Harmful content

Misogyny

9

sentences flagged

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

38

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Brian here with a big announcement from New Christendom Press.
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00:00:13.400 And in it, Eric and I take you through the dark history of feminism,
00:00:17.240 what it's done to everything from politics to church life to the economy,
00:00:21.220 and what to do about it.
00:00:23.040 Pre-order it today at newchristendompress.com slash longhouse.
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00:00:30.900 We'll also be signing the first 1,000 copies, so pick yours up today.
00:00:37.560 Early in the Civil War at the Battle of Manassas, the center of the Union attack was overwhelming Confederate forces.
00:00:44.860 It appeared that Confederate forces would soon be put to a flight, and the route would be on.
00:00:51.020 General Jackson was told by General Bernard Bee that all hope was lost, and they must retreat.
00:00:58.280 Before the war, Thomas Jonathan Jackson served as professor of natural and experimental philosophy
00:01:05.480 and instructor of artillery tactics at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia.
00:01:11.460 He was an odd, eccentric man who struggled to make simple conversation.
00:01:16.160 He was seen in church pew or in his professor's chair straight-backed,
00:01:19.980 never letting his spine touch the back of pew or chair.
00:01:23.140 He would walk to and from class with his sword on his hip,
00:01:26.680 not satisfied with letting his scabbard hang at his waist.
00:01:30.140 He would hold his sword from the middle as if he were prepared to draw at any moment. 0.93
00:01:35.040 He had a reputation for being the butt of the university
00:01:37.360 and was generally not liked by the students.
00:01:40.480 During heightened tensions between North and South, the students grew restless.
00:01:45.460 and were causing mischief with the Union soldiers.
00:01:47.960 The university held an assembly with the aim of calming the growing animosity
00:01:51.640 of the student body against the Union soldiers.
00:01:55.000 After several speeches had been made, there ensued a long pause.
00:01:59.220 Perhaps some reply was expected from the cadets.
00:02:02.640 At last, the painful silence was broken by a cadet crying out,
00:02:06.900 Major Jackson!
00:02:08.240 The cry was taken up by others, until it became general and continuous.
00:02:13.300 Aware of Jackson's awkwardness and shyness, many may have called for him the spirit of mischief,
00:02:19.120 but doubtless the majority of cadets, knowing his straightforwardness and sense of justice,
00:02:23.760 desired from him some expression of approval or sympathy.
00:02:27.540 Rising from his seat, he was greeted with loud applause.
00:02:30.580 He waited till the noise subsided, then with body erect and eyes sparkling,
00:02:35.040 as they did so often afterward on the field of battle, he said,
00:02:38.140 with a vigor and fluency that was a surprise to all.
00:02:42.180 Military men, when they make speeches, should say but few words, and speak them to the point.
00:02:47.560 I admire, young gentlemen, the spirit you have shown in rushing to the defense of your comrades,
00:02:53.100 but I must commend you particularly for the readiness with which you have listened to the
00:02:57.500 council and obeyed the orders of your superior officer. The time may be near at hand when your
00:03:03.860 state will need your services, and if that time does come, then draw your swords and throw away
00:03:10.000 the scabbards. Back at the Battle of Manassas, General B. told Jackson they needed to retreat.
00:03:17.520 He told Jackson that the lines could not hold. They were collapsing. Jackson's response was
00:03:22.600 unexpected. Sir, we will give them the bayonet. Jackson went on the offensive. He attacked when
00:03:31.380 all around him were retreating. One biographer writes, what studied those soldiers was Jackson.
00:03:37.700 He rode slowly back and forth along the line, moving in a shower of death as calmly as a farmer
00:03:44.220 about his farm. The blaze of his eye was unmistakable. There plainly was a soul on fire
00:03:51.200 with deep feeling and the ardor of battle. A slumbering volcano clearly burned beneath the
00:03:57.980 face so calm and collected. Stonewall Jackson is a beacon of masculine Christian virtue.
00:04:05.660 His faith was strong, and his courage is unmatched in American history.
00:04:10.900 There's men like Jackson that we must look to to recover the ethos of the new Christendom.
00:04:15.920 Why then do the great-great-grandchildren of Stonewall Jackson despise him?
00:04:21.220 Why was it the family of Stonewall Jackson that most adamantly fought
00:04:25.020 for a statue of their great-great-grandfather to be removed?
00:04:29.400 Somewhere in their family history, the Jackson family lost the hearts of their children.
00:04:34.980 In an open letter to the mayor of Richmond, Virginia, they say the following.
00:04:41.820 We are native Richmonders and also the great-great-grandsons of Stonewall Jackson.
00:04:47.420 As two of the closest living relatives to Stonewall, we are writing today to ask for the removal of his statue,
00:04:53.320 as well as the removal of all Confederate statues from Monument Avenue.
00:04:57.040 They are overt symbols of racism and white supremacy, and the time is long overdue for them to depart from public display.
00:05:05.680 They continue.
00:05:07.020 Ongoing racial disparities in incarceration, educational attainment, police brutality, hiring practices, access to health care, and perhaps most starkly, wealth, make it clear that these monuments do not stand somehow outside of history.
00:05:23.000 Racism and white supremacy, which undoubtedly continue today, are neither natural nor inevitable.
00:05:29.780 Rather, they were created in order to justify the unjustifiable, in particular, slavery.
00:05:36.140 One thing that bonds our extended family, besides our common ancestor, is that many have worked, often as clergy and as educators, for justice in their communities.
00:05:47.620 While we do not pretend to speak for all of Stonewall's kin,
00:05:51.160 our sense of justice leads us to believe that removing the Stonewall statue and other monuments
00:05:55.540 should be part of a larger project of actively mending the racial disparities
00:06:00.020 that hundreds of years of white supremacy has wrought.
00:06:03.120 We hope other descendants of Confederate generals will stand with us.
00:06:07.420 As cities all over the South are realizing now, we are not in need of added context.
00:06:12.340 We are in need of new context, one in which the statues have been taken down.
00:06:18.680 Respectfully, William Jackson Christian, Warren Edmund Christian,
00:06:23.480 signed the great-great-grandsons of Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson.
00:06:30.780 The King's Hall Podcast exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world.
00:06:38.620 Well, gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the King's Hall Podcast.
00:06:42.340 I am here with one of my favorite hosts, myself, Eric Kahn.
00:06:46.880 I knew it.
00:06:47.480 I knew it.
00:06:47.740 I was wondering.
00:06:48.200 I knew it.
00:06:49.560 No, instantly I knew it.
00:06:51.140 And also two other guys that are okay.
00:06:53.480 Dan Burkholder.
00:06:54.280 I mean, I'm bad.
00:06:55.920 Hello.
00:06:56.060 And then below him, Brian Harmonica SauvΓ©.
00:06:59.380 Thank you.
00:07:00.480 Thank you for using my formal title.
00:07:02.800 I appreciate that.
00:07:04.420 By the way, I never hated a harmonica more than having to listen to it.
00:07:09.380 The best part is that.
00:07:10.980 in office all the time when i'm recording a harmonica i have headphones on with what i'm
00:07:15.320 recording too so you only hear the harmonica you get the pure unadulterated straight to your veins
00:07:21.840 mainlined harmonica so you're welcome so it could be worse it could it glorious that is what it is
00:07:29.980 thinking that was actually a recording of brian earlier today saying glorious in preparation for
00:07:35.460 the show do you genuinely like the harmonica brian or is it just because we dislike what you've done
00:07:41.840 to our lives i like it more the more that you don't okay so this no i actually like the harmonica
00:07:48.200 i like the bat i don't necessarily love like blues traveler crazy skilled harmonica i like the bob
00:07:54.220 no i'm saying i like the only knows how to play chords like piano man i genuinely like that
00:08:01.400 harmonica okay very quickly greatest greatest song with harmonica obviously tom petty last
00:08:06.540 dance with mary jane behind that one what comes in wow i don't know where to start other than
00:08:13.600 a definite front runner is josiah and the bonifils cover of taylor swift song anti-hero
00:08:19.240 where is the why are you okay and go listen to it guys i can't believe i just advertised
00:08:24.720 probably pagan i don't know taylor swift well taylor swift definitely i didn't know you were
00:08:29.140 This is a country cover. 0.71
00:08:30.920 He's a Swifty.
00:08:32.000 Country cover.
00:08:32.940 The sweet psalmist of Ogden is a Swifty.
00:08:35.000 Breaking news.
00:08:36.100 Listen, listen, I refuse to own that.
00:08:40.000 Even though the safest track right now would be to act like I like that you guys are saying that to make you say it less.
00:08:46.000 But I really actually am uncomfortable right now.
00:08:49.040 Actually, Dan, what makes you uncomfortable in life?
00:08:52.220 So many things, Eric.
00:08:53.240 So many things.
00:08:54.240 So many things.
00:08:55.260 Actually, a lot of what's in our culture today makes me uncomfortable.
00:08:58.520 Wow.
00:08:59.040 That was a good segue.
00:09:00.220 It was so good, it makes me want to destroy it.
00:09:02.340 Dude, ride that segue right into the show, Eric.
00:09:04.340 You're like, just divert it right back to our pointless banter.
00:09:07.060 Yeah, exactly.
00:09:07.760 If I know one thing about podcast listeners, it's that they want 15 to 20 minutes of meaningless
00:09:12.000 banter before they get into the topic of the episode.
00:09:14.300 That's basically the show.
00:09:15.700 Constant feedback I see on Twitter is that.
00:09:18.000 We're tearing down the model of what podcasting people think it should be.
00:09:22.880 Dan, in the cold open, we heard about people who were tearing down other things.
00:09:26.080 That was quite the transition.
00:09:27.460 That was good.
00:09:27.620 Essentially, since we're definitely not tearing down anything with podcasting.
00:09:31.560 It was smooth.
00:09:32.460 Dan, one of the things that intrigues us, we were talking about this before the episode in our extensive long range planning for the episodes.
00:09:41.440 And this one in particular, we are talking about this idea of grandsons in the case of the cold open Stonewall Jackson's great, great grandkids advocating for the tearing down of Confederate monuments.
00:09:55.200 And for what we're talking about with legacy in the show, this seems like the anti-type of what we're aiming at as fathers and men.
00:10:03.480 We want our sons to protect, defend, and continue building monuments of the past generation.
00:10:10.120 So it's got to be at the top of your list of things that we should be against, right?
00:10:15.100 Tearing down these statues?
00:10:16.560 Well, yeah.
00:10:16.820 I mean there's a principle in scripture that says not to move the ancient landmarks of your forefathers, right?
00:10:21.500 And so there's a reason for that.
00:10:23.140 now you can argue like yeah maybe maybe everything the confederacy stood for wasn't ideal but the
00:10:31.200 boy what should i say name one i could i'm just kidding one thing that was wrong that's actually
00:10:37.060 really hard no uh there's many things that the confederacy did stand for in a lot of ways i can't
00:10:43.720 remember where i read it but somebody had said that was the last stand of the first christendom
00:10:48.640 was the confederacy and so even that monument in itself the monument to stonewall jackson
00:10:56.460 and to robert e lee is always in there yeah right to the but specifically to stonewall jackson have
00:11:02.820 his his generations tear down the monument to the work that he did the man that he was great
00:11:10.780 christian and the principles that he stood for yeah is presbyterian go on yeah he's a lot of
00:11:17.720 people may not know this his chaplain in when he was serving as general was rl dabney and um yeah
00:11:24.840 sounds federal vision i don't know federal vision in the 1800s that classic 1800s federal vision
00:11:31.560 yes that's right uh dabney of course uh has a phenomenal sermon on stonewall jackson's life
00:11:39.500 it's mainly about his courage um but also one of the first people to really point out that what he
00:11:45.440 said dabney one of the biggest threats uh to america and american society would be feminism
00:11:52.680 interesting yeah so and he was dealing with the first waivers who most of whom were all like 0.99
00:11:58.380 you know caddy stanton and those people were her name was literally caddy caddy that is
00:12:03.400 unfortunate that name physiognomy though check on point check don't know anything about even with
00:12:10.240 those people a lot of unitarians you know all you need to know with a name like that that's right
00:12:14.720 That's right, boys. Walk away.
00:12:16.360 Yes. So, Brian, I want to get your thoughts.
00:12:18.380 First of all, just we're going to be talking in this episode about winning our kids' hearts so that they continue building and doing the work that we've set out to do because it's going to take generations.
00:12:29.060 But before we get there, just general thoughts on – like do you see the tearing down of these monuments?
00:12:34.640 Do you see it as a form of fifth commandment violation, a form of patricide?
00:12:39.240 What is going on at the heart of that?
00:12:41.460 Well, it certainly at least shows that there was a failure of cultural transmission somewhere along the way where the people who built those statues – and they were post-Civil War.
00:12:52.540 The war had been lost by the South, and they still built these statues.
00:12:58.820 There was a culture there that loved these men enough and the ideals that they stood for, that they went to great expense and effort and made public monuments to them.
00:13:09.740 And still do today.
00:13:11.220 And still do today. And so you have a failure of cultural transmission somewhere on down the generations to enculturate that same love into the current generation, at least on some level.
00:13:22.800 You still have, obviously, there's a large group of people in the South who would still very much respect and honor General Lee and Stonewall Jackson, you know, all that.
00:13:31.940 So I'm not saying total failure.
00:13:34.220 Martin Luther King Jr. Day, at least when I was in Alabama, also known as Robert E. Lee Day.
00:13:39.600 Is that what they did?
00:13:40.360 Yeah, that is literally that is trolling, trolling. Wow. That's high level trolling high level.
00:13:45.280 So I think in terms of the topic for our for our episode today, we're talking about fathers
00:13:50.400 enculturating the the properly ordered loves into their children. We're talking about fathers
00:13:57.900 passing on a culture to their children that is a thick enough culture, a glorious enough culture.
00:14:04.360 You're welcome. Trademark. Thank you to that. It's that it's compelling.
00:14:10.180 on through the generations, which I mean, has a lot of practical handles on it. This topic
00:14:15.220 we're thinking about, you know, that means that the culture you give your children can't just be
00:14:20.320 a sort of veneer of Christianity. It can't be a thin culture. It can't be like the mega church,
00:14:27.840 you know, sermons at the movies series. I don't even know what they call them. What do they call
00:14:33.740 them? At the movies, sermon series, you know, like Christian culture, that Christian culture
00:14:38.700 is not transmittable. Because it's nothing. It's cotton candy. Like a small rain storm will 0.90
00:14:45.760 dissolve it entirely, right? So we want granite statue, cathedral culture, teach our kids to love
00:14:52.800 it. And to me, that cold open story is one of the more powerful recent examples of the way that you
00:15:00.920 can lose a culture and fail to transmit a culture. And I think there's some interesting points
00:15:08.640 there for us to think about in terms of fatherhood. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I especially
00:15:12.580 like what you said. It really is a failure of cultural transmission and a failure to
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00:16:35.040 So as we delve into this, I want to kind of talk about two issues in the episode today.
00:16:40.880 First would be just the family-integrated worship, and then the second is going to be St. Brennan's in education.
00:16:47.360 Because I think these, we agree, are kind of two of the pillars for cultural transmission is education and worship.
00:16:54.280 Yeah.
00:16:54.560 What's happening in the worship service.
00:16:56.980 So we'll delve into a lot of what happened here at Refuge, why we changed, why you guys initiated the changes on those fronts.
00:17:03.200 but first just defend why are those two things of all the things that we could start with dan
00:17:08.600 why start with worship as a central thing and then education
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00:17:45.720 Email us at advertising at newchristendompress.com.
00:17:54.060 No, there are a lot more pillars of enculturation, but I think those are two very, I guess,
00:18:01.540 structurally important pillars. The first one being worship, because the word culture is
00:18:07.460 derived from the word cultus, which actually means worship, meaning that the cultivation,
00:18:14.800 your culture, it's all coming out of what you worship. And so why is worship important? It
00:18:22.600 seems kind of redundant at that point, but right worship aligns with a right outflow of culture.
00:18:28.420 And so you'll see in the culture what people worship.
00:18:32.480 This isn't anything new or novel to me.
00:18:34.980 I mean, this was like Doug Wilson, Toby Sumter.
00:18:38.420 Yeah, Henry Vantel.
00:18:39.400 Yeah.
00:18:39.740 Culture is religion externalized.
00:18:41.620 Right. 0.54
00:18:42.040 Yeah.
00:18:42.300 This is just fact, Eric.
00:18:46.080 Yes.
00:18:46.440 It's just fact.
00:18:47.560 No.
00:18:47.820 So right worship is really important.
00:18:50.480 So that then makes you ask like, well, do megachurches not worship the true and living God?
00:18:57.240 what about Catholic culture or Eastern Orthodox culture or Lutheran pietism? Why do we have the
00:19:06.160 culture we have? If there are churches that do worship the true and living God, why do they live
00:19:12.420 differently? Yeah, we're talking about worship a certain way. That's right. Yeah, it's really
00:19:16.640 important. And Brian even said, like, not a thin worship or a thin culture, but a thick, rich,
00:19:23.080 deep culture. And so I think that's why the type of worship is really important. How you structure
00:19:30.760 your service is important. The elders you have, important. The men in the church are important.
00:19:36.800 The families are important. Where the children are are important. Obviously, like the doctrine
00:19:41.240 and theology is important. All of that. The singing is important. Yeah. So at one point,
00:19:47.840 I think each of us were part of churches that were what we described in season one as big, fast, and famous, or an iteration of that.
00:19:56.100 Maybe like smaller, not as fast, and definitely not famous.
00:19:59.180 But I'll try and be.
00:20:00.080 But we were like following that model.
00:20:02.280 Was there a point in you guys' ministry in this church particularly where you said this is not going to be advantageous for cultural transmission?
00:20:11.180 Like this isn't going to functionally – it's not going to do the thing that we now want to do.
00:20:15.160 Yeah. One of the things I think that ran through that noticing was noticing what kind of fruit the strains and streams of Christian culture that we were coming from were producing. What they were succeeding at and what they were failing at, and it was important to see. 0.95
00:20:32.960 They were failing at transmitting robust faith to the next generation, often in huge percentages, failing to do that.
00:20:41.720 So we went, okay, whatever model they're using, even if it's what 98% of people are doing, we should probably question it if it's producing 80% apostasy rates, that kind of thing.
00:20:52.120 The other thing it was failing to produce is an educated populace or an educated congregation.
00:20:58.020 So children weren't just apostate.
00:21:00.020 They didn't know their theology and they didn't know how to read the world properly.
00:21:04.640 Well, and another thing we noticed, I don't know if you recall this, Brian, this was in
00:21:07.360 an elders meeting and whether we saw with accurate sight or not, I can't recall, but
00:21:11.020 we were talking about church planting.
00:21:12.860 And the question was asked, would we want to make another refuge church and repeat the
00:21:18.840 same stuff we have here?
00:21:21.340 And I remember a lot of the answers were no.
00:21:24.120 Right.
00:21:24.700 Interesting.
00:21:25.500 Yeah, we said no.
00:21:26.200 No. And part of it was because of the overall maturity of the men in the church. So it wasn't
00:21:31.820 just children. Obviously that's downstream of the type of men that we had in the church as well. And
00:21:37.240 it was, they were designed to be that way because of the theology, philosophy, ministry.
00:21:44.580 Yeah, the discipleship.
00:21:45.520 Yeah, the discipleship.
00:21:46.520 Processes.
00:21:47.060 Absolutely. 0.53
00:21:47.540 Can you describe like the problem in the men? I'm interested, like what were you seeing?
00:21:52.800 Yeah. So the standard man would essentially look like he would be an abdicating man. So almost like a petulant child that his wife would have to lead and beg to have children because he wanted to abscond himself of responsibility at every turn.
00:22:12.860 So the average guy would either be underperforming at work or not working and having his wife work. 0.58
00:22:20.800 He would be neglecting having children because of the extra responsibilities, and it would interfere with his hobbies.
00:22:27.360 There was also rampant pornography use, even recreational drug use, amongst other things.
00:22:36.320 Maybe that's not the average.
00:22:37.780 The average of the worst.
00:22:39.580 Yeah.
00:22:39.760 Yeah. And there's also a sense in which we see, as pastors, we interface, kind of like police officers.
00:22:46.700 Right, yeah.
00:22:47.440 They don't get a good snapshot of the culture of a city. They don't, because they deal with the worst 3% of those people.
00:22:53.860 So that amplifies our perceptions.
00:22:55.900 That was being uncharitable, probably.
00:22:57.620 But that did describe a pretty significant number of men, for certain.
00:23:02.080 Yeah, I mean, at the best of the worst, you just had guys that were essentially not taking their role as husband very seriously and as father very seriously.
00:23:09.880 The things that you would see, I think, running through a lot of the households relates to one thing you mentioned.
00:23:17.500 If something was happening that we'd be like, oh, that was good.
00:23:19.780 Like they're homeschooling their children and using like a Christian curriculum of some sort. 0.98
00:23:23.980 It would be because the wife did. 0.91
00:23:25.840 Yeah.
00:23:26.120 The wife was convinced of that. 0.94
00:23:27.440 She did the reading.
00:23:28.300 She was the one interested.
00:23:29.460 She was pursuing that.
00:23:31.100 He wasn't.
00:23:32.080 So that was a theme.
00:23:33.140 We were not seeing strong Christian men, not just like who aspire to be pastors, but just ordinarily strong Christian men.
00:23:42.100 Like churchmen. 0.91
00:23:42.740 Just churchmen.
00:23:44.540 Yeah, godly husbands, godly fathers.
00:23:46.520 Yeah.
00:23:46.880 That took their role and responsibility seriously.
00:23:48.960 Yeah.
00:23:49.260 So you guys connected that problem to kind of the main way that church was being done.
00:23:57.200 Well, I mean, think about it.
00:23:58.660 One of your favorite men, theologians, and pastors of all time, Mark Driscoll.
00:24:03.460 Remember, he actuallyβ€”
00:24:05.000 Where's the lie? Continue.
00:24:06.380 He actually saw this in his church.
00:24:08.440 Remember that he was famous for yelling at men.
00:24:11.880 Yeah.
00:24:12.480 But itβ€”I mean, from my recollection or from my knowledge, it doesn't seem like he actually corrected anything.
00:24:20.200 Well, I think the problemβ€”like, we did an episode on this, right?
00:24:23.220 But, like, who the hell do you think you are?
00:24:25.840 And, you know, you've been coming to church for years and you're still doing these things. 0.91
00:24:29.120 And then you rightly asked the question, did you ever look in the mirror and say, well, we produced this, though?
00:24:34.840 Yeah.
00:24:35.240 Like this is what our style of churchβ€”
00:24:36.640 Why have you allowed this for years?
00:24:38.420 Yeah. 0.85
00:24:38.760 I think a big aspect as well was that it wasn't producing culturally distinct Christians.
00:24:44.020 And as we looked at it, we're like, well, why should it when the entire worship service is designed to be an analog of popular culture?
00:24:52.340 How do you mean?
00:24:52.780 From music to the casualness, the low church, kind of like non-hierarchical, not emphasizing leadership structure, not emphasizing command or go and do or exhortation.
00:25:05.940 Our culture is very casual.
00:25:08.120 It's very – it doesn't have any kind of sense of the transcendent.
00:25:12.020 Like a light talk.
00:25:13.220 Yeah, it's very much – it's light.
00:25:15.760 It's shallow.
00:25:16.440 Our culture, modern American culture is shallow.
00:25:19.060 so when church worship itself is engineered to be an analog of that culture but just then
00:25:27.160 sprinkling in the bible to be like aha but we've got them uh now they're here because they're they
00:25:31.720 weren't turned off by like anybody wearing a suit or hierarchy talk or like you know legalism which
00:25:36.980 means like telling people to do anything at any time for what whatsoever you know and like oh
00:25:42.160 we're just going to take the whole service model of um essentially corporate uh marketing where
00:25:47.780 it's like, look at the services we provide for you in exchange for your attendance, come to the
00:25:53.340 church. We'll take your kids. It'll be great. You don't have to worry about them. They suck anyway.
00:25:56.820 Like they're so annoying. We'll just take them away from you. Don't even worry about that girl. 0.99
00:26:00.540 You just sit down. You want a latte? We got you a latte. Go to the Holy grounds cafe. We'll take
00:26:05.180 care of you. And you've even got soy. In fact, only soy. You know, you come in here. You're
00:26:10.120 going to hear, do you like, you like bad music? We've got bad music just for you. We made it.
00:26:14.900 we worked really hard on it you know coming here like oh you you don't like strong men that's kind
00:26:20.600 of like i don't know they're gonna be tell me what to do like that patriarchy thing so we've
00:26:25.640 got just the guy for you he will be dressed casually uh and his pants will be too tight
00:26:31.300 he won't talk for very long and he will sound like he's from california brian is now describing
00:26:35.560 himself back then never been more offended even back then no eric i did not do that
00:26:41.960 well the clothes i mean the clothes let's be honest nobody wants to return to the fashion
00:26:48.320 of their early 20s i mean actually some people probably would be fine my fashion hasn't changed
00:26:53.000 ever that's true and nobody has complimented me on my fashion choices ever ever and so it's good
00:26:59.240 you're just consistent no there's one there's one one thread that's going through what you're
00:27:04.720 describing with modern evangelicalism and that's what is the ultimate aim of the worship service
00:27:10.480 Yeah. You gave a teaching on this once, like the five things that people assume that worship is. One of it is like education, theological education. So if you think that, then you're going to format the service a certain way. You're going to take the distractions out, and you're going to have very direct teaching, and you have to have notes and all that.
00:27:32.340 Yeah, fill in blanks.
00:27:33.020 Yeah, and so you're going to have more sermon than singing because the singing is just there.
00:27:36.500 Like, why is it even there?
00:27:37.440 It's an intro-outro.
00:27:38.460 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:27:39.100 Exactly.
00:27:39.420 It's like hold the music.
00:27:40.040 It's like transition.
00:27:40.780 Yeah.
00:27:41.200 Yeah, yeah.
00:27:41.880 So there are all these things that worship is assumed to be, but in that thread, in modern evangelicalism,
00:27:49.580 and the thing that we notice is that all of a sudden the liturgy was about you.
00:27:54.060 Mainly, yeah.
00:27:55.080 It was about you.
00:27:56.000 the services we provide for you, you know, the music we have for you, the teaching we have for
00:28:02.440 you, like, it wasn't about the worship of the holy and living God. Sorry, Brian put his finger.
00:28:09.120 I'm sorry, I confused you with that. I was thinking that it basically, you end up,
00:28:15.600 and the way you justify all that is you say, we're removing as many barriers as we can to
00:28:20.620 the unchurched person so that we can bring them in and share the gospel with them. But you end up
00:28:24.960 winning them too, is all of the things that they came in with. Because you're just basically
00:28:31.220 replicating their entire pagan culture. And then they come in and they're like, oh, I'm a Christian 0.93
00:28:36.180 now. What do I do? And they're like, well, just not a lot different. Yeah. So then what does that
00:28:41.120 produce? Not a lot different. Not a lot different. Yeah. So we started seeing these things and what
00:28:48.120 it was not producing, what it was producing, and then moved to, okay, what are some of the root
00:28:53.780 causes for transmitting because whether we thought about it this way or not what we were talking
00:29:00.360 about is why are we transmitting this a certain culture to these people and failing to transmit
00:29:06.080 some culture that we want to maybe we can't put our finger on exactly what it would look like
00:29:10.420 strong men strong women you know like good families you know holy righteous sin repenting
00:29:16.260 like what would okay we're failing to transmit a culture so what do we need to do differently
00:29:22.680 And the things that we really zeroed in on very quickly did relate to worship, the liturgy, what we were presenting in our worship, and also the way that we treated children, both in worship context but also overall in terms of Christian education.
00:29:40.100 Was there something, like, were you reading a book?
00:29:44.260 I know, for example, I'll tell a story.
00:29:47.860 The first time I went to a liturgical service was in Kentucky.
00:29:51.960 Pastor Bill Smith, who's now in the CREC.
00:29:54.500 I believe that church was PCA.
00:29:56.580 We went there, and it was like, I was like, I don't know what's happening.
00:30:01.560 This is really weird.
00:30:02.740 Because it was like, I mean, they had a whole worship booklet.
00:30:06.720 like you know how we have like a four page yeah bulletin kind of thing this was like
00:30:12.020 full printed page i don't know maybe it was like 10 pages long like the gloria patrie
00:30:17.860 the creeds like is that how you say that i thought it was a gloria patrie i don't know
00:30:23.260 i'm not i'm not i'm not a latin american so but you have such spice i do that was such a dad joke
00:30:30.780 It was so good.
00:30:32.120 Such a dad joke.
00:30:33.420 I love it.
00:30:34.300 I've been storing that one up.
00:30:35.940 But you dance so well.
00:30:37.440 But the salsa.
00:30:39.540 Yeah, so – but I remember going there and thinking like this is really foreign.
00:30:43.340 So one of the things that one of the elders was taking new members through was Jeff Meyer's book.
00:30:48.720 The Lord's Service.
00:30:49.440 The Lord's Service.
00:30:50.400 So that was my first exposure to it.
00:30:52.760 And then I over time started realizing, yes, liturgy shapes us.
00:30:58.500 Okay, I get this.
00:30:59.660 it's going to shape a different kind of person. If you're confessing in church,
00:31:03.040 this forms a pattern for all of life. If you're singing people and you're teaching the people
00:31:08.780 that they have to do the singing, then we're going to be singing at the dinner table and
00:31:12.660 we're going to be singing all the time. So those things were, I started to see how they train the
00:31:18.540 affections of the heart. So for you guys, I'm wondering, was it a book? Was it talking to
00:31:22.920 other pastors? What was the spark or sparks that kind of got you thinking of family integrated
00:31:29.220 worship why bringing kids into worship service why is that part of part of this and and liturgical
00:31:34.440 worship it was a long time ago it's hard to remember yeah i know so obviously christ church
00:31:40.820 in yeah he who must not be named came in at some point well yeah that was probably like 2017
00:31:47.000 had to be 2016 26 the education i moved here the education piece came in through my wife
00:31:55.680 first in my life right like i said earlier matriarchy yeah full it was we weren't to be
00:32:02.220 clear we were not we were always major as based as we are not protested too much no but she was
00:32:08.940 reading um she was reading a book about the case either the case for classical christian education
00:32:13.340 or something like that and and then i read i was like oh you you seem to really like this book and
00:32:19.540 So I read the book and that was my first memory of exposure to Douglas Wilson.
00:32:26.260 But, but that definitely had a lot to do with it because it, and then the admissions conference
00:32:30.880 in 2018, the singing.
00:32:32.000 Yeah.
00:32:32.140 Yeah.
00:32:32.420 And I, I've, I had visited on a Sunday morning and I think it was in 2020 and experienced
00:32:40.520 the liturgy and was absolutely blown away because I had read about it like in the Lord's
00:32:46.240 service, probably at some point.
00:32:48.100 I don't remember.
00:32:48.640 It's actually right there.
00:32:49.140 sitting on the table yeah we read that after though we did we had already been one to the
00:32:54.080 beauty i don't know what to say like i it was an amalgamation of things over time part of it was
00:33:01.360 when you start looking when you i guess when you see something finally that's been in front of you
00:33:05.620 the whole time and you just now notice it like okay we're producing a certain type of fruit
00:33:10.380 and it's bad you know it's something's good but a lot of it's bad and we want to change it
00:33:16.840 you start looking with new eyes and you start to get a preference for something different,
00:33:23.200 especially when you experience like the missions conference in 2019, the infamous for us,
00:33:29.680 not for anybody else, probably missions conference in, in Moscow, Idaho. Part of the reason it's
00:33:34.780 infamous is because of the snow storm. We had to drive back. We drove there and back in a van
00:33:39.700 packed full of every leader in the church. Yep. A harrowing journey through the mountains. The
00:33:45.940 church would have been over yeah i mean like they would have just disbanded it would have been like
00:33:50.080 well we got it's over yep so great part of it was that but that was just experiencing the beauty of
00:33:55.900 the music that wasn't a church service no but it does definitely like it gives you a taste of
00:34:02.640 something you're like wow i i didn't it's like a kid the first time they eat ice cream you know
00:34:08.480 like all they had was pureed vegetables and milk there was this like what have you you've been
00:34:13.880 holding back on me this whole time and that's kind of what it was like yeah it is interesting
00:34:18.440 though dan i was just going to interject i remember you know going to people's houses
00:34:22.640 they're you know singing the doxology and and singing psalms in their homes and stuff like this
00:34:28.040 and before i understood it theologically i too had that experience of like i don't know what this is
00:34:33.640 but i just want it they they seem happy um i think what one of the things that is unique about
00:34:40.540 moscow doug kept his kids i went to one of their grace agenda a few years ago and it was like how
00:34:46.220 to keep your kids and so when you when you see the outcome and you're like well when my kids are
00:34:51.520 grown i want them to be carrying on my work so then you start looking more closely like okay
00:34:56.440 what are the things i've asked a lot of people in moscow this over the years i was like what is the
00:35:00.880 thing you know if you had to point to things um that you would say like define your culture and
00:35:06.740 why it's been successful. I usually hear corporate worship and probably even bigger is Christian
00:35:14.420 education because they're so central. That's kind of the case we're making. But I think there is
00:35:19.540 something to this of seeing something, recognizing the beauty and the value of it. And then you kind
00:35:25.060 of go through the process of thinking about it, you know, and starting to implement it.
00:35:29.880 Well, I know one of the first steps that we had taken before we started singing psalms,
00:35:34.300 you know, four part, switched to piano. I guess the first thing was probably
00:35:38.400 applicational preaching, like more directly applicational preaching.
00:35:41.980 Yeah. Overtly rejecting the current as defined gospel centered preaching movement.
00:35:47.720 Yes. As it was defined and practiced saying, no, we're going to apply the text strongly.
00:35:53.780 Right. Where the only application is the gospel, trust Christ, behold Christ.
00:35:59.520 You didn't do this. Like Jesus did it perfectly. Just trust Jesus.
00:36:02.660 right don't really worry about doing it don't worry about obedience christ obeyed for you
00:36:06.940 there you go uh so it was applicational preaching and the other thing was family integrated worship
00:36:12.140 that was a that was much more difficult although it caused you know uh a lot of pain over a long
00:36:20.740 period of time applicational preaching yeah uh the children's integrated worship was a lot of
00:36:26.640 pain very quickly yeah in a short period of time because you're like hey this is what we're going
00:36:30.500 to be doing. We're going to reduce the age from 12 to
00:36:32.500 six. Okay, so you did that before
00:36:34.220 2020. Oh, yeah. And then from
00:36:36.220 2020 was the best.
00:36:38.620 Let me tell you what, because we had up to
00:36:40.320 six years old. Uh-huh. And
00:36:42.220 2020 came and we're like, we're not
00:36:44.400 doing kids. We're never doing kids again.
00:36:46.260 We're not doing kids. We're not going to bring it back.
00:36:48.760 The first time we came, there was
00:36:50.240 still like nursery, I think, basically.
00:36:52.700 There was nursery. It was like a
00:36:55.180 check-in thing. Yeah. And I think we walked
00:36:57.280 in and somebody's like, oh, do your kids want? And I just put my
00:36:59.200 hand up? And I was like, no, thank you. What a guy making his presence felt. I'm not even going
00:37:05.720 to address you. I'm just going to give you the hand, give you the hand. If you speak to my
00:37:09.580 children, we will come to blows. Well, the principles that we, that compelled us to have
00:37:15.560 family integrated worship were some arguments I'm sure from, from like the Christ church vein
00:37:22.400 and Presbyterianism. But the idea that you would relegate the indoctrination, the, I guess you
00:37:30.760 could call it worship, like education, you know, on a Sunday morning, you remove the children
00:37:37.140 from the worship. And this is really important because it tells you your aim of your worship
00:37:43.600 service. Is it to actually worship the true and living God? And if it is, why would you take your
00:37:48.040 kids out and relegate that to volunteers, you know, not qualified elders to do the, you know,
00:37:55.640 to teach them, to give them games, snacks. I mean, it's babysitting service while you're
00:38:02.760 neglecting the corporate gathering of God's people in worship of the true and living God.
00:38:08.500 A huge amount of it comes back to what are we trying to do in worship? Like what is the
00:38:12.020 gather worship for. And once you reject that it's for mere theological education and it's for the
00:38:18.300 worship of the living God, like remembering and renewing the covenant of our salvation,
00:38:21.780 coming before God in worship and remembering our sins being forgiven, offering our spiritual
00:38:29.520 sacrifice, yes, being instructed, being charged and sent out, coming to his table. So when you
00:38:35.220 when you reject that reduction a lot of other things follow and the kids ministry thing you
00:38:42.940 realize pretty quickly exists to support the worship service as a classroom a classroom or
00:38:48.580 an emotional experience yeah or a or a service-oriented marketing thing yeah felt needs
00:38:54.400 yeah like self-help because it's hard to have kids in service it's much harder than having
00:38:58.920 someone else take care of them for you obviously so that that change has been around for
00:39:04.960 fully for like with three years yeah yeah uh covet obviously it seemed like it made it
00:39:12.480 easy to make a transition at that time because you know nobody really kicked back from because
00:39:18.600 we had reduced the kids ministry age from 12 to 6 yeah and then and we had some people that were
00:39:26.220 upset about that believe it or not yeah and then in 2020 with covet we just said we're not doing
00:39:32.560 anything anymore. Honestly, even there was another reason why we did that though. It wasn't just the
00:39:37.180 kids. It was the volunteers. So you're having to remove your wife from a worship service once a
00:39:44.120 month, once every other week in order to watch kids in the nursery or to volunteer Sunday school
00:39:50.220 teacher. You know, some, some, some parents were gone for two months and they were teaching Sunday
00:39:57.040 school so they weren't in worship for two months yeah and the other thing it was actually longer
00:40:03.720 too because once we were went down to six very pretty quickly we won the majority of the people
00:40:08.080 and they weren't using it so we had very few children even in that transitional period using
00:40:14.200 it yeah most kids under six were in the service because most people were like oh yeah i preached
00:40:19.180 a sermon on it that was um oh what was it called it was probably really clever that's why i can't
00:40:25.380 You're so flipping clever.
00:40:26.940 I'm just kidding.
00:40:29.080 It was called something about the spiritual orphanage.
00:40:32.660 And tracing some of the roots of taking kids out of worship to orphan ministry in England in like the 1700s.
00:40:38.960 Well, it's hard for us to fathom too.
00:40:40.300 I mean like pre, I think like 1920s, early 1900s, like Sunday school wasn't a thing.
00:40:47.000 Not as a replacement for worship.
00:40:49.460 No, not as a replacement for worship.
00:40:49.920 It was a catechism hour.
00:40:51.100 It was an instruction hour.
00:40:52.000 It was similar to how we do – currently now we have a kid's catechism class for certain months of the year and an adult instruction class that's – but even then, the kids are welcome to come in the adult if they want.
00:41:03.960 Like we don't enforce it.
00:41:06.140 And then we get together for worship an hour later.
00:41:08.960 So it's not a replacement because the worship service is something different than instruction.
00:41:14.500 Have you seen change in that time?
00:41:17.900 So I wasn't really here for much before, you know, when there was full nursery and all those things.
00:41:23.560 Have you seen a change and a difference?
00:41:26.000 I mean, part of this is like, well, you know, we'll check the fruit and, you know, 10, 15, 20 years and I can tell you better what's going to happen with the kids.
00:41:35.240 But have you seen a change in parenting and the children and the ethos and culture of the church?
00:41:40.160 It does a couple of things.
00:41:41.000 One, it brings out parenting and discipline issues to the surface.
00:41:44.160 Oh, yeah.
00:41:44.460 The school does the same thing.
00:41:45.520 So we're having much more hands-on active shepherding of things like practical discipline because they come out.
00:41:50.660 You can't have completely wild undisciplined kids in the service for long before someone's like, hey, do you need some help in learning how to spank your kid?
00:41:57.860 Here's the emotion.
00:41:58.860 It's like teaching a swing.
00:42:00.940 You know, so it does that.
00:42:05.800 But the other thing it does, one of my favorite things that it does in terms of the culture development is it protects you from the wrong people joining. 0.88
00:42:13.580 So people who are going to come to the church and treat it like daycare and basically exchange my attendance and my tithe, which is usually 1% of their income or whatever, for spiritual goods and services, they're usually the loudest complaining, the least contributing, and the least seriously Christian people. 0.94
00:42:30.480 And so all the people that left, not all of them, but a significant number of the people that left our church over this, I wouldn't have them back. 0.97
00:42:38.240 Like I wouldn't allow them in membership without significant repentance.
00:42:42.140 I just wouldn't because they were the cause of huge cultural issues in our church.
00:42:47.380 This is why, like to me, the earlier church model of much more restrictive thought about we're not begging you to join our church.
00:42:54.640 We're actually assessing you to see if we will allow you to join our church, which is the biblical method for assessing church membership.
00:43:02.720 It's not we're going to beg you and market you in the doors and do everything we can to keep you for the sake of our numbers, our attendance and our giving numbers.
00:43:10.500 No, no, no, no.
00:43:11.160 we, we, we only want you to join if you're going to be a Christian here, right? So getting rid of 1.00
00:43:17.720 kids ministry immediately as a, as a filter, it, it cuts out huge numbers of people who would join
00:43:25.340 our church who are not Christians. Well, I remember pastoring in Colorado. That was so offensive and
00:43:31.540 I'm, I'm here for it. I love it. But pastoring in Colorado and then previous churches serving
00:43:36.700 in different roles there when you would have new people come and then they would leave a lot of
00:43:41.860 times if i talked to them especially in a small town you kind of know everybody yeah i would just
00:43:45.420 say hey you know we'd i'd love your feedback like what they're like yeah sermon was good uh didn't
00:43:50.800 really care for the style of worship um but honestly like the methodist church down the
00:43:56.800 street with the lady pastor dude they have like killer vbs and killer programs for the kids and
00:44:02.480 And I'm really – a lot of times it was like not single moms but like spiritually single moms where they would bring the kids.
00:44:09.740 Dad would stay at home and drink and watch football.
00:44:12.300 She would bring the kids and then they would be like – she's like, I just need like two good hours to myself.
00:44:18.200 Yeah.
00:44:18.580 And then you would try to explain to them like, yeah, but that's not what church is.
00:44:21.900 Oh, are your kids orphans?
00:44:23.340 Right.
00:44:24.300 I thought we were talking about like children that you – like they were legitimate.
00:44:28.320 But I think that you're right.
00:44:29.840 But I think the heart is on one.
00:44:31.480 it just makes me so mad in that situation the thing is what dan was talking about before
00:44:36.500 to see change you have to do a lot of really hard work you got to go talk to that dad and be like
00:44:41.320 listen man you're gonna have to take ownership for your family yeah you're gonna have to step
00:44:46.180 up to the plate and and we're gonna hold men accountable to those things right and as those
00:44:51.000 conversations it's funny when i first got here most of the guys who are like pillars in the
00:44:56.360 church right now and have been for a long time i would ask them questions like oh how'd you come
00:45:01.160 a refuge blah blah blah like the overwhelming majority of these cases people that i would talk
00:45:06.160 to would be like well i was basically like not doing anything and one of the pastors sat me down
00:45:12.020 and told me i was a coward and needed to go get a job and impregnate my wife and my wife and fire
00:45:17.960 her from her job and i'm like well what so what what did you do in many such cases and the guys
00:45:23.360 that are recorded those conversations yeah just like hit play and listen to this the guys who
00:45:28.140 stayed were the guys who were like, they were right. Yeah. People need to be pastored. And
00:45:33.540 that actually means rebuking them for their sins and rebuking them for the ways that they have
00:45:38.800 drunk deeply of the spirit of the age. And maybe they don't even think that we're talking like,
00:45:44.460 oh, these are lifestyle choices. They're not really sins. Like, yeah, my wife works. We don't
00:45:48.660 Christianly educate our children. We actually started talking about these things in terms of
00:45:52.440 sin. We were like, listen, you are not free to give your children a pagan education. You're 0.99
00:45:58.640 sinning if you do that. So there's the principle. No, you don't have to use our school. You don't
00:46:03.160 have to use a certain curriculum. You don't have to homeschool or private school, but you do need
00:46:06.480 to give your kids a Christian education. That's a principle. Here's how we get it from scripture.
00:46:10.800 Here's a whole sermon on it, right? And this is totally historically uncontroversial, right?
00:46:15.980 The people who will shriek and leave your church over that, you should be cheering.
00:46:20.480 You will be so much better off in six months without those people there because those are
00:46:25.300 people who are uncorrectable at exactly the points where the culture has discipled them.
00:46:29.280 So if they're not going to repent, either they're not Christians or they're not Christians 0.93
00:46:34.060 who are going to submit to your leadership. 0.90
00:46:36.000 Right.
00:46:36.140 So honestly, some of the best things that have ever happened to our church are specific
00:46:40.400 people leaving.
00:46:41.340 Yeah.
00:46:42.160 No, it's absolutely true.
00:46:43.580 So one of the things that we do that might be different than other churches, maybe this
00:46:46.760 sounds foreign, is that we give reasons why you shouldn't join the church. And I think we've
00:46:52.300 talked about this before. Yeah. But it just kind of goes back to your point about like,
00:46:58.260 we have to have a filtering mechanism. Actually in church history, you had to have a sponsor
00:47:02.480 even to be a member. Yeah. It would take a year. You'd be a catechumen for a year
00:47:07.120 before you would be baptized often. Like, so they might've actually gone a little,
00:47:12.080 they might've fallen in a different ditch, but we're in the other ditch culturally.
00:47:15.860 so we need to like actually learn from
00:47:18.080 those guys even where we say
00:47:19.940 we're not going to replicate every single practice
00:47:22.000 down to the minutia but they
00:47:23.960 had it more generally correct
00:47:25.560 about the nature of the church
00:47:27.680 and the nature of what the gathering
00:47:30.020 is what the congregation is
00:47:32.120 and is for because you could look
00:47:34.020 at the culture it produced and say like oh did 0.71
00:47:35.980 they cut the genitals off of children 0.99
00:47:37.520 no did they murder babies our Christian 1.00
00:47:40.040 culture did produce that yes like 0.99
00:47:41.940 our Christian culture exactly so 0.99
00:47:43.440 over a couple hundred years and I'm not
00:47:45.300 anyway, whatever. But I'm, that's a whole different, big, big thing there. But back to
00:47:51.920 our episode topic here, like this is all related. The reason that it matters so deeply that you get
00:47:58.980 these things right is because your children's hearts, your future, your generations, your
00:48:05.540 legacy, and the legacy of the church, the future generations of the church relies on getting these 0.83
00:48:12.000 things right, lest you produce a pagan culture and an apostate culture within one to three
00:48:17.940 generations.
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00:49:36.280 and that and that's something that i've really thought about uh we we have dan and i've been
00:49:42.180 talking with joe garacy uh backwards planning financial and it's been really helpful so
00:49:46.840 basically the idea is you start with the end in mind you say where do i want to get and then you
00:49:51.040 work backwards well in this situation it's like okay i envision a couple hundred years from now
00:49:56.860 god willing that my sons are not tearing down statutes or or just monuments or this church
00:50:02.260 or the things that we built where they wouldn't be saying, let's replace the cathedral or that 0.97
00:50:06.220 my parents built with a gay strip club. Right. Right. Like that. Cause that's literally what 0.98
00:50:11.460 we're doing in America. That's right. So then, then you go backstream, you know, to the beginning
00:50:16.320 and you say like, I, I think this, as we're talking about having kids in worship particularly
00:50:21.040 is really important. I want to tie it also then to, these are really almost two sides to the
00:50:27.580 same coin, but Christian education, because I think you could get the liturgy part right.
00:50:33.120 But if you didn't do robust every day throughout the year, Christian education,
00:50:37.580 it could be homeschooling. And in our case with the church, we said, we're going to do St.
00:50:42.800 Brennan's. There's something about these two things put together that I've never had before
00:50:48.820 in my life until coming here. But I see a totally different fruit when it's like 98% of my children's
00:50:55.640 week is spent during the summer working for somebody from the church okay then during the
00:51:00.980 school you're learning from somebody at the church usually a man and you know what i'm saying
00:51:06.240 and then they're worshiping with the people in the church like it is robustly i almost have to
00:51:11.420 be careful because my kids go out in public and i'm like okay like we can't be super based
00:51:16.400 everywhere all the time full throttle yeah we've had to have we've had to have conversations at the
00:51:21.060 school we're like you guys you actually have to know when to deploy the hard word well you can't
00:51:28.380 be just machine gunning memes all day like you're actually not and i think if you don't have that
00:51:35.160 problem you probably are not being actively conservative can i can i do something that's
00:51:40.420 probably inconvenient can i talk about liturgy just real quick before we move on to education
00:51:45.520 yeah yeah please so one of the things that we're talking about inculturation of your kids and
00:51:50.080 winning their heart. And just to wrap up the liturgy side of that, your children will love
00:51:56.120 the things you love. And I think that's really important to remember. So if you walk into
00:52:00.640 our church service, and I'm hoping that the standard male churchman, member of our church,
00:52:07.540 they love the singing. They love the Psalms. They have some of the Psalms, a lot of the Psalms
00:52:13.780 memorized by now from singing them, and their children do as well. They love singing the songs,
00:52:19.040 you the psalms because you know that on psalm sing the kids often overpower the adults on a
00:52:25.220 sunday morning you can hear the kids sing right that's a that's a good like canary in the coal
00:52:30.380 mine kind of thing is the singing of the congregation but you also see the fruit in
00:52:35.880 the men because of their consistency in showing up for for worship sunday morning worship and so
00:52:42.680 their kids are being trained that dad loves this and I love it too.
00:52:49.080 But yeah, I think the key thing, like you're absolutely right.
00:52:51.600 You can't fake that.
00:52:52.720 No, you can't fake it.
00:52:53.700 Whereas the other way, if you have a worship service that is primarily about you, whether
00:53:00.340 it's education and experience, felt needs, whatever that is, really, that's a very selfish
00:53:06.920 ambition.
00:53:09.100 Your Sunday mornings are now about you and your kids will learn that the
00:53:14.060 highest aim of their heart is to love themselves.
00:53:18.700 And is that a problem?
00:53:20.880 Even related to that,
00:53:22.540 I guess I didn't make that clear.
00:53:25.660 One of the biggest things that we intentionally aim for in our gather
00:53:30.820 worship is difficulty.
00:53:33.160 It should actually be hard.
00:53:34.860 Like there should be having kids in the service is hard.
00:53:37.640 singing in four parts fuging tunes is hard even the lord's prayer we sing the lord's prayer and
00:53:43.860 it's a difficult old setting of the song at the end of every sermon kneeling in for confession
00:53:49.280 of sin it's an hour and a half service every single week so with with my wife is doing that
00:53:55.300 by the way with six children 10 and under without my help every single week that she's there because
00:54:01.300 like half the time one of the kids is sick so you know i'm saying but the challenge what it does
00:54:06.920 in terms of enculturation is that it builds a sense of achievement, a sense of belonging.
00:54:14.360 There's a richness to it. When you think of the difference between a kid who grew up
00:54:19.140 basically eating candy bars and playing video games all day versus the little house on the 0.93
00:54:24.660 prairie kids going and, you know, farmer boy, he's a monzo's harvesting with his dad or he's 0.68
00:54:30.360 hunting with, and it's, there's a lot of challenge. There's a lot of suffering built into that life. 0.80
00:54:34.500 The point is not to be easy.
00:54:35.680 Endurance.
00:54:36.300 If you always do easy things and you teach people that the goal is to make it as easy as possible.
00:54:41.180 That's literally one of the goals of modern worship service is to make it as easy as possible, to remove as many barriers as possible.
00:54:49.480 And we're like, no, no, no, no, no.
00:54:51.080 Let's actually make it hard.
00:54:52.960 It should be difficult.
00:54:53.780 And what that does is it actually makes a culture, I think, worth transmitting.
00:54:57.800 Yeah.
00:54:57.960 And I mean, think about the things like your kids learning music.
00:55:01.060 I was laughing this week because for the older boys form in St. Brendan's, Kevin is changing.
00:55:08.880 They use Kraken Latin, and it was too hard.
00:55:12.120 So they're switching to something else.
00:55:14.160 Well, my boys are already like old men, and they did it for a year, and they both got like 95% and up.
00:55:21.140 Yeah.
00:55:21.500 And so now they're like, oh, kids today are so soft.
00:55:25.000 I remember back in our day, we had Kraken Latin.
00:55:28.400 That's so funny.
00:55:29.480 But even in the like goofball ways that they do those things, it's just – it's funny to me because I remember coming here and thinking – my wife and I both, we were like, man, this curriculum based on what we were doing for homeschool, this is really intense.
00:55:45.020 This is going to be really hard for the boys.
00:55:46.780 Yeah.
00:55:47.200 And it was.
00:55:48.680 But now they look back at that with just such pride that they had to do something hard.
00:55:55.700 It made them better.
00:55:57.000 yeah and then and then because of that the culture grew richer but but again to your point brian none
00:56:02.760 of that is because we set out and we said hey we're going to do what's easy most convenient
00:56:07.100 yeah like none of this is those things it has to be a good target like the the thing that that
00:56:13.220 we're getting at is not just arbitrary difficulty like memorizing a string of 6 000 random numbers
00:56:19.320 would be really hard but not that satisfying you know what we're talking about is which is more
00:56:24.980 satisfying to your kid over the long haul learning how to make a popsicle stick noah's ark where
00:56:30.020 some volunteer has spent an inordinate amount of time to basically do it for them anyway
00:56:33.600 or by the time they're six being able to sing the tenor part or the bass part of the soprano part
00:56:39.520 on a few in an 18 19th century fuguing tune setting of an entire psalm and actually being
00:56:47.340 able to participate in that and then standing in the congregation with confidence and helping to
00:56:51.780 produce the music of the church and worship to God. One of those things is satisfying. One of
00:56:56.980 those things you forget within six seconds of walking out of the door. Like, that's the
00:57:00.580 difference. It's difficulty in pursuit of worthiness, of a worthy task. And when you do
00:57:06.440 that, there's a note of transcendence to the culture. There's a note of beauty that we have
00:57:11.680 a very deracinated culture that's absolutely cut off from any standard of beauty. So architecturally,
00:57:16.480 artistically, musically, culturally on every level. Kids don't grow up experiencing beauty
00:57:21.820 ever. I mean, hardly ever. They go out in the woods, maybe occasionally, or they like see a
00:57:26.580 postcard of Notre Dame Cathedral. But when you build a culture that's difficult beauty,
00:57:31.280 that's centered around like building difficult beauty to God's glory,
00:57:34.420 that culture becomes something that kids actually go, I'm a part of this church.
00:57:40.060 you may say i learned kraken latin and i learned you know how to i can identify that composer
00:57:47.460 yeah you think the kid that grew up in madrid spain in their architecture would go to dallas
00:57:52.540 texas and say this is better i'm sorry most of our listeners are in dallas this our number one
00:57:57.320 city for all new christendom podcasts is dallas texas guys dallas texas is the ugliest city in 0.63
00:58:03.560 the world maybe not in the world it is so bad i don't know how you guys live there it's like 0.63
00:58:09.080 strip malls and... It's strip malls
00:58:11.180 as far as... It's Simba. I've been to Buffalo,
00:58:13.500 Wyoming. Buffalo, Wyoming
00:58:15.380 is only trailer parked.
00:58:17.140 And it's beautiful.
00:58:19.160 Compared to Dallas.
00:58:20.740 Granted, there are the Bighorn Mountains, but
00:58:22.840 anyway. I'm sure there's some redeeming quality, but it seems
00:58:25.200 like just a big, humid... The food's
00:58:27.400 good. ...pocket of
00:58:28.500 sadness.
00:58:31.000 I just look at it, I'm like, man.
00:58:32.980 I was just going to make fun of their architecture. You just
00:58:35.260 said they're depressing people.
00:58:37.100 No, well, the people are probably fine. The architecture is so bad, though. And the point is that when you have, well, this is a stretch, you know, with the Dallas connection. But just when you're surrounded by ugliness, it becomes white noise. And in a culture like that, beauty sticks out like a bright red, you know, exotic bird in the middle of a bunch of pigeons.
00:58:59.520 So when you have a church like that at the center, doing hard things, making beauty, there's also a sense of calling further up and further in where if you win the people to that, you've won them to something genuinely worthy and timeless and glorious.
00:59:16.980 So they're much more likely to stick and want to teach their children that.
00:59:22.340 What about American culture is there even to pass on to your children right now?
00:59:25.940 You know, one of the byproducts, I hadn't really considered this before, is in a world of ugliness, if there's something beautiful, so you can win the hearts of your children and your people to that idea of beauty, but the people on the outside will despise that beauty.
00:59:41.680 You're making your family a target in a way.
00:59:44.720 This church is a target.
00:59:45.960 Christ Church, obviously, is a target.
00:59:48.240 National news.
00:59:49.220 It's interesting, though.
00:59:50.780 When you think about, I think about all the visitors we have from out of town.
00:59:54.720 When people come in, it's usually two things that I hear comments about, maybe three.
01:00:00.380 The building is really unique and old, which people like.
01:00:04.720 Like, wow, that's an old-style church building, which is pretty cool.
01:00:08.500 The singing.
01:00:09.440 But the number one comment I get about above every other comment is people go, there are so many kids in here.
01:00:16.780 There's so many kids in worship.
01:00:18.960 There are brothers and sisters in Christ.
01:00:21.180 Think about that, the attraction of beauty, but also part of the beauty that we're saying, like families worshiping together, being fruitful and multiplying.
01:00:30.380 Those things, like beauty, as you described it, those things are rare in our culture. 0.79
01:00:35.640 So the stereotypical church you walk into, it's old people, a few young people, no families, no life.
01:00:43.980 And so I think too, even the, it was in the why men hate going to church, not Charles Murray, David Murrow, I think is the, is the author.
01:00:55.560 But he says in there, he's like, if you want a vibrant church, he's like, it's like demographically very simple.
01:01:02.440 You need young men and families because that's going to bring kids and vitality and life.
01:01:07.120 So when I look at our church and I say we have children in worship, the thing that we have is vitality.
01:01:13.800 Like they are literally the future.
01:01:15.900 They are life in our midst.
01:01:18.260 And so that really is something I think that's winsome to a culture of death.
01:01:22.620 Yes.
01:01:23.080 Yes, absolutely.
01:01:24.700 And connecting to the education piece as well, when you start to look at what you're aiming to do and when your children's hearts and enculturating them, you have to realize that any goal short of enculturating them into the culture of Christ in every part of what it means to be human is inadequate.
01:01:46.680 Because it will leave some domain where they can think in a way that's disconnected from Christ. They can reason in a way that's disconnected from Christ. You need a totalizing culture. So how can you possibly do that without education, particularly when you understand that education is probably going to be the thing in that period of their life, the young years?
01:02:08.980 they're going to be doing more by volume than any other thing right they're going to be uh you know
01:02:16.040 definitely pursuing education in most settings for more hours in the week than just about any
01:02:21.840 other thing they could be doing so if you say like yeah we've got this great gravity here in
01:02:26.900 the worship or in we do catechism or family worship at home all those great things but then
01:02:31.300 they go to public school 30 plus hours a week and they're reading and they're thinking and they're
01:02:36.000 learning this whole system of understanding the world and how to think about what they're
01:02:41.040 the world and you're gonna like expect what well i would expect from that for for them to treat
01:02:51.380 their christian faith and culture like an accessory to their life not like a totalizing center so to
01:02:59.280 me that's one of the key things in a place like moscow idaho that made a culture that keeps kids
01:03:05.920 and keeps people there and grows in its richness year over year.
01:03:09.900 Like I think about their hospitality. 0.53
01:03:12.100 They're like weapons-grade hospitality in Moscow.
01:03:14.940 I mean, it's insane.
01:03:16.640 Their block party they do with Grace Agenda, it's absolutely insane.
01:03:19.500 They're giving away hundreds of pounds of tri-tip that someone cooked.
01:03:24.100 And that's just one little corner of this for free to anybody who shows up.
01:03:30.300 It's hundreds and hundreds of people.
01:03:32.480 And I think, where did this come from?
01:03:34.060 Well, a huge number of the people who are here serving in this capacity grew up, went to not only that worship, but they also grew up with a Christian education and they learned all of Christ for all of life.
01:03:47.960 So now that the thickness of that culture is, it actually has breadth and thickness and richness to it that they ended up actually not only keeping their children, but winning their hearts.
01:04:00.940 And now their children are like, we're a part of this.
01:04:04.060 We are doing – we're perpetuating this.
01:04:06.300 I want my kids to participate in this.
01:04:08.040 I want them to be the fourth generation, fifth generation here in this city, in this town, perpetuating this culture.
01:04:14.420 Well, I think that's one of the things that was so big for me, like having sort of preteen – young teens and preteens before we got here and then coming here.
01:04:24.500 Look, the world is against you as it is.
01:04:27.020 Like you feel like all of life you're trying to push against the current of what the culture is trying to do to your family.
01:04:31.800 but again coming here coming into this culture it was like for the first time in my life
01:04:37.120 all the major forces around me are pushing in the exact same direction i am and as a father
01:04:43.260 i felt that feeling of like i'm gonna lose my kids like every force was allied against me
01:04:50.300 and then and then you know fast forward to now and it's like you know i can trust that when
01:04:55.280 they're working for you know one of the men in our church on a project like i know the guy i know
01:05:01.280 that were aligned missionally um when they are in school like kevin and you know uh their teachers
01:05:08.540 like i know that they are you know usually by the time they get out of school they're like dad i saw
01:05:13.960 your tweets today that was hilarious and i was like oh boy that's okay i gotta remember that
01:05:18.840 they sometimes see those now but but it's in the context of like you know their teacher is like
01:05:25.260 their teacher is like did you see what your dad posted check out this banger and you're just like
01:05:30.780 oh but imagine like this is what a lot of americans are dealing with i talk to these
01:05:36.040 guys all the time grill americans who are like yeah i don't get it i'm conservative i send my
01:05:41.880 kids to school and they come back and they're talking to me about blm and purple hair like
01:05:46.480 they like it and i think a lot of guys you know what i would say to them is well this is going
01:05:52.780 to be really hard but you have to change worship and education and this is why again i've been a
01:05:59.500 huge proponent obviously we did it but relocation if you don't have these things you need to have
01:06:03.260 them there's really not a substitute there's not like i think a lot of people are like well yeah
01:06:08.040 but i listened to jeff durbin online that's not going to do that though you're not going to produce
01:06:13.960 what you want in your kids and i think again episode central to this is we want to win our
01:06:18.940 kids hearts so that they're the ones erecting new monuments protecting the old ones yeah
01:06:25.300 advancing the construction project um and to do that you actually like the thing is if your
01:06:32.600 culture is lame and it doesn't really have a lot of answers for much of life why would your kids
01:06:38.780 want it like just to be honest with yourself what is what i'm inviting them to inherit good
01:06:46.100 well think about a lot of men in this country who maybe agree with us but how many guys go to church
01:06:52.320 and they're like, yeah, I really don't like the teaching or the elders.
01:06:56.900 I really don't like the direction,
01:06:59.360 but we're just going to try to make the best of it.
01:07:02.380 I mean, even in that scenario, like, what are you winning your kids to?
01:07:06.360 Like, sort of this, like, antagonistic relationship with church.
01:07:11.600 They're probably mainly going to hear complaints from you.
01:07:15.200 Yeah, there's actually, like, a stream of cowardice in that
01:07:17.880 because it's the easy thing to do.
01:07:21.180 There's no risk.
01:07:22.320 You know what? Changing your worship, you know, where you worship and the education of your kids are actually two of the most difficult things that you could probably do as a father.
01:07:32.920 Yeah, they're very difficult.
01:07:34.160 I mean, especially if it requires a move. Could you imagine? I mean, that's – well, you can't imagine because you did it.
01:07:41.080 Well, I even had a pagan friend that I worked with, not a Christian. And he said to me – because I was debating all these things. I was like, it's really hard. I know my core values are different than yours, blah, blah, blah. 0.75
01:07:52.320 And he's like, he's like, correct me if I'm wrong, but like your, your Christian heritage, like the Puritans. 0.51
01:07:57.100 I was like, yeah, yeah, I love them.
01:07:58.680 And he's like, didn't they like flee across an ocean and fight a frontier to establish a faith and a culture?
01:08:06.440 Like moving States is too much for you.
01:08:09.280 And I was like, dang.
01:08:11.440 Just got called out.
01:08:12.940 I got told.
01:08:14.580 Well, and, and so the thing is like the task is hard, but what would you pay in hindsight?
01:08:21.560 If you lost your kids, what would you pay to go back, to go back, to go back and do
01:08:27.800 it again?
01:08:28.540 A move would seem small.
01:08:30.260 Finding a new job would seem small.
01:08:32.860 Yeah.
01:08:33.640 Even if you go to a place where you're, you have to pay tuition for a Christian school,
01:08:38.420 that's a small cost.
01:08:40.520 Those are all small costs in hindsight.
01:08:43.740 If you lose your kids, all of them small.
01:08:46.600 I mean, I guarantee you that men who have lost the hearts of their kids, they would
01:08:50.200 go back in time and they would give whatever it took in order to change the things that they did
01:08:56.380 i talked to an old guy about this one time i was interviewing him and uh not for the hard man
01:09:02.000 podcast but just interviewing him for a different project and uh he was like i love i love you guys
01:09:06.540 message i love what you're doing blah blah blah he was so up on it and i was like well tell me
01:09:11.120 about your family and he's like i have four sons they're all atheists and he started weeping on the
01:09:17.380 phone. And he was like, he's like, don't do that. It is the worst thing in the world. Like it makes
01:09:24.720 it feel like my whole life was wasted. Man, it's brutal. Yeah. And, and I, but it was, you know,
01:09:30.840 I told him and afterwards I was talking to my wife and just praying about it. Like,
01:09:34.740 thank God for those eyeopening moments where you're just like, to Dan's point, anything would
01:09:40.100 be worth it to make it to the right place with the right people worshiping, educating your children.
01:09:46.600 Well, I mean, and a lot of the excuses for people not to move are so lame.
01:09:51.060 They're so lame.
01:09:52.720 You know, it's like you're next to family that don't even like you and you don't really
01:09:56.500 want your kids to be like, and you don't want your kids to be like them.
01:09:58.980 You don't want your kids to really spend time with them.
01:10:00.940 You're at a church you don't like.
01:10:03.040 You're at a job you probably hate.
01:10:06.180 Right.
01:10:06.880 And then you look at places that where, you know, I would recommend people move and you're
01:10:11.820 like, well, real estate is just really expensive.
01:10:14.140 I mean, it's just expensive to live there.
01:10:16.600 ah that's small that is so small you can figure it out guys you're gonna you're gonna be fine
01:10:25.320 i think especially especially the thing is you come to a church like ours or i imagine any good
01:10:30.100 church and you take a leap of faith and you you move here and you swear your member vows and you
01:10:35.200 go through the whole process and you're in the church and you're like guys i'm having a really
01:10:39.120 hard time paying my bills do you know the opportunities that there are for a hard-working
01:10:43.080 man there are so many opportunities yeah we have so many guys that are hustling that are just like
01:10:47.600 desperate for help we actually have the opposite problem i feel like in a lot of ways here where
01:10:51.640 it's like guys there's too many opportunities it's overwhelming oh man it is there's so many
01:10:57.380 opportunities yep there's there's tons and and a lot of it's like that joshua one they're about
01:11:03.060 to go into the land that god's given him he's like everywhere you set your feet i'm gonna give
01:11:07.000 it to you i'm gonna drive your enemies out but every aspect of it's completely new and terrifying
01:11:12.020 They're like, think about that.
01:11:15.060 Well, the generation before was confined to the wilderness because they wouldn't go in.
01:11:19.840 Yeah.
01:11:20.020 And it's easy to judge them, but like in many ways, I was reading the accounts in Deuteronomy and Joshua and as we were making the transition here and it's like, yeah, but there's too many obstacles.
01:11:30.520 And then you're like, how are you not just like the Israelites?
01:11:34.180 Oh, giants in the land?
01:11:35.740 I don't think any obstacle that I'm facing is like.
01:11:38.340 I will be honest.
01:11:39.060 The mortgages are giant.
01:11:40.660 Yes.
01:11:42.020 8% is a bad number to put into the calculator.
01:11:46.500 I'm not going to lie, guys.
01:11:48.120 It's no fun.
01:11:49.120 It's very bad.
01:11:50.160 But even then, I look at our stories and it's like, well, God has made a way.
01:11:54.520 Lord provides.
01:11:56.000 And you have to have faith.
01:11:58.640 And yeah, I mean, ultimately, like starting St. Brennan's, it's not easy.
01:12:03.620 It's not an easy lift for anyone.
01:12:06.700 No, no.
01:12:07.340 nothing that we've decided to do was like,
01:12:10.560 you know what this is going to do?
01:12:12.300 This is going to make our life really pleasant in the next six months.
01:12:16.700 Yeah.
01:12:17.540 Not the next six months.
01:12:19.080 But they will make our lives pleasant in 30 years,
01:12:22.920 even two years,
01:12:23.960 honestly,
01:12:24.360 many of these things.
01:12:25.520 Cause it's not,
01:12:26.560 you're not just like going to suffer forever.
01:12:28.160 There's going to be maybe a hard year or two.
01:12:30.120 We'd like really transitioning,
01:12:31.960 figuring things out.
01:12:33.120 But the question you need to ask is what,
01:12:35.720 what is it going to take?
01:12:37.340 for me to get two things into the life of my family? Number one, a church community where
01:12:43.480 I am excited to see, I would be excited to see my children buy into their vision of the worship of
01:12:50.320 the living God, whole hog. And number two, how can I then educate them to think about everything
01:12:55.840 Christianly? If you get those two things right, you know, stuff's still hard, things can go wrong,
01:13:02.060 blah, blah, blah. But you will be able to say, I think I, before God did my duty, I did what I
01:13:09.500 could do. I gave my children all I had. And, uh, and I think you'll reap. So Brian, I was wondering
01:13:16.180 if you could speak to the method of education. You know, we had explored a homeschool co-op,
01:13:21.580 which would have been quite honestly, a lot easier than starting a school. Why would one,
01:13:27.500 why did we do a school versus a homeschool co-op or even like a hybrid, like cottage model or
01:13:33.520 something like that? Yeah. One of the big motivations, honestly, is to get out of the
01:13:36.960 longhouse. Like you have to, education is one of the biggest, just absolute, um, longhouses in
01:13:43.860 the world, in, in the modern American world. It's dominated by basically feminine and bureaucratic 1.00
01:13:50.560 modes of thinking. And I don't mean feminine in like a glorious, godly femininity. I mean, 0.88
01:13:54.520 the worst of women led by matriarchal yes it doesn't have the chinocratic our education 1.00
01:14:01.520 doesn't have the note of of joyful strong male leadership it has the the dominating ringing note 0.83
01:14:09.040 of bureaucratic female dominated leadership well it's like the school marms of like
01:14:14.640 yeah Dolores Umbridge there's a reason that C.S. Lewis when he wrote Harry Potter reference yeah
01:14:20.480 Yeah. When Lewis wrote The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, he made the head of the school that they escape out of, basically, and then come back to at the end. It's a bureaucratic lady.
01:14:30.180 It's Dolores Umbridge, basically. 1.00
01:14:32.200 Yeah, essentially. That's what it is. And then she gets elected to Parliament at the end, which is perfect. 0.86
01:14:38.340 But – and I say that because you'll notice if you get deep into the education world and you start evaluating different systems of classical or whatever, you will find that because education so often lands in the plate of mom and dads are just disconnected, they're not reading the books, they're not educated themselves, they're not engaged.
01:14:59.780 You will find that – and I think most of it is like very much well-meaning, moms tend to dominate the world of education.
01:15:07.200 So if you want to get out of that, then you have to get into a different mode of thinking. And I think one of the most important things you can do is have male teachers. You can have male board members.
01:15:23.260 So for us, a lot of the school model came back to saying, we actually don't just want to replicate a lot of what we see, even in the Christian homeschooling world.
01:15:35.960 It still tends to be very much mom dominated.
01:15:39.340 And we wanted to have a model where the elders of the church or, you know, or wise and godly men of the church were overseeing the curricular elements.
01:15:50.040 obviously we have a huge input from moms. Like we have a huge input from godly ladies, ladies who
01:15:56.240 are passionate about education and know quite a bit as well. It's like, I'm not knocking that at
01:15:59.620 all. We definitely reaped harvest there. But when you start to look at, I think the kind of culture
01:16:07.040 that's produced in a community that has a really good school, it's more of a Redwood type of
01:16:13.680 culture instead of a scattered culture, because instead of everybody kind of doing their own
01:16:20.160 thing, you have this central gathering point where a lot of discipleship and enculturation
01:16:26.440 is happening, and they're all coming together to eat at the same table.
01:16:32.160 And I also think it adds an element when you bring in some of the male element tends to
01:16:38.120 tend towards rigor there's more rigor in scholastic environments that are male oriented and so and
01:16:46.440 then also when you look through a historic if you just do a historic sweep of education
01:16:50.460 especially in the classical world you'll find that it is dominated by from the early years of
01:16:58.340 in classical education you would typically be wealthier families they would typically hire
01:17:03.360 It would often be a slave even who would oversee and tutor children through the young years, and then they would be handed off to a rhetor, which would be a male teacher who would bring them up through a next level of their education.
01:17:16.960 It was very much dominated by male teachers and male administration.
01:17:22.380 And so today I think where you find a lot of male involvement, you'll find higher levels of rigor often.
01:17:29.720 It's interesting in early American history too. I was reading this with Lewis and Clark. The vast majority of anyone who was college university educated in America at that time period, their pre-college training and much of the training that would be like high school years, what we think of now, predominantly 99.9% of teachers were ministers.
01:17:52.820 So they were the only ones with the education to get people prepped for college if they want to go to university.
01:17:58.100 So when you think about it, it's like, OK, well, I wonder what the culture was like, particularly in the South, when every single higher education teacher was basically a male and well-versed in reformed theology.
01:18:12.940 I mean, it produced something very different.
01:18:14.660 And the schooling would often only go to about age 12 for many children before the young man would often go into trades or to apprenticeship.
01:18:24.600 Yeah, they would only go into higher education if it's like if you want to be a minister, a lawyer.
01:18:27.900 That's why you would see a lot of higher education begin, like university level education begin in the teen years for people that we now think of as like very accomplished lawyers or politicians.
01:18:37.140 And I mean like early in American history, many of them were doing – they were going to their college university education at 16 or they were –
01:18:44.360 Well, it was because in the Great Depression, we started – we rolled out high school essentially as mandatory or normative for everybody, partly as a way of keeping young men out of the workforce, delaying their entrance into the workforce to not compete over scarce jobs.
01:19:01.100 So during the Great Depression, this big change happened and stuck as this often happens, like we implement property taxes and then they stick forever, even though they were supposed to be temporary.
01:19:10.980 So we tend to think just generally about education very differently than the education has been approached in history.
01:19:21.280 And so a lot of that we tried to go to our model of education with an open mind of saying, well, instead of just replicating something that we can buy in a ready-made, let's think about the economic challenges of tuition.
01:19:35.140 Let's think about the male problem of having more male influence in the classroom and in the board, and that's also an economic problem.
01:19:42.880 Rigor.
01:19:43.840 We thought of a lot of these elements.
01:19:46.200 Even who makes up the student body.
01:19:48.240 Yes.
01:19:48.520 Remember, we've bounced around with that.
01:19:50.400 But we were considering like, okay, well, we'll have Christians from other churches.
01:19:55.320 They can send their kids to our school.
01:19:57.260 Yeah, sure.
01:19:58.100 But the culture of the student body is so important.
01:20:01.100 Yeah.
01:20:01.720 And so we've restricted it to members, children of members only.
01:20:06.540 Yeah.
01:20:07.120 At least for now when our school is so small that a family or two could really change the culture of the student body, we can't risk that.
01:20:15.920 Because we're not – again, we're not trying to be the biggest school on earth.
01:20:20.400 It's not the goal.
01:20:21.660 The goal is in part because we don't have a tuition that we're really charging our students because it's funded from the tithe, which is a creative way of doing this.
01:20:32.200 There's a lot of different elements that were reverse engineered from thinking through this problem of a lot of the problems that we saw in the world of Christian education and saying, how can we best address as many of these problems as possible and also grow and figure it out as we go along.
01:20:47.680 And the Lord's been kind. Our school is tripling this year roughly in student body on Tuesday as we record. It's like the end of August. We're going to – September 5th, I think. Tuesday, September 5th, we'll be starting our next year of school with like 3x the student body.
01:21:05.360 And that's about the pace it'll grow for the foreseeable future.
01:21:07.700 Yeah, for at least the next couple of years, probably the next five plus years, that would be, wow, yeah.
01:21:15.500 So if you are interested in learning to be a teacher at our school and you have the capacity, then particularly if you're independently wealthy.
01:21:26.740 Yes, or have a government retirement or a pension.
01:21:29.640 Yeah, a lot of the military. That's how we hacked it with getting military guys. Because we're like, you got to be able to, you know, support a guy full time, a man with a family. Like, you don't want some weirdo who's, anyway, different subject.
01:21:44.640 Different subject.
01:21:45.880 Yeah.
01:21:46.520 Well, gentlemen, it's been good. Any closing thoughts as we wrap up this discussion? Keeping your kids, winning their hearts, education, worship?
01:21:54.660 well yeah i would just i would just think forward to your the trajectory that your kids are on if
01:22:00.500 you look at the trajectory do you like that trajectory and what would you give to change it
01:22:05.240 that's that's what i would say it's like do the hard thing yeah fest and alente make hay slowly
01:22:11.980 but if you make hay slowly in the wrong direction you will just get to the wrong place
01:22:16.600 right so so make sure that you're looking at the foundational direction the trajectory
01:22:23.500 of your enculturation of your children as a father,
01:22:27.220 asking the hard questions,
01:22:28.640 doing the hard, ruthless evaluation,
01:22:30.920 and then saying, I either am now
01:22:33.420 or I need to get to a place where I can fest in Alente,
01:22:35.760 where I can make haste slowly to the right place.
01:22:38.100 But you really sometimes need to make a disjunctive decision
01:22:40.720 where it's like, we're gonna change the dynamic
01:22:43.360 of our life in a very disjunctive way.
01:22:47.380 Like we're gonna make a big switch now
01:22:49.420 so that we can then plod the rest of our life
01:22:51.840 one foot in front of the other.
01:22:53.260 and not make a yearly big change.
01:22:56.440 That's the goal.
01:22:57.780 So yes, Festin Alente,
01:22:59.220 but really do that evaluation Dan's talking about
01:23:02.180 in terms of the trajectory
01:23:04.080 when it comes to the education and worship of your children
01:23:06.980 so that you can win them to a culture
01:23:09.560 that's thick enough and beautiful enough
01:23:11.680 and worthy enough that a Christian culture
01:23:14.600 that you could see it lasting through the generations. 0.96
01:23:18.680 Yeah, and one of the best ways to turn the ship is,
01:23:21.020 and this is what we're talking about,
01:23:22.580 is actually repentance.
01:23:24.180 Yeah.
01:23:26.200 Repenting to your kids saying,
01:23:27.680 I've made a mistake
01:23:28.800 and I've neglected this part of my duties
01:23:32.060 and I want to ask for your forgiveness
01:23:35.560 and I'm going to change it.
01:23:38.500 That's one of the best things
01:23:40.040 that you could do for your family
01:23:41.120 to turn the ship,
01:23:43.520 to win your kids' hearts.
01:23:45.280 Yeah, that's good stuff.
01:23:46.080 Well, gentlemen, thank you.
01:23:47.080 It's been a great conversation.
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01:24:04.920 If you are a Patreon supporter until next time festin Alente,
01:24:09.880 as Brian said,
01:24:10.580 make haste slowly.
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