July 20, 2025 • 46 mins
What did churches do wrong in the 20th century to end up here? How do churches and families recover and move forward? What does education and discipleship look like in the 21st century? Dr Josh Howard, Gabe Rench and Nate Wright discuss these issues and more in this special Fight Laugh Feast episode!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Well, I am joined today by some good friends, Gabe
Wrench Nate Wright. Thank you guys both so much for
coming back on repeat guests on Eschatology Matters.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Thanks thanks for having us. This is a you know,
Fight Last Feast Network show. Yeah, Brandon did.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Remind me to remind our viewers this is some of
our fight Laft Feast cohorts. So yeah, thank you guys
for coming on and Nate joining us all the way
from Canadia.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
So thanks brother the soon to be fifty first state.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Let's not stir those waters. We're talking about other stuff.
We'll stir that pot another time.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
I will say though, like you guys are two of
my favorite Americans, So this is like the two of
my favorite Americans, Gabe Wrench and mister Josh Howard.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
So calid, much appreciated brother. Yeah, you're one of like
five Canadian people I know in general.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
One to say yeah. But yes, Nate, that's right, that's right,
appreciated in the class. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I was like, Canada is like one of those places
where you say, you know, I'm from Arkansas and somebody's like, oh,
do you know Jimmy, you know, like he's from Arkansas too.
I feel like Canada like almost falls into that category
but totally lost.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Last literally, when we were in Kentucky for the Fight
Last Feast conference two years ago, we had people all, oh,
do you know like you like, I know, we're small,
Like I do know, I do know thirty you know,
thirty five millions, a lot less than three hundred and
fifty million, but like, it's still a lot of people
I don't know them.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
All right, right, well, we we've at least gotten past
the hockey games where we're all slugging it out with
your boys. But yeah, we've moved past that and gone
on to different types of slugging in the streets of America,
which we might get here in a minute. But Gabe,
you guys have a conference coming up. You guys are
talking about something that doesn't influence or impact probably anybody
that watches our channel.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
That's tongue in cheek, right, this is kind of at
the heart of it.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Tell us a little bit about flof conference, but also
what's the thing you guys are tackling this year and why?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, So we started what we saw a tagline in
our show became Fight Laft Feast. Over the years, actually
pretty quickly Fight laf Feast because we thought Christians need
to fight well with each other and against the world
and sin, that Christians should laugh well. The joy of
the Lord is our strength. We should be jolly warriors
and feasting. You know, God prepared a table in the
(02:38):
presence of David's enemies, Like the feasting is key to
to building community within your house, building community within your
city and within their church, and also fighting at the
gates of God's enemies. God prepares at the table and
the presence of David's enemies. So Fight lat Feast became
kind of a tagline that really took off, and so
we decided to call our conference Fight lat Feast Comference,
(03:00):
which we started in twenty twenty. And basically, I think
what we do is we create conferences that are pretty
angle angular in the sense that the topics are very
you know, most conferences might have to do with let's say,
the holiness of God or or worship or something along
those kind of theological lines, which of course they're that's
(03:22):
that's great. I don't disagree with the holiness of God theology,
but to me, conferences kind of became a place where
it was just everyone pat and each other on the
back and and rehashing old topics that have already been
kind of figured out, you know, the periods have figured out.
A lot of this is for us, you know, And
(03:42):
so our conferences became really important to I think, framing
out for us what Christians need to be thinking about
given our time, our current culture, the current problems that
are that are. So we did a conference on politics
of sex. We did a conference on politics of six
Day Creation, we did, you know. So so we largely
(04:05):
try to connect what we're doing and the topics we're
talking about to what's happening in the streets right now.
Politics of sex, you know, transgenderism, all that stuff is
still big. And but we also kind of with that
comes from problems. You got to answer a lot of questions,
what do you mean politics of sex? What do you
can I can my eight year old come to your conference?
(04:25):
It's like, yes, do they read Samson? Yes? And they
can come. And and so this year the topic is, Paul,
excuse me, school wars. Obviously having a little fun with
Star Wars, there are school wars, how to rebuild Christendom
with your kids, and this topic, I mean, obviously it
(04:47):
spans so many issues, you know, disciplingship, discipling the kids
in your own house, you know, public education, university education. Uh,
you know, how does the church think about discipleship? How
does you know Dad think about, you know, discipling his employees.
You know, it crosses. It's not just about you know,
going to school every day, you know. And if we
(05:07):
think about America and when America the One Constitution was ratified,
ninety nine percent of the US population was Protestant, not
even Catholic, not even you know, EO whatever. Ninety nine
percent was Protestant. And that was you know, you know,
seventeen eighty seven, seventeen eighty nine. And so what's happened
(05:32):
in America and the moral decay that's happened in America
to me is one hundred percent the fault of the
Protestant Church. If we dominated America back in you know,
seventeen eighty then what's happened is the only way you
lose America if you dominate America and the culture and
(05:54):
its population, is you don't keep your kids. That's ultimately
what happened is Protestant, the Protestant Christian Church overtime lost
their kids and over time, uh, to you know, unbelieved,
to other sex whatever. Uh. And that's been devastating. I
mean we should basically the way God talks about God
(06:15):
keeps in some sense faithfulness obviously is by the grace
of God. You know, we're saved by gersu faith, but
in some sense related to that, because God promises that
if you're faithful to me, I'll bless you in a
thousand years. So at some point Protestants in America let
(06:35):
unfaithfulness creep into their churches through feminism, through you know,
elders being or pastors being pastors who should step down
for not having faithful kids, or cheating on their wife whatever,
over time. And I can map this out even through
the public school, the public education SYSM. Over time, America
lost their children and unfaithfulness came in and we lost America.
I'm in a town of uh, and I'll stop here,
(06:58):
but I live in Moscow, Hoe and my pastor, pastor Doug,
has been pastoring since seventy seven, seventy eight, I don't
even know, so he's been here for you know, almost
fifty years pastoring. And we're in a town of about
twenty thousand people. Give or take when the students come in,
and what I've seen, we're about four generations into the
(07:20):
work here in Moscow. And Moscow is a University of Idaho. Here,
it's a liberal town, college town surrounded by farm fields.
That's it. So you got these conservative farmers around, but
you got the towns owned by liberals because of the
University of lot of home. And it takes about thirty
five hundred votes to get a mayor. I'm just what
(07:41):
I'm illustrating is what faithfulness should look like and how
God makes it easy for Christians to take over their city,
makes it easy for Christians to take back America. That's
what I'm illustrating right here. And it takes about thirty
five hundred hundred votes to get a mayor. And we
got twenty thousand people here. Let's say the voting population
is something like eleven thousand and the voting population ten
(08:02):
thousand because you've got kids and stuff that can't vote yet,
age stuff, requirements. All that jazz well in my churches.
So Pastor Wilson started christ Church, and then we started
another church called Trending to Reform, and then we planted
another church called King's Cross. I'm at King's Cross with
Pastor Toby. Pastor Toby teaches at King's Cross. We are
(08:23):
about two thousand people between all of our churches here
in town now, so we now make up about ten
percent of Moscow. And what's happening is you just have
just average families growing their kids to love the Lord,
and they're slowly we're slowly taking over Moscow. And I
think in ten to twenty years we'll take over the
(08:44):
politics of Moscow because our kids will vote. Our kids
are staying, Our kids aren't leaving. It's our kids. We
aren't aborting our children. We aren't. You know, it's cool
to stay with your mom and dad here in town,
whereas the liberals it's not cool. You know, kids like
I don't want to stay with my mom and dad
in town. I'm going to call and boys, I'm gonna
go to college in Seattle whatever. So just the culture
of what's happening is just like faithfulness over time wins.
(09:08):
And so that's taking a long way to illustrate. That's
why school wars is so important, because how you disciple
your kids matters to a thousand generations. Doesn't just matter
for them getting a job or for them, you know,
in the next ten years or whatever. It matters the
way God puts it, it matters to a thousand generations.
(09:28):
And so look at and look what's in the Whatever
happens in the house eventually happens in the streets. This
is why homosexuality is a sin in the house, just
says as much as it's sent out in the streets.
This is why you know, we have riots in our houses.
We don't have faithful culture, family culture in a house.
We have riots in our house. We're fighting, we're bickering
and everything. So we get riots out in the street.
(09:51):
Like it's all connected. And this is why it's so
important to think of discipleship not just as education. Obviously
that's an emphasis at our conference, but you have to
think about discipleship in a post mil Eschaological way to
a thousand generations. I've talked a lot and I'll just
kind of but I just wanted to set up like
(10:12):
how important it is to think don't just think about
discipleship as education, think about discipleship as it matters everywhere.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Right, Nate, I know you've probably got got thoughts on this.
There's a couple of things that Gabe was touching on
that I'd love to talk about obviously, but this being
a focus for Christians, I think is it's overdue and
I think it's catching on. So you brought up at
least one of the things you were bringing up, Gabe,
is just kind of a like you said, it's not
like a myopic focus on just education, like you put
(10:40):
them in the right school and it checks out, But
it is kind of like, at the heart of it
is where your kid's going to you know, where are.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
They being educated? What does their schooling look like?
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Not just formal education, but I'm assuming you're talking about
kind of formative education as well when you look at
those things I was thinking of, we've been digging into
a little bit of this, like in our church and
with our families, and you know Machen back in the day,
he had a quote and it was it was something
along the lines of that he saw he saw little
or he saw no consistency with a Christianity that preaches
the Gospel to the farthest reaches of the world and
(11:09):
on every street corner. I'm butchering the quote, but something
along those lines he said, but abandons the children of
the Covenant to a cold and unbelieving secularism of course, Matton.
You know he wrote that decades back, right, But that's
kind of been so good a lot of a lot
of Christians experiences that we have been.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
You know, I'm thinking of me.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I grew up.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
I was an early eighties baby, and I know you
guys are right in that same kind of milieu. And
you know, growing up, I remember evangelism, hot missions, especially
foreign missions forefront, and praise God for those things.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
But as far as like the children of the church,
they're they're pretty noisy, and they stink, and they they
probably you know, get them over here to the side.
So I think it's a retrieval process that's long overdue.
But Nate, what are you thinking, man?
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah, I mean I think that.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
I think I think God's pattern is pretty clear scripturally speaking,
that like family is at this is at the center
of God's rescue plan for the world, and the church
is the household of households, right, So you have a
church is only as strong as the households that comprise it,
as the families that make it up. It's the family
of families, the household of households.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
And then you have. You know, as goes the family.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
So goes the church. As it goes to the church,
so goes the community. As goes the community, so goes
the nations. Right, so you have this sort of working through,
and I think you spot on, Josh, like I think
the sexy things that churches have been so enamored with,
with big conferences and overseas missions and all this kind
of stuff at the expense of our own families has
(12:40):
been a travesty. And I think that you know, you
can't export what you don't have. And you know, so
you have these churches that get all wound up and
send all these foreign missionaries off. And yet you know,
even in the commissioning services of these new missionaries, the
kids are downstairs in the dank basement being taught by
(13:01):
a sixty year old woman, you know, using a flannel
graph and like, we just.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Not flannel graph that's not the culprit.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Go ahead, you lead flannel graphs out of this.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
But you know what I mean, like we we haven't
we haven't developed family culture in our churches. And and
so the the kinds of missions that we're exporting is
is a weak family church and so like we're exporting
then to other cultures a weak form of Christianity. And
you even see this like I don't want to knock
(13:34):
anybody who's who's done a lot for the kingdom, but
when you think of sort of that Billy Graham crusade
style of whether it's a revival meetings, you know, evangelism,
whether it's missions whatever, it's this sort of parachute in
you know, decisionism, you know, and then you know there's
no discipleship, and and well, why is that our form
of ministry?
Speaker 3 (13:55):
That's our form of ministry because that's what that's all.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
We know in our our families, right we we don't
we haven't discipled our kids well enough. And I think,
you know, one of the things that we've really emphasized
at our church in our like we switched to family
integrated church, like keeping the kids in the worship service,
for going to you know, the Sunday school and the
nursery and all that kind of stuff years ago now,
(14:18):
and it was a big transition for our church.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
I was, I was convinced of.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
It long before we made that transition, and we kind
of did it slowly and loved our people along the way.
So a lot of people who come and they hear
good things about our church and they come and then
they're like like, what's going on here?
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Like where's the kids now? Where's your nursery? Where's the
kids ministry?
Speaker 4 (14:36):
And uh, And then we emphasize to them like, no,
this is this is your chance to you are forming
and shaping the next generation of worshippers. What you do
see for the people who stick around, because sometimes they
they come once and then they go for the sweet
you know, kids ministry down the street.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
But when they stick around and.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
You get fathers who understand, oh, it's my job to
listen to my pastor disseminate the information and actually disciple
my children with it. And so we're going home and
having conversations. It honors the way God did these families.
So it just changes ministry. And I just think, because
we haven't got to write in our churches, we haven't
(15:14):
got it right, you know, or we haven't got to
write in our families. We haven't got to write in
our churches.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
You know. This is why and.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
We were joking before the cameras started rolling here, is
that you guys have riots in la you know from
a bunch of kids who should have got spanked when
they were younger and probably might not be rioting if
they had gotten spanked a little bit, you know what
I mean?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Like it all comes down.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
To family discipleship, right, And I think like when people
do come to our church and we have like church
family worship guides and stuff like that, Like I think
one of the things that that you know, just family
worship is such a foreign concept, Like how is it
you want to ask, like how do we lose Canada?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
How do we lose America?
Speaker 4 (15:58):
And you know, less than a century, it's because nobody
was doing family worship. So I think all of this
is connected and I think this is this is the
crux if you want to get to like what's the
bedrock issue that makes Like we can talk about transgenderism,
we can talk about riots in the street, we can
talk about all the stuff going on, It all comes
down to this.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
It all comes from I.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Like how you're you're kind of keying in on Well
you mentioned a second ago, like you know, we don't
know how to do missions, we don't know how to
do church planning because we're not exactly doing it at home.
And there was an old quote I can't remember who
came from. I think it might have come from somebody
I don't I don't particularly like following anymore.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
But somebody he brought up. It was a good point.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
He said, you don't become a missionary on the plane
something along that those lines, and essentially like, you know,
you've got these young people who are very you know,
they're filled with passion and whatever, and they say, you know,
I'm going to go on the mission field and I'm
going to become a missionary. And he'd just say, you know,
who have you shared with this week? Because you don't
become you know, a missionary on the plane ride. I
think we're seeing that within church culture. We're saying, you know,
go and worship together, and people don't.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Know how to do it. And then we them like,
well what do you do at home? And it's like,
we don't do any of this stuff at home, and
it's kind of the the crux.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Now, Gabe, you said something a minute ago, and I'll
kick it back to you, but you said something a
minute ago that I thought was interesting. So if you
if you look back, there's a lot of things that
I think American Christians we look back, you know, one
hundred years, like Nate just brought up, and we look
back and we're kind of shocked by things.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
I live outside of Pittsburgh, and so I was just
hearing I think it's time and Kline talking this morning
and talking about some of the framers, you know, right
around the time of the framing of the Constitution and
specifically with like the First Amendment and all of the
things that flew that kind of flowed from it. Around
the time of that framing and sussing out of those
constitutional details. Pennsylvania's requirement for elected officials was that they
(17:40):
not only a firm old New Testament, but affirmed them
as inspired. Like American Christians look back, You're like, what
in Pennsylvania, and that's that's religious freedom. So we've just
kind of lost some of that connection. Now along those lines,
I think Christians and churches would be shocked to hear
what so many Christians one hundred years and then, you know,
further back said about the family stuff Like Charles Hodge,
(18:03):
for example, is one of my favorites on this and
he spoke about the family in ways that would make
us really uncomfortable because he used ecclesiastical terms, and he's
talking about the father is a sort of minister or
vicar to his children, and that he raises in essence
a small Shiloh within his home that is then to
lift up praise to the Lord. And when the father
fails in this regard to lead his children and family
(18:23):
into worship, he's in essence beckoning in demons that one
habit the premises, like, you read the stuff and you're like,
this is this is so foreign from our conception. Our
conception is I did my job. I woke them up,
I made sure their teeth are brushed, and I gave
them to Lucy, the third grade teacher, and I'll see
them when we get out of church, you know what
I mean, Like, we've lost the plot on that. But
what are you thinking on some of that stuff, Gabe.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Well, I think there's I mean, well, let me let
me start here. There are any any cultural sin that
we have in our that are a major cultural sin
in our current moment started in the church. So to
Nate's point, like what happens in the family affects the church,
(19:05):
what happens in the church affects culture the church. God
created the church to be a city on a heel,
a light on that hill, and which means that the
church is where where the Christian faith is strong in
a culture. The church is explicitly connected to the sins
(19:27):
of the culture. So whether the church has most influence
in a culture like in America, it doesn't have a
lot of influence, you know right now in Congo, you
know what you know. So whether the church has a
high concentration of impact, it's going to be connected to
the sins of America. And so think about it this way.
(19:48):
Feminism started in the church in the early eighteen hundreds.
It started where women in the church, I'm sure their
husbands were drunks or whatever, but started getting pastors to
sign abstinate vowels and get in the congregation to sign
absent vowels to not drink alcohol. And that was the
process in which wine got kicked out of the church
(20:10):
to celebrate the Lord's Supper, and how grape juice got
instituted in the church over early eighteen hundreds. I wrote
an article about this two years ago on my website.
And then by the eighteen sixties, all these abstinent vowels
were we being signed and they started realizing, well, we
got to fix our wine problem, alcohol problem, and so
Ed Welch, Pastor Welch, came along and figured out how
(20:32):
to strip alcohol out of grape juice. And there's a
market for it. But it started because of women, and
then the women got the pastors to push abstinent vowels
in the church, and then along came out Welch. And
then now this happens in the PCA, this happens in
the Baptist churches. And now you have this weird theology
that was constructed off of old feminism on a defense
(20:57):
of why we served grape juice in the Lord's upper in
the church. It came from first wave feminism, which is
which looks and I'm not saying we have we serve
wine in our community trades and we have some grape
juice in the back for people who need it. We
understand there's more complicated than that. But that was a
feminist theology that affected and created, and now all these
(21:20):
pastors have this new construct or this new theology. I
had to find grape juice in the Lord supper, but
it came from the eighteen hundred. Secondly, another example of this,
and this is This is where I tend to get
most in trouble with this argument talking about sins happened
in the church first, and then they showed up in
culture later and worse abortion. To Nate's point, we for decades,
(21:42):
maybe a century, I don't know when the practice team
has started. Maybe it was finny, I don't know, but
we started separating family from kids and worship. And so
you'd walk in the church, mom and dad would go
upstairs to real church, and the kids knew it, that's
that's serious church. That's where you really talk to God.
And we're gonna go down in the basement and play
(22:03):
church and do felt boards or whatever, flannel boardance, whatever,
we're gonna go. And and what happened is the kids
over time were was communicating. They got they got the
communication we aren't as important to go to the real
worship service. And so multiple things happen there. One is
you start creating two different kinds of churches, because there's
one kind of music downstairs, one kind of music upstairs,
(22:25):
one kind of pastoring upstairs, one kind of pastoring downstairs.
So they actually end up creating two different churches, which
is which has had massive damage in the church. I'm
not gonna talk about that right now. But the other
thing is is it aborted families from worshiping Me together.
And so we taught the church, taught the world that
that children were not that important when it came to
(22:46):
our the famili's relationship to God. The church taught the
world that children were not as important, they were not
as valuable, they were not you know, So we taught
the world how to abort your kids out of worship first.
And so, no wonder the world comes along. I know,
I know you're thinking it's a big jump, but no
wonder the world comes along and aborts the kids out
of the worms.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
So I hear the typical Christian hearing what you were saying,
especially about like you know, you come to church and
you go to you know these call it big church.
Right in our areas, you got a big church upstairs.
Kids go to little church or kids church or whatever,
and they would see that, like, well, what's the problem.
They're still hearing about Jesus. They're still hearing about these things.
I think what we were to do a lot of
times is like what you were aiming at earlier, Gabe,
when you were introducing this topic is that families aren't
(23:29):
just like real important because they make more people.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Families aren't just important because you're probably gonna teach your
kids how to read, or help teach them how to read,
you know, if you if you happen to send them
to school or something. There's like these little like you know,
accidental functions of the family, But at the core of it,
it's actually the building block of how God made everything.
So they're they're at the actual building blocks of society,
of culture of the world. And God made that covenantally,
so not accidentally. So God actually said this is the
(23:54):
way I'm gonna form this thing that used to be
very recognized covenantal Christian thinking. We've so divorced ourselves from
that when we look at the family, you bringing up
the riots sounds very strange because it's like, whoa, those
are political issues, socio cultural issues, and I'm not acting
like it's just a simplistic matter. Obviously there's there's different
things going on there, but at the core of it
(24:14):
is the family. Always and always is the family issue
at the core of these things because from that is
birthed the rest of human culture and society. So if
there are errors and gave this goes to your point.
If there are errors, whether it be something that does
not seem to match up, like you might throw feminism
out there, somebody says.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Whoa, that's a mismatch.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Everything is traceable back to the home and the hearth
because God formed culture and civilization. And I just don't
think that Christians are even seeing that.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, And I don't mean to bring up an argument
that we disagree on. All I'm trying to illustrate is
that there's like, what your point is is, there's so
much we're doing in the church to either separate our
kids from the family, or separate our kids from the faith,
or separate and disciple our kids in such a way
where it's like it's so easy for them to leave
the church and go out into the world because we've
(25:01):
we've forgotten what true discipleships should look like with our children,
you know. And I could, I could, I mean, I
could punch the Baptist in the face too with this
where it's like sometimes there's certain circles where they've got
a rough week, they just had their convention. They don't
give them a break. Most of our Baptist friend would
probably agree on this point. There's a lot of Baptist
culture where they won't let the kids get baptized as
(25:21):
they are eighteen years old. Seventeen eighteen years old old
really late. Most of our Baptist friends, they're like, oh yeah,
profession of faith to eight years old. I'm on it,
you know. But this is an extreme example, but it's
pretty prevalent in the broader you know, jeffreyes Rick Warrem
even our friend marks nine marks. Yeah, where they won't
They want to make sure their kid is such a
(25:43):
solid Christian before they baptize them, whatever that means. They
won't let a baptize toy. They want to check all
the boxes. So it's like seventeen eighteen years old. And
so again the same description kind of applies. Well, what
if you your kid goes to church and worships with
you for seventeen years and they look down the row
and they say, am I not baptized? Mom? And dad? Is?
Because mom and dad doesn't think they're a Christian. That's
(26:05):
what they That's the that's basically what's driving it is Mom,
dad doesn't think I'm a Christian. Dad. So you teach
your kids to doubt their faith for seventeen years. Well
you're going to get a bunch of doubting children leave
your church. So they get baptized, But by the time
they're seventeen, that seed of doubt has been sitting there
for seventeen years. And so that's no wonder why the
(26:26):
rebaptism rates high in those in those those circles and
those cultures, because they've been teaching. So just an example
of like this is how we're thinking in the church.
We're boarding our kids from worship service. It's no wonder
we're eventually going to get to the point where we
bought our kids from mother's wombs because we already showed
the world how to think about your.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Kids well and to that point gave you.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
You talked about like instilling doubt, doubt in your kids,
and what is really what it's doing is it's actually
discipling them in a hermeneutic of doubt right to constantly
be looking inward, examining am I really in?
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Am I?
Speaker 4 (27:01):
Do I really belong to God? Does God really love me?
Does He really exist? And they take that herma nutic
of doubt that's been discipled into them, and when they
go it into the world with it. You know, the
world is happy to feed that doubt, right, So you've
instilled the herma utic of doubt. Then they go out
and they're like, well, it seems also kind of strange
that a donkey would talk, and it seems pretty strange
(27:23):
when God would stop the sun in the sky.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
And you know, my science teacher has a.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Different view on that, and maybe yom could mean you know,
a million years and so, but it's because they have
been discipled with a herma mutic of doubt. And that
started in the family. And I think, like to your
point where you're talking about like abortion, starting with the
devaluing of kids within the church, I think this gets
(27:49):
get this gets you know. Pastor Doug is fond on
saying I'm going through Rush Jouney with a few guys
that I'm training in pastoral ministry right now where he
got the idea of the inescapable concept.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
So the church is for the.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
Discipleship of the nations that's inescapable, and we will either
disciple them well or we will disciple them poorly. But
either way they're going to get their cues from the church.
And the church is the household of household. So what
happens in the family will affect the culture. It's just
a matter of whether it affects it positively or negatively.
(28:24):
And I think if if we're all looking around at
what's going on in the world around us, it's a
bad report card.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Now, clearly we're not doing this world.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah, whether you grief mind examples or not, the one
thing that's super clear is we are not being successful
keeping our kids in the church. This is why you
have a what I call like a Starbucks church model.
And the churches know it that they have to be
so secret friendly. They have to keep replacing the congregation,
they have to keep replacing who they're serving because.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
The door is get old and die.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Well, they can't. They can't keep kids, that's what.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
That's what I mean. They just get old and die
because their kids don't stick around.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
That's what. Yeah, that's right, that's right. And so you
see this huge seeker friendly movement. I mean, now they're
integrating Starbucks literally into their church. But Starbucks is not
the best coffee, but the way they keep their customers
to their marketing and so you know, and so they
have a high turnover of customer rate you know, I don't.
I'm drinking Starbucks for years. And in the same way,
(29:27):
the church they have to because they can't keep their kids,
because they can't even keep their families in their pews
longer than three or four or five years. They have
to recycle and do a good job with their marketing
to keep their church sizes up.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah, so what's the what are the solutions then that
you point to, because I know you guys are you're
coming in, you're talking about building Christendom with your kids.
Obviously obviously, like the school function is at the heart
of it, and we do want to land the planet
at some point.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
But I'm just.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Thinking like maybe maybe you could like key in on
maybe that formative function of the school, because I think
one of the things you know, you brought at the beginning,
it's more than just.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
School, but it's not less than school. That's obviously a
huge part of this.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Just looking at the hours, I mean, you've seen those
like those graphs that break down hours that they your
kids will spend here or there.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
In fact, I just read one.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
And it was talking about how your kid it was like,
by the time they're seventeen, they've spent like eighty five
percent of their time with their parents that they will
And I've got a daughter who's creeping up toward that age,
and it was like, I want to corner now. But
you know, this is a huge responsibility right with school.
How does that sort of integrate in and how do
we maybe encourage parents? And you guys are familiar with
these struggles some Christian parents who find their kids in
(30:37):
private Christian schools, some who are are able to or
feel equipped to homeschool with their kids, others who have
not made those choices. There's a lot of mix within churches.
So like, how do you start at least starting that
process of encouraging Christian parents are among a large swath
of different Christian groups to start thinking toward their kids
(30:57):
with that school function involved with building them.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
How do you angle toward that?
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yeah, I would start with I mean dad is responsible
for the education of his kids. That's a great starting point.
Not not the wife is his helper. The wife is
his help meet. But dad should not throw the responsibility
off to his wife. That'll create so many problems. Whether
it's homeschool, Hey, I it's your decision. You want a
homeschool or do you want some christ School whatever. No,
(31:23):
Dad has to take the lead on this because he's
going to have to take the financial hit if he's
going to pay for classical Christian school, his or his
wife's going to have to take the homeschool hit. And
he's got to make sure he's going alongside with her
to make sure that hit is falls more on him
as best he can than on her. So I was
(31:46):
reading this table talk hell Man on two thousand and
three or something a long time ago, and there's this
quote that you know, you know, men want to go
and slagh draft Biggins, but no one wants to help
mom change the diapers. And what that illustrates, especially for men,
(32:07):
is that we get we prioritize, I'm in prioritize. We're
very monolithic in a lot of our thinking process. I'm
going to do this, I'm going to my office to study,
I'm going here, I'm gonna you know, I now got
to go to baseball. You know. So we're like we're
one thought wonders all over the place. But what that
shows is is that you know, Dad wants to go
(32:28):
slagh dragons, which is a good desire. We don't want
to truss that desire. But the problem is the best
way to slay dragons is actually change your kids diapers.
You is to actually bring up reinforcements to go out
and fight with you. But we don't. Dads have lost
the I think, the long term vision of how important
it is to raise their kids and be the leader
(32:48):
in raising their kids. This goes back to y'all's point
about ministry. I mean, like, what became sexy ministry was missions,
church planning, acts twenty nine, like all these things. But
you know, the hardest ministry you'll ever do is raising
kids past twenty two. Yeah, like not just seventeen, not
just eighteen, but being with your kids and launching them
(33:09):
and then becoming friends, becoming side by side with them.
That's the hardest ministry. That's the hardest lunch. But it's
also the most fruitful thing you ever do. So I
think dads need to recover the glory of what it
means to raise faithful children in the family. That's why
I start first. I mean as far as like, obviously
you got to be wise and smart. What's good for
my family? What can my wife handle? What can I handle?
(33:30):
How much money do I have? Can I you know,
then you got to start, you know, running the inventory
of what I can handle. How good am I at education?
Can I do homeschool? Can I pay for a classical
Christian school? You know? And not all Christian schools are
Christian schools, So you gotta have wisdom there and through
all that. But you got to I think dad's got
to think way bigger than we have been about raising
(33:50):
our kids and our family.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
And where you started there, Gabe and Josh even kind
of gave the amen for both of us there in
terms of that's a great start point is you know,
dad's dads need to take responsibility. It's it's dad's job
to educate the kids. That seems controversial in a lot
of ways. And I think in a lot of church communities,
because a lot of church communities where homeschooling is big
(34:13):
and all that kind of stuff, it's like, well, that's
that's her thing, right, That's that's mom's thing, that's her calling, right.
But nobody, no proper Christian would would view discipleship in
the home as mom's responsibility, right, That's clearly dad's responsibility.
And what we've lost is the link between education and discipleship.
All education is discipleship, right, Jesus says, you know, a student,
(34:37):
when fully trained, will be like his teacher. And that's
just that's that's an that's another inescapable concept. So a
student will become like their teacher, for better or for worse.
And so when when the father gets the vision that
education is discipleship, then then that that Okay, are you
responsible for the discipleship in your home? Yes, then you're
responsible for the education in your home now, just like
(34:59):
any other responsibility that husbands have, Like we can wisely
delegate certain aspects of our responsibility, like you said, to
classic Christian school or whatever. But I think if we
get that that piece first, discipleship is our responsibility and
education is discipleship, then then that's that's that's a big piece.
And I think that the you talked about that. I
(35:20):
remember Doug Wilson one time. I think it was on
the podcast maybe or something, but it was an analogy
that always stuck with me when he said, you know,
if you ask the guy mop in the deck on
the submarine what he's doing, his answer ought to be
I'm fighting in a war, because he understands, like whether
you are turning the torpedo in the in the you know, submarine,
or you're mopping the deck, or you're making the pizza
(35:41):
in the canteena or whatever. You're fighting a war, you're
just doing your your part for it. So that connection
with dragon slang and diaper changing is is it's it's
a mental paradigm shift that every father needs to have.
And so you want to conquer the world, that's a
good ambition, but you have to start by taking dominion
(36:02):
of your home, and that means not having riotous children, right,
having disciplined children who are who are being raised in
the fear and admonition of the Lord.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
So I think I think that's right.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
Is connecting the big things that men are passionate about,
that every man has the desire to pull up his
sword and go and fight a dragon, but recognizing that
this is really where it starts.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Yeah, I like that, and I I like the encouraging
thought just for Christian dads, and it's not just for
it's for Christian parents, I think mainly, although if I
could back up, I could preach a whole sermon right
about now on how it's not just for the young
couple having kids, Like if you're an eighty year old
in the church whose kids are all grown up. This
is still your responsibility because if everything we've been talking
(36:45):
about is true and this is how God's formed the
universe is on these families, you should be actively involved
with helping families. But topic for another day probably, But
when I was hearing you talk just then, like especially
with like the the inescapable, you know you will raise
your children depends on how well you will do. Same
with nations, like like was brought up. You know, one
of the things that Carl Truman brought up in that
(37:08):
the was the prison trial Prison Yeah whatever the book was, right,
He talked about poisis.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
And mimasis, this whole.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
You know, it's it's an old Greek antiquity idea, but
essentially of how to look at the universe and whether
there's something mouldable malleable that everything around me is something
I form to my desires or is there sort of
a structure and grid work for most of these things
and I'm to align myself to it. And I bring
that up not to just bring up a nerdy concept,
it's it. I think that's one of the things you
have to get through to Christian parents and to Christians
(37:37):
in general who are wrestling with this is your job
and role in parenting and in the home, Like, this
isn't something that you decide how it can work. This
is something you need to recognize, Like, I, as a father,
really have things God needs me to do for my family,
and He has designed me and equipped me for You
can't just say like, well, in my home it works
a bit different. My wife fills these roles and I
(37:57):
do these other things in broad brushstrokes.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
You have.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
You have a role to do, and you're to conform
yourself to the way God's economy has actually shaped and
formed these things. I think that alone is just a
helpful thing for Christians to understand that the family is
going to function in this role whether you want it
to or not. So so our task then as a
disciple it effectively and faithfully. And and yeah, just from that,
like you were saying, to rebuild Christendom from those foundations.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
But Gabe, where can people keep up with the conference?
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Where's you mentioned blog? Do you remember the title of
that that article? By the way, just any any of
those plugs you can.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Give it was I had to write that article again.
I could. I'm sorry I used that example that we
disagree with on it. I should have brought up a
better example that way. I knew we'd all agree on
my my fault because I know this. We weren't debating that,
So my bad for that. But if you want to
catch the blog post, it actually a response to I
tweeted out, Yeah, probably wasn't the best tweet, but that's
(38:56):
back when you had one hundred and twenty characters. I tweeted.
I tweeted something out like if you're taking grape juice
in your church during communion, you're being influenced by feminism
or something like that. I said something like that and
probably said it worse than.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
That standard tweet. Yeah, standard twitter there.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
So Tom Askell got a little frustrated with me, some
other some other good guys I love got a little
got a little frustrated me. So I wrote a whole
blog post just tracing the history of first wave feminism
in the early eighteen eighteen oh one eighteen oh two
is when this whole thing started. And there's about three
or four or five women that kind of picked up
the mantle each decade and was basically it was started
over alcohol and where the women were influencing the pastors
(39:39):
and everything, and then Ed Welch came in the eighteen
fifty sixties to so that that's the context of my article.
And it's go to Gabe Wrench dot com and I
think you click on vault or articles or something and
you should be able to find that that article. So
it was actually I was trying to make some things
right that I made wrong by just being such a short,
(40:00):
insulting tweet to how some of the people have taken it.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
So again that's standard twit.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Yeah. Yeah, So there's a go to gabers dot com
for the article. I think it. I think it it's
worth reading. Of course, I'm arguing from a paedo communion
standpoint in the article, but I think just even the
nature of the influence of a first wave feminism on
the church, in theology and whining, grape juice and everything,
I think it's worth worth with the read the conference.
You can go to fight Last Feast dot com uh
(40:28):
and you can click on you know, sign up, or
you can click on be a sponsor everything. It's it's
October sixteenth through the eighteenth in Nashville, Tennessee. We got,
of course, Pastor Wilson, doctor Ben Merkele from New St.
Andrews College. We got I guess I can announce this here.
We got Larry Tuton coming on. If you guys know
(40:48):
who Larry is. He's a kind of a journalist, kind
of subvert of subversive journalists that he's in the PCA
down in Alabama. He just his home got swatted a
couple of months ago. Just crazy, but he's he's speaking.
We got David Goodwin from ACCS. We got David Bonson,
(41:09):
we got George Grant. Just a bunch of players who've
been in this kind of world for thirty forty years
and have raised faithful children. That's the other thing. I
just want to maybe end with one point here too, Josh,
where I was saying that God made discipleship easier, God
made taking over the world easy. The non unbelievers abort
(41:33):
their children or have one kid, or have two kids,
and just over time they just aren't reproducing what they
need to keep up with their side of the culture.
And so if the church just gets discipleship right and
raise their kids faithfully, over time, it's just becomes a
numbers game. Eventually, I know, it's all by grace, God's kind,
(41:54):
it's by faith all that stuff. But in one sense,
God he says, I'll bless you to a thousand generations,
and so in one sense it is a numbers game.
And so I just want parents to think way bigger
about discipleship than just going what school should they go to?
What homeschool should they do? What homeschool curriculum should they do?
Should we do? Classical conversations is it's it matters to
(42:14):
the church, it matters to the world, it matters to
the kingdom, and how you disciple your kids at every level,
including your wife, including yourself, including the church, including the elders,
and all that stuff. So go to fight laftfees dot
com to sign up and love to see you guys there.
We start off our conference with Barren Palms. It's a
fun way to kick off the conference. Good fellowship we
(42:34):
have We do a cross politic does a live show
on Saturday afternoon, so a fun way to end everything.
It's just and please bring your kids. We actually have
a jumpy castle for kids.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
We do.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
We have ways for kids to you know, when they
get a little excited, they need to go outside and
jump on the castle. We have all that stuff. So
we're very kid friendly in what we do and everything.
So fight Laftfeast dot com very.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Cool, free baptisms for all the kids to nate. Where
can people to keep up with you?
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Brother?
Speaker 1 (42:58):
You're you're busy, busy than a one armed wallpaper hangers.
They'd stay down south up there in Canada these days, brother,
Where where can people follow you?
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Yeah, it's lots of work to do up here, So
you can go to Crossroads Ingersoll dot Ca.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
So we're we're we're trying our.
Speaker 4 (43:13):
Best to do a faithful kind of Moscow blueprint out here.
Ingersoll's little town outside of London, Ontario, just a couple
hours north of Detroit, thirty thousand people and we're we're
we're trying to take it over slowly. So Crossroads Ingersoll
dot Ca. Also Ezra Institute dot com. I'm also the
Canadian director of the Ezra Institute, So I work alongside
(43:35):
Joe Boot who's a friend of Fight offt Feasts as well.
We have the podcast or Cultural Reformation on the Fight
Left Feast network. So Ezra Institute dot com. You can
find a lot of my lectures and conference talks and
all that kind of stuff there.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
Nate P.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Wright on Twitter, and you know, I say.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Less controversial things than Gabe, but I do get into
trouble every once in a while.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
That's what Twitter's for, man, That's just that's the whole
kit and kaboodle and the Rebel podcast still.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
Right, Yeah, Rebel Podcast with Fight Last Feast, and I'm
actually I'm helping a couple of guys in my church
get another podcast project off the ground called Performing Nerdom,
which has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
So the idea there is that you want to take
all things and put them under the feet of Jesus
and Victory. So what things in nerd culture should be,
It should be put under the feet of Jesus and Victory.
So we talked everything from you know, nostalgic things like
we got Jeff Derbin coming on to talk about Ninja Turtles,
we you know, we we had Doug, we had we
(44:36):
have Doug Wilson and Joe Rigney coming on to debate
whether or not Narnia or the Ransom Trilogy is the
best C. S.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
Lewis fantasy.
Speaker 4 (44:45):
Just just cool stuff like that, talking about yeah, talking
about that kind of stuff and I think we're trying
to organize Brian Solvey and Joshua Ham's coming on to
debate whether or not anime is cringe. So like just
just fun stuff like that, Like it's kind of a
cool yeah, and like analyzing movies from a Christian worldview.
(45:07):
I'll just say this because it kind of plugs into
our discussion today. Is one of my favorite games to
play with my family is whether we're watching a movie
or we're playing a board game, we're listening to a
song or something like that, we play a game called
Spot the Lie and so, you know, in the middle
of a movie, I'll press pause and it's kind of
like worldview analysis of the movie that we're watching right now.
(45:29):
All my kids love it, obviously when I just pause
the movie and get into deep theological conversations with them.
Speaker 3 (45:34):
But you're trying to teach them, So we do that
on the show.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
We do Spot the Lie and we'll go go watch
the new Marvel movie and then we'll play Spot the
Lie and help kind of give parents like a worldview
analysis of movies that they can help disciple their kids
while they're engaged in like superhero movies or nerdy stuff
like that so anyway, that's reforming nerddom and you can
find that on social media somewhere too, So yeah, do
(45:58):
lots of stuff.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Very cool, well, Nate Gabe, thank you guys so much.
This has been encouraging. Appreciate you guys.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Gosh, thanks for having us.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Man, Yeah, thanks for having us Son you did you rad.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
My ride and the Lord to my Lord commands for
all d D. Then I will man
Speaker 3 (46:20):
Fucking Linked food Stove for your shame
Well, I am joined today by some good friends, Gabe
Wrench Nate Wright. Thank you guys both so much for
coming back on repeat guests on Eschatology Matters.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Thanks thanks for having us. This is a you know,
Fight Last Feast Network show. Yeah, Brandon did.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Remind me to remind our viewers this is some of
our fight Laft Feast cohorts. So yeah, thank you guys
for coming on and Nate joining us all the way
from Canadia.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
So thanks brother the soon to be fifty first state.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Let's not stir those waters. We're talking about other stuff.
We'll stir that pot another time.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
I will say though, like you guys are two of
my favorite Americans, So this is like the two of
my favorite Americans, Gabe Wrench and mister Josh Howard.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
So calid, much appreciated brother. Yeah, you're one of like
five Canadian people I know in general.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
One to say yeah. But yes, Nate, that's right, that's right,
appreciated in the class. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I was like, Canada is like one of those places
where you say, you know, I'm from Arkansas and somebody's like, oh,
do you know Jimmy, you know, like he's from Arkansas too.
I feel like Canada like almost falls into that category
but totally lost.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Last literally, when we were in Kentucky for the Fight
Last Feast conference two years ago, we had people all, oh,
do you know like you like, I know, we're small,
Like I do know, I do know thirty you know,
thirty five millions, a lot less than three hundred and
fifty million, but like, it's still a lot of people
I don't know them.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
All right, right, well, we we've at least gotten past
the hockey games where we're all slugging it out with
your boys. But yeah, we've moved past that and gone
on to different types of slugging in the streets of America,
which we might get here in a minute. But Gabe,
you guys have a conference coming up. You guys are
talking about something that doesn't influence or impact probably anybody
that watches our channel.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
That's tongue in cheek, right, this is kind of at
the heart of it.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Tell us a little bit about flof conference, but also
what's the thing you guys are tackling this year and why?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, So we started what we saw a tagline in
our show became Fight Laft Feast. Over the years, actually
pretty quickly Fight laf Feast because we thought Christians need
to fight well with each other and against the world
and sin, that Christians should laugh well. The joy of
the Lord is our strength. We should be jolly warriors
and feasting. You know, God prepared a table in the
(02:38):
presence of David's enemies, Like the feasting is key to
to building community within your house, building community within your
city and within their church, and also fighting at the
gates of God's enemies. God prepares at the table and
the presence of David's enemies. So Fight lat Feast became
kind of a tagline that really took off, and so
we decided to call our conference Fight lat Feast Comference,
(03:00):
which we started in twenty twenty. And basically, I think
what we do is we create conferences that are pretty
angle angular in the sense that the topics are very
you know, most conferences might have to do with let's say,
the holiness of God or or worship or something along
those kind of theological lines, which of course they're that's
(03:22):
that's great. I don't disagree with the holiness of God theology,
but to me, conferences kind of became a place where
it was just everyone pat and each other on the
back and and rehashing old topics that have already been
kind of figured out, you know, the periods have figured out.
A lot of this is for us, you know, And
(03:42):
so our conferences became really important to I think, framing
out for us what Christians need to be thinking about
given our time, our current culture, the current problems that
are that are. So we did a conference on politics
of sex. We did a conference on politics of six
Day Creation, we did, you know. So so we largely
(04:05):
try to connect what we're doing and the topics we're
talking about to what's happening in the streets right now.
Politics of sex, you know, transgenderism, all that stuff is
still big. And but we also kind of with that
comes from problems. You got to answer a lot of questions,
what do you mean politics of sex? What do you
can I can my eight year old come to your conference?
(04:25):
It's like, yes, do they read Samson? Yes? And they
can come. And and so this year the topic is, Paul,
excuse me, school wars. Obviously having a little fun with
Star Wars, there are school wars, how to rebuild Christendom
with your kids, and this topic, I mean, obviously it
(04:47):
spans so many issues, you know, disciplingship, discipling the kids
in your own house, you know, public education, university education. Uh,
you know, how does the church think about discipleship? How
does you know Dad think about, you know, discipling his employees.
You know, it crosses. It's not just about you know,
going to school every day, you know. And if we
(05:07):
think about America and when America the One Constitution was ratified,
ninety nine percent of the US population was Protestant, not
even Catholic, not even you know, EO whatever. Ninety nine
percent was Protestant. And that was you know, you know,
seventeen eighty seven, seventeen eighty nine. And so what's happened
(05:32):
in America and the moral decay that's happened in America
to me is one hundred percent the fault of the
Protestant Church. If we dominated America back in you know,
seventeen eighty then what's happened is the only way you
lose America if you dominate America and the culture and
(05:54):
its population, is you don't keep your kids. That's ultimately
what happened is Protestant, the Protestant Christian Church overtime lost
their kids and over time, uh, to you know, unbelieved,
to other sex whatever. Uh. And that's been devastating. I
mean we should basically the way God talks about God
(06:15):
keeps in some sense faithfulness obviously is by the grace
of God. You know, we're saved by gersu faith, but
in some sense related to that, because God promises that
if you're faithful to me, I'll bless you in a
thousand years. So at some point Protestants in America let
(06:35):
unfaithfulness creep into their churches through feminism, through you know,
elders being or pastors being pastors who should step down
for not having faithful kids, or cheating on their wife whatever,
over time. And I can map this out even through
the public school, the public education SYSM. Over time, America
lost their children and unfaithfulness came in and we lost America.
I'm in a town of uh, and I'll stop here,
(06:58):
but I live in Moscow, Hoe and my pastor, pastor Doug,
has been pastoring since seventy seven, seventy eight, I don't
even know, so he's been here for you know, almost
fifty years pastoring. And we're in a town of about
twenty thousand people. Give or take when the students come in,
and what I've seen, we're about four generations into the
(07:20):
work here in Moscow. And Moscow is a University of Idaho. Here,
it's a liberal town, college town surrounded by farm fields.
That's it. So you got these conservative farmers around, but
you got the towns owned by liberals because of the
University of lot of home. And it takes about thirty
five hundred votes to get a mayor. I'm just what
(07:41):
I'm illustrating is what faithfulness should look like and how
God makes it easy for Christians to take over their city,
makes it easy for Christians to take back America. That's
what I'm illustrating right here. And it takes about thirty
five hundred hundred votes to get a mayor. And we
got twenty thousand people here. Let's say the voting population
is something like eleven thousand and the voting population ten
(08:02):
thousand because you've got kids and stuff that can't vote yet,
age stuff, requirements. All that jazz well in my churches.
So Pastor Wilson started christ Church, and then we started
another church called Trending to Reform, and then we planted
another church called King's Cross. I'm at King's Cross with
Pastor Toby. Pastor Toby teaches at King's Cross. We are
(08:23):
about two thousand people between all of our churches here
in town now, so we now make up about ten
percent of Moscow. And what's happening is you just have
just average families growing their kids to love the Lord,
and they're slowly we're slowly taking over Moscow. And I
think in ten to twenty years we'll take over the
(08:44):
politics of Moscow because our kids will vote. Our kids
are staying, Our kids aren't leaving. It's our kids. We
aren't aborting our children. We aren't. You know, it's cool
to stay with your mom and dad here in town,
whereas the liberals it's not cool. You know, kids like
I don't want to stay with my mom and dad
in town. I'm going to call and boys, I'm gonna
go to college in Seattle whatever. So just the culture
of what's happening is just like faithfulness over time wins.
(09:08):
And so that's taking a long way to illustrate. That's
why school wars is so important, because how you disciple
your kids matters to a thousand generations. Doesn't just matter
for them getting a job or for them, you know,
in the next ten years or whatever. It matters the
way God puts it, it matters to a thousand generations.
(09:28):
And so look at and look what's in the Whatever
happens in the house eventually happens in the streets. This
is why homosexuality is a sin in the house, just
says as much as it's sent out in the streets.
This is why you know, we have riots in our houses.
We don't have faithful culture, family culture in a house.
We have riots in our house. We're fighting, we're bickering
and everything. So we get riots out in the street.
(09:51):
Like it's all connected. And this is why it's so
important to think of discipleship not just as education. Obviously
that's an emphasis at our conference, but you have to
think about discipleship in a post mil Eschaological way to
a thousand generations. I've talked a lot and I'll just
kind of but I just wanted to set up like
(10:12):
how important it is to think don't just think about
discipleship as education, think about discipleship as it matters everywhere.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Right, Nate, I know you've probably got got thoughts on this.
There's a couple of things that Gabe was touching on
that I'd love to talk about obviously, but this being
a focus for Christians, I think is it's overdue and
I think it's catching on. So you brought up at
least one of the things you were bringing up, Gabe,
is just kind of a like you said, it's not
like a myopic focus on just education, like you put
(10:40):
them in the right school and it checks out, But
it is kind of like, at the heart of it
is where your kid's going to you know, where are.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
They being educated? What does their schooling look like?
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Not just formal education, but I'm assuming you're talking about
kind of formative education as well when you look at
those things I was thinking of, we've been digging into
a little bit of this, like in our church and
with our families, and you know Machen back in the day,
he had a quote and it was it was something
along the lines of that he saw he saw little
or he saw no consistency with a Christianity that preaches
the Gospel to the farthest reaches of the world and
(11:09):
on every street corner. I'm butchering the quote, but something
along those lines he said, but abandons the children of
the Covenant to a cold and unbelieving secularism of course, Matton.
You know he wrote that decades back, right, But that's
kind of been so good a lot of a lot
of Christians experiences that we have been.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
You know, I'm thinking of me.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I grew up.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
I was an early eighties baby, and I know you
guys are right in that same kind of milieu. And
you know, growing up, I remember evangelism, hot missions, especially
foreign missions forefront, and praise God for those things.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
But as far as like the children of the church,
they're they're pretty noisy, and they stink, and they they
probably you know, get them over here to the side.
So I think it's a retrieval process that's long overdue.
But Nate, what are you thinking, man?
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah, I mean I think that.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
I think I think God's pattern is pretty clear scripturally speaking,
that like family is at this is at the center
of God's rescue plan for the world, and the church
is the household of households, right, So you have a
church is only as strong as the households that comprise it,
as the families that make it up. It's the family
of families, the household of households.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
And then you have. You know, as goes the family.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
So goes the church. As it goes to the church,
so goes the community. As goes the community, so goes
the nations. Right, so you have this sort of working through,
and I think you spot on, Josh, like I think
the sexy things that churches have been so enamored with,
with big conferences and overseas missions and all this kind
of stuff at the expense of our own families has
(12:40):
been a travesty. And I think that you know, you
can't export what you don't have. And you know, so
you have these churches that get all wound up and
send all these foreign missionaries off. And yet you know,
even in the commissioning services of these new missionaries, the
kids are downstairs in the dank basement being taught by
(13:01):
a sixty year old woman, you know, using a flannel
graph and like, we just.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Not flannel graph that's not the culprit.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Go ahead, you lead flannel graphs out of this.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
But you know what I mean, like we we haven't
we haven't developed family culture in our churches. And and
so the the kinds of missions that we're exporting is
is a weak family church and so like we're exporting
then to other cultures a weak form of Christianity. And
you even see this like I don't want to knock
(13:34):
anybody who's who's done a lot for the kingdom, but
when you think of sort of that Billy Graham crusade
style of whether it's a revival meetings, you know, evangelism,
whether it's missions whatever, it's this sort of parachute in
you know, decisionism, you know, and then you know there's
no discipleship, and and well, why is that our form
of ministry?
Speaker 3 (13:55):
That's our form of ministry because that's what that's all.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
We know in our our families, right we we don't
we haven't discipled our kids well enough. And I think,
you know, one of the things that we've really emphasized
at our church in our like we switched to family
integrated church, like keeping the kids in the worship service,
for going to you know, the Sunday school and the
nursery and all that kind of stuff years ago now,
(14:18):
and it was a big transition for our church.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
I was, I was convinced of.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
It long before we made that transition, and we kind
of did it slowly and loved our people along the way.
So a lot of people who come and they hear
good things about our church and they come and then
they're like like, what's going on here?
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Like where's the kids now? Where's your nursery? Where's the
kids ministry?
Speaker 4 (14:36):
And uh, And then we emphasize to them like, no,
this is this is your chance to you are forming
and shaping the next generation of worshippers. What you do
see for the people who stick around, because sometimes they
they come once and then they go for the sweet
you know, kids ministry down the street.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
But when they stick around and.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
You get fathers who understand, oh, it's my job to
listen to my pastor disseminate the information and actually disciple
my children with it. And so we're going home and
having conversations. It honors the way God did these families.
So it just changes ministry. And I just think, because
we haven't got to write in our churches, we haven't
(15:14):
got it right, you know, or we haven't got to
write in our families. We haven't got to write in
our churches.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
You know. This is why and.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
We were joking before the cameras started rolling here, is
that you guys have riots in la you know from
a bunch of kids who should have got spanked when
they were younger and probably might not be rioting if
they had gotten spanked a little bit, you know what
I mean?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Like it all comes down.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
To family discipleship, right, And I think like when people
do come to our church and we have like church
family worship guides and stuff like that, Like I think
one of the things that that you know, just family
worship is such a foreign concept, Like how is it
you want to ask, like how do we lose Canada?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
How do we lose America?
Speaker 4 (15:58):
And you know, less than a century, it's because nobody
was doing family worship. So I think all of this
is connected and I think this is this is the
crux if you want to get to like what's the
bedrock issue that makes Like we can talk about transgenderism,
we can talk about riots in the street, we can
talk about all the stuff going on, It all comes
down to this.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
It all comes from I.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Like how you're you're kind of keying in on Well
you mentioned a second ago, like you know, we don't
know how to do missions, we don't know how to
do church planning because we're not exactly doing it at home.
And there was an old quote I can't remember who
came from. I think it might have come from somebody
I don't I don't particularly like following anymore.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
But somebody he brought up. It was a good point.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
He said, you don't become a missionary on the plane
something along that those lines, and essentially like, you know,
you've got these young people who are very you know,
they're filled with passion and whatever, and they say, you know,
I'm going to go on the mission field and I'm
going to become a missionary. And he'd just say, you know,
who have you shared with this week? Because you don't
become you know, a missionary on the plane ride. I
think we're seeing that within church culture. We're saying, you know,
go and worship together, and people don't.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Know how to do it. And then we them like,
well what do you do at home? And it's like,
we don't do any of this stuff at home, and
it's kind of the the crux.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Now, Gabe, you said something a minute ago, and I'll
kick it back to you, but you said something a
minute ago that I thought was interesting. So if you
if you look back, there's a lot of things that
I think American Christians we look back, you know, one
hundred years, like Nate just brought up, and we look
back and we're kind of shocked by things.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
I live outside of Pittsburgh, and so I was just
hearing I think it's time and Kline talking this morning
and talking about some of the framers, you know, right
around the time of the framing of the Constitution and
specifically with like the First Amendment and all of the
things that flew that kind of flowed from it. Around
the time of that framing and sussing out of those
constitutional details. Pennsylvania's requirement for elected officials was that they
(17:40):
not only a firm old New Testament, but affirmed them
as inspired. Like American Christians look back, You're like, what
in Pennsylvania, and that's that's religious freedom. So we've just
kind of lost some of that connection. Now along those lines,
I think Christians and churches would be shocked to hear
what so many Christians one hundred years and then, you know,
further back said about the family stuff Like Charles Hodge,
(18:03):
for example, is one of my favorites on this and
he spoke about the family in ways that would make
us really uncomfortable because he used ecclesiastical terms, and he's
talking about the father is a sort of minister or
vicar to his children, and that he raises in essence
a small Shiloh within his home that is then to
lift up praise to the Lord. And when the father
fails in this regard to lead his children and family
(18:23):
into worship, he's in essence beckoning in demons that one
habit the premises, like, you read the stuff and you're like,
this is this is so foreign from our conception. Our
conception is I did my job. I woke them up,
I made sure their teeth are brushed, and I gave
them to Lucy, the third grade teacher, and I'll see
them when we get out of church, you know what
I mean, Like, we've lost the plot on that. But
what are you thinking on some of that stuff, Gabe.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Well, I think there's I mean, well, let me let
me start here. There are any any cultural sin that
we have in our that are a major cultural sin
in our current moment started in the church. So to
Nate's point, like what happens in the family affects the church,
(19:05):
what happens in the church affects culture the church. God
created the church to be a city on a heel,
a light on that hill, and which means that the
church is where where the Christian faith is strong in
a culture. The church is explicitly connected to the sins
(19:27):
of the culture. So whether the church has most influence
in a culture like in America, it doesn't have a
lot of influence, you know right now in Congo, you
know what you know. So whether the church has a
high concentration of impact, it's going to be connected to
the sins of America. And so think about it this way.
(19:48):
Feminism started in the church in the early eighteen hundreds.
It started where women in the church, I'm sure their
husbands were drunks or whatever, but started getting pastors to
sign abstinate vowels and get in the congregation to sign
absent vowels to not drink alcohol. And that was the
process in which wine got kicked out of the church
(20:10):
to celebrate the Lord's Supper, and how grape juice got
instituted in the church over early eighteen hundreds. I wrote
an article about this two years ago on my website.
And then by the eighteen sixties, all these abstinent vowels
were we being signed and they started realizing, well, we
got to fix our wine problem, alcohol problem, and so
Ed Welch, Pastor Welch, came along and figured out how
(20:32):
to strip alcohol out of grape juice. And there's a
market for it. But it started because of women, and
then the women got the pastors to push abstinent vowels
in the church, and then along came out Welch. And
then now this happens in the PCA, this happens in
the Baptist churches. And now you have this weird theology
that was constructed off of old feminism on a defense
(20:57):
of why we served grape juice in the Lord's upper in
the church. It came from first wave feminism, which is
which looks and I'm not saying we have we serve
wine in our community trades and we have some grape
juice in the back for people who need it. We
understand there's more complicated than that. But that was a
feminist theology that affected and created, and now all these
(21:20):
pastors have this new construct or this new theology. I
had to find grape juice in the Lord supper, but
it came from the eighteen hundred. Secondly, another example of this,
and this is This is where I tend to get
most in trouble with this argument talking about sins happened
in the church first, and then they showed up in
culture later and worse abortion. To Nate's point, we for decades,
(21:42):
maybe a century, I don't know when the practice team
has started. Maybe it was finny, I don't know, but
we started separating family from kids and worship. And so
you'd walk in the church, mom and dad would go
upstairs to real church, and the kids knew it, that's
that's serious church. That's where you really talk to God.
And we're gonna go down in the basement and play
(22:03):
church and do felt boards or whatever, flannel boardance, whatever,
we're gonna go. And and what happened is the kids
over time were was communicating. They got they got the
communication we aren't as important to go to the real
worship service. And so multiple things happen there. One is
you start creating two different kinds of churches, because there's
one kind of music downstairs, one kind of music upstairs,
(22:25):
one kind of pastoring upstairs, one kind of pastoring downstairs.
So they actually end up creating two different churches, which
is which has had massive damage in the church. I'm
not gonna talk about that right now. But the other
thing is is it aborted families from worshiping Me together.
And so we taught the church, taught the world that
that children were not that important when it came to
(22:46):
our the famili's relationship to God. The church taught the
world that children were not as important, they were not
as valuable, they were not you know, So we taught
the world how to abort your kids out of worship first.
And so, no wonder the world comes along. I know,
I know you're thinking it's a big jump, but no
wonder the world comes along and aborts the kids out
of the worms.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
So I hear the typical Christian hearing what you were saying,
especially about like you know, you come to church and
you go to you know these call it big church.
Right in our areas, you got a big church upstairs.
Kids go to little church or kids church or whatever,
and they would see that, like, well, what's the problem.
They're still hearing about Jesus. They're still hearing about these things.
I think what we were to do a lot of
times is like what you were aiming at earlier, Gabe,
when you were introducing this topic is that families aren't
(23:29):
just like real important because they make more people.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Families aren't just important because you're probably gonna teach your
kids how to read, or help teach them how to read,
you know, if you if you happen to send them
to school or something. There's like these little like you know,
accidental functions of the family, But at the core of it,
it's actually the building block of how God made everything.
So they're they're at the actual building blocks of society,
of culture of the world. And God made that covenantally,
so not accidentally. So God actually said this is the
(23:54):
way I'm gonna form this thing that used to be
very recognized covenantal Christian thinking. We've so divorced ourselves from
that when we look at the family, you bringing up
the riots sounds very strange because it's like, whoa, those
are political issues, socio cultural issues, and I'm not acting
like it's just a simplistic matter. Obviously there's there's different
things going on there, but at the core of it
(24:14):
is the family. Always and always is the family issue
at the core of these things because from that is
birthed the rest of human culture and society. So if
there are errors and gave this goes to your point.
If there are errors, whether it be something that does
not seem to match up, like you might throw feminism
out there, somebody says.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Whoa, that's a mismatch.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Everything is traceable back to the home and the hearth
because God formed culture and civilization. And I just don't
think that Christians are even seeing that.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, And I don't mean to bring up an argument
that we disagree on. All I'm trying to illustrate is
that there's like, what your point is is, there's so
much we're doing in the church to either separate our
kids from the family, or separate our kids from the faith,
or separate and disciple our kids in such a way
where it's like it's so easy for them to leave
the church and go out into the world because we've
(25:01):
we've forgotten what true discipleships should look like with our children,
you know. And I could, I could, I mean, I
could punch the Baptist in the face too with this
where it's like sometimes there's certain circles where they've got
a rough week, they just had their convention. They don't
give them a break. Most of our Baptist friend would
probably agree on this point. There's a lot of Baptist
culture where they won't let the kids get baptized as
(25:21):
they are eighteen years old. Seventeen eighteen years old old
really late. Most of our Baptist friends, they're like, oh yeah,
profession of faith to eight years old. I'm on it,
you know. But this is an extreme example, but it's
pretty prevalent in the broader you know, jeffreyes Rick Warrem
even our friend marks nine marks. Yeah, where they won't
They want to make sure their kid is such a
(25:43):
solid Christian before they baptize them, whatever that means. They
won't let a baptize toy. They want to check all
the boxes. So it's like seventeen eighteen years old. And
so again the same description kind of applies. Well, what
if you your kid goes to church and worships with
you for seventeen years and they look down the row
and they say, am I not baptized? Mom? And dad? Is?
Because mom and dad doesn't think they're a Christian. That's
(26:05):
what they That's the that's basically what's driving it is Mom,
dad doesn't think I'm a Christian. Dad. So you teach
your kids to doubt their faith for seventeen years. Well
you're going to get a bunch of doubting children leave
your church. So they get baptized, But by the time
they're seventeen, that seed of doubt has been sitting there
for seventeen years. And so that's no wonder why the
(26:26):
rebaptism rates high in those in those those circles and
those cultures, because they've been teaching. So just an example
of like this is how we're thinking in the church.
We're boarding our kids from worship service. It's no wonder
we're eventually going to get to the point where we
bought our kids from mother's wombs because we already showed
the world how to think about your.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Kids well and to that point gave you.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
You talked about like instilling doubt, doubt in your kids,
and what is really what it's doing is it's actually
discipling them in a hermeneutic of doubt right to constantly
be looking inward, examining am I really in?
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Am I?
Speaker 4 (27:01):
Do I really belong to God? Does God really love me?
Does He really exist? And they take that herma nutic
of doubt that's been discipled into them, and when they
go it into the world with it. You know, the
world is happy to feed that doubt, right, So you've
instilled the herma utic of doubt. Then they go out
and they're like, well, it seems also kind of strange
that a donkey would talk, and it seems pretty strange
(27:23):
when God would stop the sun in the sky.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
And you know, my science teacher has a.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Different view on that, and maybe yom could mean you know,
a million years and so, but it's because they have
been discipled with a herma mutic of doubt. And that
started in the family. And I think, like to your
point where you're talking about like abortion, starting with the
devaluing of kids within the church, I think this gets
(27:49):
get this gets you know. Pastor Doug is fond on
saying I'm going through Rush Jouney with a few guys
that I'm training in pastoral ministry right now where he
got the idea of the inescapable concept.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
So the church is for the.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
Discipleship of the nations that's inescapable, and we will either
disciple them well or we will disciple them poorly. But
either way they're going to get their cues from the church.
And the church is the household of household. So what
happens in the family will affect the culture. It's just
a matter of whether it affects it positively or negatively.
(28:24):
And I think if if we're all looking around at
what's going on in the world around us, it's a
bad report card.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Now, clearly we're not doing this world.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah, whether you grief mind examples or not, the one
thing that's super clear is we are not being successful
keeping our kids in the church. This is why you
have a what I call like a Starbucks church model.
And the churches know it that they have to be
so secret friendly. They have to keep replacing the congregation,
they have to keep replacing who they're serving because.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
The door is get old and die.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Well, they can't. They can't keep kids, that's what.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
That's what I mean. They just get old and die
because their kids don't stick around.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
That's what. Yeah, that's right, that's right. And so you
see this huge seeker friendly movement. I mean, now they're
integrating Starbucks literally into their church. But Starbucks is not
the best coffee, but the way they keep their customers
to their marketing and so you know, and so they
have a high turnover of customer rate you know, I don't.
I'm drinking Starbucks for years. And in the same way,
(29:27):
the church they have to because they can't keep their kids,
because they can't even keep their families in their pews
longer than three or four or five years. They have
to recycle and do a good job with their marketing
to keep their church sizes up.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah, so what's the what are the solutions then that
you point to, because I know you guys are you're
coming in, you're talking about building Christendom with your kids.
Obviously obviously, like the school function is at the heart
of it, and we do want to land the planet
at some point.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
But I'm just.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Thinking like maybe maybe you could like key in on
maybe that formative function of the school, because I think
one of the things you know, you brought at the beginning,
it's more than just.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
School, but it's not less than school. That's obviously a
huge part of this.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Just looking at the hours, I mean, you've seen those
like those graphs that break down hours that they your
kids will spend here or there.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
In fact, I just read one.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
And it was talking about how your kid it was like,
by the time they're seventeen, they've spent like eighty five
percent of their time with their parents that they will
And I've got a daughter who's creeping up toward that age,
and it was like, I want to corner now. But
you know, this is a huge responsibility right with school.
How does that sort of integrate in and how do
we maybe encourage parents? And you guys are familiar with
these struggles some Christian parents who find their kids in
(30:37):
private Christian schools, some who are are able to or
feel equipped to homeschool with their kids, others who have
not made those choices. There's a lot of mix within churches.
So like, how do you start at least starting that
process of encouraging Christian parents are among a large swath
of different Christian groups to start thinking toward their kids
(30:57):
with that school function involved with building them.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
How do you angle toward that?
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yeah, I would start with I mean dad is responsible
for the education of his kids. That's a great starting point.
Not not the wife is his helper. The wife is
his help meet. But dad should not throw the responsibility
off to his wife. That'll create so many problems. Whether
it's homeschool, Hey, I it's your decision. You want a
homeschool or do you want some christ School whatever. No,
(31:23):
Dad has to take the lead on this because he's
going to have to take the financial hit if he's
going to pay for classical Christian school, his or his
wife's going to have to take the homeschool hit. And
he's got to make sure he's going alongside with her
to make sure that hit is falls more on him
as best he can than on her. So I was
(31:46):
reading this table talk hell Man on two thousand and
three or something a long time ago, and there's this
quote that you know, you know, men want to go
and slagh draft Biggins, but no one wants to help
mom change the diapers. And what that illustrates, especially for men,
(32:07):
is that we get we prioritize, I'm in prioritize. We're
very monolithic in a lot of our thinking process. I'm
going to do this, I'm going to my office to study,
I'm going here, I'm gonna you know, I now got
to go to baseball. You know. So we're like we're
one thought wonders all over the place. But what that
shows is is that you know, Dad wants to go
(32:28):
slagh dragons, which is a good desire. We don't want
to truss that desire. But the problem is the best
way to slay dragons is actually change your kids diapers.
You is to actually bring up reinforcements to go out
and fight with you. But we don't. Dads have lost
the I think, the long term vision of how important
it is to raise their kids and be the leader
(32:48):
in raising their kids. This goes back to y'all's point
about ministry. I mean, like, what became sexy ministry was missions,
church planning, acts twenty nine, like all these things. But
you know, the hardest ministry you'll ever do is raising
kids past twenty two. Yeah, like not just seventeen, not
just eighteen, but being with your kids and launching them
(33:09):
and then becoming friends, becoming side by side with them.
That's the hardest ministry. That's the hardest lunch. But it's
also the most fruitful thing you ever do. So I
think dads need to recover the glory of what it
means to raise faithful children in the family. That's why
I start first. I mean as far as like, obviously
you got to be wise and smart. What's good for
my family? What can my wife handle? What can I handle?
(33:30):
How much money do I have? Can I you know,
then you got to start, you know, running the inventory
of what I can handle. How good am I at education?
Can I do homeschool? Can I pay for a classical
Christian school? You know? And not all Christian schools are
Christian schools, So you gotta have wisdom there and through
all that. But you got to I think dad's got
to think way bigger than we have been about raising
(33:50):
our kids and our family.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
And where you started there, Gabe and Josh even kind
of gave the amen for both of us there in
terms of that's a great start point is you know,
dad's dads need to take responsibility. It's it's dad's job
to educate the kids. That seems controversial in a lot
of ways. And I think in a lot of church communities,
because a lot of church communities where homeschooling is big
(34:13):
and all that kind of stuff, it's like, well, that's
that's her thing, right, That's that's mom's thing, that's her calling, right.
But nobody, no proper Christian would would view discipleship in
the home as mom's responsibility, right, That's clearly dad's responsibility.
And what we've lost is the link between education and discipleship.
All education is discipleship, right, Jesus says, you know, a student,
(34:37):
when fully trained, will be like his teacher. And that's
just that's that's an that's another inescapable concept. So a
student will become like their teacher, for better or for worse.
And so when when the father gets the vision that
education is discipleship, then then that that Okay, are you
responsible for the discipleship in your home? Yes, then you're
responsible for the education in your home now, just like
(34:59):
any other responsibility that husbands have, Like we can wisely
delegate certain aspects of our responsibility, like you said, to
classic Christian school or whatever. But I think if we
get that that piece first, discipleship is our responsibility and
education is discipleship, then then that's that's that's a big piece.
And I think that the you talked about that. I
(35:20):
remember Doug Wilson one time. I think it was on
the podcast maybe or something, but it was an analogy
that always stuck with me when he said, you know,
if you ask the guy mop in the deck on
the submarine what he's doing, his answer ought to be
I'm fighting in a war, because he understands, like whether
you are turning the torpedo in the in the you know, submarine,
or you're mopping the deck, or you're making the pizza
(35:41):
in the canteena or whatever. You're fighting a war, you're
just doing your your part for it. So that connection
with dragon slang and diaper changing is is it's it's
a mental paradigm shift that every father needs to have.
And so you want to conquer the world, that's a
good ambition, but you have to start by taking dominion
(36:02):
of your home, and that means not having riotous children, right,
having disciplined children who are who are being raised in
the fear and admonition of the Lord.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
So I think I think that's right.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
Is connecting the big things that men are passionate about,
that every man has the desire to pull up his
sword and go and fight a dragon, but recognizing that
this is really where it starts.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Yeah, I like that, and I I like the encouraging
thought just for Christian dads, and it's not just for
it's for Christian parents, I think mainly, although if I
could back up, I could preach a whole sermon right
about now on how it's not just for the young
couple having kids, Like if you're an eighty year old
in the church whose kids are all grown up. This
is still your responsibility because if everything we've been talking
(36:45):
about is true and this is how God's formed the
universe is on these families, you should be actively involved
with helping families. But topic for another day probably, But
when I was hearing you talk just then, like especially
with like the the inescapable, you know you will raise
your children depends on how well you will do. Same
with nations, like like was brought up. You know, one
of the things that Carl Truman brought up in that
(37:08):
the was the prison trial Prison Yeah whatever the book was, right,
He talked about poisis.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
And mimasis, this whole.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
You know, it's it's an old Greek antiquity idea, but
essentially of how to look at the universe and whether
there's something mouldable malleable that everything around me is something
I form to my desires or is there sort of
a structure and grid work for most of these things
and I'm to align myself to it. And I bring
that up not to just bring up a nerdy concept,
it's it. I think that's one of the things you
have to get through to Christian parents and to Christians
(37:37):
in general who are wrestling with this is your job
and role in parenting and in the home, Like, this
isn't something that you decide how it can work. This
is something you need to recognize, Like, I, as a father,
really have things God needs me to do for my family,
and He has designed me and equipped me for You
can't just say like, well, in my home it works
a bit different. My wife fills these roles and I
(37:57):
do these other things in broad brushstrokes.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
You have.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
You have a role to do, and you're to conform
yourself to the way God's economy has actually shaped and
formed these things. I think that alone is just a
helpful thing for Christians to understand that the family is
going to function in this role whether you want it
to or not. So so our task then as a
disciple it effectively and faithfully. And and yeah, just from that,
like you were saying, to rebuild Christendom from those foundations.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
But Gabe, where can people keep up with the conference?
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Where's you mentioned blog? Do you remember the title of
that that article? By the way, just any any of
those plugs you can.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Give it was I had to write that article again.
I could. I'm sorry I used that example that we
disagree with on it. I should have brought up a
better example that way. I knew we'd all agree on
my my fault because I know this. We weren't debating that,
So my bad for that. But if you want to
catch the blog post, it actually a response to I
tweeted out, Yeah, probably wasn't the best tweet, but that's
(38:56):
back when you had one hundred and twenty characters. I tweeted.
I tweeted something out like if you're taking grape juice
in your church during communion, you're being influenced by feminism
or something like that. I said something like that and
probably said it worse than.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
That standard tweet. Yeah, standard twitter there.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
So Tom Askell got a little frustrated with me, some
other some other good guys I love got a little
got a little frustrated me. So I wrote a whole
blog post just tracing the history of first wave feminism
in the early eighteen eighteen oh one eighteen oh two
is when this whole thing started. And there's about three
or four or five women that kind of picked up
the mantle each decade and was basically it was started
over alcohol and where the women were influencing the pastors
(39:39):
and everything, and then Ed Welch came in the eighteen
fifty sixties to so that that's the context of my article.
And it's go to Gabe Wrench dot com and I
think you click on vault or articles or something and
you should be able to find that that article. So
it was actually I was trying to make some things
right that I made wrong by just being such a short,
(40:00):
insulting tweet to how some of the people have taken it.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
So again that's standard twit.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Yeah. Yeah, So there's a go to gabers dot com
for the article. I think it. I think it it's
worth reading. Of course, I'm arguing from a paedo communion
standpoint in the article, but I think just even the
nature of the influence of a first wave feminism on
the church, in theology and whining, grape juice and everything,
I think it's worth worth with the read the conference.
You can go to fight Last Feast dot com uh
(40:28):
and you can click on you know, sign up, or
you can click on be a sponsor everything. It's it's
October sixteenth through the eighteenth in Nashville, Tennessee. We got,
of course, Pastor Wilson, doctor Ben Merkele from New St.
Andrews College. We got I guess I can announce this here.
We got Larry Tuton coming on. If you guys know
(40:48):
who Larry is. He's a kind of a journalist, kind
of subvert of subversive journalists that he's in the PCA
down in Alabama. He just his home got swatted a
couple of months ago. Just crazy, but he's he's speaking.
We got David Goodwin from ACCS. We got David Bonson,
(41:09):
we got George Grant. Just a bunch of players who've
been in this kind of world for thirty forty years
and have raised faithful children. That's the other thing. I
just want to maybe end with one point here too, Josh,
where I was saying that God made discipleship easier, God
made taking over the world easy. The non unbelievers abort
(41:33):
their children or have one kid, or have two kids,
and just over time they just aren't reproducing what they
need to keep up with their side of the culture.
And so if the church just gets discipleship right and
raise their kids faithfully, over time, it's just becomes a
numbers game. Eventually, I know, it's all by grace, God's kind,
(41:54):
it's by faith all that stuff. But in one sense,
God he says, I'll bless you to a thousand generations,
and so in one sense it is a numbers game.
And so I just want parents to think way bigger
about discipleship than just going what school should they go to?
What homeschool should they do? What homeschool curriculum should they do?
Should we do? Classical conversations is it's it matters to
(42:14):
the church, it matters to the world, it matters to
the kingdom, and how you disciple your kids at every level,
including your wife, including yourself, including the church, including the elders,
and all that stuff. So go to fight laftfees dot
com to sign up and love to see you guys there.
We start off our conference with Barren Palms. It's a
fun way to kick off the conference. Good fellowship we
(42:34):
have We do a cross politic does a live show
on Saturday afternoon, so a fun way to end everything.
It's just and please bring your kids. We actually have
a jumpy castle for kids.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
We do.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
We have ways for kids to you know, when they
get a little excited, they need to go outside and
jump on the castle. We have all that stuff. So
we're very kid friendly in what we do and everything.
So fight Laftfeast dot com very.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Cool, free baptisms for all the kids to nate. Where
can people to keep up with you?
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Brother?
Speaker 1 (42:58):
You're you're busy, busy than a one armed wallpaper hangers.
They'd stay down south up there in Canada these days, brother,
Where where can people follow you?
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Yeah, it's lots of work to do up here, So
you can go to Crossroads Ingersoll dot Ca.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
So we're we're we're trying our.
Speaker 4 (43:13):
Best to do a faithful kind of Moscow blueprint out here.
Ingersoll's little town outside of London, Ontario, just a couple
hours north of Detroit, thirty thousand people and we're we're
we're trying to take it over slowly. So Crossroads Ingersoll
dot Ca. Also Ezra Institute dot com. I'm also the
Canadian director of the Ezra Institute, So I work alongside
(43:35):
Joe Boot who's a friend of Fight offt Feasts as well.
We have the podcast or Cultural Reformation on the Fight
Left Feast network. So Ezra Institute dot com. You can
find a lot of my lectures and conference talks and
all that kind of stuff there.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
Nate P.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Wright on Twitter, and you know, I say.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Less controversial things than Gabe, but I do get into
trouble every once in a while.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
That's what Twitter's for, man, That's just that's the whole
kit and kaboodle and the Rebel podcast still.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
Right, Yeah, Rebel Podcast with Fight Last Feast, and I'm
actually I'm helping a couple of guys in my church
get another podcast project off the ground called Performing Nerdom,
which has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
So the idea there is that you want to take
all things and put them under the feet of Jesus
and Victory. So what things in nerd culture should be,
It should be put under the feet of Jesus and Victory.
So we talked everything from you know, nostalgic things like
we got Jeff Derbin coming on to talk about Ninja Turtles,
we you know, we we had Doug, we had we
(44:36):
have Doug Wilson and Joe Rigney coming on to debate
whether or not Narnia or the Ransom Trilogy is the
best C. S.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
Lewis fantasy.
Speaker 4 (44:45):
Just just cool stuff like that, talking about yeah, talking
about that kind of stuff and I think we're trying
to organize Brian Solvey and Joshua Ham's coming on to
debate whether or not anime is cringe. So like just
just fun stuff like that, Like it's kind of a
cool yeah, and like analyzing movies from a Christian worldview.
(45:07):
I'll just say this because it kind of plugs into
our discussion today. Is one of my favorite games to
play with my family is whether we're watching a movie
or we're playing a board game, we're listening to a
song or something like that, we play a game called
Spot the Lie and so, you know, in the middle
of a movie, I'll press pause and it's kind of
like worldview analysis of the movie that we're watching right now.
(45:29):
All my kids love it, obviously when I just pause
the movie and get into deep theological conversations with them.
Speaker 3 (45:34):
But you're trying to teach them, So we do that
on the show.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
We do Spot the Lie and we'll go go watch
the new Marvel movie and then we'll play Spot the
Lie and help kind of give parents like a worldview
analysis of movies that they can help disciple their kids
while they're engaged in like superhero movies or nerdy stuff
like that so anyway, that's reforming nerddom and you can
find that on social media somewhere too, So yeah, do
(45:58):
lots of stuff.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Very cool, well, Nate Gabe, thank you guys so much.
This has been encouraging. Appreciate you guys.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Gosh, thanks for having us.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Man, Yeah, thanks for having us Son you did you rad.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
My ride and the Lord to my Lord commands for
all d D. Then I will man
Speaker 3 (46:20):
Fucking Linked food Stove for your shame
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