'Missional' Fleeing is Good, Actually - Pastor Joel Webbon

AD Robles

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

All right, welcome back to the channel. I hope you had a good weekend. What you're gonna watch in just a moment is a conversation that I had with Joel Webbin about his recent book,

00:09

Fight by Flight. It's a book about the things that you might wanna consider about leaving a very liberal kind of blue area, things like that, cities, stuff like that, and move to a place where there's more

00:22

Christians and more Christian influence and all of that kind of thing. I think that that is very much worthwhile thinking about, and even if I didn't think it was worth thinking about, people are thinking about it.

00:33

And so he's got a lot of really good things to say about that topic and why not only might it be allowable for you to do, but why it might be a good idea, why you might wanna consider doing it if you live in a very pagan kind of liberal area, moving to a more

00:48

Christian area. In any case, I hope you found it helpful. I will be back in about a week or so doing more videos.

00:56

Hope you found this one entertaining and all that kind of thing. God bless. All right, well, welcome back to the channel.

01:14

We have a very special guest today. I don't really have a lot of people on my channel, Joel, so you should feel very honored and proud.

01:23

I don't know about proud, but welcome to the show. We've got Joel Webben from Right Response Ministries, Pastor Joel Webben, I should say.

01:29

Welcome. Thanks, A .T., I really appreciate it. I just love talking to you. Yeah, man, me too, me too.

01:35

Usually I come on your show. Have you ever been on my show before? Yeah, I think you had me when you were doing a miniseries on the rise and fall of the gospel coalition, and you used me for one of those episodes.

01:46

I kind of abandoned that. I should go back to that. That still has a lot of good stuff that I could do, but yeah, thanks for coming on the show that one time, and I'm glad to have you here.

01:55

I had to get this last show in. I'm actually gonna be taking a little bit of a break for the next week or so, but I had to get you in,

02:01

Joel, because I saw that you may have started a little bit of a controversy on Twitter, and I wanted to talk to you about that.

02:11

You wrote a book. That's what this is all about, right, Joel? Right. And you have no credentials.

02:16

How could you, how dare you write a book? That's what I've heard, anyway. I'll do it, yeah.

02:23

What's your book about, Joel? Because I think people would be, in this audience, would be very interested. The book is basically, in a nutshell, it's just trying to assuage the consciences of Christians that live in difficult places as the culture war is heating up, as there are certain policies at the political level and certain just cultural environments that are becoming more hostile towards Christians.

02:45

The whole purpose of the book is to say that some of you may be called to stay.

02:51

If so, you must stay faithfully. So you can't be, the Lord desires obedience, not sacrifice.

02:57

So you cannot be committed to missional sacrifice at the cost of practical, biblical obedience to the commands to fathers and husbands with a family.

03:06

But if you can do those things faithfully, some of you will stay. For those of you who would like to leave and feel as though you should maybe practically have to leave, there's a chance your pastor, not in every sense, but in every case, but there's a chance that your pastor might be strongly, maybe not commanding, but strongly persuading you to stay and even using words like it's compromise to leave, or you're doing violence to Jesus if you leave, or it's a doctrine of demons to leave.

03:38

And Christians in those environments that feel like we can't care for our family here, but our pastor is basically making us feel as though we're in sin.

03:48

If we go, I wanted to assuage their consciences because I know what that's like to be on both ends.

03:55

I know what it's like to give the bad counsel that wrongly binds the conscience. When I was a pastor in a blue context, and I know what it's like to be the individual

04:05

Christian man who feels like he needs to make a decision for his family, and I'm getting guilt -tripped. Joel, I gotta be honest with you, and thank you for that because that's a good summary of the book.

04:16

You're not commanding people to leave. I've heard people say that you're trying to command people to leave, and I knew that you wouldn't do that.

04:22

That's crazy. But I gotta be honest, when I found out about what this book was about, it kind of was weird to me that it would even need to be written at all.

04:35

You might not know this about me, Joel, but I used to live in New York City, and I really love a lot about New York City very much.

04:42

And I was there as an unbeliever doing whatever I wanted to do. I was there as a believer trying to do the right thing, trying to obey

04:50

Christ. And me and my wife decided that we would not raise our children there for a variety of reasons.

04:57

And so we just made plans to move, and we did. And I didn't even know that that was a thing that I had to run by my pastor.

05:06

You know what I mean? It just made no sense to me. So Joel, I mean, is this something that you've heard from people that people are actually being guilt -tripped for trying to raise their family in the context that they want to raise their family in?

05:20

Definitely, yeah. How does that work? I mean, I think one of the things that I wanted to talk about, because that to me seems like a tremendously overstepping the bounds of what an elder is supposed to be doing for you,

05:35

Joel. So in your opinion, does a pastor have anywhere close to that authority over what you do with your family?

05:44

Not even close. So the problem is that we learned three years ago that there's such a thing as civil tyranny.

05:53

What we have not learned yet is that there is very much such a thing as ecclesiastical tyranny as well.

06:00

One of the reasons why some pastors, not all, but some of the pastors were so comfortable with the state being a tyrant, enforcing masks, enforcing jabs, closing down churches.

06:11

One of the reasons that people were okay with that, pastors in particular, okay with civil tyranny is because they themselves are tyrants as well.

06:21

And so tyranny isn't that shocking to them. And so I think that it's not just pastors, it's not just civil rulers.

06:31

If the home, if father's in the home, so three spheres, you can be in the familial sense a father in the home, and you can be a tyrant.

06:38

You call that when the family is a tyrant, that's a mafia. When the church is a tyrant, you call that Roman Catholicism, 500 years ago.

06:46

And when the state is a tyrant, you call that whatever, statism, totalitarian, civil government.

06:54

So that's just like, it's not just the state that can be a tyrant. And I think for us, we do theology, we pretend we're doing it in a vacuum, but we're all products of God's providence and the place and time that we're in.

07:10

Right now, because the state is so huge, when we think of tyranny, we only think of tyranny in civil terms.

07:17

We forget that if we back up and look at world history, not just America, but world history, and not just the last 50 years, but the last 5 ,000 years,

07:26

Babylon and Assyria and Rome and all these different things, the state is not the only institution capable of being tyrannical.

07:36

The church has been tyrannical, families have been tyrannical. And so, yeah, so I think understanding, we did some hard work in 2020, what is the state's actual jurisdiction?

07:48

I think we need to do some hard work in regards to what authority does a pastor actually have? Yeah. Yeah, no,

07:55

I thought that was an interesting point. One person, and I forget who exactly this was, so I think

08:01

I know, but since I'm not sure, I'm not gonna name him, was saying that if you wanted to leave, if you wanted to leave a certain place for your family, that really the only legitimate way to do it is you should ask your pastor if it's the right move.

08:16

And I gotta say, there's really nothing wrong with asking your pastor about that.

08:21

What would be a good reason that a pastor would wanna caution you from leaving a city or a liberal area or things like that?

08:30

I mean, have you heard any pushback that you kinda say, oh, I guess that makes a little bit of sense? What have you heard?

08:37

Do you want a reason or a good reason? I wanted a good reason, but it sounds like I've got my answer there.

08:45

So a reason would be that he doesn't want people to leave his church. Yeah. And we just have to be aware.

08:51

I'm not saying every pastor has done that, but that is a very real possibility. Pastors are sinners.

08:57

I am a sinner. I have great motives. By God's grace, because I'm a new creature in Christ Jesus, the

09:02

Holy Spirit lives within me. I also have bad motives, because I still have sin which resides within the members of my being, my flesh.

09:12

And so it's a mixed bag. So that would be a reason would be, he doesn't want guys to leave his church.

09:17

A good reason though would be, it is absolutely possible. And Christians need to be aware of this.

09:23

We don't need to over swing with the pendulum. It's absolutely possible to hear the rhetoric from the

09:28

GOP that does not actually care about you and is not actually conservative, and certainly in many cases does not love

09:35

Christ. It's possible to hear arguments from conservative pundits and conservative politicians, and then even some pastors like myself, and overcompensate and just think, you know what, the saving grace for my family.

09:52

Life is hard right now. And the thing that will make everything better is just if I move.

09:58

And then all of a sudden you move, and there are some people who are moving and end up moving back to their belief.

10:06

And part of the reason why is because all they thought, they thought just Tennessee will save me. But they forgot a few things.

10:13

Number one, there needs to be a church there. Like a good church.

10:19

Number two, can I provide? Do I have a job there? Like sure, the cost of living is lower, but do

10:27

I have a decent job? And then also right now, it's just anybody selling their home, even if you're moving to a red state that's going to have cheaper housing, you're still going to be, if you're locked in, you bought your house three years ago in a blue state, and you're locked in with a 2 .65

10:45

interest rate, but now you're going to move to a red state. Yeah, that doesn't follow you. Yeah, the house is, let's say it's 25 % lower or 30 % lower, but you have a 6 % interest rate, then you may not feel some of the economic relief that you thought.

11:00

So my point is, yeah, in general, right? Speaking in generalities, of course there are always exceptions, but in general, it might be a good move for you and your family to get out of a progressive city slash state.

11:14

However, that's if all things are equal, all things being equal, meaning job here, job there, church here, church there, school for the kids,

11:24

Christian school, Christian school, or homeschool ability, homeschool. Like, so if all things are equal, then yeah, I think life could be better in a more conservative environment.

11:33

And even that is up to your conscience and you need to pray that through and all these kinds of things. But some guys, they just think, man,

11:41

I just got to get out of California and everything will be better. Not realizing, okay, I am in California, that part is tough, but I do have this community at my church that I've built over 10 years.

11:51

I've got a job where I've gone up the ladder in my career over 10 years. I've got this, I've got that.

11:57

And they don't think all the pieces through. Now, I don't think most people, I don't think that's a common problem, but it does happen.

12:02

I think most people have some common sense. They think it through. You know, you've mentioned a few different things, but one thing

12:09

I've noticed about everything you've said so far is it's all very practical. It's all very pragmatic. You know, you're not really talking about spiritual things here,

12:17

Joel. And I think that a lot of the criticism that I've seen you get, it's oftentimes couched in a lot of very spiritual sounding things.

12:26

Like you're abandoning the mission. You're almost not being faithful to Christ if you're saying that it's okay for people to leave these areas.

12:35

And what about the sinners in Manhattan? What about the sinners in the Bronx or whatever it is?

12:41

Like if you leave the church there purely to pursue what you're saying, you know, maybe it's a lower cost of living.

12:48

Maybe it's a better quality of life for your family. Are you not loving your family more than Christ?

12:54

I think I've seen people really try to push that kind of narrative from what you're saying.

13:02

It's very pragmatic. It's very self -centered or at least family -centered. What would you say to that?

13:08

I mean, there does seem to be kind of a little bit of abandonment of Manhattan, so to say, in what you're saying.

13:16

Yeah. Yeah, so first I would just say that there's a legitimate biblical category for fleeing. So to say, well, there's an abandonment of a city.

13:24

Well, the Lord allows for us to abandon certain cities. So someone who -

13:31

Where's that in the Bible, Joel? Just to give people some - If one town rejects you, shake the dust off your feet and flee from that town.

13:38

Got it. And I tell you the truth, you will not go through all the towns in Israel before. So my point is there's a lot of places, just like there were a lot of towns in Israel, there are a lot of towns in America.

13:49

So one, I would just say it's a false dichotomy. It's setting up missions up and against family.

13:56

Now, there's a few things, like a little MythBusters game that we could play. One thing that shocks people, but I moved to Texas and I have found over the last three years that I've lived here, that there are non -Christians in Texas.

14:10

Did you know that I do? I did not know that, no. Isn't that crazy? So the crazy thing is

14:16

I was able to do something that was better for my family and I still get to share the gospel with people who don't know

14:21

Jesus. It's mind blowing. So one, I think to set up missions as this strict dichotomy, you can be on mission for Jesus and love

14:32

Him, or you can just be about self -preservation and protecting your family and love that.

14:40

So one, that's a false dichotomy on multiple accounts, but one would be the fact that there are lost people in red states.

14:48

Another thing with that, I think Christians need to begin to ask the question in terms of there are lost

14:54

Christians here in this blue place and lost Christians here in this red place. So in terms of the missions aspect, why would we prioritize one over the other?

15:03

Should we prioritize one over the other? Is there any kind of missional strategy thinking that the

15:08

Bible would provide for us? And I think there is, and I'm not making a big deal of this, but I think it's biblical and it's at least worth evangelicals considering and praying about.

15:19

So what does the scripture mean when it talks about a harvest being ripe? What does it mean for there to be a ripe harvest?

15:29

And then by way of implication, it seems to suggest, imply that there are harvests that are not ripe.

15:38

So what is a ripe harvest? Also another question would be, what did Jesus mean when he says of one individual,

15:44

I tell you the truth, he is not far from the kingdom. Now you and I, we're both Calvinists. So we believe that at the end of the day, if a person is unregenerate, according to John chapter three, a man must be born again first, regeneration precedes faith.

16:01

So if you're unregenerate, if you're not a Christian, if you haven't been born again by the spirit of God, a supernatural work, then you can't even see the kingdom, much less enter it.

16:11

That's what Jesus says to Nicodemus. And yet that same Jesus, the God man, the second member of the eternal trinity tells us of an individual who is not regenerate, according to Jesus, he's not in the kingdom, but he is not far from the kingdom.

16:25

So my question would be, is Jesus indicating something for us that there are people who are in both cases, unregenerate, in both cases, if they died in that moment, they would be in hell justly under God's wrath forever.

16:39

And yet, is there something to be said for two lost people, both utterly lost, but one being closer to the kingdom than the other?

16:47

And then for the one who he says, I tell you the truth, he's not far from the kingdom. What does that statement of Jesus come on the heels of?

16:55

Like, does that individual tell Jesus, hey, I wanna trans kids and murder babies.

17:00

And then Jesus responds by saying, I tell you the truth, he's not far from the kingdom. Or is that a guy who is rooted in historic tradition and God's law and certain things that God actually says are moral, and he's doing these things outwardly, but it is yet to really touch the heart.

17:16

And if that's the answer to the question, which I obviously I'm showing my hand, I think it is, then what if conservatives that aren't

17:24

Christian, they're not born again, they're not regenerate right now, if they died, they would go to hell justly under God's wrath forever.

17:31

But what if conservatives as a whole in our nation, what if that might be a ripe harvest?

17:37

What if that guy who's a little bit of a kinest, a little bit of a racist, a little bit to my right, what if that guy that I despise and I look down my nose,

17:47

I think I'm better than him, right? He's a blue collar, salt of the earth, unsophisticated, and it's not just I don't love him or I don't wanna go out of my way,

17:57

I actually despise him. I don't wanna be around him, I hate him. But what if he's the ripe harvest? What if he's the guy that Jesus would say, there is sin, he's not born again, he's under my wrath, and yet there is also a sense in which he is not far from the kingdom.

18:12

What if that was the riper harvest? So the thing is there's lost people in blue places, there's lost people in red places, but which harvest is riper?

18:22

And again, that's not to say, so therefore you must as a command every single Christian leap, but the dichotomy of it's either missions in Manhattan, we really care about Jesus and missions and the loss, or your family and retreat and safety and basically just throwing in the towel and getting up on evangelism.

18:41

That is, not only is it a false dichotomy because there's lost people in both places, but I've just demonstrated for you,

18:47

A .D. and for your listeners that you could actually even perhaps make a biblical argument to support at least the possibility that it is more missional to go where the harvest is ripe and where someone's not far from the kingdom.

18:59

I think you, listen, and I'm glad that you started this by saying, you're not making a huge deal out of this because you see it in the

19:05

Bible, but it's not like an explicit, you shall, you shall not kind of thing. So you gotta be careful, right?

19:11

But I think if you read the Bible with a certain set of eyes, you see kind of stuff like this all over the place.

19:16

And so one of your cardinal sins, Joel, I'm just gonna be straight up with you, is that you're thinking strategically.

19:24

And I gotta be honest with you, in evangelical culture, that's almost like looked at immediately with suspicion.

19:30

You're being pragmatic, you're not being biblical, you're being practical, you're not being spiritual. And we gotta lose that as soon as we possibly can.

19:38

It's good to think strategically. If you look in the Bible, things in like, in the book of Acts, for example, there'll be things like, Paul, as was his custom, went to the synagogue.

19:46

Well, Paul, why'd you go to the synagogue? Why didn't you take a journey into China? Because they're so lost.

19:53

Like that's missional to go to China. Why didn't you do that? Why'd you go to the synagogue? I mean, they basically already know Christ.

19:59

Well, there's a reason he did that. It was a strategic thing. I mean, does it mean that you have to do that? Of course not.

20:05

But Paul was thinking strategically. And there's room for disagreement here. I mean, there's elsewhere in the book of Acts, Barnabas and Paul get in this whole disagreement of whether or not to bring

20:15

John Mark with them. And I think I see both sides. It's like, well, yeah, he already abandoned us once.

20:21

He's gonna do it again. Like, why would we do that? And then the other guy's like, well, yeah, no. So like, there's room to like disagree with strategy and not have

20:29

Paul or Barnabas be this evil person preaching the doctrine of demons, right? I mean,

20:34

I think we can have these kinds of strategic debates but I think honestly, and I don't know if this is your experience.

20:40

Evangelical is like, they spurn strategic thinking, I think. Well, because what does strategy lead to,

20:47

AD? Like good strategy, it might lead towards winning. You know, that's very cynical,

20:53

Joel, but I gotta be honest, I kind of agree. I think that's what's going on. If you believe we lose down here,

21:00

I think there's a real straight line between two dots here. Maybe I'm crazy, call me a conspiracy theorist, but here's the two dots.

21:09

We lose down here. The other dot is practical strategy that might lead towards winning.

21:15

Do you think those two dots might be connected? I mean, I don't think I'm crazy. What we believe about eschatology does impact the way we lead our lives.

21:28

And that being said, I've been trying to give this disclaimer more often. I am of the post -millennial persuasion.

21:33

I know that you are as well. But even for the pre -mill guy, not even just a historic pre -mill guy, even a dispensational pre -mill guy, you know, like maybe loose dispensationalist, like a lot of them are fighting, you know?

21:48

And a lot of them are, you know, okay with what I'm suggesting, this fight by flight that you could leave and fight.

21:55

And that's because a lot of them, even if they think Jesus is gonna come back relatively soon, relatively soon could still be 500 years.

22:04

And in 500 years, you know, it may be ultimately, just like the post -mill, we think on the whole, it'll be an upward trajectory, but there's gonna be some dips along the way.

22:14

And we would say we're in one right now. Well, for the dispensational pre -mill guy, 500 years is still a fairly long time if you as an individual only live for 80, 85 of those.

22:27

And even though the ultimate trajectory for most of the dispi pre -mill guys is downward, they still believe that there could be some spikes along the way.

22:36

So we think it's upward with dips. They think downward with spikes. And, you know, and their timeline might be shorter than ours.

22:43

So we may say 50 ,000 years. And so there could be, you know, 1500 year dip, and they may say 500 years, but there could, you know, going down, but there could be a 40 -year spike.

22:53

Well, guess what can happen with a 40 -year spike? It can mean the difference in life and death for your kid, or for your grandkid.

23:00

So guess what you care about? You care about making a difference. And that's why there's dispensational pre -mill guys.

23:06

It's not just the post -millennials who are giving me a hearing. There's dispensational pre -mill guys who are saying, hey, look,

23:12

I disagree with Joel on eschatology, but he's on to something. But they get it. Yeah, they get it. They get it, so.

23:19

So let me ask you this. You mentioned, of course, being, you were on Steve Dease. Is it Dease or Dease? It's Dease.

23:24

It's spelled like Dease, but it's Dease. Steve, you were on his show. And of course, you know, he's a political guy.

23:30

You know, he's a talking head, political pundit kind of guy. So you talked a lot about the political ramifications of your book.

23:37

But obviously, you know, you mentioned earlier that there's obviously family ramifications.

23:42

You know, what's best for your family? What's best for raising kids? Financially, the whole nine yards, all of that kind of factors in.

23:49

Would you say your book is more political strategy, you know, gospel strategy, or just family dynamics?

23:58

What's the primary focus? Yeah, no, good question. So the book is, there's one section on page 43.

24:10

It says, it's not only how you vote, but where you vote. And that continues from page 43 to page 46.

24:18

And that's it. That's the only political strategy in the book. Three pages, that's nice. The rest of it is, there's three chapters that deal with tyranny and COVID and the things that God used providentially to kind of rip back the veil and applying that to the concept.

24:34

I use basically the first half of the book is my principle. And then the COVID stuff, second half is my case study for my principle.

24:41

And then the end is basically, it's the last chapter is called, don't be a bitter prophet.

24:47

So if you do choose to leave, and I use Jonah as my example, and I just exegete a brief exegesis of the book of Jonah and saying, if you do go, you tell a place like Nineveh to repent, and then you get out of Dodge, well, don't sit on a hilltop and be rooting for the fireworks, for the fire and brimstone to hope that California repents.

25:08

And so anyways, all that being said, the majority of what I address in the book is the family dynamic.

25:13

And I'm addressing it, not just from a practical standpoint, but just dealing with very clear.

25:20

So what I'm trying to do is not bind the conscience wrongfully with traditions of men and extra biblical mandates, but what is the

25:26

Bible? What's the minimum bottom line? What does the Bible explicitly say? What are we actually morally bound to?

25:32

So I talk about an obligation to four generations, that I have an obligation to a generation above me to honor my father and mother, that obedience to father and mother is a temporary command for younger children in their father's home.

25:44

Honoring is a lifelong command. So honoring our father and mother, and I talk about what do you do when your father and mother are aging?

25:50

And I talk about first Timothy five, the children should give some return to their parents, for this is good and pleasing to the

25:55

Lord. What do you do when they're aging? What do you do when your parents, you grew up in Texas, but then because you wanted to be missional, you moved 1300 miles away, got caught up in the whole church planting and in the city for the city, kind of gospel coalition thing.

26:10

And now you're having kids and your parents have grandkids that are 1300 miles away. And your mom is in tears because she wants to see them and be a part of their life.

26:21

Like, do you have any moral obligation from the scripture? Right, and then what do you do if it's like, well,

26:27

I'll relocate my parents here, but the cost of living, that city that you're currently in is number one worst rated, number one worst city in the continental

26:35

United States to build wealth. And you can't buy a home yourself, much less provide something for your parents to come.

26:42

And they've spent their whole adult life, as a pastor and a teacher in one of the poorest counties in Texas and probably aren't going to be able to retire in a place like San Diego.

26:51

So is there any, do I have any obligation under God to try to, so that's one, to the generation above, then your own generation, that would be your wife, wives,

27:02

Titus two, keepers at home. I'm down for wives, you know, in some capacity,

27:08

I think a lot of the industry of a woman, Proverbs 31 is, you know, she is like, well, she's a feminist.

27:14

She's working outside of the home. No, she's buying a field. She's making investments. And whose money did she buy it with?

27:20

Her husband's. So her husband is the primary breadwinner, but he trusts his wife.

27:25

She's competent. She has character. So wives can generate income for their family. And I think it's even permissible in some instances for the generation of that wealth to come from jobs outside of the home to some degree, but primarily, especially if you have young children,

27:39

I wanted my wife to be a keeper at home, which means I can't rely on two incomes. So where can I afford to live with one income?

27:46

All right, then next would be children, Ephesians six, four, fathers do not exasperate your children, but raise them up.

27:53

And that includes protection and provision for the child, but under the category of provision, that's not just food and clothing and shelter, but that also includes an education, a distinctly

28:04

Christian education. So I believe strongly, I would disagree with Jen Wilkin and others, that you cannot as a

28:11

Christian send your kids to a public school that teaches them to hate God. And so, okay, so what my point here is, and then the fourth generation would be your children's children, now grandchildren.

28:23

A good man, Proverbs says, leaves an inheritance to his children's children. I argue in the book that I don't believe that inheritance could ever be anything less than a spiritual gospel inheritance.

28:33

But I would be surprised if the Lord, if the Holy Spirit inspiring the text didn't had anything less, but did maybe perhaps have something more like a actual material inheritance.

28:44

And obviously that's gonna be a sliding scale, right? The faithful Christian in China may not be able to give as much of an inheritance to his children's children.

28:51

And I understand that, and I think the Lord is pleased when we do the best with what we have. But there is something to be said for a guy who is just inking by, that if he made a decision to transition, could leave to his children's children a business that he might not have been able to do in this place, but he can now in this other place.

29:10

Is there any more obligation there? Again, that's a sliding scale. So there's some subjective, I'm not trying to make that just black and white, it's pass fail.

29:18

It's a sliding scale with some subjective markers along the way. And so I wanna allow for that. But you put all this together and then outside of the family,

29:26

I do believe in tithing. And so, but here's my point, that's five things.

29:32

So my aging parents, honor father and mother, my wife, wanting her to be able to be at home, my kids, providing for them, giving them a distinctly

29:40

Christian education and wanting to have, I'm not a quiverful guy, but I do believe that children are a heritage from the

29:46

Lord and a man is blessed if he has many children. And so wanting to position myself in a way that I'm not tempted sinfully to have less children than maybe the

29:55

Lord would want me to have simply because of money. So having a lot of children, providing and protecting those children and part of that being a

30:02

Christian education so I can't use public school, leaving inheritance for my grandchildren, my children's children, and then giving 10 % to the church.

30:09

Well, here's the thing about following Jesus, there's a cost. And turns out some of that cost is actually practical.

30:16

And there's actually monetary implications to following clear practical commands in scripture.

30:23

So there's no verse in the Bible that says, thou must leave a blue state. So what I'm trying to do in the book is say, okay, well, what are the things in the

30:30

Bible that are clear? The obligation of husbands, the obligation of sons, the obligation as fathers, the obligation as grandfathers, and the obligation as generous church members.

30:40

Okay, you put all that together, then you put cost of living, then you put state taxes, then you put this, you put that.

30:46

And then you have to ask the question, not for every Christian, but for yourself, can I do this?

30:52

Can I do it? And then the last thing I kind of sum it up with is when the discourse between King Saul and Samuel, where Saul says, hey,

30:58

I've gone, and he literally uses the word mission. He says, I've gone on the mission that the Lord assigned to me.

31:04

Samuel says, then what's the bleeding of goats and this and that? He says, do you not know that the Lord desires obedience more than sacrifice?

31:12

And that's the heart of my book is I think that because evangelicalism has been so much about missions, global missions, urban city church planting missions.

31:23

I really think that the Lord would have us remember the words of Samuel that says, the

31:28

Lord desires obedience more than sacrificial missions. Well, I wish you could see my computer screen.

31:35

I've got one screen here and another screen here. And I literally just pulled up that text. Oh, really? Nice. People to obey is better than sacrifice.

31:43

Yeah. And to listen is better than the fat of rams. It is, you know, that is profound because we come up with these very complex systems to not obey the simple stuff.

31:58

And we've been made often to feel like to do things for our family, even though the

32:05

Bible tells us to do them. God explicitly tells us to do these things for our family. It's somehow not spiritual to do that stuff.

32:17

Because everything, again, it strikes me, everything that you just talked about, the different obligations you have and what you need to think through.

32:24

It's so practical. This is not the kind of thing I typically would hear from a standard evangelical church.

32:30

You know what I mean? What I hear is you got to sacrifice for the mission. You got to be on mission. You got to go to your missional communities and be on mission.

32:37

And I remember when I was in New York, I was at a church plant in New York. And I remember there was, this was a good pastor.

32:45

So I'm not, I don't want to, if he ever sees this, I'm not saying you did wrong here, but there was always an emphasis on how hard it was to plant here.

32:53

And that's how you know we're really leaning in on the Holy Spirit. And there's like, he wasn't saying that to manipulate anybody.

32:59

Like he never told me I couldn't leave or anything. Like, it wasn't like that. But like, but that's a kind of a subtle manipulation.

33:05

It's almost like, you know, this is the real work. Everything else would just be hanging out.

33:11

You know, if I decided to move to Florida, I'd be being selfish. That's the implication a lot of the time or something like that.

33:17

No, this is really good stuff, man. It sounds like - Here's a problem though, real quick, is like, like we've done, we tried it.

33:24

You know, like we tried global missions at the cost of the family. And what happened?

33:30

Well, now you've got a bunch of third world countries that have a bunch of churches and setting up seminaries in Zambia and all this kind of stuff.

33:38

But then Americans, our kids grew up and they went apostate. Like Jesus said, we can tell the good of something by its fruit.

33:47

And so I'm not saying that there's no category for missions, but I am saying that evangelicalism on the whole, again, exceptions,

33:56

I'm speaking in general group terms, which we've got to be adults and be able to do that. On the whole, evangelicalism perhaps is coming off of several decades of prioritizing evangelism and missions at the cost of parenting and family.

34:12

Is that crazy? Like, can we have that conversation? It's so funny because there's nothing new under the sun.

34:18

I mean, it's just a complicated, sophisticated way to do the Corbin law. You know, it's given to God.

34:25

You know, I don't have to take, I don't have to give it to my parents, it's given to God. And it's just like, I think sometimes we read that kind of stuff and we see them and they're like, they're shysters.

34:35

And they're like, yeah, we're just gonna keep all the money. They know, they probably gussied it up, very spiritual sounding too.

34:42

I mean, I've got to go to Macedonia for this mission and things like that. And like, it's a fancy Corbin law.

34:51

Yep, you're right. Very interesting, man. This is good stuff. So how do people get this book?

34:57

We had talked a little bit about it beforehand. If someone wants to buy the book, first of all, what's the title and where do you get it?

35:03

Yeah, thanks. It's called Fight by Flight, Why Leaving Godless Places is

35:08

Loving Godless Places. And so you can get it on rightresponseministries .com

35:14

or you can get it on Amazon. Awesome stuff, man. Is there any last minute things you want to say? You know, obviously the intention of this was not to go over all of the craziness on Twitter.

35:23

I mean, I saw people saying the most wildest things, all of that. And I haven't even read the book.

35:29

I've talked to you a little bit about this, so I didn't even know what they were referring to, but it was just over the top rhetoric.

35:34

Do you want to mention anything else to kind of wrap this in a bow so people don't have any misconceptions about your book or what you're pushing or anything like that?

35:43

Yeah, sure. One thing that got a lot of attention was a clip from one of my sermons where I said, it's not the same

35:51

Christians living in California as Christians who live in North Korea. I said, the Christians who are living in North Korea, one key difference is that they're trapped, but the

36:01

Christians living in California, you're not trapped, you're stupid. And so that made the rounds, and it made the rounds and got a lot of attention because it was intentionally clipped out one and a half minutes prior to that clip in the same sermon.

36:18

The context was I was talking about provision. And so I was talking about Christian fathers, if they're not able to provide for their household and in this scenario, a hypothetical scenario, if they would be able by moving to better provide for the members of their family, but deliberately are choosing not to, that's a problem.

36:40

And then I said, now, and that was kind of, so that teed up, so some of you might say, well, there are

36:46

Christians that are struggling to provide in North Korea that are incredibly poor. Yeah, well, the difference is they're trapped and you, you're just stupid.

36:53

So I didn't say all Christians living in California are stupid. The context was -

36:59

You don't say. Yeah, you don't say. The context was Christian men deliberately choosing to stay there, having the option of moving and not providing in California, assuming that they, in a scenario, assuming where they'd be able to better provide elsewhere and they're deliberately choosing not to.

37:14

So the thing that I would say about that is I do wanna apologize for being too soft.

37:21

I was way too winsome, way too kind. The apostle Paul says that a man who -

37:29

Oh no. But I said stupid. And so I feel like I compromised there.

37:35

I was way too soft and I just wanted to apologize. Good stuff, man. This has really been awesome.

37:41

You know, if anyone's watching this and has any questions about this, put them in the comment section.

37:47

I can relay them to Joel. Maybe we can even do a follow -up if people are concerned about something. Because I think a lot, to be honest,

37:54

Joel, I think there are a lot of people out there that are thinking about this very thing and are worried that maybe they are committing some kind of family idolatry or even financial idolatry.

38:09

Maybe they're being greedy. Maybe they don't need this money. I think people are thinking this through right now.

38:15

So this is a very timely book. And so if you have any questions, put it in the comments, email me, and I'll get it to Joel as quickly as I can.