The American Churchman: The Business of Isness with David Schrock

Conversations That Matter

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:22

Welcome to the American Churchman podcast, where we encourage men to take their responsibility seriously before God, to love

00:30

Him with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. You can find out more about what we do at theamericanchurchman .com.

00:38

You can also go to truthscript .com to find out more about the organization that supports this particular podcast.

00:45

It is a 501c3. They do take donations. They also take submissions if you are interested in submitting an article for review.

00:52

You can check all that out at truthscript .com. Two quick announcements before we get into the podcast today.

00:58

This is the last chance to sign up for the conference this weekend in Sullins Grove, Pennsylvania, called

01:04

Christianity and the Founding. You can go to Christianityandthefounding .com if you want to sign up. You need to get special permission from me, unfortunately, to access the

01:13

VIP dinner at this point, just because I already gave the caterer a number, and I would have to adjust that number if more are coming.

01:20

I can still probably get a few people in, but you can certainly come to the conference, so Christianityandthefounding .com

01:27

if you're interested in that also. The following weekend is going to be the

01:32

Truth Conference in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, and I will be speaking at that as well, along with Andrew Rappaport, Craig Chambers, Seth Brickley.

01:42

My brother David's actually going to be there, who's the CEO of TruthScript, and that's going to be a wonderful time.

01:47

You want to, if you want to sign up for that or find out more information about it, I actually don't think they require signups, but you can register if you want.

01:56

You can go to strivingforeternity .org forward slash truth -conference -25.

02:03

So I think if you just go to Striving for Eternity and then click on events, online events, it'll come up as well.

02:10

But that is in, like I said, Mount Laurel, New Jersey, and that is coming up very soon.

02:16

It's the following weekend. And with that, I just want to introduce our speaker today. We actually have an interview and not a typical

02:25

American churchman podcast. I'm going to be talking to Pastor David Schrock. He is the pastor at Occoquan Bible Church in Woodbridge, Virginia, and he's a smart guy.

02:36

He is the faculty member at Indianapolis Theological Seminary. He is a graduate of Southern Seminary.

02:42

He's written a few books. We're going to talk about one of them today called The Business of Isness. And with that,

02:48

I want to welcome David Schrock to the podcast. If people want to find you on Twitter, it's easy. It's at David Schrock.

02:54

Where can people find your book? Is it Amazon? Is it Founders? Yeah. So I don't know if it's on Amazon yet.

03:00

It's definitely on the Founders website. So you go to Founders and their store, it's there. So it's for pre -order.

03:05

It will be out in July. I think they have right now the introductory chapter. They're kind of laying out what this idea of isness is so they can find it there.

03:15

Okay, very cool. And you are writing from a pastoral perspective and a pastoral heart here.

03:21

Obviously, the first question with any book is why did you write it? Usually there's a need of some kind. So what did you see out there that prompted you to say, well,

03:28

I should probably write something about ontology and the natural order? Yeah. So it comes from a sermon series that I did at our church, kind of ontology 101, the business of isness.

03:41

Because as we have seen over these last number of years, probably the transgender issue being most prominent, there's just been a radical confusion of what human nature is.

03:51

What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be human? Those are questions that I wanted to kind of explore and to do so from a biblical basis.

03:59

And to help the person in the pew to be able to understand these things, certainly around Washington, D .C., you have the challenges of being forced to put your pronouns in your email and having to stand up for that.

04:11

Certainly, we had a number of families in our church who are dealing with some of the overreach of the government telling them that they had to take the vaccines going back to 2021 and 2022.

04:22

And so we're just trying to help our people in very kind of political spaces and military spaces to understand this is what it means to be human.

04:28

And here's some apologetics and some biblical encouragement to stand your ground there and to give answers that you may be facing as you go into the world.

04:38

Yeah, I remember my wife was doing some medical input work in 20,

04:44

I want to say 2018, 2019. And then she was in kind of your

04:50

Bible Belt, not the part of Virginia you're in, on the other side of the state, south of there.

04:56

And places you wouldn't probably think transgenderism would be prevalent. And that issue came up for her.

05:03

And it was a moral crisis in a way. And it wasn't even something that I had seen on the radar.

05:09

I never even thought that she would have to navigate that at her own job. And here we are in, and I live now in a more blue state, but in 2025, this is kind of just taken for granted.

05:21

And there's someone actually recently in my own church who asked me about this, that people in his company aren't supposed to put religious things on their profile because that's offensive.

05:34

But of course, pronouns are expected. And it's kind of a wacky world.

05:39

Do you see things getting better though? Because I see, at least on a national level, it seems the Trump administration's cracking down on some of this.

05:46

Yeah, so I think the language of vibe shift is right. I think there has been a real change that has been there, at least it's created space for these conversations to be had.

05:54

Certainly, those who are at the State Department and other places have now someone behind them, supporting them, and not just trying to shove this down their throats.

06:02

I still think that that doesn't mean that these things have gone away. It seems as though they've gone underground a bit more.

06:08

And there's still some insidious ways that they're trying to be promoted using different language, right? So maybe we can't use

06:13

D -E -I, but we can use other terms that might be there. So I really think that God has given us a reprieve and we should take as much ground as we possibly can.

06:21

And that Christians should learn for maybe the first time or to recover what it means to be bold. And certainly in this situation, the business of business is trying to help people to think about, this is what human nature is.

06:32

So that means that when they're talking to someone whose mind has not been completely addled by the world around us, that they can see, yeah, there is a difference between a man and a woman.

06:42

There are distinctions that are taking place there. It's interesting, we have a member of our church who even years ago knew

06:48

Pete Hegseth. And so, I mean, you can see the way that even he is trying to bring something like that to the

06:53

Pentagon, to the Department of Defense. So all the things that are taking place there, it does seem that there's a shift taking place.

06:59

But that means that Christians really need to take this time to actually put things in place that would have some permanence to have moral sanity again.

07:08

Yeah, and that's not the only thing that you write about, of course. You write about the family, what is a family?

07:14

I don't know if you get into the national questions, at least there's not a chapter titled that. Do you get into what is a nation at all or is that?

07:20

Yeah, so I wanted to and didn't get to it in time. I preached that later.

07:26

So after going through this series where it was, I think, eight sermons on answering questions. What is a human?

07:32

What is God? What is the world? So those are the kind of the titles of those sermons. And that's what the book chapters are developing further.

07:38

I preached through Genesis, Genesis 1 through 11 and eventually preached what is a nation from Genesis chapter 10.

07:44

And so I really, I think in the future, would like to write something about that because it seems as though the question about nationalism and nations and defining what those things are has been lost in so many ways.

07:57

And Christians need to have a biblical understanding of that. I know you've done work talking about that, thinking about that.

08:02

But I think that's something that we need to have biblical foundations and can find biblical foundations for thinking about that.

08:07

So it's not in the book. I've done some work on it. Hope to do more in the future. Yeah, it seems like everything's up for grabs or has been in the last few years.

08:15

Every definition is questioned and it's limitless choice for a young person entering the world.

08:20

They not only have to choose their career, they have to now, in some contexts, think about what gender do they want to be, which is just bonkers.

08:27

I mean, that's something that should be decided for you. Well, obviously it is something decided for you, not should.

08:33

It is because it all starts with who God is. And that's where you start. Do you think this is all fundamentally a religious war?

08:41

Because that's what I think. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So you talk about the workplace where you're not allowed to bring religious ideas or convictions of faith into the place of work.

08:52

But again, when you put pronouns in your email, that's a religious statement, right? There's a religion behind that.

08:58

I mean, transgenderism isn't just, you know, confused sexual identity, but really there's a religious element to that as well.

09:04

So I absolutely think that that's taking place. And for Christians, again, we need to realize that, you know, politics is downstream from culture.

09:11

Culture is downstream from religion. It's downstream from worship. And so that's even something, you know, ask the question about nationhood.

09:18

I did a series recently, another preaching series in Genesis from Genesis eight and nine to show the way that worship is the first thing that Noah does coming off of the ark and how that leads into all the cultural elements that are taking place in the beginning of Genesis nine.

09:33

Yeah, so when you start off with, because you keep referencing Genesis, which

09:38

I mean, I know you're not plugging answers in Genesis, but that just feels familiar to me because they always look at all these cultural issues that we're dealing with today.

09:47

And they're like, yeah, it's just in the first few chapters there. All these things are answered, but it really is that simple on a lot of these things.

09:53

God has laid down a template and an order and categories for us to think in. And it seems like that's what's being questioned primarily.

10:03

And different people, even people on the so -called right are coming up with their own categories for how to sort of look at creation, look at what's around us and categorize it, box it in.

10:17

So I guess my question is like, if it is so simple, all right, if it is just literally in the first few chapters, we see what a man is, what a woman is, what a nation is, what a family is.

10:28

And you have Christians though, that seem to miss this at such a basic level. What's going on there?

10:35

Is there a, what's the motivation? Frankly, I was confused the first time

10:40

I saw organizations start floundering on these issues. And it still kind of makes me scratch my head a little bit because it really is that basic.

10:49

Yeah. So again, I think part of it is going to go to just how have the churches preach the word of God or not preach the word of God, right?

10:57

When you have someone like an Ed Young coming into his stage, I won't even call it platform, but his stage on a rollercoaster, right?

11:04

Whatever's taking place there. And then other churches are picking up and using, like that's the state of Christianity today, right?

11:12

And well, to mention Christianity today, I mean, when you're denying the nails in the hands and saying that it's now ropes to come up with something creative for Easter Sunday or Easter weekend, it's like we're so confused in our preaching of the word of God that things that should be fundamental and basic are not because we have these kind of pop culture sermon series instead of the foundations of the faith that go back to Genesis one through 11.

11:37

And I think today, I mean, those 11 chapters are some of the most critical places to preach from the word into the church today.

11:45

And if we're lacking that, then we're lacking the foundation we need on which to stand. It's interesting. I went to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

11:52

I went to Liberty University after that for two grad degrees. And I was in undergrad. It's a little more non -traditional, but I have credits from a number of different undergrad institutions that are

12:03

Christian. And one of the things that I noticed is there, so it depends on the, obviously this isn't across the board, but depending on the class you're in and the professor you have and so forth,

12:15

I was hearing things that I heard in my secular undergrad institutions, things like family wasn't really invented until the middle ages.

12:24

It's more of like a Martin Luther kind of thing. And we don't even have nations appearing until the modern age. And they'll usually say the nation state.

12:31

That's when we have nations forming. Gender is not, I mean, gender, it was a little better on, but that the roles should not be culturally formed.

12:44

And so when you see these traditional masculine roles, traditional feminine roles, part of being a Christian somehow is rejecting that.

12:50

And then I guess leaving it very blank and open to definition, but that's, and then of course, the same sex attraction comes into that.

13:00

And so it seems like without outright denying the biblical confessions and orthodox statements of the past, cause they'll cling to all of those things.

13:10

There was an undercutting of those things in just subversive ways. And I don't,

13:16

I, you know, I'd love to assume the best about people's motives. I try to be slow. I feel people don't think I am, but I do try to be slow in trying to accuse someone of intentionally being subversive, but it does seem like whole cloth.

13:28

There has been an effort to say, we are orthodox. We are Christian. We believe everything about Genesis, but we're going to tinker a little bit over here.

13:38

And that, that tinkering has repercussions and ripple effects that eventually do undermine the foundation.

13:44

Do you see, maybe give us, tell me what you think about my analysis and then maybe give us an expectation where you think things are headed in a better direction or are we going to continue floundering?

13:57

Yeah, I mean, so I definitely think that your analysis is right there. I mean, there's kind of been this, this acid that has just kind of crept in and undercut the foundations.

14:07

And let's just say the confessions of Protestant Reformation churches. And it hasn't been an outright denial, but it's just been kind of undercutting and redefining and really an unwillingness to be able to call out error and to just kind of have some laxity around the edges that just continues to work through that.

14:25

When I teach systematic theology, one of the things that I will say is that I learned a term when

14:30

I was at Southern Seminary, they were going through all of the old buildings, buildings were there from the 1920s and on, and they were tuck pointing the buildings, which is basically to go into brick buildings and to take out the mortar and then to replace it with new mortar so that those brick buildings will be able to stand for another 100 years or whatever.

14:47

And I think there's a way in which there's kind of a theological tuck pointing that needs to take place. So if we have our doctrinal categories in place from the doctrine of God, doctrine of man, doctrine of salvation, all of those, what you'll find in kind of the main categories in theology, but then you have sociology and you have history and you have science and you have kind of the social sciences and all these other things are kind of the glue that holds those things together or more actually begins to just kind of leech in and pull away from these things.

15:12

And so, yes, we affirm an image of God, but also we need to be able to say that we need to, you know, this idea of diversity, that, you know, multiculturalism is our strength, that diversity is our strength.

15:25

Well, there are some ideas brought in there that are gonna undergird, well, let's just talk about the

15:30

Ordo Amoris, right? The way that we love our neighbor and have an understanding of that. And when we have to have someone like a

15:35

J .D. Vance reintroduce this idea of Ordo Amoris into kind of evangelical spaces when he's not, you know, not either pastor nor evangelical as a

15:45

Catholic vice president, but when that is being brought into the conversation, oh, that's actually a Christian idea.

15:51

That's something we should have had all along, but we have lost that because we have been kind of lulled into and kind of brought into this modern way of thinking.

15:59

And I think part of that goes to the fact that we have been unwilling to, this is a term that I've been kind of thinking about more recently, to be cheerfully disagreeable.

16:08

That for the doctrines of faith to continue, we have to be disagreeable with those who are just kind of, you know, again, just kind of blurring the edges on that to say, no, that isn't the way that a man and a woman is defined.

16:19

And there is something natural to being a man and a woman. And so, yes, there's a biological sex that is there, but there's also something of the way that a woman is a woman and the way she conducts herself and the way that a man conducts himself as a man.

16:33

And so in the book, one of the things I'll talk about in the chapter on male and female has to do with the impact of feminism for the last 100 years.

16:39

And that has just been so brought into the way that we kind of think about everything. And it's really softened up the church so that now we need to be sensitive to everyone instead of saying, no, if you are in error, it needs to be called out.

16:55

And when you look at the pastoral epistles, what you see time and again is the need for pastors to be patient, loving, gentle, prayerful, teaching, but to be able to say, no, you're incorrect and to conform yourself back to the word of God.

17:08

And we just don't have a lot of that because we've been trained to be sensitive to just be sensitive to everyone.

17:13

And I think that's really undermined what's been going on in the church. And maybe that's coming to the forefront now because of the bad fruit that is produced.

17:20

Yeah, talk to me about the pastor who says, because I've gotten this quite a bit, I just want to focus on the gospel and saving people's souls.

17:29

And that's the important task the church has. You're getting into politics when you start talking about these things that are obviously in the scripture on some level, but they don't think it's as important.

17:40

Yeah, so certainly politics has entered into everything now. And so therefore just to have kind of a broad sweep of biblical instruction is going to apply to political things.

17:50

So, I mean, the abortion issue is certainly the forefront of that, that, okay, yeah, it's a political issue, but before that it's a life issue.

17:56

And scripture speaks all about that. Again, the image of God speaking about those who've been taken away to death, we are to rescue them as Proverbs says.

18:04

So politics is everywhere. So we're going to encroach upon that anytime that we're speaking about anything ethical, either personal or public.

18:12

And second, I think there has been this kind of bifurcation of the altar and the city.

18:18

And so again, when I went through Genesis, really seeing this, there's a pattern that is there from Genesis 8 and 9.

18:24

So you talk about answers to Genesis. So I spent some time with them, the Grand Canyon a couple of years ago. So really thankful for their ministry.

18:30

I love what they do. But really what happens after the flood in Genesis 8 and 9 may be as programmatic for the world today as what we see in Genesis 1 through 8, both in creation, fall and flood.

18:43

But we also need to see that when, again, Noah comes out of that period of salvation through the flood.

18:50

First thing he does is worship. He builds an altar. And then from there, you have the seasons that are there. In some ways, it's setting up a calendar to be reminded of how are we going to continue to worship in such a way.

19:01

And what I find striking there in Genesis 8, 21 is the way that it says that because the Lord smelled this pleasing aroma of the sacrifice that is there, he was never going to bring a judgment on the world the same way.

19:13

See, was it because of that one sacrifice that was taking place there? Or was it because the ongoing worship of true people in the place of the earth,

19:21

God is going to withhold his judgment. Of course, he gives the promise of the rainbow there. Well, later on, we see in a place like Sodom and Gomorrah that judgment does not fall on that city until all the righteous are taken out of it.

19:33

And it's not 10. It seems to be one. It doesn't look very righteous. But Lot is that one man who has saved our city.

19:39

Then judgment comes. There seems to be a connection between the worship of God's people and the judgment of God in those places and connecting that from the altar all the way to the city that is going to be established with those households that are told to be fruitful and multiply in Genesis 9, as well as the law that is commanded, that there's the shedding of blood, that blood will be shed by man.

19:58

There's a justice element that is there. All of those things seem to be pattering what the world should be.

20:03

And it connects us from the altar to the city. And today, it's almost as if, yes, we come to the altar.

20:09

That's all that matters. But we also need to be preparing and equipping people to go out into the city so that they can do that with all that they have learned from the people of God in the word of God going forward.

20:20

And not just going out into the city, where they will find other altars that are there. The way they'll come back and worship truly, hopefully bringing people with them, is by seeing that whole set of God's pattern for the world.

20:32

And so to the pastor who is saying, all I want to do is preach on the gospel, it truncates the full word of God.

20:40

Yeah, the city has been such an emphasis. It was in my seminary education. And I don't know if that's all

20:45

Tim Keller. I know Tim Keller emphasized that quite a bit. He was obviously in a city. And not just a city in the traditional sense of what a city is going back to Genesis, but a megapolis.

20:57

I mean, the scale is just incredible when you think of with modern transportation, how many people we can concentrate into an area without agricultural support, because we can get in trucked in.

21:09

It's just, it's amazing. I live about an hour and a half from New York City, two hours, depending on traffic, north on the

21:15

Hudson River. And we have commuters in my area who, I mean, that's, you know, one way they'll go, you know, they'll be on a train three or four hours a day just to work down there.

21:24

And it's, I mean, there's such a opportunity for the gospel and for Christianity when you have the high concentrations of people.

21:32

But at the same time, I know that when you, Richard Weaver wrote about this a little bit.

21:39

When you do go into that environment, there is something of an artificiality and a forgetting God and entertainment.

21:46

I mean, the city never sleeps, right? So there's, your needs can be met at all times, at all hours and all ways and without a thought to your creator.

21:55

And I wonder whether or not with these devices, you know, whether we have the city now everywhere with us.

22:01

That you can be in the middle of nowhere and the city is right there in your hand in that sense. And I'm obviously speaking about it in a negative term.

22:07

They're not the positive way that cities can be talked about.

22:13

But I mean, when you look at your congregation and you see vanity fair, you see distraction, reels.

22:22

I mean, the younger generation is completely addicted. Sometimes members of those younger generations to technology and now couple that with the rising kind of feeling of maybe transcendence or just optimism that we can now merge our brain with chips.

22:43

We can have this transhumanism experience. AI is gonna bring it to us. You wrote a book on these definitions, these creation order things.

22:53

But there are futurists who think this will be obsolete pretty soon. We as humans can,

22:58

I mean, maybe it sounds a little Tower of Babel -ish, but we are going to be able to transcend to be

23:03

God basically. As some even like Ray Kurzweil, I think is under the impression he's not gonna die because technology is going to take care of this.

23:12

Maybe jump into the future a little bit. What you see happening with like Elon Musk and what he's doing with the confidence that we're now putting in to our own achievements in the technological world and how this threatens the biblical order and me how it's not gonna work out the way people think.

23:35

Yeah, I mean, there's so many different things there and so many kind of uncertainties. But I think one thing that we can fall into is simply say, well, technology is amoral.

23:46

It's neutral. It depends on how you use that. And I think that that's a little bit naive because that technology is going to shape us often more than we're able to use it for our own purposes, right?

23:58

So you think about the way that Facebook and Twitter and other social media apps are designed in order to give this kind of feedback loop that is there.

24:07

It's training us as much as we're training ourselves to use it in some effective way, right?

24:12

So it's definitely have an impact that is there. I mean, you have as well kind of enter that mix the likes of the Elon Musk and others who are wanting to, you know, they are transhumanist in what they're wanting to do and to put those neural links in the brain.

24:25

I mean, it's to find a way to kind of take humanity to that next level or even more than that, Yuval Harari, right?

24:31

Who's basically saying that it's our obligation to be able to take humanity and take it to that next kind of super species that is there.

24:39

So that's definitely something that is taking place. And I think you're going to have some that are reactionaries to that to say, okay, we need to go back to, you know, closer to the land, right?

24:49

To these megapolises, we're so far away from creation and there's something right about that, that we need to pull back to that.

24:56

But I think at the same time, there are opportunities that may be in that technology that is there, not the way that Kurzweil is you're talking about or Musk or Harari are presenting them, but Christians need to be a part of that.

25:08

So we have a member of our church who works, you know, on the technology side of things with the Heritage Foundation.

25:14

And he's talking about the way in which they need to fuse together, that Christians need to be in those places, making arguments for a

25:21

Christian understanding of that. And that includes having an understanding of nature. And this is the, I think the bottom line issue is that for all the things that will be made by men, they're still under the feet of Jesus Christ.

25:32

They're still in nature to the way that God has made the world. And it's very possible for us to think that we can manipulate nature to such a degree that we would be able to create the future of our own making.

25:43

And yet still all of it is ordained by God. There's a way in which we need to realize that God has made the world a certain way and that humanity has a breaking point.

25:51

There's some way that we can become unhuman or to go beyond that. So that's, I think the major question for those who are thinking about technology is at what point does this actually undercut humanity that is taking place there?

26:04

So certainly we can take the city with us, with our phones, wherever we go. I mean, David Wells used to talk about this, that there's kind of this world cliche culture that it used to be that when a

26:14

Massachusetts, so this is his no place for truth, right? When a Massachusetts, this delicious paradise that was once there, that was unique from the city 100 miles away, that there was a regionalism that was there.

26:25

There's a localism that is there. I think there is something to recover that. I think the local church should be kind of leaning into that.

26:31

That's what we try to do in a very suburban area to say, even though life around you is very frenetic, we wanna help you to be a family believer centered on the gospel, trying to slow down as much as possible.

26:42

Even though it's hard. It'd be far easier to be living slowly where I used to live in Indiana, a small town of about 20 ,000 people.

26:49

There are ways of life that are healthier there, I think, than being in the city. And yet here's where people are.

26:55

There's a need for the gospel to go forward. And so how do we help people to center themselves on the altar that is found in the local church, and then to take what we know at that place of worship out into the city, instead of going out to a city filled with idols and continue to bring that way of life and that way of thinking back into the place of the church, which is to go back to Ed Young and others.

27:18

I think that's what's happened in many churches. They go out to the city and they're taking all of these kind of patterns and practices of the city and trying to ram them back to where they would worship instead of the other way around.

27:28

Yeah, there's been almost a disdain for a while of rural life and simple people, and that we need to be the sort of sophisticated

27:35

Christians who appeal to urbanites. I've always been torn on this because we do need to be involved in areas of high populations and places of social influence.

27:48

There's no doubt about that. But the danger seems to be more from, it's the way we think about it more than maybe the thing itself.

27:58

And I know there's guys, even some more conservative philosophers who have thought, we can't coexist with technology.

28:05

It's just not possible. It's going to ruin us. But the thing is, as you write about in your book, there is an order

28:13

God's laid down, which we will always live within the boundaries of. We can't ever escape it, no matter how much technology we create.

28:20

It'll never be able to make a man a woman. You can maybe deceive yourself into thinking that's what you're doing.

28:27

And that's where maybe the problem is, is you're deceived by this, to think that you can do things you can't do, but you never will be able to do it.

28:36

And you're never going to be able to create an actual human form out of just equipment that you put together.

28:43

There's something missing. God is the one who breathes life into man. And so with that, there's a message here for rural churches.

28:52

There's a message here for urban churches, for everyone, really. And it is to,

28:58

I think, lean into and drill into what God has already established and to disregard the lies that are out there, whether through technology or other means.

29:08

And so how do you practically do that? I mean, you're about, what would you say? You're a commuter distance from DC.

29:16

So you got people coming to your church who are involved in government and the deep state, we call it, but I'm not going to accuse anyone in your church of being in the deep state, but potentially someone from the administrative state is going to walk in.

29:33

How do you counsel them as a pastor to say, all right, this is how God made things. I know that you're working for maybe a good organization or maybe a bad organization, but they're living in this artificial environment in some respects.

29:50

Family life, marriage, just, we should talk about localism, all of those matters, what do you tell them?

29:58

Yeah, so again, I think one, being able to see what is true and what is false is the starting place, right?

30:04

To recognize that these promises that are being given to you, either through your workplace or through the career ladder or through the fact that you can go and change the world.

30:13

I mean, that's one of the offers that is there in Washington, DC is you have a lot of world changers that come there in their twenties and thirties, they want to do that.

30:20

And they may get sucked into some things that are really pernicious to their souls and actually cause them to do a lot of real harm.

30:26

At the same time, I mean, we have a lot of really faithful people that are at our church and that are in the district as well.

30:33

So I think the big thing, again, is like, where are you finding your identity? How are you able to do that?

30:38

This is where, you know, Rod Dreher got a lot of kind of negative press for his Benedict option, but reading his book through Baptist lens,

30:46

I would say what he's calling for is a thick community at the local church, right? That you have a community of faith that are there to say, this is who your people are, that when you're taking the

30:55

Lord's supper on Sunday, this is the meal that is most important. It's not that meal that you have at that fine dining restaurant in downtown

31:02

DC with kind of the elite. That's not as important as the people that you're gathering with on a

31:08

Sunday morning. And to be able to say, no, you really do begin with the altar and then move out to the city instead of living for the city.

31:15

Oh, and by the way, kind of giving a pittance to the altar one day out of the week. So trying to really establish your life there and especially with families as well.

31:23

It's interesting just in the demographics in Northern Virginia, Alexandria, which is closest to the district.

31:29

If I'm not mistaken, it has 20 or 30 different elementary schools. It has one high school.

31:35

So what that tells you is that families move out of that area, right? You have people that don't have children or at least don't have children by the time they are in high school.

31:43

So our area has a bit more family orientation to it. Now it's difficult to have a family here because again, the pace that is here, the population crush, but still we're trying to build families together to do that.

31:55

One of the things that I think our churches has grown in some, we have a lot of homeschoolers here. So they're not in the public schools, but really

32:03

I think churches taking on the responsibility of training the next generation, educating the next generation.

32:08

So that can certainly be done with homeschooling and even homeschool co -ops. But even schools or even churches that are taking on the responsibility to say, how do we train the next generation?

32:18

Not just with Bible studies and Sunday school, but with all areas of life. I think that's one thing that we could grow in as a church.

32:25

And we certainly have other churches in our area that are doing that as well. And that would make sense whether you're in an urban context, suburban or rural, to be able to see that we really want to tell people not just the message that saves their souls, but actually the word of God that is going to transform every aspect of their lives.

32:43

And so we're recognizing perhaps in this push towards Gnosticism that we've seen a transgenderism and the technology and all the rest, how do we actually fight against that by saying

32:51

Christianity is a message that is both for soul and for body. That even the resurrection, which we just celebrated on Easter Sunday and every

33:00

Sunday is a message to us that this should impact every area of our life, not just this spiritual component divorced from the flesh and blood, the realities of the world around us.

33:10

So I think those are some of the things that are there and it's really taking the truth of God's word and pressing it into the corners of all of life.

33:17

This is one of the things that I struggle with a little bit. And I don't know if it's a contextual thing, but so I was living in Lynchburg, Virginia and attending a church there and they have their programs and everything.

33:28

And I'm living in New York now in a much more blue area. And I go to a smaller church.

33:34

There's less Christians in this area. But there are some churches that are more charismatic perhaps.

33:40

So there's some bigger churches around, maybe not on a Virginia standard, which you'd think of as big, but they have more programs and that kind of thing.

33:50

And there's always guys who just want to see more programs at the church.

33:55

That's the solution. So in Virginia, that didn't seem to make sense to me as much.

34:01

Like, so let's say you want a bowling league and it's like, well, we should just do one at the church, right? Well, you already have a semi -Christianized culture, at least in that area.

34:11

And there's plenty of options for you to get involved in the community, maybe even meet some people that you wouldn't run across in your church that need the gospel and maybe need your influence.

34:21

And I hate to be a retreatist in that sense, to say like, we're gonna sort of take all the social activities and put them under the watching eye of the elders and push them through the organization of the church.

34:35

At the same time, where I live now, it seems like that's more and more necessary. So we have a homeschool co -op that meets at our church.

34:42

And you really don't have much of an option here as far as public schools, like, or even

34:48

Christian private schools. You just don't have that option. So you kind of have to retreat from, it's too spoiled.

34:56

It's spoiled beyond what you can do anything about. And you're not gonna use your kids as missionaries. I mean, you could get involved in extra hobbies and so forth, but you have to be judicious about that too.

35:10

Sometimes you're overcoming evil and other times evil can overcome you. And so I think there's probably room for a lot of prudence with this, but maybe talk a little bit about maybe how you're doing it and where you see the church being salt and light, but at the same time, retaining its characteristic as the church without taking on too many things, if you know what

35:30

I mean. Yeah, so maybe just one category to start with is the difference between educational and social, right?

35:38

So, I mean, it seems as though the training of the next generation in their minds and being able to understand the world and how they're interpreting the world, it really matters that our children are receiving a

35:48

Christian education, right? So if schooling is a function of parenting, right?

35:53

The parents have the responsibility to disciple their children in such a way that they're raising them in the fear and admonition of the

35:59

Lord and giving them an education, to be able to understand the world around them, then it seems as though there needs to be

36:04

Christian education, which is distinct from, let's say, Christian sports or some sort of activity that's social.

36:13

Like I have no problem putting my children in non -Christian leagues. However, we've had to be very kind of forceful to say, we're not doing it on Sunday, right?

36:23

We're prioritizing worship on the day. And that also means getting home at night on Saturday to prepare for Sunday, right?

36:29

So there's definitely some ways that is taking place. Now, some of our older children are involved in a homeschool sports league as well.

36:36

So that has been good. So I would at least begin to think about distinctions between educational and social, extracurricular and things like that.

36:45

And then you have to think about the size of the church. How much can they do? I mean, some churches are gonna have more resources, more people to do that.

36:51

Some are gonna have the gifting to be able to do that in ways that are not. So even just thinking about that. But in that context, what is the mission of the church collectively?

36:59

The mission of the church together and the mission of Christians individually. And I think that is one way that helps to avoid the church taking on responsibilities and missions that are not priority for worshiping, discipling the saints, gathering for the people to hear the word of God, to worship

37:16

Christ, to take the Lord's supper. That's what the church gathered does. But then in that context, we should be equipping

37:22

Christians to then go into all of their vocations and to use their skills well in those places.

37:28

And again, I'm thinking about adults at this point where they're taking their knowledge of Christ and then going and applying it to whether that is being a car mechanic or going and being a congressman, whatever the case may be, that they're doing that in such a way that they're bringing

37:40

Christ into those places. But then there can be, I think, those members of the church say, you know what?

37:47

There's a real deficiency for a school. Let's work together to that end. Or there's not a third place, a restaurant or a coffee shop that we can go to that would be meeting well for us.

37:57

Let's build together to do that. So I think some Christian ventures like that would do well for the church to encourage that.

38:04

But it's not the church's mission as much as it's praying for the people and encouraging them to go out and to do that as Christian businessmen or Christian entrepreneurs, something like that.

38:13

Yeah, no, that sounds, that sounds, seems right. That like I've come across the mentality that I think you actually see this in Tim Keller's book,

38:22

Every Good Endeavor, where we're just going to bring the world into the church and that will

38:27

Christianize it. So I think he did an art symposium or I don't know exactly what it was.

38:33

It was, artists would come in though and they would display their art or they would practice their art there in the church building.

38:40

And even people who aren't Christians would come in. And sort of the justification for this is that, well, every good thing is from the

38:46

Lord, right? And I mean, that can get you into some weird places though. And I just, it may be like my instincts when

38:55

I first came across that, it just made me uncomfortable and I couldn't even quite articulate why. I knew that maybe there was good motivations, but it didn't seem like, it seemed like it would water down what the church was actually supposed to be doing.

39:08

And not that it's a bad thing to do, not that a Christian in your church shouldn't go and do something like that in the community.

39:14

But yeah, I just want to be careful of those things to make sure that we're keeping the mission of the church, pure and not mixing it with other things.

39:26

So yeah, it sounds like what you're doing is, you're encouraging the car mechanic to go, you don't need to be a, the church doesn't need to build an auto shop, right?

39:36

But you do need to go and be salt and light in the auto shop that you do work in. This becomes -

39:43

I could see that man with the gifts that he has, sharing them with others in the church. Like this is one of the things

39:48

I've actually thought about. So our church will have every month a men's breakfast. And it's typically been

39:55

Bible studies or manhood. I mean, this year we're going through Michael Clary's book, God's Good Design, and kind of walking through that, helping men to think about that.

40:03

But I could also see that being, as a time of fellowship where we're actually having, a man who knows cars to be able to help others to understand, how do you change the oil of your car?

40:11

How do you train them with practical things? Now, if that becomes the bulk of what we do, that's a problem, right?

40:17

If we're replacing that, we're replacing Bible studies with that, that's a problem. But the life of our church is, we gather for worship on Sunday morning.

40:25

We have instruction in Sunday school on Sunday morning. We have community groups throughout the week. We have a Tuesday night discipleship as well.

40:31

So there's Bible study at our church. But I could see that there's also some practical tools that could be given to men growing up today, because it's possible to just make

40:40

Christianity so cerebral. And certainly as a pastor and theologian professor,

40:46

I'm on that side of the lane, right? But it could become so cerebral that we're not actually helping men to just fulfill those duties, especially at home, taking care of their homes, taking care of their wives, taking care of their children and passing on some of those things.

40:58

So I could see that. And there's prudence. And even as you said, there's a difference between where you are in New York, where you are in Virginia to see what are the needs that are there?

41:08

What are the deficiencies of those who are in the church? And how do we help them to be fully human in the way that they're living out their lives before Christ?

41:18

Yeah, well, it seems like the church did historically take on some social roles that are now being outsourced into other areas that need to be reclaimed.

41:30

One of them is, I think the church was primarily involved in coming of age. So you have a young boy who becomes a man.

41:37

This is part of God's natural order that boys at some point do become men, young girls do become women or ladies.

41:47

And Christians and churches in particular were involved in this process in some denominations and some even other traditions within Christendom.

41:59

I mean, this is called confirmation or there's other, I think, names for it.

42:04

But this is one thing that for evangelicals in particular, which I know you and I both come from that background, there really isn't much of anything.

42:13

That's outsourced, it seems like. And something like what you're describing, where you have men involved, especially as Gen Zers have, and those younger have broken households are coming from.

42:23

When you have older men in the church, training younger men and also giving them practical tools, like this is how you change your oil.

42:30

It seems like there's an opportunity there to get back involved in something the church used to be involved in.

42:36

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you look at the founding of our country and it's really fascinating.

42:42

So I was listening to something that R .J. Rushtuni was talking about the early part of America.

42:48

And I think it was Salem, Massachusetts, where he was talking about these tithe agencies that would go out and kind of do mercy and evangelism around the community there.

42:58

And so you would have the people coming over from England who are coming to America.

43:04

And not all of them were upstanding characters, but what they would do to make sure that their community was not overtaken by those who are kind of the roughnecks from England is that they would share the gospel with them.

43:15

They would meet them at the docks. They would bring them into a place to assimilate them and to acculturate them into their community because they recognize that their community would be overturned if they didn't do something like that.

43:26

And so what's interesting is that they actually used resources from the church to have kind of these outward facing ministries.

43:32

They were not the same thing as the Sunday gathering, but they were kind of parachurch ministries that were funded through the tithes that were taking place at that point.

43:39

But you think about that, the tax structures at that point in time didn't go to a colossal state that was doing all of the welfare.

43:46

The church still saw that as a responsibility. So how do you get back to that? I'm not sure because part of the tax structures we have today, we were giving so much money to the federal and the state level that they're doing things that the church once did.

43:59

And if the church did it, it would be better if it did that. Now, again, it could go sideways and it could miss the mission of preaching the gospel and gathering saints for worship.

44:08

But there's something right about a local church and a local community able to bring salt and light into that place in a way far better than the government ever could.

44:17

Yeah, you and I are speaking the same language on this. And it is a challenge to figure out how we live in an imperfect world and you can't just return to everything that, and not that there was ever a time when it was all great either, right?

44:31

That's another mistake. But it does seem like we need a restoration of the natural order,

44:38

God's order on every level. And part of that is a localism where, it's

44:44

Ordo Amoris, but you're looking at the people around you and you're saying, I have a preference for them and a responsibility towards them and a love for them that I don't have towards someone across the other part of the country that I don't even know.

44:55

And so getting back to that, I think is, and I don't wanna be legalistic on this, but it would involve things like,

45:03

I'm gonna try to prefer my local market over the big corporation or Amazon. I'm gonna go to the, and it's probably fresher anyway.

45:11

I'm gonna get some locally sourced meat. I'm gonna try to preference the artists in my area who are doing good work as opposed to ordering a painting from some, you know what

45:22

I'm talking about. And it's not, I don't wanna be like too rigid on this either because it's not sinful to go and order from Amazon.

45:30

I do, but it does seem like there is a way that God made us to live and we are out of step with it for the most part today.

45:40

And it's not healthy. And we're reaping the consequences of that. And the church is probably the institution more poised than any other institution to start reclaiming some of these things and inspiring people to look at their local community, love their neighbor, solid families.

45:58

I mean, we didn't even talk about some of the social things like, you know, even pornography, it's such an epidemic and it's just taken for granted and it's normalized now.

46:08

But that one thing, if guys, and women now too, if they didn't look at that, if there weren't addictions along those lines, that would create a completely different kind of community, right?

46:20

And the church is poised, I think, to do this. So anyway, thank you for writing this.

46:27

So where can people go? I know we said the Founder's website. Is there like a special URL link that they can go to to get this or is it just founders .com

46:36

and go to the books? Yeah, so the Founder's store is where it's at. And I sent an email to him this morning to see if it would give a promo code for coming from here.

46:47

I know that one is coming. Oh, okay. There'll be a 10 % discount. You put in the notes later on.

46:54

There'll be a 10 % discount coming from your podcast to them. So maybe they'll make it

46:59

Harris. Let's just assume it'll be Harris. There you go. And they can go. So it's founders .org,

47:04

not .com. Sorry about that. You can go to the store and you click on books and actually it's the featured resource.

47:10

So it's gonna be the first thing you see from David Schrock, the business of isness. Is there a company, like a guide to help with small groups?

47:20

Did you intend it for small groups? Not yet. So yeah, there's nothing like that. I mean, again, it came from a sermon series.

47:27

So it's intended not to go, you know, be too cerebral. I mean, from the beginning, the academic philosopher who wants to talk about ontology will be disappointed with this book, right?

47:38

So this is for the person in the pew. This is for the pastor who wants to help their people to think carefully about what nature is and what it means to be human.

47:46

Yeah, no, that's good. That's exactly what we need. And you could go through. I was looking at the first chapter this morning.

47:52

You probably don't even need necessarily an accompanying guide. You can just come up with some practical questions and bring people through it if you wanted to do that.

47:59

But check it out. Go to founders .org, the business of isness by Pastor David Schrock. And yeah,