The American Churchman: The Business of Isness with David Schrock

Welcome to the American Churchman podcast, where we encourage men to take their responsibility seriously before God, to love Him with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. You can find out more about what we do at theamericanchurchman .com.

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You can check all that out at truthscript .com. Two quick announcements before we get into the podcast today. This is the last chance to sign up for the conference this weekend in Sullins Grove, Pennsylvania, called 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 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, but I can still probably get a few people in.

You can certainly come to the conference, so Christianityandthefounding .com if you're interested in that. Also, the following weekend is going to be the Truth Conference in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, and I will be speaking at that as well, along with Andrew Rappaport, Craig Chambers, Seth Brickley.

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

You can go to strivingforeternity .org forward slash truth-conference -25. So I think if you just go to Striving for Eternity and then click on events, online events, it'll come up as well, but that is in, like I said, Mount Laurel, New Jersey, and that is coming up very soon.

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 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. He is the faculty member at Indianapolis Theological Seminary. He is a graduate of Southern Seminary. He's written a few books.

We're going to talk about one of them today called The Business of Isness, and with that, 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.

Where can people find your book? Is it Amazon? Is it Founders?

Yeah. So I don't know if it's on Amazon yet. It's definitely on the Founders website. So if you go to Founders and their store, it's there. So it's for pre-order. 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.

The Need for a Biblical Account of Human Nature

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

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 and to help the person in the pew to be able to understand these things.

Certainly around Washington DC, you have the challenges of being forced to put your pronouns in your email and having to stand up for that. 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.

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. 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.

I remember my wife was doing some medical input work in 20, I want to say 2018, 2019. And in that, and then she was in kind of your Bible belt, not the part of Virginia you're in on the other side of the state, south of there.

And places you wouldn't probably think transgenderism would be prevalent. And that issue came up for her and it was a moral crisis in a way. And it wasn't even something that I had seen on the radar. 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. And there's someone actually recently in my own church who asked me about this, that people, his company aren't supposed to put religious things on their profile because that's offensive.

But of course, pronouns are expected. And it's kind of a wacky world. You see things getting better though, because I see at least on a national level,.

It seems that Trump administration's cracking down on some of this. 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.

Certainly, those who are at the state department, other places have now someone behind them, supporting them and not just trying to shove this down their throats. 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, and there's still some insidious ways that they're trying to be promoted using different language. So maybe we can't use DEI, 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, 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. 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.

There are distinctions that are taking place there. It's interesting, we have a member of our church who even years ago knew Pete Hegseth. And so you can see the way that even he is trying to bring something like that to the 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, 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. Yeah, and that's not the only thing that you write about, of course. You write about the family, what is a family? 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?

Nations, Genesis 10, and the Order of Worship

Yeah, so I wanted to, and didn't get to it in time. I preached that later. So after going through this series where it was, I think, eight sermons on answering questions, what is a human, 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. I preached through Genesis, Genesis 1 through 11, and eventually preached what is a nation from Genesis chapter 10.

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.

And Christians need to have a biblical understanding of that. I know you've done work talking about that, thinking about that, but I think that's something that we need to have biblical foundations and can find biblical foundations for thinking about that.

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

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

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

There's a religion behind that. I mean, transgenderism isn't just confused sexual identity, but really there's a religious element to that as well. So I absolutely think that that's taking place. And for Christians, again, we need to realize that politics is downstream from culture.

Culture is downstream from religion. It's downstream from worship. And so that's even something, ask the question about nationhood. 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. Yeah. So when you start off with, because you keep referencing Genesis, which 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.

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

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. And you have Christians though, that seem to miss this at such a basic level.

What's, what's going on there? Is there a, um, what's the motivation? I, frankly, I was confused the first time 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. 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? When you have someone like an Ed Young coming into his stage, I won't even call it platform, but his stage on a roller coaster, right?

Whatever's taking place there. And then other churches are picking up and using like, that's the state of Christianity today. Right. 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, uh, that things that should be fundamental and basic are not because we have these kinds of pop culture sermon series instead of the foundations of the faith that go back to Genesis one through 11.

And I think today, I mean, those 11 chapters are some of the most critical places to preach the, from the word, uh, into the church today. And if we're lacking that, then we're lacking the foundation we need in which to stand.

Theological Drift and the Need for Tuck Pointing

It's interesting. I went to.

Southeastern Baptist theological seminary. I went to Liberty university after that for, for two grad degrees. And I was in an undergrad. I have a, it's a little more non-traditional, but I have credits from a number of different, um, undergrad institutions that are Christian.

And one of the things that I noticed, um, is there. So it depends on the, obviously this isn't across the board, but depending on the class you're in, the professor you have and so forth. Um, I was hearing things that, uh, I, I heard in my secular undergrad, uh, institutions, things like, um, family wasn't really invented until the middle ages.

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

And so when you see these traditional masculine roles, your additional feminine roles, be part of being a Christian somehow is rejecting that. And then, uh, I guess leaving it very blank and open to definition, but that's, uh, and then of course the same sex attraction comes into that.

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. There was an undercutting of those things in just subversive ways.

And I don't, 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, um, accuse someone of, of intentionally being subversive, but it does seem like whole cloth.

There has been an effort to say, we are Orthodox. We are Christian. We believe everything about Genesis, but, uh, we're going to tinker a little bit over here. And that, that tinkering has repercussions and ripple effects that eventually do undermine the foundation.

Um, do you see, uh, maybe give us, uh, tell, tell me what you think about my analysis and then maybe give us, um, an expectation where you think things are headed in a better.

Direction or, or, uh, are we going to continue floundering? Yeah. I mean, so I definitely think that your analysis is right there. I mean, there's kind of been this, um, this acid that has just kind of crept in and undercut the foundations and let's just say the confessions of, of Protestant Reformation churches.

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

Um, when I teach systematic theology, one of the things that I will say is that, uh, I learned a term when I was at Southern Seminary, uh, 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 just, uh, stand for another 100 years or whatever.

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, doctor, 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.

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

Well, there are some ideas brought in there that are going to undergird. Uh, well, let's just talk about the order of Morris, right? The way that we love our neighbor and have an understanding of that.

Uh, and when we have to have someone like a JD Vance re introduce this idea of order, a Morris into kind of evangelical spaces when he's not, um, you know, not either pastor nor evangelical as a Catholic, uh, vice president.

But when that has been brought into the conversation, Oh, that's actually a Christian idea. 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.

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, um, disagreeable 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, a woman is defined.

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.

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. 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 were in error, it needs to be called out. 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, uh, the word of God. And we just don't have a lot of that because we've been trained to be sensitive to just be sensitive to everyone. And I think that's really undermined what's been going on in the church.

And maybe, maybe that's coming to the forefront now because of the bad.

Fruit that is produced. 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. And that's the important task that 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.

The Gospel, Politics, and the Altar-to-City Pattern

Yeah. So certainly politics is entered into everything now. Uh, and so therefore just to have kind of a broad sweep of biblical instruction is going to apply to political things. 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 and scripture speaks all about that.

Uh, again, the image of God speaking about those who've been taken away to death, we are to rescue them as proverb says. Uh, so politics is everywhere. So we're going to encroach upon that, uh, anytime that we're speaking about anything ethical, uh, either personal or public.

Uh, and second, I think there has been this kind of, uh, bifurcation of the altar and the city. Uh, and so again, when I went through Genesis, really seeing this, there's a pattern that is there from Genesis eight and nine.

So you talk about answers to Genesis. So I spent some time with them, uh, the grand Canyon a couple of years ago. So really thankful for their ministry. I love what they do. Um, but really what happens after the flood in Genesis eight and nine, maybe as programmatic for the world today as what we see in Genesis one through eight, both in creation fall and flood.

Uh, but we also need to see that when, again, Noah comes out of, um, that period of salvation through the flood, 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, uh, to be reminded of how are we going to continue to worship in such a way?

And what I find striking there in Genesis eight 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.

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, 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. And it's not 10. Uh, it seems to be one. Uh, it doesn't look very righteous, but a lot is that one man who has saved our city.

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 nine, as well as the law that is commanded.

If there's the shedding of blood, that blood will be shed by, by man. There's a justice element that is there. All of those things seem to be pattering what the world should be. And it connects us from the altar to the city.

Uh, and today it's almost as if, yes, we come to the altar. 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, uh, going forward 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, of God's pattern for, for the world. And so to the pastor who was saying, all I want to do is preach on the gospel is really a trunk.

It truncates the full word of God.

Technology, Transhumanism, and the Limits of Nature

Yeah. The city has been at such an emphasis. It was in my seminary education. And I don't know if that's all Tim Keller. I know Tim Keller emphasized that quite a bit. He was obviously in the city and have been, and not just a, um, a city in the traditional sense of what a city is going back to Genesis, but a megapolis.

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

Um, it's just, it's amazing. I live about an hour and a half from New York city, two hours, depending on traffic, uh, North on the Hudson river. And we have commuters in my area who, I mean, that's, you know, one way they'll go, you know, there'll still be in a train three or four hours a day just to work down there.

And, um, and it's, uh, I mean, there's such a opportunity for the gospel and for Christianity when you have the high concentrations of people, but, um, at the same time, um, I know that when you, uh, Richard Weaver wrote about this a little bit, when you do go into that environment, there is something of an artificiality and a forgetting God and entertainment.

I mean, the city never sleeps, right? So there's your needs can be met at all times at all hours and always without a thought to your creator. And, um, and I wonder whether or not, uh, with these devices, you know, whether we have the city now everywhere with us, that you can be in the middle of nowhere and the city is right there in your hand in that sense.

And I'm, I'm, I'm obviously speaking about it in a negative term. Uh, they're not, uh, not, not the positive, uh, way that cities can be talked about, but, um, I mean, when you look at your congregation and you see vanity fair, you see, um, distraction reels, uh, I mean, the younger generations completely addicted sometimes members of those younger generations to technology.

And now couple that with the rising kind of, um, uh, feeling of maybe transcendence or there's just optimism that we can now merge our brain with chips. We can, we can have this transhumanism experience.

AI is going to bring it to us. Um, you wrote a book on these definitions, these creation order things, but there are futurists who think this will be obsolete pretty soon. We, we as humans can, I mean, maybe it sounds a little tower of babble-ish, but we, we are going to be able to transcend to be God basically.

Uh, some even like Ray Kurzweil, I think, uh, is under the impression he's not going to die because we're going to technology is going to take care of this. Um, maybe jump into the future a little bit, what you see happening with, uh, the, like Elon Musk and what he's doing with, with the, um, with the, 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, how it's not going.

To work out the way people think. Yeah. I mean, there's so many different things there and so many kinds of uncertainties. Um, but I think, you know, one thing that we can fall into is simply say, well, technology is, is amoral.

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

It's training us as much as we're training ourselves to use it in some effective way. Right. 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 and what they're wanting to do and to put those neural links in the brain.

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. 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, uh, that is there.

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, uh, you know, closer to the land, right. That these mega opulences were so far away from creation.

And there's something right about that, uh, that we need to pull back to that. But I think at the same time, like there are opportunities that may be in that, 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.

So we have a member of our church who works, you know, on the technology side of things with the heritage foundation. And he's talking about the way in which they need to fuse to get the Christians need to be in those places, making arguments for a 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. Uh, there's still a 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, uh, that we would be able to create the future of our own making. And yet still all of it is born ordained by God.

Uh, 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. There's some way that we can become unhuman, um, 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, uh, humanity, uh, that is taking place there.

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, uh, that it used to be that when a Massachusetts, so this is his, you know, uh, no place for truth, right?

When a Massachusetts, this delicious paradise that was once there, it was unique from the city, you know, a hundred miles away that there was a regionalism that was there. 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. That's what we try to do in a very, uh, suburban area to say, even though life around you is very frenetic, we want to help you to be a family believer centered on the gospel, trying to slow down as much as possible.

Even though it's hard, it'd be far easier to be, you know, living slowly where I used to live in Indiana, small town of about 20 ,000 people. There are ways of life that are healthier there, I think than being in the city.

Uh, and yet here's where people are. 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 and then to take what we know at the, 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 add young and others.

I think that's, what's happened to many churches 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. 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 Christians who appeal to urbanites.

And, um, and we like, I've always been torn on this because we do need to be involved in areas of high populations and places of social influence. There's no doubt about that, but, um, but, but the danger seems to be more from, uh, it's the way we think about it more than maybe the thing itself.

And, and, and I know there's guys, uh, even some more conservative philosophers who have thought we can't coexist with technology. It's just not possible. It's going to ruin us. But the thing is like, you know, as you write about in your book, there is an order 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, it'll never be able to make a man, a woman, uh, you can maybe deceive yourself into thinking that's what you're doing. And that's where maybe the problem is, is you you're, 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.

Um, and you know, you're never going to be able to create an actual human form out of, uh, just equipment that you put together. There's, there's something missing. God is the one who breathes life into man.

And so, uh, you know, with that, there's a message here for rural churches. There's a message here for urban churches, for everyone really. And it is to, I think, lean into and drill into, uh, what God has already established and to disregard the lies that are, that are out there, whether through technology or other means.

And, um, and so how do you practically do that? If you're, I mean, you're about, what would you say? Like you're, you're a commuter distance from DC. So, uh, you got people coming to your church who are involved in government and, uh, we, the deep state, we call it, but you know, I'm not going to accuse anyone in your church of being in the deep state, but potentially someone from the administrative state's going to walk in and, um, you know, 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, you know, maybe a good organization or maybe a bad organization, but, but they're living in this artificial environment in some respects, uh, family life, you know, marriage, um, just, you know, you, we just talk about localism,.

All of those matters. What do you tell them? Yeah. So again, I think one, being able to see what is true and what is false is the, is the starting place, right. 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.

I mean, that's one of the offers, you know, that is there in Washington DC is, you know, you have a lot of world changers that come there in their twenties and thirties. They want to do that. And they may get sucked into some things that are really pernicious to their souls, uh, and actually cause them to do a lot of real harm.

Uh, 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. Um, so I think the big thing again, it's like, where, where are you finding your identity?

Uh, how are you able to do that? Uh, this is where, you know, Rob Dreher got a lot of, uh, kind of negative press for his Benedict option. Um, but reading his book through Baptist lens, uh, 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 Lord's supper on Sunday, this is the meal that is most important. It's not that meal that you have, that fine dining restaurant in downtown DC with kind of the, the elite, that's not as important as the people that you're gathering with on a 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. Oh, and by the way, kind of giving a pittance to, to the altar, uh, one day out of the week.

So trying to really establish your life there and especially with families as well. It's interesting just in the demographics in Northern Virginia, uh, Alexandria, which is closest to the district. If I'm not mistaken, it has a 20 or 30 different elementary schools.

It has one high school. 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.