Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: There'll be many weeks where that's the most scripture that anybody deals with is in that room.
This group will quickly become one of your main reference points for dealing with the scriptures. It will be shaping worldview. There's no way around it.
Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss. Guys, I want you to picture being at dinner with a couple of teens at the table.
And instead of them doing eye rolls and phone scrolling and long, heavy sighs while you try to get your point across, imagine your teens being fired up debating scriptures, asking you doctrinal questions and some of the finer details of scripture. I know that might sound like a pipe dream if you're a normal American Christian, but it is not. It's been my reality, thanks to no small part to yam.
And today I want to kind of talk it over with Mark and all you dads listening.
But before we get into the details, let's, let's chat for a second. I'm going to zoom out and talk about why we even care about this subject. Mark, what's, what's happening in Utah?
[00:01:17] Speaker B: I had a special treat this week. I got to, I got an invite from the, the leader of our school, where I am on the school board, and he has family that have done very, very, very well in life to the point where they had access to maybe the fanciest golf course in the, in the region here. Michael Jordan is a member of this golf course. It's, it's ritzy, ditzy, and the kind of thing I probably could never afford to do myself. Or even if I had, I could afford it, I wouldn't be invited.
And so I got to play that this week. And that was a special treat. It kind of wraps up the golf season.
There's one round left that's planned, and beyond that, golf is kind of wrapping up for the year.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Tell us a tiny detail of your fancy course where you go, boy, that pushes it over the top.
That's. You don't see that one every day.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: I am used to when you finish the ninth hole, you kind of drive your golf cart or walk, depending on the day, through the, the municipal course labyrinth and go across the putting green. And you maybe say hi to Merle as he's warming up for his men's league round later in the day.
And then you go to the 10th tee and if you're really hungry or thirsty, you go inside to the clubhouse and you pay like $8 for a Gatorade. That's kind of how it goes.
This, this course Had a comfort station at the turnaround right there at the end of the ninth hole. And boy howdy, there was a cook waiting saying, what would you like to eat?
Would you like a burger dog, which is a hamburger shaped into a hot dog shape so that you could eat it with one hand while you drive your golf cart?
[00:03:09] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: Would you like every snack and beverage that you could ever imagine?
Gatorades, beers, sodas, whatever.
I, I had a grass fed beef jerky, a packet of peanut M M's and a Dr. Pepper because that's what kind of mood I was in. But yeah, the world was, was kind of my Easter egg. And I thought, this is different.
And I was thinking, how much is this stuff going to cost? And my buddy goes, it's all, it's all complimentary. You just grab whatever you want. If you want one of each, take one of each. Doesn't matter.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: So that was kind of fun.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: It's like sitting in first class. It's like when you enjoy, they bring you a little. You're looking at the losers in the back and they're serving you an ice cream sundae with, they're sprinkling the nuts on in front of you. And if I ever am in those seats and that kind of thing happens to me, I always say to the lady, could I have another ice cream sundae? And she goes, yeah, there's extras. And that's, that's you. I would have spent, I spent a half an hour on the turn just going like, let's hang out here for a while.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it was, it was cool. And we, we had lunch at the end of the round in the clubhouse, which contained an indoor pickleball court, a indoor basketball court, a bowling alley, every arcade game you've ever seen.
It was just over the top and we had delicious lunch and it was overall a very special experience.
And I broke 80, which is like, hey, that's. Wow, that's a fun thing to do on one of the tougher courses I've certainly ever played. That's great.
So that's that.
Any news on your end before I turn to the topic du jour?
[00:04:57] Speaker A: No, I don't have anything else. I'm happy for us to jump right in.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Okay, well, I have a frivolous question and then I'll tell you why we're even getting here. And you're really going to teach me today because that's what I asked you to do.
When you go to Thanksgiving dinner in Texas. There's some staples, there's some things that you and I both probably would always expect to be on the table. And one of those things is some version of an orange tuber in a pot. Maybe there's some marshmallows or some cinnamon nut crackle on top. It's baked.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: What would that dish be called in the manual household, circa 1985?
[00:05:45] Speaker A: I understand what you're asking, and I. And this, this question has regional. Has regional built into it. If you might. You.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: You might think.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Feel that already. But I'll just tell the people, depending on where you are in the country, there's different names for this. Where I'm from, I think that the, the marshmallows are normative. And we would call that. We would call that sweet potatoes.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's what we would call it, too. Although I wouldn't have.
I wouldn't have known there was any difference between that and yams.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: I heard occasionally somebody would be at the table and they'd say, pass the yams, and we'd hand them the sweet potatoes. And the reason that we even brought it up.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Is because today we're going to talk about the yam.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:06:36] Speaker B: Not the sweet potato. We're going to talk about the young adult midrash.
And we've done an episode which I think we should put in the show notes of this one that talked about the midrash. What is a midrash? It's kind of. I liked how we. We phrased it as combat Bible study amongst men.
But it's a way to approach the scriptures. It's probably the way that Jesus would have been most familiar with approaching the scriptures in a group of people as a Jewish teacher of. Of his time.
And I think I mentioned it before on the show, but I'm now finished with Vadi Bakam's book that you recommended to me on this show called what He Must Be. And it's a book for dads about how to identify the types of guys that your daughter might be interested in taking as a husband.
And at the end of the book, he kind of says, now I've laid out a pretty high standard here, and most of you reading this book will go, I don't know very many of those guys, and you're going to need to build them.
And that's what got my brain spinning.
Because we live in Utah, there's not a ton of Christians here to begin with.
I've talked about the fact that my kids go to the only Christian school in the state.
And aside from occasionally coaching these kids, maybe taking them out for a round of golf or something like that. I don't have a ton of ways to bump into boys because I have all girls.
And I'm very interested in any techniques that you might know about where I could start discipling younger kids. It's maybe a little harder when I'm 43 than it was back when I was 22 to grab a 15 year old and, you know, take them out to dinner. It's. It's a little less of a natural thing. But I asked you a week or two ago, maybe just a week ago, could you ever, like, help me understand how to do one of these yams? And you went above and beyond the call of duty. You.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: You didn't just say, yeah, I'll tell you how to do it. You have produced something that I assume you're gonna talk about today, but I think I just wanted to give you the microphone and say if this technique that I keep my daughter texts with your daughter and says, oh, I heard about some really interesting conversations that happened at the YAM in Cincinnati this week and I thought, I have a little bit of fomo. I feel like I'm missing out on something great that is a normal part of your community. If you could share it, I would love to take a swing at this. And I bet there's other fathers listening who might be interested in doing the same thing in their neck of the great.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Well, I'll share with you what I know and you can be a stand in for everybody listening and ask whatever questions come to mind. I, I just want to say, going into this conversation, if you don't know this, maybe you're a young dad, you haven't been around, you don't know this. I, I want you to know that somebody who's, who has done church work for decades and seen the trends these teen years are make or break our teens, even if you have been raised in a wonderful Christian school and your kids love your mom and dad and they love Jesus and they know about Jonah and the whale, they are, they are growing into a world that's pulling them all over the place.
And if we don't train them and equip them in these precious 13 to 18 years, before most kids will leave their family's homes, we risk watching them drift.
We know the verse that says that we are to train up our children in the way that they should go, but stats show that we are dropping the ball as a broader church community.
Lifeway research tells us that between 70 and 88% of youth from evangelical homes bail on their faith after one year at a secular university.
70 to 88%.
So we are losing most of our students as they age out of Sunday school and youth programs.
And that fires me up because of the urgency of the moment. And I'm reminded that Deuteronomy 6 tells us the commandments that God gives us. We are to impress upon our children. We're to talk about them when we sit at home, when we walk along the road, when we lie down, and when we get up. We're called to train our kids.
So, I mean, if you take anything away from today's episode, it's this reminder that you must train your children in a worldview and a lifestyle that promotes their faith and their walk with God.
You must do that while they're with you, because they won't always be with you. So the time for if you think, well, I'm just going to kind of be loving and supportive of my kids and we'll go to church when it's convenient and then they'll go out into the world. And I know they'll have some questions, they'll deal with some stuff. And I hear so many parents that say, oh, you know, those wild college years, they're going to be crazy. But, you know, we hope and believe they'll come back around to the faith. That is such an irresponsible way to raise kids. And what I want for our Abrahamic families to do is any doubts or questions is going to happen under my roof on my watch. So I'm going to actually walk them into conversations and walk them into maybe even uncomfortable conversations that, that are. They're all in scriptures. There's nothing new under the sun. There's all kinds of stuff that's in the Bible that's all problematic, et cetera. So that's why it's urgent. This has been a win for me, so I'm, that's why I'm sharing it. Okay, here it is. Here it is. Mark. What, how do you do what, what, what's, what's up?
Here's what I did when I started and put together a little starter kit for you, Mark, is that I, I broke it into three, three areas. I, I listed some must haves for, for a yam, and then I had some curated midrash passages. Like a lot of people go, like, I'm not even sure how a mid. Rash works. So what, what would, what, what's a good passage? Well, we've done that all for you listed them out. Jeremy Pryor did that years ago.
Broke it down into two years worth of weekly meetings. So there's 104 passages and, and broke it down to oh, here's a sequence for one. One meeting. What would one meeting look like? And actually broke it down. But I'm not going to bore people with, with finer details. But the midrash is a father created place for teens to gather and wrestle with and be encouraged in their faith by exploring the scriptures.
There's several advantages to the kind of thing that we're doing with YAM as opposed to and I'm contrasting it to a drop off youth program at the local church where there's going to be a kickball and a hot dog feed and somebody's going to give a thought for the day and the kids will endure that so they can get onto the fun. So what, what's going to happen at a yam is you're going to have a group of 13 to 18 year olds who are going to be walking out their faith in front of one another. And one of the great things about our experience is they're, they're meeting with kids who are from all over the city, go to all sorts of different schools and home schools, et cetera. And one thing that we believe is that if your kids have a too small network of friends, Christian friends, and those relationships end for any number of reasons, it can devastate their faith journey. So we want them tied to many other believing teens who are like serious about their faith. It also produces and I would say is absolutely requires fathers who are engaged and leading. And I actually want my kids cross pollinated with with these kind of fathers who take this scripture seriously.
We want our kids impacted by other faithful families. One of the great things Wolfenberg is always saying this that typically wives carry such a heavy load when it comes to raising children.
And this is a great way for fathers to step in, to be present, to be part of their children's spiritual and relational and emotional journey and be in the weeds with them as far as studying the scriptures and as I said, not, not dropping them off at something.
So the must haves I think is that you gotta have bought in fathers. It can't be like well the parents are hosting a teen Bible study. Bring your teens by and eventually you have 10 teens where people are dropping off their kids and you lead a Bible study every week. That's not the idea. The most needed element is bought in fathers. Our recommendation, I asked a whole bunch of guys that were there from the very beginning of starting the YAM in Cincinnati is that there should be no less than four fathers who are dedicated to. And the kit says two years of weekly gathering.
So let's try this for six weeks and see if it's a big success. Is not really a winning approach.
Fathers need to have decided beforehand that biblical literacy is a worthwhile pursuit.
[00:16:43] Speaker B: You said four.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I'm going to ask you if you've got that in a second. But I just was asking. We just had a YAM meeting last night and I'm not trying to make this seem unapproachable or something, but it was a record setting night with, had 14 dads looking around at each other because we had 56 kids at Yam last night. And we're going, well, the places that we can meet are, are decreasing dramatically and we have to break up into small groups or there's going to be no discussion and just, we're just going to have the loudmouth kids talking and we're, you know, it's a new set of problems. But I'm, I went to Justin who's, who's been part of things for a long time here, like how, how long was it small? And he said we had at least four years where if eight kids showed up, we were super pumped and go like wow, it was a big winning night. And he said, he said it's so interesting that we just hung with it and basically we had families who as we're trying to create and disciple and multiply Abrahamic families, eventually we just had families that had kids. And he said like we've got a crop of kids coming up and, and you know, I personally have been in Cincinnati for over 20 years. Jeremy has been over 20 years and what do you know, we have a crop of like 13 year olds right now. So there's a big group of young, young kids coming through. So do you think that you, you could round up four dedicated fathers?
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Well, one of the questions I wrote down for you is like what are the requirements for those fathers? So yeah, I, I think that one of the biggest issues that we face here is if controversial topics come up, which I think this is designed to highlight those and have kids wrestle through them.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: I think we, even amongst people who love the Lord in our, in our community there might be people who totally disagree with us on something like yes, women's roles in the church or something like that.
And how, how in lockstep do we need those dads to be and do you ever.
Maybe this is a question for another day, but I just envision if we're, if we're a little too far apart on some of these things, we end up arguing with each other. And that seems like a big no, no here.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Well, I don't think you have to be lockstep, because I think what you have to agree on when you walk in the room is the Bible wins.
So the Bible settles arguments.
And if you say, well, it's a question of interpretation, we both agree the Bible wins. But we think that this verse says this and he thinks this verse says this. Personally, that doesn't bother me.
I, I'm, I'm all right with people going, well, you come to a different conclusion, but we both agree the Scripture wins, so be it. And I, I think, and this has happened many times, it just happened this past Saturday.
We got into a rousing discussion at, at the midrash.
I think that if we all agree that we want to submit to what the scriptures say, and we're all here to find out.
I mean, we're not here to. I'm not here to push my agenda. I'm here to come to the scriptures with an open heart, open mind, and go, what do they say? And one of the things that we love, it's one of the reasons why the, the biblical picture of a midrash always has gray beards hanging around that what we call elders, is because if some guy says something, well, Jesus wasn't even, you know, if you were, if you're doing Genesis 1 and 2, and somebody goes, well, Jesus wasn't even present at the creation.
It's not in the Scriptures. It's not, it's not in Genesis 1 and 2. It's so helpful to have an old, mature person of the faith go, well, actually, he was.
If we turn to first John, we'll see this and we'll find that they kind of act as referees. You can't say that. Sorry, that's out of bounds. Because that's taken care of in another passage. And when everybody, when, when anybody puts forward an opinion, it's very helpful if there's such an openness in the room. The more that we spend time in the scriptures, the more that we are willing to submit to the Scriptures. And I don't think we, not only do I not think that we have to have the same conclusions when we walk in the room, I don't even think we have to have the same ones when we walk out of the room, we're just going to agree that we're diving in together and let the chips fall where they may because we want the Bible to win, so to speak.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Okay, that sounds great. Now, how well do I need to know these dads? Like, I'm in my brain, I'm sort of thinking, well, we got a school full of kids.
Could I throw out an invite to all the fathers in this grade or do I need to hand pick these guys?
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Okay, well, let me say this.
This is also. This is my number two. I called it one A or number two in the must haves.
This came with a recommendation. Okay. I didn't start the yam that I'm a part of right now, but the recommendation was there should be an existing men's midrash because the format of discussion is so unusual to most people that if you have a dad who's willing to facilitate. And by the way, I'm going to get back to your earlier question and just say not a lot is required of a dad to. He doesn't have to be a Bible expert at all. He just has to be willing to go. Let's. Okay, you're more like running a discussion group than being a Bible teacher. All right, everybody, we're in Titus 2 today. Everybody open up Titus 2. All right, I'm going to read a few verses and then we're going to go around.
And you just have to be there to referee and just watch it. You don't have to have all the answers at all.
So the, the requirements for a dad are not high as far as participating and engaging.
But your question was what?
[00:23:17] Speaker B: How, how well know these guys? And you sort of said, well, there should be an existing midrash. I'm hoping you're not about to tell me I'm four years out from being able to start again.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: No, no, no. I'm going to give as an example the fact that at my little village that's near my house, Marymount, I just started in mid rash 2, 3 months ago or something. And I did what you're thinking of, which is I threw it out to all the guys I could find. There was like a, you know, potluck at the church and I just walked around with a bunch of note cards going like, join the. Join the men's midrash. And I said something like something that you're, that you said up front, like it's a bare knuckle fight over the Bible and the scriptures always win. And then we had 20 guys show up and I didn't know these guys and I, again, I Don't have to, I don't have to win. It's not about me getting my, putting my opinion forward or anything. All I did was kind of set up the parameters. Now, hey, guys, this is an open discussion and we're trying to find out what the scriptures say and the Bible. And the Bible wins.
Now we've had a couple of guys who kind of came in and like, oh, and they flew the coop.
Most of the guys in that room came sincere, they were sincere, open hearted, and I'm getting to know the guys in the room, but because the parameters were drawn, they're, they're in and they're trustworthy and I'm liking them more and more. So I don't think you really have to know these guys. As long as what are we actually doing here is clear, which is we're trying to train our teens to deal with the scripture as adults, to deal with it for themselves.
We're not gonna, we're not gonna change the words when the Bible uses a controversial word or something. We're not gonna change the words. There it is. We gotta deal with it. This is, this is human history. This is God's history.
So I, I don't think you have to like, they have to be the greatest guys, you know, I think they just have to be guys that go, we are willing to give this a good hard try and we'll be, we'll be as consistent as we possibly can.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:25:35] Speaker A: Okay.
The other thing is that we, like, I know this isn't your scenario and it's not a deal breaker, but I have to throw it out to the people listening. What we like is hospitable host homes.
So what we, what we really want is for our teens most impactful spiritual formation, their discipleship. I want it to happen, as I mentioned, under, under my, my roof, under my watch. I just want to tap it in a home in the context of family. I think we run a risk. There's been entire books on this written. The Open Church by James Ruts comes to mind. We, we, we run the risk of teaching our children that spirituality is something that happens outside the home, that faith is something that you have to go to this other place to engage with God. And one of the reasons that we read the Bible at our dinner tables and we pull out the guitar and strum our way through some praise choruses, etc. Is because we want our children to know our home is Kingdom of God headquarters.
And so I love the fact that we, we do move from house to house.
And I'll just say in these, in these summer months, it, it's been. It. We. We're sitting in driveways and back patios.
There's again, it's a low bar for having. I gotta have an amazing home that's built to host, you know, 40 kids. No, you don't. If you can sit 12 people in your living room, you're set. I mean, like, literally we're sitting on back porches with folding chairs, you know, no problem.
So we like the, the. The hospitality of a family, a home.
We think we. In the way that we've kind of worked it out over the years. We have social time for the kids, 30 minutes for them to just bounce a ball, throw a Frisbee run, and the girls are braiding each other's hair and all that sort of thing. Then we do an hour of midrash and then we have more game time at the end. And we like to. It doesn't always happen, but we like to provide some kind of snack, even if it's just bowls of popcorn, something. Because again, we're going for hospitality and we're going for fun. So that, that's, that's the third thing I said that you need bought in fathers.
An existing mids. Midrash is good so that people kind of understand the format.
A hospitable host home. And the last thing I'll say, and this is going to have attack your earlier question is someone to lead.
Now, facilitating an evening is not hard, as you'll see. If you get our starter kit, you're literally going, okay, kids, gather round. If you can do that, you can facilitate an evening. Everybody sit down.
All right, we're going to do this passage tonight. You start it, go around and maybe dad asks a provocative question. You know, proverbs are weird to read because it's not a story, is it?
There's just these kind of sayings. And we read just two chapters of proverbs and there were sayings that were all over the map. What, what do you kids observe? What are your questions about it? The end. Dad is. Dad is done. He's off duty for the night. He's just going to sit there, let them talk, let them argue.
He might. There might be. There might be a question that he knows an answer to that he can offer up, but otherwise he doesn't have to have. He doesn't have to be the Bible answer man. We're just trying to get them going with the scriptures. And then at the end, hey, guys, I see we're at time.
It sounds like we've had a great discussion on these two points. Wow. We were really engaging on those two points. And Jenny over there, Jenny, you've been super engaged tonight. Would you close us with a little prayer and then we'll go play games?
Done. Dad's done. So you, you, you do need a leader. And we, we think that having somebody who's the point person for administration, where is it going to be?
What passage are we doing next week? Who's going to host?
Are we meeting during Thanksgiving week when it's, when it's yams for yam time. All these questions. Having somebody who's the administrator is helpful.
What do you think?
[00:30:10] Speaker B: I think that that all sounds doable.
My, my questions and I haven't even digested the little guide you put together.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: But are you ready for questions about this?
[00:30:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm, I'm kind of done.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: I feel like social media has taught us that if you want engagement you hit the highly controversial topics. So like come to YAM and the first week we're going to talk about gay marriage or whatever, whatever the hot hot button item is. Do you do that? Like talk me through the progression of topics and maybe even. Where's the best place to start?
[00:30:55] Speaker A: Yeah, well, here's a, here's a crazy hot sports opinion. We start YAM at Genesis chapter one.
We think that's a really good place to start getting introduced to the story, the worldview.
Start getting introduced to who is this creator, what is he making and why? Let's get the big 30,000 foot view of what is happening on planet Earth.
So the, the kind of move with any mid ration. It's true for yam as well. If you just look at the passages chosen.
We are trying to go for breadth so it's important to us that we're not leaving out any of the controversial stories. We're also not spending all of our time try looking for hot button issues. We are definitely going to trip across them. They're going to be there, but we're not starting with them now. I will, I will defer. I mean we're all creative agents. I would defer to you, Mark, if you thought there's so much question and controversy in the Christian community in Salt Lake City.
I think that's the best move is that I'm going to list eight hot button issues and I'm going to say we're going to hit those in the first eight weeks that we've got going and I'll show these people that the Bible's going to win. Great. Do it that way. You can start it however you want.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: What we want is that over time, if some, if somebody's there for two years, think of a teen is going to go through this thing twice in their high school years in a two year period. We want them to get a good deep sampling of the entirety of scripture.
And I put together, we really encourage agency of fathers at our little group here.
And I was so bent out of shape about like, okay, it's good for us to go through these passages, but at the time there was so much noise in the world about all this gender stuff. And I'm getting all amped up and I'm going, look, I'm talking to my kids about this and it's. And I'm getting a little hepped up thinking, like, is it happening with all these kids? Because I'm growing to care about all of these kids in the yam. And I don't think that there's, this has gone over.
So I kind of asked like, can we like focus on like what men and women are in God's plan? And they're like, yeah, put it together.
So I put together this series that we focused on for seven or eight weeks and they are more than happy to go. Well, if we're going to base, it's going to be majored in the scriptures. We can hit a timeout on our, on our systematic walk through scriptures if we've got a focus.
And matter of fact, Justin did something recently on poverty.
I've prepared something we haven't done yet that's about what we can eat because I'm finding that vegetarianism is grabbing, all grabbing teens.
So I'm like, I, I just want them to talk through what does God say about this issue? And it's never been put together as like, that's the topic for tonight. So we're doing that sort of thing. There's all sorts of room for that.
[00:34:28] Speaker B: Okay.
And two questions. One's real quick. You start at Genesis 1 and you get, hey, I love this allegory that talks about our creative God and it's poetry. You know, it's obviously not meant to be a science book and some of that stuff where you could get somebody. And I'm just using that passage as an example because you said it's the first one.
They're not exactly saying, I don't think the Bible wins, but their interpretation might be on the very loose end of where I would fall on it.
[00:35:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:07] Speaker B: So my question is, when does A father you already mentioned, if somebody says Jesus wasn't there, we point them to a clear passage of scripture that says he was. But when it's a little murkier, when does a father throw the penalty flag? And when does he sit on his hands and go, oh, let's see what they do with this.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: Well, the answer is sometimes. I mean, sometimes, uh, I'm always impressed and amazed at the sensitivity of our dads who are facilitating where the kids will say something stupid and something that's wrong and they start going down a little rabbit trail. And I, I, I've done this many times with Tim Schmoyer, and I'm looking over the room, like, time to speak up here. And he's always like, let them run for a second.
And they're running out the line.
And eventually it always happens that some kid will go like, yeah, but what about this other verse too?
And then everybody kind of deals with it and Tim will go, that's a really good point. And then he backs up and just, you know, and he's, and he's managing the way that it goes through. I think in that kind of scenario, it has happened many times with me where I'm thinking, like, that's not what it says.
I will be.
The more time that you spend with people, you build up the, the freedom to speak frankly.
And we have to be comfortable. It's one of the things, it's one of like the foundations of a mid rash is that we have to be comfortable with disagreements.
And so I've gotten comfortable starting out my, my little, making my point with, I disagree.
Okay, well, it isn't presented as an allegory. It's presented as if it's history that happened. There's evening and there's morning. It sounds like a very specific history that's happening here. It doesn't sound like poetic language.
I don't think that's right.
And sit there and everybody stares for a minute. And if that's, if it's the first time that's happened, that's going to be an uncomfortable moment. If it's the fifth time that's happened, it won't be as uncomfortable.
And one thing that will happen over time is that, I don't know how else to say this.
It's, I think it's scriptural, is that over time we will see that the people whose personal character reflects the character of God and whose family life is the most peaceful and mature and they, they smell like the things of the spirit. All I can say is that in that room, those, those words carry more weight coming from those people. That's been our experience.
And when the loving gray haired man speaks up and goes, well, I can't, I can't accept what you're saying.
For me, God has dealt with me in this way over the last 50 years. I've seen him this and this and this.
I can only see that this verse means this. Everybody's kind of like, okay, let's, I think we can let that sit.
So I'll just, I'll just say that I just don't, I just don't think it's a huge problem if somebody goes, these books of the Torah, they're not meant for today.
Okay, that, that's one thought. I don't agree with that.
And let's keep pursuing that. Let's chase that down.
I just don't think we have to have agreement in the short term about every little thing. And I think that's one of the values of, of getting, getting this kind of group together is because we're going to come to many of the same conclusions this will become.
Think of this. If this group that, let's say you've got a group of 10 people and that's dads and kids and every single week you read two chapters of the Bible out loud together and then you talk about them for there'll be many weeks where that's the most scripture that anybody deals with is in that room. Because they're not going to be pursuing the Lord on their own.
This group will quickly become a reference point, one of your main reference points for dealing with the scriptures at all. It will be shaping worldview. There's no way around it. So the, the differences I think will get ironed out. I don't think I'm trying to be equitable. They will be ironed out over time if you'll just repeatedly read the Scriptures together.
[00:39:49] Speaker B: How much do you think that your experience of yam or of any midrash is unique because of the obviously unique nature of the Christian community in Cincinnati? And what I mean by that is I, I don't know if this is totally fair. So I reserve the right to change my opinion. But if I had to guess, I would say our Christian world here is a lot more like if you took Dallas, Texas Christians and then threw 99% of them in the trash and left 1% of them in a major city. Like there's not a whole lot of us and there's not that many families around here who I see going deep into the scriptures inside the home.
There does tend to be a little bit more just shenanigans that I've, I've mentioned this recently on the podcast. Like the churches have a hard time even sticking together as churches in this place. So if you were dealing with, I would just say maybe a less mature bunch in general. Would it change anything you would do if you, if you still could find two or three mature fathers?
I'm just thinking some of these kids might go home, tell the parents what happened, and the parents go, I don't like that one little bit. What you're talking about over there. Uh, and I'm talking about people who show up at a church house every Sunday, not some lost kid. So.
[00:41:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:41:24] Speaker B: Any, any thoughts on that concern?
[00:41:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's legitimate and I do think that what, obviously I think that what we're experiencing is. It's might not be unique on the earth. It's unique from what I've experienced.
I would love to, I would love to have the assignment of going to Topeka, infiltrating the Baptist church there and starting all this and building the Abrahamic community there and starting from nothing and building a midrash and a yam and, and I, I don't, I don't think I would do anything different. I think I would just try to import this culture, which I will just throw this in.
We've said this before, there are people who like, they, like Bethel is their thing. What they love to do is go out to Bethel, California and they do two or three weekends their year. And getting around that culture helps inform the way that they're doing their life in Topeka, wherever they are, I just will throw out there that.
I think that having a place that's a repeated part of your spiritual life and piggybacking on that culture, I think it can inform the way that you run your life. And I'll just say in general, if anybody goes, I'd love to have some firsthand experience at a men's mid rash and a yam and a suit coat celebration. Etc. Well, get your rear end out to Cincinnati. There's nothing stopping you. And we'd love to host you and you can see some of this stuff firsthand and you can, and you can piggyback on it. So anyways, I'll just throw that out. But just, I just say I don't think I do appreciate the fact that it's unique and I don't think I would do anything differently if I was in a. Another place.
[00:43:32] Speaker B: What night of the week. Does yam happen in Cincinnati?
[00:43:35] Speaker A: It happens on Thursday nights. But when we had that giant group last night, we thought of dividing and going to separate parts of town.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: I'm just throwing it out there that the Abraham's Wallet retreat starts on a Friday fact. And I don't know if this will be, this episode will even be out by the time that that retreat has filled.
[00:43:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it will, it will.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: But it makes me kind of go for sure. I will be arriving in time to attend the yam on Thursday night.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: Smart.
[00:44:09] Speaker B: And if you want to come with listener, all you have to do is go sign up for Abraham's wallet retreat. It's abrahamswallet.com retreat. Is that right?
[00:44:19] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: And you could not only spend a weekend with some dudes who are pursuing all of the stuff we talk about, but you could see this yam thing. So I, I just am thankful that you, you broke it down for us, Steve. I will report back as I start walking down this path.
[00:44:40] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:44:42] Speaker B: I think we're just about out of time. I think the only question I had left that you can answer or you can just say, why don't you try it and tell us is when have you totally stepped in it with this stuff? Is this there ever mistakes that you made that you would go, well this was something you probably shouldn't do. And like when you notice little Timmy over there is trying to snuggle up with the girls, maybe he gets kicked out. I don't know. I don't know what those mistakes are, but anything we should avoid and I'll let you answer that and then take us home.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. There have been a couple of things.
You know Justin Wolfenberg who, who's part of our community. I referenced him today already, but he was a, he was a youth minister at a, at a big happening church for a long time and he always says, I think we trust youth ministries more than we should.
You drop your kids off. There you go. Oh, that's going to be great.
And we, of course we know long term there's all sorts of mayhem and even like life shattering trauma that happens under the auspices of. While I was with the youth group at the church, I'm enjoying the yam thing. I didn't start it.
Justin was there from the outset and he always has said, you know, the yam is a protected place for tender hearts toward the Lord.
So if you have a hard hearted kid around who is there to poison the well and to make it about them and cause some trouble you nip that in the bud and you get the kid out of the group.
I think that's an important thing that they, I know they dealt, they've dealt with that in the past. So that's one way to step in. It is act.
I'm going to raise my voice here because I just. There's so much about church culture that drives me insane.
If we treat our yam group the way that every church treats everything they do, which is it's for everybody.
We don't care what your background, we don't care what you think about God. We don't care where your beliefs are. We don't care what kind of person come in and infiltrate our thing and take it over with your, you know, your pet project and your little side interest, etc. No, these are for our dear sweet children to be around to, to gather together, to huddle around the warmth of God's word and go like boy, we let's encourage each other. We're all trying to seek God together. There's such a sweet spirit among our group. And you know who I'm talking about. These a hard hearted kid. Just like, I don't got any better thing. Better go. What's going on on this side? Oh, y' all got free candy going on. Great. I'll hang out with all the kids and cause trouble. We're just not going to have it happen where we, we are watching the perimeter. We're going to deal with those kids and, and they're gonna, they're not gonna be part of the group. So that's, that's something. Another thing that I've stepped in before.
Again, Mark, you might know this about me. I, I think I've got some pretty great ideas.
You know, I like to talk a little bit. I got some thoughts here.
Well, I might have crossed the line occasionally when I was facilitating yam. Here's what it is kids. Here's our gentleman and go off on some tangent and then I can feel the other dads staring holes into my head and what, what, what's going on. They're like, this isn't your time to lecture. Let the kids figure this stuff out for themselves. It doesn't matter what you think necessarily about the Bible. You need to, you need to dial it back. So that's been a, that's been a common thing that we've seen and I'm very pleased, pleased to say I'm not the only one that has violated that. When new dads come in, they all right, I'm about to. I'm about to lead tonight, and it's. It's not like that. So I would say that's the most common thing is Dad's. Dad's sucking up the air in the room when that's not your job. That's a place where I'm blowing it.
Let me just say in closing the retreat that we're calling it Abraham Blueprint. This year, it's going to be November 21st through the 23rd in the Cincinnati area. If you'd like to show up on the 20th and go to a yam, do it. We'd love to see you in Cincinnati. And until then, run your home and your dough like a biblical boss.
