The Inquisinator Questions Sean & Philip

Jonathan Gracious Father, we thank you for the opportunity to gather as we have today, eating good food after a morning of corporate worship, and now shifting to just some opportunity to get to know these two gentlemen better, and also to grow in our understanding of what it is we are doing here. So we are grateful for your grace to us, and thankful for the work of your Son. And we pray these things in Christ’s name, amen.

So, in terms of a little bit of context. You may be wondering what it is we are doing here exactly — thinking, why would a Q&A with two guys that I know pretty well already be appropriate? Well —

Philip I’m wondering that too.

Jonathan Which is part of the fun.

So, it was my idea, and so if it is a train wreck, we don’t have to do it again, and you can blame me. But if you do like it, consider yourself green-lighted to ask these gentlemen questions like what I’m about to ask them whenever you see them.

And it was born out of a few ideas and factors sort of converging at the same time. I think a lot about what we are trying to do here as a church, and then by extension Evangel Classical School, Comeford College. So, what we’re trying to do here as a community, and why we’re trying to do it.

I know that I’m not alone in that, because I am joined at least in that mental exercise by the board of TEC, so the elders; the board of Evangel Classical School; the board of Comeford College; and others. But where many of us just sort of are trying to put one step in front of the other, and trying to do the next thing, and do the next right thing, and be faithful — at best our conception of what we’re trying to do is nebulous. It’s fuzzy.

And Sean and Philip in particular spend a lot of time distilling and articulating these ambitious aims for other people. If nothing else, I benefit from hearing them talk about it when we are in some of those meetings and so on. And I wanted to give them opportunity to do that this afternoon. And so some of the questions I’m going to be asking them are related to that.

But this is also a great opportunity to just have a little bit of fun and to get to know them better as well. And I think Sean needs to get used to speaking to humans again.

So, first: how are you feeling?

Sean Excellent question. I am not reluctant about being here, so that’s valuable.

I am doing about a thousand times better than Monday night, Tuesday, or even Wednesday. So there has been dramatic improvement in my surgical recovery. If you’ve been listening to me try to answer this question individually for the last couple weeks, as having pretty severe pain on both the left and right side — a lot of that is gone. So the pain from my right side, which was relatively new, that’s all gone. I’ve started having a little bit of discomfort in my left foot post-surgery again, but that can also take a few weeks to go entirely away.

But the surgical spot itself was actually really painful, and I spent most of Tuesday night writhing around, unable to sleep, unable to find any comfortable position, pretty much unable to even — I couldn’t even be a sluggard very well. Turning from side to side was excruciating, let alone trying to then get up from the bed.

So Wednesday I spent some time on the phone with the doctor’s office, and they gave me a higher pain med, encouraged me to not just take that but to take that with some other medications as well. So I started doing better, and now I am feeling pretty weak and tired, and trying to listen to more than two people talk in a room at the same time is challenging. But feeling way better than I was pre-surgery, I would say, and still looking forward to getting better.

Jonathan So, seems like you’re going to be okay. You’re ready for this.

Sean I’m ready.

Jonathan In the interest of still getting used to talking to humans again — inquiring minds want to know, and I just want to know, what kind of encouragement you could offer to somebody who’s addicted to white girl coffee, to make the transition to drinking it like a man.

Sean I actually just read an article a couple days ago about how very few people make ongoing changes — like, lasting changes — unless they really identify the thing that’s causing them pain, that they are unwilling to keep enduring anymore.

And the pain at the time that I was enduring was anytime I looked at the scale, and just not feeling very comfortable.

So this would have been about eighteen years ago at this point. I was accustomed to drinking venti caramel macchiatos at Starbucks, probably four or more times a week. So I had all my meetings there that I could, and anytime I was there having a meeting, I got a venti caramel macchiato. And I would carry around with me one of those Coffee-mate vanilla cream, or like French vanilla cream, containers, from one fridge to another depending on where I was going, because there was no way I was drinking black coffee.

Well, those who know that I am very minimalistic in my packing know what a big deal that was, for me to carry a whole extra thing around with me.

But I weighed almost two hundred sixty pounds. I saw myself in some pictures, and it just wasn’t very comfy. So that was a pain that was not acceptable to me anymore.

So I made a few decisions. Like, no more soda that had sugar in it. And I was only allowed to have one plate of food — I could heat that plate up as much as I wanted, but I could only have one plate. So, no seconds. I followed the limitations of whatever plates were available.

And then I said, no more cream in my coffee, and no more caramel macchiatos, unless it was going to be like the Starbucks birthday reward.

So I went black coffee about eighteen years ago, and it took somewhere around a week before I decided I actually enjoyed it. So I forced myself to do it, and then after a week or so I actually decided, you know what, this is all right.

And so I have been black coffee, and down to Americanos. The splurge drink is an Americano with a little bit of half and half.

Jonathan Let it not be said that Sean doesn’t know how to party.

Sean You said this was going to be a fun afternoon, and since my middle name is Fun.

Jonathan Yeah, that’s right. And when’s the last time you had a caramel macchiato, just curiously?

Sean So I think it was last Thursday — this was pre-surgery. No, so, a week ago Thursday. Mo was sick, and I was still in crazy pain pre-surgery, and so Caitlin Hall brought some snicky-snack gifts to Mo and I to help us survive. And she brought me a caramel macchiato.

So I didn’t resist. I said, okay, I can be served and blessed by this.

Jonathan You were not reluctant.

Sean Right.

Jonathan Philip, do you even drink coffee?

Philip I do drink coffee.

Jonathan So — but you style yourself a Russian.

Philip I do. Yeah, this is actually a shame area for me.

Jonathan That’s why we’re here.

Philip Yeah. This is a time for confession.

Yeah, I am a traitor to my culture for the amount of tea that I drink. I don’t drink enough tea to be a worthy Russian. So you’re supposed to drink a few mugs of tea after every meal, and I don’t do that.

So, maybe — I’m trying to repent. But maybe when the pain gets bad enough, then I’ll commit. For now, coffee.

Jonathan Do you ever drink vodka?

Philip I do not like vodka.

Jonathan So, no vodka, minimal tea.

Philip I like Scotch and bourbon. I’ll drink tea when I have —

Sean That is not Russian, is his point.

Philip Yeah. I was born here. I was born in America.

Jonathan But we all have seen from personal experience that you identify whichever direction is most convenient or expedient in the moment.

Philip Yes. And so I’m able to do that. And we’re also in a community where I need to be able to play both sides. So it works.

Jonathan Touché.

All right. So, when did you become a Christian? We’re elevating the level of conversation here a little bit.

Philip That’s right. But that escalated quickly.

Well, I was born in a Christian family, so my dad’s a pastor. And so, yeah, I don’t ever remember a time that I didn’t believe in God or confess Jesus as Lord. That was — I was raised in that, so that was the expectation. I was baptized when I was fifteen.

But I would say that I was a confessing believer for as long as I can remember. So I think probably around my early teenage years was when I was feeling more convicted of aligning my life with God’s standard. But, yeah, I don’t really remember a time that I wasn’t a Christian.

Jonathan When I was a younger man, those sorts of testimonies seemed boring to me, because I had heard so many really dramatic conversion stories and had envied them a little bit. And, of course, the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve seen that is actually a really precious thing, when you’re fortunate enough to grow up in that culture, a family culture, from the start.

And now — you’re the youngest of — and I’m the youngest of six. So tell me, fellow last-born: do we run the world, or is it the firstborns?

Sean There is a right answer to this.

Jonathan And there’s a reason I’m not asking the firstborn in the room. Hello.

Philip We think we do. The firstborns would like not to.

So what’s your right answer?

Sean Firstborns, yeah.

Jonathan My observation is the firstborns reserve the right to change the rules of the game as they go along. I’ve always thought that was sort of unfair.

Philip So I only have interaction with firstborns. I don’t have it inside of me, but with my firstborn, and with firstborns I usually interact with — usually there’s more reluctance there.

Sean I will say that as a child, so while I was still living under my parents’ roof as a firstborn, I used all the power and authority I had as a firstborn to try to keep my sister from disobeying, so that she wouldn’t get us both in trouble. So she refused to listen to me give her the wise advice on how to not make my dad in particular mad. I was just trying to serve us all. But she consistently refused to heed my wisdom as a firstborn.

Philip This actually explains a lot of Sean’s backstory.

Jonathan Which is why we’re here.

So, all right. And you can do this rapid-fire, or you can give a defensive rationale if you’re so inclined. But: three movies that are your favorite, and three movies that you’d recommend that everybody watch. And, again, of course there’s overlap. Even better.

So we’ll have you go first.

Philip I have some things off the cuff I could say. I don’t have movies ready to go — I don’t know, favorite or recommended. I could say a few that I like.

Jonathan Okay.

Philip I don’t know if they are at the level of favorite.

Jonathan We’ll go with it.

Philip I like Braveheart. I do think that men should watch that movie. I like his overall even classical education, and then being able to go and save his people.

I really like — The Last Stand? I think with Winston Churchill. Darkest Hour. The Last Stand is a different one. Darkest Hour, about Winston Churchill. I’ve watched that one, I don’t know, four, maybe five times. I really like that one.

And I like Nacho Libre. So that one I’d recommend.

Sean Nobody would have guessed that one. Well, especially on the heels —

Jonathan On the heels of William Wallace and Winston Churchill.

Philip I had to mix it up. I was going to say something else, but —

Jonathan All right. Beat that, Sean.

Sean I mean, probably my favorite movie of all time is still The Natural.

When I was a kid growing up, we had the Disney Channel — which had no alphabet letters related to it when I was a kid. And so Disney Channel would actually edit movies and play them without commercials. And so a lot of the movies that I knew were ones that my parents had taped onto VHS.

So I had a copy of The Natural growing up that I wore out. I mean, I probably watched that VHS tape of The Natural into the hundreds, or two hundreds, of times, because I tried to watch it before every game in high school.

But it didn’t have any of the curse words, or even the sexual innuendo, that the actual Natural movie has. Which, when I watched the actual one for the first time, I was like, what is this? So I was kind of disappointed, and can’t then recommend it as easily as it was for me to recommend.

But, I mean, I like the brooding martyr baseball movies. Who wouldn’t?

Jonathan But you say it like it’s its own genre.

Sean Well, it should be.

Jonathan Okay.

Sean So The Natural is probably my favorite movie of all time.

I do really like The Rookie. He’s not quite as brooding or martyr-y, but I do like The Rookie a lot. I do like Darkest Hour a lot.

I’m entertained — so, like, my musical genre that I prefer, which I realize isn’t the question, but I generally prefer happy music. That isn’t like how most of my thoughts are most of the time. And so when I turn on a movie, I also would usually rather let it be happily distracting to me rather than making me more sad. I can do that on my own, like watching the news. I don’t need a movie to help me with that necessarily.

So I end up realizing that I like a lot of movies that relate to stealing and con men and heists. Which, depending on what mood some of my children are in, they might wonder how righteous that is. But I have really enjoyed Ocean’s Eleven and Twelve — again, more than Ocean’s Thirteen, but Ocean’s Eleven and Twelve I used to watch regularly on Saturday night when I was finishing up sermon notes.

For me it was easier to study and do some writing while watching a movie that I already knew, because then I could look up and break it anytime and laugh, ha ha, and then go back to what I was doing — as opposed to something that I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I felt like I had to be paying attention.

Philip So next time, during your sermon, when you start quoting Ocean’s Eleven by accident —

Sean We’ll know why.

“I only have one.” That’s a quote from Ocean’s Eleven right there.

Jonathan “You know what your problem is?”

Sean Yeah. “I only have one.”

In terms of recommending — I mean, you can’t go wrong watching Hoosiers, if you’re in any kind of sports, basketball especially. Hoosiers. Remember the Titans — while I was writhing around, I watched Tuesday night, in the middle of the night, I rewatched Remember the Titans. “Attitude reflect leadership, captain.” That’s fantastic.

Master and Commander, I’d recommend, again for watching. Darkest Hour is one I enjoy and I would recommend.

So that was more than three.

Jonathan And the first time you watched Darkest Hour was on the plane to the UK.

Sean Yeah, I didn’t even know anything about it. And literally my trip to the UK that first time would not have been the same apart from having watched Darkest Hour ahead of time.

So even my appreciation — for as awesome as going to the American cemetery and being on some of the beaches in France were, I wouldn’t have appreciated them as much without some of the backstory in Darkest Hour.

Plus then we got to go to the Churchill War Rooms, which I think they had just opened up. When was that trip, 2018?

Jonathan Yeah.

Sean Yeah. So I think they had just opened that up. So, clearly, I wouldn’t have gotten as much from going into the war rooms and actually then getting to see some of the things that were pictured in the movie.

So I would watch that in terms of an ingredient for World War II history, and I would watch that in terms of leadership, and I would watch that in terms of rhetoric. So I’d encourage that one for all those.

I mean, the more that I learned about Churchill, the more I realized that it seems like he made a bunch of bad decisions as well throughout the course of his life. But at least during that stretch, during that time where he was pretty much alone, or felt alone, in trying to push back the German troops in France — that season of his life, their portrayal of it in that movie, I enjoyed.

Jonathan So, imagine you get on the elevator with one person, and you’re heading to the thirtieth floor, where you’re both getting off. And he asks you: what is Kuyperian dispensationalism? And you know the relationship is going to end at floor thirty, one way or the other. So that’s all the time you have.

What would you say? Timer starts now. Wait, I guess I should tell you which one of you is going first.

Sean Yeah, sure, you go ahead.

Jonathan Ding.

Sean Kuyperian means that we recognize that Jesus is Lord. And that is beyond just our salvation. But “Jesus is Lord” is our confession, and in many ways our marching orders. So if Jesus cares about it, if Jesus is Lord of it, then we also are allowed to care about it, and in some sense even then should be caring about it, as stewards.

And, in fact, as he blesses those who are honoring Jesus as Lord, he turns them into a kind of object lesson to the Jews, and uses that object lesson — of blessing Gentiles who are living with Jesus as Lord, obviously, yes, in salvation, but then in all of their life, and in all the spheres where they’re making decisions. God blesses them in order to cause Jews, who he’s made promises to, to see blessings among the Gentiles and be provoked to repent and turn to Christ themselves.

And that is, in fact, even part of God’s plan for the future: that more Gentiles are going to be blessed to make more Jews jealous, on the way to eventually converting the entire nation in a future generation and fulfilling his new covenant promises.

So, Kuyperian dispensationalism is acknowledging that the church is not — I’m over my thirty seconds, but we’re walking; I’m walking with a guy to the bathroom.

But we’re dispensationalists because we don’t think that the church is taking all of the promises that God made to Israel. But we actually see that Kuyperianism, and living with Jesus as Lord, is sort of like the cue ball that God is going to use. As God blesses saved Gentiles, makes them jealousable, they’re like a cue ball being shot into the rack, that breaks the rack and causes many Jews to repent and believe in Christ as part of God’s promise.

Jonathan Philip, you want to try and improve on that?

Philip Um —

Jonathan Oh, by the way, your elevator only goes to the tenth floor. Sorry. Shorter trip.

Philip What?

Yeah. I think that — so, I wouldn’t mention the Jews, or maybe even Kuyperian, but just the worldview in general.

God is a covenant-keeping God, and God keeps covenant within a physical, tangible, material world. So whenever God makes the terms of the covenant, or the stipulations of the covenant, those are clear, specific, and something you could see and touch and feel.

And so when God writes in the Bible what he writes, we are to take it the way he says it is. And so when God says the world is good, we are to receive that as what he says. When God says that Christ is Lord, we are to receive that as what he says. When God says who Israel is, we should take that as he says. When God says who the church is, we should take that as it says.

And so when God creates a promise — and so I’ll put Jews into here — when God makes a promise to a specific bloodline, to a specific DNA, that is physical, tangible, material, something you could test. We ought to keep it at the level that he brought it in. If I am to try to spiritualize that, or allegorize that out of it, what’s stopping me from doing that in other areas as well?

And so, because I like my steak to be real, and not just a hologram, not just something that I’m cutting into that I know is fake — so, another movie reference, right, with The Matrix. But I like my steak warm and juicy. I like my butter thick on the bread, to actually melt, for it not just to be a typological, spiritual allegory of everything I’m doing.

When I’m reading the Bible, I want to read the Bible in the way that God prescribed it as well. And when I’m living in this earth, I ought to be able to enjoy my present moment right now with my kids, with my wife, with my church, as opposed to seeing everything as a means to an end.

And so I think there’s a way to have a means to an end, but God calls us to live in the here and now. And so the way he prescribes that moment, to live under the lordship of Christ — whether we’re talking about Jews or Gentiles, whether we’re talking about kingdom to come or his lordship being manifest here — it ought to be real, not just an allegory.

Jonathan Not just theoretical.

So then, you are a leader in your business, as a Kuyperian businessman. How do you view your roles and responsibilities to advance that worldview in your professional sphere of responsibility?

Philip Specifically in business. Yeah, I think there’s two dynamics, maybe. But the golden rule of treat your neighbor as yourself, loving your neighbor, loving people.

What we do in business is all focused on one thing. So, you could have a business license, you can have a product, you can have an org chart, you could have employees — you don’t have a business until you have a customer. Until you have an actual person who sees value in what you’re offering, so, sees value in the service or the product.

You can sell someone else’s product as a wholesaler. You could be a one-person show, no employees. You could work under the counter and not have a business license, and still have a business, if you have a customer. If you have somebody who is willing to trade their resources for the value that you’re offering.

And so, when we try to Christianize the business world by making it a means to an end — so, I’m going to use my customer in order then to take profit and give it to the missionaries, or give it to some other kind of field. Or, I’m going to use my customer in order to evangelize to the people I hired, to my employees. That is taking that person who I’m supposed to love and making them a means to an end. It is trying to manipulate that person into some other endeavor.

But if I’m called to love this actual person — it’s the customer who’s in front of me. And so, what is the best way that I could do that? I don’t need to anxiously try to figure out how to make all this connect. This is what’s right in front of me. How do I weld this bead, or make this financial statement, or build this house, in such a way that blesses this person with what he’s actually asking me?

And Christ’s lordship is all-encompassing, and it’s also focused on every hair on our head. And so when I am honing my skill as a craftsman, to lay a good weld bead, or to be able to build a quality house, or whatever my business is — I am doing that under the lordship of Christ. Period. Stop. So, just with that act itself.

It doesn’t need to be propagated or supported by some kind of spiritual dynamic. The actual physical blessing that I’m doing for my customer is good, and honors the Lord in that actual act.

And so I do think that that kind of message in the Christian business world, in our sphere — there’s seven of us partners, so Max is one of our business partners — and so we do come across a lot of other Christian business people who are interested in business, interested specifically in Christians advocating for business. And it’s rare that we come across people who understand that business is not just a means to an end in that way, but you could actually bless people’s lives through the avenue of business. And it’s actually a very obvious and sadly overlooked sphere.

We are called to work six days a week. We are saved for good works. Work that we do is part of our life. And so, to be able to then think that work and business and that whole field is some kind of second step away from actually living our calling — seems like you’re missing the mark.

And so a lot of the Christian business people do, I think, miss the mark, in the way where they see business just as a means to an end, and we can use it then to either fund our actual things we care about, or, again, use it to evangelize or demonstrate our ethics. But serving the customer and doing good work there is good work that we ought to do more of.

Jonathan That’s really good. So, I mean, you already addressed a couple of follow-up questions I had related to that.

And so you would say that a faithful Christian who brings a biblical mindset to the workplace is already at a decided advantage over a secularist, because he can approach his work as not just an opportunity to honor the Lord, but as a means of blessing other people, as doing good work.

Philip Right. With the actual work.

Jonathan And the product. Right. And so also the Christian can provide a rationale as to why that even makes sense, whereas the secularist could not. He would say, you need to be expedient, and take matters in your own hand, maybe even defraud or exploit as necessary, because the bottom line is the end.

Philip I think a secularist could do even better work than a Christian. So, better quality, on time. A lot of the time that’s even what happens more frequently — because the Christian sees their work as a means to an end. It doesn’t really matter.

And this just goes back to what I was saying about spiritualizing or allegorizing everything that we do. That’s why — I mean, I love everything about like Doug Wilson and Moscow and all of that, and I’ve learned a lot from listening to him. But that worldview, of actually enjoying the physical world, doesn’t make sense when you’re reading the Bible in a way that is allegory, in a way that is spiritualized.

And so most Christians in business also approach business through a spiritual dynamic, or an allegory. And so secularists outrun them, they outpace them, because they don’t have a spiritual reality at all.

So, yes, when they die, the Christian goes to heaven, the pagan does not. But their mindset is on this physical world. But it only makes sense for the Christian’s mindset to be even more on this physical world.

So the secularist can outrun him, but he doesn’t get any glory. So I think that’s where the distinction lies. The atheist could do really good work, and it’ll all burn up. God will use that for his own means — God directs those means, and he will even take that away and bless his people with the secularist’s work. But when the Christian works unto the Lord, he is accumulating glory. He is accumulating an imperishable wealth.

And so I think that approach has more even to do with who gets that credit, the glory, the actual return on the investment.

Sean I’m not a businessman per se. I do care about it. And even my understanding of what part of the pastoral role is, or the preaching and teaching role is, is to give encouragement to God’s people.

And I used to think that the way you could tell if someone was growing in their spiritual life was by their capacity to lead a Bible study. That’s a narrow summary of that, but it’s kind of what it was.

And then when I put that together with James 3, that says, let not many of you be teachers, then I realized I was actually wrong for having such a narrow view of what somebody’s maturing spiritual life would look like.

So, while not being a businessman, I do actually think that part of my responsibility is to encourage businessmen. And it seems like one of the things that should be encouraging is that God actually cares, and God is the one who is giving meaning to whatever their calling is, in whatever way they are going to be a blessing.

So whether that’s feeding your kid a sandwich at lunch, or that’s fixing a car for your customer who needs it to get back and forth to their other job, or that is actually selling cars, or selling coffee to the people who are driving their cars that are working to get to their job — whatever it is, those people should be encouraged that all of those tasks actually do give identity to them, in terms of having a meaning for why they’re doing it.

And our current culture is desperate for meaning. The way that most of them get around that desperation is by just trying to distract themselves. Those who spend any time trying to actually think about, well, what am I doing here, what is the point of this — they could read Ecclesiastes and they would resonate a lot with “vanity, vanity, all is vanity.”

Well, there is actually an explanation for what makes it not vanity. And that is that God cares. And you don’t need the approval of a preacher or a pastor or an elder to do your work and have it be meaningful and have God be pleased with it.

So there is actually identity and meaning for one’s life in being able to do all of the work, whatever the work is, and have God care.

Somewhere between twelve to fifteen years ago, I thought that that message would actually be such a relief and encouragement to a bunch of people I knew, and even that I had been teaching. I thought it would be a huge relief to them to hear that they didn’t have to be a vocational pastor or missionary for God to care about their work.

And for a few it was a relief. And for many, it was just transferring the burden to, oh man, God cares? Well, I would like him to just not be paying attention.

And I was actually surprised. It took me multiple years to get over my surprise at how many Christians would rather have some low level of guilt for not being a professional Christian, and then just act like God gave them the rest of the time to do whatever they wanted. And to be told that God cared about what they were doing the rest of that time got taken as an even greater burden than the discouragement, or the guilt, of, well, I’m not doing the most important things.

So it is actually, apparently, a necessary thing to learn as a disciple: how it is a better burden that God cares, and that he can give meaning to all of our tasks, all of our assignments. That is a better burden than the burden of vanity.

So I guess this is one of those, it’s not whether but which. It’s not whether there’s a burden to the work; it is which burden is the better one to carry. And the better one to carry is that God delights in giving his people work and having them do it. And that’s not just in teaching a Bible study.

Philip So, I think it’s C. S. Lewis who wrote The Pilgrim’s Regress. Or there’s that meme, right, where it’s like a bell curve, where you’re a beginner, and then —

Sean A midwit.

Philip Midwit.

So the beginner — being even like the pagan — really cares about that physical work, the labor; that that’s all there is. And he does so naively. He does so because he’s stupid, because he doesn’t know any better. So for him, all there is is the physical world, and so he only cares about that.

Then you do have Christians who are living in the physical world, but they know of the spiritual realm. They know something. And so they do live in this kind of freak-out anxiety type of approach — the midwit, that’s what you call it. Where it’s like, we’ve got to make sure we don’t forget to evangelize. We’ve got to make sure we don’t forget to demonstrate our ethics. So everything we’re doing in the physical world, we’re always freaking out to bring it into the spiritual realm.

But then, after you realize that Jesus is Lord of it all, and he gives people meaning in the actual work, in the life that they live, in changing babies’ diapers — then you enter into the stage of, hey, I could live and enjoy and delight in this physical world, because I know Christ is ruler of it all. And, yes, there’s a spiritual dynamic to it, but I’m not constantly walking around with this sense of burden that I have to make sure I have a lifeline to the spiritual realm.

Jonathan Yeah, it is incredibly freeing to be able to go about our days with the full awareness that Christ, who is Lord over all, has a greater care for the mundane than we do.

Philip And I think Christians who are not happy to hear that are still in that midwit stage.

Jonathan Not a compelling testimony at all. The world doesn’t need help to be disinterested. They are going to be provoked — the world is going to be provoked and encouraged when it sees a deep, lasting, happy delight in all of God’s good gifts, the things of earth and everything else.

Sean, what one decision you made after having kids had the greatest positive impact on your family’s fellowship and culture?

Sean What one decision —

Jonathan Had the greatest impact. So, I know you made lots of decisions that have had various impacts, but if you think of what’s the greatest positive impact.

Sean There’s a sense in which I’m cheating; I’m going to get a running start into my answer.

There’s a sense in which agreeing to read the dumb books that Mo told me that I needed to read when we started to homeschool Maggie. Because — whether you’ve heard me say this before or not — even before Mo and I started having kids, she told me that she wanted to homeschool our kids. She had been homeschooled. I went to public school. Clearly she had a higher IQ than me, so that resulted in: we should homeschool. Just science, right?

And I said, I think that is awesome for you to homeschool our kids.

And it came up every so often, and I maintained, I held strong: I totally think you should homeschool our kids. I was even teaching at another private Christian school.

And then we had a kid. And then Mo was like, I think we need to think some more about this. I said, you should totally be thinking about how you are going to educate our kids at home. What do you need so that you can keep doing it?

And Maggie kept getting closer to four or five years old, and Mo got a little bit more insistent, saying, look, I will do most of the day-to-day work, but you need to understand what’s happening, so you need to read these books.

And this was really not what I had agreed to. That I was going to have to have responsibility over this.

So I said, I’m not going to pick out books. You are going to have to select the ones that you want me to read and give them to me. I’m not doing anything. I have a job.

So she respectfully found a couple books. And I read them, and I hated them.

One was called The Lost Tools of Learning by Doug Wilson — Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, yeah. And I still have my hard copy of that book. And you can come over to our house sometime and I can show you in the margins where I am arguing and criticizing Doug in the margins. “No way, Doug.” “This is stupid.” “Come on.” “Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

And it was during the same window of time that I had finished teaching Ecclesiastes and I started in Genesis. And I started, obviously, in Genesis 1, and I kept running into this: “and God said it was good.” Oh, wow, okay. “And God said it was good.”

And after the sixth one of those, near the end of chapter one, I realized, you know, I don’t think I am thinking the same way as God about what is good. I think getting the heck off of the planet and being done with all of these earthly responsibilities would be good. And here he is saying, no — this part of earth is good, and this task is good, and marriage is good, and the dominion to fill the earth, subdue it, take dominion, this is good. Very good.

And in combination with changing my mind about what God thought was very good, my family’s life changed for the better.

In other words — when I repented from, I mean, one way to say it would be, when I repented from having a different worldview than God. When I repented from being a dualist, Gnostic, pietistic, “just wait to get out of here in the rapture” Christian. When I repented from only reading parts of the Bible that talked about salvation doctrine. When, by God’s grace and God’s word and God’s Spirit, I changed my mind about what God said was good — lots of things started to change.

Potentially the one that came right on the heels of that, which was also then just a different application of what God said was good, was: I really started studying the Trinity very specifically.

And, of course, while the Trinity is not explicitly defined in Genesis 1, there’s some sort of seeds of the Trinity that I think are inescapable in Genesis 1, including the very first plural pronouns of, “let us make man in our image.” And then immediately saying how that image included male and female, so there was more than one. And as you skip into chapter two, when God first said something was not good.

So, potentially then, the next biggest and most crucial change was changing my mind on what God said was good about relationship and fellowship. And that changed my thinking on what the Great Commission is about. That changed my thinking about what marriage and parenting is about. That changed my understanding about what communion and the Lord’s table was about.

What does God want? What does God say is good? What he says is good is being in fellowship. And that involves then truth and doctrine and learning to be right, as opposed to believing something that’s false, for sure. But I had much more been living like what God cared about the most is whether I had the right answer, and then whether my kid could give the right answer. Not about how education and learning was part of the tools for the sake of our work while we’re in fellowship, which God thinks is good.

So, I mean, there were some significant doctrinal changes — again, away from dualism, a greater appreciation for the social nature of our lives because of the Trinity. That put everything into a different context, and required me to behave differently at the dinner table. I couldn’t keep being a jerk at the dinner table and excuse it because I was right about what I had said in the second half of the sentence, or whatever it is.

So it turns out, when you actually are trying to say what is good that God said is good, that doesn’t actually keep you from being tired, but it gives wind to fill the sail of pursuing what is the right thing.

Jonathan So let’s riff off of that for just a moment. And this really is hypothetical and kind of a dramatic question. But if I gave you a choice — you have two vehicles for creating spiritual gravity for a city. So we’re thinking —

Sean I think about this.

Jonathan Okay. Well, right. So I’m about to give you two hypotheticals.

You had to choose between, let’s say, one church, about two hundred people, that had really robust fellowship and worship. That’s option A. Option B is twenty families with deep, sweet fellowship. You had to choose between A or B.

Sean How are the people in the church having their fellowship apart from the families? I’m not trying to be difficult.

Jonathan Yeah. Well, let’s say the people in the families are hopefully having their fellowship because they’re being trained right in the church as well. So —

Philip You mean like Sunday worship is robust.

Jonathan So, like, a church culture that is dynamic, and worship that is robust — is that going to have the same draw as twenty-ish families that actually really love each other?

It’s a hypothetical question, and in some ways terrible, like it can’t actually happen. But let’s go with it anyway.

Sean Yeah. It’s tough, because I’m trying to think about how a church of two hundred people who are experiencing deep fellowship would not have that experience at home. I’m trying to honor the hypothetical. Sure.

It seems like that would have to, in my mind, affect their family’s fellowship. But I can totally imagine twenty families living in their moated property, sticking to themselves, loving one another, enjoying their productive property — but until they leave that productive property and fellowship, I don’t actually think that that would, as quickly at least, bless a city.

Jonathan So then — because it is a really hard question to answer, but so —

Philip I think that, I mean, one could be the means to the other. And so I would start with the worship.

Jonathan Philip, all afternoon you’ve been anticipating my questions. I love it.

Philip Oh yeah? Okay.

Yeah, I would start with the worship. And so, yes, you could have an island unto themselves, wanting to distance themselves from the city.

But worship is offensive. Worship is on the advance. Worship is going forward. And so it meddles. It meddles with the families, it meddles with the surrounding community, it meddles with the city.

And so if the objective is to take the city, I would start with worship. And so if I’m given a church that has robust worship with great fellowship, that seems like an easy start. I would start with that. And then if there is a lack of fellowship within the actual families, I think even the way to address that is through worship — through the community intermingling, through people meddling in one another’s lives, and you can’t get away.

Sean Yeah. I mean, because one of the things that the question assumes that maybe the Amish would not assume — I say that because my mom lives in Ohio; I grew up a couple miles from a bunch of Amish farms. So, Amish: the Amish are not actually trying to change the city.

So I do think I can envision a variety of scenarios where those twenty strong families — their end has been to make their family strong. That’s the goal. They got it. Okay, let’s keep enjoying it. So why do we have to think about anything bigger than that?

It potentially assumes that we want more than just what is in our families.

And for me, how I think I would answer that is — like when I was a kid, and we had to make the mobile of the planets, and then we talk about the Milky Way. And when I was a kid, we didn’t have as good of telescopes as we currently have. And so they talk about, like, the edge of the universe.

And for whatever reason, in my mind, I was like, okay, let’s say we get to the edge of the universe — what’s on the other side? So, well, we got to the end. I’m with my teacher up to this point. What was like the next step? Nothing? Well, that would be something else.

Or sort of like — and I only saw it once — but The Truman Show, where he’s living in the bubble, and he sails into the wall and realizes, oh, there’s a whole other thing on the other side.

So when I think about my family being blessed, I got to the point where I was like, actually, maximum blessing for my family is not just going to be contained in the walls, or in the address around this property. It’s going to include their being blessed and having the opportunity to work with and bless people outside of the house.

So I like the phrase, you know, you can’t export what you don’t have, or what you don’t make. So obviously home base is a true and good thing — but home base for what? So, being fruitful and multiplying, and training and educating and having great fellowship as a family, is an absolutely necessary foundation, and also not the end of what we’ve been called to do.

So, the more I think about a barrier — the closer I’ve come to that barrier, I’ve realized, oh, wait a second, there is something on the other side.

Philip See, this is why I was self-commissioned to move to North Marysville, to colonize the beyond-the-barrier. And so we need more room. And so, at least temporarily, as a mission field, I’m planting a flag, and I’ll be back.

Sean Yeah. Like, so, what is best for TEC is not that TEC is awesome and all of the other churches crash and burn. That’s not actually best for our church, let alone for the city.

So we should want people, Christians in particular, being strong and blessed and fruitful all over the place, and connected with them in the ways that we can be.

So, do we get the other churches to be stronger by not caring about our own people? No. But if we care about our own people, we’re going to want more; we’re going to want others to be stronger. And that includes the city.

If I want TEC — the sheep who are part of this flock — to be maximally blessed, I would want them to have a different governor. And, okay, this is the governor that we have. Fine. But I have trouble thinking that we can figure out maximum blessings just within this property.

And so, putting that back down into a family’s property perspective — their family being maximally blessed isn’t probably going to be an island. Maybe that island survives the coming apocalypse, and they come out — their great-great-grandkids come out after all of the nuclear fallout, a hundred years from now. What are they going to do? Well, they’re going to find other people who survived and build together again.

So, as good as that is, I actually don’t think that it is thinking broadly enough about the kinds of blessings that we can bring, or that we can see God giving to us. We just can’t do that isolated.

Jonathan Yeah, it’s really good. And so it is safe to say, then, that we think that blessed families are not themselves a guarantee of cultural change, but cultural change can’t happen without blessed families.

And, in the same way that your interest in the blessing of your family actually did mean raising your head and looking around to what was outside of your cul-de-sac —

Sean A literal cul-de-sac, yes.

Jonathan Yeah. Likewise, if we want to see even the people of TEC blessed, it is going to not just require but promote the blessing of Marysville.

And, by the way, I’m self-commissioned to colonize far east Marysville as well. So, right there with you. Marysville has quite a few suburbs, it turns out.

So — and we’ll maybe make this the last one, and you can take it however you want. But: what does Marysville need, then, more than anything else? Why don’t you go first, Philip. Don’t say Trader Joe’s.

Philip I didn’t even think of that, but that is actually a good one.

I mean, it’s difficult to pinpoint it to one. If you say, what does Marysville need more than anything else — lordship of Christ, right? So, if you’re going to say —

Jonathan That’s a great answer.

Philip Yeah, that is a great answer. Jesus, right? That is the answer.

But I think — I’m going through Made to Stick, so, having ideas be sticky, right? And part of what it talks about there is, when phrases or words or whatnot are overused, people just get used to them and it goes in one ear and out the other. We all know that.

And so things like “Jesus is the answer” is a phrase that is said and done and misused. But understanding the dynamics of the all-encompassing lordship of Christ — what Jesus has a say in, what he cares about. Where there is no distinction between the lordship of Christ when we exit the church building on Sunday, that we go out into Marysville and Jesus has a say on how we live, and how we do business, and how we work there, and what the city council does.

So, understanding Jesus as an all-encompassing standard and authority and person, that everything we do submits back to him. So I would use that as an all-encompassing answer. So: Jesus.

Sean One thing that Marysville needs? That was the question.

Jonathan Yes. Above all.

Sean Well, in terms of what we actually have — I’m going to try to say something that I think that we can actually do something about. Not that yours was — I mean, the principle is totally there.

Probably what Marysville needs more than anything else is for the elders slash pastors of TEC to be better, stronger, faster, wiser, and more fruitful.

Marysville needs to acknowledge the lordship of Christ. It would be awesome to get all the other pastors — I mean, I was toying with answering, to get all the pastors, period, in Marysville to be genuinely understanding and then committed to the sacrificial labor of living like Jesus is Lord, and training their own congregations to do that. And that’s true.

But how do we get those other pastors to do that? I mean, we’ve talked about the various pastors association that’s already in existence. Our experience since 2020, with a couple letters that we’ve sent to seven or eight different churches in Marysville, has been hit and miss. Nobody more than you, Jonathan, has actually tried to build relationships with some of those other guys. Marysville Sun was hopeful, to try to highlight some other churches and perhaps even try to connect and encourage them in some of those ways.

But those other pastors are not signing up to get our teaching. And why would they?

So, what can we — the people need to be encouraged and strengthened and blessed for their labors. And pastors are responsible to be the first line of equipping the saints for the work of ministry, so that the whole body is built up.

So, who’s it come down to? Well, it comes down to starting with shepherds. And so I guess that means we as shepherds need to be, again, wiser, stronger, faster. For the sake of potential gravity. Not to make TEC increase in numbers, but to increase this sort of worldview, mindset, joyful, fruitful living — to see that extended.

Which is something that, to my knowledge, TEC is the only one that is trying to be as connected between worship, family, and work for the good of the city, that actually has a reason for that. And eventually somebody needs to know a reason. And we’re the ones who have the best reason.

So I guess we need to have some more fruit. Because the city council is great, fine. They’re not what’s going to change Marysville — though I can’t be more thankful for most of the things that they decide. I really do like our mayor. I would rather have our mayor and city council than any other mayor or city council that I know about in Snohomish County or in Western Washington. There isn’t somebody else in Washington that’s a politician that I would rather have in those positions. So I’m super thankful for them.

And they’re not going to change Marysville. They can beautify it to some extent, and are. They can protect it in some ways, and they are. But we’re the only ones who have reasons to do that, and generational reasons to do that, and worship reasons to do that.

And so I guess we’re going to have to do more Q&As.

Philip That’s what it takes.

Jonathan Yeah, that’s what it takes.

Well, we do have work to do, and I think you guys did great. That was a solid D-plus right there, guys.

And so, gentlemen, did you know any of those questions before?

Philip I didn’t really know what we were doing.

Jonathan So there you go. So none of those answers were prepared. That was all me springing it on them.

So I thought you did a good job thinking — I would say on your feet, but on your seats. So, thanks for being good sports, and for giving us some good motivation to keep soldiering on, because there is a lot of work to do.

And there’s actually a lot more questions to ask, because I got through a solid third of them. But late is the hour, and there’s still more wine to be taken home over there, and there’s a doxology to be sung. So let’s stand together and we’ll be dismissed.