238. Hyles Church Manual Examined - Part 4 - The Youth Program - The Assembly Line: Are We Making Disciples or Making Fundamentalists?

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   Welcome back to the 4 Freedom Podcast. Excited to be here with you today. Me and Brett are in different locations than normal, so our audio may be a little bit different. We are recording at our houses today.

   Based on our schedule, we just wanted to stay ahead and make sure you had content. I want to appreciate you guys for tuning in over the last couple of weeks over the podcast and everything we've been doing. Hope you enjoyed the double episode last week with the Jack Howell's birthday episode.

   If you get a chance, go over and check out the Texas Baptist Crucible Podcast. James Spurgeon had me on, and we talked about legalism and what that looked like.

   He did a quick little episode and then asked me to come on and talk through that. And so that's over there if you want to go check it out and listen to it.

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   Brett, how are things going in your world? You guys had a homecoming this past week.

   You had a revival this last week with all the Mississippi Baptists. How was all that going? Man, it was great. We had the Allen family come and sing for us, and man, we had such a great turnout. Excuse me.

   And, man, the Allen's sang and tore it up, and then we had Sean Parker, who's our executive director-treasurer of the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board, preach, and then we had a different Mississippi executive every night, each executive over

   a different area of the Southern Baptist Convention for Mississippi. And, man, we had such a great turnout.

   We've been planning this revival for two years, and for it to all finally come together, come to fruition,

   the Lord definitely blessed. People came. People got right with God. I feel like we've been revived.

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   And, man, we just had a good week. And I'll tell you, as of the recording of this episode, it's starting to feel like fall weather. I mean, it took a little while. We were sweating, but it's starting to get cool now a little bit.

   I'm not going to say that I'm unhappy about it. I'm nervous to say fall.

   It could be false fall. We could have a second stint of summer that springs back up onto us. But, yeah, same here. It's been 50s and 60s. We had a massive rainstorm this last week.

   But other than that, it's been great. It's been a good week. We had a very busy Wednesday this last week.

   We had a senior lunch and then a directory planning meeting. And then we had a baby shower and small groups. And at the end of the small groups, we were talking through Revelation.

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   And as we were talking through it, they were mentioning something. And in my mind, I was just getting things mixed up. And I would say something. And the guy was like, our deacon was like, no, you're not right, Pastor James. And I was like, yes, I am. I'm reading the Bible.

   And I read it. I was like, yeah, I was wrong. And that happened twice in that study. And my mind was just flaking out. I don't have those moments often.

   And she got on to me when we got home. She said, man, you're about a thousand. Everything you were saying was wrong. I was wondering when you were just going to shut up. And I said, well, I probably should have. Sometimes it's like that. Sometimes I am.

   I'm not dyslexic when I read, but I transpose words so much. I have to really focus on what I say because I'll mix words up a whole bunch while I'm speaking.

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   So I make mistakes all the time. It's just part of it. So. Yeah, that's great.

   Yeah, we've got a busy time going on. We hope you we're enjoying a four freedom cigar. We're actually testing some cigar blends right now.

   If you'd like to get one of those test cigars, reach out to me. We're trying to get some samples out to people to we're launching a new line here soon.

   And we're just trying to get some people to try them. And as always, we've got some some stuff there for you to get on our website. I was telling James Spurgeon this and maybe you as a listener don't know this, but our website's been recently redone, completely revamped.

   Had a lot of feedback from that. I just had an email from a lady in Canada and I appreciate her reaching out to us. I think I shared that email with you, Brett,

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   just the help that that's been getting for them. But you can go there and you can search our podcasts, our transcripts for people, for information that we put out.

   And it would give you the exact timestamp for things that could that we've talked about. So we hope that's a blessing to you. We hope that'll help you as you go through where you're at. But they're all topic up at the top for any series that we've done.

   You can pull up the book of Galatians and it'll pull up just the book of Galatians that we've done in the past or something else that we've done. So we want you to avail yourself of that as well. Some good resources.

   When it blew my mind, you showed me how that worked. Like you could go to that website and you could type in, let's just pick out a name.

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   Let's pick Jack Scott because, you know, because you and you could type in Jack Scott and it'll show you every episode that we've mentioned his name and give you a timestamp on it.

   Now, you know, you know, why would you do that? Looking up Jack Scott, you know, but that was the first thing that came to mind. Maybe that's not the best name to look up. But this goes to show you, you can type it in. It'll bring up every episode that we've mentioned it.

   The timestamp gives you everything. It's really, really cool what they're doing. I think that, you know, I think that AI is, you know, I think we're using all that water. I think it's a good thing. Use all the water up, AI. That's right.

   Well, that's the other thing about it. When you do that, you can actually click on that timestamp and it'll play that episode from that point as well.

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   So if it was, you know, episode 200 at the 20 minute mark, it'll go straight to that mark and play it. So you don't have to listen to the whole thing. You can just pick it up right there. Yeah, it's really cool.

   It's really, really neat. If y'all haven't been to our website in a while, go check it out. Absolutely.

   All the merch on there. We've got all of our books, our cigar sales, all that's on there. So go avail yourself to those things. Hopefully it'll help you out. Brett, any other housekeeping before we get started today with today's episode?

   I don't think we've, I think we pretty much covered everything. We don't have any major trips coming up planned, although any meetups, although I would like to get some meetups together soon. Maybe there's some way we can, we can work that out.

   And if any of you have any interest in a meetup in the future,

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   let us know. And if we get enough response, we might can make something happen, you know, but we got to see some, if there's some interest out there in it. And so just drop us a line, shoot us a message and let us know. Middle of the country time, I'll be in Tennessee,

   October 22nd, 3rd and 4th at John's house and his church area.

   So if anyone's in that area, shoot me up, hit me up. There's a conference there in Tullahoma, Tennessee, just an hour south of Nashville.

   And then for Thanksgiving, Brett, we're going to be in Arkansas for our family, Allison's family. We're going to go spend Arkansas this Thanksgiving.

   So if anybody's in that area as well, let me know, hook me up. Maybe I'll find old Sheriff Brown and we'll get together and hang out for a little bit and have a good time with him.

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    It's always a good time when you can hang out with the sheriff. Let's go. He's big time too. I know, for real. He's so big time, nobody want to run against him. I tell you, unopposed all the time. He's like Andy Griffith. Nobody want no smoke.

    Don't mess with that much. Oh, man. Love it. All right. Well, let's get started with today's episode. We're continuing in our series of the Howes Church Manual. For freedom, you set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Cigars and victory justified,

    released. Welcome to the 4-Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. I ain't saved by dress codes, not by what I eat. I'm covered in the righteousness, washed from head to feet. No tally of tradition, no man-made code.

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    Blood bought my freedom, now I ride that road. They clutch pearls when they see smoke rings rise. But my praise still ascends past the legalist cries. Christ plus nothing, that's the real math.

    So miss me with your fence laws and your extra path. He sat with sinners, I'm sitting with saints. Sipping grace from the bottle, no room for fakes. I light one for liberty, toast to the king. Every ash a sermon, death has lost its sting. For freedom, you set me free.

    Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Cigars and victory justified, released.

    For freedom, you set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Cigars and victory justified, released.

    Let grace begin. For freedom, you set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee.

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    Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Now here are your hosts, James Safrit and Brett Martin. Welcome back. We are continuing to walk through the House Church Manual. Today we look at the chapter that's entitled, Brett, I was confused with this, on the House Church Manual. It's titled Youth Conferences.

    But when you actually get into it, it's actually just talking about a youth program. And so this is a little bit different than some things we've covered in the past, because there's a lot here that we don't really necessarily have a problem with. We will talk through some stuff that we do.

    One of the things that I want to mention is the,

    there is this idea over the last couple of years of church history and ministry, where we have these, what we call silo ministries, where every little ministry becomes its own ministry inside the church, and they don't cooperate with

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    each other. And I think that can be very dangerous. As a youth pastor, I try to always, I'd say always, try to often do things with other ministries.

    I try to do stuff with our senior adult ministry. I try to bring those groups together so that we didn't feel like we were all on an island. And House says that in his book, To Care About Teenagers, we ought to care about teenagers in the church.

    And I agree with that. He says teenagers should be involved in church. Instead of being treated like they're waiting to become adults, we need to be around each other. I agree with that as well. He encourages youth activities, youth choirs, camps, adult volunteers, proper supervision,

    pastoral counseling, and even evangelism. There are plenty of things here and there. Taken by themselves, they're perfectly reasonable for church ministries. So we're not going to spend 30 minutes trying to convince you to have a youth choir or by taking teenagers on a hayride that's legalist or legalism.

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    But there is a philosophy in this chapter that I believe deserves some attention. Brett, I believe that House actually gives us a perfect picture of the almost immediately. He compares the teenage years to the final stages of an assembly line.

    The young person has moved through the church's entire program, from the nursery to the high school.

    And now the church is putting the finishing touches on that young person's life before sending him off into adulthood. And Brett, when I read that thought, the assembly line, well, that's the thought of this episode, the assembly line of the ministry. Absolutely. Because, you know, we have to make some cookie cutter fundamentalists.

    You know, we got to make sure everybody's a mini Jack Hiles. Now, I understand what Hiles means.

    And I actually agree with part of the idea. If God gives our church 18 years to pour into a young person's life, we ought to take that responsibility seriously.

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    I don't want somebody growing up at Rocky Point, spending 18 years in Sunday school and church and then graduating without knowing what he believes or why he believes it. So, you know, there's a good version of what House is saying. We are forming people. That's what discipleship is. Parents are forming their children.

    Churches are helping form young believers. Teachers are forming students. None of that is controversial.

    And there's nothing wrong with any of that. But an assembly line is designed to do something very specific. It takes raw material and produces standardized products.

    Every product is supposed to come off the end looking like the one before it. And that's where I think we need to start asking questions, particularly after everything we've already read up to this point in this manual. We've seen expectations concerning church attendance. We've seen loyalty to the pastor, loyalty to church program.

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    We've seen separation standards. We've seen emphasis on numerical results. We've seen the pastor positioned at the center of almost everything in church life.

    It all revolves around the pastor. And now we get to the youth program and we're told essentially,

    you know, we've had these kids in the system since the nursery. Now we're putting on the finishing touches. So here's the question that I want us to wrestle with. Are we discipling young people to follow Jesus or manufacturing young people to know how to conform to our particular religious culture?

    Because those aren't necessarily the same things. Yeah, I think you should be very careful, Brett, as we walk through this, because every church has a culture. There's no such thing as a church that just teaches the Bible without developing any traditions, expectations, or even preferences. Rocky Point has a culture. Pleasant Grove has a culture.

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    The church I grew up in had a culture that's different than all those other cultures. And even denominations have cultures as well.

    The problem comes when young people aren't taught how to distinguish the culture from Christianity itself. So if I'm discipling a teenager and I want him to know what Scripture actually teaches,

    I want him to understand the gospel. I want him to understand doctrine. I want him to know how to study the Bible, how to understand Christian liberty and wisdom.

    I want him to be able to evaluate things biblically as he is walking through life. He's able to take these things and take it through a biblical worldview. What I don't want is for him to simply memorize the improved behaviors for our particular group. Because eventually, he may leave that group.

    He may not be a part of my church. He may get married.

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    The Lord may call him into ministry. The Lord may call him into service of the military.

    And he's going to go all across the world. He's going to go to college. He's going to get a job. He's going to get married.

    He's going to move to another city. And suddenly, the pastor that's standing up in the pulpit, hopefully because he's at a church somewhere,

    is going to tell him things that maybe I didn't tell him because the culture is different there. And the only thing that was keeping the man faithful in my system was my system that's surrounding him.

    And then all of a sudden, you remove that system. And this young man has an identity crisis, which I went through, and I'm sure lots of our listeners have went through when it comes to leaving the IFB movement. Exactly. That's the test. And I've seen this happen.

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    A kid grows up in an extremely controlled religious environment where every decision is already made for him. Here's what you wear. Here's where you go. Here's what you do. Here's the music you listen to. Here's what Christians look like. Here's the church you attend. Here's what everybody around you believes.

    And as long as he stays in that bubble, everything looks great.

    And then he's 18, 19 years old, and he gets outside that bubble, and somebody challenges something that he's always been told. And suddenly he realizes,

    I don't know why I believe any of this. That's a discipleship failure. And sometimes our response is, well, the world got him, maybe.

    But maybe we spent 18 years teaching him what to think without teaching him how to think biblically. And that's why I don't want my sons believing something simply just because daddy's a preacher and he said it.

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    I want them to be able to open the Bible and say, this is why I believe it. Because I'm not going to be standing over their shoulder forever. I mean, I wish I could go to college with my kids, but I can't. Because, you know, somebody's got to work and pay the bills,

    you know. And neither the pastor. Pastors not going to follow them once they leave school and get out into the real world. Pastors are going to stay at the church. They have to think biblically on their own two feet.

    Now, there's another part of this chapter I actually like. How says that young people ought to be soul winners. He says evangelism isn't just for pastors, deacons, and adults.

    Teenagers ought to know how to share the gospel too. And look, I'm completely with him on that. I would love to see our teenagers know how to sit down with somebody and explain the gospel clearly.

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    I'd love to see them unashamedly, unashamed of Christ at school.

    You know, I'd love for a 17-year-old to know how to answer somebody who asks, why are you a Christian? That's a good youth ministry. But then we get into the system again. Prospects are gathered. Names and addresses are collected. Teenagers are organized into teams.

    Drivers take them from house to house. And house reports that on one particular soul winning night, the teenagers won 17 people to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, listen, we've already discussed this mentality in previous episodes.

    And I think it's worth bringing up again because words matter. I don't win somebody to Jesus. In the sense that I produce a person's salvation.

    Yes, you lead somebody to Jesus. But I'm not the one that produces salvation in them.

    I just gave them the gospel. And it's God that does the saving. Yeah, I agree.

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    And there's one thing that you said that I want to sort of circle back to that I think is great. Just a couple of years ago at our youth camp, one of our youth speakers got up.

    And his entire talk was, what is the gospel? And he started with just asking a simple question.

    I want a teenager to tell me what the gospel is. And we're in a room full of 400 teenagers. And I'm like, hey, teenagers, we've been working on this. You guys know this.

    And they were afraid in a room full of 400 teenagers to get up. And the answers that were given were shallow. They were little. They were not deep answers of actually knowing and understanding the gospel.

    And he finished by saying, you know, oftentimes we think we know the gospel because we're sitting out of churches. But we can't get up and articulate what we believe and why we believe it.

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    You're going to go off to college. You're going to have to know these things. You're going to have to know what the gospel is and how it changes our life. And so when you take all that and you connect it to Scripture,

    I think we get back to the bus ministry episode that we said in 1 Corinthians 3, where it gives us a better understanding of a healthy church, where it says that Paul plants, Apollos waters, God gives increase.

    I don't think there's anything wrong with somebody saying, I want someone to Christ. It simply means that you share the gospel and the person believed. Christians have been using that language for centuries and centuries. But inside a culture obsessed with measuring results, that language can become dangerous.

    And now salvation itself starts sounding like something the soul winner has accomplished. We won 17. We accomplished this big feat of what we did.

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    So, okay, what does that mean? What does it mean to win 17? Did 17 teenagers share the gospel? 17 profess faith? Were they baptized? Were they discipled? Did they become part of a local church? Are they still following Jesus six months later? Those questions aren't an attempt to minimize evangelism.

    They're an attempt to take evangelism seriously. When someone accepts Jesus, are we taking time to sit there and disciple them and train them and love them?

    But as I believe when you begin to look at it, when you begin to be trained to believe that success is coming back on a Wednesday night, I've got three of them.

    You know, all of a sudden, that's an enormous temptation to reduce evangelism to simply getting someone to say the right words. And all of a sudden, I've got the number. I've set my services where we would, how many did you win this week?

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    And one person pop up and say seven and three. And it's really just manipulating the crowd. Right. Right.

    And even at House Anderson, when I was in the bus ministry, we were kind of trained, hey, if you can talk to somebody for a few minutes and get them to repeat these words after you, that's a salvation.

    You may never lay eyes on them again for the rest of your life, but that's a salvation. And listen, and teenagers are especially susceptible to that because teenagers want approval.

    If everybody comes back and we're celebrating who won and somebody and one kid asks, well, I talked to three people and none of them trusted Christ, he's going to feel like he's a failure.

    But maybe he faithfully explained the gospel to three people. Maybe those people, maybe one of those people goes home and thinks about what he said for two weeks.

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    Maybe somebody else eventually leads that person to Christ who gets the credit. God does. Our responsibility is faithfulness.

    And that's something I want young people to understand early because otherwise we're putting them on an assembly line. Here's the technique.

    Here's the presentation. Here's what you say. Hey, here's how you get a response. Now, go out and do. Go out and produce the result. I don't think so. You know, teach them the gospel. Teach them how to love lost people. Teach them how to communicate truth clearly.

    Teach them how to depend on the Holy Spirit. Teach them that God saves people. You're not out there just to get them to repeat a prayer. You're out there to communicate the gospel and then let the Holy Spirit do its work.

    Yeah, another part of this book that I thought was fantastic in the concept, maybe not the practice, but the concept was good pastoral ministry.

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    Jack Howe says that the pastor himself tries to personally meet with every high school senior before graduation. And now you think of First Baptist Hammond. They're running 20,000, 30,000 people during this time.

    I mean, you're talking thousands of teenagers that he's meeting with, high school seniors that are graduating out of his church ministry.

    You're talking, I mean, just a massive amount of time that he has to influence. He talks with them about their vocation, their college, their marriage, their ministry, any decisions they're going to make.

    And, you know, I think a pastor should do this. You know, what are you thinking about doing with your life? How can I pray for you? What are you struggling with? Have you thought biblically about this?

    And again, as I read that, though, my mind has to go to the larger structure of this manual. And you have to ask yourself, where does the council end and the control begin to creep in?

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    Exactly. Later in the same book, we find out that the youth director operates under the strict pastoral supervision. The pastor, the teenagers could suggest activities.

    The youth director can add ideas. But ultimately, all those ideas are submitted to the pastor.

    And Howes makes it explicit in the article in this book. He says, no activity of any kind in this church is planned without approval of me,

    the pastor. That's not really saying the pastor has oversight. He is saying every single event, fellowship, luncheon, everything that the youth do has to run through him.

    And he has to give his stamp of approval to provide that model of centralized leadership.

    I mean, what's the point in hiring a youth pastor if the pastor is going to be the youth pastor? You know, I don't see the point in that, you know. And we've seen it over and over in this book.

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    The pastor is the moderator. The pastor directs the deacons. The pastor drives a bus ministry from the pulpit. The pastor promotes the programs.

    No youth activity of any kind can happen without the pastor approving it. At some point, we've got to ask, why does one man need to control or micromanage, is a better word, everything? You know, I'm the pastor of my church. Obviously, I have a responsibility.

    If our youth leaders said, you know, we're taking the teenagers to, you know, the Dancing Rabbit, which is the casino, Saturday night, you know, I might have some questions for them, you know. How come you didn't bring me? No.

    But, you know, so, you know, oversight isn't the problem. You can lay out guidelines and say stay in these guidelines. But, I mean, if every hayride, every youth outing, every activity, every decision has to come across my desk and nothing happens without Brother Brett's approval,

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    then I've created a bottleneck around myself. And worse than that, I may be teaching everybody that ministry happens through my authority rather than the gifts that Christ has distributed throughout his body. Ephesians 4 says pastors equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

    It doesn't say pastors personally manage every work of the ministry. Good leadership actually produces other leaders who can be trusted to lead. It's my job as the pastor to equip them to do ministry.

    It's not my job to do the ministry for them. I think that's an incredibly important distinction for us to understand and for us to hear is you don't think the pastor should know what the youth ministry is doing.

    That is not what we're saying at all. I think that by us not knowing is advocating chaos. The issue that we must illustrate and talk about is the accountability and the centralization.

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    The healthy pastor says, here are biblical convictions. Here's our mission statement. Here's our vision. Here's our boundaries. I'm going to pick mature leaders. Now go and lead. An unhealthy system says nothing happens unless I personally approve it.

    One is developing people to do the work of the ministry. And the other one is developing what Jack Howell ultimately wanted was dependence upon him.

    And if we're talking about youth ministry, that's particularly ironic because the whole purpose is supposed to be preparing the young people for adulthood.

    You're wanting to prepare them to step into this adult life where they're leading families. They're leading husbands. They're leading.

    They've been a leader of a husband. They've been a wife that's leading the family. And if your method is preparing people for adulthood, it's controlling every decision you make.

    I'm not really sure you're preparing them for adulthood. And we wonder why men come out of this ministry and they are overbearing on their wives to the effect of they don't have any.

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    The wife has no say in anything that's going on because everything has to be led to them. Because the model that they produced in this very statement here is everything has to be checked off by the pastor. Right. There's no freedom. There's no individuality.

    You know, you don't teach somebody discernment by never allowing him to discern anything. You don't teach wisdom by handing somebody a rule for every conceivable situation.

    And that brings us into something else in this chapter, and that's the rules for the youth trips. How says the teenagers are reminded that there will be no hand-holding and no love-making. You know, everybody travels together. Nobody is allowed to drive separately and meet them there.

    And basically, if you're going, you've got to ride the bus. Now, here's where I want to defend House just ever so slightly. Having rules for teenagers isn't legalism.

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    I'm a pastor. I'm a dad of two teenage boys. You know, I'm responsible for 30 teenagers on a trip.

    You know, we're going to have rules. You know, I'm going to know where you are. You're not disappearing with your girlfriend behind the building for 45 minutes. Well, I'm responsible for you. That's not legalism.

    That's called being an adult. The problem comes when I take my reasonable rule and give it divine authority.

    And that's a distinction I want Christians to understand better because sometimes we overcorrect. Somebody comes out of legalism and decides that any standard is legalism. No.

    Your youth pastor saying nobody leaves this event without permission isn't legalism. Your parents giving you a curfew is not legalism. A Christian school having a dress code isn't automatically legalism. Legalism enters the fray when we confuse our rule with God's command, particularly when keeping our rule becomes a measurement of somebody's spirituality.

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    You know, I can tell teenagers, we're not doing this on the trip because I'm responsible for you. That's honest.

    What I shouldn't do is pretend there's a verse somewhere that says, thou shalt not hold hands on the bus. And let me say this before I move on. When these teenagers grew up and got into Howes Anderson College,

    Howes Anderson College is just like camp. They're not treated like adults. They're still treated like teenagers,

    you know, like camp. Four years of teen camp is basically what Howes Anderson College is. And that's not how you, you know, they have to control you even whenever you're supposed to be going into adulthood. They're still controlling you, you know, in college like you're a teenager.

    Yeah, and I think this whole portion and section connects back in perfectly with how we titled the episode, The Assembly Line Idea. Because rules are often useful when they've trained someone toward wisdom.

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    Rules become unhealthy when the objective is simply conformity. You know, when my kids are little, I give them lots of rules. Because they don't have the maturity of judgment to do things. As they grow, I increasingly begin to explain the reason behind those rules.

    I begin taking rules away. I begin allowing them to have that freedom so they can learn to make those mistakes so I can correct them and reprove them and rebuke them. And eventually they're adults.

    And, you know, if they're 40 years old and they're still calling dad every morning, asking if they're allowed to wear something or what happened if something went wrong. You know, that is, I felt as a dad, I wanted them to call me and ask for my advice.

    But spiritual maturity works the same way similarly. Hebrews talks about believers having the powers of discernment through practice.

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    If we're going, our goal isn't to perpetuate dependence on somebody's list.

    Our goal is maturity. I think one of the most revealing statements in this chapter is when Howells talks about the weekly youth activities. He says this, and I quote, Young people are to go. They need to be kept busy. So he recommends some kind of church activity basically every single week.

    Then, even when the activity is primarily social, Howell says there should be a devotion, a spiritual emphasis. On the way to the activity, teenagers can sing gospel songs, pass out tracks, give testimony, generally fill in the atmosphere with Christ-centered activities.

    Now, once again, Brett, none of those are bad. Singing gospel songs, giving testimony, passing out tracks.

    I mean, Old Soldier, one of my favorite bus songs. My kids still sing it today. We still walk around and we're singing it. But I think there's a philosophy here that a lot of us who grew up in this fundamentalism will recognize.

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    Keep them busy enough with the church that the world doesn't have a chance to get them. And that sounds really good when you really examine it. But eventually, they're going to live in the world. They're going to have jobs. They're going to be around unbelievers. They're going to attend college.

    They're going to have neighbors that don't share the same values. They're going to have people that they encounter with ideas that are different from them. And the answer simply can't be keep them inside the church bubble forever.

    This is why we have teenagers that leave the church and they turn from the Lord and they never come back because we never allowed them to own their faith. Right.

    And, you know, it was mom's faith or the pastor's faith or granddad's faith, but it wasn't their faith. And I think this is such a big deal.

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    I've seen churches almost treat busyness as discipleship. I mean, listen, we know what it's like in a church like that. You got Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, youth visitation, youth choir, youth activity on Friday, something Saturday, revival the next week,

    conference after that, camp after that, VBS after that. And then we say, look how faithful our teenagers are. Maybe or maybe they're just busy.

    Being busy at church isn't the same thing as being spiritually mature. You can spend your entire childhood inside church programs and still not know how to study the Bible yourself. You can know every rule and still not understand what grace is.

    You know, you can know what clothes your church approves of and still not understand Christian liberty.

    You can know what music you're allowed to hear and still not know how to evaluate music biblically. You can know how to give the soul winning presentation and still not understand the gospel deeply enough to explain it outside of that script.

39. 36:14

    ABC 123, pray after me. You know, that's the difference between institutional conformity and discipleship.

    You know, Brad, I want to be fair and I want to be as honest as I can here. I truly believe that Jack Howells wanted his young people to love Christ.

    I don't think we need to question any of that from this chapter. And I don't think that it would be well to do that. But he wants them serving. He wants them evangelizing.

    He wants them to be involved. He wants the adults investing in them. He wants the pastor of the church to care about them. And he gives some generally good instincts here.

    But the end of the chapter, he ends with a phrase that brings us back to the beginning. Howell says that he hopes churches will develop youth programs so that people will build their lives around the work of Christ and his church.

40. 37:10

    I'm not going to elaborate. That's a great statement. People building their lives around the work of the church and around the work of Christ. I love that.

    I think it's great. But there's one distinction that I want to make. My ultimate goal for my children isn't they build their lives around my church. My goal is they build their life around Christ and his church.

    Hopefully, that means they're deeply committed to the local church for the rest of their life. Scripture teaches us that the Christians should be a part of the body. Rocky Point, Pleasant Grove is not, isn't Jesus. Howell's Anderson isn't Jesus. First Baptist Hammond isn't Jesus. The Southern Baptist Convention isn't Jesus. The institution serves,

    exists to serve the church and to serve Christ. Christ does not exist to serve the institution. We are to build people around Christ. Not, what's the statement you always say?

41. 38:11

    The jackal said often about. I will not use my work to build my people. I will not use my people to build my work, but my work to build my people. A great statement, but in saying it, but in practice, it was the opposite.

    It was completely the opposite. And that's such a great point. And that's really, that's the whole episode right there.

    What comes off the, what comes off the end of our assembly line? If my son graduates from high school knowing exactly how to dress for church, knowing where he's supposed to sit, knowing all the right fundamentalist language,

    knowing which preachers he's allowed to listen to, can defend the King James Bible, know which music is approved, know how to look like everybody else. But he doesn't know how to walk with Jesus when I'm not standing right beside him, looking over his shoulder,

42. 39:08

    then I have failed. I don't want to raise a kid who needs, you know, Pastor Brett to make every spiritual decision for him. I want to raise a man who knows the word of God. I want him to understand the gospel.

    I want him to know how to pray. I want him to recognize false teaching, to understand Christian liberty, to be able to distinguish between biblical commands and somebody's personal preferences.

    Now, I want him to love Jesus enough that when dad isn't watching, he still follows Christ. That is discipleship. And this isn't just the house problem. I think every pastor,

    youth pastor, and every Christian parent ought to ask ourselves this question. Are we teaching our young people what to think or are we teaching them how to think biblically? Obviously, there are things scripture settles for us. I'm not teaching my kids to independently decide whether Jesus rose from the dead or not.

43. 40:08

    That's true, okay? But there are thousands of decisions they're going to face when there's no verse giving them a simple yes or no. They're going to need wisdom, discernment. They need a biblical worldview.

    And if all I've given them is a rule book, say, here, here you go, here's a rule book, they're going to be lost the moment they encounter a question that the rule book doesn't cover.

    Yeah, and I think this really brings us to the true test of what a youth ministry should be. As a youth pastor for 13 years,

    12 years of ministry in my life, the real test is not what they look like when they're inside the ministry. The real test is what happens when they leave the ministry, when they leave your church context. Can they follow Christ when the youth pastor isn't planning an event on Friday night?

44. 41:02

    Can they study scripture when Sunday school teacher isn't handing them the lesson? Are they able to make wise decisions when the pastor hasn't told them they're allowed to make decisions? Can they explain the gospel without a memorized sales technique? Are they able to encounter someone who disagrees with them without panicking?

    Fred, I think that's one of the ones that people, I believe, struggle with. We don't debate and talk through things anymore.

    We just have to panic and walk away. People aren't good at just talking through their ideas. We used to be a country and a nation and a people that could disagree and walk away and still love each other. We have so institutionalized the way we do things.

    People can't even have conversations anymore because as soon as they get their feelings hurt, they walk away. Are we able to tell the difference between sin,

45. 41:55

    wisdom, and preference? And what we think is right or what the authority is telling us? Not with us, maturity is, you know, have we done, if we've done our job correctly, they should be able to eventually need less control from us, not more. Let me interject before you go on to the next section.

    I had a, because this is right on what you're talking about.

    When I was over, I ran an old chain shop for 15 years and I first got that job as manager and I'm training my guys.

    My owner said, Brett, if the shop can't run effectively without you, I know you're the manager, but if you have to be here in order for this shop to run, then you're not a good manager.

    You need to leave for a few hours and let that shop run without you there. And that shows you how effective you are in leadership.

46. 42:59

    You know, and I think that just goes along with what we're talking about. Well, I agree 100%.

    And I also want to piggyback by saying, you know, when Paul and Peter in Galatians were with each other and they're having a great conversation and all of a sudden the Jewish brethren show up and Peter has to change his, what he's saying to Paul and how he's living

    because those brothers showed up because all of a sudden he feels like he's got to change who he is to act a certain way in front of the brethren. And Paul looked at him and said, how dare you do that? Like how it confronts him to the face.

    And, you know, that's, it's called an axe as well. That is that control that, you know, we put this facade on and we just can't be real in front of people.

47. 43:45

    I think that's the most beautiful thing is, you know, I do Good News Club on Thursday. When our young people come in, our kids come in from the public school and, you know, they see their pastor in real life. Like I'm joking around, I'm picking with them.

    They understand that we are real people and we are normal people.

    And I think this is where when we begin walking through what Houses Youth Program starts talking about, we begin asking ourselves, what is worth keeping? We should care about teenagers. We should give them meaningful places to serve. We should teach them the gospel.

    We should teach them how to share the gospel. We should have adults invest in them. We should give them safe opportunities to have fun together, take them to camp,

    pray for them when they leave for college, give them a Bible. Pastors, I want to challenge you to know your teenagers well enough that if a high school senior feels comfortable coming in your office and asking you for counsel in the future, you should be able to have that conversation

48. 44:49

    with them. Those are good things. But don't confuse activity with maturity.

    Don't confuse conformity with holiness. And please don't confuse dependence upon the institution with dependence on Christ. The institution will fail them, but Christ will never fail.

    Right. It's not our job to keep these kids on an assembly line forever. Eventually, they're going to get off. And when they do, I don't want them walking away with nothing but a list of rules and memories of youth activities. I want them to walk away knowing Jesus, knowing scripture,

    knowing why they believe what they believe, knowing how to make wise decisions, knowing how to live in Christian liberty without using Christian liberty as an excuse for sin,

    knowing how to belong to a local church without worshiping the institution, and knowing how to respect spiritual leaders without surrendering the responsibility God gave them to search the scriptures for themselves.

49. 45:55

    If that's what comes off the end of the assembly line, then forget the assembly line. Throw the assembly line out. We've made a disciple. And that's what Jesus actually commands us to make. Absolutely.

    James, did you have anything else? I think that's what we are commanded to make disciples. I was reading through Matthew and John, the account of Jesus being arrested this week. And when Jesus is arrested and taken, he tells his disciples,

    don't come after me, but go and study the words that I gave you.

    I think that's so important for us because we should be so in tune with the commands of Christ that no matter what comes against us at whatever age, we're able to fall back onto the commands of Christ.

    We're able to fall back and say, this is what Christ has commanded me to do. I'm going to do it for the glory of God.

50. 46:55

    I'm going to honor him with my life. I'm going to do what Christ has called me to do. I may lose a friend over it. I may lose a coworker over it. But I'm honoring Christ and all those things I'm doing.

    I think if we can instill that in our young people, that's a great youth group. That's a great teenager group that's going to walk out and turn the world upside down as those 12 disciples did 2,000 years ago, which is why we're sitting here today. Because 12 young people, teenagers,

    went out and flipped the world upside down. You know, I'll say one last thing. Whenever I was growing up in the youth group in our church,

    Independent Fundamental Baptist Church, we had probably 25 teenagers that were there every day of the week. We had Christian school and bus visitation on the weekends.

    So Sunday through Saturday, these kids were at church seven days a week at every activity and learning the list of rules, knowing how to dress.

51. 47:56

    I mean, it's amazing how closely my pastor adhered to this assembly line philosophy whenever I was growing up. And when it was over, there was only like two that hadn't left church completely, like left God completely. Now, I will say that since then, you know,

    some of those have come back, praise the Lord, to God. But it's not a good system.

    This is not a good system. I mean, yeah, there are some good parts to it, but as a whole, the system is flawed. And it's not an assembly line. You know, each disciple is unique. You know, not all 12 disciples were carbon copies of Peter.

    You know, or, you know, they all had their own unique individuality and that's what made them successful. And we don't need to stamp out that individuality. You know, and I think that's what this type of system does.

52. 49:04

    Yeah, one of the things that I'll say as well is in our study of going through this manual of Jack Howes and putting out his 100th birthday episode, I came across so many groups and posts about Jack Howes

    and about the, there's one group out there, I sure do miss my pastor, Jack Howes. And I'm thinking,

    this is an assembly line that is broken people that don't know how to fix anything because the person that they put up as their God, Jack Howes, is gone and they can't go to him and ask him for advice anymore.

    I want our people, and I want our young people and any people to be so in love with Christ that if I'm not there, they still have someone to go to. They've got a community of people around them that are helping them, that are encouraging them.

    That's why so often Paul said, encourage one another,

53. 50:01

    lift each other up, be there for them. I'm not always going to be here, but the people that are around you will be. And I think that's the model that Paul gave us was build people up, give them their freedom,

    allow them to work out their, Paul says it, work out your own salvation, work through these things so that when the devil comes, when these trials come against you, you're able to walk through life firmly footed on Christ. This last week, multiple things happened. A 10-year-old friend of,

    nephew of a girl I went to high school with, he was on an ATV accident, and their family devastated.

    He was in the ICU, severed his spinal cord. He eventually passed away at 10 years old. And the overwhelming love

    that I'm seeing from this family of, you know, we don't understand what's going on, but we're just trusting Christ.

54. 51:01

    We're living through this grief, but we know Christ is with us.

    It's so encouraging for me because this is someone that I went to high school with. This is someone that I went to, we didn't go to the same church, but we did a lot of the same stuff together. But they're so reliant on Christ during this time.

    Now, I'm sure they've got a good church they're going to, the church families rallying behind them as well. But when you're firmly founded on Christ,

    these instances will come up and you'll be able to say, Christ is my only hope in life and death. And I'm going to live faithfully for him.

    I'm going to trust him no matter what happens. I'm going to say, God, this is your will. And I don't know why, but I'm going to trust in you. Amen, brother. That's good stuff.

55. 51:48

    Good stuff. Absolutely. Well, hey, thanks for tuning in today. Hope you enjoyed this series. Let us know. Give us a like rating review. Give us a comment.

    Shoot us an email. Fill out that form on the website if you want to have any questions for us. And we'll be loved to interact back and forth with you. But until next time, to God be the glory. Great things he has done. Found my new name. Found that good grace.

    Found that healing. And the tears fell down my face. When I found my beginning. That has no ending. Found that second chance. Found my best friend. Found my forgiveness. Found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. Found my freedom in you.

    Thanks for listening to the 4-Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed the content of the podcast, please do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing the podcast on whatever podcast platform you listen to.

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    Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control

    Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control

    Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control

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    Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control

    Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Control Thank you.

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