Ideas Have Consequences
Everything that we see around us is the product of ideas, of ideologies, of worldviews. That's where everything starts. Worldviews are not all the same, and the differences matter a lot. How do you judge a tree? By its fruits. How do you judge a worldview? By its physical, tangible, observable fruit. The things it produces. Ideas that are noble and true produce beauty, abundance, and human flourishing. Poisonous ideas produce ugliness. They destroy and dehumanize. It really is that simple. Welcome to Ideas Have Consequences, the podcast of Disciple Nations Alliance, where we prepare followers of Christ to better understand the true ideas that lead to human flourishing while fighting against poisonous ideas that destroy nations. Join us, and prepare your minds for action!
Ideas Have Consequences
Kids Who Own Their Faith for Life | Dr. Josh Mulvihill
More than 60% of children who grow up in church will walk away from it in their young adult years, according to Barna. Why is this happening—and what can be done to reverse the trend? Dr. Josh Mulvihill, Executive Director of Church and Family Ministry at RenewaNation, joins us to unpack the root of the crisis: a breakdown in biblical discipleship. He shares a compelling vision for how families, churches, and schools can work together to raise children with resilient, gospel-centered worldviews—and why it starts with parents and grandparents reclaiming their God-given role’s as the primary disciplers.
Main Topics:
- The Discipleship Disconnect – Why many Christian parents now believe it’s the church’s job to disciple their kids
- The Three-Stranded Cord – How family, church, and education can align to build a strong biblical foundation
- The Power of Grandparents – Why grandparents are overlooking their vital biblical role in passing down faith to future generations
Raising gospel-centered families isn’t about perfection—it’s about faithfulness, and the courage to make your home the frontlines of spiritual formation.
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- Why Social Justice is Not Biblical Justice
There's a lot of really solid young Christian people coming up. That gives me great hope and I'm really excited to see how God would use them. And you know, sometimes it's not what we do as individuals, it's who we raise that makes the greatest impact in this world for Christ, and so I'm so excited to see our kids and grandkids. What God does through them, and I hope it's way more than anything that all of us did together. Wouldn't that be great?
Luke Allen:Hi friends, welcome to Ideas have Consequences. The podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. Here on this show, we examine how our mission as Christians is to not only spread the gospel to Ideas have Consequences. The podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. Here on this show, we examine how our mission as Christians is to not only spread the gospel around the world, to all the nations, but our mission also includes to be the hands and feet of God, to transform the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected this second part of her mission and today most Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ-honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.
Scott Allen:Well, welcome again everyone to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. I'm Scott Allen, I'm the president of the DNA and joined today by my beloved co-workers, and one of whom is my son, luke. Hi, luke Great.
Luke Allen:Good to be here.
Scott Allen:Hey, and also by Dwight Vogt. Dwight, good to see you Hi.
Dwight Vogt:Scott.
Scott Allen:Yeah, great to see you, and today I'm really excited to welcome to the podcast Josh Mulville. Josh is a friend, josh, I'll call you a friend. We connected here a couple of years ago I think it was around the book why Social Justice is Not Biblical Justice, so that came out in about 2020, and Josh is very like-minded as a leader, a ministry leader, in an organization that also does a lot of biblical worldview training and equipping, and so we connected and really I've enjoyed and been blessed by the connection since. Josh, it's great to have you with us.
Josh Mulvihill:Yeah, it is great to be here and I'm really grateful for the book you wrote why Social Justice is Not Biblical Justice, and if you are listening and you haven't read it, I highly commend it. Everywhere we go and speak, we bring that book and I have the joy of serving on the board of Awana and had all of the board of Awana read it, and Scott was gracious enough to join us for about a half an hour and it was really helpful because it just it put a flag in the ground about where we're gonna stand on certain topics that organizations often don't have enough clarity about and it takes them down paths that they don't intend to go or maybe they do. But it was just super helpful for for Juana and for the different organizations that I have a the joy of being part of. So thank you for that book and for the different organizations that I have the joy of being part of. So thank you for that book and I can't recommend it highly enough.
Scott Allen:Oh thanks, josh. I've been so blessed by your encouragement and the way that you're using it. Just being a part of that board meeting with Awana leaders was a real honor. You know it's such a powerful ministry. Let me just introduce you a little bit more, josh, and feel free to add to what I'm going to share here, but just so our listeners know a little bit about who you are.
Scott Allen:Josh has earned his PhD in family ministry from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also the author of several books, including Grand Parenting and Preparing your Children for Marriage. He's a frequent speaker at conferences, a popular radio guest on programs such as Moody Radio, family Life Today, the Hugh Hewitt Show and the Christian Worldview. He's a pastor. He's been a pastor for nearly 20 years and presently he's the executive director of church and family ministry at a wonderful sister organization called Renew a Nation, and we have just really high regard for the ministry of Renew a Nation, where he works to equip parents and grandparents to disciple their families. He also consults with church leaders to help them design biblically-based, christ-centered family ministries that focus on a biblical worldview. Josh, you are joining us today from Minnesota, is that correct?
Josh Mulvihill:Yeah, that's correct. It's like 45 here. I'm still in a sweater. It's just nuts this time of year.
Scott Allen:Wow, okay, well, luke and I are up in Oregon and it's a little warmer than that here, so I'm glad we can cast off our sweaters at least for the day. So, anyways, well, josh, thanks for joining us and thanks for your ministry as well. I actually what stood out to me as I was reading your bio there was the title of the book Grand Parenting. I thought I've got to get that book. I'm two years in, I know.
Josh Mulvihill:I'm sure I would actually love to hear your thoughts on that. How many grandkids are represented on the call today between Scott and Dwight?
Scott Allen:Dwight, you start, I've got three. Well, I've got two in the oven and one one in Nashville, so yeah, and uh, yeah, luke and Sabrina, they have two kids uh, wonderful young kids and my son, isaac has one, so we have three. And then my daughter Kayla is pregnant um, her first. And yeah, so that's where we're at. So I'm on the learning curve of grandparenting right now.
Josh Mulvihill:Very exciting.
Scott Allen:Yeah, it is exciting. It's really exciting, Josh. I'd love to hear more of your backstory and tell us a little bit about how you ended up with such a clear focus on family discipleship, helping kids, parents, build biblical worldview. Just share a little bit of your backstory.
Josh Mulvihill:So as I started as a young pastor, wanting to be the best shepherd I could for families I met, decided to meet with every family at our church. I was at a church of about seven, 800 and every family that had children in my ministry I was a student pastor at this church and I think it equated to about 40 or 50 families. So my goal was to meet with every family during a 12 month calendar period, like one a week, sit down for lunch, get to know the family. And I just asked two what I thought were very simple questions. One was just to introduce their family to me as a new pastor. You know who are. You. Give me the intro to your family. What makes you tick? And then the second I asked was what are you doing to disciple your children? Which at the time it ended up becoming kind of an unofficial research project that I didn't intend on. And I, you know I'd go out to lunch with the family the kids would be with. So the parents were kind of stuck that their kids were sitting there. They had to tell the truth because if they didn't, you know, the kids were were kind of stuck that their kids were sitting there. They had to tell the truth because if they didn't, you know the kids were kids would correct them. If they didn't and I was I was really surprised. You know, there were a number of families that were doing a really spectacular job and I was really blessed to hear the intentionality, the consistency, the regularity. You know every family is very different in how they navigated that, but I was also really surprised at the volume of families at our church that there was not a lot of intentionality or consistency and regularity that was happening on the family discipleship front and of course there were a variety of reasons why, as they would share. Course there were a variety of reasons why as they would share.
Josh Mulvihill:But you know, as I, you know, as the weeks wore on and the number of families I met with wore on, you know, it dawned on me that for a very large portion of the children that what they were getting in the classroom with me as a pastor was the majority of what they were getting at all spiritually. Many of them are in public school. So you know, I know there's a variety of educational choices, probably from listeners on this podcast, and so you know what I can at least say is we know that kids aren't getting a biblical worldview if they're in the public school world and in their home, if they weren't being consistently discipled, that left the church. And I don't know if you know the statistics on the percentage of kids that go to church. It tends to be a couple times a week is the typical ebbs and flows based on the size of the church. Smaller churches tend to be a little higher than your larger churches, but anyways it like this weight landed on my shoulders on two fronts. One, I needed to be really, really intentional that I didn't waste a single hour with these young people, a single hour with these young people. But two, that we had to make sure these parents that needed whatever they needed to become active on the discipleship front in their homes. We needed to give that to them. And so that was kind of the starting place for me.
Josh Mulvihill:The worldview component, the importance of that man, if kids don't have that, their foundation is just, is not good. And you know the statistics on kids most kids develop their worldview by around the age of 13. This is a George Barna statistic that he you know. He says statistically what a person believes at the age of 13, which is about eighth grade is generally what they believe when they're an adult. Of course there's exceptions to everything, but that you know, that means that that child, the grade school, that the middle school age range, becomes really critical. That we're teaching God's truth and you know we want that to come through, at least at Renew Nation. We believe that that's best happening through the family, first the church and then through education, and when those three areas are aligned.
Josh Mulvihill:Teaching God's truth. That's a three-stranded cord that's really hard to break in a child's life and oftentimes when you can get two out of the three really strong, that gives young people a good fighting chance. But when you get multiple that are not teaching God's truth, that's a big hill for a lot of those kids to climb. It's just a math equation. You've got a lot going into their heads and their hearts that they have to circumvent and it's a lot to work through. When you're a young person in a formative stage to you know to try to find truth from error. And so you know the family, though, if that's really solid and it teaches God's truth, you know that's kind of the core to it all. At least you know scripturally by God's design. So that's been my heartbeat, both parents and grandparents critical that they're teaching God's truth. And I've, you know, I've really given my life to that. I'm on the doorstep of 50. And it's been really since my whole life has been towards that end.
Scott Allen:Wow, josh, it's really great that you're on right now, because we just had George Barna on the podcast.
Scott Allen:Was it about. Was it a week and a half ago, luke? I'm trying to remember? It was really recent and you know we were talking about his recent research and you know he goes into depth on how few American Christians have a biblical worldview. You know, and he defines, you know what that means, and we talked about that. And then we got into what are the most strategic things that we can do to help turn this around.
Scott Allen:It's kind of a crisis and he said church is really important. He mentioned family, but he said the most strategic role in a church is the children's ministry area. And I was taken by that. And it wasn't that they, the church, would impart kind of biblical truth, biblical worldview, discipleship exclusively, but primarily they need to have a vision to equip the parents, just to disciple their own kids and to teach them things like you are the primary discipler of your kids, because for some reason that message isn't getting across very well and parents think, oh, I'll bring my kids to church, they'll disciple them, and very often the church doesn't have much of a vision to do that. And so I love your three-stranded cord idea a lot. I think that's very powerful. But anyways, it's great that you're focused on this. I was really taken by what George Barna was sharing with us about the strategic nature of that. Why is it you think we, whether it's the family or the church I think there's just a neglect here. Why do you think that's the case?
Josh Mulvihill:Well, I think the church has had really good intentions with children and youth ministry. Church has had really good intentions with children and youth ministry and historically, you know, for hundreds of years it has been a blessing to many young people. But I think the unintended consequence of the age-based ministry approach is that parents get the message pretty quick that the church is the primary disciple maker of young people. And so it's really interesting. I'm on the board of Awana and we do quite a few research studies. One of our recent ones just literally in the last year or two we asked pastors and parents who they believe is the primary disciple maker of young people and previously almost all the studies you see it's like nearly unanimous it's parents' job and that was the case for pastors. When they answered this study was 95% said it's the parents' job. This is the first study I've ever seen that it came back different for parents 49% of parents said it's the church's job. And you look at that and you go why are parents saying that now? And my interpretation of that is that I think the perception of parents is finally coming into alignment with the decades long function of the church. So the church has done, has set aside. I mean, just think about the amount of staffing, money and time set aside for children's and youth ministry. I mean, there are literally hundreds of thousands of full-time paid individuals in this arena, in the church, today. That is unprecedented in the history of christianity and uh and and that speaks pretty strongly, especially when parents are getting the message. We have five kids, uh, we have ones in college, our oldest, but we have multiple in high school and middle school and we get, you know, emails every single week from our church about, you know, this is what we're doing this week, which I appreciate, the communication. But all the things are being taught, all the events to go to, the Wednesday night, the Sunday morning, the retreats, the VBSs, great stuff, not minimizing that. But when you, you know, year after year, week after week, month after month, that starts to communicate pretty strongly to parents about something.
Josh Mulvihill:And I think parents are starting to say well, I, you know, I don't know the answer to this big doctrinal question. Or, you know, go ask your youth pastor. That's not uncommon and I would actually get that from time to time from parents who would request that I had a conversation with their child. I remember distinctly a parent came up to me and said my daughter has some questions about the Muslim religion. I'm not really comfortable in having that conversation with her. Would you have that conversation? And that you know that's just one example.
Josh Mulvihill:So parents need to be reminded regularly that you know God's good design is for them to disciple their children and the church is, the church is a support. It is, you know, it's a supplement, and when we get that backwards, when we get things out of alignment with God's design, you know we don't get good results. And so I would compare it to like a steak dinner and vitamins. The church is like a with age-based ministry. The church is like a vitamin in the sense that it's good, it's helpful, it's healthy. But if we only lived on vitamins and didn't have the regular ongoing meal of family discipleship, you know we would recognize pretty quick there would get to be an unhealthy kind of situation. And so that's a big, you know that's a big deal.
Josh Mulvihill:I would also say corporate worship. It's really critical that our kids are in corporate worship and we've lost the vision for that and created essentially a church within a church, these age-based ministries that function as their own worship areas. I don't need to do a biblical theology on intergenerational corporate worship today. But when you look cover to cover, through the Bible all the generations meet and worship together. It's Old and New Testament, joshua 835, even Old Testament you can look at. You know, all of us know the passage of children obey your parents and the Lord and that was spoken directly to children, meaning they had to be in the worship service to hear that and it's just. It's as unhealthy as having the Thanksgiving dinner table where we have the kids table and the parents table and you know, once in a while that's fine. But if we did that every single meal with our children, you know, if your parents listening and your children and we had the kids table and the parents table for every dinner, we would recognize pretty quick that the family dynamic and the health of our family would be impacted by that with essentially two different meals.
Josh Mulvihill:Well, we've done that with corporate worship on Sundays at many churches we have an adult meal and a kid's meal and then we do that year after year after year and that begins to impact our children. So it doesn't mean we get rid of the age-based ministry. It means that it finds its place as a support structure, not as the replacement for, and so like with our family. You know, as a pastor, with our church, we would tell our congregation. And so like with our family, you know, as a pastor, with our church, we would tell our congregation. We want your family to worship one and serve, or in a classroom, two. So we hope, you know, we hope you come two hours and then it's not an either or it's a both, and Because there is, there's value in both but. But we just need to make sure that we want to operate in alignment with God's word, and he has created the family and corporate worship.
Josh Mulvihill:So we would say, with our families, our goal is every family worshiping together. It has two prongs, meaning we want you to do family worship at home, saturate your kids with God's word. That's the program we're after, if you want to call it that. And at church, the program we're after for families is corporate worship. And if we can get you know, we can get families worshiping corporately in the church and worshiping as a family at home. You know, reading God's word, praying, singing praises, that's a really good foundation for God's truth to happen on the family and the church side just as a regular. It just creates the weekly habits and rhythms for good things to happen. They're not in and of itself. They can become pharisaical if the heart's not there but those are getting into the practicalities of what does it actually look like and how does this function well, to be helpful for families and churches.
Luke Allen:Hey friends, a couple quick announcements for you. We have a huge opportunity right now here at the Disciple Nations Alliance. An extremely generous partner is offering a matching gift right now. Here at the Disciple Nations Alliance, an extremely generous partner is offering a matching gift right now to the DNA. So up until June 10th they're going to offer a dollar for dollar matching gift up to $50,000 for every gift that comes into the Disciple Nations Alliance. That means your support for this podcast or all of our biblical worldview resources that we offer around the world could go twice as far to equipping the global church right now. If you'd like to participate in this matching opportunity, just head over to disciplenationsorg and click the blue donate button right there on the homepage, or you can tap the link in the show notes to learn more. Again, if you give by June 10th, your gift will be doubled. Thank you so much for your support.
Luke Allen:And one more thing before we hop back into the discussion. I also wanted to recommend the powerful resource, which is the book why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice that Dr Mulville mentioned at the beginning of the episode. This book is by my dad, scott Allen, and yes, you might think I'm biased, but I will say I'm probably his harshest critic. So hear me out.
Luke Allen:If you've been wrestling with this term, social justice or any of its similar counterparts whether that's reproductive justice or environmental justice and you've been hearing these discussions in your workplace or at your children's schools, or even in your church, and you're wondering how all of this lines up with scripture, then this book is a must read. In it you'll learn the difference between today's popular ideology of social justice and the real biblical definition of justice in a clear, not too academic, but extremely biblical manner. And if you don't want to take my word for it, then just head over to Amazon and you can find the book there. And you can read the over 1,000 Amazon reviews for the book, which are mostly positive. Again, the book's called why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice by Scott Allen. To grab your copy today, you can just again head over to Amazon or wherever you get your books, or just tap the link in the show notes.
Scott Allen:Josh, I'm thinking of parents maybe right now who, if you said you're the primary discipler of your children, you should do things like home worship, I mean they would be intimidated. You know, and I know in my own case I'm also the father of five kids and yet, you know, when I grew up, went to the public school nominal Christian family loved my parents but we didn't have home worship. I never saw it practiced, you know. And so somebody says, hey, you should do home worship. I remember when I first heard that I was like it's very intimidating and I'm imagining there's still a lot of parents, maybe even listening to this podcast, who are going. I don't know how to do that. What are some great kind of practical first steps that you could suggest, josh? Practical first steps that?
Josh Mulvihill:you could suggest Josh. Well, interestingly enough, Deuteronomy 6, it starts with love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and then it moves to talk about these things and impress them on your children. So the actual first place to start for us as parents is we want our heart affection to be for the Lord and of course that's impossible for any of us to do perfectly. That's why we need Christ. But our kids will see really quickly what is our kind of, what is, what are we living our life for and what do we love most in life? It's actually a really kind of convicting question. If we ever ask your kids, what do you think I love the most in this life? And you know all of us would hope, I think we would hope that they'd say, say, Christ or the Lord. But many times I think as parents, the love of the Lord it may end up not coming through quite as we had hoped or there may end up actually being a divided heart that some parents have. That we truly do have a different life love that we are essentially pursuing and our kids see that pretty quick. They know if mom and dad are truly, truly in love with the Lord and pursuing Him and our kids tend to, I think, tend to gravitate towards the things that we're passionate about as parents, and so we could just think about our own parents and the things that we love in life, even like hobbies and stuff. You know, I'm from Minnesota. I grew up a Vikings fan and I love the Vikings. Even though they never, ever win at all, Um, I'm still a Vikings fan, Um, and they even the hot. You know the hobbies we have with outdoors and hunting and fishing and gardening. Those are things that I, uh, had passed down to me from parents and grandparents. Um, and the love of the Lord has been passed down to me by my parents, and so Lord has been passed down to me by my parents. And so I think that's where it starts. It really isn't even like do all these things, it is a, it's a heart, it's a heart affection and, interestingly enough, I think, when we, when there's something we really love, it's just it, it, it's catchy. Other people see passion and they and they see purpose and they say, you know what? This isn't something they're like trying to, it's just who they are, and that that tends to just bleed off. So that would be the first thing is. It's not actually anything we need to necessarily do in the sense of with our kids. It's, you know, I guess it's more of a horizontal thing. First is how are we doing with the Lord? And then it's the or. That's the vertical, I guess, then it's the horizontal with our kids. If we love God, the natural tendency is, well, we want to help our kids love God and so it's going to just naturally, we're going to want to talk about him, we're going to want to teach about it. And for those that feel like, oh man, I don't really know what to do, you know, with our congregation I used to do like a one hour training thing for family worship, and it was really to demystify family worship.
Josh Mulvihill:I'd set my kids up their backs, would be facing everybody and we would essentially just go through family worship. It would be five or ten minutes really short, just demystify it. I wanted everybody to feel like, well, that's it, that's all you do. Yeah, there's not a lot to it. What we do with our kids.
Josh Mulvihill:When they were younger, we would read at the end of kids when they were younger, we would read um at the end of dinner when they're still eating, and I'm kind of you know I I just feel like having food, busy hands and busy mouths is helpful for younger kids, um, and we would read um short, couple, couple verses and we had a couple discussion questions. I I used two books by Marty Machowski called the Long Story Short and the Old Story New, and it literally was just a Bible reading plan and so I'd read one little chunk. We'd put a bookmark in it next time we read. So we aimed for like three or four times a week and sometimes we hit it, sometimes we didn't. For like three or four times a week and sometimes we hit it, sometimes we didn't, and we would just kind of slowly work through and had conversations. I found the discussion questions that he wrote on each of the little chunks real helpful, but that was it, and sometimes you know it just. It mostly was mundane, but it it just. You know God's word promises to never return void, and so just the practice of reading, discussing was a huge blessing.
Josh Mulvihill:And as our kids got older, I think we often talk about this with like preschool, grade school age kids and that's not what we've necessarily done. As our kids have moved into the teen, young adult years Now we've actually done more of a Bible study method where my kids study. We do a chapter of the Bible each. We study it on our own and then we come together on a Wednesday night every other week so twice a month and we talk through the chapter. We do this with a group of other fathers and sons and so we'll work through a book or two of the Bible in a school year with that method and we get to have some pretty good in-depth conversations doing that. We've. You know, we strategically choose books of the Bible that we think are helpful for our kids to hear and you know, I think if it's new for a family it's just like anything and like learning any new skill. There's always a learning curve and kids that are. You know, if it's different for our family than anything we've ever done, there's the, there's the period of like. All right, this is weird and awkward and kids might roll their eyes and say they don't like it, but you just got to fight through that.
Josh Mulvihill:Most kids I've found are receptive. In fact, I remember one mom one Sunday morning from our church. She was across the commons area in our church and she was so excited because we had just talked about doing family worship at church. And the next Sunday she was holding her phone out and she was yelling Pastor Josh, Pastor, doing family worship at church. And the next Sunday she was holding her phone out and she was yelling Pastor Josh, Pastor, Josh, look at this. And she ran over to me and showed me a picture of her family, her four children. They're all older, like teenage aged. There's a big bowl of popcorn on the ottoman. And she said this is the first time we've read the Bible as a family. She was a single mom and she goes in it and it went great. I mean, it was, it wasn't long.
Josh Mulvihill:And so I would just say commit to you know, commit to something and start, and that's the hardest thing. Gk Chesterton said if something's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly. And this is one of those things. Like, don't worry about perfection, Don't worry about length, Just like get a couple under your belt, Commit to doing it, for, you know, be willing to do it for six weeks or 12 weeks, and even if it kind of takes a little bit to get know, once the pattern is there, you don't pick a certain number of times, we don't need to get legalistic about it. So pick something that works for you. A time of the day, whatever Short, is good, especially at first, and I think God will bless that, that's great.
Josh Mulvihill:Josh, josh, I've got a comment and a question.
Dwight Vogt:First of all, you're a lot of memories with me because I grew up in a Christian home. My father was a pastor and we had family worship probably every morning and sometimes in the afternoon. But raising my own kids it felt like more of a challenge. But going back to my parents, you said kids know the heart of your parent and they know their motivation and what's their passion. And I've often thought you know if, if I was to walk away from my parents' faith, I might be able to walk away from some doctrinal statement, but I could never walk away from their passion.
Dwight Vogt:I I I'm sure that with people, there was no way I could deny what they actually felt and believed and what motivated their lives and that was so powerful. So I I hear you when you say that that kids can read us and and somehow we have to reflect that. Um, and then you know, in our own experience, we just, uh, yeah, we, we tried, we adapted as they grew, but it was always, it was a challenge, but it was always good to to interact with our kids around questions of the Bible and talking about what they'd heard here or there or church or in school and whatnot. You mentioned grandparents, josh, and you've been talking about family altar and our family worship. What about grandparents? What's your word for them? And our family worship? What about grandparents? What's your word for them?
Josh Mulvihill:So God designed grandparents with a really important role to play. If you want to summarize what a grandparent's role is in Scripture, I summarize it with the word of discipleship. You know, technically I'd say passing on a heritage of faith to the next generation, if you want to use scripture language. But most Christian grandparents my research found it was about three out of four got closer to adopting the world's idea of what the role of a grandparent is than the Bible, and so that would be things like living an independent life from children and grandchildren. Of course children and grandchildren are loved and very important to grandparents, but the way in which lives live, the number of times the intersection happens there, is limited. A lot of Christian grandparents think. You know I don't want to be a burden, I don't want to overstep my bounds. When the interactions happen they can be really positive and worthwhile. But essentially the culture we live in says that grandparents are to live basically separate lives from children and grandchildren and that of course makes it really hard for a Christian grandparent to have any kind of significant influence, godly influence, in the life of grandchildren when you're living at a kind of a distant relationship. The second one is this idea of to spoil your grandkids, to fill them up with sugar, send them home where the real work of spiritual formation is done. You guys have heard that, I'm sure all over the place, and Christian grandparents are smart enough to know. Ok, this isn't. You know, I'm not going to fully make this my purpose, but it becomes heavy in the sense that grandparenting largely becomes about fun and support and friendship for a high percentage of Christian grandparents. And so of course having fun with grandkids is not wrong. It just becomes problematic when it is the end totality of a grandparent's engagement with grandchildren. So it's very purpose-giving for a lot of Christian grandparents to learn that the Bible has a lot to say about God's role for grandparents.
Josh Mulvihill:Maybe the most well, the most succinct passages is Deuteronomy 4.9, which says teach these things to your children and your children's children. And there's all kinds of terminology. The Bible doesn't talk about grandparenting using that term very often. It's used a couple times. But it uses the terms, and these would be great for you to write down and go look up in a concordance. If you're a grandparent, do a little Bible study on your own Terms, like children's children, son's son, father's father, fathers. And when you start looking up terms like that and start to see, wow, the Bible actually has a pretty comprehensive, pretty robust role for grandparents.
Josh Mulvihill:I've seen for a decade now the light bulbs go on in grandparents' eyes as they say, wow, this is really wonderful, I have a role, I have purpose, and so my encouragement you know, our culture really encourages grandparents that really not grandparents per se, but kind of the retirement age, the, this idea of living for self and this do nothing ism creed and I just want to encourage grandparents not to buy into that. Um, situation is unique and we could talk about a million different situations here, but just from the 30,000-foot view, god has given Christian grandparents a role. So if you're a Christian grandparent, congratulations. Your research shows you're the second most potential, most important influence in a child's life. If you are a parent that has kids, that would be somebody else's grandkids, your parents' grandkids. God has given your parents a role with your kids.
Josh Mulvihill:Of course you're the primary steward of those children, but if they're godly grandparents and I think it is then pleasing to open the gate, the gatekeeper, and give the opportunity to engage with grandchildren we could share lots. I could share lots of ideas, kind of on the practical side, but you know that's just the quick answer to that there's like 30 million Christian grandparents in the United States. Just think about that for a moment. If 30 million Christian grandparents captured a biblical vision to invest in their grandchildren, oh my, what an impact could be had in this country as Christian grandparents begin to engage and there are some. You know Christian grandparents are some of the most mature Christians that are present in most churches and are you're needed today. So Christian grandparents matter. I hope that comes through loud and clear. I hear you.
Josh Mulvihill:I hear you.
Scott Allen:You're needed, dwight. You've got a purpose. Now, there you go. That's great, josh, and I would just you know, like you said, there's a lot of practical things to be said for that, but I know for me, with my parents and other people who were ahead of me, their prayers mattered a lot, and that's something that.
Scott Allen:I'm trying to really develop a heart for with my grandkids. It's just kind of daily prayer for them. So I'm sure you would agree, josh, tell us a little bit about Renew a Nation, the ministry you're working for and some of the—well, what is it doing? You know it's work and some of the resources that are available for people through Renew a Nation.
Josh Mulvihill:Yeah, we have three, four primary arms of our ministry. We have a Christian education focus. So we take, we launch Christian schools. So if you want to start a Christian school anywhere, we have a whole team that helps with that. We're launching right now all over the country. We revitalize Christian schools, so Christian schools that are struggling in some way. We have a three-year process that we work with the leadership, the board, top to bottom, and help a school get on the path to being a distinctly Christian school to teach God's truth in all subject matters.
Scott Allen:Let me just pause you there, josh, because I just think that's so important. I don't want to just kind of run over that. I think I've seen this now. My daughter, I have daughters that are in education. They're teachers in Christian schools, and so we've had experiences with that and there's a problem there right now because of the you know, the I don't know.
Scott Allen:We at the DNA we call it a sacred-secular divide. A lot of churches that start schools, the school itself or the whole process of education kind of falls on the other side of the sacred-secular line. And so the idea is, when you do a school, you're basically teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, with prayer at the beginning, but there's not a sense of any kind of—there's not this. How does the Bible or a biblical worldview shape the way that you begin to think about teaching, the way you think about the students and the subject? It's kind of just whatever the public school is teaching, plus prayer at the beginning of it, and I've seen that as a huge problem. And so I just want to underscore that, because I know what you guys are doing is quite different. You're trying to say, no, we've got to set up distinctly Christian schools. That's got to run through every subject. So talk a little bit about that, josh.
Josh Mulvihill:Yeah, absolutely A hundred percent Amen to what you just said. So a lot of teachers come out of the public school world, christian teachers, and so don't know how to teach a subject matter from a biblical foundation, and you know. So. What is science? You know science is simply understanding God's world, and this you know. This is why passages in the Bible like Proverbs 1, 7 says, you know, knowledge is only possible when it begins with the fear of God. And so we literally can't understand God's world without understanding God himself. And so we're, you know we will help people think about and teach science, history, math, literature, you know, all from the foundation of God's word integrated into everything that is taught, and that's very transformational for a lot of schools. We find about 50 percent of Christian schools are the kinds of schools you just described, where chapel and Bible class and prayer, a Christian environment, those things are kind of separate from all the other stuff.
Scott Allen:That's the Christian part of it, right?
Josh Mulvihill:yeah, yeah that's right, and they would have the same curriculum as a public school down the road, and the same methodology. You know too. Same methodology, yeah.
Scott Allen:And I think that if you really do start from the basic premises of the Bible and biblical worldview principles, you end up with a different methodology. You know not only a different curriculum, a different emphasis, but a whole different approach, don't you Josh? Yeah, you know not only a different curriculum, a different emphasis, but a whole different approach, don't you Josh?
Josh Mulvihill:Yeah, yes, that is absolutely correct, yep, and we offer training for Christian teachers throughout the year, different capacities, and you can find all that stuff on the website. Our church and family is another arm, so we train pastors to—I find there's a lot of theological famine in church leaders, especially in the children and youth ministry world. A lot come up through their church as parents that end up leading their ministries and have the greatest intentions in their heart but haven't been trained as a pastor or in scripture theology and so doing the best I can, but oftentimes Barna would say only 13%. A children's pastors conference every year, and last year we had about 500 people in attendance and Barna spoke at it and he I was waiting to see is he going to actually say this to the 500 children's pastors that were there? And yes, he did, and they gave him a standing ovation. But I thought, oh, that is, that is great.
Josh Mulvihill:You know I'll give you an example theologically, what I mean, most don't have great clarity, what we even mean by child discipleship or family ministry. If I ask a group of pastors, raise your hand. If you have ever, if you have a theology of the family. Very few hands ever go up in a room. Most churches, most pastors, will have a theology of missions or preaching, a theology of church. But you can't implement ambiguity and there's a lot of ambiguity with churches on what does it mean to disciple a young person? Whose job is it? How do you distinguish the difference between what a parent does and what a pastor does? There's just a lot of gray for most church leaders.
Josh Mulvihill:So we have a family ministry academy where it's a nine-month-long program that we train pastors both theologically and then practically. How do you actually do this in the church with children and youth and families? We're creating a children's ministry curriculum that is very strong biblical worldview, apologetic, systematic theology with a family focus, family connection, family worship component to it. Then we do a lot with the family discipleship arena just a ton of resources that we've written for parents and grandparents. You've gotten a taste of the grandparent one. We've got a lot in that arena. And then we have a camp Manderley Christian Camp, right outside of Chattanooga, tennessee, 1,200 acres and a big camp. We host lots of stuff there. So if you're in the Tennessee area and want to host a group, I think there's 300 beds, it's almost brand new. It's gorgeous on a little mountain.
Josh Mulvihill:Huh, lookout Mountain probably right, it is right, outside of Pikesville, close to Chattanooga. Yeah, gotcha, all right.
Scott Allen:So how can people find these resources, Josh? What's the best way?
Josh Mulvihill:RenewNationorg will take you to everything If you are in the church world. If you type in churchrenewanationorg, that will bring you to all kinds of resources for pastors.
Scott Allen:Well, I just highly encourage our listeners to do that, to just avail yourself of this really important ministry to both parents and also to Christian educators and to pastors, just centering around the discipleship of our children. This is just such a vital area. So, Josh, thanks for all that you're doing with those great resources. Dwight and Luke, I wanted to go in a little bit different direction, but before I do, I didn't want to cut off any thoughts you might have had in this area here.
Luke Allen:Yeah, I had one quick thought. You were saying that most children's pastors don't have a theology of the family. Give us a little anecdote of how you develop a theology of the family, Josh. I'm curious.
Josh Mulvihill:So we actually, for the Family Ministry Academy, one of the activities they need to do, going through that they have to write a one-page theology and so they open up the Bible and summarize in bullet points. You know you could obviously there's entire books that have been filled with this, so you could do way more than a page but we need the basics down, a framework, and so that's one way that we have done that. If you want an example of that, I have a book called Family Ministry and I have an entire chapter in there. That's kind of a quick flyover of a theology of the family and that is about as important as it gets when you are ministering to children and youth. If you don't have, if a pastor doesn't have clarity there, there's what maybe you've heard the term, you know jurisdictions.
Josh Mulvihill:God created three jurisdictions. He created the family, the church and the government. And what ends up happening? If we don't have clarity around what each individual does in their jurisdictions, we get jurisdictional violations and the church is guilty of this, unintended sometimes where they end up moving into the family discipleship jurisdiction that God has given to parents, because there's not clarity on what the role of a pastor is, what the role of a parent is what the role of a grandparent is. They are very different, distinct. They all work towards the evangelism and discipleship of the next generation, but in a very different way and just like with any organization, you know, we have different roles in an organization and when you don't have clarity with your job description, all kinds of issues can happen. And this is essentially God's job description and we need clarity on what that is. And the same, you know, with jurisdictions, that could be a whole separate conversation.
Josh Mulvihill:We talked about education. There is no fourth jurisdiction. We treat education as if it's its own category, its own jurisdiction that fits into one of those three church, family or government. And right now public education has taken that jurisdiction. You know, right now public education has taken that jurisdiction and we've largely given it to the government. But you know scripturally the role of education. God doesn't give that to the government, he gives that squarely with parents. It doesn't mean that every family needs to be homeschooling, but it does mean that every parent is ultimately accountable and needs to understand that even if their child is in a traditional school setting, they have a role to play in being very present and active and engaged because ultimately, they are the educator at the end of the day and they're just getting help. So, anyways, the jurisdiction conversation becomes real critical in a theology of the family to know what does that actually look like from a job description standpoint scripturally, and we need clarity there.
Scott Allen:Well, it's such an important word on those kind of lines of you know, these are God-given kind of silos of authority, if you will, you know, and I just think it's so important for Christians to understand that, and especially for Christian parents, because when you don't like you said, others will come right in and kind of take over your jurisdiction gladly and you know we've seen that, like you say, unintentionally, even with the church, you know you just send your kids to us, we'll disciple your kids and parents are like, good, I don't want to do that.
Scott Allen:Well, you know that's wrong. The church should be saying to the parent that's your primary job. Let me equip you on how you can do that. Not that we can't help or support it, but this is your primary job. And discipleship and education biblically go hand in hand. They're really not hardly that different. And so, like you say, the government comes in. If we don't have a vision for what it means to be a biblical family, the government comes right in and says we'll take care of that for you and you know parents again very glad to say great, I can't wait to get my parents off to the school or my kids off to the school.
Scott Allen:So I think that's such a vital vital, you know thing that you just said, josh. I just really want to underscore it. Let me talk a little bit about, as we kind of I know we're running out of time, josh, but you know you've been one of the biggest fans of why social justice is not biblical justice. Tell us a little bit about that. What drew you to the book and continues to kind of draw you to use that book. Where have you found that most helpful? What was it? Was it just a need that you saw out there that, gosh, a lot of Christians are going for this kind of woke social justice agenda, or what was it?
Josh Mulvihill:Yeah, I think a lot of Christians don't know what justice means scripturally. And so, because that's the case, you know, we hear justice everywhere environmental justice, reproductive justice, social justice and you wonder, is there, is you know, are these legitimate? Well, when you get a moniker in front of a word, you could pretty much say that's usually problematic. Your red flag should go up and your book why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice did a phenomenal job of doing two things. One was laying out the problem and clearly stating the difference between biblical justice and kind of what our world is saying justice is, and I really appreciate that. The second thing that I really appreciate it was there's actually practicality at the very end of your book. There is, you know, a lot of times it's just here's the different, you know, it's just kind of an intellectual component. There was literally a. There was a practical application out of that. You know the.
Josh Mulvihill:Now what side of things is answered really well there, kind of how do we as Christians? The Bible is clear that justice is a good thing and we need to be pursuing justice. So what does that actually mean and look like to do in a godly, biblical way? We want to do that. We want to be about. That should be a big marker for us as Christians. But we want to make sure we're doing that scripturally, and so your book has done that phenomenally well. We you know, as I said earlier, I encourage everybody to read that book. It's just, it's helpful. It will be one of those where you see clearly in a way you did not, and it will help you to hear the erroneous messages. They're all around us all the time, still to this day, and we tend to absorb those as we kind of live in that environment.
Scott Allen:One question as you look at what's happening right now, especially in the United States, in North America, with churches, what gives you hope? Do you see some things changing? Do you see pages getting turned here a little bit?
Josh Mulvihill:Well, we know that the gates of hell will never defeat Christ, so I have great hope. We know how the story ends in Revelation and it's a wonderful ending, you know? I see, I think the first time in a very long time, statistics came out about um the decline of Christianity. The nuns didn't grow.
Scott Allen:Yes, I saw that in a recent Pew study.
Josh Mulvihill:Yeah, that was. That was shocking and surprising. That's. That's very hope-filled. I was very surprised in this last election cycle how many young men, seems like, decided they were not going to pursue a woke agenda and that was surprising to me. That's very hope-filled.
Josh Mulvihill:As men go, often families and churches and organizations go, and you know that's not centered on Christ necessarily but it does suggest that a lot of the direction that our culture was headed, you know people are finally saying I've had enough of that. It doesn't align with reality and the whole transgender stuff, you know, looked like it was going one direction that was not good long-term. And now our culture has kind of looks like God's truth is a secular worldview always fails and I think we're seeing people tasted it and realize this doesn't work in real life some of it, and I'm grateful for that. So a lot gives me excitement. I, you know we've got five kids and some in the kind of the young adult years and so you know my kids have a lot of friends in that age group.
Josh Mulvihill:There's a lot of really solid young Christian people coming up. That gives me great hope and I'm really excited to see how God would use them. And you know, sometimes it's not what we do as individuals. It's who we raise that makes the greatest impact in this world for Christ, and so I'm so excited to see our kids and grandkids, what God does through them, and I hope it's way more than anything that all of us did together. Wouldn't that be great?
Scott Allen:No kidding, dwight Luke. Any final questions or thoughts as we wrap up today?
Dwight Vogt:No, it's been really interesting. Thank you, Josh.
Luke Allen:Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm going to save that quote you just said, josh, I love that it's not so much about what we do, but about the children we raise in the next generation. You said it better than I did, but I'm saving that. I love that. That's such a great vision for my jurisdiction as a father and how can I be as honoring to God in this role as I possibly can. So it's exciting.
Scott Allen:Josh, I read many years ago I read a biography of Jonathan Edwards. You know the famous Puritan preacher from Massachusetts one. You know the famous Puritan preacher from Massachusetts. You know he was a contemporary of our founding fathers, some consider him the greatest theologian America's produced. And it referenced a study that was done not long ago on the descendants of Jonathan Edwards and his wife Sarah. At that point you know now many hundreds of descendants. You know they can trace their line back to him and it looked at what you know what they did and it was kind of phenomenal. How many were missionaries or doctors. One was the vice president of the United States. I mean, so many were just really accomplished and the influence that they had was kind of phenomenal and it did for me anyways. It gave me a huge vision, like for thinking generationally and the impact that you can have generationally. But it starts with, you know, your own children, your grandchildren, and thinking through the ripple, that ripple that God intends, by the way. You know that goes on.
Josh Mulvihill:And so that's what I hear you saying yeah, amen, that's a great study. I love that one. You've seen that one and very inspiring.
Scott Allen:Yeah, yeah, it's very inspiring. Yeah, yeah, I think the guy that did that did another study of somebody that was a contemporary that ended up in prison, a contemporary of Jonathan Edwards and his descendants over many years. It was kind of the opposite direction and it was a little bit sobering. So, anyways, well, josh, thank you so much for being with us today and just for your partnership and ministry, your encouragement and just. We love Renew a Nation and just your vision and the resources you guys are putting out for parents, grandparents, schools. I just really want to encourage all of our listeners to avail themselves of all of the wonderful things that the ministry is putting out. Josh, you were putting out. There's great wisdom here, real practical help. So give us that website one more time, josh.
Josh Mulvihill:Yeah, it's renewanationorg. All one word.
Scott Allen:And let's do it. Let's renew a nation, let's renew all the nations. How about that? So, in the name of Jesus, josh, thanks for being with us today. Dwight Luke, great to be with you. Again and again, once again, to all of our listeners, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance.
Luke Allen:Thank you for listening to this episode with Dr Josh Mulville, as always. To find all of the resources that we mentioned in the discussion and more, just head over to the episode page, which you'll see linked in the show notes. If this is your first time listening to this show, then welcome. We're so glad that you are here.
Luke Allen:Ideas have Consequences, as you heard, is brought to you by the Disciple Nations Alliance, which is a ministry that has worked around the world for the last 28 plus years, training over a million Christians in over 100 nations in the transformative power of a biblical worldview. Our vision here at the Disciple Nations Alliance is to see blessed, thriving nations with key biblical principles and definitions deeply embedded in their foundations, shaping their institutions, their policies and their practices across every area of society. And how we are doing this is by equipping followers of Jesus with a biblical worldview, empowering them to build these thriving cultures, communities and nations. If you'd like to learn more about our ministry, you can find us on Instagram, facebook and YouTube, or on our website, which is disciplenationsorg. That's it for today, guys. Thank you so much for listening to this discussion and we hope that you'll be able to join us again next week here on. Ideas have Consequences. You.
