Rethinking Camp, VBS, and Summer Spiritual Highs

[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome to think deeper podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Jack Wilke, joined by Joe Wilkie Will harab once again. And this week it's summer. There's not a lot going on and so I want to just tell you about focus. Plus, once again, when you're on the drive, you can listen to more podcasts, more sermons, the audio classes. We're continuing to go through the books of Exodus and Leviticus. Now, finding a way to make Leviticus not boring. I think so many people think it's really, really boring. There's some really great stuff in there. We've done revelation and so those are available. And so for your trips and things like that, it's some great resources there. Also the daily Devos going up and all kinds of other content. So check out focus plus Patreon. You can search on it there, you can find it on the Focus Press website. And as always, the deep end, the weekly exclusive for thing, deeper podcast listeners to get in comments and questions. And it's, sometimes it's almost a full second episode. Usually it's 2030 minutes, but sometimes it's 45 minutes to an hour. So a lot of extra content if you're enjoying thing deeper. Having said that, let's go ahead and hand it to will to get us into this week's episode for sure. [00:01:17] Speaker B: So Jack already referenced it. Really, really busy time of year for a lot of people, but specifically for christians, this is a very, very busy time of year for the church calendar. For a lot of congregations, the church calendar just ramps up a ton. From, from May to August. You've got all kind of things going on. You've got graduation ceremonies. A lot of churches do senior trips, I shouldn't say a lot. Several churches do senior trips for their seniors. You've obviously got the quote unquote big events, vbs, church camp for a lot of christian families, multiple church camps, and then just general YouTube events. Again, just so much going on. I worked in the youth ministry, quote unquote field for two years and summer was insane. Summer was absolutely crazy. I know for me, I, for, I think two straight years, I was at some kind of camp for three out of four, from three weeks to a five. Three out of five weeks. I was at camp during a five week stretch. Just, it's just crazy. There's so much going on, so much busyness. And what we really want to do with this episode is just kind of have an honest discussion about all these, all these things. If you're a longtime think deeper listener, then you're familiar with what Joe has said before about VBS. We're going to revisit that. You're familiar with maybe what we've said about church camps, youth groups in general. But it's been a while, and I do think it's. It's worth the discussion. Again, this is a, for Christian specifically, a lot of this is what's going on. A lot of their, their calendar is built around in the summer. When is church camp? When is VBS gonna be? Um. And so again, what we want to do with this episode is just have an honest discussion about the value of these events in general and really what christians should watch out for. We've been told before, you guys are just way too negative about stuff and fairly confident we're probably going to get some of that with this episode. But again, I hope as, as we get into this episode, I hope, you know, the goal for this is just to have a discussion. Discussion. The goal for this is just to talk about the value of a lot of these events. We're going to spend a lot of time on church camp, a lot of time on VBS. But then just from a broader perspective, again, youth group events in general, summer evangelism, kind of throw in the big bashes or whatever that is kind of meant to serve as evangelism. We want to talk about all those things from a, from a pure value perspective. What is the value? What should christians watch out for? I'll state right up front that I don't think any of these things that we're going to discuss that know anybody is in sin for doing or not doing. Let's go ahead and get that out of the way. But we want to have a discussion about what is the value. Guys, what would you add to kind of the introduction of this? [00:03:49] Speaker C: I mean, that's always been the point of this podcast, is to think deeper and to test things off their. Their merit and their value, and simply to ask questions. That's very much what we're trying to do here. Again, there is no massive judgment. We're not sending people to hell. It's not our job anyway, you know, but that's. That's not really the purpose here. It is more, is this the best we can do? And this is why everything on this podcast comes under scrutiny, because, you know, every, every part of our christianity. Because if it holds up, it holds up. If it's got value, it has value. If it's godly, it's godly, right? Whatever's. Whatever's holy we're bringing to God, whatever's going to help us glorify God better. And so that's merely what this discussion is. Is, are these the best things that we can do with our summertime? And, you know, what do we think about some of these things? And right off the bat, yeah, I'm going to say, by and large, because the first thing we're going to get, and we'll get to some of these things, but, yeah, it's probably better to have this than to have kids just be home alone while both parents are working type of thing, having video games non stop. We're just playing video games. Yeah, we're going to say, like, we do think that there are church events. Absolutely. That can help. But we want to kick this off specifically with a discussion on youth groups in general because I think that's where a lot of this is going to start. A lot of these things revolving around the youth group. We've, as you said, will you reference this like we've already talked about it? I think people do know where we stand to a certain extent, but I want to open up, fellas, on this broad understanding or maybe just, I don't know, a brief discussion on youth groups in general, because, as you said, a lot of what we do kind of surrounds this, you know, and then, and so we want to see if this brings us value. So, Jack, I'm actually going to hand it back off to you when it comes to the youth group discussion. Do you think youth groups have merit, have value? Do you think that's, that's the best way we ought to be handling the teens, especially since they are kind of the catalyst for a lot of our summer summer programs and things like that. What are your thoughts on youth groups? [00:05:40] Speaker A: I think it's important to at least understand the value of getting christian kids together, of the camaraderie of the fun of friendships that can last them their whole lives? I know a lot of people, and some of our listeners probably can think back on that, of friends they made as a teen in church that they're still friends with, maybe that they grew up around and still are around. And it's okay. Kids do. It's kind of weird when it's only kids and adults and you see those churches where there's a family with kids and everybody else is adults and, yeah, it's kind of hard for them. It's good to have mentors and all that, but you're going to want to not just have people your own age, but do stuff with people your own age. And I think that's okay. And I think that's something we, we should caution against before we, we get started, is throwing the baby out with the bath water. This is a natural thing of, you want people, you're on your own age. And, and so as far as having things for having activities for kids, having activities for teenagers to get together and do stuff and, and some of them Bible related, some of them fun related, I think that's fine. I think that's a good idea. However, the, the general thrust of youth ministry and what it's become and the idea of the youth group and the job of the youth minister, as will said, kind of just shuffling kids from camp to camp to camp all summer long, or I've seen the thing about youth ministers saying, man, I, by the, by the time August is done, I am so sick of pizza. I don't want to eat it again the rest of the year because it's just get together, have a youth event, eat pizza. Get together, have a youth event, eat pizza. Like just having a, those things all summer long. All right, what about their spiritual formation in a sustainable way in this, the short burst way, the spiritual highway, event based. Anything that's event based isn't life based, because then you always have to have the events. And as you grow up and you don't have time for those events, it's no wonder they start dropping off. They're not as spiritual, whatever it may be. And so you need something more sustainable, even as you grant that kids are going to want to spend time together and have a good time. [00:07:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I really like the way you put that. My position on it, again, might be odd from somebody who came out of working in youth ministry fairly recently. I think youth ministry as it's currently constructed in most congregations is not optimal and does not work very well. I'll put that blanket statement out there again, as it's currently constructed, as most congregations do it. Keyword most. I don't think it works very well and I don't think it's a very optimal thing for our young people. Having said that, I do think that the concept of a youth group, the concept of events for young people and kind of having an entire ministry dedicated to raising up faithful young people, I think it can be done well. I think it is possible. Again, my biggest problem with it is that it's just often not, I know that there are, there are youth ministers out there, some of them that are, that are older, that do a great job of making sure, no, the focus of this is spiritual. The focus of this is not fun. Fun can be a nice aside, but the focus of this is spiritual and spiritually developing the kids. My problem is that, again, they're the exception. Generally, what you see is a lot of times, and just, you see sometimes kind of the tropes with youth groups as far as, like the youth ministers, just the, the goofy 23 year old who, you know, nobody really takes seriously because he's just all about having fun and, you know, he's the one that all the kids want to pie in the face or whatever. It's like, to me, that's where the problem, that's where you see a lot of these problems come up is specifically with the summer calendar, with the youth calendar. The focus is fun, with spiritual as a nice aside. That's a problem. That's it. That's a huge problem. And again, I think a lot of people might disagree from my experience and from what I've seen with a lot of youth groups, with a lot of summer calendars, again, as that's kind of the topic for this episode, the focus is fun with, with spiritual. As a nice aside, if a youth group, if a youth ministry, again, if a congregation approaches it from a listen, our entire focus here is spiritually developing these young people. Sure, we'll have some fun along the way. I can get behind that a whole lot more. There's still some, some of the negatives that we'll get to here in just a second. I'm sure Joe will, will introduce for us here. But again, just to kind of, suffice it to say, as we get into this, as it's largely constructed right now, I'm not a huge fan of it. The way most people do it. I'm not a huge fan of it. I do think it can be done. Well, to some extent. Joe, what would you say? [00:10:08] Speaker C: I've got so many thoughts. [00:10:10] Speaker B: Oh, I know. I think God had you go last. [00:10:12] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. I think God made the perfect ministry for getting kids to heaven. It's called a family. So I would say family ministers, I would agree with. I think family ministers are a good thing of getting people together, getting families together, getting kids together. In that context, I'm not a big fan of youth groups, just in general. Even, even. Can they be done? Well, sure, I'll grant you that. But at the same time, my experience, along with so many other people's experiences, because you say, oh, you paint with a broad brush. Let me, we talk to the people all around, all around the country, really? All around the world, but all around the country had clients. I've had, you know, preached to different places. We've traveled and seen different youth groups. We've done youth events. By and large, youth groups are broken. And it's because when you get a bunch of kids together with minimal adult supervision, things do not go well. I'm reminded of, is it Elisha where they make fun of his bald head? And the kids, the bear comes and moles them like, yeah, that's what happens when you get a bunch of knuckleheads together. And I'm sorry, we can say, oh, but my kids are spiritual. You know how many kids are introduced to porn through youth groups? There's abuse in them. You get the 23 year old guy who happens to have a crush on the 18 year old. Next thing you know, boom, they're married. Like, that's happened, too. We see the. There's just so many horror stories, you know? Well, that's not fair. You're only looking at the horror stories. Sure, sure. And I'm sure that there are those that have gone very, very well. But by and large, I look at it and say, man, if we had a family minister whose sole job was to get families together and families working on their kids and families helping raise up this next generation, and we weren't leaving it to be the babysitter, then, yes, I think it would work well. But how many parents, you have to have the parents on board to make any youth ministry work, because if the parents get it in their mind that the point of the youth minister is to babysit my kids and go play laser tag and eat pizza, guess what he becomes? I don't care how. How much you want to, like, separate that and say, that's not what I'm here for. If the parent isn't on board with that, that is what you're there for. I'm sorry. That is what you're there for. So you may try to lead the kid spiritually. It's going to be very, very difficult when you become the spiritual leader for the kid, when it should be the dad. Family ministers. We absolutely need youth ministers. In my opinion, the idea of doing youth ministry without the family is broken. And unfortunately, there's a lot of churches that do that. And with the family ministers, like, man, if we can just get the parents involved at any point, that'd be helpful. Like, no, parents are the engine to this thing. It does not go without the parents being involved because it makes the role. Don't want to get leave. Correct. You don't want the kid finding all of their spiritual well being in the youth minister, this, this 25 year old youth minister who is fresh out of college and is not quite prepared to lead these kids from a to z. Like, that's why God gave them parents. So I do want to get into some of the, this is, I think. [00:12:56] Speaker A: I want to, I think you kind of start that critique in the wrong place. I think you have to go back to the 1950s, and when we came up with the idea of a teenager and adolescents and youth and all that, that is a, you know, I just did my cultural breakdown a week or two ago on the generational shifts and how basically mankind kind of had traditional ways of doing things for a really long time. And right about 19 30, 19 40, 19 50, we went, no, no, no. We got it. We got it all figured out. We know better and we changed the way we did everything. This is one of them, is how we view a 15 year old. And we kind of view them as still kind of coming of age still. And they are coming of age, but still, like, we kind of, this teenager thing made them in between kid and adult, and you're allowed to just really. [00:13:41] Speaker B: All it did was keep on the kid. [00:13:42] Speaker A: Right. And that keeps getting lengthened. And that, you know, we've talked before about, you'll see in news stories, you know, people calling a 25 year old a kid, like, well, hold on. Like, you got to come out of that at some point. And so that idea led to the creation of youth ministry and youth groups and things like that. And so church camps and things like that actually existed before that. And it was to look at the young men and the young women to say, you're going to be men, you're going to be women. We're going to call you to something higher. We're going to challenge you versus, hey, we're going to let you hit people in the face with whipped cream pie, like whipped cream or cool whip pies and things like that. As I said at the start, there's a time for young people to come together and have fun. But do we view them as people entering adulthood, or are we kind of helping delay that? Which is what has happened in youth culture the last 80 years? [00:14:33] Speaker C: There's a strong lack of seriousness. And this is what you get from a lot of youth ministers is this is, well, you already pointed this out. And Jack, you're saying, like, with the cool pies, when you're, and we see this with preachers, we're going to have an entire episode on this. But when the preacher is a laughingstock. And you see this a lot with youth ministers where they're kind of laughing stock and all the kids are playing practical jokes on them, like, we're just not serious. We're not serious. Well, hey, we're supposed to have fun, right? We want to let the kids have fun. No doubt. No doubt. To your point, Jack. I mean, you're right. We want to have that. We want to let them have fun. But at what point do we get serious? At what point are we able to. And if this guy's been a laughing stock all along, how much can he be a spiritual mentor to these kids? How much are they going to look to him? And they might occasionally, they might. They may ask him some questions here or there, biblical questions, but by and large, we're not serious about it. And when you see the 25, 26, 27 year old youth minister, who's just a giant kid himself playing video games with the guys, you know, to try to be relevant with the kids, it's a joke, I think, of, like, on Netflix, YouTube. Rhett and Link and Rhett and Link are pushing, like 50 at this point, man, they're in their forties, but the way they dress and they got, like, tattoos now, and the way they're talking, they're so desperate to stay culturally relevant and try to stay kids themselves. They're trying so hard. And you see this with youth ministers that are like, they try really hard to stay relevant to the kids. Like, no, maybe the kids need somebody that they can look up to and not make a laughing stock where they can take you seriously and go, this guy knows what he's talking about. And this is a spiritual leader that I really want to follow. Instead, we come down to their level and we try to get in their level and play their games and do everything else. And then out of that, instead of calling themselves correct, this giant kid himself is somehow going to lead the charge out of there. Like, this is Lord of the flies. Like, it's not, okay. It's not. You have to have a spiritual leader at the top if we're going to have anything that works like this. And the spiritual leader should be the dad. So I don't know. I just see him as mainly obsolete. But, will, what are your thoughts? [00:16:19] Speaker B: So I got two thoughts on that real quick. Joe, what would you say? Because, of course, I agree. I don't disagree with anything that you're saying spiritually or should be the dad. How many dads in the church do you know of that are just 100% unplugged. That are not about to do any kind of spiritual leader. So then obviously we're going to say, okay, well, it falls to the elders. How many elder shifts in the church do you know of that are completely, again, not, not engaged to what's going on? And so I have. I have another thought that I want to bring up about kind of just this youth group point in general. But I did want to kind of ask you about that because obviously, 100%, ideally, I agree with you. The problem is a lot of families don't operate that way. So what would you say? What would you say? And that's not to say, okay, well, then we should do youth groups. Of course I wouldn't say that. [00:16:57] Speaker C: No, this is. [00:16:58] Speaker B: But the idea family minister is difficult. Yeah, sure. [00:17:02] Speaker C: I would say the family minister needs to work in conjunction. In conjunction. Can't speak today with the elders and or the men of the congregation and say, this is my vision and this guy is really struggling. We need to help him step up and then pair him with other older members of congregation if at all possible. And if there aren't older members, at least members that are close to his age that can really call him up. So you're trying to find, okay, that guy is a stud. That guy really steps up for his family. Can I help him? Can I pair him with another guy? So I'm big for. This is why we need to do an overhaul and have, like, men's ministries where there is. We're talking about doing this at our church. Jack and I have been in discussion about this. We want to do an accountability group with the men at our congregation. We want to call them up and say, how can we help guys be better? How can we do things as guys together? And so if we have, you have to rethink the entire structure, to your point. Yeah, it's not an easy fix, but if you do it, we will be way more blessed than if we continue with a broken system, which is currently. And anybody who says anything against us, we're losing 65% to 70% conservatively of our youth, probably pushing 80% of our youth. If youth ministry was working. Where are the kids? So anybody who has a critique against this, like, okay, show the numbers. [00:18:10] Speaker B: That's the other thing. And that was what I was going to say is the lack of discipleship focus is what really bothers me about most youth groups. You think about me, decide me and my journey to disciple my own children. We're going to have some fun along the way. We're going to have movie nights, and we're going to have, we go play sports in the backyard. We're going to have some fun. That's not the focus. That can't be the focus. The focus. The emphasis for me and my wife is how am I going to get my kids to heaven? What are some things that we're going to do? What are things that we're not going to compromise on? And that's what takes up the majority of our mental capacity. And whatever's left over, again, we're going to have a lot of fun. We're going to travel. We're going to do all this stuff. Again, I plan to have fun with my kids. That can't be the focus. What I see with, again, with a lot of youth groups is the focus is not discipleship. The focus is how much fun can we have with them? And maybe they'll want to stay and stick around and maybe we can, you know, get, get them some good Bible knowledge and make sure that they know the plan of salvation and all this stuff. But the focus is not discipleship. To me, that's where, and to Joe's point, again, I don't necessarily disagree. The system itself is probably not structured in a way for discipleship. That's why God gave us the family, all those things. But I think to start, if your foundation is completely broken, then, or is crumbling, then your system is going to be crumbling as well. And that's, again, to me, that one of the biggest problems with youth groups and to bring elders into this is elders think youth groups are just going to fix the problem. Oh, we want to keep our kids faithful. What do we do? I don't know. Let's hire a youth minister and have a youth group. That's not it. That's not going to solve the problem. When you're looking at how do we disciple these young people? Again, I've got a lot of things on here. You talk about segregating kids away from the older generation. The watered down class topics has always bothered me of like, yeah, we can't expect young people to actually study a book of the Bible, so let's just have them talk about peer pressure for the 110th time, or, you know, just go through the fruits of the spirit or whatever. It's like, these are 17 year old kids. They can study the book of Ephesians. These are 17 year old kids. They can study what, you know, justification is beyond just getting baptized. Like, but we watered down these topics so much, it's like, man, we don't want to bore them. And, you know, their brains are already addicted to dopamine, so we got to give them something interesting. No, stop watering down biblical discussion, spiritual study for these young people. But that's what a lot of youth groups do. Zero expectations for their walk with God. And then, Joe, you spoke to it. There's no results over the last. No fruitful results, I should say, over the last 30 years of youth groups specifically and probably even longer. But it's one of those things. It's like, if it's not broken, don't fix it. Okay, what if it is broken? Maybe we should fix it. And so, again, you're like, man, didn't you just work in youth ministry? I did. I did for two years. And what I saw was a lot of things that can go well, a lot of things that typically don't go well. And I do think Joe's point job hit a little bit harder than I did. I think focusing on the horror stories and stuff, maybe I wouldn't have done. But his point about the family needing to be the engine is, is crystal clear like that. That is something that we have to start understanding. And until that is done, I think any effort a youth minister or youth group makes, no matter how well intentioned, is not going to work very well. [00:21:12] Speaker A: I'm going to cross examine your, your family minister point. Joe, with, you said not youth ministers, but family ministers. If the youth minister is a crutch, kind of stepping in for parents are supposed to be doing this job, and we're handing off to some younger person or whoever it may be. Is a family minister just a next level crutch, a one degree removed crutch. [00:21:32] Speaker B: Maybe specifically for the elders. [00:21:34] Speaker A: Right, right. [00:21:35] Speaker C: I think a family minister. [00:21:36] Speaker A: Here's one of the other things is shouldn't a family minister, I think if you're going to have that, you need to hire it exclusively from a person 50 plus who has raised a faithful family. Well, at that point, you just got elder qualifications. You got an elder. And so. [00:21:51] Speaker C: Well, I was about to say, ideally, a family minister is an elder. Like, ideally speaking, I think that would be the only. It is a crutch because it. The only thing would be, it's the in between, between an elder and the rest of the congregation. If the elders are doing their job, you wouldn't need it. So I would agree very strongly with that. And that's what we call it as a. Yes, I would say it is a crunch. I mean, I agree with you. [00:22:14] Speaker A: If it was one of the other problems, you said a youth minister, you know, a guy fresh out of college that he was in the youth group three, four years ago, and now he's leading the youth group, is a weird concept we came up with, but the same of, like, I would feel weird as a family minister that my oldest kid is six years old, and I'm teaching people with teenagers how to raise their kids. That doesn't seem right. I mean, this is. [00:22:33] Speaker C: I agree. [00:22:34] Speaker A: You go to Titus, two older women teach the younger to love their families, love their husbands and children and beekeepers at home and all that, and of expectations of fathers and things like that. And obviously, Timothy has given this role. We don't know his family dynamic, has never mentioned a wife and kids or anything like that. And so it's not that a preacher can't address people that he, unless he's been there, done that. But on the other hand, we had that whole elder qualifications episode about there's a reason, it says believing children. There's a reason he has to kind of show he can get this done. And so a family minister, I kind of feel like you're in the same place. [00:23:09] Speaker C: It's coming from an idealistic view, though, to say it's coming from a biblical view. But I would also say it's an idealistic view to say that the elders would be the reason why. I say a family minister is having somebody who's dedicated to getting the families together to work on family stuff, having parenting classes, things like that. Yes. Ideally, an elder would be the one to do it. It's just how many elderships do we know that are actually doing that? And so having dads in the youth. [00:23:33] Speaker B: Group, though, too, correct. [00:23:34] Speaker C: I mean, and that's why I mentioned the family minister is somebody who can help the dads be who they need to be. Yes. That is an elder qualificate. Like, that's an elder role. If the elders did their point, we wouldn't need youth or family minister, in my opinion, because they would be ministering to the dads, and the dads, we ministering to their kids. And God created the perfect system for that. We don't need various, you know, programs to do what God has already given us. If everybody's fulfilling their role, however. Yeah, it's very negative to say that not a lot of elderships do it, but I agree, or I would have a difficult time agreeing with somebody who made the case that that was not, you know, not the point. Like, if they were trying to tell me that, oh, there's plenty of elderships to do. No, there's not, there's just not. I'm sure there are elderships that do that out there, but elders are very hands off with their people and this would require a lot of hands on, like mentorship to go to the dad and go, hey, you're not stepping up in this way. We need you to step up and X, y, Z, your son and your daughter floundering because you're not stepping up as a male. Elders have the right and the ability, in my opinion, to do that. They are over their sheep. They just don't. If you had a family minister who was helping connect this, it is a crutch. I don't disagree with you. It would be a crutch in place of elders not doing their job, which is also not great. But it's idealistic to think that elders are going to shift. We're going to have to have a new generation of elders rise up who understand that is my role, to kind of call people out or the elders are going to have to start seeing that as the role, which is really difficult to teach. Bulldog new tricks. So the system's kind of rough. But, fellas, we haven't even gotten into some of the other stuff, so that is just our discussion of youth groups. Yeah. As you can tell, I'm, I'm not the biggest fan and I probably come on a little too strong at the same time, man, I wish that there was a lot of great stories and we're always going to get to, hey, I was converted through my youth group. Look, good things can come from bad things. You could make some extreme examples of this being the case that people would probably get very upset at me bringing up, but there are positives that can come out of very negative situations. That doesn't mean that the negative situation should have happened or that it should be sustained. You know what I mean? Yeah. [00:25:44] Speaker B: I would speak to the, what are, what are the results been? And you say, well, you know, I've got a lot of people that were in my YouTube, they're still faithful. Okay, what operation or what definition of faithful are you operating under, too? That's the other thing that I do think the concept of youth ministry is kind of pushed, is, hey, just show up and, man, we're going to consider you faithful. That that's a problem. [00:26:06] Speaker A: Well, and that, and the other thing is where there has been success stories. All right, what did you do different? What, what set this apart? What, how did they bring you to maturity? How were the families involved? What, what were the expectations placed on you? Like, because I think it's fair to say that these the kind of, you know, pizza and a devo and, you know, five minute devo kind of thing. Not a lot of great success stories from that. The ones where there were. It's got to be somebody who really was hands on within your life, spiritual formation, things like that. And again, I still don't think that's the ideal if parents aren't involved or whatever. But, yeah, it's one of those kind of, when we talk about the public schools, they always say, oh, man, the best statistics are when the parents are involved in the kids education, they just do better. Like, yeah, you think? [00:26:55] Speaker B: We don't say. [00:26:56] Speaker A: Maybe there's a different lesson to be learned from that. Kind of same with. With youth groups or whatever. So, yeah. [00:27:02] Speaker B: So let's go ahead and get into some specific summer events that, again, a lot of listeners to this podcast are going to be sending their kids to, or maybe even going to themselves. Let's start with church camp. Um, and again, using what we just discussed as kind of a framework for this discussion, what we wanted to do for the. For the rest of the episode is look at some of these and just discuss the pros and cons. Just discuss what to watch out for. Um, we'll see what kind of hot takes Joe has. I'm sure he's got some. Um, but let's. Let's. Let's start with church camp here. Uh, this is the peak of church camp season. You're seeing stuff all over Facebook and kids going off to camp. And again, for a lot of kids, it's multiple camps. It's two or three for the whole summer. Week long Bible camps, week long ministry camps, week long, whatever it is. And so I don't know who wants to start on this one. Just kind of. What is your. What is your take on church camp? Did you guys do church camp growing up? I didn't know what they did in Colorado. [00:27:59] Speaker A: They had it. We went to the preacher camp, which was. Is really not the same. [00:28:05] Speaker B: Okay, so you. This is interesting. So you guys then probably have a different perspective. So I, growing up, went to a couple of, like, Bible camps that were basically fun camps, went to a couple ministry camps, and then went to a Bible camp out in Yellowstone. So I kind of got to see a lot of different types of camps, but I'm. So I'll go last. I'm interested to hear y'all's thoughts, you know, albeit that y'all didn't necessarily go to the standard church camp, but we. [00:28:30] Speaker C: Had a lot of friends. We had basically every friend that I had in the church was going to camp Quininea, and, you know, a big, big church camp out here in Colorado. And my wife grew up going to these camps. And so, no, we didn't go to those camps. I was unfortunately playing hockey through a lot of it. But to kind of get into the discussion of pros and cons, I do think that there are some pros. And like I said, I think the pro would be. It's probably better that than other majorly secular events or again, Latchkey kids staying home, playing video games, getting into who knows what. So having a place to send kids where they can be around other hopefully like minded individuals, you know, christian individuals, where they're getting mentored. And usually it's much better than like, a youth minister, where there's one adult, like 13 kids. There's a lot of adult supervision in these. They're staying in the cabins, things like that. So I'm not against church camps. I really am not. There are some negatives I would say, that you have to watch out for. Well, this is kind of on your part or on your list here to get to, but I think we have to watch out for the discussion, for the spiritual high boy and having a discussion on spiritual highs and kind of coming off of that and what that looks like and all the baptisms that we see at camps, which we can get to, I think that's one of the negatives. I don't know. I still see. I'm not against kids having fun. I really am not. It's probably going to go through like, yeah, you just don't want to. You don't want the kids to have fun. Like, no, but I do think not all church camps are created equal, in my opinion. And I do like the ones that have more of a spiritual bend to them. Again, feel free to have fun. That's great. But I also, if we're going to be a spiritual christian camp, having a five minute Devo while everything else going on, I think you have an opportunity to really help kids and disciple kids and to call them up to something higher. And so many times church camps miss that because we're doing all the fun, but we're not really calling kids. We're prepping them for something else. And sometimes it's for nine year olds, and you're not really prepping them for anything. But for the older kids, I do think the camp ought to look a little different. I was a big fan of future preachers. I went like a bazillion times. So that was my version of camp. And I thought it was a ton of fun. I thought it was very helpful in terms of growing in some way. So it's not to put you on. [00:30:45] Speaker B: The spot, but you are not completely opposed to sending your kids one day to some type of camp, depending on the spiritual level, or are you? [00:30:54] Speaker C: I don't. People may think this is nuts. I'm not a big fan of sending my kids anywhere where I don't have direct supervision of them, where they are around other kids, just because, again, I know the horror stories. I know what kids get up to. I've seen this and I've counseled a bazillion of them. Whereas at a church camp that they had horrible things happen to them that I'm not going to get into. But, you know, like, these things do take place and go well. There is supervision. Yes, by and large, there's a lot more than there is at like a typical youth group or lock in event. But things still happen. Kids get introduced to things, kids get told all sorts, sorts of things. I can't cocoon my kid. From everything I'm hearing. Everybody's like, you know what everybody's going to say to that, oh, great, you're just going to. No, but I want it on my terms in a lot of ways. And I don't necessarily want to send my kid to a place where I don't know who's showing up to that camp. I don't know what they're gonna learn. I don't know what cuss words they're gonna hear. I don't know. As they get older, yeah, maybe more. A little more spiritually mature and able to discern some of these things for themselves. And when they're leaders themselves and not just followers and doing everything what everybody else does, I might consider it. I might. I might be a little bit different or in a different place, but when they're nine and they're just doing what the twelve year olds are doing and getting in all sorts of trouble, being knuckleheads, no, I'm not okay with that. So that would be my answer to that. [00:32:07] Speaker A: There was a. This. Put this on the list of cons. My sister went to a camp and not the one Joe mentioned. There was a different one in Colorado. And I don't know why they didn't cross streams. I don't know if the other one still happens or what. But I hadn't heard about it since the. The entire week was about couples and, you know, finding a boyfriend, finding a girlfriend. And it was pushed, it was pushed by even the counselors and kind of the, you know, just the popular kids and who's, who's getting with who. And it was just ridiculous. It was a church camp, but that was at the center of it. And I know there are stories like that. So where that's the case. Yeah, I don't think that's a great emphasis for sleep deprived teenagers in the summer to be making that their thing, calling it a spiritual high, kind of, that's a bad idea. I will say a pro that I've seen come out of the camp. Cornelia Joe mentioned that a lot of the Colorado kids go to is kids from all over the state grew up going to the camp together. And as they've grown up and are filling the ones that have stayed, that are filling the churches in Colorado now, there's a closeness, there's a connection among the churches out there that frankly, I didn't sense between some of those churches when I was a kid that, you know, everyone kind of did their own thing. But now you've got kids that have known each other since twelve years old grow up, and now they're in their thirties and some of them are preachers from some of these churches and things like that. I think that's fantastic. Um, and I think shout out Brett. [00:33:27] Speaker C: I don't know if he listens, but shout out Brett. [00:33:29] Speaker A: Yeah, he does a great job. He runs a great camp. Yeah. And things like that around the country, especially in places like Colorado where the church is growing maybe a little more sparse. Building our connections with each other is a great thing. And so I think camp offers kids an opportunity to do that from a younger age. And so that's a pro, I would say. Um, I don't know. I, I. We've talked about this a couple years ago. It's been a long time since, but I remember my point being then, what I'm going to make now, don't sell it too much as a spiritual thing. Spiritual is good. I'm glad there's devotionals and bible studies. You don't want young people coming away chasing that spiritual hive camp all the time, because it's just not normal. It is a fun, supercharged, week long thing that you're never going to replicate again. And it's not the normal christian life. And that's okay, but don't make them think that that's what it's supposed to be. [00:34:16] Speaker B: Brian, that's a lot of what I was going to say. I mean, at the end of the day, the question I asked Joe of, like, I could very much see myself allowing my kids to go to camp. I'm also with Joe. I would also like to be there as a counselor, just, you know, just something that I want to do as a parent. But the idea of a week long, you know, other christians, I'm obviously not opposed to it whatsoever, again, especially the ones that are more spiritual focused. What I would say is kind of what I was gonna say is, what a lot of what Jack just said, which is what you don't want, is young people thinking that, okay, your time to be spiritual is this one week of the year, and it's a camp, and then the rest of the. The rest of the year, the rest of the weeks of the year, you can do whatever you want, watch whatever you want, because you do see even the most spiritual camps that are out there, camps that are completely devoted to, you know, making sure that young people are spiritually minded. It is inevitable that, man, the rest of the year, like, man, I just wish I was back at camp, man, I just wish that I could feel the same way I did at camp and that I could have this close relationship with all these people that I did at camp. And the unfortunate part of it is it's, like, similar to vacation. Man, I wish I could be on vacation. Yeah, but you can't be on vacation every single week of the year. You can't be at the beach for every single week of the year. You can't have no responsibilities for every single week of the year. And so instead of just pining away for, oh, when's my next vacation going to be? What. What should we be doing? We should be taking each day, each week of our lives. How can we. How can we truly cherish the moments that we have, you know, while in the middle of a work week? How can we spend great time with our family, all these things. Similarly with. With church camp, spiritual high thing, rather than pining away all of our other weeks and months, man, I just wish I was back at camp. Wish I was back celebrating or, you know, having the spiritual fellowship, maybe we should spend a little bit more time figuring out how we can do a lot of that week to week to week in the middle of November or in the middle of February, as opposed to just waiting around for church camp. That is kind of the spiritual high discussion that I wanted to have of, like, yeah. To agree with you guys. It's great. It's something that I think, you know, is. Could I don't have any problem with a kid having fun and being with other christians and, you know, spiritual discussions late in the night or whatever, but you can't use that as like, man, I just want to get back to that. If I could just get back to that. You have to recognize that there's something separate that is like a vacation and you can't be on vacation 24/7 so figure out how you can have that fellowship with other christian kids, with other christian brothers, with other christian sisters, whatever it is. Figure out how you can be more spiritually minded throughout the rest of the year. That to me is my big, I guess, point of emphasis with this church camp. Point is like, yeah, it's great. Don't make it the pinnacle of your spiritual life or the pinnacle of your year. [00:36:44] Speaker C: I'm just hearing all these again, I hear voices, I suppose, know all the, all the people that are coming to guesses. But you know what's funny is, as you were describing, it's like, that's PTP. That's a lot of lectures. The one time a year at one time, you just can't wait to get there. Like, it's fantastic. It's great. Enjoy it. Have a good time. And it's great to see old friends. It's good to listen, preachers good to. It's good to be uplifted. We're not against those things. But you see, adults do the same exact thing. Ain't the same as they're. Man, I just can't wait to get there because basically life stinks around here. No, no, it's same thing as kids, we fall into the same issues. Make sure that you are maintaining that throughout the year of having people over and really trying to not maintain a spiritual light. Look, you're going to have valleys. This is peaks and valleys. That's the psalmist. David has a lot of those. We can't always be on a high and that's okay. And I think that's the one thing that I would say if I were looking to do a church camp or something like that, is just explaining to my kids, man, have a blast, have a ton of fun. Let that spiritual high hit. But recognize we're going to use that to launch into maybe something else, set up some good habits. But it's not always going to be that way. And that's okay. God shows up in the peaks. He shows up in the valleys. The one other thing that I would have a problem with, and we'll move on to vbs. Excuse me, is we have to be careful. Jack, you hit on this a little bit. We have to be careful of the clicks. We have to be careful of the groups that are formed and things like that. And this goes to youth groups and this goes to church camps is, I've seen people that come home and the spiritual high that everybody's talking about that everybody got, they weren't involved with one of the cliques or they had some kids that bullied them or whatever it is, and it didn't go well. And there's some camps that handle the bullying a lot better and there are some where I've heard that it's just not good at all and they kind of let it go on throughout the week and kids come home drained. And so what is intended to be a spiritual experience where everybody's at this high, they come home at an all time low because they were not part of the clique. You have to be careful of that as well. So if you're selling this as some spiritual week and then the kid gets a taste of that, that alone can sour them on Christianity of like, man, if I can't experience the high at this place, when am I ever going to get to that point? So we have to, again, just be careful how we're selling these things, making sure that we're not selling it so much that kids think that this is the end. I'll be all like, no, this is a fun week to go have. Let's keep it context. [00:38:53] Speaker B: I'm very curious if we gave Joe the assignment of laying out the think deeper church camp, what the week would look like if Joe is in charge. [00:39:00] Speaker C: Of the calendar exegesis from nine to noon. And then we're going to go do manly things. Women are going to go cook and the men are going to go, you know, do manly things and chop down trees. [00:39:11] Speaker A: There's your clip. You'll be seeing that on going around Facebook and YouTube. [00:39:14] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:39:15] Speaker C: There you go. There you go. Yeah. No, no, I mean, again, have fun with it. But that brings us into discussion of, well, kids, you know, what's, what's the problem with bbs, right? It's just kids. What's the problem with bbs? [00:39:27] Speaker B: Let's get into that. I'm gonna, once again, we're gonna have Joe go last here. Vacation Bible school. I'm actually curious. Obviously, we know Joe is very vocal about it. I know. [00:39:37] Speaker A: I think this of you and I go in first, softening the blow, looking at the bright side. And then Joe come in like, all right, clean up hitter. Baby. [00:39:44] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. That's right. Bad cleanup. [00:39:47] Speaker A: Goodness. [00:39:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So, I mean, it's interesting. I just came off of speaking at a vbs for the young people and. [00:39:52] Speaker A: So, Joe, are you going to fellowship will? Yeah. [00:39:54] Speaker B: I was going to say this might. [00:39:56] Speaker C: Be the last will, and I've had. Will and I have had private conversations. Jack, you're kind of the second part of Matthew 18. Go to a brother. And then we'll be going to the man of the congregation. So. [00:40:04] Speaker A: Goodness. [00:40:05] Speaker B: Oh, man. So, yeah, Jack, I guess I'll start with you take on vbs, unless you want me to go first, and then we'll let Joe wrap it up. [00:40:14] Speaker A: I would love to know. I look more at the origin of it, like, what were we trying to do? Maybe what did it start as? Because, man, I know giving kids a good time and a memorable experience and all that is I get a lot of the motivation behind it, but it, it's one of those that I think if you had never seen it and then you were introduced to the idea, it would be like, what is this? Yeah. Like, what's happening here? Why, you know, we are Mister anti hand clapping in church. And then we'll come in here and tell all the five year olds, all right, clap your hand. You know, like things like that you see happen at BBS. And I don't know the theatrics of it and the. I'm real big lately. In fact, I'm just starting in on the next book I'm going to write is on taking God seriously, and I worry that this is something that very much, you know, Jesus did say, let the little children come to me. He did not put on a costume and put on, you know, twist balloon animals. [00:41:13] Speaker C: A chill. [00:41:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And so I. [00:41:17] Speaker C: There. [00:41:18] Speaker A: You've got to have a way to introduce children to God, to help them love God, to know God better without making it silly, without making it, you know, performative goofiness and things like that. And I struggle to see vbs happening without that. And so I. I don't know. I, again, I was supposed to be the. Nay, the positive guy to soften the. [00:41:38] Speaker B: No, not. [00:41:39] Speaker A: I don't. Yeah, I don't know that I have a lot to say about. I don't know. I struggle with that one. Will, what about you? [00:41:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I love the question you asked of what are we trying to accomplish with it? And just to peel back the curtain a little bit, me and my wife were having a discussion and she just asked. She was like, why are you guys so anti not anti. Well, Joey's anti. Like, why are you guys so, you know, skeptical, I guess, is the word I will use of vbs in general. And she did ask the question, like, is it wrong for the kids to have fun with it? And so, again, Rachel, I'm sure we'll listen to this podcast eventually. And I do. Joe, I'd love for you to answer that question as well. I think what I would. The point that I would emphasize, because I'm not completely opposed to all vbs, obviously, I just spoke at one. It's not like I'm, you know, man, what are you guys doing your vbs at the same time? I would look at what is the kind of the cost benefit analysis of it? How many people have been converted? Because what everybody's gonna say is, oh, it's evangelism. That's the goal. His goal is to evangelize. Okay, I've been a part of a lot of vbss. I've been to a lot of vbss when I was younger. [00:42:43] Speaker A: There weren't. [00:42:44] Speaker B: Weren't a whole lot of baptisms going on. There was not a whole lot of discipleship, to use that word again, being done. Not a whole lot of conversions being made. It very much was a, let's have a competition among the kids to see how many friends they can bring. And then Sunday morning rolls around, and it's the exact same number of people that were there the previous Sunday before VBS. And so it really was just a one week thing. That sure was fun. And sure, maybe a lot of people at least got exposed to the church that maybe wouldn't have been before. And so you could look at that as a positive, I suppose, as a pro in the. Or in the pro category, I just have not seen the results. And you think about the cost that goes into it. I mean, the. And I, speaking as somebody who has planned one before, there's a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of energy, and a lot of money that is spent on vacation, Bible school, all for what, I guess. And you could say, yeah, well, the, the. Maybe the members. The members kids that already go to the church, you know, had a really memorable experience, maybe learned a lot. And sure, you could look at that and maybe they learned something that's. That's wonderful. Maybe they'll remember a lot of what they learned at VBS because of the things that they did there. To me, the costs just far outweigh the benefits, is what I would say. Um, not against having fun, you know, not against kids, you know, doing activities and things. But the seriousness point that Jack brought up, the. Again, just the cost benefit analysis of what is the benefit, and is it worth the cost? I typically don't think VBS measures up to it. Again, if a church has it, am I going to say, well, I'm not going to go to that church? Not necessarily. I would just try to, again, ask the question of, what are we trying to accomplish with it? What is the goal? So with all that being said, well. [00:44:16] Speaker A: Before we get on to Joe, your point about the cost benefit is, like, you think about what good things can come out of it, and some things, it's just. It's harmless. It's not really, you know, maybe a lot of good things, but, yeah, it's not doing any good. But does it have negative things? And I think that is one of the negative consequences. We had friends as kids that, you know, you're trying to invite friends, bring as many as you can. We bring them, and, boy, they'd love it. And we'd say, you want to go to church again? Yeah, sure. And they'd come and literally, like, well, that was really boring. What. What happened to all the fun and. [00:44:44] Speaker B: Games, all the snacks? [00:44:45] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, like, I'm extreme social. Sit here and listen to this guy talk about the Bible. No, thanks. I mean, like, fair enough. You know, like, it was a bait and switch. [00:44:54] Speaker C: What you win them with is what you win them to. That's. That's very much what it is, is you win them with costumes and puppet shows and acting and. And everything else. They go, this is fantastic. And you go, okay, well, let me. Let's introduce you to worship and what, like, that's not what you want me with. What you want me with was the ice cream social. What you want me with was the snacks, was the Jonah and the whale and the, you know. Oh, the cute flood story and all sorts of stuff. I mean, that's what you won me with. And so now that you're doing this bait and switch thing, I'm not really interested. [00:45:25] Speaker A: Sure. [00:45:25] Speaker C: I'm sure. I'm sure there are great stories where people stuck around, and I'm fantastic that that happened. And I'm not, in all sincerity, like, I'm very glad that that happened. If there were conversions from it. However, it's the same argumentation as youth groups, which is just because there have been a couple positives does not make the whole thing a positive from it, because there are some negatives. And, yes, I do think the seriousness of God. What's interesting is if we were to start doing, like, a catechism in church, people would lose their minds. Like, you can't do that. But we'll gladly get up there and, you know, clap and have the, you know, just make a complete mockery of everything. Like, kids can be expected to do a lot of things if you do a category we've been doing with our kids. My five year old is now able to kind of go down certain levels of a catechism where it's like, this is who God is, and this is what he's all about, and this is the Trinity and things like that. [00:46:14] Speaker A: Explain that for people who might think you're turning your son into a Catholic. What that is. I mean. I know. [00:46:20] Speaker C: Sorry. Okay, so catechism is simply a statement of beliefs. Basically, it's a series. You go down. It's a series of questions with answers of, like, who is God? And. And you can go down this list of. And you can find different ones that, yeah, probably lean more Catholic. Obviously, that's not what we're choosing, but it is a list of questions as to who God is and how we can understand it. Kids can understand a lot of different things. They're brilliant in that. Does my kid fully understand the Trinity? I don't fully understand the trinity, so. No, of course not. But he can answer some of these questions. You get kids to vbs, and once again, we make a mockery of it. And what I don't like is, I guess the ones that I have the biggest issue with is where it is a complete, like, the biggest budget or budgetary thing of the year is bbs. Well, drop ten grand, we'll drop 20 grand on doing it all big for the kids, because ultimately, it's more of an Instagram thing for the parents than it is for the kids, in my opinion. And that, to me, is such a waste of God given funds and. Yeah, yeah, I suppose you could say, well, a lot of things are waste. Like, imagine what you could do with ten grand, 20 grand, whatever it is that these big churches drop on their bbs. Imagine what you could do with that. Imagine if everybody that shows up to work on VBS worked that hard the rest of the year for the church, for other church events. How far could we be as a church if you didn't just have all these people that never show up or anything pop out of the woodwork to help with vbs because kids are involved. That's my issue with it, is we hold up the kids on some level. Church is not for kids. They're not part of the church. I'm not against having fun. I'm not against helping our kids and maybe doing some fun things. I'm not against puppet shows from time to time. But when we dedicate so much time and resource and money and everything else to something where it's not evangelism, let's just be honest, it's not evangelism in my opinion, like we can say that it is. You're not evangelizing six year olds and really VBS starts being kind of uncool for kids around ten, 1112 years old, which I don't even know that you'd be evangelizing them at that age. So again, what are we trying to accomplish with it? That's just my question. What are we trying to accomplish? I think Jack hit that, hit the nail on the head with it and saying, are there positives? Sure, I suppose there are. Are there a lot of negatives? Yeah, there are. Do the positives outweigh the negatives? In my opinion, no. I think it would do better for our families to very much teach our kids about, have as much fun as you want, have puppet shows at home, you know, whatever you want to do. Even getting the kids together for some fun from time to time. But making it, again, the biggest event of the year that our church puts on and making it all about the kids. I think the kids also kind of. That sounds mean. I think the kids also kind of need to know their place. Your time is coming and you will have a great part in the church. And we want to bring Christ to you, and we want to have this to be not all serious, like, yeah, there's fun parts of Christianity as well. At the same time, what you win them with is what you win them to. And if it's a bait and switch thing, you will lose people over it. And if that's the only time of the year, same with church cancer, that's the only time of the year where they get the spiritual high. We're doing it wrong. So that's kind of my spiel on it. I'll get off my. Yeah, I do have some problems with it. [00:49:20] Speaker B: This is the faint, deeper podcast. The point, I mean, we're going to have people who listen to this, who 100% completely disagree, work a lot. Work, you know, spend a lot of hours on BBS every year. That's okay. You know what? You are allowed to disagree. We're going to have people listening who, counselors at a church camp every single year that believe strongly in church camp. That's okay. You know, I was a youth evangelist for two years, and me and Joe's friendship did not suffer. Um, you know, at least as far as I'm aware. Um, you know, like you're allowed to have these disagreements. Well, maybe it did. Joe's shaking his head, but you should. [00:49:51] Speaker A: Have heard the things he was saying behind your back, man. [00:49:54] Speaker C: That's what I was about to say. Well, the conversations Jack and I had, really. [00:49:57] Speaker B: Exactly right. No, but the point of this episode, once again, was to get everybody to think a little bit deeper about and just to discuss the value. I do think we've kind of laid out and illustrated not a ton of value necessarily, in a lot of these things. Doesn't mean that anybody's in sin for. For believing in them or being a part of them. But we have to ask the question, what are the value? The last thing I have on here, and this is kind of, I guess, where it would be the last thing we hit, is just the idea of using big summer events for. For your, you know, to suffice for your evangelism is not a great outlet. It's not a great strategy to say, well, let's just plan a big, fun summer slip and slide day or whatever. And again, maybe young people will invite their friends, or we'll get community people, and once again, that lasts for a day, lasts for 6 hours. And then what kind of fruitful results do we yield? Typically paint with a broad brush. Not a lot. But again, that, that's. That's the evangelism strategy. And I just think from a value perspective, there's not a lot of value there in using that as your evangelism. And then you have just the whole idea of man week to week, every single weekend you've got something on the church calendar. At what point do we ask the question of what are our families sacrificing? What are the families giving up in terms of family, discipleship, time, even family vacation time together, where they get to spend time together as a family, eating around the same table, hopefully studying God's word together. If you're giving that up to constantly be at the next church camp and the next church event, I do think that's a question worth asking and a discussion worth having, if that makes sense. Once again, are we burning our families out because we have something every single weekend on the church calendar from May to August? And is that something that is the best use of our time and resources? What would you guys say to that? As we get kind of ready to wrap up. [00:51:39] Speaker A: I think there's a great point underlying that of, we are really bad at the whole sacred secular divide thing about over spiritualizing things. That, man, if we're going to do something as a church, it's got to have a spiritual connection. It's got to have an evangelistic hook to it. You can just do stuff. You can just get together and have lunch. You can get together, get some kids together and have a football game or whatever. It doesn't have to be. We got to have a devo afterwards. [00:52:00] Speaker B: Let's have our token Devo. [00:52:01] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. Our inability to. And I've dealt with this in churches, in places where you're going to have something, it's like, well, are we going to have a singing afterwards? We're going to have a prayer afterwards? We going to. You are, you know, part of what God wants us to do is live and enjoy life. That is. Is part of our, I'm not saying I'm not an all of life is worship kind of guy, but just that. Okay, well, this is a church event, so we've got to make a church. No, you need to show church people that living a normal human life is not. Oh, we've got church stuff over here, and we've got this stuff over here is we are the church. We say that all the time. Part of that is. Okay, well, as part of my natural life, I'm going to go play basketball from time to time. I can do it with guys from church and enjoy their company and their fellowship. It doesn't have to have a devo attached onto the end of it so that we can, like, officially stamp it. You know, I, growing up, my dad owned his own company, and every now and then, he, you know, we go out to hed take us to lunch or whatever, and he look in his wallet and he had, you know, left his. His cash or whatever, you know, his normal card, and all he had was his business card. And he looked at me and go, Jack, did you ever think about becoming a plumber? The first couple times was like, what? What are you talking about? And he goes, all right, well, that's a business lunch, then. And, you know, put his business card down. I feel like we do that with church stuff. Like, all right, we're gonna have a basketball game. If we sing a couple songs afterwards, we can make it a church eventually. Just live a normal human life and be a Christian in it. A christian basketball player, a christian movie attender, a Christian, you know, whatever it is that you're going to do together. We don't have to overthink this stuff. We don't have to eventize everything. We don't have to put an official stamp on everything like that. [00:53:45] Speaker B: It's a great point. [00:53:47] Speaker C: I don't know that I'd have a whole lot to add to that. It is an interesting discussion. Again, this is just to get us to think deeper about all of these things and to say, what do we want our summers to look like? And if you are the church camp VBS type VBS going, you know, throughout your summer, that's great. I would just say, make sure your family is not lost in the process. Make sure that you are spending some valuable family time where the kids aren't off at 20 different camps. You get to the end, and then when you send them back to school or whatever, hopefully you're not. But when you send them back to school, well, man, we spent like two days over the summer where we weren't doing something, even if it was spiritually related. It's good to have family time and it's really good to, as Jack said, just live regular life and realize everything is for God. And you know what? When you're in November and the doldrums of life and it's cold outside and it's gray and everything else, we're living for Christ then as well. It's not just in the summer, summer events. So that's, that's all I would say on wrapping that up, is, yeah, enjoy your summers. Have a good time with it. And whatever you decide, this is, this is not a condemnation. This is just an attempt for people to think deeper. We do open up and we realize. We open up for comments. We realize we're going to get a lot of detractors on this one. I would imagine we get a lot of. We're going to get a lot of people that have a lot of different things to say. Yes, I come across as very dogmatic on it. My son just went to a bbs night where we are with my in laws on Monday. My wife was. Yeah, my wife was grilling me about it. And so, you know what? And I had the discussion, like, if people saw my kid there. No, just kidding. But yeah, look, we're human. You know, we're, we're trying to get this one right. We're trying to understand what's most pleasing to God. There are nuanced discussions about it, of, if it's just for the church kids, not seen as evangelism. If we don't spend a ton of money on it. Yeah, we get that. And those might be the comments. And we very much welcome your comments. Just to discuss these things further, if you disagree with us, that's okay. That's perfectly fine. Still give a comment. We will discuss it if you can sway me and change my mind. Fantastic. We'll do that, too. But, fellas, anything else we want to, we want to say before we look to wrap up a little bit ahead of time, a little before the hour. [00:55:48] Speaker A: Telling people if they disagree and they know it, clap their hands. [00:55:53] Speaker B: You know what, on that note, I think we're going to wrap. Let us know your comments. Let us know your thoughts on how bad of a joke that was there at the end. [00:56:04] Speaker A: Some people are stomping their feet. [00:56:09] Speaker B: All right, we're going to wrap right there. Thank you so much for listening for the focus plus subscribers. We'll see you guys on Friday. And for everybody else, we'll talk to you next Monday.