Brett & Erin Kunkle Talk Equipping The Next Generation/Youth Ministry Antics/Crushing Monks
In this episode of The Babylon Bee Interview Show, Kyle and Ethan talk to Brett and Erin Kunkle who founded and lead MAVEN, which is an organization that exists to help the next generation know truth, pursue goodness, and create beauty, all for the cause of Christ. They talk about how we need to update the flannelgraphs, prompt the next generation to ask why they believe what they believe, and help youth groups equip the next generation with worldview knowledge, apologetics, and deep theology. They also discuss discernment in how G-rated movies are probably rotting your kid's brain with cultural messages, screen time restrictions, and wacky youth group games and pranks that would probably land you in court nowadays. There's also sage marriage advice from Erin in the subscriber portion. Topics Discussed Brett and Erin Kunkle lead up a group called MAVEN which is a movement of students who know truth, pursue goodness and create beauty. Flannelgraphs being updated for modern sunday school lessons Parenting and youth ministry challenges Teaching the Why and not just the What Catechisms and deepening our relationship with God just be knowing who He is Prompting the "Why?" questions as a parent, instead of waiting for them Teaching kids to crush the monks with facts and logic Blue-haired ladies on TikTok indoctrinating teenagers Screen time restrictions for kids Youth groups can be more than pizza and games Intergenerational church experiences Eating bugs for the kingdom and handling dead animals G-rated movies are rotting your kid's brains Narrating life for your kids to help them see what's going on around them Subscriber Portion Holy Smokes Marrying a single parent with kids The Ten Questions
I just have to say that I object strenuously to your use of the word hilarious.
Hard-hitting questions.
What do you think about feminism?
Do you like it?
Taking you to the cutting edge of truth.
Yeah, well, Last Jedi is one of the worst movies ever made, and it was very clear that Brian Johnson doesn't like Star Wars.
Kyle pulls no punches.
I want to ask how you're able to sleep at night.
Ethan brings bone-shattering common sense from the top rope.
If I may, how double dare you?
This is the Babylon B interview show.
Well, everybody, this is the Babylon B interview show.
Oh, wait, I stepped on.
That's okay.
Try again.
That's all right.
This was fun.
It was a good natural intro.
Oh, that was the beginning.
We're just talking.
Oh.
Yeah.
We're sitting here with Brett and Arin.
Yeah, the cameras come in and we're all talking and laughing.
Oh, we didn't see you there.
Oh, hello there.
We have a pipe and we're sitting by the fire.
Yeah.
Didn't see you there.
We're sitting here with Brett and Aaron Kunkel.
Yes, we are.
Brett and Aaron Kunkel of Maven, which is a movement of students who know truth, pursue goodness, and create beauty.
And Brett Kunkel used to work at Standard Reason with Greg Kochl with their associates Ben Cronkel and Jim Kukel.
Is that true?
People used to ask me all the time, like, what's it like to work with your dad?
You know, just Cokela Kunkel's.
Yeah, you guys do kind of look related.
You have like the little, the chin, the little chin.
It did it.
The little clip.
Go ahead and say it.
Go ahead and say it.
Butt chin.
That's what it is.
That's not a butt, it's like a dog.
That's going to get graphic.
I'm just saying, there's not a crack.
It's just a pinpoint.
Matt, can we get a side-by-side of the two chins?
Like an overlay, please.
But so I got tired of people asking me, like, oh, what's it like to work with your dad?
So I was like, oh, he's not my dad.
He's my grandpa.
Really?
Someone asked me to sign his book once.
Like, oh, could you sign your book?
So I signed it.
So this book sucks.
Greg.
No, I didn't do that.
Greg, if you're listening, I did not do that.
I thought about it.
Sad.
So, Maven, that sounds like a heavy metal band or something.
How did you come up with that?
Yeah, well, Maven is someone who is knowledgeable in a particular area, an expert, and then they seek to pass that knowledge on to others.
And so we started Maven two and a half years ago.
So we're still kind of in the startup mode, but we wanted, we just saw the huge need to reach young people in particular with the Christian worldview to equip them, to disciple them, to navigate the, you know, the culture and the challenges.
And yeah, so we, and we wanted a name that didn't sound like scholarly or goofy Christian or, you know, and so we're dorky.
Dorky.
That's inspired teen.
Actually, it's dorky to say dorky now.
Oh, that's kind of out.
Yeah.
Lame.
We didn't want to lame.
Yeah.
He'll come back.
Has some lame cross pun.
Yeah.
Cross.
Yeah.
Cross-eyed.
Cross-eyed.
Yeah.
I don't know.
So anyway, it captures what we want to do.
We want to pass on Christian knowledge to the next generation.
And so our two target audiences are young people, teenagers, and then the people who disciple teenagers, parents and youth workers, and pastors in particular, Christian educators.
Okay.
Yeah.
So that's what we do.
You guys do like a lot of flannel graphs and stuff like that?
Totally.
Totally into flannel graphs.
It works so well for our own kids at home.
The flannel graphs.
They really.
And then showing them a lot of veggie tail videos.
Yeah.
Nice.
Yeah.
Modern flannel graph trying to explain like modern world views to Christian teens would be interesting.
You would need a lot of new little characters.
Like maybe an Antifa group that's like, here's the fire one again.
Because they always had that same crowd in the flannel graph.
That was the same crowd that was like following Moses around, and that was the same one that was listening to Jesus.
Yeah.
And then the same one crucifying Jesus.
Yeah, it's the same crowd.
They can only afford the one.
So you just need a crowd with black helmets and goggles.
And you just keep using it.
Yeah.
You just add helmets and stuff to the crowd.
That could be a new strategy for reaching the next generation.
Yeah.
It's like felt Minecraft.
Felt Minecraft.
Feltcraft.
I don't know.
So you work with teenagers and stuff.
Like, why?
Yeah.
Why would you want with you?
Why would we want to do that?
Well, we have a few.
You do this willingly.
We have a few of our own.
We're parents of five kids.
Wow.
Five.
Yeah.
That's a lot.
This is new information.
It sounds like he's the one who gave birth to memory or something.
I think it's like three or four.
So, yeah, we have five of our own.
So we, yeah, we're definitely in the world of parenting.
And we did youth ministry for a lot of years.
He was a youth pastor when I met him, but then together we did it, youth ministry for a while too.
So we're just in this world and realize how challenging it is to raise kids.
And then we do like the teenage age.
A lot of people are repelled by teenagers and just kind of hold their breath and hope they make it through those years with their kids.
But we do enjoy that age and the time of kind of questioning and figuring things out on their own.
Now, we don't enjoy it all the time.
I remember when my oldest son was starting to, I guess he was 12 or 13, but really starting to argue with me on everything.
And it was super annoying.
And one time, Brett's out of town.
I call him like, he's just arguing.
He just wants to argue everything.
And he's like, well, you remember what stage he's at, right?
He's at that stage where they just question everything and want to debate and want to think through it.
And so it was a good reminder because I'm like, oh, yeah, we're supposed to, we're supposed to like this.
We're supposed to actually pull this out of our kids and let them ask questions and not be annoyed by it.
Yeah, I had to guide you through a lot of parenting.
That was a one-time.
I'm glad you had me.
Yeah.
No.
Well, we started.
Yeah, it was started in youth ministry.
I did junior high ministry, did high school ministry, did college ministry.
And we really first went into it for the money.
Then realized it didn't pay much.
And so I thought, well, I guess we should invest in these guys' lives anyway.
And, you know, I think they're at the stage where they can think well.
So generous.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know.
Maybe you're just blinded by the money.
Teenagers don't watch our show, so you can.
Oh, okay.
So we can bash him.
Yeah, just be honest.
Yeah.
There's one in this room, but we bash him to his feet.
He can't hear us.
He's on his phone.
And that's why we're trying to reach them because they're addicted to screens.
I don't even know what I was going to say.
Oh, no.
It's probably profound.
Well, I know it was.
I'm trying to recapture it.
No, there's this, there was something about working with young people that, you know, they're the stage where they're thinking about the big questions and they're on the cusp of making some big decisions.
They're very Malleable.
You know, they can be formed fairly easy, whereas sometimes working with adults can be a real pain in the rear in terms of that kind of stuff.
And there's just a, yeah, there's just a, there's some of that innocence, particularly with younger, like with junior hires.
I don't know, high schoolers are not that innocent anymore, but there's just a kind of innocence of life and still an optimism.
And then there's just, you can form them.
And we can mold their foolish little brains.
We can indoctrinate them into our cult-like faith.
No, but that, so it was, it was, I think it was, it was really, it was really, it's just fun to watch them when they're given solid Christian knowledge and worldview and truth and they learn how to defend it, not only know what they believe, but why they believe it.
You see their faith kind of come to life because then they start to own it for themselves.
It's no longer, hey, this is what mom and dad believe and I was just raised in it.
But no, this stuff is, I believe it.
I, you know, I am, I'm really owning my own faith.
Yeah, that's that's one thing I love about working with teenagers.
That could be the only thing, though.
So I was listening to you on another podcast because I was trying to research for the show and be ready.
And was it a better podcast than this one?
Those guys were quick.
Yeah.
You had said something to the effect of, you know, trying to reach kids even before they're teenagers.
You know, you said when they're two, when they're five.
And I, the first thought that came to my head, like, I don't even know how to talk to a two or a five-year-old about apologetics or any kind of reasoning, you know.
But I'm fascinated by the idea.
And you have thoughts on that?
Like, how do you, how do you talk about any?
I mean, I guess getting to actually what you teach partially is important, but how do you approach that with those younger kids?
Because one thing that happened to me, we have a 13-year-old daughter.
She's my stepdaughter.
And she was like the perfect, most easy child ever.
And it was almost like a wall went up like overnight.
Like you don't, I always thought, oh, I'd see her and start asking some questions and then we could talk about it.
It wasn't like that.
I was like, suddenly she's like ideologically changed overnight.
And I did start to go, I should have been talking about this stuff earlier in her life.
And one thing that keeps me from doing that is that my parents never did that.
I came to my faith completely on my own.
So I always feel like I'm kind of pushing things when I get like that.
It feels really awkward for me.
So yeah, I guess just suggestions on how do you approach those topics with a young kid?
Yeah, I think, well, for one thing, that was my experience too.
Like once I, I grew up in a Christian home, but once I got into junior high, I was, I, I did kind of decide just to do my own thing and didn't care about it.
So yeah, it's so how when we when we get to that stage with our kids, then like you mentioned, you realize, oh, maybe we should actually talk about this kind of stuff before they get to this stage.
And I do think as the cultures change, our parents, at least when we, you know, when we were growing up in the 80s and 90s, there was still with our parents just kind of a trust of the culture.
They let us watch stuff on TV, listen to music.
There wasn't a lot of, and so, and then just trying to kind of trusted the public school that what they were teaching at home was rein was reinforced at school.
That wasn't happening, but I don't think, you know, my parents were aware of how much stuff was changing.
And so then as we now are parents, and I know how it was when I was in school, knowing, oh, it's quite different now too, you realize it does need to start earlier as far as being intentional about how we're training our kids.
Because out there in the world, they're very intentional about targeting our kids and teaching them a different worldview than what we're wanting.
I think it really took messing up our first two kids.
They were baby pigs.
We messed the two up.
We're like, okay, you got three more shots.
That's why you're going to have a lot.
Yeah.
Because you got to have odds.
Really?
Yeah, exactly.
Because if a couple walks away, we still got three.
We're still, you know, more than 50%.
So, no, so I think one way to think about this is that you've got these different levels of development, intellectual development and moral development in children.
And just as a very simple breakdown, I think you can look at those earlier ages, kind of the elementary school, zero to, let's say, you know, 10, you know, kind of fourth, fifth grade, as the really the emphasis in terms of their discipleship and owning their faith is teaching them what to believe, right?
So that's where you want to teach them the what.
Now, when they get into junior high, this is where their minds begin to develop.
They begin to be able to think abstractly.
They start questioning.
This is what we saw with kids, our kids, is that, you know, they start pushing back.
And sometimes we would take that as a threat to our authority, which sometimes it is.
But often it's because their minds are developing and growing and they're no longer just interested in the what, but they want to know the why now.
And I remember doing this with my parents.
My dad would, you know, he'd say certain things that he kind of always said.
And I'd be like, well, is that really true?
Like, why do you think that, dad?
And so there's this kind of pushing, but it's a healthy sense of asking questions, wanting to know the reasons for things.
So this is the, you know, where you teach them the why.
And then I think the third stage is really kind of in the high school years, you're teaching them the how-to.
This is where you take the what and the why, kind of put it together, and then see how it works in real life.
And this is where giving high school students real life experiences with their faith, however that looks, is really important.
And so at those earlier stages, you're laying that foundation.
And frankly, when you look at Christian adults today, most of them don't even know the what, right?
Or the what is just, it's like this shallow.
So it turns out that the what of Christianity is love Jesus and be good.
And that's about it.
And it's just repackaged in different ways, right?
But what we want to do is give them good theology.
I mean, that's really the what at those earliest of ages.
It's it's theology.
It's the study of God.
It's it's the study of scripture.
And so that's what you're kind of laying in that foundation, those foundational years.
So with your two, your three-year-old, you're doing things like very practically like a catechism.
You know, for a lot of, I think, contemporary Christians or evangelical Christians, the idea of catechism sounds like a, you know, a Catholic thing or something.
We just don't have a whole lot of experience with that in our tradition.
Catechism is simply taking our theology and putting it in question and answer form.
And it's great for young children because young children have these minds that are like these steel traps and they can memorize so much and they don't understand it all, but that's okay because you're going to keep building on it.
But you're laying this foundation of theology.
And then as they really come to know the what, things like God's attributes, right?
When I go and speak to high schoolers nowadays, I'll do a test.
I'll say, okay, list for me all of God's attributes, right?
That kind of tell us who he is.
And typically students, high school students will get six or seven down on a piece of paper.
And frankly, it's not much better with Christian adults either.
And then I'll say, well, here's a list from just a standard systematic theology book.
And it's 25.
And all you could think of were these six.
And typically they're repeats.
It's like, well, God is loving.
God is caring.
And they miss the vast majority of his attributes.
And so how can we not see that young people and adults, any of us who don't know much about God are going to have a very deep relationship with God?
It's like, if you asked me about Aaron, like, hey, tell me about your wife.
And I said, oh, yeah, Aaron, she's, she's got, you know, blonde hair, brownish hair.
She's five, six.
She's got two eyes.
Yeah, that's Aaron.
You'd laugh and then you'd say, no, no, no, tell me about Aaron.
And if I said, no, that's all I got.
You would conclude something about the nature of our relationship.
It's not very deep.
There's not much richness there or there's not a whole lot of a relationship.
And in the same way, I think that that's how it is.
Our lack of knowledge about God reveals how shallow our faith is.
And so on those early stages, you're just trying to pour that knowledge in and let them memorize those things and let them memorize scripture and attributes of God and all these catechism.
And then you're going to build on that.
And then the junior high years is when they're asking the why.
So you capitalize on that.
In fact, I like to, with our kids, I like to prompt the why.
I don't want to necessarily sit back and wait.
So when they're 10, 11, 12, I want to be the one who's pushing them to ask the why questions.
So I remember our daughter Ella, who's number four, she, we were driving in the car and I think she was like 10.
And so I just said, hey, Ella, wait, why do you, why do you think that God exists?
Why do you think there's even a God?
And, you know, she looked at me like, what are you talking about, Dad?
Oh, dad.
Yeah.
Oh, dad.
And I said, and she, and she, her answer was, well, because you've told me, you know, you've taught me that.
I'm like, okay, can dad be wrong?
Good job.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And she's like, I'm like, can dad be wrong?
And she said, well, no.
And I was like, oh, okay.
Correct.
Nail.
Correct again.
I'm nailing this discipleship thing.
I should start a company called Maybe.
She's like, well, you know, of course you could be wrong.
I said, all right, let's just, let's just say maybe, you know, I don't know what I'm talking about.
Now, that wasn't plausible at all.
I said, well, maybe dad doesn't know what he's talking about.
Or, you know, do you have reasons for yourself, you know, besides dad told you so?
And she, you know, she's like, well, I don't know.
And so I'm trying to push the why because ultimately I want her to believe this stuff because she is convinced that it's true, objectively true, and not just because mom and dad said so.
Because that kind of faith, if that's your reasoning, if that's your justification, that's not going to survive in a culture that's very, you know, it's coming after your faith.
So that's that junior high stage where then you're, you're, you're provoking the why.
And that one I think is one of the most threatening for parents because they're scared of the why, number one, because they can't answer the why questions.
But then number two, to let your kid doubt and express their doubt is a scary thing.
And I get it.
But that it, look, every human is going to, every believer is going to doubt.
And not just every believer, but I think every human struggles with doubt.
The atheist struggles with doubt just like the believer struggles with doubt.
So that's navigating that is really important by giving them reasons why.
And then living, I think before they leave our homes, we have to give them opportunities to kind of live this out, whether that's taking them like when we were youth pastors, we would take our junior high, we'd do a series on Buddhism, teach them about Buddhism, and do kind of a fair assessment.
Hey, here's what Buddhism teaches.
Here are the problems with it.
And then we take them to a Buddhist temple and have a monk give us a tour.
And then the kid, that's when students own some monks.
Yeah, we're like, go own these crushed monks.
Can they force them?
For as simple, really, as when the Mormons knock on your door or Jehovah's Witness, don't slam it in their face.
As parents, invite them in, have your kids sit down too, and let them just listen to you interact with people who have a different faith or have the neighbors over that are Muslim or, you know, or atheists or whatever.
And let your kids watch you have a dialogue about your faith.
And that will spark questions, but it will also be teaching them that you're not afraid to engage in other ideas.
And you're modeling respect.
It's teaching them all kinds of stuff.
So for parents, there are ways that just right around us that you can show your kids that the Christian faith isn't one that is afraid of other ideas and that we're happy to have conversations about spiritual things with anybody.
So even if you don't have a youth group that you can do that with or you can, yeah, all the people around us for sure.
So yeah, and there are some good resources, you know, even when your kids are young that you can use to teach at home.
This was something that felt intimidating to me because as I said, I didn't come to faith till later in life till I was graduating high school.
So when it came to teaching my kids now, it was intimidating.
And, you know, Brett was a pastor, so maybe he should just do it.
But I knew I needed to be a part of it too.
So just starting to read the Bible with the kids and not feeling like I had to necessarily prepare for to have all these questions answered.
But as questions came up with the kids, I would say, oh, that's a really good question.
I have no idea why Jesus answered, you know, that way to that person.
But let's figure out why he did that or why did God do this in the Old Testament?
It doesn't make sense to me either.
So let's figure it out.
Things like that.
And then, yeah, there's all kinds of resources for kids.
One book that I'm in with our two younger kids is called Theology, and it's like a theology book for kids.
And it was talking about God being in control.
And then as we were talking about the idea of, is God in control or is he in charge?
And there's kind of a difference to that.
Like, is God in control of all of us?
Are we like a chessboard or something where he's moving all the pieces and we don't really have a lot of control of what's happening?
Or is God in control?
Is he sovereign over everything?
And our eight-year-old was really thinking through and asking a lot of questions, even in that.
So, you know, there are some resources out there.
And I think that that's the kind of thing that we're talking about where you're purposeful about engaging your kids in it.
And then when you run into problems, finding resources and not being afraid to say, gosh, that's a really good question.
I have no idea.
And I never thought about that.
Yeah, I'm just curious how that discussion ended.
Did you get Jonah to repudiate reform theology?
I assume he became a Calvinist and grew a long beard and started drinking crafted beer and drinking IPAs.
God is determining everything.
I cannot have a Calvinist in my home.
Well, it sounds like you have to be confident in your own faith to talk to your kids.
And it's like unsurprising, but people that have weak faith or can't question their own faith are going to have problems talking to their kids.
Yeah.
You know, if you've got those doubts and you're not comfortable enough to talk about them, what makes you think your kids are going to be.
Yeah.
And there's a balance there because I think some people might hear and go, oh, that means I've got to know everything.
There's a ton of homework to do.
Yeah.
And there's a good part of that because I think most of us who have grown up in the typical evangelical church, we probably do have a lot of homework to do because our churches have been so lacking in developing our faith intellectually.
In fact, even to talk about that often sounds foreign to Christians nowadays, that we, that our love for God is intellectual in nature.
I mean, Jesus says in the great commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
And, you know, so the mind is included in there.
And so it's not just the affections or kind of an emotional response, but there's an intellectual love that we have for God and that needs to be developed and cultivated.
And part of that is in our knowledge of who he is.
So in one sense, yes, we have homework to do.
And it's not just for the sake of our kid.
It'll help, you know, bring alive our faith.
It'll deepen our faith and our trust ultimately in God.
But then there's another side where we want to say, hey, if you don't know something, that's okay.
If your kid asks you a question that you don't know the answer to, that's okay.
But the best thing to do in that situation is not to shut it down, not to ignore it, because I guarantee you, if you shut down your kids' doubts or questions, they don't stop questioning.
They don't stop doubting.
They just stop coming to you if you shut it down.
And so there's plenty of other people who want to answer those questions for them.
They'll Google it.
They'll ask Siri.
They'll go to their buddy, whatever.
And so we can never shut down their questions, but we need to be able to have the humility to say, I don't know.
That's a great question.
I haven't thought about that.
And I need to.
So let's do this together.
And a lot of learning, I think we've learned through parenting that a lot of the learning is learning with our kids.
And that is something really good about that because it models for them this teachability, this humility that we want them to have, and this openness to the truth and pursuing the truth.
So that's okay.
So there's kind of a both and.
Yeah, because if anyone knows that we don't know everything, it's our kids, right?
Like they see us every day.
My kids have never said that about me.
Yeah, man.
Yeah.
Like same, I got my 13-year-old daughter.
And yeah, it's like anything we say immediately is discredited by the fact that we said it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then the outside I'd love to talk about social media and all that stuff.
Like she just recently, and we've been in a big debate about limiting her screen time, phone usage, social media stuff, very contentious.
She found a lady on TikTok who's this woman, this blue-haired lady who has like over a million followers.
And she says, this is how to parent.
And she tells everybody how to parent.
And it's give kids unlimited screen time.
Don't censor them all.
Never check their phones.
That's their journal.
You know, all this stuff.
Exactly what kids want to hear.
Yeah.
And so obviously she has millions of followers.
She's telling junior hires exactly what they want to hear.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so she's sending us these videos and saying, see, this is how good mom is.
So it's like people that you would never have to associate with now can get to your kids through social media and indoctrinate them just by them being on there scrolling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Even do with that because I struggle with over-censoring my kids and I don't want them to just go out in the world and, you know, my mom didn't censor me much.
So that's the other thing for me.
We didn't have sit-down talks about this stuff.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, it's such a different mindframe for me to try to be that way.
Yeah.
And I think the blue-haired lady on TikTok, like, why not watch it with your daughter?
Say, oh, okay, you think she has some good stuff to say?
I'll watch it with you.
And then dialogue about it.
And does blue-haired, let's just start with, does blue-haired lady even have kids?
Yeah.
She has a stepkid, I believe, is what she said.
Okay.
And then take what she's saying.
So let's find out who she is, what's she talking about, and then go through her ideas of what she's saying.
And do you really think that's good?
Well, do you think that would be good for me as a dad to just have unlimited screen time, always be distracted by, because that's as parents too, where when we're talking to our kids about something and they become older, our hypocrisy is going to come out.
And maybe we do have hypocrisy that we need to talk about.
And of course, there is a difference between parent and child.
Of course, you know, a lot of Brett's work is on the computer.
So it's okay if dad's working on the computer.
It doesn't mean that therefore then all the kids get as much screen time as dad does.
He's not on TikTok.
He's working.
I have to scroll through TikTok for my work to research.
Just researching.
Totally.
All the kids are playing Fortnite.
But the screen accountability thing, you know, that we, with our oldest daughter, we got put, I remember when we got pushed back from her and the whole privacy thing, well, what about my privacy?
And so that conversation, especially that Brett had with her, was, well, what if, what if I made that claim to mom about my phone or my computer?
What if I said to mom, hey, this and my stuff, this is privacy.
You know, I need my privacy.
And he said to her, what do you think?
How do you think mom would respond to that if she didn't know my passwords?
And she was like, that you were hiding something.
You know, and he was like, exactly, which is why I don't get to claim privacy on my screens and stuff.
And in the same way, where your parents were watching over you, so you don't get to claim privacy.
You get to have privacy when you go to the bathroom, when you're showering.
There are times for privacy.
Changing your clothes.
But when it comes to technology, you get the.
Yeah.
Actually, they want to.
They're happy when they want privacy.
Oh, good.
I don't have to.
At young enough ages, they don't want privacy.
They just walk out and walk around the house naked.
Naked, yeah.
That's my two-year-old.
Never wants clothes on.
Our youngest eight-year-old was, we had recently read through the Adam and Eve story, and he's been mad at them ever since and mad that they sinned and messed up the world.
And he said to me the other day, just over breakfast, he's like, I'm so mad at Adam and Eve.
If they hadn't have done that, we could all be naked right now.
And he's like sitting there in board shorts.
I'm like, are you just so confined?
You just feel so confined by your clothes.
I'm scared for that kid's future.
He's heading down the wrong road.
I don't think you've parented him well enough.
I'm going to have to step in.
No, with the screen stuff, that is the biggest challenge.
In fact, we do an annual conference to help equip parents and educators and youth pastors on how do we help our kids navigate the culture.
And our last one was on technology.
In fact, today on our website, we put up the video for people to purchase the talks from that because this is, I mean, the whole conference was on issues of technology, social media, just thinking through the power and the nature of technology, thinking about, you know, the sexualization that comes through technology.
So it's a huge area to navigate.
And I think for parents, maybe a helpful way to think about it, and this is an analogy that I use often in terms of thinking about just parenting and the long-term goal.
And the analogy I use is surfing.
You know, I grew up in Southern California.
I've been surfing all my life.
And when we got married, I thought it'd be amazing to one day teach my kids how to surf.
And so with our oldest, who's our guinea pig and everything, it was kind of just kind of put her, throw her out there.
And I realized you don't put a two-year-old on a surfboard, push them in the water and say, go for it.
So you lost one.
So we lost one.
Yeah, she, and I'm sure that's why she doesn't surf.
Actually, I remember in junior high, she took a big wipeout and she was like, I'm never doing this again.
And she hasn't.
So I've disowned her.
But we, the other one, so there's hope.
So I realized, okay, if I want to teach my kid how to surf, what's the long-term goal?
The long-term goal is that they paddle out into the ocean all by themselves without dad.
And they navigate the waters and the waves on their own.
They can surf on their own.
They don't need me anymore.
And in the same way, that's kind of my goal in raising my kids to live in this world as followers of Jesus, is that I want them to eventually go out there and live on their own all by themselves, navigating the culture with their faith, not just intact, you know, not just hanging by a thread, but they're thriving as followers of Jesus.
And so I realized, though, the first step in teaching my kid how to surf was actually learning how to protect them and to protect them from the ocean.
And it's always, it's great to have moms kind of helping, I think, dads on these because I'm like, let's go, you know, let's push them.
And she's like, take it a little easier on them.
And so it was, there's protection.
You keep them in the shallows.
You put them on their, on your back, you lay on the board.
You go in the foam where it's real gentle.
And then slowly, eventually you're getting them out there further and giving them more experience.
But even in that protection, the goal is not just protection.
The goal is protection so that I can teach and train and equip them to know things about the ocean, to learn about surfboards, to get some experience.
And I'm slowly taking them out kind of further and further, giving them more experience until eventually they're now paddling out with me and I'm right beside them and pushing them in the waves.
But eventually then they learn how to surf on their own.
And so notice, if all I did was protect them, they would never be able to surf on their own.
So I've got to do other things besides protection.
Protection is the short-term goal.
Navigating the water is the long-term goal.
In the same way, I think we've got to think about our kids that way, is that early on, I think we have to give them a lot of protection, particularly in an aggressive secular culture where technology is seeping in.
You can't shut your doors and lock the kids in anymore.
I mean, culture is just seeking them out in all these different ways.
So there has to be some healthy protection, but not just protection for protection's sake.
It's so that they can kind of develop some moral character, virtue.
They can build strength.
And so there's protection.
So I think for when it comes to technology, early on, lots of protection, keeping kids off of Screens as much as possible so that you can develop them in other ways so that eventually when they get into those ages where they're navigating social media, they maybe have some moral fortitude to do that well.
And of course, there's going to be lots of ups and downs in it.
So that, but the protection has to be accompanied by teaching and training.
So getting your kid to even think about the nature of technology.
Like we will have conversations with our kids to get them to think about, hey, okay, owning a smartphone, is that immoral?
No, it's not wrong to own a smartphone, but just you using that thing will shape you in a lot of different ways.
And then kind of narrating that for them.
Like, hey, this is always pushing you in a different direction.
It has no neutral gear.
It's always moving forward, backward to the side, and it's going to pull you and drag you.
And here are the different ways that it'll do that.
And then talking through some of the, you know, the, I think laying out for them kind of a vision ultimately, we want to see them not controlled by this.
And sometimes we'll just even cite the data, you know, of kids who, you know, who experience the negative effects of technology, the anxiety and depression that come that's correlated with, you know, excessive use, but ultimately wants you to be in control of this thing and not it to control you.
And so I think there's a lot of protection early on.
And then I think helping our kids see that it's a privilege, not a right.
And, you know, and kind of viewing it that way, because I think a lot of kids just kind of say, well, everyone else has it.
And so I deserve one too.
And that's where we have to, there's the challenge of teaching our kids and kind of developing almost an alternative culture in our homes that as followers of Jesus, we're different.
And we may have to start that very early on.
Like, we're going to be different than the world.
We're going to be different.
And getting your kids to really begin to get comfortable with that idea that you're going to be different than the people around you if you want to follow Jesus faithfully.
And that's okay.
And, you know, so there's so much to talk about on technology.
The whole episode.
Technology is like this giant shark while your kids surfing.
Yeah.
It's going to eat them.
But then you can teach them to like tame the shark and right on top of surf them.
I'm trying to make the analogy work other than that.
Yeah.
I don't know how deep you take that analogy, but.
Put a leash on the great white.
And no, that analogy doesn't work.
What's your take on like great white fragility?
That's what it is.
What's your take on like youth groups?
And I know you guys said you did youth pastoring and stuff, but what's, I know that there's kind of like some people that are more hardcore and are like, you know, youth groups are, you know, parents are surrendering the raising of their children and discipleship to the youth pastor.
You know, then you have people that go the other way and just pull up to church on Wednesday night, throw their kids out the door and drive off and, you know, hope that the youth pastor does everything.
So what role do you see like youth pastors and youth ministries playing?
Yeah, that's a good question because our youth pastors are probably going to listen.
I did have a different view doing youth ministry, you know, before having kids that were in that age.
But as we've, as we've had kids and they've gotten older, and yeah, because I do think there is that split of parents who are really dependent on the youth ministry to help us out here.
And I do think that's appropriate.
Like the church should, this is the purpose of the church to be, you know, to help one another.
And so youth ministry can do that.
I think the problem with a lot of churches in America today is that the youth ministry is so severed from the rest of the body.
And so there isn't that natural blending of generations that's so necessary for the body.
And so, you know, you show up at church on a Sunday morning, and typically, as a family, that you say bye to each other because it's like mom and dad go this way, little ones go that way, teenagers go that way, and then you meet up after and go to lunch.
And then you're typically learning all different things, you're not even studying the same thing.
So it is so severed in that way, and not really, I think, you know, the way the church should function more as intergenerational.
So I think a youth ministry can be, can be a huge blessing to be a second voice of what you're trying to teach with your kids.
Like I remember with our oldest daughter one night coming home from youth group and saying that her small group leader, she's like, yeah, we were talking and she was just saying, and I forget specifically what she was talking to our daughter about, but she gave the advice that I had been saying for a while to our daughter.
And now hearing it from her youth group, small group leader, it was like, this was such a great idea.
And mom, I think this is so smart.
And it took everything in me not to say, I've been saying this to you for years.
So sometimes.
And then when I heard you say that, I was like, I've been saying that to you for years.
So I had that same temptation, honey.
Yeah.
So sometimes those voices, you know, that our kids will listen to, and it's natural for them to is good.
That can be a benefit.
But I think, yeah, if the split sometimes of the different generations in the church, I think is troubling because I spoke at our youth group at our church a couple years ago.
They were doing like a sex series and I was a teen mom.
And so they came and had me share my story.
What?
Oh, did I not tell you that?
Tell me that.
But after I was talking with the kids, and then we did some QA, and it dawned on me that these students who go to our church didn't realize how many resources they had.
And so I said to them, you know, you guys, on Sunday morning, when all of us old people are over there and you guys meet in here, actually, almost everyone in there has a story of some kind of sexual brokenness.
And they've all been your age and walked through these temptations and struggles.
So you're not alone.
And there's a bunch of us over there that are here to help you and walk through it with you.
You and your parents are, you know, if your parents aren't believers, there's a whole bunch of adults over here that are, we're for you and we want to help you.
And we've been your age before.
And that to me was one of those moments where I'm like, gosh, it's such a bummer that we're not more integrated as a body.
Yeah, and that's the downside, I think, of youth groups.
And Aaron likes to focus on the negative.
So I'm going to focus on the positive here.
Just a little.
Sometimes I'm a more hopeful person.
No, so I think that is a serious issue.
This kind of you cordon off the kids and then they're not incorporated into the life of the body.
So by the, so they've had this mini church on their own away from big church.
And then they graduate and we're like, all right, throw them into the big church.
And they're like, who are these people?
And so many churches have this age gap between kind of 18 and 25 to 30 where, you know, kids split.
And, but I think one of the things a youth group can be a huge ally as well.
And so This is where, as a youth pastor, I think we, our reflections have been: if we could kind of go back and do it over again, we would focus on theology and apologetics and worldview with kids, really teaching them how to think carefully about their faith, knowing what they believe and why they believe it.
Because you just, as a youth pastor, you have such limited time with them compared to like their parents or their teachers.
And so, what would be the best use of that time?
And it's really helped grounding them in their faith.
And I think, because I would do those messages on, you know, here are the three steps to getting along with your parents or things like that, which are important things.
But often we just simply kind of just teach this moralism, tell them what to do, but they have no foundation that really motivates that on their own.
Like, well, why, why, why should I do these things to honor my parents?
Well, because God said so.
Okay, yeah, he did, but there needs to be more than that for the kids.
They need to have a robust view of who God is and his nature and character and moral values and the fact that there are objective moral values in this world and things like that.
So, giving them that foundation ultimately, I think, will motivate action, but where it comes from a place of deep, deep faith and deep understanding of their faith.
So, I think youth groups can be a strong ally in that.
And that's what we see in our home church, where our youth leaders really focus on that kind of stuff.
And we've seen as our youth ministry has gotten more serious about the faith and more serious about Bible study and spending significant time studying scripture, our numbers have actually grown.
Not that that is a clear sign of success, but what we've seen is that students are hungry for that.
We have students from other churches who kind of have just shallow youth ministries that it's kind of games and pizza and a nice little moral lesson that come to our church because there's something deeper there.
So, all that to say, I think youth ministry right now is probably a mixed bag in the church, but it can be a really great tool for the church.
What's the craziest object lesson you've ever done as a youth?
Like, you ever like start up a chainsaw or jump over the stage on a dirt bike?
No, I don't know if he did that, but he did games that for sure we would get sued for today.
Yeah, I think back on my junior high years, and I'm thinking, how did they get away with some of that stuff?
Oh my gosh, yeah, I was for sure.
The Kunkle family were big pranksters, and so I played and by we, he means him.
No, I mean my father, it started with my father, it's his fault.
Uh, my brother.
Did you have an uncle named Uncle Kunkle?
Just don't on me.
His first name was Uncle, actually, yeah.
Okay, um, so he was uncle-uncle.
Something about that name.
A lot of teenagers that we work with end up calling you Uncle Kunkle.
Not a lot.
Yeah, like two or three.
There's something about that name.
The older you get, the more it'll be called.
Yeah, the more girls.
Most of them call me Master Cunkle.
Oh, shoot.
No, that's where I can't say that.
That's racist.
I didn't mean anything.
We don't say Master Kunkle.
I can't be racist because I'm a person of color.
Right.
So it's only you, Pizza.
But yeah, he played games where, you know, we made kids eat live cockroaches.
I mean, we played crazy gloss over context.
Let's park there for a second.
Okay, it was the 90s and you got away with more.
Okay, you guys remember that show Fear Factor?
Yeah.
Well, that was like a big hit back in the day.
And so we thought, hey, let's do a big outreach event with a fear factor theme.
And we'll use it as a way for kids to bring their friends, make it kind of an evangelistic thing.
And so we did.
And so we did kind of our own little fear factor.
And one, the first, we had the room broken up into different colors when they came in.
And then we chose a volunteer from each colored team who's going to represent their team.
And so we had a series of challenges.
And the first one was like eat a live earthworm.
So we filled this aquarium with, you know, like halfway full with earthworms.
And so they had to pick one out and swallow that.
And so they did.
And so the next challenge was supposed to dig with their face for a key.
Oh, that would have been better.
We should.
Oh, that's a good idea.
Well, then the next one was, I think, swallow a goldfish.
They all ended up being eating.
They were all terrible.
And then the final challenge was eat a Madagascar hissing cockroach.
Holy cow.
Which I didn't know until I picked it up from the pet store.
They actually do hiss.
They're terrible, scary in series.
I thought when you said you needed to add some context, so this was going to get better.
No, it's just not making it sound better.
Usually when he says that, he's trying to make you think he's not crazy.
They were hissing cockroaches.
They were hissing cockroaches.
They were like the worst bugs you could possibly have kids eat.
I do have a little, I do sometimes have trouble just going to the far extreme.
So he saw it on TV, so he thought for sure it'd work.
Hissing cockroach.
Yeah, they did it on TV.
So anyway, and I think we challenged the kids that if they had so many students, then I would eat one of those.
And then we had an intern who would eat one of them as well.
And so they got that many kids there.
And one of the kids actually ended up eating it.
It's a hissing cockroach.
And so then it was our turn, me and the intern.
And I literally, literally, could not get it in.
I was so repulsed by it.
I like bit it and it just immediately spit it out.
He wimped out, basically.
And so the intern, the intern took one for the team and ate two.
He took two for the team.
He ate his and then he ate mine that was actually partially already.
And then that evening, the intern ends up in the emergency room because one of the feet of the hissing cockroach got stuck on the guy's dress.
And so we left church ministry shortly after that, actually.
Changed our names.
It's all in the book.
So you guys get their books.
They were previously the Cochles.
They changed their names to the Cunkles.
Yeah.
Just a slight change.
And so far, we haven't had any lawsuits.
So I think maybe the dead cow was.
That was a, that was probably one.
That was yeah pretty, what's the dead cow?
I can't talk about it.
He okay, he did a prank with a dead cow lady sacrifices.
Yeah, it was an object lesson.
It was an object lesson burnt off honestly.
It was.
Um, I was doing college ministry with another guy.
We were kind of co-leaders of the college.
Oh, this is real.
You're like joking.
No, the old dead cow.
No really, actually.
Don't you remember those days back in youth group when you use dead cows, spend the night sleeping inside of it like what's the creature on Star Wars?
Tantan, Tontan?
Yeah no sorry, I wasn't tracking Tantan, it was a college group.
We had a college event, me and this other guy co-led it, and he and his wife.
Afterwards the college students were like hey, let's keep hanging out, let's go do something else.
And he and his wife were like oh no, she was, I guess she was pregnant and she was kind of tired, and he's like i'm gonna take her home.
And so then the students are like they kind of they're bummed at them.
So they, they said hey, let's prank them.
I was like, oh yeah, let's prank them.
And I had this idea that had been simmering for a year or two uh, of putting a dead cow on someone's porch.
Because um, I grew up out here in the 909, I grew up in Chino, and Chino was in cow, cow country dairy, dairy country.
I went to Don Lugo.
So did I. You went to Don Lugo?
I did.
No way.
Yeah.
What year was that?
That was probably many decades after you.
Probably.
But I did blaze the trail for you.
So if you don't live by cow farms, you don't know, but it's like the trash service.
They throw it out on the corner.
And they throw the dead cows out on the street, and then the service comes by and picks them up.
So unfortunately, Brett knew this.
I knew there were dead cows available too.
And had always wanted to do this prank.
One of our college students had a track.
No, the context doesn't work.
I'll show you how I came to this idea.
They were actually hissing cows here.
You figure it's like someone leaves a love seed out on the road.
It means anybody can take it if they want.
Free cows.
Yeah, it's the same idea.
It probably means they're filled with disease.
I just want to, I just want people to see how I make these connections.
So we had done this junior high event.
It was a pool party at this family's house in our church.
And we do the game with junior hires where we buy like 100 goldfish, they dump them in the pool.
It's boys versus girls.
They have to jump in and try and catch as many gold as it is.
Animal torture.
I know.
Again, the context isn't helping.
And again, I think this is something we'd be sued for today.
If we look at it.
It's like torturing goldfish.
There's questions of whether or not animals.
You worked in Young Life?
Did you work in Young Life?
No, I never did.
Oh, okay.
I thought I read that.
Yeah, I was in Young Life, and there's a lot of goldfish torture going on.
Madagascar hissing goldfish.
I think the games have changed now in youth ministry.
Yeah, they're more politically correct.
For good reason.
So, you know, so we had all these goldfish.
You know, you grab a goldfish, you throw it in the bucket.
Whatever team has more goldfish wins.
But at the end of the night, we had this thing, this bowl filled with goldfish.
Half of them were dead.
And I accidentally left it at their house.
And so later that night, they came to my house, dumped all the goldfish on our porch, and then rang the doorbell at like midnight and left.
Right.
They thought it was funny.
And I thought, okay, that's a good joke.
And I'm going to get you back.
And I just thought, all right, I'll just get another animal and I'll put it on your porch.
And I knew there were dead cows available.
And so I just went to, okay, I'll put a cow on your porch and now I'll outdo you.
You're saying this like this is logical.
Like the next logical thing is to think, I'll find a bigger dead animal than goldfish.
I always go bigger.
Go to like a mud skipper or something.
It's just like a fish with legs.
You went way up the evolutionary ladder.
Well, the arms race really escalated there.
We were to the dead cow.
I mean, I go right to the atomic bomb so that you will never come back.
So this poor guy that we're doing ministry with has no idea what is going on in his mind in these logical steps that he's taken.
And then so he wants to go home early for his poor pregnant wife.
The college students want to do a prank.
So Brett suggests this is the best prank we could possibly do.
The idea originated with the college students and I just try and minister to them.
And so I said, hey, I got this idea.
Let's take a, yeah, let's go get a dead cow and we'll put it on his porch.
They're like, you mean like a forklift or something?
How do you do that?
It took like four guys.
They put it in the back of the truck.
We found, well, it was cowardly.
It was half.
Smelled terrible.
Okay, that's terrible.
And it was still, I couldn't believe how heavy the thing was.
I think it's still twitching or something.
It wasn't.
No, no.
But it smelled like manure.
He put it in the back of his truck, drove it over to their house at whatever midnight, dragged it through their yard, put it on their porch, and we're like, oh, that's great.
And so we went to the local 7-Eleven in the days before cell phones and smartphones and got on the payphone.
And one of the college guys called and their answering machine picked up.
And so he left a voicemail and he said, check your porch, check your porch, you know.
And the pastor was laying in bed.
He had heard the phone ring.
He didn't get up to answer, but he could hear the message.
So he gets up and he goes and he looks out the door, the little eye hole thing, and he can't see it very well.
So he thought it was a dead dog.
And unbeknownst to me, unbeknownst to me, he had been involved with getting this high school kid at the local high school busted for dealing drugs, and the kid had threatened him.
And so he's like putting two and two together.
Oh, man.
They put a dead dog on my porch.
So he called the police.
Police came and did this full investigation.
They measured where from the street we had dragged the cow.
They listened to the voicemail like 100 times.
Wow.
So it kind of got messy.
I wish I could say that was the only prank he's done that the police have been called, but it's really not.
So by God's grace, he's not in jail and with us today.
But I've confessed.
Wow.
This is fantastic.
That was a detour, but I liked it.
That may have just undermined everything I said.
Teach your kids Christian worldviews and drop some dead cows on people.
Don't be afraid to scare them with dead animals.
Before we get into our subscriber, I guess we're just about into our subscriber portion.
I did really want to talk about it.
I'm just curious on just the topic of content.
I mean, picking what movies and shows and stuff.
I mean, there's kind of a rule of thumb among Christians just to keep it all PG or just watch Christian stuff.
Or, you know, I think we both really felt like that didn't serve us well in our youth to only watch the Christian version of things or whatever.
I felt like it's kind of a false dichotomy, especially when you go out and find out, oh, these movies are way better or whatever.
And so how do you navigate that?
You know, and then we'll kind of, we'll go to the subscribe portion after this.
Yeah, I think you absolutely cannot have those kind of PG, PG-13.
Let's not let the world set the standards and the bars for what we're going to let our kids watch.
Because when our oldest daughter, who's now 25, so she, you know, when she was watching Disney Channel, it was like Hannah Montana and I forget Lizzie Maguire, some of these old Disney shows.
So they would have been what were considered PG, but they were absolute, the messages in there were absolutely terrible.
And when I would sit and watch some of them with her, and even cartoons.
So you'll notice in a lot of them, the dumbest people on the show are the parents, typically.
Always the adults.
It's, you know, the teachers are idiots, the principals, the dad, especially is just a moron.
And so this is what's common in a lot of kid shows nowadays.
And kids pick up on that.
And so there's stuff that would be in the G category that I wouldn't want my kids to watch.
It's absolute junk.
But there might be a PG-13 movie that, you know, maybe has some kind of scene in it that's bloody or I don't know.
For some other reason, it's got a PG-13 stamp on it.
But the messages in it about family or God or whatever are actually really positive or at least worthy of watching and having a conversation about.
So yeah, I don't think we should just, as parents, just let the world dictate the standards of what our kids are going to watch.
We have got to, it's a lot of work and it's exhausting, to be honest, but we have to, we have to help our kids navigate these choices and it can't be a simple rating of PG and R and how are women portrayed in the show?
How are dads portrayed?
How is any kind of authority portrayed?
Yeah, I think when it comes to what we watch, whether it's a movie or a show or a YouTube video, one thing to help our young people understand is that they're being socialized by the culture.
In fact, that's the way that culture influences us in kind of the most powerful way is that it simply presents to us what is normal.
And then we just kind of absorb that and adopt that.
So if they're watching show after show after show where parents are viewed as idiots and the kids are the ones who kind of solve the problem and figure things out and have wisdom, that's going to slowly be socialized into them.
And so those are the kind of things that I think we look carefully at.
What are the messages?
And this is a great movies, because it's such a big part of our lives and culture, it is a great tool to get your kid thinking about what they believe, why they believe it, and constantly looking at the message.
So, you know, growing up in Christian culture, you know, often it's, you know, sex, drugs, and, you know, violence are like the worst things or no, language.
Sex and language are the worst things.
Violence, you know, we kind of give that one a pass.
But anyway, so if it has sex or language, well, then it's bad, you know?
And this is where we have to go just much deeper and think, hey, number one, what's the worldview or what are the worldview pieces that are being communicated?
So I think the kind of questions that we want to ask of anything that we're watching are questions like, number one, what's the story that's being told here?
Who's the hero?
Who's the villain?
Is it the religious person that's the villain?
Is it the LGBTQ individual who's the hero?
So what kind of worldview are they communicating through just the storytelling?
And kind of helping to draw out the messages that are communicated.
What's the conflict?
How is it resolved?
And then ultimately saying, okay, how does this compare with a biblical worldview?
Because there's a lot of what we would call quote unquote secular art that actually have messages that are very consistent with the Christian worldview and tell the stories most often more compelling in a more compelling way than Christians do.
We've got to work on that.
And so those kind of things we look at and say, okay, that's the kind of art I want to put in front of my kids.
Those are the kind of movies and shows.
And if you're looking for criteria as a parent, I mean, think about the true, the good, the beautiful.
So is the message true?
Is it communicating truths about life?
And of course, that's going to assume that we know the truth.
So that's where we're going to have to keep growing in our knowledge of the truth, the truth of scripture.
But is it true?
Okay, then secondly, what it's promoting, is it promoting the good?
So it can tell true things, but it may not promote what is good.
It may not promote virtue or morality.
So for instance, Pixar movies, if you look at a lot of Pixar movies, they promote these virtues through their storytelling.
Like in Toy Story, the issue of kind of loyalty amongst friends and sacrifice for friends, that's a key theme.
And it's promoted as this good, right?
It's this beautiful picture that they paint.
And so that's the kind of stuff that we want to put in front of our kids.
But sometimes things are, you know, they have truth and they have goodness, but they're just really bad art.
And that's often Christian art, right?
Or Christian movies.
And so there's also this other piece of, hey, what's beautiful too?
What's well done?
What's good cinematography?
And those three criteria then kind of form for us this, you know, what we want to put in front of our kids.
What's like three movies?
Didn't meet all those?
Yeah.
Just watch them over and over again.
That's why I just, I just show my kids Braveheart all the time.
Yeah, Mike Heard again.
Lord of the Rings all day, every day.
All day.
That's what I heard out of that.
I don't know.
Exactly.
But yeah, that's my question.
I think that's my question, though.
Like, this movie or show doesn't align with my worldview.
Do you just not watch it or do you watch it and try to talk about it?
Because there's going to be things they want to watch.
They're going to hit a point where they can watch anything they want.
You want to be able to watch with discernment.
Yeah.
And so I guess that's the surfing analogy.
How do you get them to be ready to jump into that?
Yeah, I remember after we took all the kids to see Moana when that came out, you know, and so that was...
Did you really want to just admit that publicly?
Our youngest daughter really wanted to see Moana.
So that's the perfect example of a movie where it's safe to go see it, right?
But there's so many messages in that movie that we wanted to talk about with our kids.
And even driving home, so we talked about some of the ideas about where things were created and who had the power and all of those sorts of things.
But even I said to our daughter, it was a bummer that for Moana to do the right thing, which was to save her village, right?
She had to disobey her dad.
And I said, did you notice that?
Like for her to do what was right, she had to go against her dad.
And they kind of made her dad like the bad guy in the movie because he was like, no, no, stay.
But the, but the village needed to be saved.
So Moana disobeys dad, does it.
She's the hero.
Dad was wrong.
Yay, movie's over.
Oh, yeah.
So just having that discussion.
And, you know, that's where as parents, we got to watch just to pick up on messages like that.
And then, yes, I mean, she, she loved Moana.
Moana's great.
But even just talking through, and I said, wouldn't it have been cool if her dad was like, Moana, you have courage.
Why don't you go and do this?
Like, why not, wouldn't it have been cool if her dad actually encouraged her in doing something courageous and good?
And then she listened to her dad and did it.
Wouldn't that have been cool?
You know, and so even just talking through Disney movies or G-rated things of, again, of just walking through the story and thinking, how did they portray, you know, these people?
And as our kids have gotten older, for example, they love to watch The Office.
You know, these are our older kids and we love The Office.
And just talking to them about how is the one Christian in that show portrayed?
You know, Angela.
And she's got some issues, right?
And it's not, we're not going to not let our kids watch The Office, you know.
And again, we're talking about older kids here, but we're just even just having that conversation.
Did you guys notice like the only Christian in that show is she's a total stiff.
She's a cat lady.
You know, she's just like, there's some of the episodes.
But what Aaron's describing is what we've, the term that we've used for it is narrating.
It's like as you're living life with your kids, you're narrating for them what's going on, and you're helping them to develop eyes to see these things.
And so that's why it's so important for us to know the Christian worldview so that we can be more effective in narrating.
And so it's like, yeah, you see a Disney princess movie, and pretty much that's a theme of every Disney princess movie, right?
Go against what your father says.
I mean, that's a Ulan, Little Mermaid, you know, Brave, I think, whatever.
Brave.
Yeah, brave.
Oh, yeah.
And so you just narrating for that helps our kids to not just be these passive, you know, kind of sponges that just absorb this stuff and then get socialized by it, but it helps insulate them where, so it's not, hey, we're not going to expose you to this.
We're going to expose you to things at appropriate ages and levels, but we're going to help you see it and discern truth from error.
Because there are some movies that there are some really good messages, and in the same movie, there's some really bad messages.
So do we just take that off the table?
No, we want ultimately that for them to develop a mature enough faith where they can see both and reject the false ideas and messages and but embrace the you know the the truth in there.
Um, so I think it just.
It just means that we have to be more thoughtful, we need to be better critical thinkers um, we need to have a robust Christian worldview to help our kids navigate this more effectively.
My parents wouldn't let me watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles growing up why?
And my mom's listening to this podcast, so I missed out.
I want you to tell my mom that she was wrong, basically did well.
Basically, they let us watch the first movie and we came home and just started punching each other.
So, no more, we never would have done that otherwise.
Yeah, like we, we discovered punching through.
Yeah, you had never done that.
There's a.
There's a lesson like what?
Why does that appeal to boys in particular?
You know boys have male supremacy.
Yeah, I don't know.
Or it could be that boys have a certain kind of nature that's different than girls and problematic canceled.
I just, I just ended our ministry right there with that statement.
Kind of nature that would drag a giant cow into somebody's porch exactly exactly, when I tell that, I mean guys are usually like oh, that's so cool.
And then women are always appalled.
They're, they think of you differently every time.
They're like you are a savage person.
They have more sympathy for you they do actually, that's true.
Are we ready to go into our subscriber portion?
Yeah, i'd love to talk in our subscriber portion.
I would love to get into.
Uh, you guys are both cigar smokers, which is fascinating to me absolutely.
That's crazy, both of us.
Yeah, that's the weirdest part.
That's awesome, kind of weird envy but um, and then also uh, what was else I talked about?
Oh yeah, so you, you married.
You said you know she was a single mom.
I married a single mom and I would love to talk a little more about that because I think it's not talked about a lot in Christian yeah, circles.
It's uh, we were talking a little bit about how sometimes it's uh, a little stigmatized, so we love to talk some about that too.
And then whatever Kyle wants to talk about, I guess starts.
I'm gonna ask the 10 questions and the 10 questions that everybody always loves to hear.
They love those 10 questions.
Yeah, if people want to find out more about Maven and what do you guys do.
Where can they go?
And go to our website, which is Maven truth.com.
Okay, don't go to Mavenlies.com.
Yeah, that was one disgruntled guy from yeah who created that.
Yeah yeah, he was.
He's the guy who um, left the cow on his course.
He's a Madagascar cockroach rights activist.
Yeah we, we wanted Maven, Wanted Maven.com, but it was like this car.
It's like a rental car.
Airbnb for cars.
Oh, yeah.
Apparently, they're going under.
I don't know.
Airbnb for cars?
You can sleep in the cars?
No, you can rent out your car.
No, I'm meaning that bet.
If you have a car, you can sign up for a regular Airbnb.
I'm parked at the Arby's on night.
You can sleep in there if you need to.
So that's not associated with you?
No.
Just to be clear.
Apparently, the company.
We don't rank cars.
We don't do anything here.
Or donor base has been kind of low.
So we've had to.
No.
No, apparently they're going under.
So I'm going to look into getting maven.com.
So this could be looking up for us that they're going under.
Glad they went under.
Glad all those people lost their jobs.
No.
All right.
Well, if you want to indoctrinate your children into a Christian worldview or rent a car, check out Maven Truth or Maven Truth or Maven.
And bye, freeloaders.
Goodbye.
Get out of here.
Go hit up the dollar menu.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
I want you to call me Huncle.
Oh, no.
You can't call me Huncle.
That is definitely not happening.
Usually, by the end of these conversations, people have a lot of sympathy for me.
Before I could answer, this guy says, You know, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.
You don't want to just sit down on the couch next to each other and have a conversation for an hour.
Literally, you just put a cigar in those fingers and suddenly it's on.
Did you pay them to say all this so your wife will listen to this?
I'm hoping she'll listen.
I don't know.
Probably I hope.
Enjoying this hard-hitting interview.
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Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.
Until next time, this is Dave D'Andrea, the voice of the Babylon Bee.