Josh Simpson questions why Reformed Christians avoid Amish-style rural communities, attributing the current urban focus to a "fear of man" and cultural compromise in cities like San Francisco and New York. The speaker critiques seeker-sensitive worship and public school attendance as failures, noting a recent shift toward red-state homesteading due to institutional corruption. While affirming Amish independence, he distinguishes the Reformed mission by targeting winnable towns over isolation, citing Doug Wilson's work in Moscow. Ultimately, the discussion frames voting Democrat as an unrepentant sin warranting discipline and predicts Roe v. Wade's overturning will accelerate geographic polarization between abortion sanctuaries and conservative strongholds. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Discipling the Big Cities00:06:41
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Josh Simpson, and this is actually, we wanted to start off with this question.
This was something that Josh wrote in last week, but I didn't have a chance to get to, so I'm going to do my best.
Today, Josh Simpson writes, Why doesn't the Reformed Christian movement orient like the Amish do in terms of community and all living around each other?
There are plenty of counties in Texas where this is possible.
Fannin County would be an example, buying up land and keeping it within the family.
All right, great question.
Thank you, Josh Simpson, for writing in.
Here's my response I am not against that.
So, I I'm kind of with you, Josh, in the sense that I would say, great question.
Why don't reform communities do this?
I think there's a number of reasons.
One reason would be this.
Unfortunately, guys like Tim Keller, city to city, the gospel centered movement, early on in the young, reformed, and restless movement, right?
There were guys who had been reformed from the womb, basically, guys like R.C. Sproul.
And so there were these older men who were very influential.
And then there was this kind of rise of all these young men in their 20s.
Who were embracing reformed theology and the doctrines of grace and coming into this way of thinking, this theological lens.
And I think it quickly got hijacked and got distracted at best and perverted at worst in a number of ways.
And one of those ways is the fact that it very quickly geared towards urban church planting, right?
In and for the city became kind of a mantra, kind of a rallying cry.
And so there was this.
Disdain.
Nobody would verbalize it.
Nobody would outright say it because if you say it, it sounds sinful and wicked because it is.
But there was a disdain for rural communities.
There was kind of a disdain for small towns, right?
It's like if you really are serious about the Lord and church planting and want to make a difference, then you got to plant a church in San Francisco.
You got to plant in Washington, D.C. You need to plant in New York.
You need to plant in L.A., right?
And that was kind of the thought process.
So what happened is that you got a lot of these reformed guys who.
Over the last 20, 15, 15, 20, 25 years, this young reformed restless movement went into these urban settings with extremely high cost of living, already established communities with established economies, and certainly leaning left politically, so bad policies, but still established places.
And so it was hard for these young guys, many of them, to these churches, for them to actually own land, start businesses, right?
Because you're going to places that That are oppressive towards conservative Christian values, right?
You're going to the places where there's the highest regulation on starting a business.
There's the highest prices for owning a home.
There's just not a lot of school options.
And so that's something that's very difficult.
And you often are having to rely on a second income from your wife.
And so you're sending your kids to public school.
And it was just kind of compromise after compromise after compromise.
And sadly, what ended up happening is.
Over the years, you start to recognize that these big cities are kind of discipling these reformed churches more than the reformed churches are actually discipling and impacting and influencing the big cities.
So I think a big part of it was an overemphasis on urban ministry, the urban city context, and a disdain for small towns and rural areas.
And I think that it's because one of the sins of the young reformed and restless movement.
Was the fear of man.
And what I mean by that is the desire for the approval of the public.
They wanted a seat at the cool table, right?
They wanted to be popular.
They wanted to be significant, meaningful, valuable.
And so they wanted to go where all the cool kids were in these big towns and they wanted to be light.
And so reformed soteriology came in in their church planting, but they were missing a lot of the key reformed traditions and aspects, like, for instance, the regulative prison.
Principle of worship, right?
So you think of like Mark Driscoll.
Yeah, Mark Driscoll at the time was reformed in his soteriology.
I don't know where he's at now.
And even then, it was still debatable where he stood with limited atonement.
So R.C. Sproul, you know, he used to say, What do you call a four point Calvinist?
Well, you call them an Arminian, right?
It's not even that you're barely reformed, you're not reformed.
And so these guys, you know, were waving the reformed flag, but they really weren't reformed.
A lot of the guys in the young reformed restless movement really weren't reformed.
They had adopted reformed.
Reformed soteriology, but that's about it.
The regular principle of worship went out the window.
A Puritan way of thinking was out the window.
And so when it came to how they were doing church, it's like, well, we're going to have, you know, strong reformed preaching, but an attractional kind of seeker sensitive methodology in terms of our worship.
We're going to have the rock band and we're going to have the dimmed lighting.
Our churches aren't going to look like churches.
They're going to look more like a nightclub.
You know, we're going to do this thing, focus on these things in the area of big urban context.
Uh, cities, and so I think Josh, to get to your question, I think that you're going to see more of that.
You got guys like me, and I'm just one example.
What I'm doing is really not that unique.
I continue to hear from more and more pastors and Christians, reformed Christians, who are following suit.
They're moving out of blue states to red states, they're moving out of big cities to small towns.
They're trading in their condo and buying a couple acres of land with an old house.
More people are homesteading than ever before.
Gospel Sacrifice and Exodus00:07:02
You know, you have all these blessings that came about over the last two years, right?
COVID was ridiculous, especially our nation's response to it.
But in the providence of God, many mercies were distilled to the church, to those who are the true church, those who are actually regenerate, actually Christians.
One of the mercies is that through the last two years, God kind of lifted the veil in terms of all of our major institutions and revealed to us that they were discredited, that they were corrupt, right?
Media.
Is a joke now.
The legacy media is a joke.
Our politicians, at least the current administration that we have in the White House, is a joke.
We know it's a joke.
The Democrat Party, right?
49 out of 50 Democrats just voted not to codify Roe.
That's a lie.
They voted for abortion to be legal in all 50 states for any reason, all the way up into the point of birth, way further than Roe.
So now, like, it's not nearly as difficult as it was once upon a time for me to say, if you vote Democrat, that's a sin.
And if you are corrected lovingly by the elders in your church for that sin and you refuse to respond to that correction, you refuse to repent, and you plan and you voice your intention to vote Democrat again in the future, then you are going to be placed under church discipline.
That's how serious I take that.
I think it is a sin.
And if it's unrepentant sin, then yes, I would excommunicate someone.
For the sin, the unrepentant sin of being a Democrat and supporting the Democrat Party.
Now, that's been a reality for a long time, but it would be really hard to make that argument five years ago, or at least harder to make that argument five years ago.
And now, a lot of people are like, yeah, no, duh, totally makes sense.
So it's this mercy of God lifting the veil.
But one of the institutions, right, politics, media, higher academia, you know, pharmaceutical companies, right, so the medical.
Institution has been revealed with its corruption, the CDC, the WHO, all these different things.
But sadly, one of the institutions also that the corruption was revealed, the hypocrisy was revealed, is Big Eva, the institution of the evangelical church.
And so, a lot of people, what we have right now is, I believe, a nationwide providential game of musical chairs.
You have people who are switching teams, and the nation is polarizing politically, culturally.
Theologically, but also geographically, because it's so polarized now in terms of worldview that if the left has influence in a particular place, they make it virtually unlivable for anybody who holds to conservative Christian values, right?
Somebody who wants to get married, have their wife be a keeper at home, Titus chapter 2, have multiple children, not subject their children to the public school.
Care for their aging parents, honor their father and mother as their parents begin to age, be able to not just put them in a home, but care for them and save up to give an inheritance to their children's children and give 10% of their income to their local church and trying to be faithful with a tithe as a starting point.
People who are living that way, people who want to live that way, they can't live in New York.
They can't live in San Francisco.
And so they're moving.
And so right now, because the nation is polarized politically, culturally, and all that going downstream from Theologically, right?
It's our theology that influences our politics and our cultural worldview and all these things.
Because of that polarization and it being so hot, so stark, it's lending towards geographic polarization.
And as that continues to happen, that's what happened with me.
I left California.
I never liked California, but I was there because people need Jesus.
But then it came to a point where it's like, okay, for me to reach these people who need Jesus in California, it's going to come at the cost of my own wife and children, right?
And the Bible is really clear that the Lord desires obedience, not sacrifice.
And in a big picture, that's what the evangelical church did over the last 50 years we evangelized the world through global missions, and all of our children grew up and went apostate.
What we did, what I'm saying is, what we did essentially is we, in the name of the mission of evangelism, reaching the lost, we did it, but we did it at the cost not of our personal liberties and comforts.
It's one thing to sacrifice your personal comforts and pleasures.
That's what I would call gospel sacrifice.
But sinful sacrifice is fulfilling the mission of God, the alleged mission of God, but at the cost of obedience to God.
And the Bible is really clear about that.
The Lord does not desire sacrifice, but obedience.
And so, as it becomes more and more practically challenging to obey God at the level of the home and the family and wives and children and grandchildren, all these things, as it becomes more difficult to obey God in big cities and blue states, you're going to see Christians leave.
And we're seeing that already.
And we're only going to see, I believe, more of that, especially if Rose overturned.
Think about that.
If Rose overturned, and I think it will be.
I think these Supreme Court justices will hold the line.
Well, we know, those of us who have some education, we know that Roe being overturned does not abolish abortion across the country.
That's really when the fight just gets started.
And we should have been fighting that way all along, ignoring Roe.
It was never law, right?
That's why the Democrats are trying to codify it into law.
And they have been unsuccessful, praise God, and failed.
So what you're going to have is like Gavin Newsom with California has already come out and said, we're going to be an abortion sanctuary.
They're literally going to be a baby murdering tourist destination for the whole country and baked into their state taxes, right?
So if you're a Christian living in California, you are going to be, by your presence of living there and paying taxes, you are going to be funding not only the murder of children in the womb with mothers who are residents of your state, but also covering the airfare, the lodging, so the travel, the lodging, the meals, and the procedure, the murder of women coming from Kansas.
Who wants to get an abortion.
So, when Roe is overturned, you're going to see some states, and I think it's going to take time, but you're going to see some states, namely red states, actually get rid of abortion.
And then you're going to see blue states just double down.
And so, as these things continue to happen, the economic policies that affect work and living and all these, and then also these policies like abortion, you're going to see continue to see not just polarization of thought, but geographic.
Geographic Polarization Trends00:04:20
Polarization.
And as we see more of that, I think more Christians are waking up to the idea that maybe there is something, some merit to the scripture that says that we should seek to live quiet lives, working with our hands, so that we would not be dependent on anyone.
That's another thing that over the last two years, God has mercifully revealed over the last two years of chaos in our nation we all have come to recognize we're a lot more dependent.
Than we actually thought we were and that we should be.
And so, more people are seeking to become independent, economically independent, not dependent on the public school system, not dependent on big woke corporations, not dependent on this, not dependent on that.
And so, as more people are trying to become financially and communally independent, I think you're going to see more people moving not just out of blue states to red states, but out of big cities into smaller towns where there is land in certain counties in Texas looking to buy up land and property.
Looking to start schools, looking to start churches, conservative biblical churches.
And I think reform guys are doing this.
What we've seen, I'll end with this what we've seen with the young reformed restless movement over the last 20, 25 years is this.
About half of them just wanted to be cool.
And those are the guys who have gone apostate.
Those are the guys who are blowing smoke up the butt of David French and Francis Collins and Tim Keller and all the blue checks on Twitter, right?
Agreeing with them.
So half of them have fallen away.
And proven themselves to be tares and not wheat.
But the other half have moved from just mere reformed soteriology into a full orbed reformed, not just soteriology, but a biblical worldview.
And they're embracing not just reformed soteriology, but the regular principle of worship.
They're embracing all of Christ for all of life.
They're embracing post millennial eschatology.
They're embracing like a general equity theonomy, like I talked about last week, applying the scripture to the civil realm.
And as we see more of that, I'd say, you know, the fruit of the young reformed restless movement is about half of them just wanted to be cool.
But by God's grace, I think another half of them really want to be obedient to Jesus Christ and are starting to obey Jesus Christ in practical ways, including moving and starting communities and those kinds of things.
Now, all that said, I don't think we'll ever be like the Amish, at least in this regard.
I think the Amish are onto something in some sense, but we do want to do the work of an evangelist.
We want to do the work of an evangelist.
And so this comes from like Jim Wilson, Doug Wilson's dad, but he wrote Principles of War.
He took all of his military training and applied it to ministry and particularly evangelism.
And one of the big ideas from that book is the decisive point.
A decisive point is a place that is winnable, but it's also significant.
Winnable and significant, right?
So New York City, it'd be significant if we could win it, but it's currently not winnable.
It's just not.
And then the proverbial Timbuktu with a population of 240 people.
You know, more cattle than there are actually people.
Well, it's winnable, but it's not really significant.
I think more people are saying, okay, I want to find places that strike the balance between significance and safety safety to where I can raise my children in peace and fulfill the commandments that Christ gives me as a father.
I want to be obedient, but I also want to be on mission.
So I don't want to be on mission at the cost of obedience, but I don't want to be obedient at the cost of mission because mission, apart from obedience, is not real mission.
That's not the mission of God.
And obedience at the cost of mission, being on mission, is not true obedience, or at least not full obedience.
And so, finding that happy medium, I think that's going to be found in red states, in smaller towns, but I don't think it's going to be found in the middle of nowhere, Timbuktu.
There's not a single person alive, there's not even a town there.
And we're going to build our own town and build a wall, kind of like a M. Night Shyamalan, the village.
Planting in Red States00:01:27
That's the ticket.
I don't think that that's what we do.
I do think, though, that we move towards red states, we move towards smaller towns that are still, you know, they're winnable, but they're also significant, right?
There are people there and there is influence there and there is culture there that we can influence, that we can evangelize, that we can disciple, and it actually would make a difference.
So I think that's what we're going to see.
And in that sense, I think we will become more independent.
Reformers will begin to have whole towns.
That's what Doug has done in Moscow.
Right, think about this.
More people are aware of the name of the town that Doug Wilson is in than the name of his church.
I'll say that again.
Think about that.
More people, if you say Doug Wilson and they're aware of who Doug Wilson is, there's a higher likelihood that they'll be able to name the town that Doug Wilson lives in than the name of the church that Doug pastors.
That says something.
And I don't think it says that he doesn't love his church because he does.
And I think he's a faithful pastor.
But what it means is that Doug is committed to a lot more than just planting and pastoring a church.
Doug has been committed for 40 years now to taking over a town.
Taking over a town.
And in many ways, he's been successful, and I think we'll see more of that.
Thanks so much for listening.
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