00:00:05
Speaker 1: Welcome to Christian Parent Crazy World, the podcast that tackles tough topics to help you be a godly parent in an ungodly world. I am your host, Catherine Seekers, and in today's episode, we will answer this deeply concerning question, how do we send our children into a secular university without watching their faith unravel? Is that even possible? For so many Christian parents? That question isn't theoretical, it's terrifyingly real. We're living in a time when the youth exodus from Christianity is reaching unprecedented levels. Research shows that nearly two thirds of young adults raised in the church disengage from their faith or from Christian community once they leave the home, and the shift often happens quickly. The ideas, worldviews and pressures our kids encounter on a college campus can feel overwhelming, and many parents wonder did I do enough? Did I prepare them? Will their faith withstand what's ahead? My guest today understands this challenge on multiple levels. Doctor Stephen Hall is a respected professor at Lee University, and he brings a powerful personal perspective because his own daughter entered a secular school and there her faith slipped away. He has lived the heartache and has spent years considering the cultural, intellectual, and spiritual forces that shape our kids once they leave the nest. That's the ground we will cover in this episode of Christian Parent Crazy World. So let's get started. If you've been listening to CPCW for a while, you know that our family has walked a prodigal road of our own. And for us, it happened before our child entered a secular university. It happened in a Christian homeschool community. I thought we could prevent that outcome by taking on all the heavy lifting of our kids' education ourselves.

00:02:13
Speaker 2: And you know what, we couldn't. We've felt that ache, that fear, that sense of watching a child you love step into a world where their faith is suddenly questioned, stretched and even stripped away. And for so many Christian parents, that moment comes when our kids head off to college. We spent eighteen years pouring truth into them, praying over them. Then suddenly they are thrust into an environment where every belief they hold is tested, not just intellectually, but socially, morally, and emotionally. It's no wonder so many moms and dads lie awake at night asking will my child's faith survive what they are about to encounter? If that's you, today's conversation speaks directly into that concern, and my guest understands it more personally than most. Doctor Stephen Hall has been a Church of God minister for nearly four decades. He holds a bachelor's in Biblical studies from Lee University, a master's in pastoral Counseling from Loyola University, and a doctorate in Spiritual Formation from Ashland Theological Seminary. He currently serves as an Associate Professor of Pastoral Ministry at Lee University, and he and his wife, La Dawn also founded ministry Oasis, a beautiful resource dedicated to the sole health of ministers. But beyond all that, Doctor Hall brings something else to this conversation. That is a father's heart. His own daughter entered a secular school and lost her faith there. He has lived this pain, he has wrestled with the questions, and he has spent years considering the force says that shape our children spiritually once they leave the home. This is a conversation every Christian parent needs to hear. So with that set, let's jump right in.

00:04:10
Speaker 1: Steve, Welcome to Christian parent crazy world. It's so awesome to have you here today.

00:04:15
Speaker 3: Well, I'm grateful to be here and thank you for adding crazy into the title.

00:04:20
Speaker 1: Yes, I get that a lot.

00:04:21
Speaker 3: It feels often like that. What did our twain call adolescence transitory psychosis?

00:04:28
Speaker 1: I love to write things like that down Was that a twain? Quite transitory? I'm writing it.

00:04:33
Speaker 3: Adolescence is transitory psychosis psychosis.

00:04:38
Speaker 1: Sometimes we feel like it's not transitioning quite quickly enough. Yeah, we wanted to be a little more transitory. We want to make sure they move through that psychosis stage. Sometimes we feel like we're right in the heart of it with them, with our kids. It's a crazy world out there to be raising children. I was just telling someone today that my husband has this really cool T shirt. It's his fatherhood. The toughest job you'll ever love. Yeah, it is so hard, but it is obviously the most rewarding and I think I think the most sanctifying.

00:05:13
Speaker 3: When you agree, it's oh, there's nothing. There's no more robust sanctification discipline or exercise than marriage and parenting.

00:05:25
Speaker 1: The that I agree with wholeheartedly, agree with both of those journeys in life as being very sanctifying. We see so much of our heavenly Father, particularly even more so as I start to, you know, at the parenting journey, and you get to the place you're further along with children out of the nest than I am. I've got a one at home who's a software in college and will be empty nesting, perhaps two at once. Actually, I've got a senior that's graduating and maybe going away to school. So but you are coming to us from Lee University. Yay, lovely. That was my alma mater. It's been quite quite a while since I was there. But to tell us a little bit about yourself before we get into today's topic.

00:06:10
Speaker 3: Sure did not grow up Christian. My family was at times just apathetic, at other times antagonistic. We maybe went to a Christmas eve service or an Easter service if my mom happened to buy me and my brother new suits, and she just wanted to use them for those things. So I didn't grow up with any sense of God. In fact, it was generally my sense of God was generally negative. I when my grandmother died when I was relatively young, my mother's response was, well, God took her, and so that was my image of God, that God just takes nice old ladies. And then when my parents divorced when I was in middle school, I just assume that God does that too. He kills people and he divorces people, and so that's just the way I saw, Oh God. And then I was in high school and about fifteen sixteen years old, got somehow invited to a fellowship at Christian Athletes Meeting and ended up hearing the Gospel for the first time and responding to the Gospel authentically and holistically. And that was the beginning of an entirely new life, being born again at that moment. And so from there, I had actually secured a scholarship to Penn State to play lacrosse and went and worked out with the team, got my rooming assignments. I was planning on going into the pre med program for sports medicine, and then in the my senior year. Spring of my senior year, I just heard this voice from God that said you need to switch from medicine to ministry, and I decided to do that. So I went to my school counselor and said, Hey, I'm switching from medicine medicine to ministry. Can you tell me what to do? And she said, no, I've never heard anybody say that. That's just stupid. These are the words. And she said, you just need to go find some really religious person and ask them. And so I went and found a religious person and said, hey, what do I do? Because I really wasn't connected any church. I was all over the place. I didn't have any anchoring in church. I was at all these just random Christian meetings and small groups and all that. So I guy told me that one of my friends told me that his church youth group was going to visit a Christian college and that's probably where you become a minister. So I went, paid my money several weeks later, got in the van twelve hours later, ended up at Lee College and had no one when.

00:08:50
Speaker 1: We called a college. I was there when it was still college before it became university, So did you go it?

00:08:57
Speaker 3: So I ended up there, had no idea what I was getting into, had a little bit of a connection to the Holy Spirit, and wanted to go to a school where they seemed to know the Holy Spirit so that it seemed like they did. And so I ended up going to Lee University, and then I met my wife here at Lee University and we got married. Our first job was in Phoenix, Arizona as a minister and associate pastor, and that was for about two years two and a half years. Then I went out to southern California for about four and a half years and got hooked on surfcrack, which is why those boards are behind me, because it's an addiction now and so I love surfing and so I got connected there was there for about four and a half years. Then my wife and I transitioned back to Maryland and we connected with a church for thirty years and in Maryland as a minister, and I was the associate for a while, and then I became the lead pastor for eighteen years. And then in twenty twenty two, my wife and I recognized that her parents were burning down in Florida, and so we didn't know what to do. You know, she was spending a whole lot more time than I liked she and she didn't like it either in Florida, and so we were in Maryland and I just since our nest was empty and my you know, I had been through my BA with biblical education that I got my master's in clinical pastoral psychology, opened up a counseling center, did thirteen years of clinical directorship of a counseling center while I was the associate pastor at the church, and so a minister for thirty eight years, a clinical psychotherapist for thirteen years, and then in twenty twenty two, I just realized my doctorate in spiritual formation put me in a position where I could get jobs as adjuncts. So we moved to Wildwood, Florida, and started to take care of her parents, and I thought that was it. I thought that was just the rest of our life. And so the only way I could really love her well and she had wandered around with me for thirty eight years in ministry, was to pack it all in. We had a large church in Maryland, packed it all in, transitioned it really well, and moved to Florida and I started cobbling together a career there. And then about seven months later, the president of Lee University called me and said, we had a surprise retirement and we need someone that has the academics and also the pastoral experience to be the professor of pastoral Ministry. So that's what I do now. I am the Associate Professor of Pastoral Ministry here at Lee University, and I could not be happier. I have never been more vocationally satisfied than I am right now. I get to spend the last season of my career of ministry launching the first season of their ministry career. And it's romantic and rewarding. For me.

00:11:48
Speaker 1: It is because yeah, bookends there, because you're able to be there at the inception of so many ministries that are going forward, and that connection, I can imagine, is very rewarding. And for those who don't know where Lee University is, it's in East Tennessee. Has I took a six six campus college tour with my son, and by far, Lee is just one of the best campuses and one of the best schools you could possibly consider, especially if you're considering a Christian school. And by the way, this is not a paid interview. I'm not trying that. This is just the school I went to. I don't know if my kids will choose to go there either, but I have a huge affection for Lee. My friends that I made there are still friends of my life today. And it was hugely transformative in my life. So what we were discussing, the reason why I wanted to have you on the show is because when we went to visit for the preview day, you told a story about your daughter that just really moved me. And I know a lot of my listeners can relate to myself. I can relate to of raising your kids and the fear and admonition of the Lord. You're trying to do all the right things in training them. You're trying, you know, you're trying to put them in the right environments. And what happens so often in a lot of these educational environments is that their faith gets challenged, or in these relationships that they find themselves in, they get challenged. And our children, we want them to stand up and make the right choices, but some of them wander and have seasons of doubt. My own daughter had a season of ten months better part of the year being agnostic. That's after homeschooling all the way through and trying to make sure she was. We had all the right conversations, we did not ignore the tough topics. We talked about it all, and yet that's where we found ourselves. I know you have a story that I would love for you to share. But just briefly before we get into that, we all know about the youth exodus. I don't think anybody I know hasn't been touched by it in some way. Even if their own kids are doing well, they know children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren that have found themselves extricating themselves from the faith that they were raised in. Barna has a lot of research out on this. I've quoted it all before. Somewhere around two thirds they've said are actually leaving the faith after they leave the nest, and only maybe a half of them return. However, I do have some really good news that we're going to get to later in the show. There's some really great new research coming out from Barna that I think is going to encourage us. But before we get to that news, let's talk about your story, your family. What happened with your daughter in a secular school that led her to doubt everything that you had raised her to believe.

00:14:45
Speaker 3: Sure, we have three children. We have two older girls, and we also have our baby, which is our boy. And when we were raising our oldest daughter, we did a lot of what you did. We homeschooled for a couple of years. We put her in Christian school for a few years, then we transitioned her to a public middle school, elementary school and middle school, and we were really struggling with her getting traction. We had discovered she had some neurological issues that hindered her, but they weren't major or overwhelming. They just hindered her. And so she always seemed to struggle with the academic side of it. And as you know, most educational institutions historically evaluate students based upon math and science and English in literature, and so if you don't fall into those two categories and your intelligence, like Howard Gardner talks about, if your intelligence is somewhere else, like either in naturalistic or in spatial or musical, then and all of a sudden, you just kind of fall to the bottom of the barrel in those institutions that only really pay attention to two dimensions of intelligence, and there are multiple intelligences, and so that was a real struggle for us. And so we brought our daughter home during the ninth grade year and we homeschooled her again. She was thriving, reconnecting to us, reconnecting strongly to her faith, and we felt she was in a really, really good place. However, her gift set, her skill set was in the area of arts, and so much like you, had a propensity for thriving in music and theater. So we were looking for an institution that may help us help her thrive and feel value rather than always shrinking and falling to the bottom and feeling like a failure. And just because the public institution was measuring on two dimensions and she had other dimensions. And so we ended up finding Baltimore School of the Arts, and we were thrilled. We could not believe that in our backyard in Baltimore, Maryland, we had such a high profile, excellent, amazing, famous school for the arts that although we didn't live in the city, we could export her to the institution. And so she ended up auditioning she got in. We were thrilled. We believed it was a God send. I mean I remember weeping and thanking God for this opportunity where she could go somewhere to school and have her gifting and intelligence honored and blessed and affirmed. Well, we put her in the school and two weeks later they stole her. I mean, they stole her, We lost her. She was gone. It was like, all of a sudden, she didn't believe in us as parents anymore, she no longer held our faith. I mean, this is tenth grade like.

00:18:10
Speaker 1: Forward to How did that happen so quickly?

00:18:13
Speaker 3: It was amazing. It blindsided a stunned us. And it was. And she was coming home with all these wild ideas and completely incongruent ideas that we had raised her in and loss of belief in faith gone, and we are Christian, orthodox, morally conservative, and all of a sudden, all of that was being attacked.

00:18:37
Speaker 1: Wow.

00:18:38
Speaker 3: I remember just going to visit the school one day, and I had a portfolio in my hand, like a leather portfolio. And I remember one of the kids seeing us and then running to the office and saying, hey, Carly's preacher. Dad's here, and he's got a giant Bible in his hand.

00:18:58
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Like.

00:19:00
Speaker 3: As if I was carrying a gun into the building. She was insane. And so all of a sudden we were like these.

00:19:08
Speaker 4: Mortal enemies and we were we were, we were overwhelmed, and so we struggled and thought, and she did end up getting through that school, but not in a good way.

00:19:21
Speaker 3: With regard to us and her faith and her sense of direction. And so it ended up out of there that that we truly decided, Okay, the only option is to snatch you up and export you to Lee University, because we had we basically had you know, some allies there at Lee University and that we're working with us and could get her in late. It was like August of that summer and classes were getting ready to start, and they welcomed us. They just wereate, how can we help? And it was so wonderful and fabulous, and so we you know, grabbed her up and I brought her down here and we put her in and hoping that all things would go well. Well. The contrast there is, and this is what I want to really make. The contrast there is that when we put her in that high school, and when many parents put their children in institutions of higher learning that are not allies, and that's the keyword, they are not allies. When we put our daughter in what in an institution, what we thought was going to be an ally, it ended up being an enemy. And all of a sudden we had given our daughter to the enemy. And we didn't really even see it coming. If we would have been more thoughtful, more circumspect, I think we would have known. But in any event, our child, I don't think any child really is ready for a conflictual, contrasting educational sperience that is not allied with the faith, moral conservatism, you know, Christian orthodox kind of understanding that Christian parents generally have. And so I'm an advocate, a strong advocate. I see it all the time at Lee University that parents generally kind of stop parenting at that high school age. The kids, the students are wanting to be independent. Parents don't want to fight it anymore. They're releasing more and more. And then the next thing you know, they send their child to an institution that may not be allied with that parent's faith or understanding of human existence, and all of a sudden, that child's gone, just gone. It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens in a large number of cases that I see all the time. And so I know from personal experience, theoretical experience, and institutional experience that every Christian parent must must parent through presently and strongly and directively parent through the young adult phase of life. And I don't know when you want me to get into it, but I've got the psychological background. It gives me the capacity to be able to speak about the developmental stages there. So you tell me when you want me to get into that.

00:22:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would love to talk about that. I've done it on a very simple scale of talking about how we start off as the caregiver doing all of it in the beginning, and then we become like the cop like don't touch this, don't touch that, don't play with the knife, and the toddler years, and then you become the coach where you're starting to relate to them how it is that, why it is rather that you're not touching the stove or running out into the street to get the ball. You know, you're giving them the reasoning. But then you become the counselor where as they get older, you want to be that trusted ally that they come to to ask for advice. I don't know if that's a good way of putting it. That's how I heard a pastor describe it one time before to me, I love all of the things that you're talking about here because I love the term ally. I think you're exactly right, Many of the educational institutions out there right now are really enemies to our faith. And it's not that we want. I don't want to indoctrinate my children. I want to encourage them to experience God and experience the truths of my faith. And I can't choose it for them. But I am their chief guide on this journey, and I want them to see that faith alive in me and then that fire burns in them. So how do we get there and get into the psychological as you're answering this, how do we encourage that? To me, what I've noticed, the thing that is the most important for any person in their faith is to have a radical encounter with Jesus Christ. When you have an encounter with Jesus Christ, then you can withstand the fiery arrows of the enemy. When somebody gives you a question that you can't answer, But what about this, and what about that? And what about historically would happened you know in the inquisition? Whatever they give you, these these these fiery darts to your faith. But when you have an encounter with Jesus Christ, then that seems to change everything. But I can't choose it for my child, I can only hopefully exemplify it and put them in really great soil that will encourage that kind of encounter and that kind of growth. That's kind of how I've learned to think about it. What are your thoughts on that? What could you like looking back? What would you have done differently in order to maybe help your daughter not go down that dark path for the years that she did.

00:24:59
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, in just in logistical terms, in high school, a student will spend what eighty to one hundred and ten hours a week in an environment that may be antagonistic to your faith.

00:25:21
Speaker 1: Yep.

00:25:21
Speaker 3: And so when in high school, when they're sixteen seventeen years old, fifteen sixteen seventeen, they are in an incredibly formative state and very vulnerable and impressionable. And when you, as a parent, all of a sudden, you had all these hours with this kid, nurturing that soul soil in that kid, and then the next thing you know, they're gone from your presence for up to one hundred hours.

00:25:49
Speaker 5: A week football practice, sports practice, theater practice, after school, all of that, all those eight hours a day and ten hours a day sometimes, my goodness, that is a lot of hours that kids spend in those environments. So there's dozens and dozens of hours there that you don't have influence over. So I'm really really pushing.

00:26:12
Speaker 3: Hard that you find an allied environment where when they are with other people, you can trust that those other people are attempting to influence them as you would like them influenced, and so developing and nurturing that soul soil is something that happens all the way through young adulthood. In psychosocial development. It's the theory of psychosocial development says that in the adolescent ear years even to the late adolescents, which includes eighteen nineteen years old, the psychosocial crisis of that season of development is belonging. They want to belong. They want to belong. So sports are huge theaters, huge having groups have a feeling like they belong somewhere. They already belong in their family and hopefully they feel really good about belonging in their family, but they are exploring belonging outside their family. And so if you have an environment, a school context, where you are putting your child in that school and they are belonging, they're feeling they belong to a faith based allied environment, similar to their family, but different. They are believing that they can belong in this world and retain their faith. And then they move from that psychosocial crisis, that central process of belonging into the young adult years, which are all about identity. Who am I independent of my parents. They're happy to belong to their family in middle school and high school. They're happy to belong to their school in middle school and high school. But when they hit that young adult age, they're happy to belong to their college institution, but they are exploring intensely how to become their own person. In psychology, we call it individuation. Where they're individuating well at that time. And I hope most of your people on this podcast know that that the frontal lobe, neurologically, the frontal lobe of the brain, which houses judgment, morality, faith questions, existential questions, doesn't really turn on until those late early twenties, like twenty two, twenty three. Well, that's when they're getting ready to graduate from college. So parents need to parent hard and involved, and they need allies in their child's formation. And when I say formation, I'm not just not talking about math and science and theology. Perhaps formation of their character, formation of their soul. You need an ally in your parenting that's with you all the way through that early twenties experience. So when they truly launch from your home, which college or university is an extension of hopefully, when they launch from that environment into their adult life, that soul soil has been so nurtured by their middle school, high school, college experience, it has been uniform. The farming of that soul soil has been uniform, so that you're all looking for the same crop, the same fruit to be produced, which is the fruit of the spirit. Middle school, high school, university life, college life. If you have a common farming mentality, soul farming mentality, then you can, to the best of your ability, prepare that child's soul soil to produce rich, good spiritual fruit as they move forward. So I'm inviting parents to take that very seriously. That psychosocial reality and that neurological reality requires it demands that parents stay involved in the game.

00:30:39
Speaker 1: Hey friends, it's Catherine here. If you're trying to be a godly parent in this wild and wacky world, you need all the help you can get, and I've got you covered. When you subscribe to my website. You'll get instant access to tons of free resources made just for Christian parents. You'll get my Prodigal Bundle, which is packed with every podcast, article and scripture list I've created for parents walking that tough prodigal road. You'll also get my free eat book Beyond the Lies and covering five myths the culture spreads to mothers, plus powerful scripture list Pray over your kids, and even scripture songs to help your family hide God's word in your hearts without even trying. And of course I'll keep you encouraged with my weekly newsletter full of faith filled PEP talks and outlines of what we're tackling each week on the show. So don't miss out. Head over to Catherine Secers dot com. That's Catherine Scers dot com and subscribe today. Because Christian parenting may be crazy, but you don't have to do it alone. You know, you're touching on something that I couldn't agree with more. The one thing that I think I underestimated the most was that that kind of environment. And I say that being a person who had all of my children in a classical, conservative Christian homeschool environment. Conservative Christian youth group, church environment and all of this. But what I failed to fully consider, I think, were some of the relationships that were forming within those environments. And you can have your child in all the right places and still there can be some very challenging relationships there. That that was kind of the area where I think I was a bit naive, And I knew the parents involved in the parents were great too. They were struggling equally like we were, as parents are ended up. We had some you know, just these relationships they're forming. It's so critically important because, like you said, that sense of belonging is huge, and hopefully they feel like they belong here, but they're trying to find their identity outside of your home and even your zip code. Perhaps they're trying to find their place in the world, and without that prefrontal cortex being fully developed until they're twenties where they're settling on some of those the answers to those questions, those challenges can be faith altering. I know they were in my daughter's life, and it sounds you know that that was the kind of situation that you had there. So I couldn't be more with you in terms of making sure, you have that ally going forward, and you also have that ally in your youth group. You have that ally in your church while they're still still in your home. You have that ally in your your homeschool environment or your Christian school environment if it's a public school environment. So what would you recommend then for parents who that's the situation they're in. Maybe they don't have another option. They don't have the option to homeschool or send their child to a Christian school, which they're you know, the cost involved in both of those things and the time involved in both of those things are not you know, I know a lot of parents who might would love to do that, but they're not able to. So how do we if they are, like you said, eighty ninety one hundred hours a week and these other environments that may have a lot of toxicity in it, how do you how do you encourage parents to train their children through that or to ally with them through that.

00:34:20
Speaker 3: Let me first of all say that getting your child in a allied environment is not a guarantee that that child.

00:34:31
Speaker 1: Will I was there, I was there, will.

00:34:34
Speaker 3: Never make any This is just a foundational truth of parenting. You can do everything right and they can still drive their life right off into a ditch. I love again when we're going back to Mark Twain, but I love his statement when he said, if you want to protect your child from the negative influence of the world, when they're about seven years old, put them in a barrel and feed them through the not hole, and then when they're fourteen years old, plug the not hole. It's like, there's no way, there's no way you're ever going to be able to have this three p sixty wrap around insulation around those kids. So, whether they are in a Christian school.

00:35:25
Speaker 6: Environment a secular school environment, there's going to be nefarious influences all over the place, and your child may choose, out of their own free will, to reject your way of living and thinking and join someone else and belong to some other tribe or whatever rather than your family.

00:35:42
Speaker 3: And that can happen anywhere along the way. So, parents who have wayward children, or struggling children, or faith abandoning children, it's very possible you've done pretty much everything right and had but yet your child still drove off into a ditch. Now, for parents who struggle with the being able to afford allied environments and context, it means that you have to attempt to afford or connect your child to extracurricular context of allied arrangements, such as you make sure that if your child's in theater, that you have your child in a theater group that is allied with you. If it's the school theater group, well that's one thing, and hopefully that will not be all that derogatory but are demeaning or debilitating. But you need to find allies other than school. If you don't have an ally in the school, you need to find an ally in a youth group, an ally in a little league, an ally in a sports program, an ally in a junior college program with the high school. Something along those lines is going to help keep your child connected and that perhaps can be afforded. The other piece of the puzzle is that as you go along in this seeking allied environments, to consistently attempt to reduce the managerial tendency and posture yourself in more and more of a mentoring type way. So parenting is so much about managing. Are they fed, is they're diaper changed? Are they going to school? Do they have clothes? Is the house say you know? Are they taking their medicine, all managerial types stuff, and we often lose the mentoring along the way. So finding people to ally with may not be school, but it may be a tutor, could be it may be a coach. It may be a family member, a friend of a parent of a friend who takes on more of a mentoring type role because you're so busy managing. Totally get that now. The other piece of the puzzle is as parents may have some incredibly difficult children, personality wives, and again, what you can do is you can make sure that you do your due diligence testing those children, exposing those children to people that can speak into your life as you parent them, such as is there a disability involved, is there a mental health issue involved? Is there a learning disability or an emotional disability involved. There are resources that you can access through your insurance, your community agencies, through your county, through your city, through your workplace, perhaps through the school. We found an incredible school counselor in a secular public school who came to us when our oldest daughter was in middle school and said, would you allow me to do some testing with her? I said great. They did some testing and the school counselor came back and said, you know what, I really think you would do well if you went to Johns Hopkins and their tic disorder clinic, their neurological clinic. Okay, And we had no idea, but we found out that our daughter had some neurological issues which were preventing her from thriving. We as parents were completely blind to that. We had no idea. Nobody ever picked up on that. But then an ally in a school environment, public school environment, helped us and we investigated. We found out what was necessary. We did medication, and it was better our other children. We put them into some educational testing and found out that there was some learning disabilities going on, some attention deficit issues that were going on, and we addressed that and things improved. So as parents, don't just think you're cursed or don't think you're broken, You're not crazy, you're not alone. Try to find some help and find some allies and doctors, counselors, school counselors, teachers, coaches, family members, and look for allies in those places as well, which don't require you spending all the money to send your kid to a Christian school.

00:40:20
Speaker 1: I love that, Yeah, First of all, I would encourage parents pray for the allies because God's gonna put them in your pack. A good point, pray for them. If you feel like you don't have that, say Lord, and then just you know, bring these allies to the forefront and then you know, be looking for them. That's great, and partnering with them because I love that, because I know, you know, not everyone has the bandwidth or the ability to pull your kids out of whatever schooling environment you have and do it on your own, or they may not have the resources to do a Christian private school. But God can provide where you are, and He will provide, So I love that. First off, extra points for using the word nefarious. I love that word. That's a great one. I try to slip that in whenever I can too. But what you were saying earlier on too about even if you dot all your eyes and cross all your teas, they could still end up in a ditch. And my regular listeners know this, but I always come back to this. I was telling somebody this today. God is the perfect parent. He is the absolute perfect parent, and he had two kids in a garden with an infinite number of good choices. They could make in any given day and only one bad choice, and still they chose the one bad choice. So if you think you're going to outparent God, good luck with that. They rebelled. His children rebelled, and he put the story of the prodigal child in scripture for a reason because he knew many of us would experience that as he has experienced it. And when you do experience it, man, you understand God's love for the lost in a way you never imagined that you could when your own child is not a path that is leading them towards the plans and purposes that God created them for. But you gain an empathy and a heart for the loss that I think is I didn't understand so the degree that I do now, I did not understand it before. It just really will break your heart to know that we have a heavenly father that looks down at all of his lost children and loves them as we love our lost child, those of us who have walked that or niece or nephew or grandchild. And it's an acute pain that God can use for great good in your life, and He can redeem that the prodigal can come home, And that's what we're looking to have happened. I want to touch on a couple of things here when it comes to these journeys with our children and the challenges that they face and the youth exodus, how much do you think leans into this intellectual side where their worldview is being challenged with ideas like naturalism and relativism and post Christian ethics, And how much do you think is really leaning more into that community based relational aspect of they've ended up planted in a community where everybody is questioning the preacher dad who came to the campus with a portfolio that looks like a massive Bible and they act like it's a gun. How much of it is more or it could just depend child to child. How much do you think is more on the intellectual side, because I think a lot of times parents feel ill equipped sometimes to you to answer all of those questions. And I would tell parents, you don't have to answer all of the questions. You just have to be someone who's willing to actually, I don't know, do a little research, pick up a book. Maybe you may need to go study some of these ideas that they're entertaining in order to have that conversation to show that you care. But at the end of the day, do you think it's more on the intellectual side or more on the relational community side That is the bigger challenge for kids when they leave the nest.

00:44:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me let me go back to go forward. I want to go back to say the story of my daughter ends. Well, you know she is right now thriving, married to a great Christian man and have a child, raising a child, and the fear and admonition of the Lord, and you know that older daughter is just on fire for the things of God. And it's just fascinating to see how God's grace can effectively work in a divinely conspiratorial way that takes into consideration all of your parental failings. That I want to offer every parent listening this principle. The only thing that God needs from you is He doesn't need you to be a perfect parent. He doesn't need you to be on the cover of Focus on the Family magazine as parent of the Year. Doesn't need that in order to help your child or work with your child to bring them to a place of faith. He just needs consistent adequacy. Consistent adequacy. Now, we don't really like that in our American frame, because we're always wanting to be exceptional, and God is only looking for people who will simply commit to being consistently adequate, and he will do all of the rest in a divinely conspiratorial way that is in accordance with Romans eight twenty eight, where he moves that child into increase sing opportunities to experience the best of you as a parent. He will, like you said, pray for allies. Pray for people to come into their life that will represent the best of your parenting. So that although when you take all the highs and you take all the lows, and you take all the successes, and you take all the failures, you were consistently adequate as a parent, rest in that grace and be at peace because God's Dallas Willard always used to say this phrase. It's a fabulous phrase to parents. Trust the creature to the creator. Trust the creature to the creator. And that leads me into this discussion about intellect or relationship. It's both, it can't be not both. One can be more weighted than another. But my belief about it is that when parents live as sincerely and authentically consistently adequate before their children. And their children see all their ups and all their downs, but they see that the throughput is honesty. They that you, as a parent, were consistently adequate at being faithful to God and faithful to them. That's all that God needs to work so that you can release your child to the Creator who will track them, never loses track of them. This is the great story of the prodigal son. This is the great story of my daughter. This is the great story of any child who's ever been wayward and returned. That that we pray and seek God that he will track them, and they may reject him in the end. They may reject him, And I recognize that reality of free will. I subscribe to that sense of God's sovereignty. But within the context of them, they may choose to reject him ultimately, But we as parents must not give up the faith and the hope that we can trust our creature to the Creator. And if we live faithfully, all of that intellectualizing, all of that debating worldview, challenging of worldview is real, but it is not sovereign. All of that relationship and those other relationships that come into your child's life that may or may not be an ally to you. They are also not sovereign. But in all of it, God is working, working, and working everything towards good, and the prayer always is that our child will ultimately choose that good that God has for them, and that's why we continue to pray. Now, I love your idea of hey, should we be wily and savvy with regard to intellectual high edge of higher education type thinking. That's great, But if you can talk your child into faith, someone is always going to come along more wily than you and talk your child out of faith. The only way we can, the only way we can establish some kind of continuity, is to be the best, most consistently adequate, faithful person we can be to God and our child and trust the creature to the Creator. Wherever they go to school UAB University of ten seeing Lee University, they're always going to have an opportunity to reject God. But really that that consistent adequacy, trusting the creature to the Creator is the way in which that we can posture ourselves in peace to know that whatever happens, He hasn't lost track of them. And truly, your child's ultimate salvation is beyond your pay grade.

00:50:27
Speaker 1: That is well above my pay grade for sure. But I tell you you said so many amazing things there that I would love to touch on it. Just it's so encouraging to know that we don't have to be consistently extraordinary or excellent, just adequate.

00:50:44
Speaker 3: And social media kills about that. So you go on social media, I know everybody is a better parent than me. I might as well just give up now.

00:50:53
Speaker 1: No, But the thing that you said that's important is consistent. We can choose whether we're consistent. I can't choose whether I'm extraordinary or excellent at everything, because I'm not going to be. But I can choose whether I'm going to be consistent at something. So if I can just manage to be adequate and consistent at it as a parent, then God can take that. And you used another term, divinely conspiratorial, that he is always seeking our children. And the one thing that I would bring that back to you you talked about prayer, because I brought that up early in praying for the allies. Do not forget yes, our children. They do believe that my child has free will, that they can choose God or not choose God. So ultimately that is the reality. But my prayers, in your prayers, our prayers as parents are powerful. I think it was Edwin Orr that once said that the history is silent on revivals that did not begin in prayer. So if you want a revival for your child's faith, where it may start, and I believe it can start and will start, is you on your knees, fasting and praying for your child. And I tell you, we had to learn how to pray like we never had before when we had this faith crisis with our child, and we assembled. I've got it on my website. It's just a free resource, a bunch of scriptures you can pray every single day over your child. We do not fail to pray those scriptures over my children because I know His word does not return void. But more importantly than that, is just this consistency. I'm not always articulating the most brilliant prayers, but I'm consistent at it. I consistently pray for particularly my daughter who struggled in the faith, but for all of my children every day. I'm consistently adequate at that. Some days I'm kind of extraordinary, some days I'm just adequate. But I'm consistent at it, and that prayer I know is moving things in the heavenly realm. We can go there are obstacles to their faith, there are enemies to their faith, and we can help to tear those down. I believe in prayer as we pray for our children. So I'm huge on that, and I did promise earlier and I definitely want to get to this that we do have some good news about some statistics that are coming out of BARNA right now. I thought we're very encouraging. There's a new article that came out in April of this year. It's called new Research Belief in Jesus is on the rise, and it's fueled by younger adults. I want to read a little portion of this. It said, according to barna's latest data, sixty six percent of all US adults say that they have made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important in their life today. That marks a twelve percentage point increase since twenty twenty one. We've had a rough few years, and isn't that interesting that that seemed to be pushing people back towards belief in Christ. It goes on to say, when commitment levels reach their lowest in more than three decades. That was twenty twenty one, according to BARNA tracking, Now it's up to sixty six percent, a twelve percentage point increase, and it's not only statistically significant, it may be the clearest indication, they say, of meaningful spiritual renewal in the United States. And there was another article that came out in November by BARNA talking about how millennials in Gen Z are driving a Bible reading come back, and this was interesting. It talked about how actually it's fallen off with boomers. Boomers used to have the highest levels of Bible reading. It peaked at forty nine percent and twenty ten, but now they have actually gone down and Gen Z and millennials are on the rise when it comes to Bible reading. And David Kinneman, who is the CEO of BARNA, said, we're not necessarily witnessing widespread social transformation, but we are seeing Americans move back towards patterns of faith that have been fading, and that is very hopeful. Have you seen that on the college campus. I know you're in a Christian campus, or you would expect or at least for higher levels a Bible reading there. You know it's required for some of the classes, But are you seeing that in young people yearning? I know there was a revival. There were you there for that at Lye when that came, when it was hitting all the college campuses. Lee was one of the schools where that happened.

00:55:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, it did. I was not a faculty member at that time. I came after that, but the residual effects were real. You may I think I could illustrate your citation of all that data, which I agree with. And the interesting thing is that that data, the quality and the character of that data is also rooted in I think majorly rooted in that these gen Z and millennials and alpha are are not necessarily interested in getting doctrine right. They're interested in getting doctrine lived. They want to know that faith matters. And that is somewhat of an indictment on parents who may say they have faith, but they don't live that faith. And that's why I said earlier that the greatest gift that we can give our children is a faith consistently and adequately lived in front of their children, and all the good days and all the bad days running through all of it is a faithful witness of God's power in the life of those parents. And let me emphasize this because I think it's critical to parents who may be struggling, and that is especially young parents. To young parents, you cannot try harder to be a good parent, but you can train better to be a good parent. And what I mean by that is is that good parenting just doesn't naturally occur. It is you got to put in some effort for that. And the effort is not in trying, but training, which means that we as parents actually engage education, reading podcasts that are filling us with good ideas and good practices and good principles, like when you think of Ronald Rolheiser's book The Domestic Monastery, Oh my goodness, how wonderful that book is to help us understand the holistic nature of spirituality and now and Ken Shigamatsu's book The God and the God in Everything Finding God in Everything, Oh my gosh. It's taking the ancient tradition of rule of life, which I call soul health planning, and translating it into this practical way that parents can develop soul health plans for themselves and for their family training up their child in sole health planning, practicing disciplines in their household. For instance, Sabbath. Okay, so we have ten. We have ten commandments, but we only really care about nine. I mean, how many of us would say the sixth and seventh commandment, we can just ignore thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery. No, we all would say, oh yeah, we don't want to be adulters and we don't want to be murderers. But yet we can ignore the fourth commandment. We can just ignore the fourth commandment. Just because we keep Sabbath doesn't make us, doesn't make us Christians. But Jesus did away with legalism of Sabbath while maintaining the wisdom of Sabbath. So when we give our children unwittingly to a world that requires busyness and acquisition and achievement, and we tell them never turn, never take a day off, always be busy, then we are being terrorized by a culture that is sucking the life, not creating margin for our children. When we live at break neck speed, we end up, like Pete Scazarro says, being shamed by the pharaoh of this culture into busyness. The pharaoh of this culture is shaming us into busyness, because when we rest, we feel guilty, and then we keep busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, and we never John Markomer's great book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, we live in a hurry sick society. And when we, as Christian parents, don't ever take real time to rest for ourselves, then how can we ever have the energy to parent? Well, Lord, have mercy, We're so tired all the time. Remember this statement from the old adage, if the devil can't make you bad, he'll make you busy.

01:00:27
Speaker 4: Yeah.

01:00:27
Speaker 3: Well, here's why. Because if he can make you busy, he makes you tired, and when you're tired, he can make you bad a lot easier. If the devil can't make you bad, he'll make you busy, because when you're busy, you'll be tired, and he'll have an easier time making you bad. So when we live without the wisdom of the Central Commandment, the fourth commandment that has the most words out of all of the commandments, has the most words. God gives it the most weight, and we ignore Sabbath, then we're living and we're living in sin and we're living under the oppression of our culture. We as Christian prayerents, need to stop trying harder to be parents and train better, which means creating rhythms and routines in our life, being able to say no to certain things. Fasting as a family, reading the Bible as a family, sabbathing as a family, going to church as a family. All of those things are critical rhythmic routine disciplines that train our children to be faithful stewards of what our faith is.

01:01:39
Speaker 1: M I love that I crave. I crave my Sabbath too, I really do, and I get I've become more and more and more protective of it because it's just so important to me to have that moment of rest. If I, for whatever reason, something habits on on our Sabbath and we do it on a Sunday, and then I'm just I feel like I'm running into a week just completely shot already if I don't take that time to just rest and reflect and being in my family and in the relationships that God has given me to focus on. It just it's so important. I love that you brought that in. That's worthy honestly of a whole episode of itself talking about the Sabbath. That's just something, like I said, We've craved. I've craved more and more the older I get. I have to have that that time of disconnection from the world, reconnection to my heavenly father and into my family. So I love that you mentioned these rhythms, and it's these things. Some of them are hard to do because our culture is not geared this way. Hey, but it's working really well for Chick fil A and Hobby Lobby, right. I mean, look how well those two businesses have done. And I mean, what isss this person would ever tell you to close down your business for a day on the weekend and think that that would thrive, And yet they do. They thrive. So you know, anyways, just throwing that in there, But I love all of these rhythms that we can find ourselves. The praying, the fasting. We started something in our family. Goodness, it's been a couple of years, but it was one of those things that I'm not a morning person, but we decided to get up and go to six a m. Prayer on Monday morning at our church. And it's a bit of a drive and it's cold out right now, and you know, I don't love it when the alarm goes off, But my goodness, how good that has been for our family. What an incredible discipline that we've kind of put into the fabric of our lives and trying to find more of those you know, that really ground us, so that as they go out and to their own hopefully they'll take those those spiritual habits and rhythms with them as they get out into the world. This has just been really so very very practical as well and encouraging that I don't have to be extraordinary, just need to be consistently adequate at doing these things and helping my children. What final thoughts do you have for us to help encourage us as we're considering empty nesting and where our children may end up going on for their education.

01:04:16
Speaker 3: Little review of just as far as that's concerned, you need an ally, bottom line, you need an ally in your parenting, and so look for those allies, pray for those allies, be good stewards of those allies, and that will bless you and your children. And the second thing, many of the things I've talked about spiritual discipline, soul health planning, Sabbath. All of those things are on a website that my wife and I curate. It's primarily for ministers and ministers' spouses, but it has lots of good practical information on it, like, for instance, sabbathing with a young family with little kids, how do you do that? Well, there's a I have a whole recording a video on there that everything's free, nothing's for pay, it's just available. And that's Ministryoasis dot com. Ministryoasis dot com. It's just available. And all those resources there have sermons on Sabbath. I have fillable PDFs on soul health planning, little videos on what it means to develop a rule of life, which I call soul health planning. And so if you don't plan for your soul, you plan to fail your soul.

01:05:35
Speaker 1: I think you're absolutely right. Maybe we'll have to have you back on sometime we can do a whole episode on the sabbath, because I'd love to learn more about how to make that even more meaningful and more RESTful and refreshing. It's counterintuitive to our culture, and that's exactly why we do it. Same thing with tithing, right and with giving, you know, it doesn't make sense to give money away when you're struggling, and yet that's the very door that opens a spiritual principle and our lives and the rest principle. There, it's having to trust that, Okay, God has this and that he has designed me to need rest, and if He's designed me this way, then he's going to take care of me if I if I take care of myself and obey him in this. It's a huge faith issue. I was just talking to someone the other day about, you know, the giving aspect, and they're they're really struggling, and I'm like, well, this is the way God has gone designed it. When you're tapping into something that's even more real than the scientific laws that govern our universe. When when we tap into these spiritual laws of sabbath and giving, they're counterintuitive to the world because God is trying to break us from that ideology that rules the world that says, no, you've got to work twenty four to seven, you can't rest. You've got to get ahead, and you've got to you've got to save everything for yourself. And he says, no, no, that's not how his kingdom works. His kingdom works very differently, and I'm just so happy that we had this time. I knew when I heard you at Lee at the preview day that, ah, I've got to have Steve on the so so that we can really help encourage and equip parents that are getting towards this empty nesting phase. Maybe some of them are a little younger and wanting to know some of the things that we talked about. I think that we're so great that will help you prepare for that phase. But a lot of us are in it, and I know I know that the email I get more than any other is from parents who are hurting, whose children have been on these prodigal paths, And Praise God, your story is so encouraging there. Just keep praying. I know my daughter's story hopefully is encouraging for people too. She is now no longer agnostic, she believes in the Lord, and so just keep praying through that. So I'll give you the final word there, Steve.

01:07:41
Speaker 3: What my final word is, thank God for you, Catherine and your podcast. Truly to care enough to do the work to curate this kind of outlet is exactly the kind of ally that I'm talking about.

01:08:00
Speaker 1: Expect you to say that now I'm going to cry. That's very kind of you that I do hope to be. And by the way, listeners subscribe at my website, you'll get a weekly email from me. But if you don't want to do that, if you don't want any more emails, just email me at Katherine at Katherinsegers dot com. I respond to all of my listeners that write me, and I've spent and I'll pray for you and your kids because I know what that feels like. Actually, I have another guest that is probably that episode will air before this one. We have a monthly meeting of allies who get together and we just pray for our kids. We just because we've been on similar journeys with some of the things our kids have walked through, and we just get together and pray. And one of them actually she went to Lee as well. She's a friend. We reconnected on Facebook, and I invite her to the group. And so if you're needing those kinds of allies, they are out there. Pray for them. God is going to bring them. I think that's the overarching theme of the show today, is that we need allies and our parenting. Whether it's a podcast, whether it's a mentor whether it's a you know, some books that you really need to read, or some group that you need to get in, a prayer group for your kids. We all need those allies, and especially those allies that are speaking into our kids' lives, and our prayers can help us to find them and help our children to find them. So thank you so much, Steve. It's been just delightful. We'll have to probably have you back on to do something on the Sabbath so we can really learn how to do that better, because if we don't have that day of rest, then we're really not going to be consistently adequate experience, are we.

01:09:29
Speaker 3: I don't think I've discovered that in my life. I believe that.

01:09:33
Speaker 1: Well, God, bless you. Thank you so much. This has been amazing. I just knew this was going to be an incredible conversation and it did not disappoint. You know, one thing that doctor Hall said really stuck with me.

01:09:47
Speaker 7: That is, as parents, you can do everything right, faithfully, intentionally, prayerfully, and your child can still steer their life straight into a ditch. Now that may we sound like a strange kind of encouragement, especially if you're in the thick of raising little ones. But stay with me here, because at some point your child will hit a ditch. Now, maybe it's just a shallow one in the backyard, or maybe it feels more like the Grand canyon. But when that moment comes, you need to remember this. Their ditch is not your report card. We are called to be faithful, not perfect, as doctor Hall said. We are called to be consistently adequate, not extraordinary or excellent, although we should strive for excellence. But if at the end of the day we manage to just be adequate, that is enough, because our God is more than enough. So be encouraged to pray for the people who will surround your child, their friends, their professors, their mentors, especially as step into independence. And yes, please think wisely about environments, even considering a Christian institution that can partner with you, that can be your ally in shaping your child's faith and their future. And I'll just share a quick personal note here. My son did choose a Christian university, and I'll be honest, I kind of hoped it would be Lee University, but it wasn't. He chose Mississippi Christian University, which has an incredible rich two hundred year heritage of educating young people from a conservative Christian worldview. So yay, yay, he chose very well. But then there is the cost.

01:11:48
Speaker 1: And let me just tell you, as a parent, that can feel overwhelming.

01:11:53
Speaker 7: We've had those very real conversations with con that like.

01:11:56
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to make away here, and you know what he already is Provision is showing up from places we did not expect.

01:12:05
Speaker 7: Now we're not all of the way there yet, but we're seeing his hand and trusting him to finish.

01:12:11
Speaker 1: What he has started.

01:12:12
Speaker 7: So wherever you are in your parenting journey, hold on to this. God is not finished. So keep praying, keep trusting, and keep believing that the one who began a good work in your child will be faithful to complete it. And always remember God gave you your kids, your specific kids for a reason. That's because you hold the key to unlocking who God created them to be. We'll see you next time.

01:12:50
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