0:00
(upbeat music)
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- This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:21
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:23
Let's get into it.
0:23
Hi guys, today we got a special guest on the podcast.
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His name is Dale Partridge.
0:27
So Dale is an author, preacher, entrepreneur,
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and church reformer.
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He is the president of relearn.org,
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which is a house church planning ministry,
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and Reformation Seminary, which kind of feeds into relearn,
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which we talked about a lot in the podcast.
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He conducted his graduate studies at Western Seminary
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and the Master's Seminary,
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and also Grace Bible Theological Seminary.
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And he's also the author of several Christian books.
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We'll get into one of them prominently today.
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And he's the host of the Real Christianity Podcasts
0:51
and the Teaching Pastor at Reformation Fellowship
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in Sedona, Arizona.
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So the guy's got stuff going on, right?
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So he's got a lot of irons in the fire.
0:58
He's even got a new company
0:59
that we're gonna be talking about today on the podcast.
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It's called Male the Gospel.
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It's gonna give you a little bit of a peek behind the curtain
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before he explains it.
1:06
It's like gospel tracks that don't suck, right?
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Anyone that grew up in the church, even though I didn't,
1:12
I'm at least well aware of gospel tracks
1:14
and how a lot of them were pretty corny and pretty low quality.
1:16
He kind of talks about how they're working
1:18
to kind of change all that.
1:19
But he also has a new book out,
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which we spend the last half of the podcast
1:22
talking about called The Manliness of Christ,
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how the masculinity of Jesus eradicates a feminine Christianity.
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So are you guys still questioning
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why I'm having him on the show?
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I mean, this is exactly tailor made for you guys.
1:35
I'm not gonna keep him from you any longer.
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So without further ado, let's get into it.
1:40
Dale Partridge, welcome to the Daunted Life of Man's podcast.
1:43
- Hey brother, I'm excited to be here.
1:45
- I'm excited for you to be here as well.
1:47
You've got a lot of these coming up
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'cause you got some cool things that are launching soon,
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which we'll get to here in just a second.
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But you have kind of an interesting track
1:53
in terms of your career.
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So you began, as far as I understand,
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so feel free to correct the record
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if I get any of this wrong.
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You began as kind of a startup business guy, entrepreneur.
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You had a little bit of an athletic background as well
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that didn't quite pan out.
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But then you popped into the reformed Christian scene,
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but you still kind of got that entrepreneurial bug
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and you're still doing all these things
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and this thing and that thing.
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So in a 30,000 foot view experience,
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how about you kind of take us through
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kind of how you got to where you are today?
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- Yeah, most guys go from ministry to business,
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not business to ministry.
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That's generally the trend.
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And I was in the business world
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and when I say that I was in the business world,
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I was just about as deep as you can get.
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It was on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine,
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featured in Forbes, Fortune,
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almost every major outlet.
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I wrote a book called People Over Profit.
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I wrote a book called Launch Your Dream.
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I wrote a book called Save From Success.
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Before Facebook and all the kind of crazy agenda
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that's going on with identity politics were there,
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I opened up as the opener
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for the 10th anniversary Facebook conference
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for the 10th anniversary of the social network
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in San Francisco with all 10,000 of their employees,
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I was asked to open up for Mark Zuckerberg
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to talk about our story as a company
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and how we use Facebook.
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So I mean, when I say what I was in the business world,
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I was way in and it was a really fun experience.
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The Lord had blessed us with a really great journey
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of building a large multi-million dollar company.
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We had about 50 employees.
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And that was just one of many companies that I had started.
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And I remember hearing a quote that goes something like this,
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"Once you get to the top, you realize there's nothing there."
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And that was a compelling reality for me
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as I started to realize that once you make
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a certain amount of money, more money doesn't matter.
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Once you make $250,000 a year,
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you can really do almost the exact same stuff
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as somebody that makes five million a year.
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You can go to the same restaurants,
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you can take basically the same vacations.
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And so I realized I started losing the wind in my sales
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for making more money.
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I was really struggling with, well, I have a legacy to leave.
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This is going on in my life.
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Like, what am I going to do with my time?
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I have one life to live.
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And I didn't know what was going to happen.
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I decided that, obviously it was a Christian.
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I was going to church.
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I was getting involved in my church more and more.
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And the Lord had just continued to impress upon me
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a greater and greater desire to know the Word of God.
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And so that was kind of coming in collision
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with my business dreams.
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And I sold a couple of companies.
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We paid off our house.
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We got some rental properties.
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We did some right things with our money.
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And the Lord called me into ministry in 2016.
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I was starting to feel this kind of deep,
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I couldn't suppress this urge to get into ministry.
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And I sold a company called StartupCamp.com
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that I tried selling for the previous year
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and I couldn't get it done.
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I finally gave up and then the Lord sold it for me.
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It was absolutely remarkable.
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I don't have time for the story,
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but it was just like, okay, that was God.
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The day I sold it, I actually got an email
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from a gentleman who runs one of the biggest media companies.
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I'm not going to name names, media companies in the world
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asking if they could buy it and I would come with it.
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And I said, hey, man, I just really feel like
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the Lord's leading me into ministry.
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I feel like this is kind of the end of that era
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and I'm going in to serve the Lord full time.
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And he said, well, how about I offer you a million dollars
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a year and I want you to come down here and talk about it.
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And I was absolutely in conflict, dumbfounded,
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completely frustrated and trying to figure out God,
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what is this?
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I was basically invited to the big boys table
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that I've been wanting to be invited to for a long time.
5:59
And here's my opportunity and it's right after
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it was so evidently clear that I was to be called in the ministry.
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I spent a couple weeks praying for that.
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The Lord clarified it in such a clear way that you,
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I couldn't even, it was just unremarkable
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or it was remarkable on how that happened.
6:19
But I don't have time, I'll talk about that way too much
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if I start rabbit trailing.
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But we, I end up calling the gentleman.
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I said, hey, thank you so much for the offer,
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but I just can't do it.
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And I went into ministry at that point.
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Everything started to getting very tough.
6:36
I got sick.
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I've been chronically ill now for about four or five years
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from a variety of different things.
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First time ever dealing with that in my life.
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I went to seminary, I went to Western Seminary for a year,
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then I went over to the Master Seminary with John McArthur
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for a couple of years, then I went to Grace Bible Theological
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Seminary with Owen Strand and Dr. Jeffrey Johnson.
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I finished out my graduate studies there.
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And started planting a church, started relearned.org.
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And man, it has been nothing but difficult, to be honest.
7:13
It's been nothing but joyful, to be honest.
7:16
And now we've been in ministry since 2017 full time.
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So we're going on about five years of that.
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And yeah, so there's a blend.
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I basically am an entrepreneur called into ministry.
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And so there's a little bit of Mr. Miyagi,
7:32
like what was I doing in my entrepreneur time?
7:36
But I was learning how to manage an organization,
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lead people, understand finance, understand
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organizational ops, strategy, all of this
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that I've now been able to use and apply in the nonprofit space.
7:52
And so we're living a very different life now.
7:55
We live on very little in comparison.
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It was embarrassing how much, how many years it took for us
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to change our lifestyle from living large to living humble.
8:07
And it was kind of a sad reality.
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My wife and I still talk about how painful it
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was to come off of that, making so much money now
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to being really a servant.
8:20
But I feel like we're here now.
8:21
And we're five years in, and we're ready to serve the Lord.
8:25
We've been trained, and we're absolutely loving every bit of it,
8:28
even though we have had much suffering and much difficulty
8:32
on the way.
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When it seems like you've had to do a lot of foundational work.
9:06
So if you've ever done any type of a building project,
9:08
obviously we know this is also scriptural.
9:09
If you have a terrible foundation,
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you will have a terrible structure.
9:12
But even when you were talking about when you get to the top
9:14
of the mountain, you realize there's not a whole lot there.
9:16
I remember the story when Dion Sanders is one of the best
9:18
athletes on the planet, his team just won the Super Bowl.
9:21
And after he got back to the hotel, after the Super Bowl,
9:24
he just completely broke down because he's like,
9:26
this is the pinnacle.
9:27
Like this is the pinnacle of my athletic achievement.
9:30
I'm the best athlete on the best football team in the world.
9:33
And there's nothing here.
9:35
And a lot of people have kind of had that attack of conscience,
9:37
but then a lot of people just kind of doubled down
9:39
on trying to get to the next pinnacle, to win again.
9:42
So get to the next peak or something like that.
9:44
So it's interesting the road that you took.
9:46
Now you did mention relearn.org.
9:48
And so you established that to help strengthen
9:50
biblical literacy in the church,
9:52
but also to help plant house churches.
9:54
And then that's also tied into Reformation Seminary,
9:57
which you run, which kind of equips the people
9:59
to do that work, a planning house church.
10:01
Do I have that straight?
10:02
I mean, if I don't correct the record,
10:03
but then kind of give us an idea of relearn.org
10:06
and Reformation Seminary.
10:07
- Yeah, so relearn.
10:08
I basically realized that in the American church,
10:10
especially just church in the West, generally,
10:13
there is a massive biblical and theological illiteracy
10:17
in the church.
10:18
Most people don't know what they believe.
10:20
You know, a quote that I often say is that
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if you believe wrong, you'll never live strong.
10:25
What we believe really does matter.
10:27
Most people can't defend their faith.
10:28
Most people don't know the basic questions
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of like a children's catechism.
10:32
If I asked you, why is it vital that God is,
10:35
or that Jesus is fully God and fully man?
10:37
Most Christians can't answer that question.
10:39
Most Christians can't defend the importance
10:42
of a virgin birth.
10:43
And so this is a problem.
10:45
And this is the reason why Westernized Christianity
10:48
is so weak.
10:49
We don't know what we're defending.
10:51
We don't even know what we believe.
10:52
It's not precious to us.
10:54
We don't have a theological depth and comprehension.
10:57
We don't study.
10:58
We might read our Bible.
10:59
And if we do, it's the Bible app
11:01
and it's a couple minutes in the morning.
11:04
But we're not into this kind of theological rigor
11:07
or academic rigor.
11:09
And I think about the first and greatest commandment
11:11
that Jesus says is to love your Lord or God
11:12
with all your heart, with all your soul,
11:13
and with all your mind.
11:15
The problem is is that we often leave out that last piece
11:18
that we're not actually exercising the love of God
11:22
with our minds.
11:23
And so we have this costless, empty headed Christianity
11:26
that doesn't really confront the theological
11:29
and academic rigor required to know God.
11:32
I mean, it says, in Jeremiah, I think it's chapter nine,
11:35
it says, "Let not the rich man boast in his riches
11:37
"or the mighty man boast in his might,
11:39
"but let him who boast boast in this
11:41
"that he understands and knows me."
11:44
And so knowing the Lord, right?
11:46
This is the, you might've heard like the great mission statement
11:49
of Christian life is basically to know God and make him known.
11:53
And so we need to be willing to actually put in the hours.
11:57
And this is a quote that I often tell people is that I say,
12:00
"Hey, it's not how many years you've known the Lord,
12:02
"it's how many hours."
12:03
I can know the Lord at a greater degree,
12:06
if I just spend more hours than the guy that's known him
12:08
for 50 years, but doesn't put in the time,
12:10
doesn't put in the prayer life, doesn't put in the devotion,
12:12
doesn't put in the praise, doesn't put in the study.
12:14
And so I've realized that there's just a problem there
12:19
of applying ourselves, we're distracted,
12:22
we can't be, we're not focused.
12:24
And so I wanted to create relearn.org as a place
12:28
where we talk about theological literacy,
12:29
get sound to the basics,
12:31
understand like some of the historic statements of faith
12:33
like the 1689 or the Westminster Confession,
12:36
letting us have some real theological depth.
12:39
And basically making those complex things
12:43
palatable, accessible, simple to understand.
12:47
And the Lord has really given me a passion
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and a heart to help people with that.
12:53
And that's why I went to school,
12:54
I was in seminary for five years.
12:56
I'm still doing, I'm probably gonna give my doctorate.
12:58
And it's this passion of really understanding
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the complexity and figuring out a way
13:03
that I can help people understand.
13:05
There's a quote that says,
13:06
"If they knew what you knew, they would do as you do."
13:09
And I think there's a lot of a transition of information
13:12
that needs to occur.
13:13
But again, when you have churches that are doing
13:15
TEDx talk style preaching,
13:18
and you're not actually having a real deep discussion
13:22
of expository preaching from the pulpit,
13:25
most Christians again don't have that depth.
13:27
So that was started really to start basically
13:30
be a teaching ministry of what we're doing here
13:33
and provide theological and biblical depth.
13:36
Our tagline is back to the Bible.
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Let's just get back to the Bible, let's talk about it.
13:40
And then I've been kind of a shocking reality
13:44
is that I love the traditional church.
13:46
I'm a big fan of the traditional church,
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especially if they're thriving,
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healthy, biblical churches led by men
13:51
who are actually have a spine.
13:53
But when you look at the church today,
13:58
there's still a lot of problems, right?
13:59
It's 10 feet wide, it's one inch deep in most cases.
14:02
It becomes a little bit more like consumer Christianity
14:05
versus contributor Christianity.
14:07
I don't remember who said it, but someone said,
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going to church should be less like going to the movies
14:12
and more like going to the gym.
14:13
The problem is is that it's like going to the movies.
14:15
So we have what I call inactive spectator Christianity
14:18
or audience Christianity, and a lot of the guys
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don't have the ability to actually engage
14:23
because they're just actually stuck in just a pew
14:28
listening on and we're all surrounded by 400 people
14:34
surrounded by one man.
14:35
And so I was really struggling with,
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is there a more fruitful way?
14:38
Is it, what's the biblical example for church?
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And so I started doing some history and some research
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looking about what was the most fruitful expression
14:45
of the church throughout church history?
14:46
There's really two eras that come to mind.
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It's the early church, the first couple hundred years,
14:50
and then the Reformation era, the Puritan era,
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right after like the 1500s.
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And so those two eras I looked at,
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and I was like, what's so special about these eras?
15:01
And they were gathering in homes
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or very small communities of faith.
15:05
I mean, very small communities of church,
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I mean, less than 50 people.
15:09
And so, and they were out of a state of persecution.
15:14
They were out of their position of defense.
15:17
Their eschatology was more optimistic than pessimistic.
15:20
So there's a handful of things,
15:21
but the house church thing really stuck to me.
15:23
And I go, when you think of a house church,
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house church has a bad brand.
15:26
I mean, most house churches I would call heresy factories.
15:29
They're really not that great.
15:30
They're glorified Bible studies,
15:31
people that are elitists,
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people that have detached themselves from church history.
15:35
They're non-conformists,
15:37
and they're not confessional Christianity.
15:39
That's generally the trend about house church.
15:41
But I thought, how do we create biblical,
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reformed, doctrinally sound house churches?
15:46
And so we've been doing that.
15:47
We've been a part of one for about eight years.
15:49
I've been pastoring one for about five years.
15:52
And we've been planting them as a school.
15:55
So we started Reformation Seminary.
15:57
We've had 70 men, yeah, 75 men go through that program now,
16:04
graduated two classes now.
16:05
It's a one year program.
16:07
How to plant and pastor and preach
16:09
at a biblical house church.
16:11
And that's at Reformation Seminary.com.
16:13
It's basically a missionary training program for guys
16:15
who are already qualified, called to preach.
16:18
Meaning these are godly men, first Timothy three,
16:20
Titus one kind of dudes that are ready to go.
16:23
I just need the training.
16:24
I just haven't been theologically trained.
16:26
And so we give those guys the training.
16:28
We send them out to plant house churches in our network,
16:30
which is called Reformation Fellowship.
16:32
And so this is still kind of early on.
16:35
We're still kind of building the plane as we're flying it.
16:37
But man, it is an awesome journey.
16:39
And the Lord is doing some great stuff
16:41
with biblical house churches.
16:43
- Well, I appreciate you getting into all that detail.
16:44
And I wish we had time today to go into even more detail
16:47
into that.
16:48
Maybe we can get into that down the road a bit.
16:50
But with all these irons in the fire, Dale,
16:52
you decide to put some more irons in the fire
16:55
here recently.
16:55
And so you have a new thing that you're going to be launching.
16:58
And I don't want to take any of the sting out of it.
17:00
So I want you to tell our audience about it,
17:02
because guys, if you're listening to this on time,
17:04
this is now available to the greater marketplace.
17:07
So Dale, go.
17:09
- Amen.
17:10
So here, before I tell you,
17:11
and I want to kind of put some tension here,
17:13
I want to bring some clarity.
17:15
So guys that are putting too many irons in the fire
17:18
that are compromising their family, not cool, right?
17:20
People ask me all the time,
17:22
how do you do this?
17:23
How do you have so many things?
17:25
Doug Wilson is another man, has tons of things going on.
17:28
John MacArthur, if you look at his life,
17:29
he's got so many things going on.
17:31
R.C. Sproul, we look at his life,
17:32
so many things going on,
17:34
different schools and ministries and books
17:35
and writing and conferences.
17:37
And the way you do that is you build a team, right?
17:40
So that you can outsource and you can show
17:42
that you can have leadership and delegate.
17:43
And that's what we've been doing here.
17:45
We've been able to build a small team.
17:46
We've been able to get a good support of donors,
17:49
the support, the vision and the mission of what we're doing,
17:51
and guys that can help carry out these massive projects.
17:54
Now, this next massive project really came out of
17:59
a problem.
18:00
Now, there's a problem in the church and men,
18:01
I want you to listen up here.
18:03
Okay, so the best problems to solve
18:07
are urgent, required, and painful problems.
18:10
If you're gonna start a business or solve a problem
18:14
or start a ministry,
18:15
you need to figure out if you're solving an urgent,
18:18
required, and painful problem.
18:20
The reason toilet paper is so successful is because why?
18:23
It solves an urgent, required, and painful problem, right?
18:27
Nobody wants to wipe their butt with their hand.
18:29
And so we need to think about,
18:32
how are we going to do this in the way we approach business
18:36
and the way that we approach ministry?
18:37
So we saw an urgent, required, and painful problem.
18:41
I was thinking about how many Christians
18:43
actually share the gospel.
18:46
And we did some stats,
18:48
we looked at some other statistics and studies,
18:50
and it's a really sad number.
18:51
About three to 10% depending on the study that you reach
18:56
or that you look at,
18:57
three to 10% of Christians will share the gospel
19:00
with somebody at least once per year.
19:03
And now I'm not talking about sharing your faith,
19:06
talking about the Bible, or mentioning Jesus.
19:08
I'm talking a bad news, good news gospel.
19:11
A real gospel, you were born into sin,
19:13
you were born under the law,
19:15
the law is the Ten Commandments,
19:16
you failed to keep them, you're under God's wrath,
19:18
you need to be forgiven.
19:19
If you're not forgiven, you'll go to hell,
19:21
repent and believe in Jesus Christ alone.
19:23
Like a real gospel.
19:25
That gospel doesn't get preached that often
19:27
by about 10% or less of Christians.
19:31
And so I was going, okay, why is that?
19:33
Like what's the problem
19:35
that we can't have the great commission fulfilled?
19:38
Because 10% of Christians are the only ones engaging.
19:42
And so if we wanna see the West,
19:44
get out of this moral downturn
19:51
and this collapse of all things that are good,
19:56
the only way to repair that is the gospel.
19:58
I know we definitely need to confront evil.
20:02
I forgot what it says in Proverbs,
20:03
but the fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil.
20:05
We need to confront evil.
20:06
We need to stand up for the righteousness of God,
20:09
the moral law of God.
20:10
We need to condemn what is wrong.
20:12
But at the same time, you need to go upstream
20:14
because if you just talk about what's wrong,
20:17
but you don't change the heart, you have a problem.
20:20
Because the only way to change the way
20:22
that people behave is to change the heart.
20:24
So the gospel doesn't just change what you do.
20:26
It changes what you want to do.
20:27
It changes the affections of men's hearts.
20:30
And so we need to get the gospel out there primarily.
20:32
So yes, confront evil.
20:35
But if you don't get the gospel out there,
20:36
the evil's not gonna stop.
20:37
You're gonna create a bunch of legalists,
20:38
a bunch of moralists, a bunch of religious people at best,
20:41
but you'll never change the culture
20:43
unless you change the heart.
20:44
And the only way to change the heart
20:45
is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
20:46
So I go, we gotta get the great commission out.
20:49
How do we do this when 90% of the Christians aren't engaged?
20:54
And so I thought, I wanted to find out what was stopping them.
20:57
And we found out that there was really three reasons
20:59
stopping men and women from sharing the gospel.
21:02
Number one is they're afraid of rejection.
21:05
And to be honest guys,
21:06
the best of us are afraid of rejection.
21:09
The apostle Paul would sometimes struggle with these things.
21:13
And he would still be faithful, but he talks about this.
21:16
I mean, this is a difficult thing to share the gospel,
21:19
to tell somebody that they're condemned,
21:22
that they're a sinner,
21:23
and that they're on their way to hell
21:24
if they don't repent in Jesus Christ.
21:26
I mean, it's good news,
21:27
but you have to understand that it's only good news
21:29
because the bad news is so bad.
21:31
And so we have to be willing to share
21:33
the bad news, good news gospel.
21:35
Now, we're afraid of the rejection.
21:37
So that's number one.
21:38
We're afraid of the rejection of man,
21:40
the persecution of man,
21:41
the frustration of man, the anger of man.
21:45
Number two is that we're afraid that we are not
21:50
theologically equipped to prepare
21:53
and present an eloquent presentation of the gospel.
21:58
We go, I've never been trained.
22:01
I know what the gospel is at a surface level,
22:04
but man, I don't know if I can actually get up on stage
22:06
and preach it or get in a conversation
22:08
with someone and preach a full gospel presentation.
22:10
And again, this is another failure of the Western church.
22:12
We need to train individuals how to preach the gospel.
22:16
The third reason is that people are afraid
22:19
of the apologetic questions that come
22:21
as a result of a gospel proclamation moment, right?
22:24
So they're afraid of moral relativism
22:26
and the Big Bang theory and what about the dinosaurs
22:29
or whatever, right?
22:29
They're just afraid of those discussions coming at them
22:32
and they're not prepared to give answers for it.
22:35
And so those three reasons, right?
22:36
You got rejection, you got fear of not being equipped
22:40
and you have the apologetic questions.
22:42
You layer those on top of each other
22:44
and you go, wow, that's a pretty compelling reason
22:45
to not preach the gospel.
22:47
And so we go, all right, we have to solve the problem.
22:50
How do we get and permit the 90% of Christians
22:55
that want to share the gospel, but don't, a way to do so?
22:59
And so we created a website called mailthegospel.org.
23:04
And basically what this is, is that we created
23:08
a handful of tracks.
23:11
Now, when you hear the word tracks,
23:13
if you've been in the Christian world for some time,
23:15
tracks have a really bad brand, okay?
23:18
Most tracks are really ugly.
23:20
They're really, they're either long or too short
23:24
or they're doom and gloom or they're Jesus loves everybody
23:27
and you just need to be loved.
23:29
Whatever it is, very few tracks have been like,
23:31
wow, that's a really good track.
23:32
The other thing is that most tracks are unpersonalized,
23:35
meaning that they're written in a third person perspective
23:40
versus historically when you look at conversion
23:44
in the church, most people are converted by preaching.
23:47
So we went out and we said, hey, we want to create tracks
23:51
that are basically like sermons.
23:53
And we want them to be not too short, not too long,
23:56
but they could be read in about eight to 12 minutes.
23:59
That means they're thorough enough
24:01
to get a full gospel presentation across, but not so deep
24:06
that you're going into a 100-page book.
24:09
We also want to make these things beautiful
24:11
because again, most tracks are printed.
24:13
It's like someone says, hey, let's put the most beautiful
24:15
and most important message on earth
24:17
and the crappiest paper we could find, okay?
24:20
It's terrible.
24:21
So we wanted to create beautiful tracks
24:24
with beautiful design, beautiful paper.
24:25
They're four by six, they're easy.
24:28
There's something that you don't want to throw away.
24:30
Like when you receive them, it's not like trash.
24:35
Most tracks are like, oh, this is designed for the trash can.
24:38
These tracks are designed for your shelf.
24:41
And so we wanted to be able to create a way for anybody
24:44
to send to mail one of these gospel tracks.
24:48
Now these gospel tracks have been theologically reviewed
24:50
by our board.
24:51
We have some incredible men, several of them
24:54
have their doctors and theology, incredible minds
24:57
that we went and scrutinized and looked at this thing
24:59
and toured apart and put it together
25:01
to make sure these tracks were solid, tight, raw, real,
25:06
historical with sound doctrine.
25:08
And so now, getting back to this whole thing,
25:11
and sorry, I'm rambling, Kyle, but--
25:12
- No, you're good, you're good, go for it.
25:14
- So if you land on the website, you go mail the gospel.org,
25:16
you can basically land there, enter your information,
25:19
and then you can choose which track you'd like to send.
25:21
We have a couple of different tracks.
25:22
You can read them on our website.
25:24
You choose the track you want to send.
25:26
You can then enter the recipient's mailing address.
25:30
So now you get to figure out who you want to send this to.
25:32
You could send it to multiple individuals,
25:33
you could send it to just one.
25:34
Now the best thing is you can personalize it,
25:36
which we suggest, or you can send it anonymously,
25:39
which are, there are various unique circumstances
25:43
where you're gonna send it anonymously.
25:44
You might have a brother-in-law in your family
25:46
that's living a different lifestyle than you,
25:48
and you've already shared the gospel with him,
25:50
and to be honest, if you shared it again,
25:52
he's not gonna listen just because you shared it.
25:54
And there's those moments where you get to go,
25:57
I like to send the gospel to him and just send it anonymously.
26:01
And so we have that option for you.
26:03
However, we do want you to personalize it if you can,
26:06
because we don't want to replace evangelism,
26:08
we want to nurture it.
26:09
We want to help you get comfortable with evangelizing
26:12
and using this as a tool.
26:13
The best thing also after this is you can actually
26:15
add a Bible to your order.
26:17
So we partnered up with Crossway.
26:19
They give us a stellar deal on Bibles.
26:21
You could basically send a Bible for like 10 bucks,
26:25
like a full ESV, thin line, Old Testament,
26:29
New Testament Bible for 10 bucks.
26:31
So you got like a gospel track, which is a couple bucks,
26:34
and you got the Bible, and then the shipping,
26:36
it's like 20 bucks or less.
26:38
You can mail the gospel to anyone you want to.
26:41
And it doesn't end there, actually, I'll stop.
26:45
You can ask me more questions
26:46
than I'll tell you more about the tracks.
26:48
- Well, so you answered a couple of those,
26:50
like what is the cost?
26:51
Do you do like a monthly subscription?
26:53
Is this a subscription model?
26:54
Are you buying them at one at a time?
26:56
So you're basically buying them itemized, right?
26:58
Just one at a time as you send them out, correct?
27:00
- Correct.
27:01
- So my question isn't as much about the mechanics
27:04
of the website and about the idea,
27:06
because the idea makes sense,
27:07
because I remember when I became a Christian,
27:09
when I was like in junior high high school,
27:11
and I was like, oh, these tracks,
27:12
like, okay, this is what Christians walk around with.
27:14
Like, I thought people carried money in their wallets,
27:16
but these people carry these tracks,
27:18
and everyone's on fire,
27:19
but then, you know, there was this bridge
27:21
made out of the crosswood,
27:23
and now they're not gonna die.
27:24
It's like, okay, it made sense.
27:25
But if you were a little bit deeper,
27:27
or a little bit had your brain been more developed,
27:29
it probably wouldn't have landed the way
27:30
that you would have wanted to.
27:31
I guess part of me is, I'm the type of guy
27:34
that loves when things are hard, certain things.
27:37
There are certain things like this morning,
27:38
I spent 45 minutes yelling at my lawnmower,
27:40
because I couldn't fix the thing I needed to fix.
27:42
I wanted that to be really easy.
27:44
But when it comes to like exercise, I want it to be brutal.
27:47
And if there is a hiking route
27:50
that is more brutal than the one we're currently on,
27:52
that's the one I wanna do.
27:53
And so I kinda have that inkling as a man.
27:56
I want that resilience training.
27:58
I want that grit,
28:00
and you only get that when there's heavy resistance.
28:02
And so, I know you know how to answer this,
28:05
but I gotta ask it,
28:06
'cause I know my guys are gonna ask it.
28:07
Are we making it too easy?
28:09
Are we making it to where we're allowing people
28:12
to stay in their little Christian cocoon,
28:14
where they can just like, okay,
28:15
I'm gonna hide down here,
28:16
but you know, behind my microphone,
28:18
then I'm gonna shoot.
28:19
I'm gonna shoot the gospel over to somebody,
28:21
and then I'm gonna duck down
28:22
and hope they never talk to me again.
28:23
Does that make sense?
28:24
- Yeah, no, it makes a ton of sense.
28:26
You know, it's one of those things that this, again,
28:28
we don't wanna replace evangelism.
28:30
We wanna nurture it.
28:31
And the reality is that some of you men
28:33
need to actually read this tract yourself.
28:37
Means that you need to actually understand
28:39
what the gospel is.
28:40
You might be saved,
28:42
but you actually can't comprehend
28:44
the vital importance of penal substitutionary atonement.
28:48
You need to understand that God has become,
28:50
Christ has become your righteousness,
28:52
and that it's been imputed to you by faith.
28:54
You give him your sin.
28:55
He gives you his righteousness.
28:56
You need to understand some of these killer points
28:59
of the gospel that are,
29:00
oh, like just punch in the gut moments when you realize them.
29:04
Now, what we wanna do is a second phase here,
29:09
and this will be probably pretty quick,
29:11
is we wanna offer theological evangelistic training.
29:15
And so we want guys to get there and go,
29:16
okay, I wanna send the gospel out.
29:18
I wanna personalize it.
29:19
I wanna send us to individuals.
29:21
And the reality is, to be honest,
29:22
sometimes you just don't have time
29:23
and you just need to use this as a tool
29:25
because you don't have time.
29:26
There are so many people to share the gospel with,
29:28
and many of them live across the country
29:30
or different parts of the world.
29:32
And the reality is that you don't get to talk to them
29:34
that often, and you would like to talk to them more often,
29:36
but you have kids, and you have a wife,
29:37
and you have a job, and you have responsibilities,
29:40
and there's just people you just go, man,
29:41
it'd just be easier sometimes to just mail them something,
29:44
and write them a quick note.
29:45
And so it solves more problems than just evading the fear,
29:48
but the reality is it's a practical tool
29:50
for a lot of guys just to go, hey,
29:51
I wanna mail the gospel up to somebody.
29:53
You met somebody at a conference,
29:54
or somebody's at work, or whatever it might be.
29:57
Now, I'm not saying that it should replace
29:59
getting out and having a conversation about the gospel,
30:02
but it becomes a really great tool.
30:04
We also sell these tracks.
30:05
When you check out, you can actually add some tracks
30:08
that you can just get mailed to your own house,
30:10
which is important.
30:11
I actually carry these tracks with me everywhere I go,
30:14
because I get into a conversation,
30:16
and I'm a theologian by all senses of the word,
30:19
like I write theology books.
30:22
And I know the gospel, I write gospel tracks,
30:24
I understand how to preach it,
30:25
but I get moments where I'll be talking to my barber
30:28
about the gospel, and I specifically go
30:30
to different barbershops almost every single week,
30:31
just so I can preach the gospel to different individuals.
30:33
And so I'll be talking to them,
30:35
but with them having their conversation
30:37
about their life and learning about their story,
30:40
I might only get in three or four minutes
30:42
into a gospel presentation by the time I have to leave.
30:44
And so it's really nice to be able to go,
30:46
"Hey, I wanna leave you with this.
30:48
"Here's my card, here's a gospel track.
30:50
"You wanna have any more conversation, let me know."
30:52
So it does solve a problem of just lacking time
30:54
in a very busy world, but in addition,
30:57
it does help bridge that gap.
30:58
I'd like to send the gospel to my boss.
31:01
I'd like to send the gospel to my childhood friend
31:04
back in North Carolina, whatever it might be.
31:06
And so, but we do wanna offer training.
31:09
So we're not gonna leave people there.
31:11
Very soon, we're gonna offer training
31:13
for these individuals that are interested
31:15
in sharing the gospel on a regular basis,
31:16
"Hey, let us teach you how to do this in person."
31:20
And then these become a tool for you,
31:21
not just an actual crutch for you.
31:24
And so that's definitely the trajectory.
31:27
- Well, I'm glad you used the word crutch
31:28
because I specifically didn't use that,
31:30
but I know some people will think of it that way
31:32
and couch it as a negative thing,
31:34
but it is about equipping.
31:35
And so you're not just giving people the product,
31:37
you're giving people the stuff behind the product.
31:39
So I've talked about this on the show before.
31:41
My entry to the spiritual conversation
31:44
with a lot of people comes through a book
31:46
that I've gifted more than just about any other book.
31:48
And despite Tim Keller, and I've got my issues
31:50
with Tim Keller and some of the things he said,
31:51
especially lately, like what's going on with this guy?
31:53
But he wrote a book that's incredibly accessible
31:55
called "The Reason For God."
31:57
And so there's a guy yesterday, it spent 20 years
32:00
basically killing people for Uncle Sam,
32:02
doesn't really get the whole spiritual side of things
32:04
and all that.
32:05
That's a book that I can send him and not drown him
32:08
in so much stuff that he doesn't even have the words for.
32:12
He doesn't even have the scaffolding in his brain
32:14
for some of these things.
32:15
So it's kind of the same thing that you've done here
32:17
is you're creating this bridge to a conversation.
32:21
And guys, just think about, I've said this before,
32:24
one thing that I do whenever I go out to eat
32:26
is right before we start eating
32:29
and the waiter or waitress says he is
32:30
or anything else I can get you.
32:32
I always say, "Hey, we're about to bless our meal.
32:34
Is there anything that we can pray for you about?"
32:37
Now, most of the time, they're like,
32:39
no, not really, but thank you.
32:44
Or sometimes it's like, oh my gosh,
32:46
my aunt just got diagnosed with cancer.
32:48
Or, I'm afraid I'm not gonna be able to pay my rent
32:51
this month, it's kind of hard.
32:52
I just picked this up as a second job.
32:54
I've never had anyone punch me in the face.
32:56
And that in my head is the worst case scenario,
32:59
is they just go, ah, and then just blast me in the face.
33:02
And then it's like, okay, maybe I had that one coming.
33:04
I won't let you hit me again, that was your freebie.
33:06
But that's kind of the deal, is like,
33:08
we build this thing up in our brain, like,
33:10
oh, these people are gonna lose their minds.
33:11
And they're just gonna freak out
33:12
and pull out a machete and start hacking away.
33:15
And so I like the ease of this
33:18
to where a guy can say, okay, this is an easy seed
33:21
that can be planted that you can water later.
33:23
So I appreciate you, I appreciate your team for doing that.
33:26
Guys, all of that will be in the show notes
33:28
so you can get there.
33:29
And again, you have a bunch of great videos on the website.
33:31
There's a bunch of stuff there.
33:32
Like, if that explanation didn't really land with you,
33:35
to go to the website, like, that's an easy way to describe it.
33:38
That's an easy way to look at it.
33:40
So you can kind of check that out for yourself.
33:41
And again, if you're listening to this right now,
33:43
you're part of the initial thing.
33:45
You're part of technically like the beta launch of this thing.
33:47
It'll only get better as time gets out into the future.
33:50
But I'd be remiss if we didn't spend maybe the last half
33:54
of our time together talking about a new resource
33:56
that you've put out, which is gonna be ACEs for my audience.
33:59
And it's a book called the Manliness of Christ,
34:02
How the Masculinity of Jesus Eradicates a Feminine Christianity.
34:06
Now, my understanding is that this was kind of like a resource
34:10
that you put out on relearn.
34:11
I'm assuming you got a lot of great feedback.
34:13
I told you before you and I met for the first time,
34:15
I actually shared that relearn article on my monthly email
34:19
that I sent out to everybody.
34:20
And, you know, this is before we even met
34:23
because of the importance of this.
34:24
Because here at Undaunted Life,
34:25
we equipped men to push back darkness.
34:26
We are a men's ministry, equipping men to, you know,
34:28
cultivate spiritual, mental and physical resilience
34:30
on a daily basis.
34:31
Like that's why we're here.
34:32
That's why we're doing it.
34:33
But it's the, the personification of Christ
34:35
that keeps a lot of men out of the church.
34:37
And that's another big thing.
34:38
But I want to kind of give a quote from early in the book
34:41
that I believe is the hinge point for the book.
34:44
And then you can give us a little bit of context on that
34:46
and why you decided to write this.
34:47
So here's the quote.
34:49
"My hypothesis is this.
34:50
Due to the feminization of Jesus,
34:52
the cultural hatred of masculinity
34:54
and the lack of faithful exposition in the pulpit,
34:57
we have been conditioned to not recognize
34:59
the potent manliness and courageousness of Christ."
35:03
Go.
35:04
- Amen.
35:04
Yeah, so we have an effeminate church
35:06
because we have built up a caricature
35:10
of an effeminate Jesus.
35:12
And so the culture has, again,
35:14
basically is dealing with the sin of idolatry, right?
35:17
Idolatry is creating a God that we want in our own desires.
35:22
And so it's not just laying down and bowing down
35:25
before a shrine.
35:27
It's also idolatry is also creating a version of God
35:30
that's not accurate to the scriptures.
35:32
And so that's what culture is done.
35:34
We've created a Roman Catholic version of Jesus
35:36
where he's wearing blush and he's got his eyebrows tweezed.
35:39
And that's how we think of Jesus.
35:41
We have all of our books and it's the soft and gentle.
35:44
There's a chapter that I added from the article.
35:46
So I put this article out,
35:47
then I added about 5,000 words or 4,000 words to the book.
35:51
And one of those is a chapter that I talk about,
35:54
the most recent book by Dane Ortland
35:57
who wrote a book called "Gentle and Lonely."
35:59
And this is like a blockbuster book in the sense of,
36:02
I mean, thousands upon thousands upon thousands,
36:05
tens of thousands of copies sold.
36:07
And to be honest, if you read it, you go,
36:10
"Hey, it's actually accurate to the scriptures on most."
36:14
I would agree with it.
36:15
The problem is it's a one-sided Jesus.
36:18
And that's the dilemma.
36:19
And so I go, what is the other side of Jesus
36:23
that the church has just conveniently avoided
36:26
in this feministic era?
36:27
- Well, to that point with the feministic seven,
36:29
don't lose your train of thought.
36:31
Like that was why we even started what we're doing here.
36:34
That's why I have a lion over my shoulder
36:35
because I'm not saying seek the lamb of God
36:38
to the detriment of understanding the,
36:40
or seek the lion of Judah to the detriment
36:42
of the understanding the lamb of God.
36:44
But that's what most people hear me saying.
36:46
It's like, no, you have an incomplete view
36:49
of who Jesus is if you see him only as a grace giver
36:52
and not a truth giver.
36:53
Like, if you don't see his justice,
36:55
if you don't see his ferocity,
36:57
you see what, like, so that's the thing
36:58
that's actually astonishing to me, but keep going.
37:00
- Yeah, and if you notice that I'm looking down
37:02
just 'cause I'm looking at the book right now,
37:04
trying to get some different notes out of this thing.
37:06
But yeah, the manliness of Christ, I mean,
37:08
there is a, I'm actually, so the way,
37:12
the reason I wrote this paper first, it was a paper.
37:15
I was finishing my last Christology class
37:17
for like the very end of my seminary work
37:21
for actually a professor and Dr. Owen Strand.
37:23
Some of you guys might follow him on social media.
37:26
And so he was my professor for this.
37:27
And, you know, when you've been in seminary
37:29
for as long as I have towards the end,
37:30
you basically just kind of have some free reign
37:32
to just, you know, write what you wanna write
37:34
and you're really communicating with your professor.
37:36
And so I wrote this and he's like, man,
37:38
this is a really good piece.
37:40
I like this idea.
37:41
And I wasn't gonna publish it.
37:43
I put it up as an article on the website.
37:44
And then I got so much feedback from that.
37:47
People were saying, hey, if you turn this into a book,
37:49
I'd use it as men's ministry.
37:50
And I said, all right, well, I'll just add a little bit to it.
37:53
And I turn it into a book.
37:54
Then I put it out on social media and I couldn't believe it.
37:56
I mean, this is a small book.
37:57
It's, it could fit in your hand.
37:59
You could read it in an hour.
38:00
It's about 80 pages long.
38:02
It's a punchy little book, which again,
38:03
I wrote for men because guys don't have a lot of time.
38:06
You don't wanna, here's your next 350 page book.
38:08
Like that is not the thing that you wanna hear
38:11
when you're a father and you got so many different things
38:12
going on.
38:13
But this book, I mean, it's been bonkers
38:17
in terms of the way it's been selling.
38:19
So many women have bought it for their husbands
38:22
on Father's Day.
38:23
I'm so excited about that.
38:25
But we're talking thousands of copies.
38:26
I'm actually gonna write another chapter
38:27
and add it to the next edition.
38:30
And one of the things I talk about
38:31
is just the resolve of Christ, the fearlessness of Christ,
38:35
the boldness of Christ, the intensity of Christ,
38:39
just the rawness of Christ.
38:42
And one, the new chapter that I'm gonna put in
38:44
is just the intense language.
38:46
You brew to vipers, he calls men liars to their face.
38:49
You whitewash tombs.
38:50
This is like most Christians today are just cowards.
38:55
They're just afraid to use these language against evil.
38:58
But Jesus was just ruthless in the way that he spoke
39:02
to those who were standing opposed to him.
39:04
And so there's something to be learned there.
39:07
The biggest thing about the hallmark piece of the book
39:10
was really, I was reading a book called
39:12
The Cross of Christ by John Stott.
39:14
Man, this book is just absolutely a central Christian reading.
39:17
But you really learn about the resolve of Christ.
39:20
Christ went to The Cross knowing
39:23
he was about to be just physically demolished.
39:26
He went to The Cross, not just knowing that,
39:27
that he would actually be hung on The Cross
39:29
and actually be forsaken by the Father.
39:34
And there is still theological mystery there.
39:38
But the reality is he was going to bear the wrath of God.
39:41
And it says in Matthew that he says,
39:44
we're going to Jerusalem and he was out ahead of us.
39:47
And you just think about that.
39:50
You go, Jesus is out ahead of us.
39:52
And he knows what's happening.
39:54
He's leading the way.
39:55
He's not holding back.
39:58
He's not being fearful.
39:59
He's not timid.
40:00
He's out in front.
40:02
And this is again, it kind of reminds me
40:04
of those men of World War II,
40:05
when you see, you know, they're walking out in front
40:08
to the battle and they just go, if I die, I die,
40:11
but this is the work that needs to be done, I'm going.
40:14
That kind of raw masculinity you see in Christ,
40:18
the problem is it's buried.
40:20
It's buried and so many of the Christian churches today
40:24
we have is, you know, some guy wearing a swoop neck shirt
40:27
and some tight pants and, you know,
40:28
let's sway your hips to Jesus and raise your hands
40:30
and dance for Jesus.
40:32
And it's just we've lost the kind of David and Goliath imagery
40:36
that was in the scriptures to represent the Messiah.
40:39
And so this is the book that you just go,
40:41
hey, we need to remember, we need to teach our boys
40:44
what it means to be a masculine man.
40:46
- Dale, it's even deeper than that.
40:47
I'm glad you brought up David and Goliath
40:49
because another problem,
40:51
here we are defining all the problems
40:52
of the modern Western church,
40:54
another problem that we see is that we've been convinced
40:57
that we're David in that story.
40:59
That when you, you know what I mean?
41:00
Like, so I remember when Matt Chandler pointed this out,
41:03
he was invited to go speak at Elevation Church,
41:05
Stephen Furtick's church years ago.
41:07
And he basically went in there
41:09
and burned it down and walked away.
41:10
Where he basically, he screamed at these people and said,
41:13
you're not David.
41:15
Like, you're not the point.
41:16
God is not about you.
41:18
God is about his glory.
41:20
And I remember that being like a crazy turning point for me,
41:23
thinking like, I even got chills right now,
41:25
just thinking about that moment
41:26
because it's like how awkward,
41:27
'cause Stephen Furtick was like sitting on stage.
41:29
Like, as this was happening,
41:31
it was like, dude, he's burning down everything
41:33
that you've built up with your ministry.
41:35
But the part of the thing is is
41:37
you lose the personality of Christ.
41:39
I'm glad you're adding this chapter.
41:40
You lose his intensity when you read the Bible deadpan.
41:43
Right, so a lot of us need training
41:44
in how just to read the Bible.
41:45
And I remember there was a great book
41:47
by John Eldridge a while ago called The Beautiful Outlaw
41:51
where every chapter was about the personality of Jesus
41:53
when he was being playful or teasing or aggressive.
41:57
Or like how many of you guys out there
41:59
have ever said something that made a lynch mob
42:01
wanna kill you, right?
42:02
I've said some pretty incendiary things.
42:04
No one's ever shown up outside my house.
42:05
But that's what Jesus did on a regular basis.
42:07
These crowds of people were trying to get together
42:09
to kill him, but we definitely lose that.
42:11
I do wanna read back to you, Dale,
42:13
my favorite quote from the book.
42:14
And again, just to kind of echo something you said,
42:17
guys, I read this on a short flight this week.
42:19
I mean, it's, you know, widely type set.
42:21
So you can buzz through this thing pretty quickly.
42:23
So don't get, you know, bogged down in the weeds
42:25
about, oh, I gotta read a book and I don't have time.
42:27
But let me read this quote to you.
42:29
"The gender role distortion and infatuation
42:31
with egalitarianism have contributed to great confusion
42:34
in the church of what it means to be a biblical man or woman.
42:37
It has left women fighting for leadership
42:39
and left men without direction in their role
42:41
in marriage, church and family."
42:43
But more than that, it has left children
42:45
without visible models of biblical masculinity and femininity.
42:48
In fact, I strongly believe this has been
42:50
the enemy's central strategy for this generation.
42:52
He has influenced the church to such a place
42:54
of feminine emotion that when the time comes
42:57
for masculine boldness, fearlessness, sacrifice and resolve,
43:00
the church and culture will be grossly unprepared.
43:04
The truth is church history is saturated
43:06
with Christians being tortured, dismembered,
43:08
beaten, shot, hung, racked, boxed, buried and burned for Christ.
43:12
The timidity of the current church,
43:14
which submits to government overreach and complies
43:16
with laws enforcing unbiblical support of sexual sin,
43:19
will be costly.
43:20
And this is the hinge point here.
43:21
The time is coming soon.
43:23
When the need for masculine Christian men will be intense,
43:27
but their availability will be short, okay?
43:30
Now, Dale, this goes back to, you know,
43:31
the thing I don't know who it's attributed to,
43:33
but hard times create strong men, strong men create good times,
43:36
create weak men, weak men create hard times.
43:39
That is applied directly to the church
43:41
that we've had a lot of weak men that have created
43:43
the hard times that we're experiencing now
43:45
and the even harder times that are coming.
43:47
Go ahead and give us a little bit more context
43:48
behind that quote.
43:49
- Yeah, so Satan's ultimate plan in the world
43:52
is that men will be boys, I mean, not as ultimate plan,
43:54
as ultimate plan is to make sure people go to hell.
43:56
But Satan's cultural plan is that men will be boys,
44:00
that women will be men and that children will be irrelevant.
44:04
Okay, and so this is what we're seeing right now
44:07
as we're seeing a timidity that comes across men,
44:09
keeping them to act like boys.
44:11
- Right.
44:12
- We're seeing a influence of women as a result
44:17
because men are cowards, women become men.
44:20
And that's just the reaction.
44:23
Somebody has to be the man.
44:25
- Well, Dale, we see this visually.
44:26
Like 10 years ago, there weren't a whole bunch
44:29
of yoked up Jim Bro females,
44:31
but in an era where we're elevating the dad bod
44:34
as like, oh, this is fine and this is actually preferable,
44:38
then we see at the same time all these women
44:40
that aren't just in shape, but they're jacked.
44:42
And I know that that's, I'm just painting
44:43
with a broad brush here, but you can see it visually.
44:46
Like we don't have to operate in the spiritual realm
44:48
to see this.
44:49
- Yeah, see, the reality is,
44:51
is when you talk to sound-minded women,
44:55
they really want biblical men.
44:58
Even if they're not Christians,
44:59
they want a man that is protecting, providing for them,
45:03
caring for them, leading them.
45:05
They want, women don't really want the feminist agenda.
45:10
They've been told that they want that.
45:12
There is such a gross distortion of what's going on.
45:17
My friend's over at Cannon Press.
45:20
I'm actually close friends with Becca and Benjamin Merkel.
45:24
Becca wrote a book called Even Exile.
45:27
Ben sits on our theological advisory board, her husband.
45:30
And they came up with a documentary called Even Exile
45:33
that talks about restoring biblical femininity.
45:36
And so it's two-sided reality here, guys,
45:39
is we need to not just learn what it means to be a man.
45:43
And the only place you can learn that is Christ.
45:46
He is the definition of a man.
45:49
Now, the other side is that we need to know
45:52
what biblical femininity is so that we can lead our lives to it.
45:56
Okay, so it's not, you don't just leave your wife
45:59
to learn femininity on her own.
46:02
You actually want to lead her in the scriptures
46:04
and let the scriptures teach her femininity.
46:06
And so we need to be aware.
46:08
We can't guide our families to territories
46:10
we are not aware of.
46:12
You know, we need to be prepared to guide our children
46:14
into what does it mean to be a godly boy or girl?
46:17
What does it mean to be a godly woman?
46:19
And so we are the leaders of our home,
46:20
the pastors of our home.
46:21
So we need to have a good, clear comprehension
46:25
of that theological and doctrinal territory.
46:27
And so doesn't mean that women don't also have a role
46:29
in teaching other women, absolutely they do.
46:32
And men teaching other men.
46:33
But there is a role for a husband and a father
46:36
to learn the territory to teach that to their family.
46:39
And so this is just a part of that.
46:41
And it's just a part of restoring biblical manhood
46:46
to the church today.
46:49
- And I think you brought up a few important things.
46:51
I don't think you used the word just then,
46:53
but it's about catechism, it's about catechizing
46:55
your children.
46:56
There's a great book by Vody Bockham called Family Shepherds.
46:59
It's not his most famous book,
47:00
but it's such a great book.
47:02
And it was a member of my team that turned me onto that book.
47:04
And a lot of the things in that book
47:05
are about catechizing your children,
47:07
teaching them these things.
47:08
And we live in a culture now where the question
47:10
what is a woman doesn't have a clear answer anymore, right?
47:13
And so just last week on the show,
47:15
I was talking about Matt Walsh's documentary
47:16
where he basically for an hour and a half shows
47:19
the insanity that is currently pervading our culture
47:22
on just the issue of gender.
47:23
And the thing is,
47:24
is these people don't not know the answer, right?
47:26
They know the answer,
47:27
but they know if they say it,
47:28
their entire worldview crumbles, they lose power,
47:31
they lose funding, they lose donors, they lose whatever.
47:34
And for us and for the stuff that you're doing
47:36
and you're helping us equipping men to push back darkness,
47:38
this is a darkness in culture
47:40
that if you're not equipped to push back, you won't.
47:42
And that's the thing that I have liked to,
47:43
I've seen in Christians and conservatives here recently,
47:46
is a little bit more fight.
47:48
And you could say, "Oh, Trump did that."
47:50
Oh, you know, culture is forcing them to do it,
47:52
but Christians for forever.
47:53
And I've been saying this a lot lately,
47:55
they've been pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed
47:56
until they've been pushed too much.
47:58
And it's like, "Hey, you better stop that,
47:59
"I'm gonna get mad, you don't want to see me when I'm mad."
48:01
And then now it's like, no, no, no, no.
48:03
When we initially see the push,
48:06
we're pushing back immediately.
48:08
If you see, if you're walking through the library
48:10
with your child and you see a drag queen story
48:12
are happening,
48:13
you walk over and you call that out, but go ahead.
48:15
- Yeah, no, this is exactly true.
48:17
If you see somebody carrying a pride flag
48:20
or you see somebody at Target putting these things up,
48:24
you need to tell the cashier,
48:26
you need to tell the employee,
48:28
because you need to make sure that silent Christianity
48:31
or quiet Christianity is not biblical Christianity.
48:34
And so this whole passivity where you apply,
48:37
turn the other cheek to all these moral cues is stupid.
48:40
We need to be willing to stand up and go,
48:41
"No, this is wicked, this is wrong."
48:43
And it might be just talking gently
48:46
to the cashier at Target going,
48:48
"Hey, I know you guys as a company support this stuff,
48:50
but just know that I don't,
48:51
and I don't think a lot of people in this community do,
48:53
and I believe it's wicked,
48:54
and your issue's not with me, it's with God."
48:56
And then walk away, you know?
48:57
And so that just needs to happen.
49:00
If the church, I mean, my goodness,
49:02
the church is, there's still millions of Christians
49:08
in the West, biblical, born-again Christians.
49:11
If they just open up their mouth, again,
49:14
speak the truth in love, I'm not saying go be rude,
49:17
go be mean, I'm saying be aggressively,
49:21
be aggression or have aggression,
49:23
but don't do it with angst or with maliciousness.
49:27
Do it in love, and we can be aggressive
49:30
and invasive without being rude.
49:33
- Right, and the same is true in the opposite.
49:34
It's a small number of very, very loud people
49:37
that are getting these massive changes.
49:38
Think about these small groups of people
49:41
that are getting Netflix to change their policies
49:43
and what types of things they put out there.
49:44
I saw recently, I think it was George Washington University.
49:47
I think there's 25, 26,000 students there.
49:50
Well, if they got like 500 signatures on a petition
49:53
to change their mascot,
49:55
'cause I think they're called the Colonials
49:56
or something like that,
49:58
and the university's gonna acquiesce to it.
50:00
500 people get mad and say,
50:02
"Yeah, this is bad in colonialism and all these things
50:05
"that aren't based in reality."
50:06
And the administration's like,
50:07
"Oh God, well, we don't want any bad press,
50:09
"so we're gonna go ahead and do that."
50:10
But what do you think would happen
50:11
if 10,000 alumni of George Washington University said,
50:15
"No, you're not gonna do that."
50:17
Like, that's nonsense.
50:18
Tell these kids that this is not a daycare,
50:20
this is a university that they opted into
50:23
and they choose to pay tuition and fees towards,
50:26
and they can just pay those tuition and fees
50:27
towards somebody else.
50:28
We're not gonna coddle you and get into all that.
50:30
Now, we gotta wind up a close here,
50:32
'cause we got more things to do today,
50:34
and I know you got a couple more of these after this,
50:36
but this will be the last question of the day.
50:37
In the very, very last paragraph of the book,
50:39
no spoiler alert here, you say this one sentence.
50:42
We must reform the church's view of manhood.
50:46
So my last question of the day for you, Dale, is how?
50:50
- Yeah, so we need to be preaching
50:52
a full expositional view of Jesus.
50:55
We need men to be talking specifically
50:58
about the characteristics of manhood.
51:01
We have, now, there's a lot of times
51:03
where we have faithful teachers
51:04
that are teaching verse by verse through the Bible.
51:06
That's important.
51:07
The reality is that we can't overlook
51:10
that we're dealing with certain things in the culture
51:12
that need to be addressed now.
51:14
And so I go, hey, I'm teaching through Romans right now,
51:17
and I'm gonna teach the Romans.
51:18
But there are times where you go,
51:20
it's pride month right now to the gay community,
51:23
and we need to talk about that directly.
51:26
The things that are plaguing the church right now
51:27
is a lack of understanding for manhood.
51:30
Feminism is a fierce opponent to the church.
51:33
We need to be speaking against this.
51:35
Our biblical ladies need direction.
51:38
They do, they need direction.
51:39
There's very few women out there that are standing bold.
51:42
And then we need to be training our children in this.
51:46
So we need to be talking about these issues.
51:48
I can't stand it when churches are,
51:50
they'll talk about everything but pornography and divorce
51:53
and addiction and feminism and homosexuality
51:57
and transgenderism, like these are the things
51:59
that every Christian, when they walk out on Sunday,
52:01
are spending the rest of the week they're talking about.
52:03
They need to be hearing this stuff from the pulpit.
52:05
Now, you don't wanna also become a front page
52:09
of the newspaper preacher, right?
52:10
Where you're just kind of preaching whatever's the news.
52:13
You don't want that either.
52:14
You wanna be faithful to the scriptures
52:16
book by book, verse by verse.
52:17
But you just, we need to find the balance of getting there.
52:21
And I do believe that we need a reformation
52:24
on our eschatology, on our view, on our optimism,
52:29
on our dominion, on the fact that we have,
52:31
we are, this world is ours.
52:34
We will be inheriting the earth,
52:36
having an optimistic eschatology.
52:37
I think that there's a big issue there.
52:39
And I know for some of you guys that are theology nerds,
52:41
I'm a post-millennialist,
52:43
which really is a totally different radical theology.
52:45
I believe that the Great Commission will be fulfilled.
52:48
I believe that Christ is ruling and reigning
52:50
at the right end of the Father.
52:51
And that all authority has been given to him
52:53
in heaven and on earth.
52:54
And the church will continue to prevail.
52:56
The gates of hell will not prevail against it.
52:58
I believe these things are true.
52:59
And that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed
53:01
and it'll become the biggest kingdom of the kingdoms.
53:03
And it's like leaven and it'll leaven the entire lump.
53:05
I believe these things.
53:07
Means that I believe that this world is Christ,
53:10
that he is the king, that he is the governing power over it,
53:12
that all authority is his and that we are his people
53:15
and that through the battering ram of the gospel,
53:17
we will preach it and it will continue
53:20
to convert people who are sinners into saints.
53:24
And that we need to be willing to get out there
53:26
to preach the gospel and have optimistic reality of it.
53:29
This is God's world.
53:31
Many of us, maybe some of the old him, my father's world.
53:34
This is God's world.
53:37
We need to start acting like it is.
53:39
Instead of hiding in the corner, it's just going to get worse
53:41
and it's just going to get bad.
53:42
My Jesus is going to come back and rescue us
53:44
because my daughter's probably not going to grow old enough
53:46
to get married and why I even have any more babies?
53:48
Because you know what?
53:49
It's going to all going to crap anyways.
53:51
And no, no, we need to be willing to realize
53:56
that this is, like for me personally,
53:58
I don't think Christ is coming back for a couple thousand years.
54:01
And so when you understand post-millennial eschatology,
54:03
Doug Wilson, James White, Jeff Durban,
54:06
all of the Puritans, some of the Ligonier guys
54:09
have hold this eschatology.
54:10
This is important for you guys to view,
54:12
to study up and look into optimistic eschatology
54:16
because I really do think it changes our aggression,
54:18
our dominion, our view of this world,
54:21
of our church and of our family.
54:23
- Dale, we covered a lot of ground.
54:25
I enjoyed it, but that's all for me.
54:26
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
54:28
- If you want to pick up manliness of Christ,
54:30
you can do that at relearn.org/man.
54:33
Again, that's relearn.org/man.
54:36
Everything else, man, if you want to find me on social media,
54:38
I have a podcast that I do every single week.
54:40
It's called Real Christianity.
54:43
I don't know, a couple hundred episodes in
54:45
and would love to have any of you men over there.
54:48
I don't know, the internet's full of women.
54:49
And so we just get so many ladies,
54:51
I need some more men to come over to the podcast.
54:53
So yeah, come over to Real Christianity.
54:55
- I told you beforehand about 85, 90% of my audience is men.
54:59
So you're talking to the right audience.
55:00
But Dale Partridge, thank you for coming on
55:02
Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
55:04
- Amen, thanks for having me.
55:05
- There you go, guys.
55:06
I hope you enjoyed my time with Dale Partridge,
55:08
but before we let you go,
55:08
we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
55:10
At Undaunted Life, our mission is equipping men
55:12
to push back darkness with content that
55:13
for just spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
55:15
And so this guy's got a lot of things going on.
55:17
So I'm going to try to get all the different links in here.
55:18
So if I missed one, I'm so, so sorry,
55:20
but I've got a link to Dale's website,
55:21
which is a good center point for a lot of the other stuff.
55:24
A link to Mail the Gospel, a link to the book,
55:26
the manliness of Christ, and also a link to his podcast,
55:28
and the relearn website.
55:30
So all that should be there.
55:31
And if I missed something, just Google it.
55:32
You can find it.
55:33
All right, guys, thanks so much for listening to the show.
55:34
We definitely appreciate it wherever you're listening to this.
55:36
Please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five star
55:39
of you.
55:39
If you want me to come and speak live at your event
55:41
or on your podcast, just shoot me an email
55:42
to info@undaunted.life.
55:44
That's i-n-f-o @undaunted.life.
55:46
You can follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook
55:48
and check out our website for everything else,
55:49
including how to donate to keep more content
55:51
like this coming your way.
55:52
Just go to www.undaunted.life.
55:54
And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns Red
55:57
for allowing us to use their music for our content.
55:59
The music on this podcast is our song "Cutting the Ties,"
56:01
which is off their 10th anniversary re-recording
56:03
of their album, "Leveler."
56:04
The links are in the description.
56:06
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
56:07
Remember, keep pushing back darkness,
56:10
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
56:14
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
56:17
(upbeat music)
56:24
(upbeat music)
56:27
(upbeat music)
56:30
(upbeat music)
56:32
(upbeat music)