The conversation covers the theology of violence through the lens of Westminster Larger Catechism Question 135 (duties required by the sixth commandment), Raymond Ibrahim's historical work on Christian-Islamic conflict, the definition of biblical meekness ("having a sword, knowing how to use it, and leaving it sheathed"), practical training for families, and how to structure church security teams with honest skill assessments. Nathan's core message: master the basics, start small, include your family, and never let the pursuit of tactical perfection keep you from starting.

Resources Mentioned:

• Two Swords of Christ by Raymond Ibrahim
• Finish by Jon Acuff
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis
• Westminster Larger Catechism Q135
• Tactical Household
• Reformed Evangelical Seminary — Church Security Course
• Three Guns Every Dad Should Own — Free PDF at tacticalhousehold.com

Outline:

00:00 — Introduction: What are martial skills and why they matter

03:00 — The two swords of Christ — theology of when to use force

05:00 — Spiritual protection, situational awareness

09:00 — Finding a church community with trained men (Genesis 14:14)

11:00 — The biggest threat to your family is sin, not external violence

14:00 — Balancing training investment with your wife as a sounding board

17:00 — Westminster Larger Catechism Q135 — the spiritual undergirding

19:00 — Courteous words or hard knocks — meekness vs. weakness

22:00 — Practical training: habit stacking, dry fire reps

25:00 — Nathan's background: Rangers, Special Forces, 12 combat deployments

29:00 — Historical context and defending physical space

33:00 — Covenantal responsibility: protection as a man's duty

40:00 — Raising sons and daughters with grit

44:00 — When is martyrdom the right response vs. armed defense?

52:00 — Turning the other cheek — insults vs. physical violence

54:00 — Church carry posture and layered security teams

1:00:00 — Deterrence, humility, and the danger of arrogance

Four months later, we sold our duplex in Southern Pines for $775k (bought it for $165k), rolled every dollar into the land through a like-kind exchange, and had nothing left to build with. No house. No cash. Just faith and a vision for something multi-generational.

Five years later, I'm sitting in the home office of the house we're building on that land. This episode is the raw, unedited prayer from 2022 and what happened after. If you're trying to build something bigger than yourself — for your children's children — do it in prayer and without doubting.

Outline:

0:00 — Introduction: Revisiting a prayer from January 2022

1:00 — Why I'm publishing our five-year journey

1:45 — The 63 acres: survey stakes and a text to the landowner

2:45 — Praying the Prayer of Jabez — expanding our borders

3:30 — Trusting God when the math doesn't work

4:15 — "I am a character in a story He is writing"

4:50 — The prayer (raw, unedited)

7:00 — Amen — and what happened next

7:45 — Sold the duplex: $165k → $775k in equity, January to May

8:30 — Rolled 100% into 34 additional acres, zero left to build

9:30 — Years of waiting — the construction business used the land

9:50 — Spoiler: sitting in the house on that land today

10:00 — Do it in prayer and without doubting

Episode Website

https://www.spearing.co/bush

Connect with Jordan Bush

Website: TGFB.com Twitter: @jmbushwrites Podcast: Thank God for Bitcoin Podcast

Jordan's Books:

• Thank God for Bitcoin (2nd edition releasing soon)
• The Orange Umbrella (Children's book - available for pre-order)
• Gospel-focused Bitcoin resources

Resources Mentioned

• Cash App - Custodial Bitcoin wallet (easy for beginners)
• Blue Wallet - Non-custodial hot wallet (recommended for self-custody)
• Cold Card - Hardware wallet for long-term savings
• Start Nine - Private server solutions for Lightning nodes
• River.com - Bitcoin-only exchange (1% fees)
• AZTeco - Bitcoin vouchers (non-KYC option)
• Square/Block - Bitcoin payment processing for merchants
• Lightning Network - Second layer for fast, cheap Bitcoin transactions
• Modello - Steel seed phrase storage device

Books Referenced:

• The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
• Thank God for Bitcoin by Jordan Bush and co-authors

Outline with Timestamps

00:00:00 - Introduction and Jordan's Background

• Growing up in a Christian family
• Drifting from faith in high school, returning in college
• The missions conference that changed everything
• Moving to Uruguay as a missionary in 2015

00:06:00 - Discovering the Currency Problem

• Venezuelan refugees flooding Uruguay
• Learning about currency debasement and hyperinflation
• How governments fund promises by printing money
• The connection between monetary policy and human suffering

00:08:00 - The Path to Bitcoin

• Opting out of Social Security as missionaries
• Looking for ethical investment alternatives
• The Coca-Cola dilemma: profiting from selling sugar water
• First hearing about Bitcoin in 2012 (and not buying)
• Finally buying Bitcoin in 2017-2019

00:12:00 - Going All In on Bitcoin

• Putting 85% of liquid net worth into Bitcoin in June 2019
• Why Bitcoin solves the Venezuela problem
• The philosophy behind Bitcoin: sound money that can't be inflated
• Writing "Thank God for Bitcoin" and outselling the Pope

00:19:00 - Bitcoin vs. Crypto: Why Bitcoin is Different

• The "telos" (purpose) of Bitcoin vs. other cryptocurrencies
• How altcoins are pre-mined and benefit founders
• XRP and the permanent seller problem
• Why every crypto trades against Bitcoin
• The insider trading nature of most cryptocurrencies

00:24:00 - Learning from Others and Making Decisions

• Tim Ferriss's approach to political decisions
• Michael Saylor and spending 1,000 hours learning after age 40
• Trusting people who make sound decisions
• The importance of mentorship and wisdom

00:26:00 - Historical Perspective on Money

• The Roman Empire's currency debasement
• How sound currency makes civilizations strong
• The British pound as a literal pound of silver
• The U.S. dollar's gold-backed origins
• Why soldiers refuse debased currency (historical pattern)

00:32:00 - Gold, Silver, and Bitcoin

• The physicality problem with precious metals
• Venezuelan refugees and the theft problem
• Bitcoin's portability: 12-24 word seed phrases
• Crossing borders with wealth in your head
• SEER training and torture-proof wealth storage

00:37:00 - The Canadian Trucker Protest Case Study

• Being declared enemies of the state
• Bank accounts frozen by government
• $900,000 in Bitcoin that couldn't be stopped
• Why churches need to think about this NOW
• Pastor Doug Wilson interview and the question: "What if you're cut off tomorrow?"

00:40:00 - Practical Bitcoin for Churches

• Starting with a men's group chat
• Creating a church economy (raw milk, chickens, services)
• The importance of practicing with people you trust
• Building a skills directory in your congregation
• Learning together as a community

00:43:00 - Square, Cash App, and Lightning Network

• Custodial vs. non-custodial solutions
• Square's Bitcoin payment integration (3% savings for merchants)
• Lightning Network as the "PayPal of Bitcoin"
• How to send Bitcoin invoices
• The trade-offs between convenience and sovereignty

00:49:00 - Bitcoin as Money: The Maturity Process

• Why Bitcoin isn't "use money" yet (and why that's okay)
• The baby analogy: growing into purpose over time
• Store of value vs. medium of exchange
• Why you should start saving in Bitcoin NOW
• The seeds analogy: you can't wait until you need them

00:56:00 - Addressing Volatility Concerns

• The marriage analogy: short-term vs. long-term thinking
• The children analogy: dealing with volatility to get the benefit
• Bitcoin's growth from less than 1% adoption
• Network effects and the runaway train
• The orange tree analogy: seasonal cycles are natural

01:04:00 - Bitcoin for Minors and Families

• Eli's question about buying and storing Bitcoin as a 16-year-old
• Cash App custodial account limitations
• Blue Wallet for self-custody
• "Not your keys, not your coins"
• Hardware wallets (Cold Card) for long-term savings

01:09:00 - KYC vs. Non-KYC Bitcoin

• Know Your Customer laws and their problems
• Buying Bitcoin from miners (no paper trail)
• AZTeco vouchers (Bitcoin gift cards)
• Churches mining Bitcoin with solar panels
• Sending Bitcoin to persecuted churches overseas

01:15:00 - Fees, Trading, and Long-Term Strategy

• Why Jordan doesn't day trade
• Paying for services vs. being the product (Gmail example)
• River.com: Bitcoin-only exchange
• The 1% fee for ethical business practices
• Avoiding the "get rich quick" mentality

01:19:00 - The Greatest Time to Be Alive

• Tucker Carlson interviewing Rich Lusk
• The church can't be stopped
• Opportunities for faithfulness in our generation
• Building the kingdom where God has placed us

01:20:00 - Where to Find Jordan and His Work

• Twitter: @jmbushwrites
• Website: TGFB.com
• Thank God for Bitcoin podcast
• Books: "Thank God for Bitcoin" (2nd edition coming)
• "The Orange Umbrella" children's book (illustrated, rhyming)
• Becoming a nonprofit to serve Christians better

Transcript

[00:00:00]

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): And when people criticize Bitcoin for not being able to, pay, for their haircut and Bitcoin, I'm like, you're totally missing the picture.

You're missing it. How? Like, how these things become money. We're watching in real time for the first time in a very long time. Something becoming money, this maturity takes time. It takes time for people to understand what it is, to be able to understand how to use it.

Nathan: So just got off of a interview where you got to ask me a bunch of questions and I was excited that I get to ask y'all questions. So give, uh, give life on target listeners your background, if

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Sure.

Nathan: uh, Christians that have been living under a rock.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Oh yeah, because that's the only, the only way you could possibly not have heard about me is if you were living under a rug. Yeah, right. Uh, so, no. So my, my name is Jordan Bush. Uh, I grew up in a, in a Christian family. Uh, my mom was a barely second generation Christian. My dad was a, was a first generation believer.

And so, you know, my life growing [00:01:00] up was going to church and had parents who, you know, had us in church whenever they could. And, uh, worked for a Christian, they worked for a Christian nonprofit organization called Word of Life. And so I grew up, uh, there and um, and so yeah, grew up in church, uh, made a profession of faith at a young age.

Uh, and then kind of as I got into middle and high school, uh, just got to the point where I just really wanted to be liked and really wanted just to be normal, was at a public school and, uh, and so just kind of drifted away from the Lord. And, uh, and then it was near right bef near. Come about a year and a half before I graduated.

Uh, the Lord just kind of really just stepped in and opened up my eyes and still wasn't perfect, but I definitely had a, a Christian trajectory. So, graduated, uh, went to Bible college. Knew that my parents were gonna make me go for at least one year, so ended up while I was there. Um. I was not, I'm not, just to give you an idea, I'm not a morning person whatsoever.

Just under normal circumstances. And, uh, and during this Bible college, like the Lord just was [00:02:00] opening up my eyes and, and just giving me new desires. And so we had to wake up, I think at like six 30 to do breakfast and all this kind stuff. I was waking up at like five on my own to go get alone and pray and read the scriptures.

And so just, and I'm just reflecting at this like, Lord. Checkmate atheist like me up at five to do this. Like, there, there's no other way to account for this. And, uh, and so, so that's kind of what was going on. And, and about halfway through the year, uh, the, the college that I was at did a missions conference.

And so again, I, I was a basketball player. I, I did not, I'm like, I'm not a missionary, you know, if you would've asked me, I couldn't have articulated for you what a, what a missionary was. I just knew that I wasn't one because I played basketball and didn't like to live in tree houses. So, uh, so, so we, you know, went to this missions conference and long story short, there was a guy there who was about, uh, five feet tall who grew up in the jungle tribe in the Philippines.

Uh, his grandparents were head hunters and just told the story of how when he was a little kid, this, uh, white [00:03:00] guy walks into the tribe and, uh, and just basically says that he's got a more important message than they've ever heard before, and that he wants to move in and live with them. And so long story short, even though they'd chased off people in the past, they allowed him to come in.

And, uh, so again, long story short, he ended up. The guy ended up preaching the gospel. Almost everybody in the tribe becomes a Christian. And this guy who was, you know, grew up and was teaching, uh, or sharing his story, ended up becoming a Christian, went to college in the United States. Whole, whole crazy story.

So he ended up, finishes his story, and he's talking about how he actually was the person, he became a jungle pilot, ended up flying in the first shipment of Bibles in his people's own language back into them in the Philippines. And he's just, as he's flying, he's like, I'm flying across these jungles and I'm just blown away by the Lord's kindness.

You know, just, and I'm like, who, who am I that, you know, I have, you know, that I have the ability to fly these in? Who are we that we're gonna have Bibles in our own language? Uh, and he just talked about how he just was overwhelmed thinking about like, what if this guy who, the missionary who would come in, uh, to, [00:04:00] to share the gospel with him, what if he just decided to do something else with his life?

And so as I was listening to that, uh, I just was thinking, you know, just. I just was thinking, Lord, I've wasted so much time. I grew up with 50 Bibles, couldn't give two craps, you know, like just could not care less. And, uh, for most of my, most of my growing up years. And so I just basically, as he's kind of finishing, I just said, Lord, you know, please let me go, you know, please let me go, go be a missionary.

Like, I don't wanna stay here in the States. Like, I just want to go, like if there's really, and, and his kind of climactic thing was he had this, you know, like the old printer paper where it's like connected on the ends and it's got the little stuff on the sides you rip up. So he basically, he, his climactic thing was, there are still, as of this was 2000, early 2007, there are still 6,000 languages that have no scripture in their language.

And so, and he basically said they're on these, on this piece of paper, and he threw the first piece of paper off and it grabbed the second and pulled it off, grabbed the third. It just kept pulling it. And there's like nine or 10 pages. And so I'm just [00:05:00] like staring at this from the front row and I'm just like, man.

All right. Like if that's true, I, you know, if that's true and there's people who have no access, they have no access whatsoever, then, then please let me go. The Lord was doing something very similar in the heart of, of my who, my future wife, and, uh, and so long story short, we ended up getting married, knowing that we wanted to be missionaries within about a year and a half of getting married.

Nathan: presentation.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah, she was at the co at the college. She was at the, we ended up being there at college, at senior and uh, and so we, we ended up getting married a few years later. And, um, and then within a year and a half of getting married, we started raising support to go be missionaries, uh, in the country of Uruguay.

Uh, so in 2015 we moved to Uruguay and, uh, and helped plant a church there. And so we were reformed Baptist at the time. Uh, ended up planting a, a small Baptist church. And, uh, and again, the Lord, the Lord was super kind to us. Um, we, we initially went there. Uruguay is a very secular country, uh, more than about half of the people, the population of [00:06:00] three and a half million would claim to be either atheist or agnostic, which is the highest percentage in, in South America.

And so we went there anticipating in 2015 being the Uruguayan Tim Keller, uh, you know, of going there and being very winsome and, and, you know, reaching the city. And, uh, and so then within, within I mean weeks we came to realize that, uh, as we were preaching the gospel, the, especially in the beginning, the overwhelming majority of people who were coming to our church weren't uruguayans, but they were Venezuelan immigrants.

And so there was just 60,000 Venezuelan immigrants that poured into the country over the course of a few years. And so I knew nothing about geopolitical happenings or, you know, why they were there. We just were trying to minister to them and their need. And so over the course of the next couple years, I started, I started to learn a lot more about just what had been happening in Venezuela and why people were leaving.

Uh, and just that at root, a lot of what was happening was a result of currency debasement.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): you know, the, in a world [00:07:00] where the currency is just either paper or digital representations of paper, uh, you know, the way that you get elected in democracies is to promise free stuff to people. And whoever promises the most free stuff wins.

And, uh, and so that's, and so

Nathan: obviously.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): never, no, we're way better than that. Uh, and so then, uh, over time, the way that you, especially in a place where you don't have the world reserve currency, uh, the way that you fund that free stuff that you promise to give people is just by printing more money. And so we started to see, you know, the effects of that.

And then me as like a philosophy nerd and as a, you know, somewhat, you know, financially interested person. We just started to think about the consequences of this on everything from missions to, you know, just churches back in the states and all this kinda stuff, and just started to go down the rabbit hole of trying to understand, you know, monetary history of, of the, of the world and especially the last a hundred years.

And, um, so yeah, so that was kind of a, a big as I'm just pastor, you know, helping pastor this small church and just, you know, just blatantly in the [00:08:00] background. I'm just kinda learning about that and just chewing on that. And uh, and then as of right now, uh, we ended up launch was short, ended up leaving Uruguay, uh, partially because we became Presbyterians, partially because, you know, other, a number of other things.

Uh, but one of the things that we, you know, that I just got into, uh, was bitcoin. I got into Bitcoin in 2019 and, uh, just started, it, started doing it because after being a missionary for four years, uh, I hadn't even looked at our retirement account. I hadn't even thought about it. Uh, our mission organization, thankfully forced us to have some sort of, uh, retirement account through a fidelity and, uh, so it was like a 4 0 3 B is their equivalent of a 401k.

Uh, and so I, I hadn't even looked at this thing in four years. And so in 2019, I just thought to myself, well, this is, this doesn't seem very responsible, so I better start, try to, you know, start trying to understand investing and, uh, talk to some family members. They were like, Hey, get some good dividend stocks, get Coca-Cola, get some of these [00:09:00] things.

And um, as I was thinking about that, I just was thinking about the prospect of investing in Coca-Cola and I was like, so if I'm gonna look back in my life, uh, you know, I'm gonna get to the end of my life and look back and realize that, okay, I was able to retire because I made money off of selling sugar water to poor people.

I was just like, I don't wanna do that. You know, and so just this, I, the concept of ethical investing just, you know, really began something that I began thinking about. And right around the same time I started looking for other things and ended up finding Bitcoin. And so as I was just trying to study it and understand it, um.

I started thinking about it, not from the standpoint of how, you know, can I get rich quickly, even though obviously for everybody, that's where they initially, you know, are looking at it. Uh, but over a relatively short period of time, I started thinking about it, uh, from a number of different lenses. And that led to getting involved with other Christians who were into Bitcoin.

We ended up writing a book called The Gospel according to Bitcoin, which just basically gives a, a, you know, a history, brief history, ninth grade level, uh, history of what money is, how it [00:10:00] works, why it matters, uh, and so anyhow, that, that just ended up being where I go. And then from there, the book ended up selling way more copies than we thought the claim to fame as it came out the same week as a book by the Pope.

And we were outselling the Pope. We said, take that Bishop of Rome, uh, you have no authority here. Uh, and then the Lord's just done some crazy stuff. So today, I, I run, uh, it's called Thank God for Bitcoin, uh, or TGFP media, which exists to help Christians. Um. And, and others understand and use Bitcoin for the glory of God and the good of people everywhere.

So, um, so we write resources, write books, and do events designed to provide opportunities for churches, nonprofits, and anybody in between small businesses to understand the non-intuitive reasons why they should care about Bitcoin that have, that have nothing to do with getting rich quickly, so,

Nathan: Yeah. So, you know, just pulling up, I don't know what month you said you got in 2019, you know, that looks like it's hovering, uh, at the beginning of 19. You know, [00:11:00] it's at, uh, three grand a Bitcoin, you know it, and towards the end of 19 it's, seven. So even in that 12 month period over. Over a seven.

So even in that 12 month period, if it's the beginning, you're doubling your money. then today, like at this moment, even at the kind of a low for the last month, we're at 93 a Bitcoin. So if you can, you know, buy in at that and then hold, you know, which is, is the, is the way

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: Um, it, it is, uh, very, was very profitable.

And then, you know, I guess the discussions, one of the things I'm curious about is the, you said you kind of just like, I, I found Bitcoin and it ended up buying it. So like what talks, let's zoom in on that

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: moment

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: personally.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: I like [00:12:00] to try to do with this podcast too is I, I know that financial, this is not investing advice.

This is not, you know, at your own risk, blah, blah, blah. Um. of our listeners are, have agency and, and all that.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah.

Nathan: I really like to understand, you know, what specifically you did and why, like, 'cause that's your story.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: there's

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep,

Nathan: things. What you, you have all these experiences. Why did you do it?

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep. Yeah, so good. Great question. So, uh, again, I, I mentioned, I mentioned this basically my, my wife and I, um, when we were, when we were missionaries. One of the cool things that, uh, working for a nonprofit or especially a religious nonprofit, uh, gives you the opportunity to do is opt outta social security.

So like if you become, if you become a pastor or a missionary or something like that, or work for a Christian organization, you have from the beginning you have a two year window with which to, to file for, to, you know, [00:13:00] opt out of social security. So we ended up doing that. And then the, our, that was not our, our missions organization was not happy about that decision.

Uh, but they were like, Hey, this is your decision. If you're gonna do that, you need to start saving money every month. And it was like a pretty good chunk of money relative to what we were making. So I just, you know, we just started living frugally and I just, you know, we're saving, um,

Nathan: basically gave you a Christian discipleship not consume everything and,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): correct. They, they basically just said,

Nathan: that you weren't giving it to the government. That's obviously gonna

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yeah. Yes, ex. Exactly. Well, well, and to be fair.

Nathan: to pay into it.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Correct. But to be fair, what I will say is the, their, their, their motivation. So like, they didn't necessarily have like the first principles, see the big picture of where this is going. What they were looking at was, we had missionaries who opted out of social security back in the forties because they were dispensationalist who thought the rapture's gonna happen, we're not even gonna need to save for retirement.

And so [00:14:00] they saw a lot of people get wrecked that way, who they, they got to the end of their life and then either

Nathan: end, guys.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): and the world didn't end. And so they had, they were reliant on, you know, just people to continue supporting them. Um, and so, so that was, that was part of what was motivating them. But in, in my case, again, I'm sitting here like, you know, I, I'm looking at this a hundred, you know, 70 years later from, from when they're at number or 80 years later.

And I'm just like, guys, like this is a Ponzi scheme. Like pon, social security's a Ponzi scheme, but it's gonna run out. Money's gonna run out in 2030 according to their own numbers. So

Nathan: Yep.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): just like, this doesn't make any sense. So we ended up just taking, you know, setting aside from like 20. Uh, man, 20, I guess 20 14, 20 15.

Just started setting aside money every month and, uh, ended up, oh man, it's painful. I ended up, there was a couple times where we, you know, took a few thousand dollars and invested in, in something, uh, that if I, I'm like, oh man, if I would've bought Bitcoin with that, I would've had a lot more, a lot more Bitcoin, uh, but just ended up just sitting on a lot of it.

Uh, which again, was not very smart, [00:15:00] just keeping it in cash. We were getting murdered, purchasing power, but I didn't know any of that at the time, so we're just like saving up money and just setting it aside. And so, um, when I, when I heard about Bitcoin, I heard about Bitcoin in late 2017. That's the first time I actually bought some, I'd obviously heard about it before that.

Um, I think my first touch with it was 2012. Uh, I had heard about it on the news and then went into a silver broker, uh, in Florida to get, uh, with like a 2,500 bucks to get silver. One ounce coins.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): I walk in the door, there's a girl sitting behind the computer. This is 2012. It's a girl sitting behind the computer with a, with a buy Bitcoin sticker on the back of the old gray computer monitor.

I walked, I looked at it, looked at her, walked right by her, talked to the guy and said to the guy at one point, uh, as I was buying my, uh, maple leaf, uh, silver, one ounce coin, I said, Hey, so Bitcoin, huh? And he goes, it's really interesting. I think Bitcoin was around two or 300 bucks at that point, and I [00:16:00] just had no framework for owning it.

I'm not a technological person, uh, by nature. And

Nathan: said really interesting, you didn't buy.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): no, I did not buy, I was just like, Hey, that, yeah, I agree. It's interesting. Now give me my, you know, give me my 35 silver ounce coins or whatever.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): And, uh, and so then it was, so I ended up. Not buying any until 20, 20 17. Still only bought like a couple hundred bucks worth also bought, you know, $50 worth of Ethereum, $50 worth of, uh, you know, uh, not Doge, what's the other one?

Um, XRP, all these ridiculous things like, like a sprinkling and all these things. And, uh, and so then obviously the Bitcoin crashed in December of, you know, went up to 20,000. Uh, in December of that year crashed down to I think like nine or something. And then shortly after that, after it crashed, uh, I was, I was the, at that point, the very content number two guy in our church.

There was another, uh, man and family who was kind of, he was the, the main pastor. And so they had a family emergency in early [00:17:00] 2018. Ended up having to leave to go back to the states. And so I ended up over pretty much overnight becoming the, the only pastor of this church. And so pretty much for about a year, everything just went, got put a year and a half, everything just got put to the side.

I didn't even think about Bitcoin, didn't think about, you know, any of these other things and just focused on trying to pastor the church in Spanish, deal with all the, all the crazy things that went with that. So by the time 2019 came around, Bitcoin was kind of had woken up. Um, I started really buying it in 20, in May of 2019.

So it wasn't quite at three. I think it had gotten back up to nine by the time I was looking at it again. Um. So I, I just started doing some investigation. Uh, I was like, what is this thing? Uh, you know, again, I was a philosophy major, so just trying to understand. I like to understand a little bit of everything, uh, just to be able to have, just to be able to get my hands around it.

Just, you know, get my mind around it. Like what, you know, what is this thing? Why does it exist? And, um, and so I just started doing some basic research there. There was a couple podcasts that [00:18:00] were out, uh, that I just found that were at, right at the right time that were helpful. And so within, again, we would not recommend that necessarily everybody do this, but this is, this, again, you asked me for my story.

Within about a month, I had put about 85% of our liquid net worth into Bitcoin. I did like a month worth of, of deep dive. And then was like, all right, this is, I, I buy in completely to the thesis and uh, and I'm in.

Nathan: That's in 2019

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): in like June, June, 2019. I, I had like 85% of our liquid net worth and, uh, which again wasn't much 'cause we're missionaries re remember,

Nathan: Yeah.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): but just, you know, had conviction.

Nathan: It's returned a little better probably than Social security investments.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Just, just to touch. Yeah. Yeah. So, so did that. And then, um, and then just had more, I had like some more cash. I, I think I had like an ounce of, of gold. Um, you know, just again, we're overseas so that the precious metals thing was complicated. Like it's, it's gonna be difficult for us to cross [00:19:00] borders through the airport with large amounts of that kinda stuff.

So Bitcoin made sense in that front as well. Um, but really I just, I just had more money that I just was like kind of playing around with. So I, I had like a short crypto phase where I was do, trying to do some trading. Uh, messed around with 20 x leverage, uh, got got wrecked and that ended up, don't do that.

Uh, by the way, uh, so just ended up playing around. Still knew, knew that Bitcoin was the only thing that mattered, uh, or the only real thing in the crypto space, but

Nathan: of the things, 'cause you said XRP, that craziness or

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yes,

Nathan: like, so talk to, talk to

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yes, yes.

Nathan: why you say that

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah.

Nathan: say Bitcoin.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yes. So, uh, so much of this comes down to, again, like the, so t telos is a, is a word. I mean, just like, what is the end goal?

Why does this thing exist? And so what, what you find out is that Bitcoin was created and, and kind of the connection to my world was. After I'd already bought some and was already kind of sold on it. I started thinking about it and just realized that like, okay, so wait, Bitcoin was [00:20:00] created to be money that a government couldn't hyperinflate, that a government can't create more units of the way that governments can create more units of fiat currency effectively.

Endlessly. And so that when, when that clicked for me and I realized like, okay, wait. This is actually a totally unique thing. It's like a technological achievement. It's like a, I mean, I think Bitcoin's gonna win a Nobel Prize or some sort of equivalent prize someday just because of all the different disciplines and what a revolution it is.

But one of the things that I realized was. Holy cow. Bitcoin was created to solve the problem that destroyed the lives of all these Venezuelan brothers and sisters of ours who had to flee their country. And so just the, the real world application and, you know, resolution of this problem, it just blew my mind.

And so as I started to, to look at all these other cryptocurrencies, I started to realize, wait a second. They were not all created with that end in mind. And so the way that you can see this, the way that you can, I can prove this is because every other cryptocurrency di wasn't created until 2011. So [00:21:00] Bitcoin had about like a two and a half year head start.

And the reason why that date of 2011 matters is because the first time Bitcoin monetized was in 2011. The first time anybody used Bitcoin to buy, uh, actual real world, you know, goods somebody used, they paid 10,000 Bitcoin for two pizzas. And so it was right after that happened where it clicked with all these nerds.

Who could, I mean, you could spin up a cryptocurrency in 15 minutes. They just realize, wait, we can, any of us can create our own currency and basically be, we can basically be our own federal reserve. Why would we not do this? You know, we can make it, we can basically make ourselves create our own currencies and be millionaires within minutes.

And so that's where you start to see the explosion of all these other cryptocurrencies from Ethereum to XRP, to all these things. They, they weren't, like, they have, there's people who will defend them and saying, oh, this is programmable money, or this is, you know, the future or whatever. But in all of these cases, they [00:22:00] all have pre minds.

Okay. Which means that, you know, they create a fixed amount of the supply. So they create like, let's say a billion tokens, and then they, they give two thirds of the tokens to the founders, to the early developers, and then to some celebrities or people who are well respected in the hope of pumping these things.

And the whole time they ended up, as it starts to pump, they start dumping their own, their own shares. It's effectively insider trading. So they're like dumping their own shares onto the market.

Nathan: So everyone is like that.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): That, that's, that's literally how all of them work. So like XRP, they're guys, they're, uh, I can't remember. Uh, Brad Garlinghouse is one of the founders, isn't it?

Joe? Something is another one. These guys are permanent sellers of XRP. They will never purchase XRP, and they're, and so what are they doing? They're, they're pumping, they're telling, oh, we're, we have all these things with these banks. They're gonna start using XRP, or they're doing these things. Oh, look, look, there's, we're waiting on this news.

And so you just get in now and then just get, you're gonna get a pump. And in reality, everything in the crypto world trades off of Bitcoin. Everything. [00:23:00] People, everyone, all the traders, everybody, the game in town is accumulate Bitcoin. If you don't realize that's the game. It is the game. Everyone know, like all the guys who are the founders of all these other projects, they're trying to accumulate Bitcoin.

And when they sell, when these guys garlinghouse, all these guys, when they sell, one of the things that they're buying in addition to yachts, in addition to all these things is Bitcoin. Because they understand, they, they, they don't buy their own propaganda, the vast majority of them. Uh, and so for a lot of people, like that's Bitcoin is the real scarcity.

Bitcoin is the real thing that has censorship resistance that's been demonstrated for 16 years by the fact that China's tried to ban it seven times and failed, uh, because they can't enforce the ban. And so there's just a whole, a whole bunch of reasons. And again, I get a hundred percent I sound like the the crazy person.

Yeah. You've drank the Kool-Aid for just Bitcoin. And yet over and over again for the six years that I've been in this industry, I've seen the people who are in here. I've seen the incentives and every single time the incentives go exactly how you would expect them to go if Bitcoin's the only game in town.

[00:24:00] And so I,

Nathan: and

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yeah.

Nathan: that's essentially, um, whenever I read four hour work week, right, they say, you know, he said, Tim Ferris said, and I think that guy has a lot of.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yes.

Nathan: Uh, good things that are thought provoking from a philosophy

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: things. Even though we can acknowledge, hey, like his, he, he, he looks at things from a different angle and I like reading things that then

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: to

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Challenge.

Nathan: my own universe. And one of the things he said, he is, I never consume any US presidential, political, stuff ever.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: He's, I just, he's like, it's so much theater, it's so much. So what I do is I call people When it's time to vote, I call five people and say, who you voting for? And then I vote what they say, you know, and he is like, I, I basically outsource five get to

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: so much [00:25:00] time and energy into, and so for me, in a lot of ways, I, I don't have time right now to spend months researching

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep. Yep,

Nathan: I can listen to. know, was it Michael Saylor

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: and say, that guy thinks about the world

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: a lot of the ways I like to think about the

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Mm-hmm.

Nathan: And I heard him say, who after age 40, spends a thousand hours learning anything new

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: in the population. And I think it's probably half a percent

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep,

Nathan: the population that will spend a thousand

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: like, I've spent whatever, 10,000 hours

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: at

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: and this is it. You know? And so it doesn't mean that like, I guess I'm okay with, um, I'm okay with, uh, talking to people that I like, can look at the, their life and be like, this person makes [00:26:00] decisions in a sound way.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: And so, and they've made this decision

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: I don't have, and we have to do that, I

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Everyone does this. Whether they recognize it or not. Everybody does this, right? Yeah. It's just everybody.

Nathan: I am. Asking you

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah.

Nathan: 'cause I want to know, like, what is it for you that made you say, I'm

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yes,

Nathan: That's it,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yes. And so some of this, again, there's, there's a positive case and then there's a negative case, right? Like the same way if somebody asks you, you know, what's the great commandment? Okay. So like, you know, there's a positive answer. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

And then there's the negatively framed version, which is the 10 Commandments. Like, don't do these things. And so part of the, part of the thing is just, I mean, part of my journey was just. Recognizing the lay of the land of just like, okay, so what are the, what are the threats even before Bitcoin ever exists, even if you don't like Bitcoin, let's just put that aside for now.

Like, what are the problems that exist that you have to reckon with, even if you think, even if you don't agree with Bitcoin, even if you don't think that that's, you know, you got one of, you're afraid of solar for layers, or you're afraid of [00:27:00] getting hacked or, you know, whatever. Like there were still as, as I was researching, there were just a bunch of problems that are just, that are just out there that have been problems for thousands of years as, and they've been one of the big things that leads to the end of civilizations.

So including the, the most important ones, the, the biggest ones, the most powerful ones that have ever existed. And so. Part of the thing that I went part of the rabbit hole was like, okay, so the Roman Empire, why did the Roman Empire collapse? There's a whole bunch of reasons. There's like, you know, societal degradation, degradation and all kinds of stuff.

But one of the reasons why they collapsed is because their currency collapsed. And one of the reasons why their currency collapsed is because in order to like pay off their debts, in order to try to, you know, do, do all these kind of things, they, they started introducing, uh, non precious metals, a greater percentage of non precious metals into their monetary supply.

And so by the end of it, the money, I mean, their, their currency barely had any silver at all in it.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): this is just something that happens as cultures decay. Uh, you know, they're, they're founded on these things that make them strong. One of the [00:28:00] principles that makes nations and, and Empire strong is a sound currency.

So, you know, the United States reached, uh, global reserve currency status because, uh, they had a fully gold-backed currency. Uh, they had a number of other advantages as well on the, on the heels of World War ii. And so, um, even though there were people who didn't trust them, you know, it there, you know, the United States with their, you know, the lion's share of the world's goal at that point, uh, was the 900 pound gorilla in the room that made the decision that everybody else went wrong with?

Um, the same thing. If you go back another generation, another a hundred years, this, this is true of the British Empire, right? Like they had the strongest currency in the world. The British pound was literally a pound of silver, uh, you know, like a, a big, a big block of silver, what, you know, amounted to one pound.

And so they had their, one of the strongest currencies in the world. You go back before them to the Dutch, you go back before them. Like you can just follow this, this is a, this is a universal, uh, principle of money. Money, and, and. Civilization is whoever has hard currencies, sound scarce [00:29:00] currencies, currencies that are backed by something that is scarce, that's, you know, real, that, you know, people value.

Uh, those, those currencies and those civilizations are going to be around a lot longer than those who don't, uh, because fundamentally sound currencies or scarce currencies, they, they put a premium on the value of your work. Right. Like they, they basically treat your, your work as if it matters. Um, and rather than just basically saying, you know, uh, in the case of fiat currencies, the government can just create effectively a trillion units out of nowhere and steal purchasing power from you by virtue of doing that.

Um, and so the more that I, the more that I researched the history of this, I realized, oh wow, okay. So this problem that Bitcoin is purporting to solve is not a novel problem. This is a thing that's been happening for literally thousands of years. We can, we can demonstrate through all, all through history of where this is a problem that ends empires, empires get, you know, get, have too much debt.

Their currency gets to the point where in the case of, uh, in the case of Rome, that their, uh, their soldiers refused to accept, uh, the, the [00:30:00] currency anymore. It got so debased that they refused to accept the currency. And so you can imagine, you know, you can look at, this has happened with other empires.

This happened on the, uh. You know, a number of places around the world. But so like one of the ways, when I look at, you know, what is the, what is the root of the, of the United States strength right now? It's in large part, there's multiple answers, obviously, but the United States military, right? We have a geopolitical presence all over the world.

Well, as like the, the debate of the United States currency and the weakening of the currency is, it's an existential threat to that, that strength all over the world. And so as that strength breaks down and you have an ever increasing, uh, you know, your liabilities in terms of like pensions to your soldiers and all these kinds stuff, as that starts to whittle down and the soldiers start realizing, they start realizing, wait, dude, like we're getting paid money.

That's, that doesn't have anywhere near the purchasing power as it was, as it did when we signed these contracts. You just have people who, you know, this, this starts to, starts to decay and starts to break down and ends up [00:31:00] being a Trump, you know, a big fall historically. And so I just looked at this and I was like, okay, that's, I see that.

Like I see that that's a real problem historically. This is a problem. This isn't the Bitcoin bros making this up in, you know, trying to act like this is, you know, this is some bitcoin, some novel solution to this novel problem that we've never seen before. This is a problem we've seen over and over again, uh, that's born of hubris and born of, you know, governments try acting like they can, they can avoid the way that God's designed the world to work, which is sowing and, and reaping.

Um, so that was, that was one big thing. Another thing was just practically, uh, I, I mean, as missionaries we had to deal with moving money and the challenges of moving money around the world. It's a big problem for hundreds of millions of people all over the world just trying to move money. Whether, whether you have family who's moved to a different country and you're trying to send money home to your home country.

Or something along those lines. It's, it's a very difficult problem. Um, currency, the basement, every country in the world really is, is on a, is on a fiat currency. Uh, and so their money is [00:32:00] losing pur purchasing power, uh, over time and for everyone, but the dollar, it's, it's happening a lot more quickly than it is to Americans.

And so these are, these are all real problems that, um, that exist that you have to find some solution for the solution that probably I would imagine many of, of your audience and, and a lot of you know, Christians.

So it's, it's one of these things where gold and silver are great.

Nathan: you for a second.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Oh,

Nathan: if you,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): can you hear me?

Nathan: I saw you reach up and do something and then you came back, so maybe

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): good.

Nathan: the last 15 seconds or so.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Perfect. Yeah, so, so basically I would imagine that a lot of your audience would've, you know, they appreciate gold and silver, and gold and silver is one way to, to opt out of some of these problems, right? So you can, you can take your fiat currency, your paper currency, and then you can buy, you know, solid real world scarce gold and silver.

That's great. That's far better than, than paper currency. And, you know, especially in these kind of, uh, late stage, uh, you know, late stage [00:33:00] currency moments, uh, the problem is. Again, it's not an existential problem, but there are shortcomings to gold and silver. Um, there's a reason why we don't use gold and silver as money right now, and part of the reason is just because of gold's physicality.

People, many people will look at gold and silver and they'll say, well, that's the, that's part of the value proposition is that it's physical. And I say, you are correct until it's not. Because the real, the the real reality is that it, there's not, there's not good or bad when it comes to currencies.

There's trade-offs. And so one of the things that you get with gold and silver is yes, it's physical, and so you can bury it in the ground and nobody knows you have it, but it's also physical. And so if you're gonna carry it somewhere, it's gonna be very evident that you're carrying that, you're carrying it somewhere.

And so the example that I use was, you know, specifically for our brothers and sisters who were trying to flee Venezuela, they had to walk across the border. And so there were lots of, there were two groups of thieves. There were government sanctioned thieves who were soldiers who knew that there's people leaving the country on foot with all their belongings there.

Were looking for [00:34:00] people. With heavy bags full of gold and silver to rob or to, you know, charge taxes, make them pay, you know, extort them to get money like that. And then on top of that, there's just normal thieves who knew, who know that people are leaving on foot with all their money. And so then this same thing, even if you're not in a, in a, you know, um, immigrant situation, there still is plenty.

I mean, if you're, if you're using a physical currency, you have to physically transport it. You need a physical place to put it. And there's just different challenges. Um, whereas with Bitcoin, I mean, I can memorize a 12 or 24 word, seed phrase or put it on, I can put one, one word on each page of my, of my, my webpage.

And now I've got those things on there. I can cross any border in the world, access that information, either remember the, the past phrase, type those 12 or 24 words into an an, an app that I download on my phone and plug those in there. And I have access to all of my money up to, you know, effectively trillions of dollars I can have access to just by virtue of, of memorizing a, a, a seed phrase.

And so.

Nathan: a way [00:35:00] to, you know, I go as a soldier who's been through seer.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yes,

Nathan: torture to

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): correct.

Nathan: literally don't know it.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep. Exactly.

Nathan: get it.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep,

Nathan: it's, it's, I sent it ahead

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: and there's no way I can retrieve it

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: nobody else. Like, it's, it's like essentially making sure that, that you're just like, look, there isn't an option to

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: Like, it's, it's there. From a human

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Correct, correct.

Nathan: do you literally make it safe?

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: say like, I'm eminent, it's eminent, you know, or here's how you access it in

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: that to somebody else, you know? And that's, the, the, it's, there's so many, you know, different ways that you have, you have to think about this when you're not in the us,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yes.

Nathan: And, and that's, I have a, with 12 combat deployments, I, I have seen societies[00:36:00]

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Correct. Yes.

Nathan: when there isn't money.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Correct.

Nathan: when the currency is guns

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: person with the ability to get the most guns to follow them

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Correct.

Nathan: what that can equal as far as oppression and things like that. And I feel like I talk about this a lot of times with people that they just haven't traveled the world

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep. Yep.

Nathan: to to, to even be able to conceptualize how bad it is

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): To to borrow our enemies. To borrow our enemies framing. Uh, they have a, an American privilege that they have not checked, you know?

Nathan: yeah,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah. And so,

Nathan: And it, it is, it's true. And you have to, you have to. But when you, and we, we were talking, my wife and I were talking about this morning, it's one of the reasons why you have your kids read really old stuff is to get outside of particular point in history.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Your set of biases. Yep.

Nathan: there are patterns and, and you know, as it Mark Twain is like, it rhymes,[00:37:00]

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep,

Nathan: rhymes. You know, it's, it's being able to recognize that and then use that to make decisions now

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep, yep. A hundred percent. And I mean, one, I'll say one other thing. One other thing that I, that is, is a related point, um, is in one thing. So the first episode we did on my podcast, uh, I host the thank God for Bitcoin podcast. Uh, I interviewed Doug Wilson,

Nathan: Nice.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): and I've been thinking about Doug for five years.

Yep. First one, like, reached out to him, had a connection to him somehow, and, uh.

Nathan: how I knew you were legit 'cause you were, weren't afraid to say his name

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Let's go. No, I, I'm, I'm not ashamed at all. Uh, and so I interviewed him and so the first 45 minutes we just talked about economics more broadly. I'm like, I, I don't want him to think that I'm a crazy raving lunatic, even though I am. Uh, and then got the last 15 minutes and we talked about Bitcoin and one of the things that I said to him was, I said, pastor Wilson, I've been thinking about you in relation to Bitcoin for the last four years.

Uh, because in the last three years, I think at that point, because, [00:38:00] um, you know, I had the privilege to interview BJ Dictor, who's the spokesperson for the Canadian trucker protest. And so these guys, these truckers were, they were declared enemies of the state, uh, by virtue of not wanting to get an experimental, uh, you know, poke in the arm.

And the thing that he testified to was, he's like, we had people in the States and in Canada donate to us millions of dollars, millions of Canadian dollars, but. The government declared us enemies of the state and cut us off from any of those money from, we couldn't access any of those money. We couldn't access our own bank accounts.

And so what he said is the, the only money that we were able to access was the $900,000 that people donated to us in Bitcoin. That was customed in such a way that didn't, it couldn't be intermediated by the state. And so that money actually made it to real people. And so you have this real world situation in which a totalitarian government, you know, uses its full force and they can't stop Bitcoin.

Uh, and so I, so I said to him, I was like, I, this is before this is 20 to 2020, uh, and this is, you know, Biden era. And I, you know, [00:39:00] things were looking bleak. And I just said like, I don't think, I think we're past the point where Christian, you know, churches can afford to. Put all of their eggs in the basket of trusting the legacy financial system.

I just said like this, this, this just seems irresponsible to me. And I said to 'em, basically like, if you were cut off from your bank account tomorrow, like up to this point, largely, you know, the, you know, the courts have been a, a batching of sanity. Like they've been, you know, a, a place where we can retreat to, but that takes time.

Like that takes months, years, whatever to get to get your court, you know, tried and then to, to basically find out that it's non-con, not constitutional. And so I just said to him, I was like, well, you know, what would you do if you were cut off from your bank accounts tomorrow? How would you pay your staff?

How would you pay your missionaries? How would you, you know, and like, again, in, and I even said to him, I was like, in your case, you guys are well known and you guys probably have diversified stuff and you have a, a big community of people who could rally to your aid if you, if you wanted to. Uh, but again, then they could start targeting those people.

And so if they're, if they're,

Nathan: and

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): [00:40:00] yeah.

Nathan: have to back to when we talked about it is this is, um. This is just like seeds. You just can't have 'em in your closet and whip 'em out and have food.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yes.

Nathan: I use the analogy of the one guy at our church saying like, look, you, you can't just have a ham radio

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah.

Nathan: in your

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): You need to practice. Yeah.

Nathan: programmed and have backup comms if the cell network goes down.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: I mean, to that end, I guess I would say, um, if I wanted to and, and how I approach this podcast is first and foremost, you have my son listening and me learning from you. But I immediately am thinking like, can you talk me through if I went to, so we have a men's group chat say, Hey, let's try as a church to only deal Bitcoin amongst ourselves. And it's not, you know, we have somebody that sells raw milk in the church. We have somebody [00:41:00] that does chickens. We have like, let's, let's try to set up. A economy where we interact and exchange with each other. Not large amounts of money,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep,

Nathan: like our families, our wives, our, our sons and daughters can interact and share value in the different ways.

And, and,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: and can bar like, 'cause some of it is they're just bartering,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: like, Hey, I'll do this in exchange for raw milk or whatever, but like, how, talk me through

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: just as in as much detail as

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: over the last, you know, 20 minutes or so how my church and anyone else who is in a group. And I, I think the church is such a great way to do it because, um, you also know you could go to that guy and be like, I accidentally sent you a thousand dollars, know, get, and for a gallon of milk, can I get that back?

I didn't mean, you know, and you're not like, there's a [00:42:00] some side of a, a safety net.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: Um, in, in practicing

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yes.

Nathan: some, 'cause it's not like, I don't, I don't think I could go and get my session build a, i, I think I'm immediately thinking when I'm in charge, uh, and whatever point, and we can vote on it and say, look, we have this much cash.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep,

Nathan: Um, it's smart. Um, what percentage should be in a, in, in, how should we hedge the church's resources

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: a way? And, and acknowledging that like, as we look at things, it's probably, we're not trending towards more fiscal responsibility no matter who's in charge.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: just say, um, we want to try to practice and, and, and realize that how do we do that? I got 10, let's just say 10. 10 11 deacons. We're gonna get together and say, Hey, we're in charge of, of, you know, the church's [00:43:00] budget. Um, let's try it with our own money first, learn this system, the 10, the leaders,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: and, and develop a report that we can give to the session that says, let's, let's disciple people

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep,

Nathan: in money,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: uh, in, in value.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yes. And this is, this is honestly what we're working on. This is part of what TGFB is gonna be working on. So we are, we're actually becoming a nonprofit. We've been, we've been trying to make it work as a for-profit for the last three years. And it's just one of these things where our largest market is Christians who are not yet Bitcoiners.

And so to try to get them to pay a couple hundred bucks for an event ticket, it just like, doesn't make sense. And so we're like, we're like rethinking stuff. And so this, that, this actual conversation is something that we're gonna be doing a lot more of. Um, but so what, the first thing, before I answer the question directly, the thing that I, I, I'm anticipating an objection from some people and they would see, they're like, okay, yeah.

So, but Bitcoin. It still is this novelty because I can't go use it to pay for stuff. Uh, I can't, I can't use it at [00:44:00] the grocery store. I can't use it

Nathan: they

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): at, at,

Nathan: that.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): exactly, yes. So do, so then you could look at like something like, uh, like a Square and w Liquid Square just did, so they just turned on Bitcoin payments for a whole bunch of anybody who uses the Square platform.

Um, you can do that with like two clicks, three clicks on your, on your computer, and then you can either decide to keep that in Bitcoin as people pay you Bitcoin or you can auto convert to dollars. So the tools are there, I mean, there's, there's, again, there's a, there's a level of depth here. So you can, you can have like what's called a custodial route, which basically means it's kind of nerfed, it's kind of, you know, it's a, it's a centralized solution, which means it's super convenient.

It's really easy. Uh, but.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Ultimately, if the government wanted to lean on Square, they could, they could do that and then still get your money.

Nathan: cave.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep. Square would cave. And so that's, so that's one thing. Like that's, so there are, you know, easy solutions, but the easy solutions, uh, also have the trade off of being able to be, you know, the government could come after them.

There's ones that are a little bit more complex, not much more complex, but there's ones that are a little bit more [00:45:00] complex that don't have the level of custodian, uh, they don't have a custodial wallet, so there's no third party to intermediate to kind of come after your funds. Um, and so again, it's just a process.

It takes time to do that. Um, but the, the one thing I want to touch on is the, the assumption that because Bitcoin isn't use money yet, that. People should just not pay attention to it until it is that, and the, the illustration that I use is, okay, you, you mentioned about, um, you know, if you don't, you mentioned seeds, which is a fantastic example where it's like, all right, so if you're, if you're not planting seeds before you need seeds, you're never gonna be able to, you won't have seeds when you need seeds.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): I do this, I do the, make the same comparison between, uh, Bitcoin and basically how things become money. Uh, we have this expectation that something should just be fully matured money right from the beginning. And the reality is that doesn't happen when you have a free market chosen money. You know, basically every Bitcoin transaction in the world right now [00:46:00] is a free market decision.

No one is forced to use Bitcoin, unlike they're forced to pay taxes in dollars or Canadian dollars, or, you know, whatever it is. Every Bitcoin transaction is a freely chosen thing. And so, yes, right now, right now, basically because we have the dollar, even though it's losing value, it is an awesome, uh, medium of exchange.

It's fantastic. And fiat currencies make great medium mediums of exchange. What? They don't make good, uh, they don't, they don't make good stores of value.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): that's really the value proposition that the vast majority of people, especially in the United States, are looking to Bitcoin to solve, is, hey, they look at the, look at their currency and they're like, our currency is, is becoming more worthless with every data that goes by.

We need someplace to be able to store value that won't lose its value. Uh, and so they're looking to Bitcoin for that. And so Bitcoin is, is, you know, has served to be a very good store of value, uh, over the course of its lifespan. And so the thing that I compare this to is children. [00:47:00] Okay? The process of something becoming a money is like the process of someone becoming a person.

Okay? Now again, we all acknowledge the dignity of the unborn, okay? As soon as that baby's in the, in the thing, okay? As soon as this baby's in his mother's womb, is it a human? And we would say, or is it a, is it a person? We would say absolutely. Okay. Now imagine some smart ow kid. We don't know any of those, but imagine some smart al kid came to you and said, yeah.

But, uh, in Genesis one and two, God tells people what to do and he tells them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue and exercise dominion and to garden, keep the garden. Babies can't do any of those things. They can't reproduce. They can't be fruitful and multiply. They can't exercise dominion.

And so he thinks he's smart by raising this objection. And you go, well, no. But again, when the baby is born, he can't do these things, but he grows up into these things. This is a natural progression of maturity that happens over time. And when people criticize Bitcoin for not being able to, for not being able to pay, you know, for their haircut and Bitcoin, I'm like, you're [00:48:00] totally missing the picture.

You're missing it. How? Like, how these things become money. We're watching in real time for the first time in a very long time. Something becoming money, uh, you know, in real time. And this, this maturity takes time. It's gonna take, you know, it takes time for people to understand what it is, to be able to understand how to use it.

And so, so what I would say is right now, I say all that to say this. If you're a Christian and you're a church, the best thing that you can immediately start doing is saving some of your money in Bitcoin. That would be, that would be the first thing that I would do is like, just take a percentage, whatever it is.

What I always just tell, I never give people an exact answer. 'cause it really depends on your age. It depends on how much extra income you have. It depends on a whole host of factors. Um, but just start saving nothing. The there's start more than nothing. Something more than nothing. Um, start saving. And then if you have people who want to just do this experiment, who, you know, they want to do this experiment of, alright, we wanna try to see if we can do this.

Well then, yeah. So then there's, there's plenty of options of different, they're called, [00:49:00] um, yeah, this is a more complicated thing, but there's, there's two ways you can send Bitcoin. One of 'em is just, it's called on chain Bitcoin, which is just basically, you're, you're doing this in a completely non-custodial way.

Uh, there's no intermediary, there's no nobody who can stop your transactions from happening. Um, then there's another way to use Bitcoin that's on what's called a second layer. So the, the, uh, dollar system equivalent of a second layer is something like PayPal. So PayPal, the way that PayPal actually worked, your experience of PayPal is that you send money and you get it immediately, or somebody sends you money, you get it immediately and you can spend it immediately, whatever.

What's really happening on the backend is that PayPal, like twice a day, they do batches of transactions. So like functionally, there's, let's say there's 50 banks in the United States or more, but like let's say there's a hundred banks, there's only a certain amount of transactions that are actually going to happen between banks to settle up at the end of the day.

'cause you're gonna have Wells Fargo who [00:50:00] ultimately at the end of the day, or at the end of, you know, halfway through the day, owes JP Morgan XX amount of money. And so they send one check to finalize that, that amount of money, and then they do another thing. So our experience of it, we experience, oh wow.

It goes quickly, immediately in reality, the reality is more complicated. That same system there, that same principle happens with Bitcoin. And so the PayPal version of Bitcoin is something called the Lightning Network. So the Lightning Network is great for small transactions and you can do bigger transactions, but it's, it's perfect for smaller transactions.

And because there's no fees involved, it's basically free. And so that's something where I use this all the time. Um, I use, I use this to send people money. I use this to pay invoices. It's super quick, it's super easy. Um, there's a variety of applications that you can use. The, the easiest one, honestly, in terms of the, the usability and the, the, the way that it interacts with the, the legacy banking system is probably something like Cash App.

Um, I, I think you [00:51:00] can also do it with Venmo. I think you can also do it with some other things, but cash apps. The its interface is just so sweet. It's, it's awesome. And so that would be what I would recommend is just, you know, you can send people invoices. You can tell me, Hey, how much, how much do you need?

How much do you want me to pay? And then you can either send a request or I can just, you know, you can do it either pushing or pulling. I can request that you send me, send you an invoice so that you send me some money, or I can just send it and you can receive it. Um, and so again, there's just, just a bunch of different ways you can do it, um, that, that will enable you to have, you know, independence from just the legacy, uh, the legacy payment system and, and the ability for your transaction to be, you know, intermediated by a government or a bank or you know, something because of some opinion that you have that they deem, uh, unthinkable.

Nathan: So does Cash App make it than than Square? Because it's lightning and it's

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): So.

Nathan: Lightning.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): So Square, so Square and Cash App are owned. They're basically, I don't think they're owned by the, I think they might be [00:52:00] owned, both owned by Block, which is like a parent company. So they're, they're very, it's basically the same, same program. Um, so basically Lightning, the Lightning Network can be, anybody, can, can set up a Lightning channel is what it's called.

And anybody can do this. So you can do this. Uh, I mentioned like you can have a private server. Uh, there's some, a company called Start nine that's doing some really cool work. Um, and so they have these private servers where you can set up your own cloud service, uh, for not too expensive. Um, and you can run your own what's called a lightning node, which basically means you can set up a channel where anybody who has access to this channel can send and receive money in there.

Um, and so you can do that. So basically there's, there's custodial lightning channels, and then there's self custody, lightning channels, so square, um, uh, cash app, all those things. Those are called custodial lightning channels because again, there's, there's a custodian who at the end of the day is controlling what's going on there.

Uh, the benefit is it's super slick, super, you know, convenient. They've done a great job with the UX to make it super easy to [00:53:00] use. The downside is. At the end of the day, the government could still put a thumb on them and, and, you know, force them to cut you off as a customer or whatever. Whereas, and this is kind of more what you're getting at, is you can set up your own, uh, self-hosted custo, uh, self, self-hosted lightning channels that you are in total, total control of.

And the government can't just come and can't, can't shut it off. They don't have access to it. You could custody it in such a way that they wouldn't be able to, to, to shut you off from it or shut off anybody from it. And so the long term and the, you know, the kind of the counter insurgent, uh, circles that, you know, that we're looking at and just trying to provide, uh, future proofing or, you know, just, uh, sovereign, more sovereign options, even though sovereignty is, you know, it's like a sliding scale, not some sort of utopia that you reach.

Uh, but like these, these. These ideas of, of being more sovereign and taking more responsibility and maintaining more responsibility. There's ways that you can do that with Bitcoin, um, in, in ways that a small community could do this in a way that multiple communities could do this to interact and, [00:54:00] and, uh, transact with each other, uh, in all kinds of, you know, ways that are much healthier and, and cheaper is the other thing.

So, uh, we, you mentioned a couple weeks ago, or we guess a week ago, uh, square announced that they were adding Bitcoin payment services to any of their merchants who has the square terminal. So you hit like, I think it's like three or four taps on your screen and boom, you're able to receive it and you're able to accept Bitcoin payments.

And one of the benefits of it is, and this is like a, this is a, a benefit is, I mean, with every transaction you pay with a credit card, you are forced to pay 3%, if not more. In some cases now they're raising them, but 3% to either MasterCard or Visa with bitcoin. Those fees are much cheaper and at the most expensive, it's usually around 1%.

Um, square has basically said for the next 12 months, we're going to remove any vendor fees. So basically, if you're a merchant, you're gonna make 3% more off of every single transaction if you accept [00:55:00] payment in Bitcoin. Than you would if you were accepting in, you know, with, with MasterCard or, or whatever.

And so then after 12 months, that drops down to 1%. So you're still saving 2%, uh, if not more, uh, if you're, if you're accepting payments in Bitcoin. And so as things get tighter and tighter due to inflation, all this kind of stuff, I think that more and more, like basically more and more, uh, business owners and stuff like that are gonna be incentivized to accept Bitcoin because 2% of a million dollars is actually a meaningful amount of money.

2% of, you know, half a million, whatever the, you know, money that your business is making, it's, it's gonna be an actual meaningful amount. Um, so again, all these things take time to learn, but it's really not anywhere near as hard as, as people would imagine. Um, if you can use Venmo, you can use Bitcoin.

That's it's super simple.

Nathan: Yeah, and I guess I, I'm immediately wanting to go full, you know, custodial, there's not a

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): hat. Yeah,

Nathan: Like, and, and I, I know for sure that there is at least one guy in our church that can

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): let's go.

Nathan: to[00:56:00]

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: I guess that's the other side of it that we, I, when I talk with Joel s and he is like, Hey, you needed to develop a skills directory. And the things that people in your congregation are good at

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: who to be able to search it and go to people. And that's, you know, and John Moody's talked about it too, and the Amish are just

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep,

Nathan: at

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: keeping it in-house. And this just seems like a good way to, at the same, we were already developing this in-house with our church.

We have a, you know, a form and people are, are putting their stuff on there, um, to where we can search,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: for these particular skills and say, Hey, you know, um, how do we incentivize at the same time? Like, let's try to do this with Bitcoin too

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: and let's try to, you know, and I think that that's just, you have to do this

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: and transact with people you trust and learn it,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: learn it together.

I think there's just tremendous possibilities

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yes. And so this, and this is one of, oh, go ahead.

Nathan: I was gonna say too, just. The [00:57:00] volatility, obviously, like and I both acknowledge, we've talked about this before, like anytime you're willing to hold something forever. I think I, I shared mine, you know, I bought it like 48,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: thousand and it tanked for three and a half years, you know, uh, and, but ultimately it's more than doubled

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: bought it in even with the, the, you know, crash that's

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: right now. It's, it's nowhere close after it went. It has not been below, where I bought in, uh, since like right after, you

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep,

Nathan: and, and even looking at it, like, it's just crazy to me to think that I could have bought at 16,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: but even just the, the, uh, reality that I just had all this money get cut to 25%. So that, that if, if you remove short, short term gain. From the equation, which is something that plagues our

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): A hundred percent. [00:58:00] A hundred percent.

Nathan: it's o it's obvious. But is there something else more to, because I've also heard people on your podcast say, Hey, like it's still mimicking the s and p or they're still

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: a hedge by these financial institutions and we see the Trump's talking about it 'cause they

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep,

Nathan: banked and

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: like,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: you cut through

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: of that

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): The,

Nathan: a Christian?

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep. So the, I mean, the principle, it's, uh, you know, wealth gain little by little, you know, will, will grow. And, you know, wealth gain hastily, if you're looking for short term, you know, if you're looking to make money quickly, you're gonna get wrecked. I mean, this is, this is, it's the proverbial wisdom here.

Um, and so I just. Again, you could do this with a hundred things, right? Like if I were, if you were to, if you were to go short term and look at your marriage, you know, like all of us have had mo I would say ma, most of we've had moments in our mar Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We're pretty perfect. But other than, other than us, uh, you know, like you have these moments where you're like, man, this is hard.

You know, and it's like if you were, there's plenty of people who just sell, [00:59:00] you know, they, they, they, they have a dip in their, in their marriage and they just sell, like, they just, they just get out and they, they wanna move on. And so I just think like, this is, so basically the volatility of Bitcoin is due to a whole bunch of different factors.

And the response to volatility is not to to totally, you know, cash out and not do anything with it. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, basically, it should force you to size in appropriately. And so the, and again, this is why I think chil children are a great example of this. Okay. So. If you're sitting there, imagine you're talking to your friend who's 35 years old and has no kids, and he goes, yeah, I, I don't, I just don't wanna have kids.

They're just so volatile. And you look at him and you go, bro. Like if you don't have kids and deal with their volatility in the beginning, you're never gonna get the benefit of what kids turn into when they're less volatile. Like, this is just you, you have to do this. And so I think the, the same thing both in my own experience and just logically like this, is this is how you think about Bitcoin.

Like Bitcoin is currently only owned by, I think less than 1% of the [01:00:00] world, less than a quarter of 1% of global wealth is in Bitcoin. And so, and yet ev everyone who has internet, which I think is like 60% of the world, has the ability to, to use it and is incentivized to understand it so that they can't be robbed by their governments in, in the banking system.

So like, again, all of the things, Bitcoin's been growing exponentially for 16 years. There's all these things where, you know, the adoption and that, that was even before you had things like, uh, the government talking about establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve, which is just would've sounded like a, you know, Bitcoin or Fever Dream three years ago.

Um, but like these are things where. Again, if you look at, if you look at how networks work, uh, you know, the, there's the network effects. You know, when, when you reach a certain critical mass or something like Facebook or something, all these kind of networks, once they reach a certain point, it's like there's like a runaway train.

And Bitcoin is at this point where there's millions of people who are using this thing and they're just continuing to, like, the, the case for Bitcoin just gets stronger with every day that goes by. Um, and so yes, there's going to be [01:01:00] volatility because you have people who've been holding Bitcoin in some cases.

You know, you have people who've been holding Bitcoin since it was a penny. And so, so these guys are getting, I mean, a lot of these guys are in their fifties now, and they're sitting there like. I'm a billionaire, and so I'm gonna go dump 10,000 of my Bitcoin because I, I want to enjoy my money between, I, I wanna enjoy, like, money doesn't just exist for its own benefit.

It exists for, you know, to, to get us things that we want and need. And so it, like you have these periodic sell-offs where people have held, held Bitcoin for a certain period of time where they've reached, reaped a huge benefit of it. And so, again, this is not a bad thing. Like this is, this is a totally normal thing that happens in all markets.

Uh, and, and so I just think like volatility is the price of life. Okay? If you want something, if you wanna avoid, all volatility will then go die, right? Because then that, then you'll, then you're protected from volatility. But like, volatility is a sign and symptom of life. Uh, and so again, the fact that Bitcoin every, you know, every few years, like [01:02:00] it has these downturns and then again, just because of, you know, just the way that things work, it comes back to life because the incentives are still there.

Um. This is just how this works. It happens with Bitcoin, it's happened with a whole bunch of other things. Uh, and so you need to be in things for the long haul. You like, this is, I am, I'm allergic to, to a fault. I'm allergic to buying things because I think I can make money short term. Like I'm not a, I don't own tons of stocks.

I don't own tons of these things because I don't wanna buy something unless I actually believe in it. I don't wanna breathe life into something if I don't actually believe in it. Um, and so this is how I think about, I think about Bitcoin. Um, I guess the last, the last thing I would add on that is when I, when I, to try to help people think about this, I'm like, okay, imagine, imagine the aliens came down and they, a, they saw you eating in orange, and they're like, what is that?

And you're like, oh, this is an orange. And they're like, well, well, what is it? And then where did it come from? And you go, well, I had these seeds and I stuck them in the ground, and I sprinkled some water on them, and I just let the sun just kind of [01:03:00] shine on them. And then over time, the seed grows into a tree, which produces thousands of these, of these oranges.

And the Ian goes, wait, what? He's like, that's like magic. That's incredible. And you're like, well, yeah. I mean, it is kind of like magic. It is pretty amazing. Right? And so he goes, well, so then what happens? You know, they, they grow and then you, you get 'em off and you eat 'em, and then what happens? And he go, well, yeah.

And then all the trees die for about three or four months, you know, three months. And he goes, wait, wait, what do you mean they die? And he goes, yeah, yeah, no, they die. And, and he goes, well, well, how do you know they're gonna come back? And you go, well, you know, I, I, there's not some contract that I've signed with these trees that they're gonna come back.

But that's just the nature of, of how this works. And, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the trees die. Uh, but in the vast majority of cases, this, there's a seasonality here that is totally predictable, understandable. And I would argue the same exact thing happens with Bitcoin. There's predictable cycles because of, you know, the cycles you can predict based on how long somebody's been in and they sell off, and there's more people understanding it.

So they're getting into it for the first time. Um, and again, [01:04:00] all of these things, this, this is totally normal, totally cyclical. Um, Bitcoin is just par for the course along with many other things that we just, many of the other volatilities that we take for granted, uh, that exist in areas like our food system or like our growth cycles of our kids, or any one of a number of other things.

Nathan: I guess, uh, if you have a little bit more time to

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah.

Nathan: to, I was gonna the mic to Eli if he's here.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Go Eli.

Nathan: we're facing is he's 16

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Mm-hmm.

Nathan: and with the Cash app, he could get a custodial account. He can't send and receive, I think once he buys.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Okay. Yep.

Nathan: one of the things that I've done on his behalf is just buy for him

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Boom. Let's go.

Nathan: hold it in somebody in, in custodial or whatever.

And,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: he's, he's sold some of his stuff to get his car, you know, he,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Cool. Let's go.

Nathan: car, so he had it. Um, you know, and I, one particular moment for me with, as a father is like, we, we watched live it [01:05:00] break a hundred thousand,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: and, and just like had that moment, father and son, and, and he's been hollering out Bitcoin prices to me across the house for the last, you

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Oh,

Nathan: 48 hours,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): don't do that, Eli.

Nathan: As we're tracking. And it, it's, it's, it's fun though. And I know my wife's like, you guys are nerds, but I'm glad you're nerds, you know,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: um, so yeah, I just want to give him maybe the mic if he's there and just some him ask some questions about it too and how how he can, can, can in this or some specific ways as we're trying to teach our children

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep,

Nathan: manage it themselves.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): let's go.

Elijah: everything you said. Up to

Nathan: You there, Eli?

Elijah: all great stuff. Um, but like, I'm just kind of wondering what are the best and safest ways for me to, as a miner to buy and store Bitcoin? Because most of these things I've signed up for and you get part of the way through and then even like, it'll just [01:06:00] say you have to be 18 to buy and exchange it.

And so far what I'm doing is, like he said, the cash app, custodial account, but that has a cap that's not super high. And even then, like very removed. Like it's not really mine, it's just looks like it's mine basically. So,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep. Yep. Yeah, the thing, so what, in your case, what you're, what you're gonna look for, you want a non-custodial wallet? Okay. So basically there's the phrase, have you heard the phrase, not your keys, not your coins. So that's basically okay. So basically what it is it, so whoever, whoever's controls the, either the 12 or the 24 word seed phrase, they're the ones who actually hold the Bitcoin.

So when you have your money on something like Cash App or like Coinbase or any one of these platforms, like when you hold your money with them, you're actually entrusting your money with them and you're entrusting that because they're scared of paying fines or scared of going to jail, or scared of losing their business because they're, [01:07:00] you know, if they would rip people off that they're not gonna rip you off.

Uh, and that's a pretty safe set of assumptions and, and, uh, incentive structure that's set up. But in, in your case, if you're sitting there like, Hey, I just really want to have the Bitcoin under my control, um, you want a self custodial wallet that allows you to be the one who controls those keys. And so there's a, there's a variety of of ways you can do this.

There's, there's, um, there's something called like, uh, hardware wallets. Or signing devices is what they are. Uh, and so there, there's something called like the cold card, which that, so these are varying levels of complexity and cost. And the bigger the cost and complexity, the more you want to treat it, like, uh, your long-term savings.

Okay? So like a cold card for example, is like this, it's like a physical device kind, looks like a calculator. Um, and I think those range anywhere from like probably 200 bucks to 400 bucks depending on how they work. And so you don't wanna be, you don't wanna buy one of those just to tool around and you know, like make, send 25 bucks to your buddy or something like that.

But if you're gonna be [01:08:00] storing. Thousands of dollars that you're hoping to use to buy a house someday or something like that, then like that would be something where it would make sense to use. Um, the, the more, probably this is brought kind of more the sweet spot of what you're looking at or look what you're looking for.

There are, there are applications, uh, they're called Hot wallets. Uh, there's something called, there's a, there's one called Blue Wallet, which is the one I recommend. Super easy to use. Um, but it allows you to custody your own keys and so you can transfer your Bitcoin from Cash app or from, you know, whatever your platform you're using.

You can transfer, transfer it from there to Blue Wallet. And then you have your keys. You're totally in control. There's nobody to, to, you know, to take nobody. You don't need to ask permission from anybody. And those are not KY ced, which is the process that you're looking at. So, KYC laws are know your customer laws.

Uh, they're nominally designed to protect us from terrorism and from all these kind of things. Really what they do is they prevent normal people from getting access to their money while allowing, uh, money [01:09:00] laundering for, I mean, like Jeffrey Epstein, JP Morgan, banked Jeff, Jeffrey Epstein. They knew everything he was up to.

They hit it all because they were making millions of dollars in banking fees. The, these effective, these, these laws are worthless. They don't actually stop the type of thing that they're stated, uh, to do, and they make lives more difficult for normal people like us. So. Blue Wallet is an example of a non-custodial wallet.

You don't need to ask permission and you can just download it on your phone. Uh, set it up takes just a few minutes, and then what you wanna do is when you have your those, um, what you wanna do is when you get those 12 or 24 seed words, you want to, you want to put them in a safe place pro, ideally a couple safe places.

Um, and just you wanna protect those words because those words are effectively your access to Bitcoin. If you lose those 12 words and you have a self custody wallet, there's no calvary to come and help you. So what you can do, uh, there's a number of different devices that can help you store your, your seed, uh, words.

So what basically the cheapest [01:10:00] way that people do is they take those 12 or 24 words and they, they look at them. And then basically you can take like a, like a dye set where it's got like letters. Uh, and you can take like a washer, take like a, a long bolt in a set of washers and you can stamp. The, you know, the whatever, the four or five letters in each one of these words or the, or the first three letters of each word or whatever on these little washers in a way that, like, you do that for each word.

You, you know, put the washers together, you throw 'em in a fireproof safe. And then even if your house burns down, even if your're fireproof safe, like there's stamped on there in steel. And so there's no way for, for you to lose access, um, to them. So there's other, there's other cooler, um, I'll show you this one.

So this one is called, uh, a Medullo Modello. This thing is, this thing probably weighs seven, eight pounds, if not more. Um, it's like machine steel. And what this guy does, this is, this is, if you're super into programming and stuff, he made this, um, come on. He made this [01:11:00] thing. And so what it has. It's got like the, it allows you, you can unscrew this thing and then each one of these little dunno if you can see this, each one of these little things represents the binary code.

And so you can basically put, put, put your wallet on here or put your seed words onto here. And then again, you could have World War four and this thing's gonna be fine. You can have a nuclear bomb and this thing's gonna be fine. Um, and so there, there's all kinds of, this is like a super technical one, but like, there's all kinds of ones like this that are just designed to make it easier for you to, to handle your seed, uh, your seed phrase to keep it, prevent it from being able to be stolen, keep it from being able to be, you know, burn up in a fire or anyone of a number of other things.

Um, so that, that'd be probably blue wall would be what I would recommend. It's kind of the, the happy medium of what you're looking for. Um, that's, I use it, it's great. Um, yeah, I can't recommend it enough. So.

Nathan: My guess Eli, is that you're gonna have to send your Bitcoin to me and we're gonna have to help you set up multiple, [01:12:00] we'll set up multiple blue wallets, that one that's technically yours. 'cause you probably can't set it up and send it with Cash app. You probably have to let your dad help you with that.

If it's like that, hop from him.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: don't know.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep. Yeah, that, that's probably being what you're gonna have to do. And it's probably gonna take you a little bit of time to do it if there's a cap on how much you can send and stuff like that. Um, the other thing, okay, now this is the other thing that I would really recommend, and especially as like a, uh, for Christians and for a whole number of reasons.

So, so Bitcoin is an open monetary network, okay? So there are, it's like every transaction that's ever taken place in the Bitcoin network is, is public. It's like a public ledger. You can go on there and see it. Now again, it doesn't have your name attached or anything like that, but if you know what you're looking for and depending on where your Bitcoin originated, uh, you know where you purchased it from, there might be a, a trail attaching your name to this amount of Bitcoin.

The exception is if you buy Bitcoin directly from a Bitcoin miner.

Elijah: So there's all kinds

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): That doesn't require any [01:13:00] KYC, that doesn't require any, any knowledge that you know, that any, any paper trail to you. And so there's all kinds of reasons that you might want to do that. Now, buying bitcoin from a miner usually comes at a premium.

Usually pay like anywhere from two to two to 5% more. Um, but depending on why you're doing it, it could be very, very worth it to you. So one example, I've got a buddy whose, uh, church is starting to mine Bitcoin with solar panels that are put on their, on their roof. And so one of the reasons why they're gonna be, why they want to mine Bitcoin is because the mined Bitcoin, it doesn't have any paper trail attached when, when you mine it.

And they can use that and send that to churches in the, in the Middle East or around the world without it having any way to be traced to the United States to, you know, quote unquote Christian countries or what or whatever. Um, and so. Again, that's something, another thing I would recommend is, and I can connect you to people who, you know, who pe to miners who, you know, are constantly looking to, to sell SATs and, you know, sell [01:14:00] Bitcoin to people.

Um, but that'd be another thing, like if you wanna have like a, you know, if you wanna have, let's say, you know, 30% of your stack be non KYC Bitcoin that you bought from a Bitcoin miner that doesn't have any paper trail, or if you wanna buy all of it, or if you wanna buy, you know, whatever you can, you can kind of decide what you want to do to give yourself more privacy, more anonymity, uh, than you might otherwise.

Nathan: And what is, uh, just from a social, uh, decorum, if you

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah.

Nathan: if you don't podcast with Jordan Bush, what's the generally the. Like amount that a Bitcoin miner is gonna want to even talk about or whatever. 'cause I would imagine that it's, you don't want to be that guy that's like, Hey, I'm looking for five bucks,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah, no, yeah, you don't wanna do that.

Nathan: this.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Don't wanna do that. I think I, I'm, I'm trying to remember the, I've, I've purchased, so there's a number of different ways so you can go, okay, so you can buy directly from miners. If you're gonna go that route, it's probably gonna, I would imagine no less than like 500 bucks.

Um, so again, it doesn't have to be thousands, but I would imagine no less [01:15:00] than 500 bucks. Um, the other way, the other way to do this, so there's a company, there's a company called, um, AZ teco. So it's like A-Z-T-C-O, I think it's like a abbreviated thing, but what they, what they do is they sell Bitcoin vouchers.

Okay? So you're not, you're not buying, so you, there's no KYC involved because you're not actually buying Bitcoin, you're buying a voucher. That's like a Bitcoin gift card. And so in the same way that you don't have to show your ID to get gift cards E Exactly, exactly. And so what you do is you buy the voucher and then you redeem the, there's like a QR code on, on the voucher.

You just scan the QR code with your wallet, and then you get access to the Bitcoin with no paper trail to you. So though, that's another way that you can do this. Um, and you can buy significantly smaller amounts, uh, with that. So you could probably do as, probably as little as, I would imagine, 50 or a hundred bucks.

Uh, but again, you're gonna spend, I think their, I think their fees are around 5%. Um, so different, different, there's just all kinds of different [01:16:00] possibilities based on your, your threat models, based on your desires and all kinds of things. So,

Nathan: Yeah, I guess I would say too, what is the, custodial side of that, the fees are obviously

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: they keep you from day trading, small amounts or

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: Like how, what's the way that methodology that you approach the,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah.

Nathan: side and the research? 'cause

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah.

Nathan: equated also to going broke, trying to save money,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah. Yeah. So trading, I don't do trading. Uh, I know people who trade and who do it well, but like I just know way more people who've gotten absolutely wrecked by trading. So I, I don't, I just, again, treat it like long-term savings. I just buy and, and hold, and then when I need to sell some, for some, you know, some purchase that we need to make.

I, I sell some and I don't think twice about it. Like, I, I'm grateful that I, you know, have, have this and, and it's good. Um, in terms of the fees, again, my, my. My, my attitude towards a lot of these kind of things has changed dramatically because I, I think one of the things that we've gotten psyop into, uh, is just valuing free [01:17:00] services because it, again, it's nice, it feels good to get something for free.

It feels good to get Gmail for free. The problem is if something is free, you're the product. Google is selling your information down the river to people. And so I, I just don't wanna be anybody's product. So I've ceased to use, I, I use, uh, I pay for my email. I pay for as many things as I, as I can, um, so that I, to avoid giving away my data.

Um, our, our web store, I don't, I don't use plugins that'll, that force me to give away my customer data. I, I don't wanna deal with that. And so when it comes to fees, I'm actually happy to, to pay fees to the different, the businesses where I buy Bitcoin from. Um, if I'm, if I'm not. If I'm buying Bitcoin from a KYC location because I'm, you know, again, from, by and large, especially given the way things are going, I'm not super concerned about it at this point.

Um, I, I buy my Bitcoin from a company called river.com, uh, that only sells Bitcoin. They don't sell any of the other alt coins. And what that means in the short term is that they're turning down millions and [01:18:00] millions and millions of dollars in fees that they could be making by selling all these other cryptocurrencies in, in favor of only selling the thing that they really believe is the only thing that's actually gonna matter.

So with them, I pay a, it's like around a 1% fee and you can even get it cheaper than that if you do, if you sign up for like a, a monthly DC, a daily cost average or something like that. Um, but in that case, I'm happy to pay them 1% 'cause they're doing,

Nathan: Yeah.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): know, exemplary work. They're actually providing value to me.

And so I'm happy to, to compensate them for that. Um, so again, it just depends. There's ways where you can get it down, where you pay no fees. There's ways where you can pay more fees. Um, you know, there's other trade-offs. And so again, it just comes with the trade-offs. You know, what, what are you looking for and what are you, what value?

And at any given time,

Nathan: I think all that's super helpful and I think we've officially got everybody else to stop listening. That's not really bought in, which

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): let's go.

Nathan: is the idea

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): fine. That's right. Turn 'em all off. Let's go.

Nathan: if you, if you don't like this, go ahead and unfollow 'cause I prepare to get worse, you know?

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): If you, if we listen, and this is how I think about Nathan. [01:19:00] If you have more than 30 followers, you're compromised. Right? That's how I treat it. Like, if you have any more than 30 podcast listeners, you're doing something wrong.

Nathan: I told my pastor, I'm like, we're getting kind of big on Sunday. You need to preach on the patriarchy. And uh, and uh, he actually did Sunday, so I

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Let's go.

Nathan: I'm like, Hey, you're, uh, you're listening to my, uh, my church shrinking strategy. I'm a, I appreciate it.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Did you speak of that? Did you see the text I sent you right before we got on?

Nathan: I did. That's epic.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Bro, rich, rich Lusk recorded, uh, recorded a podcast with another guy, and then Tucker Carlson, the three of them in a room. Sign me up. I'm in.

Nathan: Yeah. And it looks like it's a, he was the guest.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah, I think Tucker was the guest.

Nathan: also, Yeah. Tucker, it, it's, it's, this is the thing about it is this, like we talked about on your podcast, like, this is the greatest time to be alive.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep,

Nathan: have a media director for Theopolis

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep,

Nathan: something like that kind of real time you know, and that they're praying [01:20:00] and like, just, man.

Like,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep.

Nathan: it, the nobody can stop it. The more that they try to crush the church, the more it's gonna grow.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: Like, it's just, it's not gonna stop.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yeah. And it's, again, it's, it's, it's easy to think that, oh man, the greatest time to have been alive would've been like when Jesus was alive. Like, that would've been pretty sweet. Or the greatest time to be alive as an American would be like 1776. Like, how sweet would that have been? And then just like thinking about it, like, listen, the battles look different, at least right now.

But like, there's, there's still battles to be fought and there's, you know, there's opportunities for faithfulness and opportunities for cowardice. And, and so again, we're just out here, you know, we just, we ought to be out here just asking the Lord to help us to be faithful and, you know, to, to look for opportunities to advance the ball down the field.

So,

Nathan: Well go ahead and, uh, let people, what's best way to

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): yep. Sure.

Nathan: with your philosophy and

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep.

Nathan: you, um, in what you're doing?

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep. Yeah. [01:21:00] So again, we're gonna be going nonprofit at the end of the year. Um, and so we're gonna be, have more information, uh, about where you can do that. But, um, you can follow me on Twitter. My handle is right there by my name at JM Bush writes. Um, then you can find out more about tgb@tgb.com.

We've got links to our podcasts and links to a whole bunch of other stuff, including, uh, our, the various books that we've written. So I've got over this corner was the first book we wrote called Thank Out for Bitcoin. Uh, we're getting ready to release a second edition of that within the next two or three weeks.

Um, I wrote another book that's even, listen, if you thought a a, a book for Christians explaining the value of Bitcoin was niche. Boy, do we have another one for you over here, which is, this is basically mere Christianity, but for Bitcoiners, like explaining the gospel to Christians, uh, using, uh, money in, in Bitcoin.

Um, so that's another one I wrote with a buddy of mine. And then the thing that I'm most excited about is with, I don't have a copy of it yet, uh, but we have this kid's book that we wrote called The Orange Umbrella that doesn't explicitly mention Bitcoin. Uh, but that's just a [01:22:00] good, good kid story that kind of talks about, you know, the way that money works and compares it to umbrellas.

So that actually goes to the printer, uh, went to the printer this morning and we should have a few copies and have them, uh, able to be sold in about two weeks. Um, so that's already for sale. Self-published? Yep, self-published. Um, we're looking to get bigger distribution through like, uh, books A Million and some, you know, other, uh, bookstores that we're working on that.

But um, but yeah, you can pre-order that.

Nathan: have some, some, uh, past book

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yes, e exactly. And then.

Nathan: the Pope and stuff.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Exactly. And then, and we just have, there's people who are connected to us who have way bigger followings than I'll ever dream of having. So we've got a couple guys who have like 350 or 400,000 followers and another guy who was like 500, 500,000.

So, so just like leveraging those and um, yeah, so you can go, you can go pre-order those on our website. Um, we, we did basically it's the whole illustrated book. The whole thing rhymes. I wrote all the, the, the text, um, all the words and then how to actually, do you know Joshua Hames?[01:23:00]

Nathan: Yeah, yeah.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Yep. So Joshua's sister, Caris

Nathan: provocateur number one in the, uh, reformation world. Uh,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Correct? Yep.

Nathan: I guess a non boomer provocateur. We got a,

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Correct.

Nathan: at Doug Wilson level yet.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): He's, he's not yet, but he's, he's going strong. But it's Josh's sister. Caris is the one who illustrated our book for, she did a fantastic job.

Nathan: I.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): Um, so yeah, so those are, those are available to pre-order on our website. And, um, so yeah, so we ended up, did, we did the color, it's a illustrated book.

And then, because we had all these, these illustrations, I was like, Hey, we should just do a coloring book too. And so we, we published a coloring book, like Work Twice Sell or Work Once, sell twice. Like let's, let's do this. So we've got a, a full, full book coloring book, 50 pages that we're gonna sell, uh, in collaboration with that.

So you can go, go pre-order that today, tgb.com

Nathan: All right. I'm gonna, I'm gonna pre-order it today before we, uh, before I go to bed, make sure I do that. Eli, thank you so much and looking forward to [01:24:00] continuing to build the kingdom where God has us together, man.

Jordan Bush (@jmbushwrites): a hundred percent. Man. We'd love to chat. We'd love to chat more. This won't be the last. And Eli, if you have other questions, man, hit me up. Happy to, happy to help.

Connect with Rory Groves

Gather & Grow Family Ministry: https://gatherandgrow.us

Kickstarter Campaign – Henry and the Great Society:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gatherandgrow/henry-and-the-great-society (Available until Nov. 6)

The GroveStead Blog (Family Economy & Durable Trades): https://www.thegrovestead.com

Outline:

00:00 Introduction: Embrace Imperfection

00:25 The Podcasting Journey

00:35 Balancing Family and Media

00:59 The Real vs. Technological Advances

03:01 Henry and The Great Society

04:45 Reviving a Lost Classic

05:27 Gather and Grow Ministry

07:21 Kickstarter Campaign and Publishing Goals

10:42 Challenges in Christian Publishing

11:35 Long-Term Strategies for Family Economy

18:28 The AI Arms Race and Its Implications

27:27 Personal Reflections on Real Assets

29:46 The Importance of Discernment

30:35 Surviving the Jobs Apocalypse

31:41 Growing Your Own Food

33:12 Storing Up Without Stress

33:48 Embracing Change and Taking Action

34:30 Faith and Obedience in Uncertain Times

39:58 Building a Family Economy

44:54 Entrepreneurship and Education

46:52 The Journey of Publishing and Family Involvement

52:27 The Power of a United Family Vision

53:59 Conclusion and Call to Action

Transcript:

Rory Groves: [00:00:00]

you don't have to have it all figured out.

From the beginning, before you get started, you don't have to have analysis paralysis. You can just do one thing today with your family that unites your family, that's gonna bring you closer to something that's sustainable, that's going to survive whatever's coming, and it's gonna separate you and join you with other families who are doing the same things.

well welcome back to podcasting. I guess last time we chit chatted you weren't doing podcasts.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah, I think I still have a, uh, I guess tenuous relationship with it. You can devote a hundred percent of your time to your children, to your wife and it, not be enough.

You know what I mean? True. But then the, also the reality is that this media can work on your behalf and on my behalf, round the clock. True. Or relatively cheaply. Yes. You know, so maybe, um. You know, [00:01:00] that'll be, that'll be the discussion that we have here because it's this, uh, tug of war between the analog or maybe the real, we could just say that.

The real mm-hmm. And then the, the make believe technological advances and things like that. So I think I still, I would say that it's a big topic, whatever the metric that I apply now is that. I want to talk to somebody about a subject that I particularly am curious about. All right? And I want to know what do I do?

How do I figure this out wise, men, women, people that are in my network? Why not record it? I wanna have the phone call anyway. I just call you up and say, Rory, help me out with ai. How do I, how do I figure out as I watch all these billions and billions of dollars that don't even, they really exist? Thrown into AI chips because it's [00:02:00] an arms race that will never end.

Rory Groves: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Spearing: How do I protect my family today with my time? I want to call you up and ask you that actual question, and why not hit record and let's not spend a lot of time editing and polishing, because if it's real issues that men on the ground are facing. As they intentionally try to shepherd their families, then just, you know, upload the audio file. Shoot it out there and let it, um, produce, but don't spend a whole lot of time, um, at least right now with the resources that I have trying to polish it.

Trying to just, just let the, the, the content, uh, and the, because that's the medium is people want to have a conversation and want, feel like they're there. So if you and I are really discussing this, this is stuff we're wrestling with, how do we do it?

Talk about what you're working on because that ties directly into it, like about that.

Oh, I know, that's, I'm [00:03:00] thinking.

Rory Groves: So the book, Henry and The Great Society, the, uh, in a nutshell, what it does, describes the breakdown of a family that had lived. A very, uh, integrated way of life for generations. This is a farm family, kind of in the 19, I think the book is set kind of the 1940s, 1950s. It's mid-Century America.

Mm-hmm. The author who wrote it lived this life and he watched his life. His community fall apart when all of the modern conveniences of modern society came to his hometown. And so this is, this is, it's a fictional story, but it's like a cautionary tale, Henry and the Great Society. Mm-hmm. And, and when you read it.

Um, what's, it's really thought provoking because, uh, you see the way, not only that it dismantles this community, that it meaning the technology, the prosperity, all these things that we kind of take for granted as part of modern [00:04:00] life. It's not only that it dismantles this community and more that it begins to dismantle this family.

It's that you see how the thought patterns about life and what is. What is the priority changes in these individual characters? Mainly Henry, who's the father of this family. You see how it begins to break down and wear on him, and he, he's kind of up against an in insert. He's, he's, he's out of his league, so to speak.

Mm-hmm. And so this book is, it was just like very thought provoking book. It actually did very well in its day. It was published in 1969. It had, it had some, um, uh, it had some following there, but it basically fell out a print kind of in the two thousands. And we discovered this book a couple years ago.

Someone had mentioned it. I looked it up. I found. You know, there's used copies still for sale and there's things like that, but it clearly was a very rough shot thrown together version. It wasn't a very well, well [00:05:00] produced version. And before I even read the book, I just had this sense of, uh, this is gonna sound crazy, but it's totally true.

But I just had this sense that we're, uh, my wife and I are gonna get into publishing someday, and this was gonna be the first book that we publish. I hadn't read a page. I just had this sense about it. So then I start reading this book. I end up stop reading it. I get the family together and I start reading it to them because it was everything.

So gather and grow as a ministry. Everything that we're trying to do is all about the family economy. We're trying to bring the family back together in a world that's pulled them apart. And so I'm reading this book and it's like, man, this is like exactly what has happened to the 20th century family and now 21st century family.

And I'm like, Becca, this speaks exactly to what we're trying to reverse as a ministry. Like we're trying to bring God back into the picture. We're trying to bring family back into economy. We're trying to do all of these things. And this book is speaking at it, but kind of in a very unique way because it's not just saying, Hey, let's all do this [00:06:00] thing.

It's saying, here's what can happen if we don't, if we're not intentional about this, here's how the slippery slope works. And so for us, we just saw it as like this would be an incredible tool to be able to put in people's hands to start the conversation. Mm-hmm. Begin to open people's eyes. And we hear that from people who we've come across that we mentioned that we're working on this book, we're gonna bring it back into print.

And we've heard from multiple, multiple people. Like I read this book and it changed my life. Or I, I've run into Amish families, dude Amish, who say I read this book every year just to keep me focused on the things that matter. And they're already not, you know, they're already opting out of most of what we're opting out of.

So it, they, they're, they're on that scale. They're pretty far to the, they're pretty far already. You think like, dude. It's just because of the entrapments of wealth and prosperity and all these things. It's just always in the water that we swim in right now. Mm-hmm. So, anyway, long story short, uh, we have taken this project [00:07:00] on and we, um, we were able to meet with the copyright owner.

I've got this great story about it. Um, I'm not gonna go into the details here. Right now, but this great storyline about how the Lord set up this appointment with the guy who owned the copyrights told 'em about what we were doing, and they're huge supporters of it, and they sold us the rights to republish this book.

And so here we are. We're in the middle of a campaign right now to try to raise funds. To publish the book and to try to open a whole publishing house behind the book because we really want to do much more than just one book. Of course, we want to bring out lots of stuff that's gonna help families rebuild the family economy, which is why we started gather and grow in the first place.

Awesome. Last time. That's not quite an elevator pitch, I guess,

Speaker 2: but I, you sent me the link and I posted it on my ex account, and when I looked at it, you guys had. Met the original goal. Yes. But I imagine that as the original goal gets met, that's kind of the minimum one. [00:08:00] Right. And, and the more that people get behind and support this, the more firepower there is to do other projects or is it, is that particular publishing gets to be That's right.

Bigger.

Rory Groves: Both. Both. So, so the minimum goal was like print black and white book and paper back and just get it out there into people's hands. And you know, you have to order certain multiple thousands of these to actually get a decent price to make it affordable. And so as we met the initial funding goal, which was early on in the campaign, to our delight, we have.

Other, like, they're called stretch goals on Kickstarter. So we have hard now the book, I'll tell you, we've hit a bunch of these stretch goals. So the book is gonna be printed in full color. I have an illustrator who's commissioned to do artwork for the book. Um, he's working on those projects right now. I have, um, it'll be a hardback cover.

Um, it'll have, um, we're, we're actually gonna be producing an audio book version of it now. Which was another stretch goal. So all of this is part of the package, but it's [00:09:00] only for if you pledge before November 6th. Well, November 6th is the last day. But if you pledge before the end of the campaign, you get the book plus all the stretch goals, plus whatever else you want to do.

'cause we have. Other rewards and things that you can get as part of the promotion. All that ends on November 6th. Then, we'll in about, it'll take us about five, six months to actually get the book printed and then it'll go on sale in the spring. So all the backers now will of course get, they'll get the book first, but we may not be able to print a book that's gonna be this high quality again, in this, in this quantity.

So if you're interested in all of this or interested in getting like the audio book thrown in for free, this is the best time. To pre-order. It helps us know how much to order and to be able to afford it. And so, um, but yes, at some point down the road we're gonna also just offer it available through a new publishing house that we're in the process of setting up.

Speaker 2: Nice. Yeah, and I, I think, I mean, if I recall when we were [00:10:00] hanging out and was it 2022 or whatever, um. You were talking about. 'cause 'cause Chris is, you know Yeah. Published and, and some of the, the perils of the publishing industry and Yes. And getting stuff to press and, and you know, just, there's a lot to go.

Into that, to actually pull that off. There's a lot,

Rory Groves: there's a lot of, there's a lot to pull it off. And one of the things that we have felt, well first of all, there's probably no one that's gonna take on family economy as a precise goal of their publishing house like we are. I mean, this is what we're about and we feel the need for a lot more resources out there.

Um. But secondly, there's a lot of consolidation in the Christian publishing industry. There is a lot of, what would you say, uh, content producers that have been falling behind the gates now of secular companies that are taking over these publishing houses. [00:11:00] And they're controlling that information. I don't see that as a trend that's gonna get better going forward.

So if we want to be able to say boldly what we have to say about the family, the Christian family, God's role for the, for fathers, for wives, all of these kinds of things, and how that relates to building an economy together at home, we want to just have the freedom to do that. And that means we're gonna have to go through the initial.

Upstart, um, effort of building our own, uh, house and, um, building our own brand and finding our own customers and being able to speak directly to them.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So talk about, um, a little bit about what's driving this strategy as opposed to uploading a PDF to Amazon. Totally. And print on demand, you know? Yes.

Because obviously that's, that's, that is. You don't own the relationship with the customer, still, you're still relying on the good graces of Amazon to agree. So I, I'm sure that that's it. But what are some of the other things besides that, that make [00:12:00] you, well, it's, it's kinda like,

Rory Groves: yeah, it's what I touched on.

We're, we're entering this age where information, as it becomes more digitized, it's easier to control. I mean, in one way it's easier to disseminate. And that is true. I mean, there, there, it. It's expensive to print, you know, physical things, but in another way, um, we're allowing the information to flow on the rails of people who don't necessarily hold our best interests at heart.

And I say us as believers. Um, and, and so we need to think, you know, a lot of folks have done work on alternative economies and things like that, and it's along those lines. But one of the things I've learned just as an entrepreneur for many years is that. There's this principle, don't build your house on rented land.

Mm-hmm. It's like, you know, a lot of people have gotten into trouble by just using other platforms and then well, of course, becoming de platformed. Or just even the rules of the [00:13:00] game changing. I mean, I remember back when Facebook used to be able to post something on Facebook and all your followers would actually see it.

Imagine that. Yeah. Now you have to pay for the same. Right. And so it's just. It's kind of like this, this whole thing of like what's best in the long game, Christians, you know, we can play the short game, but we can't forget about the long game. So I mean, do what you feel in your conscience to do. But for me, I feel like we need to be focusing on the long run in a lot of these cases, even if there's more of a short term pain, short term expense.

I mean, put it out there. If the Lord's leading you to do something, he's gonna supply. We don't need to abide by the rules of the traditional economy. I think that we can be scrappy, we can fight tough, we can come up with creative, nimble ideas that will send the Goliaths on their backs. Um, but, um, but more importantly, I just think it's, it's a long game strategy.

Developing direct relationships with customers. We have a print newsletter, [00:14:00] I mean. Is there anything crazier than coming out with a print newsletter in, I mean, we did this, now it's been almost 10 years, but we have names and addresses of like thousands of families and we, there is no gatekeeper between us and them.

Um, things don't get lost in the email. Another world, but, and I don't even know if, you know, honestly, if that's the right. Thing to do in the long term, but I know that we've been able to communicate directly with thousands of Christian families, get them inspired about family economy and get them connected with other families that are doing something similar.

So you just don't know, and I, so, so don't throw it out just because it's not new or modern. Um, carefully weigh if, if there's a long game component to that strategy. And I would encourage the same thing with any business no matter what you're doing. Focus on the long-term sustainable business, not the quick exit.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think, um, you know, as [00:15:00] we kind of spoke at the beginning of this, about the relationship with podcasting, you know, and for me realizing, uh. First of all, the fruit from podcasting that there was actually families that would move across the country because they heard a podcast and they thought, oh, people are doing this locally the way I think I want to do it.

They'll visit, um, you know, I'll pull out all the stops because I, I view it as a competition to try to get 'em, you know, and, and, and admittedly so, and then they'll, they'll take root in the community and then become one of my. Most trusted advisors and counselors as a, as a, as a brother in Christ and the family and just loving, you know, and I, I was, uh, teaching a group of, of, uh, nine to 12-year-old girls yesterday about how to drive a nail and drive a screw nice.

And pull a nail and mount something in drywall, you know, so we had nine to [00:16:00] 12-year-old girls. Um, it's a inter, multiple churches involved in local community. And, and his daughter is there and is the most, uh, aware Hmm. Uh, of the, the terms and the, oh yeah. This is friction and metal shavings and math about, you know, 'cause I started talking about how old their house is.

It might have plaster and Hmm. You know, and just seeing a new technology bring a yield that I didn't expect. Then at the same time, realizing that right now in this chair, I am not, uh, directly doing something local. You know, this is, this is a, a bid in a sense, a longer game. Mm-hmm. You're doing something somewhere else locally and that's why you're here, you know, like that.

It's not, uh, a internet celebrity. It's a, it's a reality that, that I, I, we get the newsletter. We read it, we see the events like mm-hmm. It's happening in [00:17:00] person, it's building locally. It, and in a lot of ways this can't be scaled. Mm-hmm. The same way. Right. The economies of, of labor and, you know, and then I, I mean, I understand the value of, I mean, I, I literally gotta just got a package for, like, from a book that is on historic moldings, you know.

Nice. And, I mean, molding, molding itself is. In some ways wasteful people will say, you know, but it's, I mean, it's historic millwork. Love it. And, and this is a nice, nice book, you know, and, and I value having, uh, old books, you know, these, all these construction books in the background and things are old and new, and seeing how they did it, the old ways they did things and, and not sleeping on that like that, that this is, and that's, uh, that's all durable trades is talking about is.

This timeless? Yes. What are the timeless vocations

Rory Groves: Yes.

Speaker 2: That are gonna exist [00:18:00] no matter what. Yeah. AI chip is in a $10 billion server form. Mm-hmm. You know, and, and so, uh, I know you can't give away the conclusions of the book, but like, I mean, we'll put this out definitely before the Kickstarter. Um, but I. I, what are we doing now?

You know? Mm-hmm. I mean, did you by any chance listen to that podcast I sent?

Rory Groves: I didn't get a chance to listen to the one on the server farms. Yeah. Um, but I, I know about that and I know kind of about, I mean, I've been writing a lot and researching a lot of the AI arms race right now, which is what it is.

It's an arms race. That's why. That's why everything's being thrown to the win, uh, to pursue it. Um, and let's get into that, but, um, what to do about it now. So a couple things you touched on. So there's, there's, you can leverage technology and I'm not opposed, I mean, here I am talking [00:19:00] to you on. Basically a Zoom call and so clearly mm-hmm.

I'm not opposed, I mean, we, we use e we, I'm not opposed to it. Mm-hmm. The differences is discernment. It's wisdom and discernment, and I think one of the main things to keep in mind with any tech is. You have to look at what, what are the long, long term ramifications of using this technology? One that I like to look at is, does it unite the family or divide the family?

To me that's, I'm, I'm trying to reduce things down to relationships because I've seen, essentially what we have in modernity is we have this obsession with the individual. And it's, it's been a really bad move for society. But I mean, going back hundreds of years, the Industrial Revolution, the great Enlightenment, all of these, you know, the falling away, the, the, the, just the weird deviations in the Christian Church have all basically been traced back to this lust for individual [00:20:00] autonomy.

And, and so, um. The economy that we Autonomy. Autonomy, yes. Yeah. Yes. Just, just pursu everyone doing what's right in their own, uh, in their own mind or in their own way. Uh, and, and so understand the modern economy and pretty much everything that it produces will be reinforcing this idea of individual, uh, um.

You know, power, uh, lust, pride,

Speaker 2: prosperity, comfort, and you even dress it up as a rugged individualism. Yeah.

Rory Groves: Right,

right.

Yeah. So, so the, the big thing that's happened is that when we've revolved around this idea for a long time now, that if we have more money, then that will bring satisfaction in life and meaning, and all these things, and everybody knows they even know it.

They know it's false. What really brings meaning is relationships. That's the dichotomy. That's what has been broken down in [00:21:00] order to produce this quantum amount of money. So think about it this way. It's like if you take a nuclear bomb, the way it works is, and you maybe you know better than I do, but they, they divide an atom.

In a chain reaction of atoms and the, the severing of that nucleus creates this chain reaction that is, you know, nuclear destructive vision, destruction, power, though, I mean, we harness the power to, we harness that to power, you know, entire cities and entire continents, that that's the kind of power that's harnessed, but it comes at the destruction of matter.

And I would say what's happened in our, the last couple of centuries has been that effect on, by separating the family. If the family was the nucleus, the nuclear family severed that chain reaction unleashed something which was material wealth like the world has never seen, [00:22:00] but we've never been able to move.

Industrial revolution, that's it. The industrial revolution. And we have material. Uh, benefits. I mean, there's a lot of things that we have today that we never would've had, but one of the things you can't say is that people are happier, more well connected, have more meaning in their lives than they did before.

That's the one thing that we've given up. And, and, um, not to bore anybody with stats, but it's like, I think it's the, the, the second leading cause of death for 10. Two 14 year olds. 10 I have, I have a 10-year-old, a 13-year-old, and a 14-year-old. The second leading cause of death right now is suicide for 10 to 14 year olds.

Okay? So that just didn't exist before. That came from somewhere, and it came from this, this lack of meaning and this extreme individualism that tries to put money, success, fame, identity as the draw cat of everything else that we do in life. So. [00:23:00] Okay. Back to the answer. Long-winded answer, just to get back to the tech question is that to me it's just that, is this a technology, whether it's a movie or a screen or, or some business opportunity.

Is this something that's gonna unite my family or is it gonna drive us further apart? And I think you, you need to answer that question. Everyone's gonna have to answer that for themselves, but you need to start asking some question. That, that, and not just adopting technology such as AI because it exists.

That's what we've been doing for the last 50 years, and it, it's been, uh, detrimental to the larger society because of it. Mm-hmm.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah, and I mean, this, this is gonna, this podcast is getting live transcribed, you know, the recording that, that's, that, that's something that's on the back of. The, the platform that as we go, and that's gonna enable me to, you know, go back and research [00:24:00] the, 'cause I have it in text now.

I can search for particular things. I can, I can leverage that to write the descriptions, you know, that are ultimately not gonna really be the meat of this. That's a, it's a little front end polish on stuff, but, um, but I can, I can totally, I mean, I guess. The, you know, the podcast that I sent is essentially saying everybody is connected to this, uh, this AI arms race.

And the, the premise is that they're building a billions of dollars depending on what the project is. They're actually announced one here in North Carolina, that's gonna be 10 billion, uh, 45 minutes from me. Um. Largest single investment in the state of North Carolina history. Uh, supposed to be, uh, whatever, 10 to 20 250,000 square foot warehouses.

Um, [00:25:00] and then I listened to this podcast to that Mike, a mutual friend of ours sent to me, you know, Hey, check this out. And, uh, I listen to it and they say, okay, so essentially. This $10 billion price tag, around 65 to 70% of that price tag is the latest and greatest chips, um, that will be obsolete in 36 months at current technological price.

So saying you're doing a $10 billion project and that $10 billion project is six to 7 billion in chips. That you can only rent at current rate. So just you view it as a rental property now. 'cause this is not necessarily, these bigger companies aren't, don't all have that organic need to process all this data.

They're renting it to smaller players that are outsourcing it. 'cause they can't build a $10 billion facility essentially. So they're asking people to just, they're trying to [00:26:00] build the latest and greatest they can get, the highest re return on renting the processing. That no matter what if, if, if, if you stop spending this money in 36 months, you don't, you know, so basically it's inevitable.

The, the real estate, the value of the real estate gets depreciated on a 36 month timeline, um, to 30%, 25 to 30% the original value. And there's no way you can rent that space. Those servers for, for longer than that. If everybody, you know, unless we agree, okay, this is gonna be the most processing, which NVIDIA's not gonna let that happen because that's what's causing, and, and then he basically, they said, if you think that because you're conservatively investing in, in, in REITs or these, which are typically the most conservative, they have a 25 to 30% commercial real [00:27:00] estate.

Uh, aspect that is these things and that these companies are all able to write this off, or not even show this on the balance sheet because they're forming separate. Entities Yeah. That are also being backed by lenders and investors or whatever. So it's, it's, it's mutually assured destruction.

Rory Groves: I feel like I've seen this movie before, don't you?

Don't you feel like

Speaker 2: we've been

Rory Groves: here. Yeah,

Nathan Spearing: exactly. And that's, and that, I guess that's for me as I, first of all, for me, I think, thank God I bought land. And I built a house on the land with my own labor. So I, I paid essentially wholesale, um, for a real asset that I'm sitting in right now that is only gonna get value.

And so the fact that I built it with my own skill and my own hands is, is I'm, I'm gonna win. In a lot of ways, because I [00:28:00] developed the land too. I, I brought the plumbing and electrical and septics and, you know, piping water. Um, and I have relationships with a plumber that enabled me to do, you know, 1800 feet of infrastructure for cost because I help him, he helps me, and we, we, we, we have, uh, labor and time that we can exchange for each other's benefit.

And so there's these relationships, but. I still have, I'm, I mean, where I am personally right now is minimizing debt, you know, because there still is a price tag associated with, and, and, and we use our current currency. I mean, basically the way I've even used it is up, up until now, I have been okay with debt because it allows me to do essentially five times what I could do in cash.

What I have in cash, 20% down payment. I can get five times the value from cash and that if I [00:29:00] don't put that cash into something that is real, it's gonna get worth less. Because the only way you can have the billions to build these server farms is if it's make belief to money. You know? Where is that coming from?

Where is that? That's on everybody's balance sheet. Yeah. You know the whole world Yeah. Is being UN is underwriting this fantasy. Um, but, but, you know, I, I guess that's what, what are the things you're, you know, you're telling fathers and, you know, mothers and things like, how are you, in a sense, I view this as a hedge, like mm-hmm.

If you're, if you are like the man Vista car and understanding the times, what do we do? You know? Mm-hmm. It's, it's definitely not double down on ai. Uh, at least in a way that you think it's gonna continue at its current rate. 'cause I think that's, we can get pulled in as Christians, we can get pulled into the arms race.[00:30:00]

And want to use everything. But yeah,

Rory Groves: so, so besides discernment, which is critical, and, and, and by the way, um, talk to people, you know, talk to lots of people. Uh, discernment comes from, um, you know, people that God's put in your life. Elders, um, thinkers, you know, listening to podcasts and things like this.

And, um, but it comes by prayer too. I mean, that's how the manifesta car discern the times and, um. There's discernment and, um, we should all be pursuing that. Um, I, uh. In response to that, I have a very specific response actually, and it just kind of, it just kind of confirmed. I was thinking about posting this to our blog from our, uh, the latest newsletter.

I wrote an article called Surviving the Jobs Apocalypse and um, we're, you know, we are just getting started and it's been. Um, painful to watch families that we've known for years are starting to hit up [00:31:00] against this, uh, jobs revolution, or what are they calling it? Um, they're calling it the, the white collar recession because mm-hmm.

Because the jobs, they're not wiping out the trades. Actually, the trades jobs are the ones that. That we don't have enough workers for. It's wiping out the white call or the information processing. And we knew this was coming. I wrote about it in durable Trades. That was a while ago. But anyway, I, so I'm gonna publish, um, I'm gonna put this on my blog, the grove stead.com.

I'll just put the whole article on there. So go check it out if you wanna read it. But in, in that article, I specifically answer this question and what, here's, here's what, how I feel every family's gotta choose. What they're gonna do. But at a minimum, everyone should be growing food number one. Mm-hmm. I say farming is a floor, and if you can still eat it puts a lot more options on the table.

So I, I make, I pull no punches about that. I mean, we live on a farm. We try to be as self-sufficient as possible. We raise [00:32:00] much of our own food, not all of it, but at least we're learning the skills. So I say, number one, grow your own food. And I,

Nathan Spearing: I guess I'd like to insert, I, we, we've had discussions before that is not.

I have a bunch of seeds in the pantry. Yeah, right. And I'll throw 'em out. It's a survival bank back door in the, in the event that it, you know, like that's in a sense, having a couple raised beds is a, is a is a way. It's still better. I've heard Joel s say it like, have a tomato plant. If that's it, start somewhere.

'cause you're learning exactly a skill. Like, oh, that plant died. Why'd it die? You know, you're learning it at a small scale. Yeah. Uh, and you're scaling

Rory Groves: from there. Um, and, and it'll take you, and the reason why you say don't have a seed bank, just thinking you're gonna throw out the windows 'cause it'll take you decades to learn how to feed yourself off the land.

I mean, it's the sad reality if you don't, unless you were raised in it and I wasn't. It takes a long time. To learn to do that. So that's number one is like, just, [00:33:00] just understand, most of humans for most of human history knew how to feed themselves off the land, and we've lost that knowledge. Um, number two is, um, now I'm gonna blank on it.

Um, number two is store up, but don't stress. Hmm. So this is a principle is all through scripture. Uh, it's all through our ancestors is they stored away. I mean, it wasn't like, uh, you know, the idea of a prepper was just normal life for most people that you would store up for winter. I mean, it's called the harvest.

You know, it's not like, it's not brain science. We've made it into some kind of stigma because, and I think it is a stigma because it goes against this idea that anything bad could ever happen. Yeah. Um, but that's another one. Don't stress about it, but just do it as a way of life. And then there, uh, another one I'll mention is that sometimes change is good.

Sometimes this could be, you know, a, a shaking, whether it's technology or loss of a job or something like that. This could be a wake up call to [00:34:00] do something that. God wants you to do like he there, there is a shift in direction and, and maybe you've even been looking for an excuse to do something well, um, don't, don't wait.

You don't, don't have to wait for the floods to arrive to begin building your arc. You should be doing it now, but just it, it doesn't need to be a thing of stress, but it does need to be a thing of action. You know, you need to be a man of action with your family and begin moving towards something. Um. I, I was sharing with someone yesterday about.

When God called Abraham, well he was Abram out of U of the Chaldeans to the Promised Land. It says he called him to a place that he did not know Abraham, didn't know where he was going, but he left everything behind because of his faith. And it was his faith that was credited as righteousness, his faith in God.

And I think a lot of times, guys, especially those of us who are mid-career and. We're, we've got a lot of [00:35:00] responsibility. Maybe we've got a lot of debt. It can be the scariest thing in the world to rock that boat. And I get it. I mean, I, I went through the same thing, uh, you know, several years ago when we completely, when I walked away from my tech job and I started a family ministry and, you know, we live, we lived very frugally to make that work in the early years.

But the point is, um, uh. You're not, you're not gonna see what it all turns. You're not gonna see the promised land on your first step. It's just gonna be a small step of obedience out of a way of life that isn't producing life. You're stepping away from a culture of death, and then you trust. It's relationship with the Lord that's gonna lead you to the next step and the next step and next step.

It's just a pattern I see over and over again in people's lives. I've talked to dozens of families that have said the same kind of thing that they never thought that they'd be in the position they're in today, but it all started with just having the faith to take the first step. So that's, [00:36:00] that's a beautiful thing because it means that you don't have to have it all figured out.

From the beginning, before you get started, you don't have to have analysis paralysis. You can just do one thing today with your family that unites your family, that's gonna bring you closer to something that's sustainable, that's going to survive whatever's coming, and it's gonna separate you and join you with other families who are doing the same things.

Kinda what you were talking about before with, um, the podcast and how it attracted other families.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Rory Groves: I think one

Nathan Spearing: of the things I want to add. Um, as where I am in, in this space is, and, and I was learned about this in our men's Bible study about Genesis 34 is where Jacob didn't, uh, he, he didn't go to where God said to go.

He kind of stopped. We can, you obviously there's a, is a narrative of in scripture, so you have to be careful about making. Oh, that means this, you know? Mm-hmm. But essentially the overarching thing when [00:37:00] Dina is assaulted. Mm. And, uh, she was, she leaves the house, she's out, the, the foreign people snag her.

The Jacob comes back and is quiet. His sons are angry. His sons do this thing. And essentially, I, I kind of was pushing my past, like draw back to a bigger conclusion and it's essentially, he didn't continue. Two where he was supposed to be, he had kind of stopped. He was, he was supposed to leave the way, the land, the people were doing it.

And he started to, and he kind of got outside, but he didn't continue on to where he was gonna be. You weren't doing what you were supposed to.

Therefore this bad thing happened. And I guess the reason I'm using that, I mean, we have David and Bathsheba, he was not, he didn't go to war. Yeah. So he is, but this particular story, you know, for me it's a long road, you know? Mm-hmm. To get to the promised land mm-hmm. To get [00:38:00] to leave and settle. It doesn't go easy

my favorite part of Abraham's story is Genesis 1414. He takes his 318 trained men and they go and they have to do a hostage rescue for the people because the, the local kingdoms. And that's my prescriptive for, hey, you need to be building a, a protective security capacity as part of this, you know, if you mm-hmm.

And, and I think I like hanging out with guys like you because they tell, Hey, special ops guy, grow food. Like it's act in a lot of ways. And I, you know, I see, uh, I think it's, uh, the end of the world is, is not the beginning. There's just the beginning, which is a, you know, a liberal demographer. But he, he says in there, famine has killed more people than war, you know, I don't know exactly how to shape it, but I, I take the Army's logistic kind of framework and. Go buy that. And it, it starts out with food and sustenance and clothing in that thing. And I'm having discussion with guys, um, about it. I mean, [00:39:00] my, my kind of banner that I'm erecting now that I may end up but is, is the tactical household and Hmm.

Talking about, um, taking military principles and applying them and, and that's just the framework that's familiar to me and is logical. But then to take that Army Logistics manual and say, Hey, you wanna do operations? You know, this is not necessarily gonna be for operations, but this is, you want your family and your household to continue to operate.

Here's the things that the military says. You gotta have to be able to do operations, you know? That's great. I love that. And you don't need rocket launchers and Right, you know, jet fuel necessarily. But you need fuel, you need this, you need and, and. Um, but it, it's, it takes a really long time and I also feel like, um, you can't do it by yourself either, you know?

Yes. Right.

Rory Groves: Well, and the thing, talk about that aspect,

Speaker 2: the net

Rory Groves: local network and how you do that. The thing that's, [00:40:00] it's both hopeful and, um, uh, and encouraging about this, but, but it takes a lot of responsibility, is that you can do something. In fact, the one thing that you can do. Is the best thing that can be done, which is rallying your own family around a vision, a purpose.

Mm-hmm. And this thing's never gonna turn around. Because some Supreme Court justice gets, you know, appointed or some president or some law or whatever. I mean, there are, there are things that you can certainly help and hinder at the political level. But look, man, I mean, if, if you're not rallying every ounce you've got.

You know, it said that, uh, uh, Noah in godly fear prepared an arc for the saving of his household. Mm-hmm. I mean, if you're, if you're not moved to do everything else you can besides check the box every couple of years at, you know, at the elections, um, [00:41:00] then you're not gonna make it. You, it's gonna take everything.

But that's the good news, is that you don't have to wait for some. Political party to come to your rescue. You can do so much as a family today. You can start and um, and, and that, you know, what we was saying before is as soon as you take those initial steps, you start to begin that journey, you are gonna find other families who are doing the same thing.

We have in, um, uh, Minnesota, where, where we are, we have been hosting events through Gather and Grow for, I mean, well honestly. Goes before, before we started the family ministry, but we, we host events up there multiple times a year. We have fairs, we have conferences, we bring in speakers. We've had, um, thousands of people come through our property and, um.

And this one common refrain that we hear from so many of these, because we're always speaking on family economy, that's kind of our core focus. They always say, [00:42:00] I didn't know that there were other people out there like us that were feeling this way. You know, that we're growing their own food or trying to, trying to keep the family together in their vocations.

And they're so refreshed when they find a pocket of people out there. Who are talking about these things and gathering and encouraging each other, and that's just, that's part of the process and that's part of the excitement is that oftentimes you might be the only one in your neighborhood or community or your um, uh, church.

We've heard that many times. I'm the only, we're the only family at our church that thinks this way. There's others out there. The Lord has reserved many others who have not bowed the knee. And so, um, that's part of the exciting part of the walk of faith in all of this. There the Lord has, um, he's not checkmated.

He's got a plan for his people and he knows how to hold. The righteous to rescue the righteous from trials while he holds the ungodly for punishment. So there's, there's a dual thing that'll be worked [00:43:00] out here. I don't know what the role of all of the technology will be. I really think we're at the very early stages of this revolution, and it's a little bit difficult.

Um, and arrogant to try to predict it. We don't, we know that it will be a mega disruption and that that much is pretty much certain and, and we've seen it already, but, um, but we really don't know, you know, what, what to invest in and what to, um. Uh, what technologies to embrace and which ones to avoid and why, but we do know that we can make huge strides with our own families.

We still have the freedom to do that in America, and you can begin building something that's small but durable, something that's going to not just turn, turn over because they invent a better AI chip, right? Mm-hmm. That's the kind of thing that families need to be looking at. That's why I wrote about durable trades is because these are historical.

Types of work that for the most part are probably gonna be with us for several [00:44:00] more centuries.

Nathan Spearing: Hmm. So talk about some, some, uh, specific things that you're, uh, you know, we, we, I'll I'll link our previous podcast that people can go back and talk about that. I think that that will be maybe the. Primer besides durable trades and then our conversation, but the primer on the Oh yeah.

Rory Groves: Family

Speaker 2: economy. Family economy, and sure. How that, that works. But talk about how you, um, decide because if you're not continuing to invest and learn, you, you're dying, you're, you're, you're not. So talk about some specific ways that your family is continuing to, to head towards the promised land and well invest in these things.

Certainly besides publishing.

Rory Groves: Certainly, yeah, well, publishing's the latest thing. Um, so certainly, um. I, I just think that entrepreneurship is the best teacher. I mean mm-hmm. Learn by [00:45:00] doing. And, um, you meet people when you step out there and start doing things. And so, uh, um, like one of the things that we've focused on a lot in the last several years is getting our kids involved in everything that we can get them involved in.

I mean, of course we homeschool at home, but when we do conferences on the road, our kids are always with us. We almost never do a conference. Without the whole family together, it's just a principle that I, that I try to adhere to where, where possible, um, because it's training my children in all kinds of, uh, life skills.

So for, for, for that. So that's a huge part of the education is just bringing your family along and then you also get to learn how. Manhandle a 3-year-old. Yeah. During a day long conference workshop. And, um, so mom and dad get a good education too, but, um, but we find it to be really bonding for the family.

I believe it's building ties, it's gonna last, you know, our children's lives. And those are the [00:46:00] relational aspects of it. But in terms of the other things is. You know, you always have a number of options on the table and it takes a lot of patience 'cause you're, you're never gonna get to do everything that you dream up.

But there are certain doors that begin to open as you move forward. I kind of think of it like, um. If you're in a canoe and you're going down the river, like if you, if you try to stop still or park that thing and then, and kind of like map out everywhere you're gonna go, but you're already in the water, you're probably gonna tip the canoe over.

The best thing to do is to just start moving forward. And you can actually have better ability to steer that, uh, that canoe, uh, than if you try to stand still. And life, life is a river. I mean, I don't know how else to say it. Just start moving forward and you'll see opportunities open that you couldn't see around the Riverbend until you get there.

And that's been, you know, like I said, with the publishing, I started this out saying we just, we saw this book. It just came to us like, I think we're [00:47:00] supposed to publish this book. I think this is gonna be part of what our ministry at some point, that was three years ago. And it took us a long time to figure out how exactly this was gonna happen.

We met with a lot of people. We tried to, to, to learn about the publishing side business. I know nothing about it. This is our first entrance into it. We met some great people that are, that have offered to help us along the way and but, but it's been a, it's been a very deliberate process, but that's one option.

I mean, there's a lot of other things that we would like to do and all things in their timing. Right. There's a, see, there's a, there's a time for, for everything under heaven. So, but as long as we're moving forward, we continue to make connections and we continue to see opportunities open up. And some of them we fall flat on our faces and they don't work out.

And some of 'em, you get a little wiser for the wear and you can do better next time. So that's, that's kind of it. But I just think of like. The family is the education, the economy, you know, bringing folks together is the [00:48:00] education. It's really confronting all of life with, um, with real skills. And if you don't know what you're doing, go find a mentor and learn it, uh, or study up on it, uh, and rehearse it.

The other thing too is, um, I never really envisioned myself as an author. Um, that wasn't like even. I mean, I was a computer programmer for my whole career, and it's like, it wasn't until I started writing for our family newsletter that I didn't kind of learn, like I actually, I really enjoyed this. I, I kind of would like to, to do more of this.

And eventually all that writing led to my first book and then a whole new door. I mean, a huge door opened up for us with the publishing of durable trades. So all of these things are like, it's. You know, it's just taking action and getting practicing and beginning to move forward on that. Life is a great teacher in that way.

Nathan Spearing: Well, and I would, I would guess, uh, that having thousands of addresses [00:49:00] both physical and email and a gather and grow, uh, brand and nonprofit and training that you've done, and the relationships that you built in person are how you are able to successfully raise what you have. Yeah. No, I mean, you wrote can't do that without years of faithfully Exactly.

Doing a print newsletter. Yeah. That how, I mean, how many, when you first sent it out, how many went out, you know, like 30. Yeah. And what do you, what is the circulation now?

Rory Groves: The last one went out and we're actually calling some of that back because, um, you know, a, after so many years, but the last one went out to something like 4,500 households.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah,

Rory Groves: and that's all word of mouth. We don't advertise. I mean, I advertise that if I'm on a podcast, I'll let people know we have it. Yeah, but it's a free newsletter. We'll mail it to your house and it's just this, it's, it's literally just like working out. How does a family economy work? What does it look like?

Here's some of the stories that we've [00:50:00] learned, here's some inspiration. And um, and trying to encourage the people who are trying. That's always been my heart behind the newsletter is I don't wanna persuade anyone to do anything they don't wanna do. I want to find the families who are trying, and I wanna put some wind in their sails because it's so rare to find a family like that.

They need encouragement. I really feel that that's a, a huge part of what we're doing, what we exist for. Yeah. Can you, uh, can you get. Digital copy of it? Or is that just, I don't, I just don't have a digital copy, uh, download. But if you go to our website, gather and Grow Us, um, we have the links for the Kickstarter campaign, right at the top of the page.

You'll see that we have the newsletter sign up, we have links to the book, we have audios from past conferences. And, um, yeah, and you're right. Yeah. I, and that's probably something that

Nathan Spearing: makes it it special too. 'cause it's in a sense, you're, you are, uh, not. Using technology that would make this easier. You know, you're [00:51:00] choosing a different

Rory Groves: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Thing,

Rory Groves: you

Speaker 2: know.

Rory Groves: Well, it's, I mean, our kids write articles. It, it's a thing that the way we do it right now, it works for right now. Um, and because, largely because it makes it a family project rather than dad sitting at the computer crunching out a, you know, an email. Uh, and easing and stuff like that. And believe me, I know all about that.

I came from that world. I was, that was my life for 25 years before I moved into this. So for me, it's like, it's cathartic to get away from all the screens and, and to, to involve my family. And we used to fold and stuff, the newsletters right at our, uh, living room table. Mm-hmm. Um, I've got pictures in one of the book of, of like the, the children just folding stuff in like 500 envelopes and eventually we had to move.

To a local printer 'cause it just got to be too many. But for years that's how we did it. And it was just, it was really fun and, and, and, um, it was a great way to connect with other families. But it's not like a formula, it's just something that felt right at the time. We [00:52:00] pursued it, it led to another thing which was publishing of a book.

And that led to another thing, which is now we're doing, you know, speaking on this topic. We're hosting events at our farm. Um, and that's led to now opening a publishing house. So it's that I would not have been able to sit down and map out this course. If we had talked five years ago, even, I wouldn't have had the foggiest notion of what was coming down the pike.

But, um, that's the fun of it. And I really think that the Lord blesses the families that unite around a common vision. I think that that's built into the DNA of what God's plan was for families. Mm-hmm. For me, I believe, you know, uh, Kevin Swanson, I have a picture of an ax on the front of, uh, uh, the family economy, and that comes from a saying from Kevin Swanson who said.

The family economy is like. An ax, it's like an ax head. If you're trying to use just an ax head to take down trees, it's gonna take you a while. But if you put a handle on that head, [00:53:00] the capability for useful work increases a hundred fold. And that's the basic elements of the family economy. It's uniting around a common vision where you're all working together rather than being pulled in a million different directions.

And the, the, the kind of capacity and capability that you have with those whom God has given and entrusted to you is. Exponentially more than anything. Any kind of thing you could conjure in the modern economy or doing it alone. So that's a little bit about us.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah, I was, uh, a friend of mine, uh, we, I got in, I actually got in the background.

I have this axe here. Um, nice. Love it. Uh, in talking about the, the usefulness of that. Okay. And compared to a sword, compared to a shovel, compared to, you know, all that stuff. And, uh, it, it's, it's pretty interesting how these, these things reflect God's order back to us. But

Rory Groves: Amen.

Nathan Spearing: I mean, [00:54:00] I, I really appreciate your time, uh, and I know, you know, you got more things to build locally, but, uh, just give us a recap of where Sure.

Where people can find you.

Rory Groves: Well, biggest, biggest way to support us right now would be to, um, go pre-order the book Henry and The Great Society. Uh, it's on Kickstarter, but if you go to Gather and Grow Us, I've got the link right at the top of the page. That would be amazing. You could see what we're up to.

The latest. There's a video all about our ministry at the top of the Kickstarter campaign page. Um, but otherwise sign up for the newsletter. Same place. Um, you could order our books, durable Trades, or the Family Economy or just drop us a note. Let us know how we can support your family. That's what my wife, Becca, and our family, uh, want to do.

We pray for families every single night. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Awesome. Thank you, Nate. Appreciate being back. Let's do it again. Absolutely.

[00:55:00] Click

Nathan talks about buying land, building for future generations, finishing 75 Hard with his wife, and the discipline required to keep moving forward when outcomes lag behind obedience. He also opens up about a conversation with Ben Greenfield that reshaped his vision for Tactical Household—shifting from selling digital products to creating real-world brotherhood rooted in faith, training, and community.

Linke:

• ️ Join Tactical Household (Free Skool Group): Join here
•  Previous Episode: The Power of Muscle and Money in Men’s Duties w/ John Moody
•  Transform NC (Remodeling): https://www.transformnc.com
•  Life on Target Archive: https://www.spearing.co/podcast
•  Connect with Nathan: Instagram | X

Timestamped Outline

[00:00:00] Opening — Reflections After the John Moody Episode

• Nathan shares listener feedback and lessons learned.
• The tension between business growth and generational vision.

[00:01:00] Faith, Risk, and Real Estate

• Buying 54 acres, living in a bus, and trusting God to provide.
• Why this decision was about faith, not financial return.

[00:04:00] Generational Thinking

• Rejecting the “my kids can fend for themselves” mentality.
• Building homes for future generations and cultivating family legacy.

[00:06:00] When Faith Feels Foolish

• Facing the temptation to dig up in doubt what was planted in faith.
• Holding the line when vision feels irresponsible.

[00:07:00] Physical and Mental Discipline

• Day 74 of 75 Hard: workouts, rucks, and grit with his wife.
• How shared suffering builds unity in marriage and mindset.

[00:08:00] Business Disappointment — The $266K Contract That Didn’t Close

• Lessons from losing a big project.
• The value of paid design agreements vs. free estimates.
• Protecting time, expertise, and confidence in the process.

[00:10:00] From Wants to Needs

• Focusing on essential service work over luxury remodels.
• Example: solving real problems that clients can’t ignore.

[00:12:00] Provision, Protection, and Preparation

• How the theology of violence connects with business and readiness.
• Why men must earn, train, and build margin for defense and provision.

[00:13:00] The Ben Greenfield Call

• The big takeaway: people crave real community, not just content.
• Pivoting Tactical Household toward face-to-face brotherhood.

[00:15:00] Building Local Ops Through the Church

• Feast of Tabernacles campouts, Psalm sings, and local scouting groups.
• Why true community starts inside faithful churches.

[00:18:00] Tactical Household 2.0

• Opening the Skool group for free.
• Passing on lessons from the military and entrepreneurship.
• Helping men lead, protect, and provide through practical training.

[00:21:00] Finishing Strong

Finishing 75 Hard and continuing discipline beyond the challenge.

Closing smaller contracts, staying sharp, refusing to quit.

“Don’t get down—get to work.

Transcript:

Nathan Spearing: [00:00:00] So, what'd y'all think of that John Moody episode? Huh? Talking with him about maybe making that a more regular thing. Got some good feedback from. Those in the inner circle at my church, et cetera. So, uh, anyway, I, I was trying not to doubleheader John Moody, uh, publishing in the life on target feed. I'm not saying that you particularly wouldn't be able to handle it, but there are weaker minds about if you just, uh, scroll on social media, you'll find, uh, proof of exactly what I'm talking about there.

But, uh, I just wanted to. Hop on here and talk about some of the unique challenges that I am facing with the business, with the family vision, with building something of value for multiple generations. Um, probably talked about this before a little bit, but one of the conversations or [00:01:00] themes of some of the conversations my wife and I have been having lately is the.

Belief that we kind of swung for the fences a little bit. We bought a lot of land and we moved into the bus and didn't really think that through super well, except for we will figure it out, we'll muscle it through. And then not only did we, uh, buy 20 acres, build a barn, finish out the bus. Then we also saw that, uh, he was surveying the land next door and we had the opportunity to buy another 34 acres at a lot more expensive price point than the 20.

So we had to liquidate some real estate and do that. We, uh, were able to do some tax, uh, stuff to [00:02:00] minimize the effects of that, but essentially liquidated. An asset and put it into a generational asset, if you will, that we wasn't gonna really pay off monetarily. It was gonna give us the fiscal location to build houses for our kids.

I think that we'll talk about that. I don't think we've talked about that here on life on Target, but I'm very much, I would say it's probably mostly influenced because of John Moody, uh, that the whole, like I made it on my own. Uh, my kids can do it. My kids can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and, and, you know, I'm gonna, that kind of boomer mentality of having, they're gonna spend all their money and, and, uh, you know, kids can sort it out for themselves.

That's just a, is a terrible mindset and, and, and methodology to approach family living. And so. You know, buying this land [00:03:00] being something, the reason that we're buying it, besides, I'm sure if you follow us on some of the social media channels, you'll see that we just did our fifth annual Feast of Tabernacles Camp out.

So some of it is here and now. I mean, we, we did our first annual Feast of Tabernacles camp out. It, uh, within a few weeks of us closing on the land, I think, I think we closed on August of 21 and, and it was like September or October of 21 that we had the first camp out. We didn't even have anything out there.

We just literally had the land, the raw land. We, or, uh, rented a of John had a camp out. So that has, uh, had yield, uh, relational yield right now. And has been something that has become culturally something that I think a lot of people at our church look forward to. And for sure my kids look forward to it.

It's a similar level of excitement to Christmas, uh, moving up to Feast of Tabernacle. So not to say that [00:04:00] all that we've done to this point has been, uh, without the yield, but in a lot of ways it's a liability because the cost of owning it exceeds the cost. Of that exceeds profits on the land and in the monetary sense.

So this is a, was a spiritual, uh, relational generational investment. It was not a, a real estate. I mean, it, it obviously it's gonna hold its value, it's gonna appreciate, but you're, and I maybe can use it to, uh, leverage it, uh, for strategic. Yeah, investments or whatever, but that the intent right now is not to do that.

The intent is to continue to pay that down and to essentially own the whole compound house and home and everything, cash and it to [00:05:00] essentially be, um, it's standalone, uh, self-performing place for us to live and for future generation. To give them a house is a goal. Um, we'll likely try to build a cottage first that one of our kids can use when they get married.

And then, uh, maybe follow on cottages that other kids can marry when they marry, can move into. But, uh, the overall goal will be, I think when my wife and I in our late sixties, seventies age, we'll move out of the house as soon as, uh, one of our kids gets to the point that. They have more kids than make sense for us.

Where us moving there, we'll just, we'll switch with 'em. They'll, they'll move into the big house and my wife and I will move out and move into the cottage. And, uh, essentially that vision we feel like is, is, uh, a good one. Uh, but where we are today, uh, it doesn't [00:06:00] feel like it was smart. Uh, the tendency can be to dig up in doubt.

What we planted in faith, uh, and that, you know, I think I've talked to you guys about how I, my friend told me about that and it's kind of just been something that's been ringing in my mind. Uh, doing 75 hard right now, day 74 for me. I just finished my second workout of day 74. And, uh, one more day, two more workouts.

Uh, another quarter of water today and I'll be done. Another, uh, gallon of water tomorrow. I think I still have to read my 10 pages stick to my diet. So looking pretty good that we're gonna finish that. The ruck that I just did, I did with my wife. I had a 45 pound ruck on. She had 20 pounds on. She, uh, she's a champ because she is literally did that ruck with 20 pounds on and, and right after lifting, uh, this morning she did [00:07:00] squat.

As well. And uh, so I was like, dang girl, like, uh, you're okay. Probably be okay if you just drop the ruck and did the, did the walk 'cause you did squats. And she said, I'm not phoning it in the last couple days. And that's, uh, literally what I like about my woman is she's, she's probably. Okay. She maybe isn't quite as intense as me physically, but she is, uh, every bit mentally is tough.

And, and you guys all probably know that because she let me move her into a bus for three and a half years. So anyway, um, wanted to get on here, encourage you. Uh, I had, uh, a $266,000 contract that I have been designing for some clients for, uh, the last three or four months. We do a des a paid design process, uh, specifically for instances like this.

So when the client calls me up in the morning and says, [00:08:00] Hey, uh, we looked at it, we trust you. We, uh, decided that it was gonna be you or nobody else, uh, that does this. And we looked at how you did this, and we like the process. We trust you. But we're looking at it and thinking ultimately this is a, a want and not a need for us.

And that we need to steward the resources we have and that the price point on this is a little bit higher than expected, which is understandable. And we're never gonna ask somebody to do it cheaper 'cause we know it's worth, you need to pay what it's worth and or you don't, uh, you don't get the results.

So everything for these clients is a. Perfect fit as far as our brand and what we do, but then ultimately not pulling the trigger on the job. And it, quite frankly, is the, the biggest thing that we have in the pipeline right now. Uh, not the only thing, we got lots of [00:09:00] things going on, but this was the larger contract that we were working on.

This is honestly the one that I was hoping to get and I didn't get it. And so it's providing a lot of opportunity for reflection. On the business, on the focus of what we're doing. Uh, I guess the, the huge win is the fact that, uh, I charged 12 grand for that job and didn't do it for free. And I, I preach that all the time that you should not be doing if you were in blue collar.

Um, specifically if you're a general contractor and you're trying to piece together a pretty complex set of trades and skills. Zero reason. You should be doing it for free, for a free estimate. And I have, uh, done some training with some individual, training with guys, some group training with guys to lay out that process.

And ultimately it works very well. It works very well to not end up at the end of this couple months of, you know, and, uh, I [00:10:00] think we were at. 80 to 90 hours or so of, of bidding the project and meeting. And it was the first time that we did this hybrid design agreement where it's a fixed fee hourly, so that it actually, at the end of it, you can feel like you actually made money at it instead of just basically covering costs.

So, uh, all around from that perspective, a win, but then not closing the contract. And so the reflection that I would have is. You know, what are the, the things, how can I tailor my business and my services that I offer to clients to really be needs? And so I guess tangibly what that means for me right now is I, I'm looking at what are some, uh, some smaller jobs that need to be done, that clients have to do it.

And the one example that really pops to my mind would be the, uh, I just did some window repair. For a guy. So basically every time it rained really hard, [00:11:00] it got wet in his house and we found out that they hadn't taped the windows and flashed them property properly. So I was able to charge, essentially a pretty high rate to go in there and do surgery on the siding.

We're still a little bit, we're still in the process of doing it right now because we end up having to do more siding work and uh. And we're gonna have to paint it and things like that. But yeah, we at least got him dry. So we've had a couple rains and he said, Hey, it's, it's dry. So that would be example of a need, you know, and that's a, that was, I think the price point on that job is 7,000, 7,400 bucks or something like that.

And uh, and you know, obviously a huge difference between that and the 260 something thousand dollars remodel and wanting to. Essentially I've, I've done this before. I've, I've kind of focused on doing, um, uh, service work and [00:12:00] short, smaller jobs, but it, it's harder to keep the pipeline full. It's more work.

And, and so anyway, those are, those are some reflections that I have there. Um, I also, uh, honestly, still feel a pretty high hard calling or, or at least at, maybe it needs to be a ministry. More than it needs to be, uh, uh, business, but to help, uh, families and particularly men develop the marshal skills through the theology of violence for the ability to have a mindset to protect their family.

Um, I think there's a lot of people teaching the provision aspect or the protection aspect, um, but maybe not pairing them together and, and holding them in tension, how you gotta make money. Uh, so that you have margin to trains, you have margin to buy, uh, the weapons and, and things like that to be able to set your house up to be secure, to be able to, [00:13:00] um, have margin to, you know, store fuel on your property and, uh, have water sources and power alternate power sources with batteries and solar and.

Uh, generators and, um, you know, durable food sources and, and all these different things, and I feel a real need. Uh, that's what I enjoy most of all is, is working through that with our own family, but then also talking about how we're doing that. And so I, I reached out to Ben Greenfield and uh, he was gracious enough to give me 20 minutes or so on the phone and talk me through, because I just honestly, guys just feel like, uh.

Uh, the sales and digital, Hey, buy this course, or, you know, do this, uh, ebook and this and that. It's just, it's so, um, so played out and it's so corny and even, and, and, you know, and, and I, I felt this, uh, going into the call, [00:14:00] but he confirmed that kind of saying, you know, that people are desiring community.

They're re desiring the analog experience, they're desiring. Uh, to be with other people. And I, I got that in that first Warriors Tending Gardens, uh, event that I held. I had 15 guys come out. We, and, and we shot out to a mile at this facility, this range, and that, that people said that was epic. But the feedback was, you know, being around a fire with guys and having the ability to talk about the issues that everybody's dealing with to build that community.

And I, and I don't wanna build something that is. Alternate to the church. I want it to be something that is building churches, guys from different churches and community. And, and that's really what's gonna scratch that itch is being in a church with lots of men and having that, uh, experience, uh, week in and week out.

I mean, I, I think we've talked about [00:15:00] this before. I'm at prayer meeting on Wednesday where Sunday and night and uh, Sunday morning worship. And then monthly Psalm sings with men and, you know, feast the Tabernacles camp out, and, uh, Pentecost Feast and, you know, all these different times, I mean, we, we are a Protestant church, but, uh, we, we use opportunities in the church calendar to, to celebrate, uh, and have, uh, you know, just get together and sing Psalms and, uh, eat good food together more so than hyper ritualizing it.

And getting our kids together and, and just really, I mean, interested in enjoying that and, and had a friend come and drive out that, uh, coincidentally went to my, or I guess not coincidentally, intentionally went to my, uh, first event that I had and then has stayed in touch and been a good friend and we had opportunity to work out together and, uh, work through and, uh, different things and talk about plans and, um, [00:16:00] he was able to come visit our alternate scout.

Event thing that we have, uh, on every other Monday night with a bunch of different churches, probably I'd say close to 200 kids showing up to this thing of, of girls and boys, different age groups. And we obviously it's, there's not a co-ed, um, scouting thing. It's, there's three girls groups and three boys groups.

But we do have, you know, dads and some of the older boys, uh, that have competencies in these areas, helping train. Uh, the girls and some of the skills, and it's just all very well executed with a lot of competence. And so it's fun to show that off with, uh, to people and, and give them help, uh, share some of our documents and what we're doing to do that.

And, and even, you know, candidly and honestly saying to this guy that's visiting, you know, I didn't build most of this. Uh, I'm, I'm just part of these, these different networks. We're able to facilitate 'em. I'm able to show up and [00:17:00] teach. I'm able to help, uh, but I'm not even the driving force for a lot of this.

And I, I want, uh, the church and I want men and families to be able to experience a life like I am experiencing it and, and, and put the effort in and being willing to do, to fight the battles that. Are needed to create space and to create, uh, time on your calendar to train with your children and to train with your church.

And I, I guess the other side is, we talked about is, is church security. It's just basically, hey, we gotta start training. We gotta, we gotta do more range time. So setting up days to go the range with the men in our church, having other men that are skilled, offering that to churches and security leads. So just trying to work that out.

So, uh, hopefully. I will, uh, try to start putting out a lot more free content after the, the very fruitful [00:18:00] call with Ben. Uh, it helped kind of connect some dots and, and I would say that I, I, hopefully he would say this, but I, I wasn't calling him, asking him to tell me all the things I needed to do. I, I was calling him with like a lot of.

Actual real learning of the last five years. I mean, it was, I think it was May, March, April or something like that, 21 that I did my first in-person event. I've tried to do some other in-person events. I've tried to do some digital products. I've tried to, uh, sell, uh, downloads and lead gen and, you know, I got a lot of experience that I would say, uh, gives me.

Context to be able to go into that call and really conceptualize something that he's doing at a, at a level and, and him saying, Hey, you know, uh, it was just real hard hitting practical. 20 something minutes. Gave me a lot to think about and a lot to do, and confirmed some [00:19:00] things. Gave me some good ideas about some other stuff.

So, you know, and then the ability to just, uh. Put it into practice now. And, and I got a, a podcast a while back of a guy that said, Hey, you know what, what guys that are experienced or, or ahead of you wanna see is they wanna see when they give their time to you, that it is fruitful in more ways than just, uh, you know, getting the, the feel goods they want to go out and execute.

And, uh, and so I think that as of right now, I'm planning on launching. I've already drafted the school community. Uh, but I think what I'll do is, uh, you be actually just kind of processing this right now. I think I'm gonna put the link to the school community. Uh, I'm gonna make it public and I'm gonna make it, uh, I'm gonna make it free.

Probably. Uh, I will, I don't actually know. I, I got it set up for. For a monthly [00:20:00] fee, but I think I'm gonna make it free. And I'm gonna, you're gonna probably have to apply, it's gonna be private. You are gonna have to ask to get into it. 'cause it's not gonna just be everybody. And I think I'm gonna ask you what church you're in and, uh, where you are.

And uh, and then we're gonna go from there. And I will have, uh, my first couple lessons of my pistol course in there. I will have. What has previously been behind the tactical household paywall? We'll all be for free. And my hope will be that we can, inside of that community together, figure out how I can pass on a lot of the learning that I've gotten. From my military career, from my entrepreneurial journey. 'cause I think that, that, that's a unique pairing there. Just the mindset of when you don't close a $266,000 contract, how you [00:21:00] immediately start going down the list of leads.

I'm literally gonna have to stop this podcast, uh, shortly because I'm gonna pull up to this other job that I sent a contract out, uh, on, I think, uh, a couple weeks ago. And they followed up. And so I got a $32,000 contract that is, is possibly gonna get closed in a few minutes. Uh, maybe I'll jump right back on and, uh, record on the way back from this meeting how that went. It may go terribly and I might not wanna say it, but anyway. Um. Just how to keep crunching, to stay on the path, to keep following up on leads, to not get down when you don't close, uh, a big job. And to accept the jobs you have, the leads you have, and, and push to close 'em and prioritizing the things that you need to do in a day and starting at the top of the list and knocking 'em out.

And I would say for me, the [00:22:00] last 74 days has been my health. It's been not drinking alcohol, it's been working out. It's been, it's been drinking lots of water. It's been following a diet. And, uh, it's, that's been hugely helpful for my mindset, for my sleep, for my, ability to work really hard during the day.

I'm 42, and so I think that there can be a tendency for some of that stuff to slip off. I'm not accepting it yet. I'm not accepting that I'm getting old. I am going to, uh, continue to, uh, take what I am doing and eating and supplementing and, and nutrition and exercise, and that's actually what the other John Moody podcast that I might just turn around and release that one same day as this.

And get it out and get it going and, uh, you know, working through how we can, uh, continue to improve each other's position. And I can use the lessons I'm learning every day, uh, to help y'all. So [00:23:00] look for that school link and the bio below. And, let's go further up and further in together.

All right, so it's been, uh, actually 48 hours since I recorded the other video, but I got the check, um, and we'll be starting the project next week. So, uh, had to answer some questions, send a revised contract with a couple different things. And get it paid or get it signed. And the client is a little bit leery about online a CH transfers.

So I went back and picked up a paper check. All good. And I'm headed to prayer meeting now. So. Pretty good. Uh, three days hard charging. Uh, I finished 75 hard yesterday. I, uh, am intending to take a [00:24:00] couple days off 'cause I'm actually feeling it pretty good with, uh, my elbow, tennis elbow a little bit. So I might go get a.

Deep tissue of the shoulders and elbows 'cause that's helped out a lot before. And, uh, hit it hard. Uh, the end of the week, this weekend, again, I am drinking water. I am not going to be taking a selfie today. Uh, and I will be, uh, drinking any alcohol still. And, uh, anyway, got the, got the check. It feels like a, almost like a, a full week and we still got two more days.

I still got two more days to break necks and cash checks, so probably be mostly breaking necks the rest of the week. So anyway, thank y'all and, uh, have a good one.

Links:

The post we talked about that sparked this episode

Follow John Moody on X and/or Facebook

Nathan's website

Nathan on X

Beregenerated Brotherhood

[00:00:00] Opening

• Shotgun intro.
• John Moody: “Most men’s problems are solved with more muscle and more money.”

[00:01:00] The Feminist Trap

• Nathan on husbands hoping wives’ side hustles will cover provision.
• John explains why many churches still cater to feminism.

[00:03:00] Young Men Want Practical Teaching

• Why men in churches are starving for real-world advice.
• Uri Brito quote: “Theology without application is not theology.”

[00:04:00] Early Marriage and Missed Business Opportunities

• John’s seminary days: starting businesses but told “it’s not ministry.”
• The lost potential of building skills earlier.

[00:06:00] First Business: Scholarship Consulting

• Helping students get scholarships on contingency.
• Lessons learned when clients didn’t want to pay.

[00:09:00] Second Business: Tutoring

• Grew fast, but limited by capacity.
• Why he wishes he’d scaled and sold it before family responsibilities multiplied.

[00:11:00] Plant Your Field Before Building Your House

• John’s advice to his younger self: provision first, then advanced degrees or ministry.

[00:14:00] Money, Muscle, and Biblical Duties

• Provision, protection, leadership require resources.
• Gnostic spirituality divorces wisdom from real-world strength and wealth.

[00:15:00] Competence Earns Authority

• Why the church often offers mediocrity, not excellence.
• Influence flows from demonstrated skill.

[00:16:00] Pushback in Church Leadership

• Story of being blocked from eldership for “making too big a wake.”
• Parallels to Michael Foster and fear of strong men.

[00:18:00] Men at the City Gates

• In the Old Testament, those with estates and strength sat in judgment.
• Wealth + physical ability qualified them to lead.

[00:19:00] Xenophon’s Oeconomicus and Paul’s Writings

• Historic parallels on managing households.
• The hero is orderly, strong, and economically fruitful.

[00:21:00] Closing

• Practical discipleship requires money, muscle, and order in the home.
• Nathan signs off to head to a project with his sons riding along.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Click. Click.

John Moody: he goes, for the majority of men, most of their problems will be solved by more muscle and more money.

Nathan Spearing: Can say amen. Say

John Moody: ouch. And, and again, you know, are overly spiritualized, gnostic circles, chafe at that. But when you look at the Bible, and, and this is what confuses me, like, but what are men's basic duties?

Their provision, protection and leadership. So what do those duties practically need? Yeah. Well, you need muscle and you need money to do those duties. Like how do you, how can you tell people they have these duties but then kind of riffle your nose up? At the things that make the duties possible. Yeah. How, how do you separate these things?

Dramatic music household.

Nathan Spearing: [00:01:00] Yeah. What's your reflection? You just wrote one on, I actually didn't read the women one, but I know enough about your content to know exactly why it's making everybody mad. Because people are still, even in the church, are still slaves to feminism and, uh, husbands are still hiding out and secretly hoping their wives.

Have Instagram businesses so that they don't have to work so hard, but,

John Moody: oh goodness man. So thought, thoughts on those posts, you know, those, those posts are primarily, well, when I thought of that post, it was driven by a few things. Um, one is just our family's personal experience in churches for the past. Man, 20 years. Uh, and just realizing, uh, [00:02:00] how many churches,

uh, hold on a second. We might have to start this over. Or you can just delete this stuff out.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah, you do that.

John Moody: It's, uh, for me it is, what's that football analogy? It's, you know, fourth quarter

Nathan Spearing: the game is tied.

John Moody: Yeah. On the 50 yard line or something. Yeah. So just all kinds of, all kinds of stuff going on.

Yeah.

Nathan Spearing: I, uh, I, I did a post today on in inflation and the relationship between time and money a little bit. It's already taken off a little bit. It seems like our, uh, our young men in the church are starving [00:03:00] for practical stuff.

John Moody: Yes.

Nathan Spearing: And I just had Yuri on my podcast and he was like, theology if it's not applied is not theology.

That's my paraphrase of it. And uh, and also, you know, this, he was kind of going after guys about waiting till they have a cer they're ready to get married or whatever, but at the same time, like you need to be part of being ready to get married is being able to make, make money.

John Moody: Yeah. Yeah. You know, well, and that, and that's really, you know, at the heart of those posts is when the Lord first saved me.

And then Jessica and I first got married, uh, you know, I was part of Southern Seminary at the time, and Jessica, uh, there's a professor's wife who was doing [00:04:00] a, a woman's discipleship thing. For some of the younger, newly married, about to be moms ladies.

Nathan Spearing: Okay.

John Moody: And the only thing this lady wanted to do though was get together with them and do a bible study.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah.

John Moody: And you know, when I was in seminary, uh, I already had started two different businesses while I was in seminary and none of the older men. I was around firm that they're, you know, they wouldn't necessarily say like, having businesses is bad, but, but they're just like, it's not ministry. It's not preaching the gospel.

Yeah. It's, and so I never built those businesses, you know, a bunch of the skills I now have, I could have acquired those in the early two thousands and. [00:05:00] Had a totally different life, a totally different way to help people. Uh, but you know, just, just this, we have such a dearth of older women who can actually help younger women become good wives and mothers, and we have such a dearth of older men who can help younger men become good providers and protectors and leaders.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah, so, so what were the two businesses that you had?

John Moody: Uh, I had a scholarship business, so, you know, this was hilarious. I was a business finance major in college.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah.

John Moody: And my internship one year was working at my college's foundation. So the foundation at a college is what does a bunch of different things.

But one of the main things it does is oversee the pool of scholarship money. [00:06:00] Okay. And how, and it, it, you know, it oversees the assets that create the money for the scholarships, but then it also awards the scholarships and stuff. Usually, you know, sets a lot of the criteria. Other things, unless like the scholarships are earmarked to a particular department.

But a lot of the general scholarships the foundation works with, you know, who those scholarships are tied to. So I had all this experience with scholarships, uh, going when I went to seminary, um, and it's how I paid for seminary. I was able to go to seminary basically completely free almost. 'cause I hunted down all these scholarships to pay for school.

'cause I didn't have any money.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah.

John Moody: So I was like, and I'm not gonna go into debt. And so Southern had a financial aid office and I saw what they were doing and I'm like, this is an office. I think they [00:07:00] had four people, maybe five people working in their financial aid office. And me being a very young believer and kind of naive, I go to the office and I just offered a help for free.

Um, I'm like, Hey, like I could help. You all do such a better job with this. Like you, you all could probably, yeah. You saw

Nathan Spearing: inefficiencies and things that you knew immediately how to optimize

John Moody: Well, and I was just like, you all could probably be bringing in five times the amount of scholarship money to the school.

I if you just helped, you know, if you identified more scholarship, you know, if, if you basically were like truly running a financial aid office. Yeah. Um, and I met with the head of it and stuff. We talked and never hear anything back. And so one of my professors, he's just like, he is like, you can just do this as a little side business.

You can privately help students who want your help [00:08:00] to get scholarships and you, you could do it on a finder fee only. So they don't pay anything upfront. They only have to pay you when they actually get a scholarship. And, and your work pays. And he goes, that really puts the ball in your court, um, you know, to, to actually get them good leads, make sure you're only working with good students and stuff.

Um, so I had that business for a number of years though. But man, that business was also an eyeopener that quite a few guys, I got them scholarships and stuff. When it finally came time to pay a number of them, all of a sudden were really unhappy about the contract we signed.

Nathan Spearing: Oh yeah. That's very, uh, typical of people,

John Moody: you know, and that was also a bit of an eye-opener 'cause people were like, well, how is it fair that you're getting.

25% of my first [00:09:00] year scholarship. And I said, because that's all I get. I don't get any, there's no residuals on this. You know, I did all my work up front. I don't wanna be responsible for if in a year or two you fail to turn in your renewal paperwork. And I don't wanna be a collections agent for the next three or four years.

Uh, that's one

Nathan Spearing: reasons why. Uh, charging up front in the construction side where typically it's, you know, 50% and then 50% when we finish. And, and, and I just basically was like, I, I have had people not on our contracts and I've built a brand now on a reputation where I just say, Hey, you know, we'll, we'll show up when we have the money.

We'll do it right. And you know, it's just, it's just, it's worked so far and sometimes we gotta make little concessions here and there, but [00:10:00] by and large, I don't end up waiting on money anymore.

John Moody: Yeah. Yep. Well, and that's, you know, the buying club I founded as well, that was a fundamental problem there. Was that the other

Nathan Spearing: business during seminary?

No, the other

John Moody: business I did during seminary was a tutoring business. Okay.

Nathan Spearing: So what would you have said, like you're saying there's a dearth of men, and if you would've gotten advice, like what would you have said, what would you have, what would, if you could go back to John Moody in seminary with these two side hustles trying to go through, like what would you, being the older man now trying to put stuff out and help people, what would you tell you specifically in that time?

Oh,

John Moody: I'd, I, I'd tell me to go through seminary slower and build the businesses. First, first thoroughly knock out your duty of provision, or as Proverbs put it, you know, before you build your house, plant your [00:11:00] field.

Nathan Spearing: Okay? So, so you, you basically are saying the degree you're getting was priority for you and you wish you would've prior, maybe still tried to get the degree, but.

But taken longer and made more money upfront. Focusing on, yeah, focusing on those two businesses, or would you like, or, oh, yeah. I

John Moody: mean, both of those businesses had a lot of upside potential. You know, I, I could have began, you know, and this was the challenge, one reason I didn't do it is like the tutoring business.

Um, I got to the point where I could not take on any more students. So if I wanted to grow that business at that point, I would've had to develop the new skillset of managing and bringing on more people. And because I was more than full-time in [00:12:00] seminary, uh, you know, I was also a Garrett Fellow for a professor, uh, which basically means I was like the professor's assistant.

And then I was getting ready to do PhD work. It, it just, you know, I was just like, man, this is gonna be such a pain. Try and hire people, do this and that, expand the business. But so had somebody said to me, Hey man, you, you can do a, if, you know, imagine if I'd sold a tutoring business back in 2007 for half a million dollars, when half a million dollars was actually meaningful money.

I could have invested that and, you know, paid for a PhD solely out of investment income. Yeah. Passive income, because one of the reasons income to

Nathan Spearing: use the, the buzzwords.

John Moody: Yeah. You know, and, and one of the reasons I didn't do a PhD is instead, you know, I got married in 2005 [00:13:00] and by 2007 we have two kids. And I don't have, I don't have any, I don't have any real assets still.

I don't, I have some money in the bank, but nothing meaningful. And so one of the reasons I didn't do a PhD is I just couldn't biblically justify, you know, because, because I could, I couldn't provide while doing a PhD, 'cause I would've had to work while doing a PhD, which would've effectively widowed my wife.

For, you know, four or five years while I'm getting some additional letters behind my name. Yeah. And you know, I think it's Chris Willis is his name. He, he's like a pretty popular podcast Instagram guy. But he said something a number of years ago I saw where, and, and a lot of people in our circles would be like, this is so unbiblical.

I'm just [00:14:00] like, this dude is so right on the money, but he is speaking to men. He goes, he goes, for the majority of men, most of their problems will be solved by more muscle and more money.

Nathan Spearing: Can say amen. Say

John Moody: ouch. And, and again, you know, are overly spiritualized, gnostic circles, chafe at that. But when you look at the Bible, and, and this is what confuses me, like, but what are men's basic duties?

Their provision, protection and leadership. So what do those duties practically need? Yeah. Well, you need muscle and you need money to do those duties. Like how do you, how can you tell people they have these duties but then kind of riffle your nose up? At the things that make the duties possible. Yeah. How, how do you separate these things?

I don't get well in

Nathan Spearing: our hyper spiritualized, gnostic [00:15:00] culture, um, kind of sets up this false dichotomy like you have to choose between physical strength and money and spiritual knowledge and wisdom, you know? Yeah. And, and, and like there, like it's not actually wise to tell somebody how to provide, it's actually taking him away from his, you know, great commission challenge, but you know, who's being listened to.

And who can speak with authority are people that demonstrate competence. And so happens a lot of these guys are not Christians these days.

John Moody: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I think Wiley and others have talked about people go to church for mediocrity, not for manliness or excellence. Hmm.

Nathan Spearing: And in my experience, the wife makes, uh, makes you move churches.

If there's too much manliness that is also calling her, you know, to, to submit and listen to him, [00:16:00] you know?

John Moody: Yeah, yeah. Well, and yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things, um, you know, I guess I'll tell this story, but you know, so in the late two thousands I started this buying club business and it started to grow like wildfire.

And we were also part of a good church at the time. And so I, uh, I was nominated by a few people who knew me to become an elder, which I knew 'cause they told me. And the church repeatedly blocked even considering me becoming an elder. One of the elders told me it's because I was too influential already.

Like the, the word the elder said to me was, is I create such a big wake like a boat. You know, the wake from a boat passing through. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Nathan Spearing: for sure.

John Moody: And [00:17:00] uh, you know, at the time I found that utterly crushing. 'cause I'm just like, why? Why is it a bad thing? I'm successful at what I do and I care about it and it's helping people.

Nathan Spearing: Would it, would, would it be there? Um, maybe the why the PCA is really scared of Michael Foster right now.

John Moody: Because, well, well, the reason they're scared of Foster is because he's not even just a flashlight on the cockroaches. He is. He is. The Chicago Bears football stadium lighting, yes. On Friday night.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah.

Well, I guess that would be like, that dovetails into like you have influence, you have, uh, competency. And if we. Uh, if we, um, if we, if we, we start trying to control you, you, you won't, if we're, if you're a cockroach, [00:18:00] then we can't control you. 'cause you'll put light on me and I don't like that.

John Moody: Yeah. So yeah, so those were the, those were the businesses, uh, that, you know, and I, uh, you know, if I was talking to young men now, especially young men who have a heart for ministry or wanna be able to serve, and, and this is where then, you know, I had another decade or two a Bible study under my belt, and you begin to realize like, who, who in the Old Testament.

Are the men who get to hang out at the city gate. The elders of the people. They're, they are the, you know, I, I once said it offended a lot of people on social media, but they were the four hour work week men of that day. You know, you, you. Um, it's, and it's because they had time

Nathan Spearing: to sit around [00:19:00] while their estates made them money.

John Moody: Exactly.

Nathan Spearing: And you actually wanted to listen to what they said because they actually had stuff that worked, uh Oh, yeah. While they were being wise.

John Moody: Yeah. Um, you know, the, the, the word used of like David's Mighty Men and Boaz and some of these other guys in the Old Testament. That word especially refers to, uh, financial success.

It, it, the, the word really focuses on two categories. One category is physical prowess, and one category is financial success, success. Yeah. And you know, you read, uh, Wiley years ago, he's like, everybody should read Xenophon's Os you know, on household, you know, household rule. Yeah. And, and that book is the same thing [00:20:00] that the, they very small book, that book.

Oh yeah. Everybody should read it. Um, but, but who, who is. In that book, Paul uses very similar language at places in his letters to that book. Um, because, you know, the book actually opens with the question, what does it mean to manage a household? Well, and then you have Paul in his one pastoral letter saying, A man must manage his household well.

Um, you know, there there's a number of linguistic and conceptual parallels between. Paul's writing and Xenophon's, which makes sense because Xenophon's book was the book on households for maybe almost a thousand years. Yeah. In, you know, at that time of the time of the world. Um, but, but who's the hero of that book?

He's a dude who crushes it economically. [00:21:00] He, he leads his wife and household well. Hi. His household is very orderly. Then outside the household. Um, and you know, the book talks about he's a guy who keeps himself in good physical condition, but the guy also is an excellent businessman. He's excellent vocationally.

He knows, he knows how to make money, um, so that then he can do good to both his household and his community.

Nathan Spearing: So good.

I actually probably need to jump off 'cause I'm meeting an engineer on a project here in uh, 25 minutes and I gotta hustle two kids 'cause I got two boys that are, they're homeschooling is, uh, riding along with me and doing these repairs. So

John Moody: well have fun today, brother. Lord bless their day. Same to you.

shotgun: Click. Click

Follow Uri Brito on Twitter/X: https://x.com/uribrito

 The Perspectivalist by Uri Brito (The Perspectivalist for regular essays, culture commentary, and pastoral reflections:)

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Sing Your Part - Establish Your Church's Singing Culture - https://singyourpart.app

Nathan’s website: www.Spearing.co

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Timestamped Outline

[00:00:00] Opening

Intro: reformation, Protestant tradition, and the example of Charlie Kirk.Nathan welcomes Pastor Uri Brito.

[00:02:00] Current Events & Sabbath Convictions

Uri shares about being invited to Charlie Kirk’s funeral on a Sunday and why he declined.The importance of keeping the Lord’s Day holy even during public events.

[00:03:00] Why Nathan Reached Out

Nathan recalls hearing Uri on rites of passage and the importance for military dads and churches.Connecting Charlie Kirk’s ministry to the absence of true rites of passage in American culture.

[00:08:00] Uri’s Background

Pastor in Pensacola, doctorate from Reformed Theological Seminary.Commitment to training pastors, political theology, and household economy.Father of five, invested in homeschooling and Christian education.

[00:10:00] Responding to Charlie Kirk’s Martyrdom

Nathan asks: “What are we supposed to do now?”Uri stresses application: worship, discipleship, household faithfulness, and public action.Martyrdom always produces multiplication in church history.

[00:14:00] Lessons from Charlie Kirk’s Life

Charlie’s rhetorical gifts, boldness, and courage.Martyrdom as a call to examine apathy and complacency in men.

[00:16:00] First Sphere: The Church

Recommitment to worship, catechism, and modeling faith for children.Martyrdom as a call back to faithful participation in local congregations.

[00:18:00] Second Sphere: Household Leadership

Men: get married, take responsibility, provide for families.Fathers must disciple their children directly, not outsource to wives or schools.Masculine education: setting rituals, rhythms, and rites of passage.

[00:20:00] Third Sphere: Public Witness

Engaging the local community: trash cleanup, confronting drag events.Example of Uri’s congregation planning a Psalm sing against public sin in Pensacola.

[00:22:00] Balancing Household and Public Duty

Nathan asks about prioritizing wife/kids vs. public action.Uri explains the church-friendly family model: spheres are interconnected, not isolated.Distinguishing between practitioners and poets in the church.

[00:28:00] Worship and Singing as Warfare

The importance of masculine, bold singing in congregational life.Tools like the Sing Your Part app to train families.Psalms of lament as appropriate response to tragedy.

[00:33:00] Denominations, Coalitions, and Online Engagement

Why denominational fights shouldn’t distract from bigger cultural battles.Need for coalitions like Charlie Kirk built.How online debates differ from face-to-face fellowship.

[00:39:00] Poets and Practitioners

Uri’s framework: poets (philosophers) and practitioners (doers).Why the church needs both — and why each must learn from the other.

[00:41:00] The Lure of Orthodoxy and Catholicism

Why young men are attracted to ritual and structure.Uri calls Eastern Orthodoxy a “mirage of the ancient.”Protestantism’s true fruits: Reformation, Puritans, and Western cultural achievements.

[00:55:00] Building Protestant Stability

Protestant tradition offers truth, beauty, and goodness when lived faithfully.Need for more bold Protestant voices online and in media.

[01:00:00] Using Social Media Wisely

Why almost everyone should be online (with a few exceptions).Poets and practitioners working together.Practical playbook: start with Scripture, add quotes, then strategy.Do things well: good tools, quality production, accountability.

[01:06:00] Closing Thoughts

Social media as service to Christ and His church.Encouragement for men to act decisively under church authority.Uri departs for an adoption ceremony; Nathan closes with thanks and blessing.

Transcript:

Uri interview

shotgun: [00:00:00] Click. Click.

Uri Brito: There’s a beauty to the reformation and to the Protestant tradition that needs to be reinstilled in the hearts of people.

And it’s true. We need more gifted YouTubers. We, uh, somebody who provides a greater vision of Protestant than Gavin Orland, you know, who does a fine job, but we

Nathan: Amen.

Uri Brito: a, a much richer Protestant tradition than what’s what he’s offering there from a tradition that doesn’t compromise in political matters. So that’s, that’s what I’m saying. And I think these, these, these are appearing, they’re taking place, they’re showing up. uh, this is the season I think the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk, I hope, will stir up 100 dormant voices to, to get out there and proclaim this, this vision that I’m proposing.

Nathan: Pastor welcome

Uri Brito: Hey Nathan, how are you?

Nathan: Living the dream.

Uri Brito: Hey, there you go. By Nathan or Nate.

Nathan: Uh, either my mother called me Nathan, and I feel [00:01:00] like it’s slightly more biblical, but in the military they, they like to truncate to single syllables,

Uri Brito: Oh, I imagine, I imagine

Nathan: realized my office door was open and there is a sometimes joyful music being produced and sometimes not so joyful music being produced in the household. So

Uri Brito: that’s a productive household. Looks like, sounds like,

Nathan: always endeavoring to be.

Uri Brito: Man. I am. Um, you know, I just got back from Brazil and um. these decisions I have to make. I just got a call from T-P-U-S-A, they gave me sort of VIP seats to go to the, the Kirk funeral.

Nathan: Oh, wow.

Uri Brito: um, but it’s on Sunday morning. It’s just, uh, I I don’t understand that at all. So I,

Nathan: I saw that, um, announcement and, um, the, the CREC has work to do still when I see stuff like that.

Uri Brito: I know. Yeah, me too. I feel the same way. Uh, so anyhow, so I’ll be here and I’m, so God knows what he’s [00:02:00] doing. ’cause I came back from Brazil with a little bit of a cold and uh, in fact I still have a little bit of a cold now. But, uh, other opportunities will arise.

Nathan: Amen. Pastors face the, the struggle to honor the Sabbath just like the rest of us.

Uri Brito: Exactly. We have a couple of Series C churches in the area that have afternoon services.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: And, um, that may have worked well, but I just, I’m just, I feel just convictions in that regard. Anyhow, you can tell it’s been in my mind last, uh, 12 hours. So I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit.

Nathan: Absolutely. I, um, I reached out to you and scheduled this, I think three or four weeks ago. Um, and, uh, none of what has happened in the last week or so has, was, had transpired. So I kind of originally. Reached out. I listened to a podcast I think he did a couple years ago about rites of passage and how you did that in your [00:03:00] household.

And I was like, I gotta talk to this guy about this. ’cause that’s something, we’re a predominantly special operations community, so it’s something that the dads here, um, I think as I look at the landscape, do very well in the discipling of their children. And then, you know, tying that to some, some pretty masculine activities.

Um, and so, but I think the, the, the flavor of, of what I wanted to talk about changes a little bit. I think it does go back to that because Charlie was speaking to these young men that hadn’t been spoken to, hadn’t been, uh, hadn’t gone through a rite of passage, if you will, or had, had been going through a rite of passage that, um, the government gave them.

I talked to a friend about it with being the. Driver’s license or graduating high school or things like that, that the government tells these young men, they’re, they’re entering a new phase necessarily, but the church is not. Um, so I guess, you know, maybe [00:04:00] give people a little bit of background about who you are and then maybe we can jump into that.

Um, and I got a couple bullet points, but I, I, I don’t have a whole lot of structure. I’m, I’ve told people that I, I started a podcast ’cause if, if you call somebody up, a wiser, older man that, um, you want to talk to and you say, Hey, can we jump on a phone call? You can kind of sound like a weirdo, but if you got a podcast, it’s a little bit easier to, to get to talk to the men.

So that’s kind of been my, my strategy is, is it gives me a little bit of access to men that I wanna learn from and then, uh, allows others to maybe tag along. And my son usually edits the podcast, so at least he gets to hear. Uh, what these men are saying as well. So I, my edification and then my son’s edification and that’s enough for me.

And if everybody else gets it, so be it.

Uri Brito: That’s great. I, I love all, all those things. ’cause I think that’s the, nature of it, you gotta do it. The conversations need to happen and they, it’s [00:05:00] really remarkable to see that will visit our congregation here in Pensacola and they have been, listen to something i I podcast I did seven, eight years ago.

I, I literally, Nathan have absolutely no recollection of anything. But uses all these, little fragments to pierce the souls of a lot of us, a lot of good saints. And, uh, they learn from it. So I’m grateful.

Nathan: Yeah. Maybe I can get you to get our, our pastor on social media. He refuses. Um, I think that’s, that’s maybe the, uh, faithful using of the, of media has been something I’ve, I’ve kind of preached, uh, locally and, you know, I’ve had people. Join our congregation because of my construction business’s Instagram.

And I try to, I try to give people the option to follow as much of Nate as they want to. So if they want to just see my professional construction work, they can. But it’s a pretty easy hop to find my wife and I, um, and what we’re doing and, uh, [00:06:00] you know, but, but I, at the same time, I, I, I wouldn’t want my pastor to go off the deep end.

And I, I, I get a lot from, from what he, he does. I don’t think he would, ’cause he is a wise man, but maybe, maybe we’ll get you linked up with him about, about putting out the podcast. What some of the men in our church have taken the liberty to just start recording him and putting out stuff, uh, the sermons.

And we, we do have a live stream that is, that goes out, but starting to kind of try to get a little bit more of, of what he’s putting out mostly for our own church. I think that’s the thing that’s missed too, is that. Church members are sick or tending to something like that, that they, they actually honor the Sabbath, but they legitimately have something happen that is, uh, emergencies type stuff that can go back and listen and, uh, as well.

So anyway, I’m this, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna change my pastor’s mind in this, this talk.

Uri Brito: Yeah. Well, I mean, just for the record, I, I suspect that, [00:07:00] uh, you know, Spurgeon and his manuscript, they were obviously were very prolific and, uh, we, we gained from Spurgeon, I think when Spurgeon died, we were years or four years from the first recordings that occurred.

Nathan: Hmm.

Uri Brito: And so, um, but I mean, think about how much we’ve gained.

I suspect he would’ve easily, or, or, or Martin Lloyd Jones, right? The minister of Martin Lloyd Jones, or, I suspect he, every generation people have recorded their thoughts, not because they thought they were. Significant or special, but because they thought that what they had to offer was gonna benefit their immediate community. And, um, and, and then I realized the responsibilities that are placed on UND seasons of national chaos. And, um, I think, you know, we’ve, I think we had seven or eight visitors that came because of my articles on, on Facebook, on the, on the, on the, the Kirk situation. People are listening and people are gaining their data in the nine, in the 19th century through the national [00:08:00] newspaper that was coming out in the Netherlands.

Right. That’s how Abraham Kiper got involved in these kinds of things. today, the, the medium is what it is. Anyway, I’m talking too much. I, I have a, I enjoyed his footnotes.

Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. So give a little bit of background of geography, family, um, maybe a little bit of, of how you came to this point for, for context, and we will, we’ll, uh, dive in to some of those other things.

Uri Brito: Yeah, I am, uh, pastor Uri Brito. I received my, my. My doctorate from Reformed Theological Seminary and Pastoral Theology, years ago. And so much of my work has been geared towards training pastors to think, theologically liturgically, but also politically as well. I have, um, I, but I always make the case very clear that the true politics begins in the worship of God’s people, and that overflows to the politic of the, of the home. even the word household means [00:09:00] ika comes from ika, which means the economy of the home. So there’s, there’s an economic structure that is very much part of the world that God created. the question for us is not so much do we engage ourselves in these economic structures of the home, of the church or the state. The question is how do we steward these economic structures the, this exchange of not only, uh, currency, but the exchange of ideas is something that I’ve been very much, uh, geared towards. I have, uh, five kids, all of them are, um, either homeschooled or go to a local classical Christian school. I have spoken in homeschool environments.

I’ve spoken in classical school environments. So my commitment has been very much to the, to the blessing of indoctrinating our, our youth and our young ones through biblical education and also encouraging parents to take on that remarkable task. And I think Nathan, part of this larger conversation you and I are having, uh, stems from how do we, how do we handle then the, the gifts that God has given [00:10:00] us in our home, uh, namely our children? And that’s what I’m, I’m very eager to talk about this morning.

Nathan: Awesome. Yeah, I, um, I, I guess the. I asked my pastor, we, we had a, uh, um, you know, the incident with Charlie, the assassination with Charlie happened, uh, Wednesday and we have Wednesday midweek prayer service. And I was on a, uh, spaces on X for a little bit talking about it and, you know, what are they gonna do?

And I said, I’m, I’m gonna do what I do every week, uh, on Wednesday, and let’s go to church and pray with the saints. And, you know, obviously, um, everybody, uh, was in a, in a different state depending on where they were and what their station was in life. But that, that touchpoint of, of being in the sanctuary of the Lord, being on our knees and, and praying and um, having that ritual was anchoring to me.

Um, [00:11:00] and, you know, I load my five kids up and go to pray. And, and some of the people we’re talking about, you know, in these, these spheres about how that. And they, and they didn’t mean it disrespectfully, but they talked about how that, that didn’t seem like enough, you know? Um, and then, you know, like, what, what I, I got it.

Pray. Yep. I’m not making light of that. But then what? You know, and, and then we had a men’s, uh, psalm sing at a, that we get together pretty regularly as men and sing. And then, uh, as is, as a tradition in, in our denomination, there’s, there’s cigars and, and various, uh, liquid forms of enjoyment. And, uh, we sit around, I think we, we ended up sitting for two and a half hours, and I asked my pastor, um, what are we supposed to do?

You know, and, and not necessarily, um, you know, like I, I’m not gonna accept the, the, the standard answer. I want to hear a little bit more, and I, I like [00:12:00] to hear from you, you know, what are, what are we supposed to do? I have in my outline, uh, men. And then I, I’d like to go, you know, women and, and kids, young men, children, and even old people.

’cause that we find all these different people in, in the church. Um, and, and you specifically what you’ve been saying in the last, uh, week and a half or so to these, to people about what we’re supposed to do. You know, what, what we want to take action.

Uri Brito: The, the question that I always end my sermon with is the old Francis Schafer question, you know, how now shall we then live? Which I think is a very pertinent one, uh, to ask in, in every sermon. Ultimately, you know, the Puritans sometimes would have 33 points of application at the end of a sermon. Uh, no, nobody is, uh, to preach, you know, two and a half hour servants.

But nevertheless, the, the point I think still stands that the, the application of the word of God is something that needs to be, thought through [00:13:00] very carefully, especially in these high seasons. In these high seasons, whether it be liturgical seasons or high civic seasons, when things of great importance of, of shake up the foundations of our country.

And I think this is in many ways what God has done, is that he has shaken up our, our country in these last seven, eight days. And the things that stand will stand and the things that were, uh, always, you know. Prone to falling away will fall away. This is a bit of a, of a vineyard imagery taking place in John 15 in our nation right now. And I am somewhat, I, I, I, I feel a level of pity towards those congregations that are not equipped to handle these kinds of scenarios because I think pastors, and I’m not talking about, they don’t have to write sophisticated dissertations on these kinds of things, but they ought to have a couple of practical thoughts to, to give to their people because these are the things they’re thinking about. This is the thing that they’re thinking about at work, the thing they’re thinking about at home. [00:14:00] Uh, they’re young men. You know, my, my young boys listen to podcasts, listen to Daily Wire, uh, cross Politic, listen to, uh, Charlie Kirk, all these men, and these are the conversations they’re having at school as well. And so there is an inevitability to the Christian faith when it comes to these issues. Like you have to talk to them. can be, you can be somewhat unequipped to discuss, but you have to discuss. And so as I’ve thought through these issues, I think I’ve written about five, six articles, ’cause it’s been very, much pressing in my heart these last few days. The remarkable thing is very hard, Nathan, to fathom many gifts in one human being at such a young age. just the rhetorical gift, but the ability to build coalition, ability to think on his feet. Uh, the ability, the, the boldness, the courage, the ability to, to wear a, a vest everywhere you go as a, as a preparation, um, for a [00:15:00] potential death or potential, uh, casualty. These kinds of things, they weigh on you as a man. And it’s remarkable that God placed all these gifts in a, in a 30, 31-year-old man named Charlie Kirk. And I think as we, as we remember and memorialize Charlie Kirk, I think one of the things that comes to mind in these conversations is that, is it not true that many of us have become rather complacent and apathetic in our faith? What does the example of a Charlie Kirk instruct us in thinking through what will our dispositions be in the days ahead? And I think that a lot of our men have become rather comfortable, the malaise of COVID got them on their feet, may perhaps this is the, this is the new, the new COVID era, and it doesn’t come through a. A, you know, we might say somewhat of a fabricated disease, comes [00:16:00] through the death of a true Christian martyr. And the question now is, how now shall we then live in light of this here? What will a martyrdom produce? Martyrdoms throughout history have always produced multiplication. This has been the chronology of history, history.

God has always planted seeds through the death of his saints, and those seeds have, uh, sprung forth in, uh, remarkable resurrection moments. And so in, at this point, a couple of things come to mind. What is your involvement in local congregation? That’s a, a serious contemplation for many of us. Maybe the apathy has struck you in such a way, uh, that you have begun to treat church as it’s some kind of optional thing as opposed to the way the reformer spoke of it as the, um, as, as, as the church, as, as our mother, without which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. What is your involvement in the life of the church? How have you been encouraging [00:17:00] discipling God’s people worshiping? always tell, uh, my, my parishioners that. When the worship is occurring in the body of Christ, there’s always, if you have children, there’s always a little person looking up to you and they’re looking at a model.

Because human beings are imitative by nature. Nathan and how you worship will instruct their understanding of worship. So worship, worship faithfully, worship When your heart is not fully engaged, worship, work hard at the process of worship, prepare your families. Let the, the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk, a true evangelical man who loved God’s people.

I had the opportunity to interact with his pastor when I was at T-P-U-S-A at an event some months ago where Charlie spoke, and this is a, even though they’re from a different tradition than we are at the reform tradition, these men, they loved Christ. They were engaged in the worship of, of Christ. So keep that in, in, in the back of your mind. Secondly, and I’m just going [00:18:00] through the, the initial, the, the categories of spheres here. Secondly, as men, if you are not married. Why are you not married? We have allowed the American, the, the American strategic way of thinking about reality to shape the way Christian men have thought about reality. I am always appalled by men who have grown up at the church, who are in their mid to late twenties who are still indecisive about whether they’re prepared for marriage or what. Listen, I’ve been to marriage counseling for exactly, I’ve been doing marriage counseling for 20 years now. The point of marriage is that you’re not prepared for it, and that God is going to sanctify you through that process. The point of marriage is you can’t afford it. God is going to give you the, the willingness and the commitment and the faithfulness to work through it, because now the, the, the enthusiasm increases.

Now, the Bible says that, that those who not provide for this family are worse than an infidel. [00:19:00] Well, I think part of that lack of, uh, provision is the motivation to provide. But when you have a wife under your care, under your tutelage submitted to you, there’s your motivation to provide. No one wants to be an infidel, but there is your motivation.

And the same with our children as well. There are many men who go about their days without contemplating much at all about the responsibility that they have to nurture their young ones, their little ones at home. And they allow, they, they grant their responsibility to their wives, who typically do a fine job, working double time to make up for the inadequacies of their husbands who are very much devoid and divorce in the process. daddy has to be involved. Daddy has to be involved because a true education is a masculine education. daddy’s the one who has to establish, uh, rituals of life for their children, rhythms of life for their children, especially their sons. so care for the church, care for the. Responsibilities that are inherent in the life of [00:20:00] the, of the household. And then finally, look at your town. Look at your town. There’s a, a road that I have to take to get to church on Sunday mornings and throughout the week, and I see trash on the side of the road. Uh, I don’t know why, but I get deeply irritated through that. am I gonna do about that? These are small, minuscule examples here.

What am I gonna do about the we have here in Pensacola, which is absolutely shameful, there will be a drag queen. A drag queen event the 23rd of December during the high advent season, two days before holy Christmas died. That is absolutely unacceptable. congregation is, was stirred even more so by the boldness of Charlie Kirk, uh, to be there on the 22nd and 23rd singing Psalms in hymns.

And Lord d willing, uh, we have a congregation around 400 plus people. We’ll have at least Lord D willing half of those out there singing with their little ones. And in peaceful fashion, of [00:21:00] course, but not with peaceful psalms. gonna sing Psalms of implication, Psalms of lament, because this is abhorrent.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: eyes. And so we’re we plant to sing. And I think these are just some examples of what we are to do. And momentous occasions like the martyrdom of, of someone who lived for the faith, who breathed the faith, who boldly proclaimed the faith, who was not ashamed of the faith. These martyrdoms ought to stir people up to particular actions. they have become calloused. Otherwise, they are true candidates for apostasy. And I would be very deeply sorry if this martyrdom did not move and cause you to live according to God’s standards as a result of it.

Nathan: Would you say, um, like, describe the order? ’cause I, I like the order that you did it. You know, you started, uh, about an individual action and then it kind of worked its way out to [00:22:00] be more corporate in nature, you know, and we had one particular young man, it’s like, I don’t want to do. Anything but my wife and kids, you know, and, and make sure I’m focusing on that ’cause I I’m not doing that well.

And that it maybe just speak to that tension, um, for how you’re supposed to know, because obviously we’re never gonna be perfect husbands and fathers, but I can potentially idolize my marriage to the detriment of my kids even though it has a higher priority. And, and, and it flows out of that faithfulness to my children.

Just talk through that, that tension for, for young men and, and I don’t struggle with that. I launch a podcast. I try to throw together a church security training thing because I want to meet a need 80%. And it’s a military thing. Indecisive action, um, doesn’t equal victory. And continuing to plan when the plan will not survive, first contact with the enemy, [00:23:00] like as the military acts them that we, you know, talk about all the time, like you plan, plan, plan doesn’t mean we don’t plan.

It doesn’t, but we, we still conduct the operation and, and we could stay on the range and shoot all day and never go out and where the enemy is and engage them. Um, you know, and, and I’m mixing that metaphorically. I’m not prescribed. That’s, that’s me and my old, uh, as a agent of, of, of the state exercising justice.

But me as a man now and, and who’s looking at five children and a wife and active in the church and I’m looking at this thing, but then, you know, okay, how, what, what’s the order? How do I work through that?

Uri Brito: You know, many years ago I edited a book called The Church Friendly Family, it was an attempt to sort of correct what I considered was an erroneous view of the world, which was through the category and the phrase of the family friendly church. And I wanted to switch that around myself and uh, one of my mentors, rich, um, [00:24:00] Randy Booth and my dear friend, rich Lust, we wanted to switch that category around the church friendly family. And what that meant was that these, these spheres were not meant to be separated. And the reality is that we have, we certainly have created, uh, because nature of being in America, we have created a, a, a very. A remarkable sense of individualism and individuality. There, there’s, there’s benefits in all these things.

I, I agree with that sort of capitalistic spirit in one sense, but I also want to add a couple layers to that. And, and the first layer I’d add is that the Bible is a corporate book. The Bible is a book that incorporates the I into the we. And that language is very much, very much preeminent throughout the sacred scriptures, even use Paul’s category of the, the theology of, of our union with Christ is that what Christ possesses. We also have a [00:25:00] union with him. And so if we kept our individuality apart from our union with Christ, we would be nothing. We would be, uh, destined to hell. And so this principle also applies the way young men think through these categories is that we, we live in a. live in a Navy town, as you know, Nathan here in Pensacola, Florida, and we have some Marines as well.

And these

Nathan: I’m sorry.

Uri Brito: Providence. I knew you were gonna say

Nathan: Yeah.

Uri Brito: Uh, these men are coming to Providence with a, a strong desire to incorporate themselves in something far greater than the military. They wanna incorporate themselves to church militant. want to sing things that parallel the kind of world they live in. They’re, they’re in a world in always in preparation for war and training for war. And now they wanna join a community where the sons of God go forth to war.

Nathan: Amen.

Uri Brito: you, when you separate these categories, you are creating young men who will make wonderful [00:26:00] Andrew Tates, but will not make Charlie Kirk’s.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: we don’t want Andrew Tates. We want Charlie Kirk’s, right? We want, we want men who are committed to their families. They’re loyal to their, uh, loyal to their, their fundamental ecclesial commitments. And it’s remarkable that a man like the Charlie Kirk, who, who traveled on a, on a remark at a remarkable pace, was always in contact, always texting his pastor, seeking for wisdom.

And I think in scenarios like the one you mentioned, where you have established these kinds of principles of, of warfare, these principles of training and these principles of equipping I think we need in, in a, in let’s say a church of a hundred, we need probably seven to eight Nathans as a way of stirring these young men as a way of, of, of bringing them along and saying, it seems to me that you don’t have much of a purpose. Come work with me for a day. Come spend a day with me. Let’s do this Saturday here. And you know, I [00:27:00] I, I, I use this illustration. In a couple of occasions in the past, but I have the luxury of preaching from a pulpit every Sunday. It’s, it’s raised, it’s in the platform, which means I get to see 400 plus members, right?

And pastors have incredible view of their congregations. And we’re singing through these great psalms. Psalm one 10, you know, Psalm 1 48, Psalm 98, all these great psalms and hymns. sometimes I will see a young man in the congregation who’s sort of mumbling his way through the liturgy. And because I’ve been here for a long time, I can do this.

I don’t recommend it to everybody. But usually after the service, I walk up to these young men and I look at them and say, um, are you deathly ill? Something very, very wrong with you. They would say, well, no, no, pastor breed. I’m just fine. it seemed to me that if you knew that you were worshiping in the company of angels, in archangels and all the company of heaven, and in the presence of the holy and triune God, [00:28:00] be alert, aware, and awaken to the holiness that is enfolding this place. And that would change the way you would move your lips. It would change the way you would sing. Now, I don’t go into all these intricate details, but I, I sort of give a quick exhortation and it, initially they think it’s humorous, but in the past I’ve also noted that they’ve come back to me and say, you know, that thing you said to me after the service, you’re right. was distracted. I wasn’t prepared. And I think that’s the parallel we have to use. There are many men who are distracted, unprepared, and don’t think they have to be equipped until they realize that the stakes are far, far higher than they’ve ever imagined.

Nathan: I, I guess one of the things I would say, I’ve heard men say, I’m listening, I’m awake. Uh, but if I added my voice, uh, it wouldn’t be the same. Because I don’t know how to sing or, you know, um, and, and I am by far the most musically weak in our family. My wife is our church [00:29:00] pianist, and my children have been in children’s choir since, you know, my, my son was nine months old when we came to our current church, and we’ve been there ever since.

And he’s been in children, they’ve all been in children’s choir. They moving into men’s choir. And, and, uh, at the Psalm sing, I had to do a solo, uh, because we were singing, uh, the different parts and there were seven verses. And it got to the point where it was an awkward pause and it’s like, well, you know, if I can’t jump in and take this part, my son’s right here, he is already singing apart.

What’s he gonna think of me? And uh, and I tried to kind of work under, under my breath as we were the, the, I was verse six, thankfully. So I got five verses to try to just slightly under my breath, try to hit each note with these men that are better than me. And then. Go for full tilt. I don’t think it, it sounded as bad as I, I expected it.

Um, but there, there was just, it’s the same, um, thing that I had to work through with physical things, uh, the spiritual things and to go [00:30:00] for it. ’cause you also know if you sing timidly or quietly and, um, are insecure about it, it’s a certain, almost certainly gonna sound worse than if you gave it your all.

Um, so, but, but what would you say, I guess to, to men that are there?

Uri Brito: I I, I love, I love that, that example there. And I, I’m so grateful to hear you, you say that you, you press on nevertheless, you know, and I think that’s the, the reality is that had men, we have, we’ve literally had families join our congregation because they said, we want our boys to see what masculine singing sounds like.

Nathan: Mm.

Uri Brito: And they came from, from particular congregations where, where the singing was very effeminate or even that they started to pitch too high. unfortunately, there are some hymns, uh, some hymnals that, are, are, that put in, in particular places only to be fitting for women to sing. And that is a, that’s a travesty in my

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: a true travesty. But the solution here [00:31:00] is not, not to sing. The solution here is to, to find a, a body of men in the congregation who do sing. And so if you are not particularly prone to loud singing. Find someone in the congregation who sings loudly, I have many people who really enjoy singing next to certain men in our church ’cause they know they sing loudly and that helps tremendously.

So this is the same principle again, when Ephesians and collage and say, one another by singing Psalms and hymns and spirit songs. There’s no qualification. It doesn’t say unless you’re a, a gifted soprano or an alto, none of that. simply means that you have to encourage one another and part of that process means incorporating yourself into the church.

Now it’s easier to do that in the larger church like mine in smaller congregations. You gotta be more, more thoughtful, however. Lemme put a plug here for the Sing Your Part app, which is a wonderful app. Uh, what I try to do is I try to send my congregation our hymns by Wednesday, way those who don’t think they sing well [00:32:00] can look at the Sing Your Part app that our church adopts and they can listen to those songs 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 times familiarize themselves with the tune. And so we also have seasons of practices, and I have learned over the years that everyone who have thought that they don’t sing well are delighted to be in the church that delights in singing. And so, because that adds an encouragement to them. And I think in seasons, circling back to our conversation on the, the Kirk death, I think in seasons where the church weeps and grieves, God has given us Psalms to sing Psalms of lament psalms that express precisely the mood we have.

And that also should be a response of God’s people in such a time as this.

Nathan: You can set that up as a church, right, too, and have, uh, share, share stuff via that. There’s some pretty cool, um, corporate features for that I think as well.

Uri Brito: [00:33:00] Yeah, exactly. I’m a, I’m a big fan of it and I know all the guys who put the app together. I think they’re doing a great work. And you can learn every single part as well. It can work through parts. So if you think you’re, you sing a little bit too low or too high, well there’s also an alto or bass, uh, there is, uh, soprano.

You, you can learn your part that’s gonna be there. And that’s one of the great benefits I think of, um, of AI technology.

Nathan: Hmm. Yeah. And, and, uh, the Philistines are still wearing their masks in their car, and you can be singing God’s word as you’re in your car. Uh, and nobody has to know.

Uri Brito: precisely right. That’s exactly right.

Nathan: Um, I think one of the things that’s significant that kind of came to me, that jotted down, um, I haven’t seen, I don’t know if you have, I haven’t seen a, a single post in the wake of this that was, uh, going after Charlie Kirk’s position on baptism or.

His position on the table or, you know, denominationally that, and [00:34:00] I’m sure you probably have seen some of it because of your vantage point on the culture, but I, I, I, I, I consume a decent amount, uh, of media to try to keep my finger on the pulse and to offer, you know, what I’m thinking through. And I didn’t see a lot of that, you know, and that’s, uh.

Just not to make light of it. ’cause I’ve, I’ve had es Anthony Lin on my podcast, you know, and we discussed, um, and I asked him specifically how Catholics and Protestants are supposed to get along, you know, and, and so, and I’ve had a friend tell me, you know, IIII can make fun of the Navy. I already did, you know, and I,

Uri Brito: Yeah.

Nathan: you know, the, the, uh, I will never, uh, think of them as the same level as me, tactically, spiritually, whatever.

There’s just a general mental capacity that they don’t have if they join the Navy that somebody in my position has saying facetiously, obviously. Uh, [00:35:00] so we can banter. I mean, we can have, if I’m in the room, if I go to these, you know, fight Laies conference or whatever, and the Marine says something and I go at ’em.

For being a Marine, it does not bother him. And he’s actually excited. He’s like, okay, finally, I’m another dude. We’re gonna lock antlers. We’re gonna go at it. And, uh, I, when a similar thing happens, the nomination, but specifically online, I think it happens in person, but with, with the blogs and with the podcast, when a, and it’s often not done playfully.

Um, but I know we need the Navy and the Marines and the Air Force and even the Coast Guard, like there’s a place for those guys. As weird as they are, you know, um, we need all these people and, and have seen in the real physical sense how our nation employs these different capabilities [00:36:00] to get, you know, effective, complete missions, um, you know, and things like that.

And so I, I guess. As I look at the church and as I interview pastors and things like that, I, um, I came from a home church unchurched kind of background. My dad was not involved in a, a church. He got, uh, asked to leave a PCA church when I was a junior in high school ’cause he was making trouble. And I, I’ve seen him lock, uh, in, in maybe not a Christian way, horns with men at our dinner table and, you know, they become heated.

Um, I, I guess I would say is, you know, what do, what do you think about that and how do you think we, um, with the current mediums, um, can, should be conducting ourselves? Because I, I, uh, um, I, I have, you know, sat with a lot of these pastors throughout and I know their heart. I’ve, I’ve been with their people in person

Uri Brito: Yeah.

Nathan: I [00:37:00] don’t wanna fight with any of them.

Specifically online. And I want to build coalitions with them. And I say, you know, they’re mutilating babies in the womb and chemically castrating children all over the place. And we’re talking and we’re fighting and putting a lot of energy into these things that are, are, do matter. Like you said, they form, they’re, they’re worship, they form us.

But, but how do we, you know, build coalitions like Charlie did. Um, ’cause that’s, I guess where I wanna see, I want to see coalitions being built. I wanna see common ground being established. I wanna see bread being broken in our homes, um, with each other and dissolving these things in maybe smaller groups than on the internet, you know, and that’s what, uh, Anthony Lon said.

He’s like, we’re not gonna solve this stuff, uh, on a podcast. You know, like, we’re not gonna, it’s this is, these are, there’s a reason why they are still things. That, that very [00:38:00] learned men cannot agree on, you know, and, and, and fight about. So I guess that what, what some feedback, uh, on that.

Uri Brito: Yeah. Great, great stuff. I could talk for a long time on that issue. That, let me, let me propose two categories that I’ve used in the past, Nathan. category of poet and the category of practitioner. and practitioners. Poets are generally, they’re, they’re the philosophers. They’re the, the gals, the, the pipe smokers, right.

I wrote in my book on, on the pipe smoking that those are kind of the poets. they want to think carefully through things and they want to. things. we have these men,

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: we refer ’em in various ways. They’re, they’re nerds, they’re um, they’re, they’re thinkers. They’re professorial. And I don’t think necessarily, these are all bad things. I think they’re, they’re good things. We need poets. We need poets. the other hand, we have

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: And you strike me as a practitioner, [00:39:00] you know, very thorough. And these are good things. But we can’t all be practitioners because somebody has to lay down the philosophy to, to guide our practice.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: If we don’t have poets writing our, the philosophy to guide our practice, we’re gonna be revolutionaries, we’re gonna get in trouble, we’re gonna go to prison, and we need these kinds of things. So I always tell these two kinds of people, and they’re very easy to, I’ve been a pastor for a long time, and, but I’m sure because of your skills as well, somebody in the military who knows, um, who, who has dealt with men, they’re very easy to identify probably within five minutes of a conversation.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: Pretty user identifying

Nathan: might be able to identify them without the conversation by their physical makeup as well.

Uri Brito: Yeah, I

Nathan: Going out on a limb here.

Uri Brito: Yeah, no, that’s very true. And really you want to encourage them to be, you know, 10% more like the other, more like each other.

Nathan: Yeah.

Uri Brito: there’s a, there’s a, a truth to that sort of premise. And uh, and I [00:40:00] think a lot of the men who are sort of more thinking through what happened in the Charlie Kirk situation need to gain some wisdom from the practitioners

Nathan: Mm.

Uri Brito: who are saying, I gotta do something, you know, gimme liberty or gimme death.

You know,

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: there, there’s a danger and reactionary, and I’m concerned that these guys are going to do very foolish things. Um, an example of, and so they need to learn a little bit more from the poets as well, and which means there is an art to contemplation. Bible says there’s, there’s a season for everything.

Please ask these three. if you think. season’s a season for warfare. Uh, you’re gonna wear yourself out and you will lose your family very early

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: So that’s, that’s the first thing to keep in mind. But the, but the second element to keep in mind is that we we’re, uh, this has been, this is somewhat personal to me ’cause I’ve experienced this now in the last couple years of pastor here, there are a lot of, of Twitter conversions taking place, right? Protestant men who [00:41:00] understand their Protestantism are listening to Jay Dyer, for example, are being swayed and drawn into matic language that says, if you are not in the Orthodox Church, you’re not in the true and only church. men who are not equipped and who are not guided or rooted the bait.

And that’s what, that’s what it’s, these are baits. And so my, my premise as I have been on Twitter probably since 2004, I believe so 21 years now at some level or another. And on Facebook since, you know, 2001, I think. And I think my, my premise has been to write, I ironically, in a way that draws people in. And for every four ironic posts have one that hits people, that challenges people, that confronts people. I think that’s, that’s the balance I have found in my,

Nathan: Can you give a definition [00:42:00] for the practitioner of Irenic?

Uri Brito: Yeah. For, for the, and I think that that simply means that you, you state your position with as much, uh, with, with as much boldness as you can, but you don’t treat it as if this is life or death. So you can talk about baptism and state it in a way that’s bold, affirmative. But you don’t challenge the salvation of Credo Baptist, for example, right? Uh, but I think there are times in situations like this where I’m gonna write a post, where I’m going to say, these are the things that you’re missing out when your children are not in worship with you on Sunday morning.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: These are things you’re missing out when you think that discipleship begins at the age of 12 at a public profession of faith.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: So there are situations where I’m going to address these things and I, I don’t know, actually, I don’t know where I follow these categories. There are days where I, you know, I, I love poetry, but I also, but my heart is always in the practice, primarily because I was trained by Professor John [00:43:00] Frame, who literally defined theology as the application of the word of God to all areas of life. Uh, frame actually said, Nathan, that there is no such thing as theology unless it is applied, which I think is just, uh, fascinating, uh, to contemplate. And, but these are, these are a couple thoughts I think to keep in mind is that the social media will always be a great and fruitful endeavor. And I encourage virtually everyone with maybe some few exceptions, virtually everyone to be a part of it. But what I would do pastorally, if they would seek my counsel, because I have no interest in, in shepherding people’s tweets, right? Um, I, I just don’t have the,

Nathan: Bandwidth.

Uri Brito: don’t have the, bandwidth. I don’t have the stamina or the bandwidth, what I typically say is, you wanna get on, in line.

I encourage you to do so. Um, let’s, let’s contemplate your online presence in three to six months down the road. then let me give you some wisdom in how better to sort of cultivate, um, this, this healthy theological impulse or practical impulse that you have [00:44:00] so that you don’t sound like an idiot in everything you post.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: I think that’s, that’s where shepherding has to begin. Let these guys go out and do their thing. Encourage them, stir them. put too many hindrances, but then three, six months down the road, bring them over for a beer, a cigar, and say, Hey, listen, what do you think about the way you’re posting your interaction with Sister Susie down the road? you treat an elderly lady that way? Should you treat an an a, a godly wise father the way you have treated him? Would you say these things to him face to face?

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: translate? And so, just, just some general sort of pastoral thoughts to

Nathan: Or have you thought of inviting them over and saying it, you know,

Uri Brito: Hmm,

Nathan: there’s gonna be a different, I have, um, have several times almost, um, like called up a couple people duking it out online and say, I’ll provide the venue. Like, I have a mansion in Pinehurst. It’s, it’s great. I want everybody to come in here and, [00:45:00] and we will not talk about any of these issues until we’ve had three meals together.

And so we’ve sat around the fire, so we’ve had an opportunity to share about what the Lord is doing in our families, where we are locally. And, and I go back to that Abraham Lincoln quote, I don’t like the guy, I don’t like the man. I must get to know him better. Um, and, and I feel like that is, that is in a sense of what the podcast realm is doing, is giving the opportunity for us to know each other better.

And I see the evil one reducing us down to sound bites because that is how they can, they can create the, the schism in the church, like the warfare that can happen.

Uri Brito: Uh, man, I, I, um, I am absolutely in love with what you said there. I, I love that po I did this with the, remember when Kevin, the young, wrote the Moscow mood uh, as a presiding minister, I, I said, listen, I’ll be happy to go to Moscow. I’ll bring Doug Wilson to Charlotte, [00:46:00] North Carolina, where you pastor, and I’ll moderate a debate here.

I’ll pay for all expenses and all that.

Nathan: Amen.

Uri Brito: And, uh, obviously never took up on that reality, but he really should have, because I think these are things that, um, really need to occur. And there’s something also just something, something tender about putting conversation food.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: everybody’s soul is tenderized when they come into your home,

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: and that allows for fruitfulness in dialogue. And I’ve seen. I’ve seen people change their minds, obviously much more so in those environments that you’re proposing Nathan, than the kind of sort of alistic back and forth that just really people and gives them a greater desire to press on in their wrongness. You

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: they may even be wrong and they may acknowledge that they’re wrong, but by golly they’re not gonna let this one slide, you know.

Nathan: Yeah, I mean, I, I go back to Rosario Butterfield’s testimony [00:47:00] and how long it took to convert her. I mean, it was, I think it was two years, year and a half, two years of dinners and, and even just a, um, a potential, a pastor opening their home up to, uh, somebody in, in the depths of, of sin and in the grasp of the evil one at the time, and setting them free.

Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s hard to, um, I, I, yeah, you just, it’s hard to not get along with these, and that’s what I see at some of these conferences too. I see a lot of different backgrounds and I can read the poet reacting to, uh, something the practitioner said and being quiet. And I can see the practitioner go crazy and I, you know, I have gone into these situations and ruffled feathers, I guess in, in some of those minds.

I say, I’d rather I’m trying to reach the seven or eight. I’m not trying to reach all of you. Like, this is my moment. I want to try to pull and, and bring, but then learning the wisdom [00:48:00] to do that and, and ongoing. I, I don’t, I I’ve, I’ve modified my social media presence a lot since I first started and, and, and have called Christian Men and gotten feedback about it and been like, why did it land this way?

This is a problem I’m really seeing, you know? And, uh, you know, I mean, I mean, I used to go after, I used to to talk about fat pastors online a lot and, and you may have seen some of it or whatever, but, um, and I see, uh, that being, I guess, you know, this is kind of driving to the point, I guess you talked about the Greek Orthodox.

I, I, I, um. I got tagged, uh, in a, a post on X this morning about a young 22-year-old man that was raised in the nondenom space, has a huge Instagram following. And it was talking about I see the Greek Orthodox as being where I want to go, you know, and, and that his [00:49:00] comment was like, no, we need to listen to these guys.

And that’s how I found out about this guy. So I went to his Instagram and sent him a message and just said, I, ’cause from where I see, I see that these men want the structure. These practitioners understand they don’t get stronger without pushing the barbell against gravity. And they want rigid structure and being told, do these things and this fruit will happen.

And I see liturgically that being, and that’s as a practitioner myself, that’s why I show up every day. That’s why when I didn’t like how my session was handling something in critical moments, I stayed. And because I see as a practitioner, I can have no confidence in my own actions if I’m not under authority.

And if I’m not having these conversations first and foremost with my pastor in my session, um, and, and I [00:50:00] don’t get outlet online and, and these things and I have to bring it under, like, that’s for me, I feel like I saw that, um, respectfully in my father and I wanted to change that, that he didn’t have. And I wanted to put this root in place or this foundation in place for my family.

Um, but I, but I, but at the same time, like we’re, we’re ready to go and we got these guys that are seeing essentially seem like they’re, they’re going from Nondenom and they’re launching into. The Orthodox space and, and they’re, and they’re able to discern maybe, oh, I don’t necessarily like how Catholicism handles these things.

And what is, how do you see, um, I would be, I would be curious to know, even just theologically, doctrinally how you, if you have that young, so, so I guess the rest of the story is he posted a story on his Instagram and said, we’re doing Bible study at [00:51:00] 7:00 AM because I started just look at his, look what’s the fabric of his life.

And I jumped on that Bible study. It was during my weightlifting time today, and I jumped outta the Bible. So he, he has, he’s opening Hebrews 11 and 12 as a 22-year-old, and he’s, he’s got 20 young men that tuned in and, and they’re looking at the word of God. And he literally was going after pornography in their life, you know, as a 22-year-old.

And given a testimony of that, he walked away from. The faith and, and so it’s like practically discipling with the word of God. And, and has the ESV study Bible open, has it shared on the thing he’s walking through? He’s, he’s making the connection of, you know, the Spotless Lamb being tangled in his head, tangled in the thorns, and Abraham Abraham.

And he’s got, like, this dude has got it, you know, and, and he’s, he said he felt like, he just kinda shared, he is like, I’m, he is supposed to be doing this Bible study. [00:52:00] And I, I was just curious, like, I wanna know more about this young man and more about what he’s doing. And obviously God is working through what he’s doing and, but I, and I also have this clip, I don’t know how long ago that got shared on Twitter saying, I see Greek Orthodox.

Um, I know that’s a lot there, but that’s, I guess really the heart of where I’m at with things right now is, is looking at these guys and saying, what, where, what do we do? You know, how do we help them?

Uri Brito: Yeah. I ha I we’re, we’re experiencing a great season of Ritualization and. Part of it is that these congregations have not offered any stability for these young men who are practitioners. want to move, and these congregations are not adding stability. Look, the the last thing you want to do when you are practitioners is to be in an environment that has no order, is to be in an [00:53:00] environment that moves through the law of spontaneity. And I think there’s a real danger in all of that. And I think that’s the, one of the things that will happen is that liturgical bodies are gonna continue to increase in numbers. I mean, Nathan, I think the last 10 families that join our congregation were somewhere between in their twenties and forties.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: just remarkable, These are young people with little children who are looking for stability. They, they’ve been awakened from their malaise, and I think there’s something really powerful to that. But the. The reality, I think, is that what they’re, what they’re finding in places like Eastern Orthodoxy or Catholicism is the mirage of the ancient, the mirage of the ancient. doesn’t truly exist. It doesn’t exist, and it doesn’t provide order. I mean, the prime example of this is, for example, look at Eastern Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy will forever have to contemplate the fruits of their labors.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: Look as an Eastern Orthodox. Look at [00:54:00] what the West has produced with Shakespeare,

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: with Cramer, with Calvin, with Luther, with the Puritans, the Puritan ethic with the United States of America.

In its founding, look at the poetry have produced. The East will have to deal with that question. The Bible says, you are tested by your fruits. You shall know them by your fruits. The West has produced infinitely more. Culturally, sociologically, theologically than the east ever has. at the state of Ukraine, Poland, of Russia. Look at Eastern Europe, or look at Eastern Europe and or, or look at even South American bodies, for example,

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: Where these expressions of Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox are, are, are more Catholicism in in South America, but certainly the east eastern orthodoxy obviously look at their producing socialism, tyranny. And so these things have to [00:55:00] be contemplated. The, again, the mirage of the ancient, it appears from the outside that there’s been this remarkable two millennial stability, but don’t be deceived the beautiful architecture from the outside,

Nathan: That’s immediately where I went is there’s all these, uh, Twitter pages showing that, I mean, that is, that’s fruit in, in a, in a large sense obviously, that that actually transcends logical argument in theology, in, in a way. When you stand in these great churches, something happens that is, is, is not necessarily, uh, amoral, uh.

Uri Brito: No, no. There, there’s a, there’s a sacredness to space that ought to be contemplated. I would also argue that the West has produced the best architecture as well. That, that’s a different question, but I, I think that’s another fruit of the Western tradition as [00:56:00] well. Now, I think, you know, we have, we have our own problems obvious in the West, but look at the fruitfulness of what we have done and look at the fruitfulness of the East for thousands of, for thousands of years, certainly the last 2000 years, and certainly the last 50 years, for example, the. The, the, lack of a, uh, not just the lack of, of societal order, uh, but the lack of any kind of meaningfulness in, in life itself. And so, I’m, I, I want to bring these issues to everybody’s attention because I think Protestantism in the best of what’s Protestant, I think has afforded, uh, young men the, the beauty that they crave, the, the, uh, the, the poetry that they crave, the goodness that they crave, and the truth that they crave. I think these things are all provided, and the, the reality is that many people have never gone beyond, a Chuck Swindoll or beyond the, you know, so we have very much limited in our resources. It’s, it’s incumbent upon us [00:57:00] to provide our people the resources and realize that our great fathers in the Reformation tradition, were not divorced from the Patristics. They built on the patristics. And so whereas there’s a mirage of the ancient, the reformers truly built on the ancient and sought to reform the church in its deepest corruption. And so I think that’s, it’s something to contemplate. There’s a beauty to the reformation and to the Protestant tradition that needs to be reinstilled in the hearts of people.

And it’s true. We need more gifted YouTubers. We, uh, somebody who provides a greater vision of Protestant than Gavin Orland, you know, who does a fine job, but we

Nathan: Amen.

Uri Brito: a, a much richer Protestant tradition than what’s what he’s offering there from a tradition that doesn’t compromise in political matters. So that’s, that’s what I’m saying. And I think these, these, these are appearing, they’re taking place, they’re showing up. uh, this is the season I think the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk, I hope, will stir up [00:58:00] 100 dormant voices to, to get out there and proclaim this, this vision that I’m proposing.

Nathan: Absolutely. So give a, give a playbook then. Um, you know, the, the guy that you said, you said, going back, you said, I think everybody should be on social media with exception to a few people. I, I get that correctly. So there’s some people that you’re like, Hey, I, I’ve watched what you put out. Um, you don’t, you don’t have it.

You know, it’s, it’s different than singing. You should try to sing. Before God. But this is not necessarily something that I, you know, and, and I actually got, um, uh, Larson Hicks told me to, to bring my podcast to the session, and we’ve had people join our church ’cause of the podcast. And that was literally not even in my mind when I started it.

It’s literally what I told you before. How, how can I gain access to these [00:59:00] wiser men that, that I would not ordinarily have. But, um, you know, when I went to my session, I said, Hey, I want you to listen and even break it out. Like listen to this podcast. And, and I literally had to show, I think every single one of ’em how to find a podcast on their phone.

Like, because we have a, a older, wiser session, you know, and I jokingly refer to them as the ends, you know, they like when they finally go to war, it is a reckoning, you know, and, and me as a practitioner, I’m like. We’re gonna lose, you know, come on. And they’re, and they’re just steady, which is why I want to be underneath them.

This is why I wanna stay there, which is why I, I haven’t left, is because I know apart from, from that fellowship that exists in the church, I would be a fool or more of a fool than I already am. And, but I’d say just I give the, the prescriptive, I [01:00:00] guess of, of some of those, like, I, I particularly want to, um, I would love to go back to our church men’s group and says, say all y’all need to go on Twitter and all y’all need, and, and, and maybe a, not a consum, because that’s, I guess the distinctive I make is, are you consuming or producing and setting up practices where you produce something of quality and of value?

Um, and it’s helped my own study of the word, um, this conversation is making me a better man. And, and that practice of trying to produce something of value makes me better. But I want to tell ’em, Hey, everybody, uh, the presiding minister of the CREC says, y’all need to be on Twitter. But I asked him to give you guys a playbook.

So you’re talking to 60 men at our church in Sandhills, and, and, and I’ve talked about what to do. We’ve talked about a lot of in order, I want you to tell ’em about that. Like if, if, if [01:01:00] we’re gonna, if we’re gonna say everyone should be, except for a few exceptions. So maybe how you determine if you’re the exception guy or the, the, the larger group.

And then after that, then what you do, um,

Uri Brito: Yeah,

Nathan: without losing yourself to it, um, without neglecting your family. I mean, my wife definitely, I’ve, I have a practice. I come in, I put my, take my watch off that buzzes. I don’t have any notifications set up on any of those platforms. They don’t get to, to break my conscious thought with a notification.

I set it down on my. The piano in our, our room, and I go back to dinner and I don’t try to touch that again till bedtime or, or whatever, but, um, what you would say to them, um, in the practice of it, not me, I’m, I’m, I’m waxing eloquent here.

Uri Brito: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m gonna have to, I’m gonna have to leave shortly for an adoption ceremony, Nathan, but I’ll, I’ll, let me, let me, lemme rephrase it this way here, um, as my, my closing point here. I think there, there are certain people whose dispositions and [01:02:00] personalities and whose anxieties are so all consuming that I think social media would be the, the final straw that would probably break them.

And I speak from someone who has seen that take place in, in, in the lives of people that I know. And so that’s the first consideration. the second consideration is that there are perhaps poets who do a better job communicating at a, at a one-on-one level, at a congregational level, at a, a face-to-face, at a, at a, um, an in fleshed discourse than they would online, right?

And so these people, what they’re doing in some ways is they are, they’re setting down the guidelines for guys like Nathan. so I think the way I, the way I look at it’s, I think for every, for every poet there ought to be five practitioners. And so. Perhaps your pastor is one of those poets. Perhaps your session is one of those poets, they set the stage down so that they can set their congregants on fire, but they need to be inspired by [01:03:00] something.

Right. Um, practitioners by nature sometimes are, are not the, um, they typically have the ability to sort of write down, um, guidelines and, and, and, you know, so they, they don’t have, by nature the power of inspiration as poets. Right. But sometimes. the poets need to realize that they, they need to be inspired by something because they can’t be inspired by themselves, right? I, I’ve, I’ve met many poems, poets who are who, who struggle reading their own poets, their own poems, whereas other people truly love their poems.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Uri Brito: I’ve heard pastors who are fantastic pastors who have a really, really hard time listening to their own sermons. But people love their sermons. And so I think for every poet we have five practitioners.

And sometimes there are poets don’t need to be online, but they need to be saying, Nathan, go forth. My man. Carry on your battle there. Let me encourage you, know, here, here’s, here’s a, here’s a, a text to encourage your [01:04:00] day-to-day the things you’re pursuing. I think those ought to be few and they ought to be selective. There are, uh,

Nathan: So you’re saying the few, the people that are just in the background encouraging need to be few because the proportionate is that they’re actually producing something in four or five others that they’re better gifted for.

Uri Brito: Correct. They’re, they’re in that role of exhortation and inspiration, perhaps, as you said, it might be your role to, take their inspiration and exhortation with their permission and publicize so other people can be encouraged. But I think there’s a, again, there’s a season for, there’s a season for everything in terms of how somebody should go about these kinds of principles. If I had sort of my way of doing things, if you say, okay, I’ve been, I’ve been dormant for a long time. The Charlie Kirk incident has just stirred me. I have listened to brother Nathan. I’ve seen his excitement, his um, motivation, his zeal, his fervor. I’ve seen all these things and I wanna do something [01:05:00] about it. you know. Begin for the first month, just posting Bible verses. Begin through an incremental model. Post Bible verses Post your, your favorite Doug Wilson quote. Um, post a, a clip of something that is meaningful to you. Be, uh, play as as positive a role as possible. then sort of start a strategy. Do things well, if at all possible. Get a good microphone, get a good camera. other words, take your job seriously. don’t need more mediocre Christians on social media. We need Christians who do things well. We talk about beauty. Well, let’s add beauty to what we do. And so prepare yourself. Equip yourself, so put these things in place and then seek the wisdom of at least two men.

I, I would urge two men who have done this for a season and do it well and then seek a kind of, a, kind of accountability, avoid going. Uh, you know, avoid going in this kind [01:06:00] of, uh, express expressive individualism, uh, model and avoid going in a particular journey where it’s you against the world. It’s not you against the world.

You’re not Athanasius, right? It’s not you against the world. It’s you in union with Jesus who has bought a people for himself. It’s you in connection. What you do actually does echo in the, in the, in the corridors and the foyers and the sanctuaries of where you are. You represent your body, you represent your family. So whatever you do, do as unto the Lord, and that includes your social media practice. So there’s some strategic things to keep in place, and I think these are at least ways to begin this conversation.

Nathan: That’s awesome. I got a lot of ideas to go put in practice right from that. You, I’m going

Uri Brito: Lord bless you, my brother.

Nathan: Awesome. Exciting about a baptism. Uh, I appreciate your time and, uh, we’ll continue to be in touch and, and, uh, may the Lord bless and keep [01:07:00] you and your efforts and your family as you continue to do war where he’s placed you. Um, thank you so much.

Uri Brito: You are very welcome. My absolute pleasure and delight to get to know you a little better.

shotgun: Click. Click.

Hey y’all, Nathan here. I, uh, turned this episode around really quick, try to get it out to you, but I wanted to go ahead and say something real quick before we sign off completely. I have been struggling as a construction worker trying to use my background in the military special operations to specifically help.

The church and Christian men right now, um, not with construction, but with some of these things that they may feel under-prepared for, with what would happen in a tragic situation, in a kinetic situation in your church, in your school, in your home, that you’re not really ready for. You know, deep down as the Charlie Kirk things happen, as, as the situation seems to get worse, you’re not really sure what to do.

And where to [01:08:00] go And, uh, I would maybe first and foremost say you should move here and join our church in Southern Pines, North Carolina. But I’m also trying to use some of these digital tools and media and carve out time in my day to build what is needed to equip the church. Um, at this point hasn’t paid better than construction, so I’m still doing construction, but I have put together some resources and put them underneath the banner of the tactical household.

And so if you go to tactical household.com, I’ll put the link in the bio and, uh, also I’ll put the, the coupon code ’cause I know I have one for Life on target listeners. And I haven’t been doing it very much lately because I’ve been trying to get into our house, but there is my EDCs on there, some Amazon shopping lists, um, some PDF downloads, some gun kit links.

Um, a uh, couple different things about taking dominion over yourself. Access to my private telegram channel where I put out stuff. I’m gonna try to get back to doing [01:09:00] something almost every day on that telegram to my paid people. Um, but yeah, uh, go over to technical household.com. I’m gonna start putting out more stuff.

I actually, last weekend, recorded a basic pistol course. I’m selling that for 25 bucks. But, uh, I’m also. Rolling that into the tactical household covering. So the basic pistol course and at a $25 price point and the tactical household at $150 price point is a tangible way that you, as a listener of the Life On Target Podcast, can support my efforts to continue to produce media that arms and equips Christian men, um, spiritually first and foremost, like we talked about with Pastor Uri Brito, but then.

Actually physically, um, and with some of the skill sets that I have, uh, at a very elite level. So, um, we’re also gonna get some of the men in our church. We’re seeing as our, our church continues to build and prepare locally to meet the [01:10:00] challenges that, um, face us. We’ve been doing range days. We’ve been, we’ve got a lot of people in our church that have, um, background and skill and instruction.

And so we also have a a in-person offering. We’re putting together where people from your church can travel out, can stay at my mansion in Pinehurst, come out to our farm, enjoy meals together, enjoy time around the fire, but then also some time on the range and some time being taught, um, medicine and uh, medical stuff.

From, uh, a, a, a cadre, a rich cadre, members of our church, um, that also have skills in some of these other things that we, we wanna run to the guns as men. And this particular, uh, training is meant to talk about the spiritually, how to spiritually equip, uh, men and their families, but then also the tangible tools they need.

So, um, I’ve been kind of tripping about that on X and, and, uh, Instagram and we’re working through, I’ve had a number of people contact, we have a lot of capacity. [01:11:00] Um, probably could do up to 30 men, um, as early as November. So, um, that’s probably gonna come around a $2,000 price point. I’ve already run this with the cross politic guys out in South Dakota and we’re replicating that with a bunch of the additional stuff that would be provided that were close support, brag.

So, um, opportunity to, uh, you know, you can DM me on any of social media stuff or, um, you know, you’re gonna. Get access to some of these lower price point thing, but then also the premium offering that builds on the basics. And, uh, I’m really want to equip brown belts with this training to go back and, uh, disciple the men at their church.

I want you to come with the blessing of the session. At your church being, uh, somebody who is a, uh, already has dominion over their life at a, at a, uh, a leadership level and is looking to lead the church efforts in some of these different domains. So those are [01:12:00] kind of three tiered offerings. You know, I don’t run a bunch of ads, um, and I put all this stuff out of, of, uh, my own pocket.

And, uh, we lived in a bus for three years because I did it, and that’s why it’s taken me so long to get back to do an episode. So tangibly going and supporting, uh, but I’m, I’m also trying to deliver a, a valuable product to you as well. So those are some three ways that you can support what we’re doing here, and I look forward to seeing some stuff come in, uh, on, uh, the feed as, as we continue to build that community.

Guest Links

• Puritan Reform Church: https://puritanphx.com
• Twitter/X: https://x.com/RealDavidReese
• Armored Republic (AR500): https://www.ar500armor.com

Resources Mentioned

• The Book of Proverbs (Bible)
• Westminster Larger Catechism (esp. section on the Law): Free Online Version
• William Perkins – Christian Oeconomy (Christian Economy): Free eBook (PDF)
• The Great Exchange by Jerry Bridges & Bob Bevington: Amazon Link
• Ron Paul Curriculum (mentioned for homeschool history videos): https://www.ronpaulcurriculum.com

Connect with Nathan / Life on Target

• ️ More episodes of Life on Target: Spearing.co
• Twitter/X: @thespearing

Outline

[00:00:00] Opening

• Nathan introduces David Reece and reconnects after previous conferences.

[00:01:00] Guest Background

• David shares his bio: pastor at Puritan Reform Church, husband, father of six, new grandfather.
• Founder of Armored Republic; mission: “tools of liberty for free men.”
• Building a portfolio of Christian businesses.

[00:05:00] Children and Work

• Training sons to begin full-time work by 15–16.
• Daughter engaged in admin/finance; sons in marketing and video.
• Purpose: each child gains a trade and skill, avoiding idleness.

[00:09:00] Homeschool Philosophy

• Early emphasis on reading, writing, arithmetic.
• Family worship every day: Bible reading, prayer, psalm singing, blessing.
• Using play to prepare for work by adding layers of complexity.
• Teaching biblical and world history with big “touchpoints” to anchor understanding.

[00:17:00] Discipline

• Importance of consistent, prompt discipline.
• Nathan shares convictions from Future Men documentary about avoiding moving standards.
• Reece explains discipline framework: charges, plea, verdict, sentencing, restoration.
• Transition from corporal punishment in younger years to written reflection, restitution, and responsibility for older children (esp. daughters).

[00:28:00] Quick Forgiveness vs. Prolonged Punishment

• Discussion about restoration after discipline.
• Contrast between God’s long judgments (e.g., 40 years wilderness) and parental discipline.

[00:29:00] Structuring Time & Priorities

• Nathan asks about perfect week, balance of spiritual, business, and family growth.
• Reece emphasizes delegation to wife/children, necessity of managing household well.
• Prioritizing worship, family discipleship, and physical health.

[00:35:00] Physical Training and Health

• Story of Sean O’Brien bluntly telling Reece he needed to train.
• Reece’s weight loss, strength training, and discipline alongside his sons.
• Nathan comments on pastors needing to face physical fitness honestly.

[00:42:00] Business Leadership and Delegation

• Importance of running current businesses well before expanding.
• Four major jobs of a CEO: strategy, culture, accountability, financial planning.
• Principle of leverage: finding points of greatest impact with least effort.

[00:45:00] Sabbath and Time Markers

• Keeping the Lord’s Day as central time structure for life and business.
• No ordinary work, email, or marketing on Sundays.
• Family and private worship as anchors.

[00:50:00] Empowering Others

• Big rocks analogy for priorities.
• Morning private worship with wife; evening family worship.
• Numbers as a “kingly” book of order and warfare.
• Delegating authority in home and business with clear jurisdictions, resources, deadlines.

[01:02:00] Triple Household Offices

• Man as master, husband, and father.
• Wife as queen, partner in managing estate.
• Children and servants brought under clear authority and profitable work.
• Prophet, priest, king roles applied to leadership.

[01:05:00] Final Encouragement

• Reece recommends three resources: Proverbs, Westminster Larger Catechism, and William Perkins’ Christian Economy.
• Closing thanks and links to Puritan Reform Church (puritanphx.com) and Twitter @RealDavidReese.

[01:10:00] Outro

Links:

The Tactical Household Private Group (Paid)

3 Essential Guns Guide (Free)

Blue Collar Business Launch Guide (Free)

Nathan’s Twitter/X

Nathan’s Instagram

Nathan’s YouTube Channel

Timestamp Outline:

• [00:00:00] Introduction: Reflecting on Monday morning thoughts about time and purpose

• [00:01:00] Understanding opportunity cost and God’s unique purpose for each of us

• [00:02:00] Balancing mental toughness with smarter decision-making

• [00:03:00] The question of delegation: Who can do this better than me?

• [00:04:00] A lucrative opportunity: Excitement vs. dread

• [00:05:00] Overcoming FOMO: Saying no to financial gain for personal and family priorities

• [00:06:00] Systematizing business operations to free bandwidth for creative pursuits

• [00:07:00] Closing thoughts: Verbal processing and encouragement for the week ahead

Links:

The Tactical Household Private Group (Paid)

3 Essential Guns Guide (Free)

Blue Collar Business Launch Guide (Free)

Ranger Handbook on Sustainment Operations (PDF)

Off-Grid Medicine Book

Art of Manliness: Off-Grid Medicine Podcast

Joel Salatin’s Homesteading Insights (Life on Target Episode 64)

Nathan’s Twitter/X

Nathan’s Instagram

Nathan’s YouTube Channel

Join the Tactical Household private group and make your family unstoppable. Use code “LIFEONTARGET” to get 10% off.

Follow me on X | Instagram | YouTube

All episodes, show notes, and full transcript at www.Spearing.co

Links:

• “A Theology of Violence”- Nathan Spearing (Trad Dad 2023 Session 3)
• “Making The Battle” – Nathan Spearing (Trad Dad 2023 Session 6)

Outline:

00:00 Regret over time away from family and farm.

05:23 Desire for hosting despite practical challenges. Embracing simplicity.

07:24 Balanced life over theological arguments and social media.

12:41 Creating free launch guide and courses soon.

Follow Nathan on:

X | Instagram | Spearing.co