Good evening. I'm so glad that y'all came out tonight. And tonight, Owen and I are going to have really a conversation. And this is something that I've wanted to do for a long time. And I'm going to ask him questions. And these are the questions that I want to ask Owen. So people were sending me questions and saying, are you gonna ask this? Or, you know, can we ask questions? No, no, I'm asking the questions. And I think, you know, Owen is such an expert on social issues and issues like transgenderism and wokeness and everything that's going on in the cultural square. You can go on YouTube and find a ton of that stuff that you've done for a long time. So what I wanna do is do something a little bit more personal and kind of get at the heart of Owen Strand and really, you know, really kind of peel back the onion a little bit and for people to know who you are personally. So let me pray for our time and then we'll... Get started. Heavenly Father, Lord, we pray for our time this evening. Just pray, Lord, that this would honor and glorify you. Just pray for Owen as he's thinking about just the different facets of his life and ministry, and just pray, Lord, that you would minister to us through him. And we ask this in Christ's name, amen. All right, let's just begin with you and a little biography. Tell us about your family life growing up. I know you grew up in Maine, but tell us about your parents, your family dynamic. Who is Owen Strand? Okay, thank you. I grew up in coastal Maine in a small town called Machias, and I grew up about an hour east of Bar Harbor. My father was a forester who walked the woods of Maine for a living. My mom was a librarian at a few elementary schools, and I went K to 12 public school, and then I went to a secular college. So in terms of kind of having the wind in your face, like a lot of us Christians do nowadays, I kind of had it in my face from an early age. Maine is very post-Christian. There's about 1.5% of the people who identify as Christian, evangelical Christian, and so there just are not many Christians out there. But that was really good for me because, again, it put the wind against me, and I felt from a young age what it was like to be a bit of an alien, you know, an exile. And I was raised in a tiny Baptist church of about 50 people. And it was a faithful Baptist church and heard the gospel, came to faith when I was probably nine or 10 at Vacation Bible School. Some of you know about VBS. You have a VBS coming up, yes. Yeah, you said it's probably gonna sell out. VBS is, right? Sell out, that's not quite the term, is it? Get your tickets today. Anyway, came to faith at VBS, and believing parents, very thankful for that. Just one sibling, one younger sister, Rachel, who's in the Greenville, South Carolina area, and those are the basics, I think. So you graduate from high school, and you go to Bowdoin College, which I must confess, until I met you, I had never heard of before. So tell us about Bowdoin College and your experience there, how you were growing as a believer throughout your collegiate years. Yeah, it's kind of like Davidson or Dartmouth or something like that. It was a tough school academically, which again was very good training for me. I was from a 160 student public high school. So going to Bowdoin was actually a big school for me. It was 1,600 students. It was a private liberal arts college. Princeton Review ranked it one of the most secular colleges in the nation while I was there. So again, similar theme, wind in my face. But it was at Bowdoin that the Lord did a lot of work in my heart. I was pinning a lot of my hopes on being a basketball player. I knew they were going to laugh. They laughed. Are you working with your people on fruit of the Spirit or like kindness? Wow. Sorry, let's have a minute here of recovery. Yeah, so that my basketball career ended when I got cut my freshman year of college and it's a d3 cut so That's a pretty tough one It was a fairly aggressive pickup basketball player. I wasn't terrible I just want to put that on record for whatever that's worth. But anyway, I apparently was not good enough for the amazing basketball landscape that was Bowdoin College. So that was used, though, because, you know, that's what happens with idols, right? Idols of the heart. Idols don't make sense when you step back from them and look at them. It didn't make sense for me to be pinning my hopes on some sort of basketball prospects. There were no basketball prospects. But I was. I was. That's where I was trying to find my identity. And it's just such a common struggle of humanity to try to find your identity in anything other than what you should find it in, right? Christ is the only truly stable identity. That's the only stable identity that you can find on the cosmos. So, God used that. He shook me up. I started taking Bible study seriously. I started praying to God. I remember the first time I ever prayed for more than 15 minutes, you know, like one eye looking at the clock, like how long has it been? Oh, seven minutes. Okay, let's keep going. I don't know what else to pray for. I remember that. And I was a Christian coming into Bowdoin, but the Lord used that to jar me. And then I was a little bit of the on-fire Christian from that point. And I wrote an honors thesis at Bowdoin about George Whitefield. and it had an elegant title that I spent a lot of time on. You ready for it? George Whitefield. My roommates, who are Christians, make fun of me for that to this day. I don't know what the question was, but I think we're done on that one. So, one more thing. Joshua Chamberlain. Who knows who Joshua Chamberlain is? Johnny Carr does? Who's Joshua Chamberlain? That's exactly right. I think it was that little round top. Joshua Chamberlain. Tell us about Joshua Chamberlain. He was the Union General who stood against the Confederate forces. Gettysburg. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was, that's what he's known in history for. He's in the film Gods and Generals, a famous film, for example. And he was a strong Christian man. He had a great marriage to his wife, I think her name is Sarah. And there are books written about their marriage because they wrote such, passionate letters to one another, Christian dedication to one another. And so Chamberlain came back from the Civil War and served as president of Bowdoin, the college I went to, and instituted compulsory military drilling, which was not popular with the students. Bowdoin's an interesting little college. It produced Hawthorne and Longfellow in the same class, so 1825. In the same class was Franklin Pierce, one of America's presidents, one of the least consequential of America's presidents. So put that on your advertising brochure. So from Bowdoin, you go to Washington, D.C. Was that the first stop or was there another stop? That was the stop. Yeah, I had heard from my roommate about a church that he found through the phone book called Capitol Hill Metropolitan Baptist Church. That's exactly what it was listed in the Yellow Pages as. This is the Yellow Pages, kids. We are deep in history right now. Seriously, talk about that with your children or grandchildren on the way home, the Yellow Pages. And so he found this church and he started attending it while he was an intern in D.C. in like 2001 or something. He told me about this church. He showed up at it and he thought it was, because he was just trying to find a Baptist church. He didn't know one in D.C. This is pre all the big stuff, T4G and all these things. And so he goes to it and it's like 700 Neo-Puritans worshiping for like three hours. And he was like, This is awesome. So he tells me about it. They have an internship program. I was a strapped, almost college graduate who had no money, and they would pay you a stipend to go to CHBC and learn about pastoral ministry. I was like, sign me up. Living on Capitol Hill. Learned more about Mark Dever, wanted to learn from him. Wow, seemed like such an interesting and gifted man. So in fall of 2003, I went to D.C. and did that and did the Capitol Hill internship. Very formative for me. Thankful, very thankful for it. to this day. Then I interned at the U.S. Department of State for five months and worked for the Office of White House Liaison and met Colin Powell. Colin Powell and I almost knocked each other over, by the way. We were in the cafeteria. I don't know why he was in the cafeteria. I was in the cafeteria because I needed some food, and we almost knocked each other down, rounding the corner. So there you go. Wow. So was it that point that you realized that you were called to ministry and not called to the How did that happen, your call to ministry? How did you know that you wanted to pursue full-time vocational ministry? That's actually a crucial part of it because after that internship, I interviewed for a post in the Bush White House and might have been able to get a post in like speech writing office. Nowadays, I'm like, why did I not stay an extra year in Washington, D.C. and do that? I kind of wish I had, but it was the call to ministry. You just had that fire. I had to go and get more training for ministry. Devor encouraged me to go to Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and so I did. In the fall of 2004, I went to Southern and started an MDiv, did it for three and a half years in biblical and theological studies, five classes in Greek, five classes in Hebrew, very intense, very formative for me. Speaking of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, what would you say your biggest takeaway from that internship was in terms of your thinking, whether it's about Christianity, about the church, what was your biggest takeaway? The church culture was really a remarkable culture because Mark Dever was and is such a relational person. So he's known for doctrine and church polity and these sorts of things, but he was very relational. And I'd never seen a pastor who had such love for people. And so sometimes in the Reformed world, in the conservative evangelical world, there's a stereotype of the pastor as the guy who holds away for like 40 hours working on his expository sermons and you almost win the lottery to have a meeting with him or something like that. And that was not Mark Dever. He was the opposite end of that. And that really, in looking back on that, I'd have a few disagreements with Deborah over the years, you know, especially more recently, but when I look back at that model of pastoral ministry, I'm so thankful for it. And we need that model of not cold shepherding that you can find in our conservative world, but warm shepherding. Pastor can't meet with everybody in a given month, or so I don't mean that, but he was a warm shepherd. Was he the one who introduced you to Reformed theology? And just give a broad overview of what Reformed theology is. Reformed theology operates under the banner that God is sovereign in all things, including in salvation. So God sovereignly is controlling and providentially ruling the entire cosmos, and man is not sovereign in salvation. It's not our free will that chooses God, and then God goes, you chose me? Great, I'll save you. It's God who pursues us and finds us and loves us and saves us. Reformed theology is wonderful, but I saw it as very bad because I grew up in free will Baptist theology. And the reason I am reformed today is because one of my college roommates, who actually was a professor at Duke in classics until recently, this buddy liked a girl. And so he tried to take her out and she said, I can't, I can't go out with you because you're not reformed. And he was like, reformed? What is that? So challenge accepted, if you will. So he, she's like, you have to read Jonathan Edwards, Bondage or Freedom of the Will, Freedom of the Will. And he was like, Okay? So, he read it, and he became Reformed through it. And so, then he came back to Bowdoin in our sophomore year, this would be 2000, and he was like, guys, I'm Reformed. And all of us, we had a circle of buddies, and we were all like, no, that's terrible. That's terrible that you're Reformed. And I was with my pugnacious nature. I was like, all right, I'm going to disprove you. I'm going to read the whole New Testament and find all the passages that disprove your Reformed theology. So, we had this kind of month-long fight, and then I got to Ephesians and I was done. That was it. I was like, you win. So Owen went on to do your PhD at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and you did it on a gentleman by the name of Harold Ockengay. And most people probably have never heard of Harold Ockengay, but he's important in American Christianity because he represents the movement called Neo-Evangelicalism or the New Evangelicalism. And I think it'd be important for us to hear about, just a little bit about your interest in that, and maybe not so much Akenge, but fundamentalism in America, and what fundamentalism is, and neo-evangelicalism, and kind of where we find our place in all that. Yeah, can I tuck something into, because I'm married today, and so I, during my MDiv, I didn't say this, during my MDiv in 2006, I married Bethany Ware, the daughter of the theologian Bruce Ware, who taught at Southern. And so we got married in 2006. I was in his mentoring group when I came to Southern in 2004 and got to know the family. And we, at a certain point in 2005, or 2005, yeah, Dr. Ware was like, my wife Jodi and I would like to talk to you. So I was like, let's talk. And so we talked and they were like, we think you might be a good fit for our daughter Bethany, who was a student at Moody Bible Institute. and was really cute and really sharp too. I'd met her before, just once. And so in Thanksgiving of fall of 2005, I went over to the warehouse and I went early and helped them do the place cards and met Bethany again. and fast forward to July 2006, we got married. And then three children, Ella is 15, born in 2008, Gavin is 12 going on 13, born in 2011, and Ainsley is 10, born in 2014. Okay, so I had to tuck that in or else I'm a stinker of a husband and a father. Cause that was huge. I should have asked that question. That's fine. That was huge then and now for obvious reasons. Almost 18 years of marriage. Married July 2006. Harold Ockengay. Alright. Yeah, I... I was really interested in this pastor from Boston named Harold Ockengay, Grant mentioned him a minute ago, because Ockengay was a model of a guy in Boston, being from New England myself, who had a strong ministry in the city, drew a lot of Harvard, MIT, Boston College folks. And at the time, when I went to Southern in the mid-2000s, I wanted to be a pastor. And specifically, I wanted to be a pastor theologian. I didn't want to have an unintellectual or a theological pastorate. I wanted to see myself as a theologian in a pulpit. And so, Ockengay provided that model. What Ockengay did with Billy Graham and Carl Henry is he staked out a position in American Christianity that did say no to a lot of things that you and I would say it should have said no to, you know, modernism and Protestant liberalism. the doctrines of Catholicism and these sorts of things, but Akenge and Graham and Henry did it in a pretty positive way. So they were willing to say no, but they focused on the positives. And that was appealing to me, and so that's what I did my PhD on at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School where D.A. Carson and others have taught. And that was in distinction from fundamentalism, which basically stood for a vision of the Christian life that focuses on purity and abstaining from the world and has a lot of good things to contribute. We really should not be stained by the world. We've got to pursue holiness, as I talked about a little this morning. But what happens with the movement called fundamentalism in the 40s and 50s and beyond is it becomes marked by what it is against. So it's against Billy Graham, and I would be against some things that Billy Graham did and said, but it's against Billy Graham. And it comes to be for a body of practices that aren't necessarily all found in scripture, like women wearing dresses or not listening to rock and roll, even not listening to Christian rock and roll, and these sorts of things. And it ends up in what we call legalistic territory. There's really two forms of legalism. There's legalism of a gospel kind, where you say it is not enough that you trust in Christ as your Savior, you have to add works to that. And that's what Paul is addressing in the book of Galatians. And so that's a first-order issue. If you hold to that form of legalism, you're not a Christian. You might think you are, but you're not a Christian, because there's nothing you can add to the work of Jesus as salvation, as the grounds of our salvation. Then there's... behavioral legalism, and that's what I was just talking about, where if you don't, you know, have a Wednesday night service in your church, you know, you're of the devil. If women wear jeans or something like this, you know, they're probably not even Christians. And if you ever listen to a rap song or a rock and roll song, you know, you're one foot away from the fires of hell or something like this. That in a lot of ways is not a sound division and Today we can talk I'm answering like 19 questions at once here. Sorry, but I shot a lot at you you did Today, I think we're in kind of a new resurgence actually of fundamentalism and And it's because of how fundamentalism always comes back into play when you've got a really dark context, like we do. And so there's two major instincts. One instinct is to be very fleshly and worldly, what we call antinomianism against the law. Right? So, we're just going to live however we want to live, and it's fine because God's got us. Well, that's totally unsound. That's what Paul is battling in the Corinthian church. But on the other hand, there's legalism, which comes as a response to that, and that's a grave danger, too. Right. So, just explain to them as a movement how fundamentalism started, like how...that's a good point. Because fundamentalism, when it started, it didn't start. as a kind of monster that we're talking about, something that morphed into something, it started as something that was a good desire, wouldn't you say? Yeah, and even today, there's a lot that you and I are going to agree with a good number of fundamentalists about. They'll stand for doctrines in a lot of ways that we're thankful for. It starts as a response to Protestant liberalism. in the 1910s, 20s, and 30s as the Northern Baptists and Northern Presbyterians really are liberalizing. They're giving up on miracles. They're giving up on substitutionary atonement. They're giving up on the wrath of God. They're giving up on a real heaven and a real hell. They're giving up basically everything they can give up. And as a response to that, there's a series of pamphlets written in the 1910s called The Fundamentals. That's where the term comes from. And so, the fundamentals are good. They're a good response to this liberalizing movement. But that then begins to morph really in the 30s and 40s where the fundamentalists see themselves as needing to separate from anyone who does not have what they would see as the purest form of doctrine, and that picks up steam in the 40s and the 50s. And Billy Graham is really where there's a major splitting point between fundamentalists and evangelicals leading into even the current day. As I say, I think we're kind of in a new resurgence of fundamentalism where we've got so many things that we're fighting that we're almost more known for our negative vision. So, you shouldn't have these instruments in the church, and look at what this musician He partnered with this person. It's not that there's no concerns there, but you have to be careful or else you can be so pure in your doctrine that you don't recognize anyone else as a Christian. So the neo-evangelicals, Billy Graham, Ockengay, Carl F. H. Henry, they were trying to course correct, right? And what would you say, you know, we're probably the heirs of that course correction. We would consider ourselves a reformed, evangelical, baptistic church. But obviously, evangelicalism now, when you look at the landscape, is bonkers. It's crazy, and so many evangelical churches have compromised, especially with issues like same-sex attraction and wokeness and all these things. So when I talk to my fundamentalist friends, they say, oh, see? See, this is what happened with evangelicalism. What would you say to that in terms of just evangelicalism as a movement? Is there an inherent weakness in evangelicalism that we should think about? or, you know, why are things the way they are now? Yeah, man, such a good question. A bunch of people have joined this church, I know, in recent years, a lot because of those compromises that you talked about, compromises over wokeness, compromises over biblical sexuality, compromises over lockdowns. I mean, just the list goes on. And so I have great compassion for those people who want to be in a sound church under sound doctrine, That is a very good instinct, praise God, that they have come and have gone to other sound churches as well beyond this one. So, I very much would support that. What we have to say is this. John 1 17 says that Jesus was full of grace and truth. And so he wasn't truth alone and he wasn't grace alone. And it's really easy for us to err on one side or the other. and it's really easy for us to be reactionary. So we see something really bad here, and we freak out, and we react, and we go to this extreme, and we're just ping-ponging back and forth between extremes. And I think a lot of us, we've had to react to some of those things you just mentioned and I just mentioned. You have to. If you're in a church that is preaching wokeness, whether a hard form or a soft form, you can't stay there. I don't, at least not for long, if your soul's going to be fed. And sadly, some churches even in this area, the Raleigh-Durham area that are known internationally across America have embraced that to one degree or another. So praise God for this sound church. But you've got to always be watching your life and your doctrine closely, Paul says, 1 Timothy 4, 16, so that you're not drifting, which implies that we're all prone to drift. In technical terms, we all do drift, but the drift hopefully is small, right? It's not huge drift. And it's easy to drift into a hardened, battling spirit on the truth side, and just be anathematizing one thing after another, and in part that can come out of you had to take a stand, you had to leave somewhere, you had to identify something that the pastor, let's say, wasn't even willing to call out, and you had to say, my family and I can't be here under this unsound doctrine. That was the right instinct, but we have to watch ourselves. because if we're not careful, that can harden and morph and the truth portion can become a kind of battling tendency. On the other side, you can have a love for divine grace, but then that can manifest into a kind of we just need to be nice, we need to be seen as winsome on the part of the world, and so you don't draw any lines. And sadly, that's some of what has affected the Southern Baptist Convention that has lots of good churches in it and lots of good people in it and good organizations that we could identify amidst others that are less sound, but that tendency to draw no lines and take no stands and make no enemies, if you will, has led to real drift. So, long answer, but we've got to watch ourselves with both grace and truth. It's not that you need only some grace and some truth, but you've got to be pursuing both. The evangelicals, the neo-evangelicals, wanted to be a people balancing those realities. Sadly, they didn't draw all the lines they should have, I think, but they were trying to hit the grace and truth balance. Today, I think we've got to recommit ourselves to that. We don't...I don't think the answer is what we would call fundamentalism, though again, you and I have many friends in that world, but I don't think that's ultimately the answer. But neither do I think a squishy evangelicalism is the answer. It's got to be something like a sound doctrine, but warm-hearted evangelicalism. Well stated. Isn't that good? So this one's an easy one. Why don't you talk about the biggest ministry influences in your life and why? Biggest ministry influences. My grandfather, Daniel Dustin, was not in ministry, but he was a godly man, and he took a spiritual interest in me. And in his own way, he helped disciple me. And it's so rare to be discipled. Being discipled is like a miracle in the American church. for somebody to take notice of you, spend time with you, speak into your life in a gracious way, but speak into it. And that's what my grandfather did, and I'm so thankful for that. So that set my course, helped set my course. Dever was a serious ministry influence. Then I get to Southern and end up interning for Al Mohler at Southern. And that was like, you know, leaving the kiddie car behind those little Playmobil cars that you ride around in your driveway. And you're like, this is cool. And then stepping on a rocket roller coaster. And you're like, what are we even doing right now? Because Moeller was so intellectually brilliant and loved to engage culture. So, he loved to see trends in culture and theology and go to Scripture and theology and give a Christian answer to them, a Christian handling of them that wasn't exclusively negative. You know, it was nuanced, it was thoughtful, it was balanced, but he did it with such sophistication and power and conviction. This is in the mid-aughts. I was, honestly, I would sit in on his radio show and just be like, again, kind of your hair blowing back, like, what is this? Who does this? And so that shaped me, that stamped me. And so those are two major ministry influences. And then the fourth one I'll mention is Bruce Ware, my father-in-law, because he's such a God-centered man, he loves God, and he cares so much about what God thinks. He doesn't care about what man thinks. Primarily and he's a man who's gone through some real heat some real fire for his biblical convictions But he he did not turn strident Despite attacks. He didn't hate his critics He didn't hate flesh and blood and that was very important for me to watch too because I'm no perfect man and my blood can run hot and And God has worked in me in part through His example to help me try to love my enemies and handle these matters with grace and truth. Well said. So Owen and I met through our work with the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. That is a mouthful. That is a lot to even take in in the name. But why don't you explain what is the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood? Yeah, I feel like we're at a fundraising meeting right now from like 12 years ago, and I've got to remember my facts, but it was founded, CBMW was founded in the 80s by Wayne Grudem, John Piper, and some others, and it was founded to defend and promote manhood and womanhood from the Scripture. Really a far far-reaching, forward-thinking organization, tiny, always small as an outfit, headquartered right now in Louisville at Southern, led by Denny Burke, a dear friend of both of ours doing good work. But CBMW understood that there were major challenges coming to manhood, womanhood, the family, human sexuality, the sexes as a stable reality. And so I was blogging because of Al Mohler's influence in the aughts and then the 2010s and I did some blogs responding to some egalitarians who would say that women can share headship with men in the home and women can share eldership in the church and so women can preach on Sunday morning. and these sorts of things, and complementarians, which is the position that CBMW stands for, and you stand for, and I stand for, and all these wonderful people stand for, we pray by the working of the Spirit. CBMW said, no, men need to be heads in the home, and men need to be elders in the local church, and men are the only ones who should preach and teach to the gathered body. And so CBMW took that stand in the 80s and 90s and very important ministry, very thankful CBMW did. And so yeah, I wrote some blogs about some of these issues and CBMW leaders came to me in 2011 and 12 and said, we want you to lead this organization at that time. It had dipped a little bit financially and stuff, and so I was this 28-year-old young theologian already teaching at Boyce College full-time, but I took it on. It seemed like it was the call of God, and so I become executive director of CBMW in 2012, and then I'm at my church. Or was it, yeah, sometime in there. And this strapped up Texan comes in. Captain America himself. And as our friends at Southern came to call this guy. And he had great character. He was fun to be around. He was very convictional. But he had a warmth to him and just did really good work. And so he was my first hire at CBMW and the Lord took us into battle together at CBMW, and we faced a lot in our four years together, 2012 to 16, and he's my closest friend. Is that what I was supposed to answer? That was very gracious. All right, so complementarianism, I know that's a mouthful. is what the biblical view that you just described about the equality with men and women, but yet the distinct roles that men and women have, both in the home and in the church. Why is that so important for us to get right? Well, it's important because that's how God set the world up. God set men up to be leaders in the home, in the church, in a Christ-like way, though. And that's a twist we have to add. Even today, there's a push behind what we call patriarchy, which is basically just an even stronger form of complementarity, where it's almost like the headship and leadership of men is so strong sometimes that maybe women almost are relegated to a dormant role. And that's not what complementarity advances. And some of our friends who are patriarchal would agree with us on these things, but they would still use that term. So, there's all sorts of nuance to add. I prefer the term complementarianism or complementarity because it emphasizes that men and women alike have real gifting from God. Patriarchy more focuses on the role of the man. So that's not bad. You and I would agree with patriarchy on a lot of things, including meaningful headship, where it's not just the man has the Trump card at the end of the day that he throws on the table to make decisions for the family. He really is the one who is the leader in the home. He shapes the culture. But we want to focus, too, on how richly God has gifted women in all sorts of ways. So, a lot to say there, but I do think that patriarchy has pushed complementarians because sometimes complementarians only talk about the home and the church and only talk about men leading in each and women playing their role in each and don't talk about society and culture. And so complementarians have received a needed push from our patriarchal friends. And I would go on to say that men are actually called to be leaders in society as well, not to the exclusion of women, like a woman couldn't hold political office, I wouldn't say that, but I do think Isaiah 3.12 and other texts would have us encourage men to step up and lead and not send our wives into battle for us. Right, like roles like a police officer, a fighter pilot, things like that. It's not just, oh, these are toss-ups, whether a man or a woman does that. Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a sin for a woman to be a police officer, but I'm not training Ella and Ainsley, my two daughters, to be a fighter pilot, to be a policewoman or something like that. I think that's a role that is more suited to a man. So what advice would you give to maybe an engaged couple or a newly married couple? about understanding what this means for their marriage. What does this look like practically for them? What advice would you give them about applying this? Wow, that's a big question. I would say, as a man, it means that we are a Christ-like head. So, to the young man entering marriage, how beautiful is that? I love, by the way, that we continue to celebrate marriage in such a fallen world. It's like the bombs are falling all around us, but look at this happy couple staring into each other's eyes on their wedding day as the whole family of God celebrates this. This is a sign of that planting gardens mentality that I mentioned, like we're not just planting a physical garden, we're planting the garden of the home. And even as the bombs fall, may God bless and prosper. This union, but I would say to men, you need to be a leader. You need to set the tone in the home, but your leadership, you don't have to be insecure and fearful of leading. You don't have to be insecure about your wife's wisdom. You can welcome your wife's wisdom. She'll probably be happy to supply it to you at different points, including driving recommendations at times, yes, and other matters. And there will be a lot of pillows in your home, I would say, as well. Way more pillows than you would ever imagine. You will have vastly more pillows than the human heart could even dream of having. So, you know, there's going to be some things like that that are going to take place at least in some of our homes. But yeah, you want to be that leader. The buck stops with you, so that's real. But lead in a Christ-like way. You're not looking like a military commandant, exactly. You're looking like Jesus Christ in the home. So Jesus Christ laid down his life, and so godly men want their wives' wisdom and want their wives' gifts to flourish and be expressed. There's so much more to say, but to the wife, I would say, you have this role of putting submission on display. This is not something the world is going to applaud you for. It's not something the world understands. Furthermore, you're a helper to your husband. That's not something the world esteems either. When's the last time you saw a great magazine called Helper and whose cover, you know, photo shoot was so exciting, you know, to the world? No. Nobody wants to have helper in their title. Helper? In the Christian faith, helping is divine. The Spirit is the helper of God's people. And so, godly young woman, you're bringing all sorts of strengths to the table in helping your husband. Helper doesn't mean you're lesser as a human being. Helper means God looked at Adam and said, you need some help, bro. And that's what you represent. So, submission and helping are such a key part of your calling. It doesn't mean you two don't talk a whole lot through. It doesn't mean you don't bring a lot to the table. But really, please do respect your husband. Strengthen him as a leader. Don't tear him down. Don't nag him to pieces. If he makes a decision you disagree with, pray about that, and that may be hard, and you guys may have to work through some things, and you guys may even need some counseling at some point to work through things. Don't be scared of that. A lot of us can be scared of working through things. It can feel like we have a scarlet letter on us if we need an older couple to speak into our life. Hey, friends, can I say this for just a second? We all need help. We all need older, wiser Christians to speak into our lives. You are not a shame-bearing Christian in a bad way if you need some help, including in your marriage. Not just year one, even year five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty. It's a good thing. I don't even, yeah, I'm droning on here. What about the single Christian? This is a hard time to be a single person. What would you say, just encouragement or warning or admonition to our singles that are here tonight? I love that, and that's part of what, honestly, complementarians very much believe in. We try to exalt marriage because God's Word does, but we do not think that you have to be married to really count as a Christian. We do know that in our age today, there's a lot of delayed marriage and a lot of self-driven singleness, and so those are real things to push back against. But in 1 Corinthians 7 we know that singleness is an honorable calling before the Lord and the one who is single, man or woman alike, is free to serve the Lord in a way that married couples aren't. And so we want to very much have a role for godly singles and honor them and strengthen them and encourage them and not make them feel like because they're not married they're just waiting until the day they get married. No! They may well be called to be single all their days. So we want to support them. We want to say these kind of things. Then we do also want to try to do some work, though, to help singles who genuinely do want to be married and feel called to marriage. And so we want to set up, you know, non-awkward social opportunities for the singles of the church. you know, mixers, if you will, to use a very cool term, where in all seriousness, the sexes can get to know each other, the men and women can get to know each other. Our culture is not helping young men and young women do this well at all. The report that I hear from my wife, who is discipling numerous young women at our church back in Arkansas, is that young men oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes have no idea how to talk to young women today. Now, no doubt that has always been the case. What is more fearsome when you're a young man than trying to, you know, go up to a girl and talk to her and that sort of thing? I mean, in an appropriate God-honoring way. It can be pretty terrifying, to be honest. You ladies don't know. You have no idea how scary that can be. But men need help to do that. But a lot of singles are coming into our churches and they haven't seen healthy marriage modeled. They're from broken homes, very sad. And the young men haven't had training from a wise, godly father and like, hey son, this is how you kind of talk to a girl or something. And the young ladies haven't had a mother disciple them and help them figure out how to, I think the term is present to young men. but in a good way, and so there's just a lot of confusion, and the sexes don't know how to get this done, and so we've gotta help in that respect as well. Very helpful. Okay, this next round of questions, what I wanna do is word association. So I wanna give you a word, a name, a phrase, maybe an aspect of theology, and for you to do a short answer, just whatever comes to your mind when I say this, okay? Is the word milkshake on the list can we add because I just want to I want to share that with the people sure go So you say milkshake milkshake amazing It bet best if chocolate peanut butter fudge Thank you, thank you, thank you for that. Let there be revival in the church around milkshakes. We've got these, that was the only thing I've said that has really gotten a response tonight, so. Chocolate peanut butter fudge milkshakes. Cookies and cream is good. You got a mocha option sometimes, solid. Not necessarily gonna do it for me, but there you go. Good, okay, all right. Let's do Jonathan Edwards. My favorite theologian, because he is, well, I guess he is, yeah, he's up there in heaven, but he is and was a very God-centered theologian who, yes, he's famous for preaching about hell, sinners in the hands of an angry God, but actually preached a lot more about heaven. and God's love, and I think those are themes that the Reformed and conservative evangelical community mutes and downplays. And so in Edwards, I find a soaring God-centered vision that inspires me to want to live for God, but not just on Sunday morning, like from 11 to 12, Edwards understood that the entire world is charged and shot through with divine beauty. And we don't talk a lot about beauty as conservative Christians, and so the aesthetic side in me that loves film and loves art and loves powerful music and those sorts of things is very much stirred by Edwards. The atonement. I just wrote a book called The Warrior Savior where I tried to bring together two major dimensions of biblical atonement that what we call penal substitutionary atonement, Jesus dying as a sacrifice for our sin in our place. and what is called Christus Victor, a Latin phrase that means the victorious Christ, because oftentimes people don't think of the cross as a victorious act, but it actually is a victorious act, according to Colossians 2, 13 to 15, because it is where our sins are paid for, and so because our sins are paid for, the power of the devil is broken over us. So we cannot be indwelt by demons or something like this. And victory has come to us in our lives, even though we await the final stage of it, because Christ shed his blood for us. So the cross looks weak to the world, but is very powerful indeed. And it is the very center of history. It is the center of our theology. It is where we see, by the way, that God is not an abstract God, a stone deity in the sky, but God has entered history in the form of the God-man and made atonement, shed His blood for us. Purity culture. Wow, purity culture. Can we go back to milkshake? Purity culture had some real strengths to it. Purity culture is what evangelicals, a lot of Baptists, produce in the 80s and 90s and aughts to counter, you know, a flagrantly pagan sexual culture in the secular world. And so a good number of conservative Christians develop what is called purity culture, where there's like a purity pledge. Young people in the church would, in many cases, sign like a, some of you may have done this, like sign a document saying, abstain from sex until marriage, that needs to be the commitment of our heart. Purity culture is severely and ferociously mocked now. There would also be dances, or I guess not dances, Baptists don't dance, but there would be Like, formal occasions where fathers and daughters would go and there would be a focus on purity. I think that was another...I didn't grow up in purity culture in the heart of it myself, but even there, that is, again, mocked. You can make good money by writing a tell-all memoir about how awful it was to grow up in a conservative evangelical home and make a good amount of money and fame off of it. But actually, I think there were some really good instincts there. But I also think there could, it was the case that there was something of a legalistic focus in that movement. And those efforts weren't always grounded in the gospel and grace. And even if you did sin, which of course is not in any way the goal, there's forgiveness for you. And so there were some things missing from purity culture too. Christianity Today, the magazine. Sadly, Christianity Today was founded by Carl Henry, who we've talked about a little bit here. Carl Henry was a magnificent Baptist theologian. You should read him. If you like theology, if you're a theology geek, there's an excellent chance you haven't read much Carl Henry, but you should get his six-volume God, Revelation, and Authority set. And he is so sharp. He is the theologian that the church has forgotten. He founded Christianity Today. It starts out really strong. Sadly today, it's gone off the rails. A very gifted man named Russell Moore is now basically the head of it. when I became a faculty member at Boyce College and Southern Seminary, Russ Moore was the Dean of Southern. Again, very gifted, but he's straight off course. I don't know why exactly. He's like David French in that respect. He's like Beth Moore in that respect and others we could name and sadly, CT is now kind of the evangelical left's main cheerleader, and it's just not a magazine I could recommend It's not that it gives gets everything wrong in terms of every article, but it's just not what it was sadly John MacArthur John MacArthur is incredible in that by many metrics, he should be in the nursing home, but he is still preaching. I mean, it's just incredible. The grass fades and tax rates rise, but John MacArthur is still in his pulpit. And so you're like, how is this? He took that pulpit when like, you know, the 60s were going on. So anyway, Such a demonstration of fidelity to the pastoral office, such a steady man. I find, I was watching the NBA playoffs this afternoon on my break, and the way even the superstars who have everything going for them react is so unsteady. You know, one call and my beloved Boston Celtics, it's like the world has ended for them. And so they were up 30 on the heat and then the heat roared back because the key Celtics players are kind of unsteady. And in contrast, and there are so many unsteady men They're just not solid, they're not dependable, they're not trustworthy by the power of God's grace. That's the great need of the age. And that's what I think, alongside, of course, excellent exposition in exegesis MacArthur models. He models steady Christianity. God, give us steady Christians. If that is all you do, boy, girl, man, woman, All you do is remain faithful, and you're steady in your commitments, and you're steady as a member of this church, steady as a husband, steady as a wife, steady as a single Christian, and on it goes. That is a massive victory. So just be steady. Just pray to be steady. The love of God. I think the love of God is the central theme of the Bible. R.C. Sproul would push us in the direction of the holiness of God, and we revere R.C. Sproul in many respects, though I strongly disagree with him over Thomas Aquinas. But I actually think the love of God is the central theme of the Bible because Ephesians 1 takes us to the very plan of God. And what is at the heart of the plan of God? It's absolutely for the holiness of God to be displayed by God and in the lives of God's people. But honestly, holiness really isn't the end of all things. It really is love. Meaning, God wants a covenant people for himself. God saves sinners like us to be that people. And what does eternal life consist of? It consists of loving God and being loved by God. Now there's definitely a secondary theme, excuse me, in Scripture where God's wrath is displayed to his glory. So I think you always have to say that whatever the theme is, it's to the glory of God. So I think the central theme of Scripture is the love of God for his people displayed to his glory even as his wrath is displayed against the wicked, but I think the love of God is so underplayed as a theme. And here's the thing, when you underplay the love of God, that has a direct effect on your life and your home and your marriage and your family. And so people who downplay the love of God, including reformed and conservative people, I see this in my own background. I see this in my own life. When we downplay the love of God, there's this crazy effect We're not super loving. We're not super kind. And I think we, when we go to scripture, we see that the dial needs to be turned up on love. The evangelical mind. You wrote a book on this. The evangelical mind. Mark Knoll wrote a book, he was a historian at Notre Dame for many years, called The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind in the Mid-1990s, where he excoriated evangelicals for their lack of thinking and lack of love for doctrine, and he made a lot of great points. I think he overcooked it, his critique. I wrote a book, which was not nearly as consequential as Mark Knowles, certainly did not sell as many copies, but it was called Awakening the Evangelical Mind, which came out in 2015, and I argued that actually evangelicals did do a good number of things that were positive, including the guys we've talked about, the neo-evangelicals. Today, what is the state of the evangelical mind? Kind of discouraging. Here, though, is a word of optimism. In what is happening with Christian schools, Christian classical schools, the homeschool movement, and other things we could mention, I see fathers and mothers who are taking back education. I think you can go to public school, by the way, as a Christian. I don't think there's one thing you have to do. But I really think there's a lot of renewal happening in our midst. and education's being reclaimed by fathers and mothers, and kids are being well instructed, but from a robust and joyful perspective. And that gives me real hope. Speaking of hope this is the end of your short answer deal. This is these are the sort of your Closing just this is kind of your closing question. Well. It wasn't really it wasn't really short answer. Sorry It was kind of it was kind of mid. Yeah mid answer. Yeah, this is exactly what I was looking for okay, so just considering the landscape today What would be, if you could have a megaphone in every evangelical church, what would be your message? What is your message for the church today? I've renamed my podcast to be Grace and Truth because of what we were talking about earlier, and that's come in part from God working in my own heart, God showing me my own sins and failings, because James 3 says, we all stumble in many ways. Sometimes in conservative circles, we so hate our sin that we almost make sin the focus of the Christian life. So, the Christian life doesn't become about living joyfully in Christian freedom, according to the Word, to the glory of God, pursuing holiness. The Christian life becomes about not sinning. And we should not sin, but that's not the center of the Christian life. What that kind of perspective can create, though, is what we call a fear-based culture. where, whether it's in a church, or whether it's in a home, or whether it's just in your own mind, you're living a fear-based life. Now, the fear of the Lord is an Old Testament and New Testament reality. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and there's much to say about that in the New, but fundamentally, Paul says in Romans 8 that we do not live in the fear of the slave. We've been delivered from that. We live as sons, and we cry, Abba, Father, all of us. We're children of the King. So, I would want to say to my fellow believers, don't live in the wrong form of fear. The fear of God biblically is not terror for the Christian that God is going to pour out wrath on you. The fear of God is awe and reverence, even loving reverence of God, and so God has delivered us from abject fright of God. But I think a lot of Christians have been in legalistic or quasi-legalistic or fundamentalistic settings and the God they truly believe in is a God who isn't very kind and isn't very approachable and frankly isn't very loving. and their life is dominated by trying to avoid sin, or getting into sin, and then feeling shame over sin, and the cycle repeats endlessly, and I want to say, be liberated. from slavish fear and don't live under a fear-based culture, and pastors are happy sometimes, sadly, to lead fear-based cultures because it gives them more control over the people, and their people are looking to this major leader, what should I do? What decision should I make? I think Grace-based culture in a church, for example, is freedom culture, not meaning freedom to do whatever you want, freedom to live in the rest of the finished work of Christ. And so, I would want to say that, out of that grace and truth balance, let's have done with fear-based culture. Let's stop living in terror of God as Christians. Let's instead embrace grace-based culture, and let's enjoy Christian freedom, and let's show grace to one another where we disagree, and let's not raise our kids with white-knuckled intensity at every second, scared that they might sin. They're gonna sin. Your kids are going to sin. You don't want to try to encourage that, but you have to be honest. Sometimes reformed Christians are not honest. It's like we can actually live in functional perfectionism, and we can't. We can't become sinless. None of us can. So, Let's instead live in grace. Let's be honest. Paul Tripp is very good on these realities. If you want some good writing, Paul Tripp has had some stumbles in the last few years on some issues, but he's good on the gospel and honesty and the freedom of grace. And last comment, way too long here, but I have seen in my own heart how I can I can approach God in the wrong form of fear, and I can be legalistic with myself. My Christian faith is not based in my devotions, how long they are each morning. I truly believe I should be in the Word. regularly, but I shouldn't be making a new law for myself that is not biblical and then living under fear of it. Let's live under grace. Let grace season our marriages. Let grace season our child-raising. Let grace drive our singleness. Let grace shape our church. Final question, how can we pray and partner with you? Milkshake donations would be welcome. That is very kind. I think we already are kind of partnering because I keep showing up here once in a while, so thank you for that. Thank you for having me, you and the elders and the church that has so graciously welcomed me. Thank you to the men who came to the conference on a Friday night and a Saturday. But if you would just pray for me that I would grow in the ways I just talked about because I am a normal Christian who needs to grow in all the stuff I just discussed. So if you would pray for me there, that'd be wonderful. And if you wanna, I don't know, check out my podcast, it's called Grace and Truth. That's one tangible thing, but I don't have some long list of ways. I just really appreciate this brotherhood and these people and the blood of Jesus Christ that unites us. Well, thank you so much for coming. Let's give him a hand. I ask Kenny to come close in prayer for us and give the benediction, so. Thank you. It's been a true pleasure, hasn't it? Let's pray. Father, thank you for the day. Thank you for your grace and your love that you have given to us. Even now, Lord Jesus, in this time together, in this evening, as we have listened to Owen and the gospel-centered answers, the God-centered answers. that He gave to the questions that were asked. Father, in this time of Q&A, Lord, teach us, edify us in Your truth and Your mercy and Your love. Father, continue to help us here at Capitol, continue to be a people that stand firm on the truth of Your Word. Help us not to be a people that are wavering or getting off course. As Owen said, Lord, help us to be steady. Help us to be steady in this always changing, always moving culture that is pivoting to the left and to the right, to cave to sin and to people's pleasures and to really whatever direction the wind is blowing. Father, help us to keep on. to keep on being faithful, to keep on being a people who love you, who love to serve you, who love to be in your word and pray to you. Father, we thank you and we pray all these things in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.