← Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Ep 1368 | They Told You the Bible Was Banned From Public Schools. They Were Wrong. | Joel Penton
00:46:04
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- [00:01]
A
Lifewise Academy is a program that allows students in public schools to learn about the Bible in an off campus setting if they and their parents want them to. While it should be accepted by public schools across the nation, it might not surprise you to hear that some schools that celebrate, say, Pride Month don't think that Lifewise Academy is quite inclusive enough. Joel Pitton, who started Lifewise Academy, is here today to talk about that program and also their battles with some of these progressive, secular public schools. We've got all of this and more on today's episode of Relatable. Joel, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. For those who don't know, can you tell us who you are and what you do?
- [00:49]
B
Yeah. Well, thanks for having me. My name is Joel Penson. I'm the founder and CEO of LifeWise Academy. We provide Bible education for public school students during school hours. I'm also the husband to Bethany, and we have six wonderful children. One of them is off the camera right now.
- [01:10]
A
I know. And he's awesome. And y' all have a little baby that y' all welcomed just a few months ago. So congratulations.
- [01:15]
B
Thank you. Baby Victor is amazing.
- [01:17]
A
Yes. We saw y' all a few months ago, and your wife was very pregnant. She was a trooper in the altitude when we saw y' all last time. And now y' all have the baby. So sweet. So fun. Okay, tell me about Lifewise. How in the world is there Bible education that's allowed in public schools during school hours?
- [01:36]
B
Well, in part because it's not technically in public schools. What everybody knows is that decades ago, our nation systematically removed the Bible from the public school day. However, few people are aware that in 1952, the Supreme Court ruled that public school students can, in fact receive Bible education religious instruction if the program meets three criteria. If it's off school property, privately funded, and students have parental permission, it's called released time. Religious instruction. That's a mouthful. That's the legal term. But again, very few people know about this. It's been kind of under the radar, underutilized for 70 years. We learned that this was a thing was possible. And so we created Lifewise Academy to be a plug and play program that any community could implement to again teach their local public school students the Bible during school hours.
- [02:31]
A
I want to do just like a mini history lesson. Y' all have a documentary that, you know, I feel like I'm someone who kind of knew the history of public education, but I learned some things, specifically about a woman named Madeline o'. Hare. Was it o' Hare or o'? Hara? O'.
- [02:46]
B
Hare, yeah, o'. Hare. Madeline Marie o'.
- [02:47]
A
Hare. Yeah. And I didn't know about her that she was kind of one of the people in the 20th century that was kind of pushing for this idea of a neutral worldview in public schools, that religion has nothing to do with what we learn or how we conduct business. You can kind of of have your little faith over there, but don't bring it into the public realm at all. And her worldview really had an impact on how public school was shaped in the last half of the 20th century, right?
- [03:15]
B
Yeah, it really did. Which is sad because, as I'm sure many of your listeners know, our public education system was not only founded with the Bible as central to it, the Bible was the motivating factor for. For education even existing. I mean, the first law around education in our nation is the old Deluder act in Massachusetts that explicitly said that communities need to teach their children to read so that they can read the Bible. So the reason for education was to get people to the Bible. And so it's very sad that the Bible was eventually taken out. And as you mentioned, Madeline Marie o' Hare was a central figure in this throughout the A lawsuit in the mid-1900s that basically saying, yeah, we need to completely remove Bible reading, we need to move, remove prayer from schools. And it was much of that that led to where we are today.
- [04:11]
A
And let's talk about that foundational assumption there. I hear this a lot when it comes to politics. Don't bring your faith into politics. It's the same kind of thing. Don't bring your faith into a school. And the idea is, if we remove Christianity, that things will become neutral, that we'll have a neutral place from which we can teach students. But that's just not true. We can't really have a neutral worldview, right?
- [04:35]
B
No, you can't. Everybody has a worldview. And, you know, George Barna talks about worldview as kind of the operating system. We'd like to think that, you know, there's just all these different subjects. There's history and there's science and there's math, and there's all these different things. And, you know, religion is one, and you could just remove it and just not talk about it. But the truth is, a worldview isn't just like one of the many. It is the central thing. It's like the hub of a wheel that gives order to everything else. It's the operating system that makes sense of all the different softwares that you could say history is a software and science is a software, but worldview makes sense of all of that. And so to say that you could just be neutral on that or you could just remove that really doesn't makes sense.
- [05:19]
A
Yeah, there are a lot of assumptions when it comes to evolution, which of course is taught that we evolved from monkeys. That's not a neutral position. That says something not only about who we are physically, but also what our worth is. I mean, if we really came from nothing, if we all exist because of chance and then evolved from animals, well, that's a very different presupposition that that's going to offer someone about humanity than the idea that we were created by this God who cares for us, made us a particular way for a purpose, and who loves us. I mean, neither of those are neutral, but they are going to lead to different outcomes.
- [05:57]
B
Yeah, you're right, they're not neutral. And what we've tried to do in our secular education system is just to remain silent on some of the key things about God, about eternity. However, silence isn't neutral either to send a child. And there are many parents who feel this way. I mean, lifewise exists because parents want this. Parents want Bible education for their students. And many parents recognize to send their child to school for 25, 30 hours a week where they're learning so many things and there's never a mention of God, there's never a mention of the Bible. That's not sending a neutral message to their students. Right. It's sending a very clear message, which is that those things aren't important. That potentially they're not real is the message. And at minimum, they're not important.
- [06:46]
A
Yeah. Tell me about starting life wise. What inspired you in the first place?
- [06:51]
B
Yeah, good question. I never intended to, that's for sure. Well, I. I came to faith when I was in high school in a small town, northwest Ohio. The Lord made me to be an evangelist. I just wanted to share the gospel. After hearing the gospel and being changed, I wanted to share it with anyone who would listen. And so I even found myself preaching in my home church to fill in for my pastor and preaching in churches around town that I continued. When I was in college, I played football at the Ohio State University, that's how you pronounce it, the Ohio State University. And that gave me a platform to speak. And so I actually had a career in full time speaking, doing evangelism around the country and youth events. And that's what my intention was for my life. I was going to speak, I Founded a speaker's bureau. But the Lord rocked my world when in 2018, I was in my hometown and a guy named Tim ran into me and said, hey, Joel, we'd like your help with our release time program in town. And I said, tim, what's that? Is that like a prison ministry? Like, what's release time? And he said, no, it's this program where we pull kids out of the public school during the school day, we teach them a Bible lesson, and then we take them back to school. And I said, I think that sounds illegal. I don't think you're allowed to do that. And he said, no, it's real. And he told me about the Supreme Court ruling. And he went on to explain that their goal was to have 30% of the kids enroll. They started this program in 2012. By the third year, they had 95% of the entire public elementary school enrolled in this program. And they started to, for one, see all the impact of the word of God in the lives of students. So they also started to ask, why doesn't every community have a program like this? If a community can support a McDonald's and a library and a YMCA, you would think that Christians in every community would do this. I tell people the day Tim asked me that question is the day I gave up sleeping, because that question haunted me. And I thought, man, unless I'm missing something, unless I'm confused, this might be the single greatest missed opportunity of the American church to reach the next generation. And I just started wondering, has anybody really tried to put this in a box? Has anybody tried to make a release time program that's repeatable, scalable, kind of plug and play? Because I recognize the barriers to entry are very high. You gotta basically start a private school. You gotta find a facility and transportation and all the details. And so I started doing some research and found that, no, it didn't look like anybody had done that. And so I actually went to the group in my hometown, and I said, here's what I think you need to do. You asked for my advice. Here it is. Take everything you're doing, but change it all. Make it repeatable, make it scalable, and I think it'll spread. And they said, we don't want to do that, but we think you should do that. And so in 2018, I was kind of voluntold to get involved, and that's kind of how I got started.
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A
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- [11:09]
B
Well, what was nice about that was we knew the assignment. We knew that this concept already works because it had been proven in my hometown. So the nature of the task was scale. And so we knew the first step was well after getting our fundamental, what we're committed to of gospel centrality, excellence and being community driven, making everything repeatable. And so we started with a proof of concept. We launched two pilot programs in Ohio. We had no idea what we were doing, just were able to address each thing as it arose. But with everything, every issue that came up, we knew the solution we developed needs to not just work for this community, it needs to work times a thousand. And so we got started with that in 2019 and have just continued that until now when we're really serving schools all across the country.
- [12:04]
A
So tell me exactly how it works.
- [12:06]
B
How it works is. Well on the most basic level, you know, the logistics are that a student, a parent will sign up their student in the same way a child you advertise.
- [12:17]
A
So like do y' all go to a school district and you start advertising? Do you pick like local parents to help you or how does that work?
- [12:25]
B
Yeah. So how one gets started, we have a 10 step process to start a local lifewise program. And we're committed to being completely community driven. And so the first step is through a signature campaign. You can go to our website and you can look up any school district in the nation and we say, show us 50 signatures. It's like a petition. Communities petition us to engage. And so first the community collects 50 signatures. And then once we see that, we say, okay, next step, form a steering committee, form a planning team. And now we'll communicate with you and walk you through the process of planning. And then we have several steps along the way, but we meet with the school, we present the plan. 90% of the time, the school agrees to the plan. And then we walk them through a T minus plan of hiring a director, finding teachers, a board, and then ultimately signing up students to participate.
- [13:15]
A
And then you pick the kids up in a bus.
- [13:18]
B
That's right.
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A
And you take them to some off campus site.
- [13:21]
B
That's exactly right. So in the same, we tend to serve elementary schools. We do have middle and high schools. We start at elementary and a student will sign up, the parent will fill out a permission slip, and then once a week, each student can attend. So in the same way, a kid gets art class once a week, music class once a week, they get Lifewise once a week. And yeah, we pull up usually in a big red Lifewise bus. A class or two gets on, takes them down the road, usually to a church. Sometimes it's next door and they can walk. They get a Bible lesson, they come back and we pick up another group. Just as an illustration, our largest program is a town in northwest Ohio. And the elementary school has a thousand students in the school. 900 of them are in LifeWise. And so five times a day, five days a week, a big bus pulls up and two classrooms at a time get on, go down the road to the ymca. That's where they hold their classes. They go into two classrooms, get their lesson, get back on, it comes back and it just rolls. It takes an army of volunteers, but the community loves it. I mean, almost all their children are being taught the Bible.
- [14:29]
A
Tell me an example of the kind of Bible lesson they're learning.
- [14:32]
B
So we partner with an amazing curriculum called the Gospel Project. It's a lifeway publication and it takes students through the entire Bible over five years. And so we tend to serve grades one through five. So a child will start Genesis one in first grade, and by the time they finish elementary school in fifth grade, they've been through the entire Bible. And every lesson we Talk about a threefold kind of framework, and that's head, heart, hands. We start with head. What's the information on the page? What does the story say? And then heart, we take a step back to say, how does this Bible story fit into the bigger picture story of the gospel message? And so we're talking about redemptive history. We're pointing about Jesus as the true hero of the grander story every single week. And then further hands, we discuss if we rightly understand this passage, if we rightly understand the gospel, how does it transform our character? How does it transform what we do?
- [15:31]
A
Have you ever had a child come through this program that you know of whose parents were not Christian? Maybe they just signed the permission slip because their child wanted to, because his friends were going, but they really didn't have a Christian background either.
- [15:47]
B
We see that very regularly and perhaps more often than not, it's possible. It's possible. More than that. What you just described describes more than half of our students. And we hear it so, so often, the stories, and they flood in. They truly flood in, because now we just eclipsed a thousand schools served. Over 60,000 students enrolled. And the stories of the child who went home and said, hey, my friend Johnny gets on a big red bus every week. I want to go on the big red bus. And then the children who come home and say, hey, I'm at Lifewise and I'm learning about this. You know, why don't we go to church? Why don't we learn more? And we just see story after story of families getting reconnected to church. In fact, we have a. It's in the documentary, a family that the daughter came home and she said, why aren't we talking about God here? And so they started going to church. And by the end of the story, there's a family of nine that have all been baptized and they're members of the church. And so it's very exciting to see it's normalizing faith and faith conversations in schools and communities where it had been marginalized to a great degree. You know, you see kids carrying their Bible around because it's one of their textbooks. You see those kind of conversations, and you do see families re engaging.
- [17:11]
A
Yeah, I heard a story in the documentary that just really touched me about this boy who just sat down with one of the volunteers, one of the people working at Lifewise Academy, and just kind of broke down and talked about the hard things he had going on at home. He didn't think he was going to see his dad again because he was in prison. Just a very unstable home life. And it sounds like this is kind of a refuge for a lot of kids too. This is not just a place for, you know, like all of the church kids whose families already have it together. This is also a place for people who maybe don't know God, they haven't heard the gospel and who really just need a place of stability.
- [17:49]
B
It's definitely that. And that's one of the reasons we, you know, public educators, when we approach them, sometimes, understandably there's some hesitancy when we come and say, hey, we want to take your kids down the road to the church and bring them back. There's hesitancy. But once programs are up and running, you regularly see educators understanding the value and being so thankful and so grateful. And it's in part because of what you're saying, that this is a way for the community to really engage kids. And a lot of kids who are genuinely hurting, kids who maybe don't have the best home life, kids who they need more. And educators are being asked to do more and more these days. And if you get them alone, you may hear a public educator, like a superintendent or principal say something like, these days it's not enough to educate kids. We have to be their parents as well.
- [18:44]
A
So hard.
- [18:44]
B
And this is a practical way to engage the church community to come alongside and provide some of those intangible supports. And yeah, we see like the story you mentioned. Just today while I'm sitting in the lobby, I got a message of a story because they come in every day of a girl who tragically her mother just passed away, a Lifewise student. And about a conversation she was having with the Lifewise director, saying how she is going to she can tell her father's hurting and she's going to teach her father to pray as she was taught to pray in life wise because she thinks it will comfort him. And yeah, that type of engagement we just, we weren't seeing before as part of the school day. And now we are.
- [19:33]
A
Next sponsor is Good Ranchers. It's July. It's grilling month. And just because the 4th of July is over does not mean that you have to stop grilling. In fact, you got all month to celebrate these American farmers and ranchers that are feeding you and their families have been feeding America for generations. It's time that we support them. Buy all of your meat from American farms and ranches. You've got all different kinds of steak and beef and seafood and chicken and all of that good stuff. All from the American farming industry. Plus, Good ranchers is a Christian America loving, family owned company that you want to support. We've been relying on Good Ranchers for five years in the city ducky home. And I'm so glad we have in July, Good ranchers is celebrating all 50 states by giving you $50 off your order. But only when you use my code. So go to good ranchers.com/ally. That's good ranchers.com code ally. I would love to. I know this kind of puts you on the spot, but just to hear a couple more stories of testimonies of kids that stick out in your mind. I'm sure you have a ton in your head, but are there any that stick out as just you look back and you're like, I need that reminder from God that what we are doing really matters and that lives really change because of lifewise.
- [20:52]
B
Yeah. Well, how much time do we have?
- [20:54]
A
Plenty.
- [20:54]
B
In fact, we just produced a Lifewise stories book that because our directors, once a month they fill out a form that just gives us some data, you know, enrollment, different things. And one of the things they indicate is if. If there are any stories that they've seen lately. And so every month they come in and as a staff at our headquarters, we read them all, we take turns reading them and we pray for the prayer requests. And the stuff that comes in is, is amazing. Even the little. It's. It's the little ones, the simple ones that get me. Like the girl who came into Lifewise and when she was handed a Bible and she opened it, she said, wow, the pages are so thin because she'd never held a Bible before and she had never seen Bible paper that we're so used to. Yeah, regular. The stories of kids that walk in and say, I've never been in a church before. This is what a church looks like. The kid, I just heard one of the kids who had never seen stained glass windows from the inside. And he was saying how beautiful they were, like he had only seen the outside. But then, of course, the stories of lives changed. I was preaching in a church east of Columbus and a family came up to me and they said, hey, it's so nice to meet you. We're here because of you. And I thought they meant they came to hear me. And they went on to say, yeah, our daughter came home and told us about how she was so engaged with Lifewise and she wanted to get connected to a church. And so we, we started bringing her here. And now we've all been baptized. We're members of the church and we just wanted you to know that that's why we're here. And it's just story after story. One more?
- [22:39]
A
Yeah, please.
- [22:41]
B
This is an early one. A little boy who, interestingly named Christian, who. His mother tells the story that she got a postcard about lifewise and she put it in such a way that I think a lot of parents would say that she said, oh, Bible education, Bible based character education, this couldn't hurt. And I think that's where a lot of parents are. They're like, oh, Bible, yeah, let's broaden their horizons. And same type of story. Christian starts coming, he falls in love with Jesus, he's asking his parents about it, he's bringing the Bible back, and they're doing Bible stories at home. Family gets connected to a church and now they're members of the church. The mother is in a Bible study with the life wise teacher. And they're financially contributing to the local LifeWise program to help it keep going. It's just really exciting.
- [23:30]
A
That is awesome. You said about 90% of schools work with y'. All. When you reach out. What about that? 10%? What happens there?
- [23:39]
B
Yeah, you know, more than 10% of the time there's hesitancy. Right. So there's maybe extended conversations, but there are some. It depends on the state whether or not the school can decline. So we talk about the state laws as may or shall. And some states have no law at all. Some states have a law that says schools may release students. But then there's now about 20 states. We've seen an uptick, we've been a part of that, of laws that say if a student requests this, a parent, then you shall release them. Those that there's not. I mean, it's rare, but a lot of times there's just hesitancy among the superintendent. You know, they'll say there's not enough. Maybe there's not enough time in the day, or they'll just maybe not be responsive for one reason or another in those situations. We encourage the community to continue to pray, continue to grow the grassroots effort, and we trust that eventually that no will become a yes.
- [24:41]
A
Yeah. Tell me about the pushback you have gotten, because you do have some opposition.
- [24:47]
B
We do, we do. There are those who don't.
- [24:50]
A
Where's that coming from?
- [24:52]
B
Yeah, it's a little bit all over. I mean, it's a very vocal minority. Right. I talk about the 10-10-80 principle, or maybe 1080, 10. And that's, I think 10% of the people out there are so in love with what we're doing that they will give money to it, they will volunteer, they will get it going. And there's 10% of the people that, for whatever reason, they do not like the Bible. They see it as regressive or something hostile. And they don't want anybody to have access. And even though it's optional and they don't have to sign their own child up, they don't like that anyone can sign their child up. And so they go on attack and they go to school board meetings and say things, and they post things online. At the end of the day, a lot of those efforts actually help us. They have. But it's out there. With that said, 80%, I think, are in the middle and they're just living their lives. Right. 80% of people are just trying to get their kids to school and to soccer and all of that. But the opposition we see, yeah, we've had a program that was shut down that the school board kicked us out after we've been there two years. The beautiful part of that is that in many ways, that sparked the statewide legislation in the state of Ohio changing. And so that one program, us getting kicked out overnight, it opened up about 80 other school districts because the law changed. We're experiencing some challenges right now just outside Seattle with a lawsuit, but I don't know, we figure this is part of it.
- [26:27]
A
Yeah, I was actually about to ask about that. So that's Everett Public Schools in Washington State. State. You guys are suing the school district because they're not allowing participation despite parents wanting this. And the superintendent actually says, I do hold animus. Here's thought 7. I want to make it very, extremely, abundantly clear that, yes, I do, in
- [26:50]
B
fact, hold animus towards Lifewise Academy.
- [26:52]
A
It just became really concerning for me as a parent then when my students needed to seal up their Bibles and hide them at school. Okay, so that's troubling. Obviously, this is not the case everywhere, but you've got a very secular, progressive state in Washington. You've got the superintendent outright saying, no, I actually don't like them.
- [27:19]
B
Yeah, well, this. What's kind of nice is this exception kind of proves the rule in that we so rarely see this. Right. We're going to be serving 1100 schools this school year. And this we have one instance of, to this extreme. But, yeah, we have a situation that unfortunately, a program that's been up and running, we had dozens of families involved, lots of students going very well, and the school board so that in fact, was a school board member. And they have some policies now that are, frankly, they're quite transparently discriminatory and aimed at Lifewise Academy. So whereas every other club or class that I've ever heard of, you sign your kid up at the beginning of the school year, you fill out a permission slip. That's what happens everywhere we serve. Well, they changed it so that the parents have to walk in a permission slip each and every week.
- [28:13]
A
Yeah.
- [28:15]
B
So that in any case, they're just
- [28:17]
A
trying to create more obstacles to make it more difficult.
- [28:19]
B
That's right. Yeah. Put obstacles in the way. And then the one that is most dystopian is if we give a child a worksheet, maybe they colored a picture of Moses or something, or a Bible, when they go back to school, it has to be in a sealed envelope, which, again, we're not aware of any policy like this for other organizations. That's crazy. We did not seek to make a big thing of this. There is a lawsuit now. But we tried to handle this very quietly. So first we just reached out to the school and said, hey, guys, you can't. You can't really do this. This is discriminatory. They weren't responsive. And so then we got our friends at First Liberty involved, and they sent a letter. Again, we wanted to be quiet, to say, hey, we don't want you to have egg on your face. Just take it back to the fair policies. And the response was what you just heard the school board member. What's wild is that the letter we sent said, we believe you hold animus. Which, you know, they're supposed to say, no, we don't. And then he said at a school board meeting into a microphone that he does hold animus, which, you know, our First Liberty really appreciated that.
- [29:28]
A
Yeah, thank you for just going ahead and saying that and making our case for us. Because, of course, that is the illegal, discriminatory part of it, is that you're not supposed to be showing preferential treatment or animus. Right. You're supposed to be impartial.
- [29:41]
B
That's exactly right. And so we. What do we want? We just want that policies to go back to normal. You know, we're just looking to be treated as anybody else would.
- [29:49]
A
Yeah. And I think people forget or maybe they just ignore the part that this is completely voluntary, that the parents get to decide if they want their child to go to this or not. And I really feel like someone like that, as rare as that might be, but he's showing his hand, that he actually Thinks that he knows better than the parents.
- [30:09]
B
That's exactly right. And to back to your point about neutrality, we. We've often said that that's really all we're genuine. Neutrality is what we're looking for. To require it, you could say to require Bible education, you could say it's not neutral. But to prohibit it is also not neutral. All we're asking for is that parents would have the option to enroll their own child.
- [30:33]
A
Yeah. So how can people pray with y' all through conflict like that? Even if it is only 10% of people, it's still conflict, it's still opposition. And ultimately, that is time that kids are not learning from the Bible. And so how can we help you guys through that best?
- [30:56]
B
Well, you. You said it. Prayer. We would love for others to join us in prayer, to link arms with us, especially for our local leaders. You saw the woman. We have a couple ladies in Everett, Washington, Sarah and Darcy, who are amazing. I mean, they are just the best, the sweetest, the most dynamic cream of the crop. But they're in the midst of it, fighting through this. They got kids who are signed up that now can't go, or there's all these obstacles in the way. And so that they would have perseverance, that they would be encouraged. Pray the same for our team, but also pray for those that are praying opposing us. Right. As a team, we always say, first thing we want to do is pray. Next thing we want to do is we want to look in the mirror if there's opposition. Yeah. Are we doing something wrong? Are we not saying things the right way? Could we be more winsome? So you could pray that. That we would be reflective and doing everything we can. And then ultimately, we want to pray for our opponents. This is a spiritual battle. We're not fighting with people right. About truth. And so that we would pray for the hearts of those who, for whatever reason, want to stand in the way of kids having access to the Bible.
- [32:22]
A
A very fitting sponsor for today is Freedom Project Academy. So maybe you're fed up with the education system that your child is in, whether they go to private school or public school school. There's something about it that maybe you don't like. You don't like the lack of flexibility. You don't like the values that are being taught in the classroom. You want to spend more time with your child. Or maybe you're a homeschool parent and you want a little bit more structure. Freedom Project Academy is for you. For 16 years, Freedom Project Academy has delivered a fully accredited Classical online education firmly rooted in Christian values for kids in pre kindergarten through high school. So if you need structure, you need. You can go live with real teachers. If you need flexibility, you can Access your courses anytime 24, 7. If you want more control. FPA's homeschool track puts your child in the driver's seat and you with Live Anytime and homeschool options, every student at Freedom Project Academy learns with purpose at a pace that fits their calling. Go to freedom for school.com you'll save 10% on tuition when you use my code, Ally. That's freedom for school. School.com code. Ali, What do you want? People who are outside of your organization, not in public schools. Someone like me, I went to a Christian private school. Very thankful for that. My children are going to get a Christian education. And so there's a lot that we only hear secondhand about what's going on in public schools. What do you maybe wish someone like me could know or see about these kids and what they're learning from y' all and just the experiences they're having?
- [33:58]
B
Well, I think someone like you, Ali, that I would like you to know is that 90% of school of kids attend public school. And so I think I would just want to emphasize the great need, the great opportunity. So 90% of kids go to public schools. Less than 20 regularly attend church. And so there is an ocean of students in our nation. In fact, there are 50 million public school students in our nation. Those are our future doctors. Those are our future leaders. Those are our future community members. And I would ask, can you think of anything more important than reaching them with the word of God? And so I would just want the message to get to any of my Christian brothers and sisters and say there are many, many important things that we need to do. Right. And I would say this is up there among them.
- [34:52]
A
Totally.
- [34:54]
B
And to say that it really is a great opportunity in that the word of God is doing what the word of God always does as students are being exposed to it, is going to work in their hearts. Kids are coming to faith. One of the fun things is that Christian kids are being emboldened. Right. They don't feel like they have to be on the sidelines anymore. Right. They're bringing their Bible, they're engaging their friends. And so. So, yeah, I would just want to put out the invitation to link arms.
- [35:22]
A
Yeah. What are all of the ways that we can get involved in help even if we don't have kids in the public school district ourselves?
- [35:31]
B
Yeah. And I'm a Homeschool, Dad. By the way, I'd say that there's a. Almost. There's a lot of people, you know, private school, homeschool families that are behind this effort because it's a lot of the same worldview issues, worldview convictions that lead one to homeschool or private school that lead one to get involved in this movement. And so ways to get involved, the best way is locally. Right? I would invite everybody. Just find out the status of your local school district. We now have at least one signature from more than three quarters of all school districts across the nation. And many are gaining that 50 signatures and beyond. So you can get to our website, find out the, the status of your local school district. Maybe it's just signing your name, maybe it's spreading the word. Maybe it's sign up to volunteer. And if you are a public school family, it's enrolling your student.
- [36:19]
A
Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, tell me one, your biggest prayer request for everyone who is listening or watching to pray right now.
- [36:28]
B
Oh, boy. I just have to narrow it to one.
- [36:32]
A
Well, if you, if you have to expand it to two or three, that's okay. You can break the rules.
- [36:38]
B
Well, I'll, I mean, I'll share the one that I just shared at an event we had over the weekend. And that is that we. That we would not drift. That we as a ministry, we are committed to the gospel message of Jesus and we do not want to drift from that. And we live in a world where there's always pulls. Right. And we also live in a world where that is the rule is that gospel centered ministries do end up drifting so that we would not drift and even more so that we would not drift from the Lord himself, that as we do grow exponentially and now we're in 30 some states and however many schools that we would be close to the Lord and close to his heart and that we would be, as Moses said to the Lord, if you don't go with us, we don't want to go. Don't take us, don't send us. We would say the same thing. We want to be with the Lord in all this.
- [37:38]
A
Amen. Okay, where can people go to learn more? Sign up volunteer.
- [37:43]
B
Yeah, so you can go to LifeWise.org, l I f e w I s e.org, you can click find your school. Find any school. You can learn more. A few different ways, but one is you mentioned the documentary. It's now on Angel.
- [37:54]
A
So it had a really, really good.
- [37:56]
B
Thank you. And Emilian Filmmaker. Yeah. And so it's on, it's on Angel. It's even. You're able to share it with those who don't even have angel accounts. It's one, one of those pieces and
- [38:08]
A
it's not only just about life wise, although that is an awesome part of it. But you'll learn a lot just about our public education system, how this is impacted, how people think about education, but also how we think about worldview. And you can see the evidence of that literally in every single space, sphere of society, this mistaken belief that Christianity can be compartmentalized into this tiny corner of your life. So just in general, whether you have kids or not, like this is a documentary that you want to watch.
- [38:37]
B
Yeah. That's maybe the best way to learn more. Right. And great experts interviewed in that. George Barna and Kelly Shackelford, Lisa Childers. Yeah, many, many others. So that's, that's on angel, our website. I've got a book out, but.
- [38:50]
A
Yeah, no, tell us about your book.
- [38:52]
B
Well, it's called During School Hours and it's, I mean, it's meant to clarify this opportunity and to amplify it. And it in some ways is like the documentary. It tells the story of how the Bible was removed from public education. Really lays out the why it's important that we reinstall Bible education for public school students and exactly how to do it. And so it goes into the lifewise story. If you jump on the website and you like what you see, if you watch the documentary and you like what you see and you want to go deeper, check out the book. But you can get the basics from, from those other things I mentioned.
- [39:23]
A
No, no, no, don't undersell it. Last sponsor for the day is netsuite. They say every day your business is late to the artificial intelligence boom. AI, you fall two days behind. And honestly, with fast growing competition, you can't really afford to do that. So how do you keep up? Fortunately, there is Net Suite Next. You already know NetSuite. It's the powerful business management suite that connects your financials, your inventory, commerce, HR into one single source of truth. But now NetSuite Next takes it to the next level. With AI built into everything you do, it services custom insights, automatically deploys AI agents that work alongside you and lets you simply ask questions in plain conversation, just like talking to a colleague. It's customized for every industry and, and ready to scale with you. Go to NetSuite AI Ali if your revenues are at least in the 7 figures it's built for every Industry ready for every boardroom, netsuite, AI slash alli. I think a deep dive into this is so important and to really know the heart behind the organization. Because if you're going to invest your time and your prayer and your money into an organization, you want to know the people behind it and the heart behind it and the impact that it's having. And you've got like testimonies in the books. You've got stories of how people's lives were actually changed, not by you, but by the gospel, by the word of God. And it's really hard to think of a much more important mission field than like you said, the future generations who are like biblically illiterate. I mean our current, our adult generations are biblically illiterate. That's something that George Barna talked about in the documentary and this is trying to remedy that.
- [41:16]
B
Yeah, yeah, it really is. So yeah, those are all ways to learn more. I mean to your point, one more story if I can, please. I was visiting one of our programs around Christmas time and the teacher said we're going to learn about and we're going to learn the Christmas story today and we're going to learn about Jesus earthly family. Who can tell me the names of Jesus parents? And this was the first year the program was up and running and in a room of 20 some kids, not a single hand, not a single kid knew Joseph and Mary were the names of Jesus parents. And so to your point, the opportunity is so great.
- [41:53]
A
Yeah. And just I know now we're getting into kind of like another tangent just for a second. But even from a non spiritual perspective, to understand the classics, to understand so much of history to you have to understand Christianity because it's been the central part of Western civilization. So again, that's not a neutral position to tell to say I'm not, not going to tell kids about this very important part of American identity. No.
- [42:19]
B
The most influential book ever written, certainly the most influential book in the western world. To ignore it. It's silly.
- [42:28]
A
It's not me.
- [42:29]
B
It's absolutely silly. And not only that, and again not to tangent, but all the how kids with Bible education fare better. Mental health, academics, you know, behavior, drug and you know, resistance to drug and alcohol, all of those things. There's every possible reason, even if you were to reject the spiritual claims, there's still every imaginable reason to get kids into the Bible.
- [42:54]
A
Wait, can you tell us more about that? About the statistics, what the statistics show about Bible education and the mental health of kids?
- [43:01]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, there's some pretty new stuff out from George Barna and Arizona Christian University that shows the number. Well, for one, Gen Z numbers of mental health are off the charts in terms of mental health problems. And the strong inverse correlation between those with a biblical worldview and those with mental health issues is very compelling. And this supports what's been decades of research that shows. Yeah, when kids, when anybody of any age has Bible in their life, has Christianity in their life, they fare better in all these ways. And now we have third party independent studies that show just with our program, life wise, you see, when a school implements it, you see attendance increasing significantly. In fact, there's a net increase in class time. So even though kids are being pulled out of school.
- [43:54]
A
Interesting.
- [43:55]
B
They're in school more because they're showing up for school that, that much more. And behavior dropping, behavioral problems dropping in a major way. So again, it's just there's. Unless you have a some sort of almost dogmatic opposition to scripture, there's every reason to support something like this.
- [44:20]
A
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. When you're in line with your creator, other things start falling into place too.
- [44:25]
B
Of course.
- [44:25]
A
Yeah. Amen. Well, I'm so thankful for what y' all do and that you said yes to being volun told what to do to lead this organization and to bring it to scale. And of course we know that's just the Holy Spirit. It's what God does and we just get to be vessels of that. But what a privilege and what an honor. And my audience is definitely going to be praying and hopefully supporting in lots of other ways too.
- [44:48]
B
Well, I appreciate that and appreciate you and all the work you do and yeah, I'm grateful to be part of an amazing team. We say lifewise is a movement of God, by the people of God and he's raising people up to do it.
- [44:58]
A
Amen. Well, thank you so much.
- [45:00]
B
Thank you.