Building Christian Boroughs: In Defense of Monocultures

Summary

The King's Hall

Episode: Building Christian Boroughs: In Defense of Monocultures

Hosts: Brian Sauvé, Eric Conn
Date: August 1, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode takes a deep dive into the concept of “Christian boroughs” and builds a case for creating and defending robust monocultures—distinct, thick, communal Christian cultures in local contexts. Drawing heavily from history (especially King Alfred the Great’s fortified “boroughs”), the hosts critique America’s post-war multicultural transformation, explore the weaknesses of pluralism, and lay out a practical vision for culture-building in the face of demographic, legal, and spiritual adversity. The discussion highlights principles, challenges, and specific components of building monocultures, all while keeping to a tone that is both serious about Christian distinctiveness and filled with banter and personal insights.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. America’s Shift from Monoculture to Multiculturalism (00:27–10:31)

• America once had a dominant white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP) monoculture, intentionally eroded through post-WWII immigration reform (notably the 1965 Hart-Celler Act) and the civil rights movement.
• “Diversity is not our greatest strength, but perhaps among our greatest downfalls.” – Brian Sauvé (09:39)
• Multicultural reforms, driven by subversive elites and legal shifts, have led to increased animosity and fragmentation—a “second constitution” (Christopher Caldwell) supplanted traditional American civilization.
• The church has largely conformed to the “post-war consensus,” adopting foreign forms of Christianity and yielding culture-forming power.

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2. The Model of the Borough: Learning from King Alfred (10:44–16:59, 17:07–22:24)

• King Alfred’s “boroughs” were fortified towns—cultural, legal, and defensive centers—that preserved and multiplied his people’s way of life.
• Christian boroughs today should similarly be “fortress communities”: robust, thick, rule-bound, multi-generational bulwarks of Christian culture spanning all of life (“vocation, education, law, worship, business, trade, justice, invention and innovation, media, family, friendship, tradition, birth to burial” (08:13)).
• Emphasis: “It’s not just ecclesiastical institutional power, but also economic and all of the other aspects of human life.” – Brian Sauvé (19:37)
• The vision is holistic, not “building a hill fort,” but replicating the spirit of strategic regrouping in the face of cultural defeat.

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3. Monoculture vs. Multiculturalism: Why a Monoculture? (22:24–26:19)

• Definition: A monoculture is not bland uniformity ("Monsanto cornfield") but a choir with diverse voices, harmonizing under shared norms and non-negotiables.
• “If you don’t make sure you’re careful to build and defend what is inside… you will be destroyed from the inside out.” – Brian Sauvé (22:03)
• Homogeneous, high-commitment culture is distinguished from the “big tent” or lowest-common-denominator approaches of most American churches.

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4. Replicating & Defending Monoculture: Tactics and Analogies (26:19–32:29)

• The analogy of gardening: culture-building requires intentional seed-planting, fencing, and ongoing cultivation.
• Membership is carefully gated: standards include, for example, a requirement for Christian education for members’ children, with only rare exceptions.
• “The willingness to be utterly hated, to have like a steel spine in enforcing the culture and even being willing to lose almost everybody.” – Brian Sauvé (33:00)
• Emphasis on a narrow front door (tight membership) and a wide back door (easy exit for the nonaligned); experience has shown this is necessary for culture preservation.
• Practical: “You hire slow and fire fast… it is really hard to get rid of people who are already there.” – Eric Conn (36:58)

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5. Leadership, Hierarchy, and the Immune System (47:32–54:03)

• Egalitarianism, democracy, and individualism are seen as corrosive; biblical and historic models favor clear hierarchy and organic leadership structures.
• “We must hate egalitarianism with perfect hatred. And we must love the hierarchical world that God made.” – Brian Sauvé (49:08)
• Not all pastors or leaders are the same—giftings and responsibilities differ by God’s design (Exodus 18).
• “It’s not whether or not there will be elites and rulers, but which kind.” – Brian Sauvé (56:40)

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6. Challenges in Building Monoculture (60:00–77:39)

• The “fussers” (chronic complainers/outsiders) can dominate a leader’s attention to the detriment of the unified whole; leaders must learn to say “no.”
  • “A good leader has to say, no, I’m not meeting with you anymore. I’ve given you everything you need. Go read the book.” – Brian Sauvé (62:52)
• Leadership development: the hardest part is humbly finding and empowering capable leaders, not just surrounding yourself with non-threats.
• Culture-building takes immense effort in leadership team unity, conflict resolution, and continual vision casting—far more than content production.

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7. The Components of a Christian Monoculture (81:37–147:22)

A. Shared Vision for Life

• Deep buy-in: “There’s no place like this place…God’s doing something here.” – Eric Conn (82:42)
• Vision must be big enough for every person—truck driver to academic—to see their value and role.
• The aim is not a cult of personality but a “we are great” community consciousness modeled on biblical identity (1 Peter references).

B. Gatekeeping

• Multiple “gates” to membership ensure the community remains potent; standards are enforced up front and make the group self-conforming as well as self-selecting.
• “The gate is wide, it’s flung open…the red carpet is laid out for people to repent. But the gate is also narrow—you can’t refuse to repent and come in and pretend like you’re in.” – Brian Sauvé (99:08)
• The church’s “vibes” and cultural markers are intentionally crafted to make it undesirable (“a stench”) for would-be subversives, protecting both inside and outside.
• Leaders take on the necessary “loudness” on controversial issues so the average congregant doesn’t have to (105:22).

C. Sex Piety

• Male-led, female-adorned: Distinctions are not only theological but culturally celebratory.
• “We want to build a culture where men love women and women love men—and the way God made them.” – Brian Sauvé (122:50)
• Defending biblical gender norms and sex piety is considered a first-order issue due to the ubiquity of cultural attacks and chaos.
• Women are expected to help safeguard the culture among themselves; e.g., gossip, slander, or immodesty are swiftly addressed peer-to-peer (110:27).

D. Beyond Ecclesiocentrism

• The church is at the center but isn’t the only institution; business, education, and social spheres are all Christianized rather than subordinated.
• “Worship is going to be at the center. But you know what else there’s going to be as you grow in scale? There’s going to be political leaders. There are going to be business leaders, elites in different areas of human life…” – Brian Sauvé (135:56)

E. Learning & Education

• Institutional Christian education like St. Brennan’s is vital, as is group learning for homeschooled families; togetherness creates more potent, consistent formation.
• “If you’re together, then that’s where you see…who are those leaders. But you also see what the problems are…and togetherness gives you opportunities to do even yet more cultural formation and alignment.” – Brian Sauvé (141:27)

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8. Leadership as Cultural Transmission

• Leaders are not just transmitters of doctrine but also transmitters of “the vibe.”
• The importance of men like Ethan and Tate Taylor (unnamed last names at points) who catalyze masculine fellowship, training, and social activities.
• “One person with the right gifts, cultivated in the right way and put in the right time and place can influence millions.” – Brian Sauvé (144:31)
• Leadership multiplication is crucial for borough replication elsewhere.

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• On the nature of monoculture:
  “It’s the monoculture of a choir singing to the same conductor with their male and female voices and all the nuances, not the monoculture of a Monsanto cornfield.”
  – Brian Sauvé (45:59)

• On gatekeeping and outsider perception:
  “What is the maximum amount of disagreement we can tolerate and still remain potent?” – Brian Sauvé (95:09)
  “One of the ways you defend your monoculture is by making it so obnoxiously everything your enemies hate that they would never in a million years join it.” – Brian Sauvé (100:10)
  “Success.” (In response to a critic saying a video would make them never want to come.) – Brian Sauvé (100:31)

• On masculine/feminine polarity:
  “You need a masculine edge…and this is why men are given to lead and women are not in these things. You need a masculine fortitude…” – Brian Sauvé (41:01)
  “Men build civilizations with women as their helpers. It’s not the inverse.” – Brian Sauvé (41:51)

• On leadership development:
  “Fathers, husbands, business leaders: we all experience this, where you start to go, wow, when I started, I thought I was good at this aspect of leadership, and I’m not…You realize very quickly that you’re not God. And so you need other leaders.” – Brian Sauvé (69:39)

• On the need for Christian education and togetherness:
  “Institutions have gravity and power in a culture that scattered, smaller groups don’t have.” – Brian Sauvé (140:44)

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Major Timestamps

• 00:27–10:31 – America’s demographic history, postwar reforms, and monoculture decline.
• 10:31–22:24 – Boroughs as historical metaphor; introduction of Christian boroughs.
• 22:24–26:19 – Why monocultures are necessary; differences from past models.
• 33:00 – The pain and necessity of disciplined, steel-spined leadership.
• 47:32–54:03 – Hierarchy, elites, and leadership structures.
• 60:00–64:36 – The problem of fussers; the necessity of refocusing leadership energy.
• 81:37–111:44 – Components of the monoculture: shared vision, gatekeeping, education, sex piety.
• 122:42–132:37 – Sex piety, masculinity, femininity, and community distinctives.
• 135:56–142:14 – The role of church vs. broader institutions; the importance of education.
• 144:31–147:44 – Leadership as culture transmitters; notable individuals in the community.

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Conclusion

This episode is both a justification and a practical guide for building distinctively Christian communities in an age of fragmentation and ideological chaos. It presents both a critique of modern pluralism and actionable strategies for creating thick, resilient, generative Christian monocultures rooted in hierarchy, tradition, and localism. The conversation ranges from historical analysis and social commentary to nitty-gritty details of church membership, leadership, education, and personal anecdotes of cultural cultivation on the ground.

Next episode will focus on leadership replication in these boroughs—“how to” details on training, multiplying, and transmitting culture through strong men and robust institutional structures.

Transcript

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[Brian Sauvay]

Foreign It's commonplace in today's cultural discussion to hear academics and politicians repeat the slogan America is a nation of immigrants. For example, in 2023, Yvette Clark, representing New York's 9th District, called for immigration reform, by which she meant more expansive immigration on the basis that America is a nation of immigrants founded by immigrants. The phrase seems to have taken off thanks to a book by John F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants in the late 1950s, which then exploded in discussions about race during and after the Civil rights amendment of 1964. But when you look at America's founding, this storyline fails to hold the water it was intended to carry. In point of fact, America was founded predominantly as a nation of Northern and Western Europeans who crossed the Atlantic Ocean to become a part of the white colonial expansion of their mother countries. For example, in the 1790 census, America's population of roughly 3.9 million was comprised of 3.2 million whites. Of those, almost 90% were English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish. Germans were 9%, Dutch, 3%, French 2%, and Swedish less than 1/4 of 1%. The remainder, excluding Native Americans, were black slaves who numbered just shy of 900,000. Even as late as 1940, the US population was about 90% white European lineage. Today, the monoculture of white, Anglo, Saxon, Protestant WASP has been intentionally eroded. As of 2025, the nation has grown to almost 360 million, with the fastest growing ethnicities being Asian and Hispanic. Those groups make up about 33% of the US population currently, but are expected to make up 40% by 2060. Whites are in steep demographic decline, making up about 57% of the current population, but are expected to drop to 40% by 2060. Blacks have grown by about 4%. Meanwhile, it's projected that foreign born individuals will soon be 20% of the population by 2060. As the racial profile of America has changed, so have the values driving its now highly pluralistic culture. You may wonder what happened. It seems there was a concerted effort after World War II to erode the WASP stronghold, which culminated in the 1964 Civil Rights Amendment and the Hart Celler act of 1965, which majorly restructured the country's stance regarding immigration. While the previous immigration policy favored European immigrants to help maintain a monoethnic principle and in American civic life, the Hart Celler act reversed this. It favored immigrants largely from the Third World, including Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. One of the primary framers of the act was Emmanuel Seller, a Jewish congressman who partnered with the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress to garner support for the bill. As chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Seller was a key figure in pushing for immigration reform and and long sought to dismantle the 1924 Immigration act, which favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. The civil rights era 1954-1968 transformed America in ways that are hard to fathom for us who live downstream of it. As noted in a Wikipedia post titled Jews in the Civil Rights Movement, two of the most politically influential groups at that time were American Jews and African Americans who, quote, formed strategic alliances to challenge racial inequality across the country. As a result, Jewish activists took many of the leadership positions within the naacp. Likewise, as the page notes, Jewish individuals and organizations provided financial support, legal expertise, and grassroots activism to support the growing movement nationwide. Prominent Jewish organizations involved in this grand alliance included the Anti Defamation League, adl, and the American Jewish Congress. Prominent Jewish leaders such as Rabbi Abraham, Joshua Herschel, and Jack Greenberg marched alongside figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. And contributed significantly to landmark legal victories. As Christopher Caldwell aptly demonstrates in his book the Age of Entitlement, the civil rights era marked a second Constitution of the United States, meaning that new laws effectively nullified the aims and intentions of the first Constitution. It was a pivotal era that gave birth to unfettered immigration and affirmative action, as well as what would ultimately evolve into today's dei, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Those policies would filter down into corporations, government jobs, and academia, thanks to entire HR departments of hysterical women devoted to their enforcement. Later, these ideas would morph into the WOKE agenda, the BLM movement, more race riots, and a continuous replay of black on white violence. Rather than bringing the nation together, however, these multicultural efforts, including diversity based hiring quotas and housing projects, would breed even more racial animosity, thus fracturing the once unified country of white and largely Protestant Europeans. As it turns out, diversity is not our greatest strength, but perhaps among our greatest downfalls. As Stephen Wolf argued at the 2024 New Christendom Press Annual Conference, multiculturalism is not the positive good for our nation that so many of our ruling elites tell us it is. Nations cannot long survive, let alone thrive by importing competing nations, cultures and peoples into their borders, particularly when those competing peoples not only refuse to assimilate, but positively protect the culture of their native land whole and intact. But this episode of the King's hall isn't first about fixing the demographic destruction wrought on our nation. That work is not only massive, but to work which will take A kind of steel spined conviction that our nation doesn't seem to possess yet. Time will tell. Rather, in this episode of the King's hall, we want to draw a line from the sad tale you just heard to that which is in our grasp. The Christian borough. That term borough we're of course borrowing from the 9th century king of England, Alfred, who is also the only king in that nation's illustrious history to be awarded the title. The great Alfred saw to the establishment of fortified communities ranging from small hill forts at strategic locations to whole cities across his nation, connected boroughs built for the preservation, defense and multiplication of his people. If you followed us for long, you know that we often describe our project in these same terms, the construction and defense and multiplication of Christian boroughs. You can think of a Christian borough as a fortified town, a fortress community. It has thick walls to defend what is inside and manned gates to make sure that what is inside is worth defending. It's a cultural stronghold. Not just anyone can walk in. There are rules, norms and cultural non negotiables for membership in these communities. A Christian borough is a strategically located community of like minded Christians and intent on building thick, defensible, replicable Christian culture that might stand for generations and answer every part of what it means to be human. And while a Christian borough will certainly center on robust Christian worship, it will encompass much, much more. In fact, it ought to growingly encompass all of the requisite parts of human existence. Think, vocation, education, law, worship, business, trade, justice, invention and innovation, media, family, friendship, tradition, birth to burial, human life. In this way, a Christian borough is the seed of a town or a city, or even a state or a nation. It's a community designed to both weather turmoil and opposition, as well as to bring renewal and life back to the barren deserts that untethered wickedness inevitably creates. It's not something that must begin as a large scale sort of thing, but it must aspire to institutional power and productivity on the scale of its surrounding area. So what does this have to do with multiculturalism, globalism and the destruction of American culture through the planned replacement of her native peoples with foreigners? Quite a bit, actually. See, we are convinced that one of the most important central principles that must be obeyed in the construction of a Christian borough is a Christian borough must establish, establish, defend and promote a monoculture. We are not aiming to build a multicultural community in Ogden, but rather a monocultural community. And so in this episode of the King's hall podcast, we want to ask and answer a few pivotal why are monocultures good how can we go about building them in our own households? Churches and boroughs, what are they? Why are we building a thick monoculture here in Ogden? And what are some of the challenges that we've faced? And we think you will as well. What are some of the core components of that monoculture? As we answer these questions, it's our hope that you will be inspired to build a robust, thick monoculture where you are. For after all, a strong borough is the seat of a nation. And if we hope to see sweeping changes in our society, we've got a lot of local work ahead of us. The King's Hall Podcast exists. Exists to make self ruled men who rule well and win the world well.

[Eric Khan]

Welcome to this episode of the King's Hall Podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Eric Khan, joined by the only other host that we've ever had, Brian. Brian Save.

[Brian Sauvay]

That's so true. Here I am. It's only ever been this lineup.

[Eric Khan]

It is actually funny. Brian, I was listening to an old talk of yours and you were talking about Dan and Alfred and you were talking about the Vikings. Yeah. And you're like, the Vikings were horrible, bloodthirsty, awful people. Dan's people.

[Brian Sauvay]

And he's like, what? We converted.

[Eric Khan]

We converted.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, but before you converted, you did a lot of raping and pillaging. Like, let. We can let bygones be bygones.

[Eric Khan]

And here's the deal. You're French people who in 1790 represented 2% of the population. I think we can all agree they never did anything wrong, ever.

[Brian Sauvay]

I know this. Yeah. The French. Name one thing we've ever done wrong. One thing other than the French Revolution.

[Eric Khan]

I can't even think of anything or.

[Brian Sauvay]

Like any of the French today, like, or the last hundred years. Any. And other than that total Maginot line, like, just nothing else.

[Eric Khan]

Totally debaucherous.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. I mean, no. What are you, the French? They're great, great, great people.

[Eric Khan]

Napoleon.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, Napoleon. We got. You know, I claim all of the Frankish peoples too, since, I mean, they're, they're, you know, there's like Germanic. It's a lot of people's. Came from.

[Eric Khan]

They did.

[Brian Sauvay]

But I 100% claim them entirely as my people.

[Eric Khan]

As your people.

[Brian Sauvay]

I don't make the rules.

[Eric Khan]

One of the things, Brian, I want to. I want to talk about.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

People will notice a little bit different set. It's true. Sort of under construction.

[Brian Sauvay]

It's, it's, it's not finished.

[Eric Khan]

We're changing.

[Brian Sauvay]

Don't worry. But we're.

[Eric Khan]

This is like when you build a borough. Where you begin and where you end are not the same place.

[Brian Sauvay]

It's not the same place. No. You have to do, you have to tweak, you have to change, you have to elevate, you have to grow, elevate, evolve.

[Eric Khan]

That's right. Yeah, you absolutely have to do that. Brian we're going to really talk about in this episode, a project I think that's been near and dear to our hearts for a couple years, but that's building Christian Burroughs. And I guess just right off the top, I want to ask you why is. Hopefully we'll do a series of of episodes on this, but why is this so important to be talking about boroughs? We're looking at multiculturalism and what it's done to America. We're looking at the division and so we're addressing crazy things like monocultures in Ogden. But why be talking about this issue so repeatedly and so much about Christian Burrows?

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[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, we want to bang this drum a lot because the, the parallels, they're not one to one. Our goal isn't for you to go out and build a hill fort, you know, like start chopping trees down and.

[Eric Khan]

But I mean if you did that, that'd be cool.

[Brian Sauvay]

If you did, you might get arrested but it would be cool like and I would have your back. I want you guys to know that I'd give to the givesend go. You know I would just also say.

[Eric Khan]

If you have fortresses.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, call.

[Eric Khan]

You also need a killdozer.

[Brian Sauvay]

Absolutely. Like that's step one actually to defend the building. A sword and a trowel, you know, like a kill dozer. And Chainsaw. Those are the two things you need now. So we're not one to one saying exactly what a burrow was in King Alfred's day is exactly what we need today. There are differences, but the parallels I think are important to note. So when these enemies, these Viking enemies came in and attacked Alfred's people, they almost won. Like history would have been very different. You see Alfred driven all the way back to Athelney, which is an island in a swamp. We call it Athelney now, which means Prince Isle. It was named because he, it was a, it was a no place. Like nobody was going there. One, it wasn't a destination. He's driven back into hiding. And from that near defeat, Alfred was able to build back up, call some of his surviving men. They rallied around him and then they engaged in a series of strategic tactical engagements of the enemy. They learned what they had done wrong in engaging them. Many, many lessons that they took away and then they applied very well and they ended up taking back the nation and then establishing these boroughs to defend it against future attacks. And there's a lot in that story that we can't get into today. But the parallels are just striking in our culture very much. We are a people on the run. Like a people who were a minority. If you just look at the average person in America, even the average Christian in America, many of them, their minds are conquered by what we've talked about, the post war consensus. Their minds are already conquered so that they actually enforce the will of their own enemies. That's one of the ways that you can know that we are functionally, in many ways a conquered people. And so the question is, what do you do when you're not a part of that conquered people? And you're like, no, we see what's happening and we want to reclaim the nation, rebuild Christian America, truly Christian America, and everything that would come with that. One of the first things you have to reckon with, like Alfred when he's on the run is that you need strategic regrouping. You need to be able to build up forces. You need to be able to establish tactics that are co, coherent with your situation. Like, Alfred couldn't take his, you know, handful of men and go charge the, the defended walls of a, of a hill fort. He would have died in one engagement. It would have been glorious. And people, you know, no one would have written songs about it because they all would have been dead. But it would have been the kind of things you could write a song about. But he didn't do that. And he thought tactically he was wise. We think about the project of building like the Christian community we are in Ogden, a Christian borough like that. We're engaged in wise tactics that fit our time. We're trying to build a center of institutional power in every part of what it means to be human. So not just ecclesiastical institutional power, but. But also economic and all of the other aspects of human life that you can think of. That's a long, slow project. But the borough is like, it's just such a fitting rallying model to think about these things through, I think.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, I think a big part of this is number one, I would say, history. So even for Alfred, it was really looking to historical examples, even in the recent history with Charlemagne, and looking at something we'll talk about in this episode. But he wasn't just saying, like, hey, we need to reform the Church.

[Brian Sauvay]

Right.

[Eric Khan]

It was the church, it was law, it was monetary policy, education, as you say, everything that it means to be human. Yeah. So the borough has to be all encompassing. So I think it's helpful to get kind of the right understanding of the scope of this project and what we're trying to do. But the other part that I would say for Alfred and kind of what we've learned from it, this is also largely a critique on whatever the 1900s into now. So 20th and 21st century church, we're also critiquing that and we're saying, hey, it's not doing anything against that. And one of the themes that we've covered a lot in our episodes is that the church has really been conformed to the image of the post war consensus. And so you have a different and foreign form of Christianity. And I put that in like scare quotes. Christianity.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, it's like a novel theological apparatus is what we've called in the past.

[Eric Khan]

Right. Because really what's happening is we're looking at the church and we're looking at boroughs and we're looking at Alfred and we're saying, actually, if we want to change culture, we're going to have to build these monocultures in boroughs. It's got to be more than just ecclesiastical changes. And it's gotta be rooted in historic reform Protestantism.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, you basically need a place and a mechanism to form and recruit and multiply and cultivate and defend a certain type of culture that is self consciously saying, we are not that. We are not the surrounding culture. We are not the surrounding Christian culture, even let alone the surrounding culture of our nation, which is debauched and apostate. And sinful, you know, to. To the max. So you. You really like you. You have this project. The reason we say monoculture so many times is that it's the kind of thing that you can't allow. Walls keep things out, like a. A defended burrow, keep things out. But if you don't make sure that you're careful to. To build and defend what is inside of that nation, that little borough, that seed of a nation, you will be destroyed from the inside out.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, it's sort of, I think of it especially in the early phases, and we'll kind of get into this, you know, why we built what we built, why we're doing it a certain way. The hope is that others can replicate it. But I think about it right now, especially we're in. I don't know, it depends how you look at the years, But I've been here roughly five years, so it's a shorter term project at this point. But you guys have been doing it for longer than that. But when you look at that, we're sort of like an early seed bed where you have to make sure that you have the right kind of seeds planted. You have to guard the garden. You know, think of a gardening analogy. Dan would love this, by the way. He's on paternity leave. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that.

[Brian Sauvay]

He'S on paternity leave.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, yeah, he's. He's making more Viking babies.

[Brian Sauvay]

He's making more male burkholders.

[Eric Khan]

I mean, seriously, which is an army.

[Brian Sauvay]

That's amazing.

[Eric Khan]

But when you think of a garden, you've. A lot of times around our area, you got to put up fences to keep the deer out so they don't eat all your bulbs and all the early fruit. So there's lots of work that has to be done in cultivation. And part of it is, I think we have had to think through really carefully the foundational structures and principles of what kind of culture, what kind of people do we actually want to make. And one of the problems, I would say, with mainstream evangelicalism is they might say something like, well, we want to make people who love Jesus. But that's not quite specific enough to actually mean anything.

[Brian Sauvay]

Especially if you let people self identify and you say, anybody who says I love Jesus can come and be a part of this community. Because here's the thing. Transgender rainbow stole wearing mainline church lady pastor. Are they a lady pastor at that point? Whatever will say I love Jesus. You will have liberals who reject utterly all the central claims of Christianity that will say, oh, I love Jesus, though, I think it's you Christians I don't like, like Gandhi. Oh, sure, yeah. You really love Jesus, but you don't love his body. The church, it's like, it's not enough. It doesn't have a potent enough center. It's not worth replicating. It has no defense. And ultimately all it will become, because our enemies are crafty, is another faction of their own army defending and promoting their view.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. And I think part of it too, obviously if you look at the mega church culture, you could see much clearer distinctions between us and them. But even in something like, say the pca, like if you, you guys are both Protestants, you're Reformed, love John Calvin, etc. And yet even there, we would have vast differences to where not all. We have many friends in the pca, but we also have a lot of people who are like, we absolutely hate what you're doing. And we, we would not be seen in public with you. We would never acknowledge that we, you know, read or partook of any of your content.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, no.

[Eric Khan]

So that just kind of goes to show we are. There's a lot of effort going into how we define the community.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. You could ask the question, like, what armies have marched on America? What forces have invaded our borders? Did they set up artillery? Did they roll in with mechanized forces? Did they airdrop troops in behind our borders? No, they slowly, carefully, intentionally, subversively won the gatekeeping and culture forming mechanisms of our nation in law and education and media and all of these areas of human. And then after seizing those institutional microphones, they promoted their view subtly and carefully. And one of the craftiest things they did is that they wrapped it in a veneer of Christianity so that once the people were conquered, they wouldn't know it.

[Eric Khan]

Well, and it's interesting, I think, pivotal time periods we mentioned in the cold open, like the 1960s, it was fascinating to me that even in like 1940, you still had a 90% European population, Protestant, white, European population in America. So you can definitely trace. Wow, something must have happened shortly after that. We've talked about the post war consensus, but you have these pivotal passages of law, and this is one reason with Hart Celler, immigration reform in 1965 and also the Civil Rights Amendment 1964. One of the reasons, I think in Christian circles, especially Reformed theonomic camps, we've often said things like, well, culture is downstream from the church. But what we actually found in another true sense is that of course church does impact the culture. But in this case it was really culture is Downstream from the law, from legal changes. And I think that the people who were. We've talked about, but the people who were involved in those cases, lots of Jewish influence, Martin Luther King, the black influence, they understood how culture is shaped.

[Brian Sauvay]

From fundamentally communist forces, fundamentally subversive communist forces. And here's the thing. We say that cultures down the stream from the church is absolutely true. We say that apostasy in the church led and gave way to many, many sins and corruptions of our nation. And that's true. But you also have to realize that our enemies were very crafty in this time period. And if you asked. Caldwell gets into this in his book in the Age of Entitlement. But if you asked, you know, the average person in the 60s about the civil Rights act and what it was going to do and the Hart Cellar act and what most people wouldn't have known at all what it was intended.

[Eric Khan]

To do, well, it's interesting.

[Brian Sauvay]

Would have understood it.

[Eric Khan]

He points out in the book the majority of Americans were opposed to it. I saw Tucker on with Charlie Kirk the other day. They were talking about boomers, but they were talking about the Civil Rights act. And they said the people who were, like, least favorable to it at the time were blacks.

[Brian Sauvay]

It wasn't like, popular the nation. So the point is that the nation didn't rise up culturally from the bottom up and say, we demand the Civil Rights act, we demand the Hart Cellar Act. We demand all these things. Not at all. Instead, it was imposed again via institutional power by political elites who were subversive and knew what they were doing.

[Eric Khan]

Yes.

[Brian Sauvay]

They said if we're going to change the Christian, the cultural Christian ethos of this people, we actually have to change the makeup of that people. We have to flood them with other alien cultures that are more malleable to our view. That will erode and remove the power from this base of people that would never have this if they understood what it would do.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah.

[Brian Sauvay]

And so they did that. A very elite, small group of people had an absolutely outsized effect on our nation's course since then. And that should give us comfort because we can do the same thing.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. And you look at a lot of the things, you know, people may wonder if they, you know, they listen to the show, maybe especially now, if they're just listening for the first time. I'm sure if you've been here for a while is not surprising. But why do we address things, the changes, sexual change in culture in the 1960s. Why do we address birth control and procreation? Well, this actually makes sense. How did the white population begin to shrink? You know, we went from 90% of the population in 1940 and today we're like 57%. While not only flooding the borders with immigrants and foreigners, but also giving white women the pill and saying, oh no, we have this better vision of life for you that's not going to include children. And so this becomes a real issue where pastorally we're like, no, the Bible does speak on this. First of all, procreation isn't like, it's not one of those issues. You know, it's not like aeronautics where you're like, well, I can't find anything about that in the Bible. There's actually quite a lot.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

In our church fathers throughout history, you know, if you would have said to John Calvin, for example, hey, here's, here's the pill, here's what it's going to do, here's what the church is going to respond. I think he would have started pulling hair and beards out.

[Brian Sauvay]

It would have been a Nehemiah type kind of moment. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[Eric Khan]

Like, what are you people doing?

[Brian Sauvay]

So I pulled out his hair and I beat him and I cast him out of the temple. That's right, Nehemiah. What a baller.

[Eric Khan]

Honestly, like Mark Driscoll, I'm here for that. One of the things I do want to ask you, just as we jump in, because we're going to get into like, what are the components of this monoculture? We'll have more episodes too, speaking to specific things, like how to cultivate leaders so that you're replicating the culture. All that. But one of the critiques that we've received often from people who are, they would be prominent, they would be well read men that we would respect generally. But they have said things like, I don't like how narrow you guys are defining a lot of your culture. I don't think that's a good thing. And one issue in particular that we can reference is I don't like the fact that you make it a requirement of membership that you give your children a Christian education. That shouldn't be a requirement. So I guess the question for me is, what's your defense of that? Why do we not just say come one, come all?

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, it is a good question. Because a lot of the things, and I actually mentioned it in the cold open, that once you've lost a monoculture and you've been successfully infiltrated so that you have like, we have borders. But even if we defended all of our borders, right now, and we didn't get rid of foreign aliens who hate our culture and want to subvert it and bring their whole national culture wholesale in intact and impose it on everybody else. Defending the borders isn't enough at that point. You actually have to do this very difficult thing of removing people. So when you think about a Christian borough, and we've had this experience in the church, actually in the initial process of establishing a borough, as I grew in the pastorate and started to identify some key areas where I became convinced we really need to take ground here, we, we need to set our flag here on some of these theological principles, some of these cultural principles, some of these cultural distinctives. What happened was we had borders as a church. Some people were in and some people were out. But a significant number of the people who were in the church wildly disagreed with me. And so it took a process of years where by the grace of God, like one of the things we had to cultivate, I had to cultivate as a leader, other leaders had to cultivate is the willingness to be utterly hated, to have like a steel spine in enforcing the culture and even being willing to lose almost everybody. So there was a period where the entire church, literally hundreds of people over about five years left the church and new people came that were in on the culture. That's a very, very painful process. Okay, so once we establish this culture like we have today, where the church has never been more like minded, are extraordinarily potent in our agreement and consistent vision for what we're all building together, not just the leaders. Like we are together doing this work, this great work. That's how we think about it. We're doing this great work the Lord's given us. Our God is great. He's given us great things to do by his spirit, not in our strength, but in his strength. We can, we can do it. Okay, so once you've been through that painful process, like, think if in America over the next 50 years we did the really hard work of taking back our nation. Okay, what do you think that would do to the stubborn refusal to open up those gates again in the people that went through that? They'd be like, absolutely not. Absolutely not. So what some people see as like even up to and including sinful narrowness, we from experience have learned, no, this is actually the essential masculine, steel spined will to defend that which is good. So if we don't, like take education, you know, I, even after the talk in 2024, I gave it new Christian press conference building Christian boroughs. It Was the, it was the theme talk for the conference. I talked about that education example, like, you know, just kind of offhand, hey, one example of this, this building a monoculture is that you can't come into membership if you aren't. Like if you send your kids to public school and you're not giving them a Christian education unless there's some. There are very, very few extenuating circumstances, almost always relating to someone who is sinned against in a divorce. Maybe your wife cheated on you, divorced you, and she has educational custody of the children. And so he has no custodial right of that decision. And so a parent might be doing their best with a bad place, you know, bad situation.

[Eric Khan]

They could be a member, we would still allow them.

[Brian Sauvay]

But someone who's willfully saying, yeah, I know that you provide a Christian, like we, we provide a Christian school for all of our members who tithe, and there's no tuition charge. Like, that's how committed we are. It's not that they have no options. So if someone still said no, we're convinced that you are wrong on this. Christian education is not a requirement of a Christian parent. And public schools are a perfectly viable and lawful option for Christians today and we're sending our kids there, we would say, thank you for applying. This isn't the place for you. Why are we doing that? It sounds mean for the same reason that someone in 2075, if America regains the will and kicked out all the aliens trying to conquer our nation, if someone said, well, you know, maybe we should open up the border and just a small percentage of people from the third world could come back in. Everyone should rise up from that generation and say, do you, are you serious? Do you know what we did? Do you know the fight we had to go through?

[Eric Khan]

Well, that's a really good point. I've heard you say this before, that the reason you have a narrow front door and a large back door is because there is this reality where it's just like hiring and firing in the corporate world. The reason that you hire slow and fire fast is because it is really hard to get rid of people who are already there.

[Brian Sauvay]

Oh, man. Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And a lot of times what they will do is you'll have these long periods, periods where people are on your staff or in your church. They will be disgruntled, they will sow division, they will work against what you're trying to accomplish and you'll go through a long, laborious, time consuming process which is like having your fingernails pulled, very painful. And, and Then eventually they'll usually leave one way or the other.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

Either they get excommunicated or they maybe just opt out and say, we're, you know, we're going to go somewhere else. And we're like, yeah, you should have done that a long time ago.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

But when you look at that, there's a high cost. And so later on down the road, we would say naturally, as elders and have said, wow, we need to make the membership process tighter. And look, it's not all mean. We do want to put our flags out front.

[Brian Sauvay]

Totally.

[Eric Khan]

We want to have this posture where when you come into membership, we want you to know exactly what you're getting into.

[Brian Sauvay]

100%. No bait and switch.

[Eric Khan]

No bait and switch. This is not a seeker sensitive model at all. It's the opposite way.

[Brian Sauvay]

Opposite.

[Eric Khan]

Which is kind of funny because a lot of times people are like, you guys are seeker sensitive. I'm like, you have no idea.

[Brian Sauvay]

You have absolutely no idea. You should go to our eight week member class.

[Eric Khan]

Well, and one of the fruits of this, I would say, is the megachurch will be big tent. And they will say, we just want everybody who says, I love Jesus. And you get a hodgepodge of things. And you, I would argue, you don't have something fundamentally that will transform culture.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

I even go back to this with somebody like Martin Luther. And I think about our pastoral staff, I think we're all a little extra meaning. Like you got some, some bulls who know how to pull some weight on the team. And that can be difficult too.

[Brian Sauvay]

It can be somewhat difficult occasionally to deal with in an inter team dynamic sense, potentially. People say, one could imagine Brian likes to get involved. Like there's all these like one liners that have developed the lore around each one of our pastors. Like, Brian likes to get involved. Eric, you know, sometimes he loves too much. He loves too much.

[Eric Khan]

I think Dan did tell me one time, he was like, you should have been a field general. And I was like, well, no higher compliment versus what?

[Brian Sauvay]

I was like, I've never been paid a higher compliment than that. Thank you. And he's like, it wasn't a compliment.

[Eric Khan]

He's like, you love to give commands and there's all these things, but here's the reality of all of that. It takes men with tremendous force of will to accomplish something like the Protestant Reformation. I mean, you can look back, you know how people did this, like young, restless and reformed. They would look back on Luther and they would say, he wasn't very gentle. And I'm Just going to tell you now, it's not the gentlemen who affect massive wide scale change like the Protestant Reformation.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. And even when you think about what gentleness biblically is like, Jesus is his yoke is easy, his burden is light. He is I'm lowly and come and I will give you rest to the weary. But that is to those who come and bend the knee to Christ as Lord.

[Eric Khan]

It's not to the Pharisees, to those.

[Brian Sauvay]

Who hear his stern rebuke of their sin and turn from it and receive this great living water and grace of forgiveness. The Samaritan woman at the well who, who's had five men and they're not her husband. Like all of this, he's bringing out the worst thing she's ever done. And then he says, I have living water for you. Jesus was a gentleman in the way that a good field general is gentle with his people, but he is not gentle with his enemies. The Lord Jesus is crushing Satan underfoot. Paul in Romans 16 prays that the God of peace would soon crush Satan under your feet.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah.

[Brian Sauvay]

So like we. You need a masculine edge. And this is why men are given to lead and women are not in these things. You need a masculine fortitude that is willing to not even be manipulated by calls to being gentle and lowly in a gay and effeminate communist way.

[Eric Khan]

Well, and this is part of it is as we think about the community. We'll get into the components too here. But one of the things that you have to have, as you said, masculine leadership. You cannot even have the subtle forms of feminine rule which are often hidden forces in a church or a community. It absolutely cannot be the case. This is why we've. We did an episode on it. We reject the Gilderism.

[Brian Sauvay]

Absolutely.

[Eric Khan]

The George Gilderism. These principles of boomer quasi feminism.

[Brian Sauvay]

It's 20th century feminist slop.

[Eric Khan]

Yes.

[Brian Sauvay]

That. That you know, basically what you need in a community is for the feminine to. To civilize the men. The reality is that men build civilizations with women as their helpers.

[Eric Khan]

Y.

[Brian Sauvay]

It's not the inverse.

[Eric Khan]

Well, and I think there's a good. There's a duality in good men. We've actually got an episode upcoming on the Hard Men podcast with myself and Thomas Acord, where we're talking about throughout Western literature, the Western canon, the ethos of the west, there was kind of this duality that men ought to be both gentlemen and chivalric and they should also have a barbarian side. Meaning there is a time where you have to be like David and go slay a giant and cut his head off and take his sword.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And there is another time where you're tender to Mephibosheth and even the son of one of your kind of enemies, you know, so there's this duality that we have to have within the culture, and that's what we're seeking to do. One of the things I would say as we talk about monoculture would be helpful to highlight. You're. We're not talking about a mono crop. Meaning when. When people hear monoculture, I think what they think of is like Handmaiden's Tale. Yeah. Which I don't even know it is. I just know it's a bunch of ladies who wear the same thing.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, I've. I have. I could not tell you the barest summary of the plot.

[Eric Khan]

I don't know. I don't know it. But people think of this like a kind of conformity that would crush any kind of diversity.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yes. And this would be a misunderstanding. When you think about farming like a monoculture is a field that's going to have one type of seed exactly the same. And there's arguments for and against whatever. That's actually not what we're talking about. Where you could look at the people and say, everybody in this community is like a bunch of grains of corn from Monsanto lined up. Like, I can't tell the difference between any of them. That's not how Christian monoculture works. Because what you're saying is everybody is being conformed to this identical standard. And yet the way that that standard works out is very diverse in a certain sense, because of the way God made the world. So the standard is the Lord Jesus Christ. We're all being conformed from one degree of glory, being transformed into the image of Christ that we behold. Men, women, all of us, all Christians. That's what God is doing with us. But what that looks like is that the way we often talk about it, even in counseling, is that every member of our community is becoming the most them version of themselves. Like, you can imagine that there's this person, say, there's a guy named Bill, and Bill has strengths and weaknesses, and he's caught in certain sins, and he's, you know, and then the Lord saves Bill and he comes into the church and the process of his sanctification from that point forward. Is Bill becoming the true Bill? Yeah, it's him becoming the truest Bill. Where all of the things that were corruptions and warpings of. Of what God made when he made Bill they're all falling away until in glory, you'd look at Bill and you'd say that what a glory. But he would be different from Susan, and he would be different from Walter, and he'd be different from me, and he'd be different from you. So it's not the case in our church that the monoculture we're making is that everybody becomes exactly like Brian Sauvay. That would be insufferable. And all of my enemies agree, but my friends do too. Like, it would be insufferable. That's not how God made the world. He made an Eric, and he made a Martin, and he made a Ben, and he made my wife, and he made your wife. And he made it. He made this great community where we're all. It's more like a great. If you've ever been in a high mountain valley, it's beautiful up in the high uintas in the spring or the kind of early summer, and it's just alive. There's aspens, there's pines, there's wildflowers there. Birds everywhere. Just 15 different birds, if you know what you're looking at, even just listening. There's ground voles, there's elk, there's deer, there's the wind, there's the cloud. There's be. But it's. And it's all coherent. It all sings in the same tune.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, it's like one ecosystem.

[Brian Sauvay]

It's the monoculture of a choir singing to the same conductor with their male and female voices and all the nuances, not the monoculture of a Monsanto cornfield. So there are things we must enforce. And it's like if you want to sing in the choir, you have to sing to the conductor. You can't decide that you're in five, four, when the song is in six, eight. It just won't work. That's not how music works. So the leaders of a community have a duty to constantly be pointing people towards heralding the marching orders of the Lord Jesus Christ and saying, you must sing in tune with this. But not only generally, but this is what that looks like in. In this day and in this place and in this time. And we're whole hog convinced of this.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah.

[Brian Sauvay]

We have principles that we are deeply committed to, deeply convinced of. And we will not be moved by a fusser or a subversive who's trying to come into our church and say, your church would be great if I could just change this 10%.

[Eric Khan]

Well, it is interesting because I totally agree. And when you think about the analogies that Paul uses in the New Testament. The church is like a body. You have very different parts, but they're working in unison together. They're aimed at the same thing. I think this brings us. It's a nice segue into some of the challenges we've faced in building a monoculture. One I'll just start with right off and get your thoughts on is because our age is so steeped in egalitarianism that even we. In cultures where we say, hey, we're patriarchal.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

Yet we have found on our church leadership team. We've found it in the church. We found it among the people. There is this long process, this long obedience in the same direction where we have to keep working out hierarchy into the warp and woof of what we do, because egalitarianism is so steeped in our bones that, you know, we may think that we've eradicated it. And then you start looking and you say, wait a minute, we're acting like egalitarians here.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. Hang on.

[Eric Khan]

There it is again, the impulse for sameness.

[Brian Sauvay]

That old specter rattling its bones.

[Eric Khan]

So I guess on the hierarchy front, I know that we've wrestled with this and I think done an excellent job as leadership, for example. But even having to wrestle with something like, not all pastors are the same.

[Brian Sauvay]

No.

[Eric Khan]

You look at what Paul says about the giftings of pastors. Some of them are gifted at evangelism, some of them are gifted at counseling. And so as our team has grown, we've actually. We've had more hierarchy and more expression of diversity among giftings. So now we have Kevin Griffin, who's a pastor of counseling, and we have a more clarified, I think, leadership team on. On the leadership staff. Why is that so important that, you know. Well, first of all, I would say, like the head, the leaders are obviously going to affect the body.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yep.

[Eric Khan]

But why is it important that we get egalitarianism. Egalitarianism eradicated? And then we say we need clear hierarchy.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. One of the principles, one of the. Like, if there's this manned wall and inside is the monoculture that we're trying to build and defend, which is we. We believe just obedience to Jesus in our time.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah.

[Brian Sauvay]

And what that means in our place and time as our people, in this day and age, all of that. One of the things you immediately realize is that a huge amount of what needs to be eradicated is egalitarianism. It is communism. It is a flattening of the world. It is a looking out at this Glorious, variegated world that God made and saying, I hate that. I must flatten it all. I must flatten it. I must make everything gray. I must make everything one note. I must make nobody rule and nobody be ruled. And what that really is at the bottom is it's Satan's tactic to rule over everything, trying to say, the world is not as God made it, it's as I want to remake it. Right. So egalitarianism is everywhere. So you have to not only learn what hierarchy looks like, what God's design looks like, but you have to love it. You have to learn to love it to where you start going, man, I am so, so thankful that God made a world where I am not good at everything and where I should not be in charge of everything, where I should. God did not make a world where even in our community, where I should be in charge of every aspect of everybody's life. That's not how God made the world. God raises up leaders, some over. You know, think of in Exodus 18, Jethro, Moses, Father in law, his counsel to Moses, that Moses, what you're doing is not good. He's trying to rule over all of the people by himself and hear all of their complaints and cases by himself.

[Eric Khan]

There's functionally no hierarchy of leadership.

[Brian Sauvay]

It's like God, Moses, everyone. And Jethro's like, you're an idiot. Stop it. I mean, he was more tactful than that.

[Eric Khan]

This is bad.

[Brian Sauvay]

You need to raise up. So Moses raises up some over tens and some over 50s and some over hundreds and some over thousands. And what is Moses doing there? Because there's a list of character requirements. Moses is looking out over the people with the help of his chiefs and his aides. And he's saying, God has already put these people here. Somewhere in this mass of millions of people, there are these leaders already there because God made them that way, and God intended for them to do that work of ruling. So I need to find them, test their character, maybe train them, and help them, and then establish them.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, you can imagine, by the way, that that was a process.

[Brian Sauvay]

Must have been a huge headache.

[Eric Khan]

You got to identify, like, who's really good at leading their families. And. And as you said, even with that, though, there's not just rulers of tens. No, there's hundreds, thousands, thousands and different kind of leaders even.

[Brian Sauvay]

And it doesn't even stop there. Moses is clearly a ruler over millions in. In the. In the scheme. So there's. There's huge layers to this hierarchy. And what happens when you start to see that, that principle and love it, and then try to notice what God is doing in a community. All sorts of things happen. So a monoculture needs to give an answer for every part of what it means to be human, which is vocational, educational, political, ecclesiastical. There's all these different aspects. And what you start to do when you go, oh, God has salted the world with men to lead over tens and fifties and hundreds and thousands. So then you start saying, we need economic potency, institutional economic potency in this borough if it is to grow and scale. Well, I bet God put some of those men in our church. And the pastor doesn't go, oh, it must be me. Probably not, but he does. Like in our church, you could look, there's the handful of men that I would say those are our guys at our scale who are our leader over hundreds or thousands in that sphere. And then you just throw your weight behind being for them and helping them and giving them opportunity and introducing and networking and just take that one example and apply it to all those other domains of life. And over time, this isn't going to exist in a group of 10 people in someone's living room. But over time, as a community grows in scale, as a Christian borough, let's say you have a couple thousand people in a Christian borough somewhere, you're probably going to find that nearly every aspect of human life, God has raised up, literally leaders on all of those different parts of life on the different levels, tens, fifties. But a problem arises. The people love egalitarianism. I mean, generally. So again, you have to go, you have to teach church, community, borough, brothers, sisters, we must hate egalitarianism with perfect hatred. And we must love the hierarchical world that God made. So then when you start saying things like, hey, that leader over hundreds, he is not going to have the same job description as the leader over tens. He's actually going to be elevated. He's going to have more authority, he's going to have more power.

[Eric Khan]

I think this is something people can hate that. I think it's something in America. And I want to get your thoughts on this. We, and I grew up this way, pretty Baptistic. Well, I was fully Baptistic, same, but tied to that is individualism and democracy. And so forever I was a part of these Baptist churches, as, you know, different levels of leadership, as a congregant, whatever. And I remember church meetings where it'd be like, the pastor's like, okay, we need a new wireless mic for preaching on Sundays. And then we would have a vote it's $150. And I was like, what is happening? But that impulse of every man is his own, you know, authority and he's, every man should make his own mind up for himself. Like he were the king. It part of the way that we rule in the church. This may surprise some people, but a lot, a lot of people come from the outside and they say, so when did the congregates vote? And I'm like, there you are mistaken.

[Brian Sauvay]

Here's the neat thing.

[Eric Khan]

They don't, they don't. You appoint wise elites and wise rulers. Certainly we listen to the people and we take feedback. But I've often said it's like, would I go to my family and say to a four year old little Johnny, we're thinking about buying a new car, I'd like to hear your vote.

[Brian Sauvay]

The red one.

[Eric Khan]

I literally have like, I'm thinking through that and I'm like, that's stupid. That's a bad decision.

[Brian Sauvay]

Makes sense.

[Eric Khan]

So one of the impulses, I think that has to be, it's on the egalitarian spectrum, but that we have to kind of do away with is this idea that we won't have authority, we won't have elites. Because I think one thing that is in the Baptist impulse particularly, and it's not just them. So I don't want to pick on just Baptists, but I think it's dominant. There is and for historical reasons that are understandable, but a complete allergy to being ruled. And so it's like, well, if we just insulate ourselves against ever having anyone in authority over us, life will go well. But of course the irony is you never in life avoid that. You brought up this point recently. You said we talk about needing good elites, good rulers, economically, politically, ecclesiastically. But a lot of people today say no, our elites are terrible, they're awful. I would rather have the authority of a ham sandwich over me. But we can make an error in saying, well, we don't need any elites, we don't need any rulers, we don't need authority is bad.

[Brian Sauvay]

And all you get are just bad elites.

[Eric Khan]

That's right.

[Brian Sauvay]

It's not weather, but which it's not. You're good. That whole communist play, we've talked about this before in the king's hall. But like what communism did in the Soviet Union is it just created a new czar, the chairman of the Communist Party. And it created. And the politburo becomes the dukes and you just keep reinventing it.

[Eric Khan]

Well, I think you saw this with Bane in The third Batman of the trilogy, the only Batman movies that exist.

[Brian Sauvay]

What a great trilogy for.

[Eric Khan]

But at the end, when. So he's an absolute tyrant bent on destroying the city. Yeah, but how does he pose it? He's like, it's for you, the people.

[Brian Sauvay]

The people.

[Eric Khan]

Like, we're putting the people in. You're not putting the people in power.

[Brian Sauvay]

No, no.

[Eric Khan]

That's not what's happening.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. Presbyterians do this, too, with, you know, where we have our sessions. We have our. Like, our bureaucracy. And bureaucracy is inevitable as well. You have to rule through bureaucracy. It's. It's good. That's a good thing. God actually made that. But Presbyterians can do the same thing. They can start to be ruled by proceduralists who are often cowards, who love procedure because it prevents anybody from having to stick their neck out and make a decisive action against a subversive enemy. And so a lot of Presbyterian denominator, like a lot of Presbyterian groups, what would be really great and what would have helped them a lot over the last, I don't know, 10, 20 years, would have been really strong, wise, godly leaders that were like, absolutely not. No. To revoice. No. We're just not. No, we're not doing that. Absolutely not. Like, you cannot legislate egalitarianism into the tectonic foundation stones of an organization and have it not collapse. Well, first of all, have it not be conquered by someone who will rule it. They will just rule it subversively.

[Eric Khan]

And I think even in America, in our political system, the elites run this play where they want you to feel like you're in charge. They want you to feel like it's a democracy or, you know, and I know people are like, we're a federalistic republic. I know, I know. I get that. But I'm just saying that it's an illusion. You still have elites. They're still. They're more powerful in your life now than they've ever been.

[Brian Sauvay]

Oh, 100%.

[Eric Khan]

They can mandate so many things. One other thing I want to address with challenges, at least one other thing that we've had in building a monoculture, I would say, is something like the rule of the fusser. You go through this with the failure of Nerve and Edwin Friedman, but an organization can be truly tempted to be ruled by the fussers, by the squeakiest wheels, I think, because what it takes is a nerve in leadership to say, I literally am not. I see you. I hear what you're saying, and I'm ignoring it. Not because I'm not Compassionate, not because I don't love, but I have the good of the group. I have a strong will and we have a strong vision and this is where we're going. So a good book. Edwin Friedman, Failure of Nerve. Definitely recommend that. But in there is sort of the Pareto principle. This is the 80, 20. And part of it is that the fussiest people, those 20% of fussers, can dominate an organization where you're taking polls and you're listening to the people who complain the most and you're trying to appease them at all times. What's the problem with this?

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, so. And it can, in some organizations it can be even a tiny percentage, like 5%, 3%, 2%. Where I'm going to use the church as an example, but this applies to any organization with hierarchy and leadership, like businesses, political factions. It really applies to almost every thing like that a pastor could have. Let's say he has 400 people in his congregation and there are about 20 people that if he let them, they would take up 80 to 90% of his meetings and 80 to 90% of his headspace where he's just constantly thinking about them, what they've their problems, their issues. And what you often find is that these are the least bought in people. They're actually not enculturated to the monoculture. They don't love the culture. They don't intend to promote and defend and give their strength to build and defend and multiply this culture. That's not what they are not sure about it. They're not sure about you as a leader. They're not sure about your principles. And so what this person will do is they will go from thing to thing that they can complain about and they'll try to have meetings with you constantly. They'll try to argue with you constantly. And you might give them 10 meetings in a year that were two to three hours apiece and give them all of the arguments that ought to be persuasive for a reasonable person in their position to follow and submit. You might rebuke them, you might encourage them, whatever it is. And there will still be this recalcitrant 5% of people who they will not change. They will not listen, they won't actually hear your arguments. They're just fussers. They are just black holes of resources. So a good leader actually has to say, no, I'm not meeting with you anymore. I've given you everything you need. Go read that book. Go do the things I already told you to do. I'm not meeting with you anymore. And this is where the masculine edge of leadership is so important. Because you might have, like, let's say a lady in church finds out, you know, Susie finds out that you told Fred that you weren't going to meet with him anymore about his theological questions. She's like, well, you're a pastor. How. How dare you neglect the pastoral office? And you're like, no, you don't understand. I will neglect the pastoral office if I keep meeting with Fred. Because the 80, 90, 95% of people that actually need me to pour into raising leaders up, and they need me to pour into teaching them and loving them and shepherding them, and they're never going to demand it because they're good godly men and women who are shoulder to the plow. They're pushing and I need to go serve them and I need to go lead them. And if I just keep going with this fusser, I will spend all my time. So this is the thing leaders have to become really good at saying, no, I will not talk with you anymore. No, I will not meet with you anymore. And there's the door if you don't like it.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And a big part of this clicks. I was reading Tim Ferriss book, the Four Hour Workweek, and he was discussing the Pareto principle, which comes from this era of like Machiavellian politics, but actually really helpful in thinking through political theory. Vilfredo Pareto in Italy. But what he was talking about was he had this revelation where he was looking at his sales business and the 20% who were causing 80% of the headache for him. He went through his books and he was like, they actually contribute the least to our bottom line.

[Brian Sauvay]

Oh, yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And then he looked on the flip side and he said, there's like a 20% of my clients who bring in 80% of the business. And he said, the funny thing is they don't fuss very much. They love what we do. Yeah. So he went through and he, he fired the 20% that was causing all the problems. Yeah. And he poured all his energy into the 20% who is most productive.

[Brian Sauvay]

That's 20%.

[Eric Khan]

And. And then he tells the story, he says, yeah, my business like quadrupled in a year.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And so I think if you apply that to the church, obviously you can't just fire people who are in your church. We're not talking about that. But applying that principle would look something like saying, and I've had to do this. We've had to do this. Instead of me Spending all my time with the fussers. I need to spend the majority of my time with the development of future leaders. The people who are most bought in, the people who love what we're doing, the people who, gosh, it would be so sad. You could actually neglect them and not make progress as a church, because you keep meeting with the fusser.

[Brian Sauvay]

And.

[Eric Khan]

And to your point, here's the reality. I have rarely ever seen the fussers change.

[Brian Sauvay]

They very rarely do. You have to Remember, like Ephesians 4, Paul tells us that God gave these various offices in the church to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. So what we're constantly doing is fighting against what people have learned. Ministry is, is that a pastor dispenses to them spiritual goods and services in exchange for their tithe and attendance, that we're religious professionals who basically go out and do the ministry for them. The reality is we actually exist to equip them to do the ministry, which is a ministry of love of God and love of their neighbor. That sums it all up. Love God and love your neighbor properly. So our goal needs to actually be to go and pour into those people who are obedient, who are loving their neighbor, and they need help leveling up, raising up more leaders who will teach the saints to do likewise. And that will have a multiplicative effect on the downstream fruit of that church where the fusser will come back and they'll try to guilt manipulate you, or often women will try to guilt manipulate you about. I have this concern about brother so and so that you're being harsh towards or whatever. Don't you know that the shepherd leaves the 99 to go find the 1. And I always say, now, yes, that is absolutely true. What the shepherd does is when he finds out that there's a guy out there wallowing in the mud of sin, or he broke his leg, he's been harmed and sinned against. You go out and you say, hey, let me take you on my shoulders and take you back to the green pasture where there's good food and healing and protection. Let me bring you back there. What they're missing is that the fusser is like a sheep that's wallowing in mud, way out, away from the flock. And you go out there and you say, come with me. Stop it. Cut it. Knock it out. And they say, no, I'm the one that left the 99, so you better have daily meetings out here in the mud with me. Yeah, this is like, no, obey your Hebrews 13, 7, 17. Obey your leaders and submit to them. Because if you won't, I can't change even one person.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah.

[Brian Sauvay]

So it's not a one time thing. If anybody ever gives any pushback to a pastor at Refuge Church, they're out. But it's like once you identify someone's a chronic, unsubmissive fussing, this is what you do. You follow the biblical process which culminates in church discipline. And then we've seen this happen where people have repented because of church discipline and people who have refused to repent. But the thing is, the pastor's done their job in both of those cases, biblically discharging the discipline of the church to say, you must turn from your sin. I cannot do it for you. And what you want right now is not repentance. You want me. You want to be worshiped.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah.

[Brian Sauvay]

You know, and I. And I refuse.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. This is sort of the empathy card that's being played. One thing to be aware of too, is that we haven't faced this so much in our church now, but it happens a lot where you also have the fusser on the leadership team.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

One of your elders, or it can be oftentimes like the elder's wife who is. Yeah. I mean, Pastor Dan described this years ago. Really well. It's just like having a person in the boat who's rowing in the wrong direction.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And it's gonna stifle progress. And. Yeah. I've been in many leadership situations where you're like, you're trying to appease them, you're trying to listen, you're trying to be caring. And at the end of the day, to use the Jim Collins good to great analogy, we're on a bus, we're going somewhere. We can move seats and we can figure out who sits in which seat and it's right. But at the end of the day, if somebody has rotated to like every seat and they just. They hate the way you drive the bus. They hate where the bus is going.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

It's like the bus also has a door. And here's your stop, stop and stop.

[Brian Sauvay]

You open the door and you say, this is your stop.

[Eric Khan]

And like, Mark Driscoll got a ton of heat and he expanded the analogy to running people over with the bus.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. He's being a pilot on the bus or the bus is running you over. There's only two options.

[Eric Khan]

He's like, we got a bus and a pile of dead bodies behind.

[Brian Sauvay]

We're opening the back door.

[Eric Khan]

We're like, okay, I don't Quite know about that. But the reality is, even if you looked at our church.

[Brian Sauvay]

What about communists? Helicopters, though.

[Eric Khan]

That's fair.

[Brian Sauvay]

Communists aren't people.

[Eric Khan]

They're helicopter rides.

[Brian Sauvay]

Okay. Anyway.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, well, yes. The famous question. What was it like to kill a human? Well, I never killed humans. I only killed.

[Brian Sauvay]

Was that.

[Eric Khan]

It was like a Czech anti communist.

[Brian Sauvay]

I only killed communists.

[Eric Khan]

I only ever killed communists. I couldn't tell you what are you talking about, but kind of that idea again, it seems. I would say it's a will issue. Most pastors today don't have the will to do that.

[Brian Sauvay]

Absolutely.

[Eric Khan]

And to say no to protect the great culture, it's like having a weed in the garden. You simply cannot have it, let alone spend all your time, like, watering it. Yeah, that's not gonna work. I'm curious, before we jump into the components, now that we're all the way at this point in the episode, any other challenges that you would describe as having been, you know, challenges to building the monoculture. Things that have really been a difficulty for us as a church. I know you've been through a lot of change. A lot of.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, I mean, one of the greatest difficulties is in finding and developing leaders to complement and bring. Because you, as a leader, don't have everything. I certainly don't have everything. I have areas of concentrated gifting where I'm confident the Lord gave a gift. And it's like my job there is to cultivate it, to take the 2, 3, 5, whatever, having talents and say, I'm going to double it and give it back to the Lord. That's my job here. But then the longer you go in ministry or leadership of any kind, the more you discover your own deficiencies. So fathers, husbands, business leaders, we all experience this, where you start to go, wow, when I started, I really thought I was good at this aspect of leadership, and I'm not. So the answer is, when it's just you, you have to figure out how to do your best. But that's not actually good enough long term. What that means is the Lord is telling you, I want someone who's good at that, that I've gifted to come and be enabled to do this. So there's a lot in that. And I think we need to do some whole episodes on this, on leadership development, like you've said, because it is a difficult process with about a million different relevant principles that I'm, you know, you learn more of them as you go. But this is like, I think one of the key difficulties. It's also important. It's related to the fussing thing. If you spend all your time on the fusser and the person who's not really in, and you don't just have an immune system, say, I would rather have fewer people who were bought in than more people who aren't. Because that's a lot of the challenges. Pastors, they're proud, they want big churches, and so they're like, I'll put up with any number of things to keep the church big. You won't ever have the bandwidth and capacity to go do this leadership work if you focus entirely there. So to me, that is like, the issue of the will is so central because you have to start by saying, I am going to do this work. It's a good work the Lord has put in front of me. It's like Nehemiah saying, we are going to rebuild the walls. They're going to be sandballats, they're going to be gashmus, they're going to be all sorts of people that I am going to have to look them in the eye and say, I don't care what you think or what you feel, please go away. You're going to have to tell people you thought were your friends. I am actually willing for you to leave because what the Lord has given us to do is so important that I would rather be obedient to the Lord than to please you. So the will is important, but then when you start working out, you realize very quickly that you're not God. And so you need other leaders. Finding, developing, keeping the wrong leaders out, finding the right leaders, developing those leaders, deploying those leaders. It's all this great process of humbling because it inevitably results in you thinking more lowly of yourself.

[Eric Khan]

Well, this is kind of the crazy thing. I think this is why it's so hard to find. I would put that on my list, too, is you need a leader who has a really strong will to get things done, and yet who is humble enough to recognize, as you said, the areas in which I can't do everything. You can't do everything. There's not a single guy who can do everything. So we need divisional labor. We need cooperation. I also think this is just reality of our time. Most of the leaders that I knew, older leaders, and even the guys who are in their 40s now who are trying to establish some kind of borough, some kind of project, some kind of church, some kind of thing, they almost never work well with other people.

[Brian Sauvay]

So many solo guys out there, and.

[Eric Khan]

Usually what they'll do is they'll put a few guys around them who are kind of low level managers.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. They intentionally surround themselves with people who aren't that gifted.

[Eric Khan]

Right.

[Brian Sauvay]

Because it's never a threat to them.

[Eric Khan]

It's not going to be a threat, but it also limited. It limits the capacity of what can be accomplished.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

This was one of the biggest things I thought when I came here was, you know, that, like, we were talking and, and you know, I pastored, I've done media stuff, done. Done leadership stuff in business and most places I went, it was a threat to whoever was the senior pastor.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And I would even tell them, I'm like, I do not want your job. I do not want your job. I literally do not want your job.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

But it was different when, when I came here because it was. There was a team of guys who were like, yep, we could use that.

[Brian Sauvay]

Oh, yeah.

[Eric Khan]

Like that's going to, that's going to benefit us. We don't feel threatened, I would say, even as our team develops, like, if you want to, and we'll, you know, like you said, do other episodes on this, but if you want to develop young leaders, that means on the preaching side, you're going to have to let them preach.

[Brian Sauvay]

They actually have to do the thing.

[Eric Khan]

And if they preach and everybody goes, wow, he did so well. He's gifted. That senior guy can't feel offended.

[Brian Sauvay]

It's so funny, though, because we're people. So you all, like, you will have an instinct of the flesh that is challenged in this process of raising up, identifying and deploying leaders. You'll have like 50 different ways your flesh will want to derail it because your flesh is trying to protect this idolatrous view of the self constantly. But what the new man has to do in ruling your spirit is tell the truth, which is, hey, do you actually want honor and glory as a leader? Do you want people to rise up at the end of your having run the race and say, well done. That was an honorable man who ran the race. Be humble and empower other people to do things better than you.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah.

[Brian Sauvay]

And you will. People will guarantee, even if it's only the Lord. But I mean, I'm pretty sure that people will say, that's an honorable man when you do that because multiple things happen. The organization works better. Like in our, in new Christian press and in the church, if I said, you know, like, I have to kind of be the guy in charge of everything. So Eric is good at executive leadership. He's probably better than me at it, you know, but I Can't give up all these titles and seats. Right. New Christian Impress and Refuge Church would suffer because the gifts that God gave you that are totally different from the gifts he gave me, they wouldn't be deployed. They'd be sitting there buried in the dirt. And it would be my fault. Right. It'd be my fault. As a leader who's not saying, let me step out of a seat and put someone else there. So all of the things we need it, we keep saying it. We need to do some episodes on this because this is one of the most important aspects of building a Christian borough. And the reason we're doing this series is because people ask us this constantly. What is Ogden? What makes Ogden Ogden? How do we do this other places? What is your leadership like? What is your training like? How do you defend the culture? And there's a million aspects of it, but so many of them I keep finding come back to leadership. Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And I think developing your culture, people probably on the outside, you listen to a podcast, but you don't see how much time, effort, energy we put into working on the leadership team, building relations, working through conflict, making sure that we have a shared vision, working out principles of hierarchies, as we said, that is time consuming.

[Brian Sauvay]

We spend far more time on that, all of us, than writing and recording shows for New Christian Press.

[Eric Khan]

That's right.

[Brian Sauvay]

I mean all of them by far. It is multiple times more volume of hours spent because we've looked at the landscape and considered and said we believe the thing that the Lord has given us that we could do with greatest fruitfulness is to establish, raise up, cultivate and deploy leaders. That's the thing. If you want to have a great Christian borough and you know God's raised up leaders over tens, fifties, hundreds, thousands and beyond, then one of your biggest jobs is to go find those people and give them the right job.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. And I think keeping a strong core is so vital.

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[Eric Khan]

I. I want to get into the components. We can go through these components of a strong monoculture.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

As you've called it. Number one, we have a shared vision for life.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And we've touched on this. But it has to encompass many different people, from truck drivers to academics to engineers to business entrepreneurs. But it has to be the same vision. So it's not saying that everybody is the same, but it is saying that the truck driver believes in the vision like you do.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And he understands it. I think part of this means that we've kind of done this in two ways. We've done it through the air war and we've done it through the ground war, which is local ministry. Air war meaning media, podcasting, books, that sort of thing. But I would say the number one thing, that if you came to Refuge, you would be shocked that the truck driver or the housewife, they could pretty clearly articulate what this community is about.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And there's a vibe about that vision. It's not just like, I'm going to read the list and here are the. You know, it's like reading the phone book.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

But people are excited about it. They feel privileged to be here. There is a sense of there's no place like this place. Like, we're fortunate, we're blessed. God's doing something here.

[Brian Sauvay]

And I want everybody in their community to feel that way about their community.

[Eric Khan]

Yes.

[Brian Sauvay]

That's the thing, is that it's not a hoarding. Like, oh, look at us. I feel that way. I'm so blessed to be here. I'm so thankful.

[Eric Khan]

Whether one of the books, Tribal leadership or Jim Collins and good to great. Great by choice. Bill to last. He talks about this all the time. He said a great tribe, a great culture. Whether it's a business or any institution or community, there will always be a cult like description of it by outsiders. Yeah. Meaning like these people, there's a differentness about them. There is a passion, there is a zeal. You see it a lot with, you know, even people who've been reared in the community for some Time I asked my oldest son, I was like, so, you know, you're going to go out in the world. This is like a year and a half ago. What do you want to do? And he said, I love this place. I would never leave. I want to be here. I want to pour in. I never told him he had to do that. And there's so many people here who have that same mentality. And granted, there's people who are bought in. We have people in the military, so they have to move. And we understand all that too. But there is this unity of vision that the people have. So I guess for you, why is that so important? Do you feel that? Do you sense that as well?

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, I do. And I think that's a great way of putting it. It's that moving, like the Collins books from the dysfunctional, like, I'm great to we are great.

[Eric Khan]

Yes.

[Brian Sauvay]

And for the Christian, because it's a business book written by a business guy, but he's getting at something important, which is that, like, when you think about the way that God talks about his people and he wants them to think about themselves first. Peter's a great example. He's like saints. This is what you are. You're a holy nation. You're a royal priesthood. You're a people for God's own possession. You've been pulled out of. Like he's. You're. You are living stones being built in a dwelling place for God. Like he is telling them, you, you. One of the things in obedience to the Lord, you need to do is say, the church of Jesus Christ is great and is beautiful and it is worth defending and it's worth giving my life to these people. Because why? Because our God is great, Our Lord is great, and he is making us like Him. All glory to God. So the, the shared vision needs to be a big enough shared vision. It has to be a shared vision that is like that.

[Eric Khan]

When we've talked about this part of the problem in so much of the church, it was I think even like Joe Boot described it as like churchianity, where the only thing that you could be of use for as a human is to tithe or give to missions.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, right, that's.

[Eric Khan]

Or to evangelize.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yep.

[Eric Khan]

But outside of that, it was this whole culture we've talked about before where all the competent men in your church were like, go plant a church. Because that was the only way to fulfill your calling.

[Brian Sauvay]

If you're a high quality man, you're going to go plant a church.

[Eric Khan]

But we didn't often say, as we should have been saying, there are guys in your church where you can say, go, glorify God. Be a great part of this community. Buy into the vision, all that. And you need to go start an H VAC business and be great at it.

[Brian Sauvay]

Be great at it. Yeah. This, like, mega churches often have this thing where they're like, it's all about evangelism, a very thin kind of evangelism. Like, we are helping people make decisions for Jesus. But like, reformed hyper nerd communities do the same thing in a different way. They say we're all about making people post millennial, theonomic, partial preterists. Like, and they list like. And they all happen to be doctrinal things. Like, we exist to just create a people who assent to all of these.

[Eric Khan]

Doctrinal things, but you're basically making theology nerds.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, well, that's what you're doing and you're actually presenting the end. And I know that any. I don't want a caricature. Anybody who, who says they believe all those, they understand that the point of, like post millennialists get it, that the point is to go make people who go do all these different things. But we can accidentally even make it seem like that's where everything ends. So everything we do in a community is basically pointed at that. Like, it's all Bible studies to make people post millennialists, it's all going through these different books. It's all doing this kind of stuff in our community. The vision is much bigger than that. It includes ecclesiastical theological aims. We want people to be catechized, well formed, but it expands so far beyond that. The vision is actually, I think people would probably a lot of them would say something like, well, we are a new humanity going and obeying Jesus in every part of what it means to be human. That's how I talk a lot from the pulpit.

[Eric Khan]

Well, it sort of is an extension of, I think, what Max Weber called the Protestant work ethic, meaning that what made this country great was that people went to all areas of their calling and vocation.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And they did it excellently for the glory of God.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yes.

[Eric Khan]

And so it's weird because I've heard this in Reformed churches for a long time, but the praxis of how the culture actually works out wasn't quite there. And I think it was kind of the assumption was to really be a great man, you have to be obsessed with the Puritans. You have to be like, really into kind of, you know, the unique, you know, the five solos or something like that.

[Sponsor/Ad Host]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

You have to be like a theology nerd who wants to name your company after the Reformation. That was every guy. Now, it's interesting because I was doing the eulogy for my father in law recently and I said something in there and I said, you know, Jeff was not a theology academic type guy. He was a faithful Christian, but he was a blue collar Christian. He loved the Lord, he loved his family, he gave his life for his generations, all that, but he wasn't a book nerd.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And I had several people, including one of the pastors, come up and say, I really appreciate you saying that. Because a lot of times in our communities we would look at that guy and say, like, he's a subpar Christian.

[Brian Sauvay]

Ah, yeah. Even if by implication.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah.

[Brian Sauvay]

The vision of a monoculture. Everyone needs to be bought into a shared vision. But it needs to be a big enough vision that any person can buy in.

[Eric Khan]

Right.

[Brian Sauvay]

Because it includes them in something beyond just church attendance and tithing or missions giving. It's like, so when we're talking, the mother of the little children needs to know that she is being exactly what God made her to be. And that is her participation in this vast, great kingdom work that the Lord has given us.

[Eric Khan]

It's not second rate.

[Brian Sauvay]

It's not at all. It is exactly the Lord. Like, I want people, when they walk out of if, if, let's say they hear a month of sermons from me, one of the things I would want them to walk away with is God smiles over his people and he's so pleased in seeing them do all of the different little, small things that he's.

[Eric Khan]

Done, not just Bible studies.

[Brian Sauvay]

He's so pleased. Like, there was a hype video that Tate Taylor put out recently of brutal American, and it was like, of a parish event that our two parishes got together and we went to this place with these big redneck slip and slides some literally Farmer had built on his hills and then realized that renting that out was. Was more profitable than farming. So he, like, kept it and he made this big hype video of all of us, like, being silly. Like, we're. I'm jumping down the slide head first as fast as I can to try and beat Ben in how far we can go, which I did, by the way, every single time. He didn't even come close. Because I am elite at sliding. He says it's because I'm fatter than him. You be the judge. But it was just this video of, like, all of our kids playing, all the ladies hanging out Cheering on the guy. Like, banquet beers, banquet beers. Like, we're just hanging out. And. And everybody in the, you know, comments is like, dude, the vibes are high. And it's like the. The. The aura farming of this community.

[Eric Khan]

I loved it at the end, too, because it's like a kind of a community church hype video. And at the end, Ben says, well, anyway, come to Refuge.

[Brian Sauvay]

So anyway, come Refuge Church. Like, it basically sells itself one of our elders. So you look at that and you go, that was a literal parish event where there was not a Bible study to be seen. Oh, we prayed and we gave thanks to the Lord for our. For our food. And we felt, we ate, we broke. We could use all these church terms for what we did, but what were we really doing? Well, the vision for the church is big enough that it encompasses that one of the most important things we can possibly do is be friends. Because what do you think it means to love one another? What do you think it means when John, over and over in first, second, third, John is like, beloved little children love one another. Like, what if you actually liked one another and hung out and then you were like, I really love these people. I just want to be with these people. I want to spend the time that I have on this earth with these people.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah.

[Brian Sauvay]

That's. What kind of monoculture. That's the culture that you're building.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. And it, you know, so, you know, a lot of people could hear that and be like, oh, they don't believe in, like, studying their Bibles. And like, we do that too.

[Brian Sauvay]

We do a ton of that.

[Eric Khan]

I mean, like, men's book clubs and we have that. But I think what you're getting at is just that it encompasses not less than that, but more than that.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. You know, the Lord actually ordained in the life of the church. 52 meetings a year where we open the Bible, come to the Lord's table, teach verse. Like, we preach mainly expository sermons through whole books of the Bible. We have the reading of the Old and New Testament. We have the confession of sin, assurance of pardon, charge, and benediction. We have all these different elements. Every single week we do that. And then in addition to that, about 40 Sundays a year, we. Or 40 Tuesdays a year, we get together and we have a big potluck, and we sing psalms and learn how to sing, because we're all ignoramuses who didn't learn how to read music. So we're like, we should probably figure out how to sing our own hymnal. So we do that. And there's a lot of singing of psalms and, you know, great. There's a lot of stuff that looks like normal church stuff, too, but, like, one of the abiding characteristics that I think people most walk away from if they visit and they've never kind of experienced us close, is that a good culture looks better the closer you are to it. A bad culture can often look shiny and good from afar, but then you go visit it and you're like, ah, there's cracks. That's not good. So people come and visit, and the thing that they're noticing isn't the greatness of me and Eric and other leaders. They're actually noticing the greatness of friendship, the greatness of our men, the greatness of our women, the greatness of fellowship and joy and laughter. And, yes, we suffer together, we bury our children and miscarriage together, we experience loss and cancer together. All of the parts of human life, but we do it as friends.

[Eric Khan]

It is interesting you mentioned that, because when people come here, maybe to check it out, to visit, whatever, because they've heard the podcast, they want to check it up, up close. I have never once, not one time, have I heard somebody say, wow, whoever preached today, they're the best preacher I've ever heard. They just killed it. It's not about any individual, even.

[Brian Sauvay]

They blew them away with the rhetoric.

[Eric Khan]

No, it's. It's usually, wow, it is so encouraging how many kids are here.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, you're.

[Eric Khan]

I hear a lot of your ladies are so wonderful, so beautiful.

[Brian Sauvay]

They're so respectful. They're so.

[Eric Khan]

They're so kind. They're so thoughtful, the hospitality people. It's hard for somebody to come in and not get invited to a home on Sunday. So there's a lot of that going on. The other thing I would say, I read a. It was a substack maybe six months ago, I think a Roman Catholic guy, but he was saying, if you want to look at any culture and gauge its health, he said, all you have to do is ask one question, are they having kids? And he said, because that is their stake in the future. And it is them saying, we actually believe in the promises that we claim to hold to. So I do think you have old Mormons who will come into our church, and they're excited about the kids.

[Brian Sauvay]

Oh, yeah.

[Eric Khan]

Because everybody, I think, by nature, this is a natural principle. They understand that children are a sign of life. So that's another, I think, good thing about the monoculture. Number two, we talked about gatekeeping. We've Talked about this a little bit prior, but you've said something. You said, what is the maximum amount of disagreement we can tolerate and still remain potent? Why are we not asking the question what's the least amount we can believe.

[Brian Sauvay]

To join this community?

[Eric Khan]

To join this community?

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. So many churches, that's how they approach everything. So many communities, that's how they approach it. They're like, what's the minimum viable threshold? And it's a useful question on some level. Like, yeah, you need to be a Trinitarian Christian who confesses the historic creeds. Like, of course. But it's not that useful of a question to end with. That's like when we, when someone's coming in, we through the gates, we actually see it as multiple gates like Minas Tirith, which it's successive gates on their seven walls. But as you come through, you go through gates that are increasingly narrow. So it's like, yeah, are you a Christian? Okay, what kind of Christian? What do you believe about this? What do you believe about this? Are you willing to submit here? What do you think about this question of culture and sex piety? And so we bring people through until we're actually. What we're wrestling with constantly is what is the maximum amount of disagreement or cultural misalignment that we could permit and still say, that's fine. You don't actually have to be like, for example, you can be amillennial and do great at our church. You don't have to be post millennial. You can be a lot of different when it comes to some of these things.

[Eric Khan]

We're dual practice.

[Brian Sauvay]

We're dual practice. But you couldn't be egalitarian, you couldn't be soft complementarian. It wouldn't work. You couldn't be way pro public school. You couldn't be like, but I am really convinced that we need to have acapella only singing. It wouldn't work like, because we're gonna have beautiful music and make, you know, and we believe that God created a world where there are things like instruments and they're actually beautiful. But on the other hand, you also couldn't come in and be like, I really am convinced that you need a rock band and seeker sensitive type of CCM worship. We're literally never going to do that. It's not going to happen. And if you couldn't be satisfied with that without arguing with everybody all the time, it wouldn't work. Work for you.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. I even think if you were maybe in the camp of like, you know, every other song needs to Be like a Getty song.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

You. You'd probably just be disappointed.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

I feel like a lot of those people. This is kind of the other side of the gates, though. That often gets missed. It does keep. Keep people out, but it also conforms people.

[Brian Sauvay]

Oh, yeah.

[Eric Khan]

So we've had couples. I, you know, sat through a number of these membership interviews where they're actually misaligned on a number of these things. You know, one example could be a couple is living together, and they come to the church and they say, like, literally, just brand new. Brand new believers just discovered the Christianity and the faith.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And we say, actually, well, that's sinful.

[Brian Sauvay]

You need to stop that.

[Eric Khan]

And they say, what?

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. People think might have this idea that we just, like, bludgeon people immediately if they disagree with us.

[Eric Khan]

No, no. And so we had a conversation. We said, yeah, let me show you. In Scripture, actually, this is a form of fornication, and this is in the list. And they. They literally said, like, well, how serious is that?

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And I was like, well, let's go to First Corinthians 6. It's in the list of things that will send you to hell.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And there were. And here's the amazing thing.

[Brian Sauvay]

That's a bad thing.

[Eric Khan]

Just like in Acts Chapter two, no one had asked them these questions or said any. Nobody had the stones to say something to them about this. So we go through it, and then there's tears. And then they both said kind of in unison, they were like, the Acts Chapter two. They're like, what should we do now?

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And we laid out a path forward of obedience. And they were like. And they said, we're going to do that.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And so this is the other effect of the gates is that it's bringing people in who, to use biblical language, is they're repentant. They're willing to look scripture in the eye and say, it's not wrong. I'm wrong. And so I have to change. I have to change, because here's the deal. Paul says this all the time. A little leaven leavens the lump. You do not want unrepentant, hardened sinners milling about your people.

[Brian Sauvay]

1 Corinthians 5 is right there in the Bible.

[Eric Khan]

It's right there in the Bible.

[Brian Sauvay]

And Paul was also so gracious that even the man who had his father's wife that he rebuked first, like, why haven't you removed this man? Don't you know? And then the next one, he's like, hey, that man repented. Receive him Back. Don't. Don't crush him. Like, the gate is wide, it's flung open. The red carpet is laid out for people to repent, but the gate is also narrow. You can't refuse to repent and come in and pretend like you're in because you're actually not in. It's why we have a very serious. We undertake things like pornography very seriously, policing those things. And, you know, when. When there's issues like that in a marriage or a home and a member, it's like, that's a big deal. We need to deal with this. We need to. We need to help you repent. We need to describe repentance to you, make sure you understand it, and then help you walk in keeping with repentance, practically. So, yeah, gatekeeping is absolutely enormous. We've talked a lot about it early in your episode, but you have to have the vision. But then the vision will die within a generation if you don't. Gatekeeper.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. One of the things that you said, too, that I really liked. You said, one of the ways you defend your monoculture is by making it so obnoxiously everything your enemies hate that they would never in a million years join it. Both your enemies and their sympathizers become a stench to them. And I took that personally as a challenge.

[Brian Sauvay]

You were like, I can do this.

[Eric Khan]

I felt like you when you said that, you were trying to gas me.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, I was like, eric, this is for you. This is so. This is so funny. But that very vibe video that I post, I reposted it that Tate had posted from our parish event. Someone said, like, way to make a video that makes me never want to come to your church. And I just replied one word, Success, success. And they actually replied like, okay, that was actually pretty funny. I kind of deserved that. But it's like, we're constantly thinking of things like that where. How could we make. How do you egalitarian proof your church love hierarchy and, like, be open in your love of hierarchy and the greatness of hierarchy. And, like, how do you keep loud, nasty women out of your church? Just constantly talk bad about being a loud, nasty woman, like, oh, that's terrible talk. Like, the Bible talks in proverbs about it, you know, like, just.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, it's a function of gatekeeping, too, where, like, we're loud about it. And some people ask that. Like, faithful Christians will ask me and pastors, like, why are you guys so loud on social media? And I would say it's partly this so that no one would come here or very few people would come here by mistake. And if they do, they would realize very quickly, very quickly what we're about. We actually, again, this is the principle I think a lot of communities get wrong is they want to hide the flags in the back.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And like those will come out eventually.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. If you.

[Eric Khan]

But we just fly the flags out front and then that is a barrier to your community, that protects the community.

[Brian Sauvay]

I was talking with Stephen about this at the conference between one of the sessions, Dr. Wolfe, and he was just noting one of the things I really love about your church is that everyone's just very normal. It's a very normal church. He didn't mean it like we're normies. He meant people probably think you're this weird, dysgenic, cultic, like just extremist. Everybody's extra all the time. And actually we're just totally. Look at that vibe video tape posted. That's what it looks like to hang out with us. We're not always arguing about like, I don't know, race or sex piety or whatever. We talk about it, but he's like, you guys are really normal. And one of the reasons that leaders have to do what you just described, make the community a stench to the people that would hate or destroy it is so that not everybody has to. Because I know my job, my job in the borough, one of them is to lead and that is to actually go out front and make known herald from the walls. This is what this community is. Don't apply if you're not this. We will not allow you to come in unrepentant for this. And what that does is it lets the most of the Christians in our community don't have to do that. There are not a huge number of our people on Twitter being like aggressive all the time. Most of them don't have time legitimately.

[Eric Khan]

They're just working.

[Brian Sauvay]

We do it so that they don't have to. And you have to know your assignment. That was another Steve and I connect. We're talking about this. Like sometimes people can see us or see media type of activities and think like, oh, if I'm going to be a good Christian, I have to do that. I have to go post the edgiest thing I can about this.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, we were actually saying like that you shouldn't.

[Brian Sauvay]

Don't do that if you're.

[Eric Khan]

I've told my son this, but like if you're like 20 years old. Don't have social media.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, don't have social media and don't like make your whole thing like trying to basically make yourself unhirable for all eternity. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't be building communities where men can be hired and have truth. No, no. But it's legitimately, like there's a thing we could do and actually harm people by tacitly teaching everybody that they all have to be like us. Everywhere they speak publicly. But I am unhirable outside of basically what I do. 100%. I know it. I knew it going in that I would make myself like this doing what I did. But I know the Lord called me here. We've burned the boats that he's going to provide. Absolutely. But if you are a 27 year old engineer working for a large firm and that's how you provide and that's where the Lord called you, you don't have to go make yourself get called into HR twice a week till they fire you. You actually don't have to do that. Not every person in the body is a mouth. Not every person has to. I almost said not every person is a middle finger.

[Eric Khan]

But.

[Brian Sauvay]

Johnny Cash artist said, wow. Actually actually didn't like that ad. But like not everybody has to go and raise the black flag of high defiance against a God of this age constantly.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. Because that's what you're getting at is that in many ways we're running cover.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yes.

[Eric Khan]

We're protecting the community so that they can put their heads down and work.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And do their good mothers and fathers and business. Final thing I want to ask you just about gatekeeping.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

One of the things we've seen on the political right in the Reformed church is especially trying to, you know, dox burn, cancel anyone who has a political position within the church just to the right of them. And so the question I will ask is like, why are we not saying that when we're saying gatekeeping? One thing I will point out, there's been this sort of like certain leaders have raised this alarm bell that like Ogden is just full of Nazis. There was actually, I think there was like one person who came, we talked for a little bit, had some weird like, you know, kind of alt right personality type stuff that you, you would kind of say like that's interesting, maybe some like pagan Germanic tattoos. Here's what's funny about our culture. I've known of like one instance of that and that person self selected out almost immediately because I think what they realized was like, they're just normal guys. They're like normal. They love their families, they don't want to be weird. They don't want to do weird stuff. We're actually not like, if you hung out that gathering, we're not like right wing edge lords. No, we're trying to establish godly households. Most of our time is spent counseling people in marriage and how to parent. The other day it was funny because Brian and I were having this conversation about just maintaining that we have this emphasis in our preaching of the warmth of the gospel, the mercy of God.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

People come here and they feel, you know, people come into any church service, they feel shame and guilt and beat up, and we want to give them hope and we want to remind them of the prodigal's father in the Lord that he. He is gracious to them. So in. In many ways, getting back to this question of gatekeeping, we also, a healthy community, also gatekeeps the weirdos.

[Brian Sauvay]

Oh, yeah. Because you get them. Like, people that are formed entirely. They have absolutely no social awareness, and they're formed entirely by online communities. People can come in in various degrees of that. Like the syndrome, they've caught it. And what happens is most of the time is that they learn social grace from being in the community, even by guys. You know, Ben's good at this, taking a guy's side and being like, hey, you know that hangout we had last week? Like, everyone thought you were super weird the whole time. And I just want you to know that, like, for your information, you were being like a huge weirdo. Like, you kept bringing up polygamy and like arguing about polygamy. And like, you're not a polygamist, right? Like, no, I'm not a polygamist. But, dude, you're just, you're being weird. Like, here's how to be a normal person. And it's not making people normies, it's making people human beings who are being made. Like Christ.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. I think in the old world of Christendom, you know, you can read Jane Austen and it would have been something like having Christian manners.

[Brian Sauvay]

Can you imagine if someone had helped Mr. Collins and been like, hey, Pastor Collins, you know, come over here. Hey, has anybody ever told you that, like, you're the most insufferably self important ass that I've ever talked to and you know, everybody's thinking it every time you talk, but not in a rude way, but in like a helpful way. It's part of leadership and culture and gatekeeping. It's one of the things that we become normal.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, we do a lot. With the young men especially, it was like, hey, man, you're really weird. Like, we're gonna put you in these groups of men. They're gonna push you, they're gonna point out your errors. They're gonna love you, they'll be in your corner. But yeah, stop being weird.

[Brian Sauvay]

There's even something while we're talking that hit my mind, made a mental note, like, literally in this conversation, like, oh, yeah, I need to reach out to that person for. From psalmsing last night. Because, like, there was something that I needed to tell him. Like, hey, dude, hey, knock it off. Not a big thing, though. It's just maintenance. It's like gatekeeping is mainly once people are in it. It's like a lot of small maintenance that you help and when everybody's humble. Cause we are all both the recipient of this. And that's the goal. Like, I receive these things myself. And also, like, you know, hey, Brian, you just came across in that meeting as like, a total jerk. Oh, did I? Yeah, you said this, this, this, and this. And you said it like this. And then I think about it, I'm like, wow, that was. I was a huge jerk.

[Eric Khan]

I actually get feedback all the time too. It's usually that you love too much.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. People say this to Eric. They're like, eric, we wish that you would just, like, go a little harder. Like, is there just. Could you have some courage and like, a spine at all?

[Eric Khan]

Man, you just love too much.

[Brian Sauvay]

You just let people walk all over you, man. You give too much, you love too much. You care, too.

[Eric Khan]

It's all the things.

[Brian Sauvay]

It's all. All your greatest weaknesses. No, but it is. It's grand vision, important things God's given us. It's worth us loving one another into fruitfulness.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. And I would say also just to highlight the ladies, we'll get into sex piety here in a second. But the. Okay, let's say you get a woman who is something of a reviling wife who comes into the community. It does not take long before several ladies have talked to her. She has been welcomed into the pastoral office for counsel. But the ladies, even. This is the beauty of it is like, they just don't tolerate gossip, slander, reviling of husbands. It is absolutely not tolerated to the point where my wife will do this if she has a conversation with. It's usually people who are new or fringe, but they will say something bad about their husband, and she will say, oh, wow. Yeah, that really sounds like you need to talk to a pastor. I'll be sure to let my husband know we had this conversation.

[Brian Sauvay]

Jerry's so great. She's like, oh, honey, no, no, honey, no.

[Eric Khan]

And she'll say it in a really sweet way, but then it's basically like, we're not gossiping with you. We absolutely refuse to do this. And, hey, by the way, if you don't go talk to the pastors, they'll be contacting you anyway. And again, it is a mercy to the woman.

[Brian Sauvay]

Totally.

[Eric Khan]

It's a mercy to her. We're not trying to be mean. It's a mercy to her. But we're also safeguarding our ladies because this is how it would work. You get one in.

[Brian Sauvay]

You tolerate it.

[Eric Khan]

Who's reviling you tolerate it. And these are the ones that just spread like wildfire.

[Brian Sauvay]

You're gonna get divorces out of it. Like, it's not small. No, it's such a mercy. People tend to walk around their whole life in Christian communities with these, like, huge, like, eminently fixable problems of sin and character defects, and they just keep going at them because no one ever has the fortitude to say, like, hey, privately, kindly, gently. Galatians 6:1, restoring them in a spirit of gentleness, keeping watch on themselves. You need to knock that off. Like, you know how everybody's perceiving you on the basis of the way that you are is really bad. Like, hey, you are a really loud woman, and you're. You're really rude, or, hey, you know, dude, you are a absolute passive doormat. They're small things. Most of these are, like, the very first. They ought to have been the very first stages of repentance for people, and they never get to them because no one ever corrects them for them.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. And it's uncomfortable, right, to have that conversation. You know, we. And we've had them less and less. But whether it's like, let's say you show up to the water park event and somebody's wife is not dressed well, and. And then you say to the husband, like, hey, you got to deal with that again. We have, I think, because of the external. What you talked about, about being loud and obnoxious. Like, it was actually kind of funny because we showed up and, like, people were very aware going into it, and we never said a word, but they were very aware. Like, you better be modest. Like, that's just part of our culture and DNA on the gatekeeping thing, as we close that one out, how are. How is what we're doing different than trying to cancel guys on the. On the right. Like, what we've seen?

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's a fair question, because there's overlap. It's main, like some of these things.

[Eric Khan]

We're not saying we don't gatekeep.

[Brian Sauvay]

No, of course we gatekeep.

[Eric Khan]

Because the argument has been, well, you know, you're. You're pastorally inept if you don't gatekeep. And we're saying, no, we do gatekeep.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. The main difference there is that in order to answer questions of gatekeeping, you actually do have to get into the substance of the issue. So you can't just. It's not a general principle question. Everybody ought to have the general principle of gatekeeping, the culture. But in this, it was like what. What we were seeing, what we were pushing back against is a lot of really loose, sloppy, friendly fire that was unnecessary. Like, where you're actually. And also I think, in principle, overextending the pastoral office to gatekeep questions of historical debate instead of what you are authorized by scripture to gatekeep. So I don't believe that a pastor. If someone said, for example, even, you know, someone said, I believe that X number of people died in the Holocaust, and it was not mainly gas chambers. It was mainly typhus and starvation, and it was this many, not this many. And you ask him, like, okay, but like, is there any issue here where you're going? Like, if someone in our church said, yeah, I'm a Christian, my parents were Jews, my name is something Steen, but I'm a Christian, you know, I'm in good fellowship with the Lord, and there's no, I'm not sinning like my Jewish neighbors sin. Right? And they said, well, you need to get out because you're a Jewish. We would say, well, no, you can't do that. But if the person said, no, I wouldn't do something like that, that would clearly violate James, like what James says about these things and what Paul says about these things. So, no, I just believe as a historical data point that I've read this and I've read this and I've read this, and I think that this is really what was going on in World War II. And it's not the mainstream narrative. I don't believe I have pastoral authority. I have no interest in it. First of all, I wouldn't want to. To try to destroy that person or church, discipline them. I'm interested in are they sinning? Right. So there's a lot of disagreement, actually, around the substance of the debates. That is really important.

[Eric Khan]

That's a really good point. I also think the other part of it Is okay, let's say. And we have had. Not really on those issues, but let's say we have guys who tend to be more on the right politically. And let's say that they have a marriage issue. Yeah. Because it's not. That's not unique to people on the right. This may shock you. Right. But let's say they have a marriage issue. What I'm not doing is going online and trying to destroy that person publicly. I'm just calling them and saying like, hey, let's talk pastor. You know, pastor to congregant. Yeah, I want to help you. Let's set up some counseling. We love you. That's where I would say we are gatekeeping our community. But we're not doing it in a left coded way that is bent on the destruction of a person.

[Brian Sauvay]

No. And also like we've talked about a lot the psychologizing of the psychologizing tactic where we're reading hidden motives into. Into genuine legitimate debates where like all of my opponents are just fatherless and they're riddled with envy. It's like, well, demonstrate it, you know, like. Because that would be a problem if they were. If they had huge daddy issues and they were very envious. Those are sin. Like one of those at least is. Is quite a sin. But I just, I think the substance of that debate is where the issue is. It's not whether or not to gatekeep. It's actually like the substance of the debate. And the way that we've handled these things, like even around these very controversial debates is that we don't try to keep people from talking about them because there's some really hard conversations right now in culture, even in our cold open. We talked a lot about race. We talked about Jewish influence politically in Hart Celler act and some of these things. These are very controversial topics. Zionism, how to deal with immigration and with illegal immigrants, issues with our system of economics when it comes to terrorists and protectionism and also just global multiculturalist, capitalist. Like there's a lot of debates of genuinely difficult debates. Very important. They can get very emotional. How do we handle those at the church? We don't try to set out and lay out a range of all the permissible possible views you could have on any of these topics from the get go. Particularly when it's like, do you believe this or do you believe this about this actually thorny, difficult question about America and race. Right. Because there's a lot of. There are a lot of positions I think Christians could hold that they would even Disagree with each other and argue for the merits of their position. Rather, we would say, yeah, man, go talk about them, go debate them in book study, propose a book to read. Go have conversations around cigars at the barbecue. Like our guys and ladies too, but mainly our guys. They're talking about this stuff all the time. But the thing is they know we have their backs, that we're not going to try to cancel them for wrong. Think we will try to correct them for sin, but we won't try to cancel them for political wrong. Think so. It gives freedom, actually. And what tends to happen is that some of them, what I would consider views that I wouldn't agree with that are in certain dissonant right circles. There are some views that I'm pretty like, I'm probably called a member of the dissonant or woke right constantly. And I don't agree with everything everybody in the space says. A lot of times in our community, people will just be like, the men will handle it themselves. Someone will say, well, I think this. And they'll be like, yeah, but what about this? And then they have a lively debate and a lot of people move and they change their minds about various things and they say, well, we'll keep talking next time. That's how I think that's perfectly healthy and great. That's a part of this great community where we're trying to build a culture that can give an answer for every part of what it means to be human, including controversial, pressing matters of politics, social life, all these different things. You have to have freedom where the authorities have your back, to even have the conversations and even disagree about them.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, I think that would be kind of the clarification. You're right, is that we just happen to not draw the lines of gatekeeping where say, like the post war consensus boomer pastor might. And we also are going to go about the gatekeeping process differently. Like you said, if somebody brings up a view that you think that's just stupid, it's probably just going to be a conversation. And you say, I disagree. And here's why.

[Brian Sauvay]

Even within the patriarchal conversation, I've heard people say things that they might sound like, oh, they're even more based, but that I would go, you know what? I actually disagree with that. I think that you're wrong about this or that. I've heard people say things like a woman, a wife should never ever bring a concern to her husband, ever, because that is to subvert his leadership. She's to be quiet and you can listen to Bright People have gotten mad at me about this and called me a squish and a lib over this. I think they're stupid and retarded. But I encourage my wife and say, lexi, you have my permission. I tell husbands in marriage counseling that your wife should have your permission explicitly to respectfully, calmly, and reasonably privately bring you any concern that she has because she's your helper. And because also then if she has a concern that she ought not have, how else are you going to help lead her through it unless you know it exists?

[Eric Khan]

So, yeah, there's actually a great new book about how to do that.

[Brian Sauvay]

Wisdom on her tongue. Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

Wisdom on her tongue in the book.

[Brian Sauvay]

Is from, you know.

[Eric Khan]

But she actually talks about. Yeah. Like how to address it in a respectful way.

[Brian Sauvay]

And I'm a godlier man because I have a good, wise wife.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah.

[Brian Sauvay]

And she doesn't henpeck me or rule me or any of that. She's. She's helpful to me.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. I think, like you're saying on those issues, we. We have a discussion. We disagree. We're not trying to destroy anybody. It is a good segue into sex piety.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

Which is, man, a huge part of our monoculture idea here. Let's talk about the men first. Yeah. We're certainly a male led community.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

We believe very much in vibing with the boys. This was one of the things I said in my longhouse talk. I was like, one of the best ways to crush the longhouse feminist coded feminist norm, you know, feminist dominated society is simply to have male tribes to enjoy one another's company, to have fun, to have a good time. And then, you know, that spills over into doing important work. But it is interesting here. We do not have a culture. This is thinking about a church gathering on Sunday. Right. There can be, like, men and women standing around in a circle talking. And I was watching two of the guys banter back and forth. And the ladies are generally pretty quiet in that setting. They'll talk, but they're not trying to interrupt rudely the men or anything like that. But I was watching two of the wives just kind of like staring at their husbands with looks of admiration. And I was like, this is just Ogden.

[Brian Sauvay]

They were like, my husband is a king.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. This is just the vibe of Ogden.

[Brian Sauvay]

And the men are like, my wife, man. She's the best.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah.

[Brian Sauvay]

To frame this whole conversation, this just clicked for me like, two weeks ago. One of the things about the sexed piety that we're trying to build is that we want to build a culture where men love women and women love men and men love women. As God created women. They're actually pleased that women are the way that they are. And the women love men and love that men are the way that they are. And that we as a community love how God made women to be and we love how God made men to be. Give you a concrete example. It's such a small thing, but this is often where it goes wrong. Like we have a male led culture, female adorned culture, male led culture, female adorned culture, men leading, women helping. That's the culture of the church. And one of the things about men that a lot of women in our day actually, they literally don't understand this. They're actually just annoyed that men are this way instead of loving men the way God made them is that men were designed to mainly fellowship around shared activities. So men don't love to get together and just talk about their feelings a lot. Women love to get together and just chat.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, I've heard this often put this way that men do things side by side. Women are face to face to face.

[Brian Sauvay]

So. So the example would be in a lot in our culture it's very ordinary for there to be throughout the week a lot of gatherings where guys are just like, hey guys, let's go. We're gonna go shoot. We're gonna run a training exercise on small, on pistol, we're going to run a training exercise on AR15s in like room, whatever it is. Or hey, Monday night some of the guys are going to go golf on base. Twilight hours, great, like half price, awesome. Bunch of men are going to get together, go do that. Now in a lot of cultures the women would be resentful and chagrined and annoyed that the men are like that, that they like to get together without women present and go do stuff together. And a lot you can see some of it is just hobbies where the goal is just friendship. And some of them are actually like also useful like defense and shooting and things like that.

[Eric Khan]

And golf.

[Brian Sauvay]

And golf. Golf is also very useful for lots of like rotational things, flexibility. You know what I think the whole game, really the whole package in our culture we cultivate and sometimes it takes work, but like teaching the ladies. You should love it when your husband has friends and even once or twice a week he's hanging out with men because that's going to make him a far better man. He's going to have his tank filled in ways that he needs. He needs male friends. Most men in America don't have Real friends. Okay. So we want the women to love that about men. That men need gangs of men, tribes of other men that they do things together with without women present. That's a good thing. God did that. And conversely, the men love women. They love that women love to be with their husbands and that a lot of women, they really want, like they don't want their husband gone every night of the week and they don't want, they want their husband with them and they want private time with him and he works hard and he's out of the house and they really want him to be there and to have present quality time together. And so the men, we want the men to love that about women and their particular wife, but about women in general. So that on the other hand, they don't say to their friend, hey, every night this week, do you want to go bowling? Well, I wouldn't do that to my friend because I actually love that he has a wife who loves him and needs him home.

[Eric Khan]

It is interesting on that mix too because we're thinking like the elders wives, they'll get together and they'll have dinner once every so often and they're like. And they hang out and chat and they have a group chat and all that. And they're very respectful and have a good time.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

But it's interesting because the men are like three times a week now. Some of it too for us is we see each other every day.

[Brian Sauvay]

Oh, yeah.

[Eric Khan]

So a lot of the things that we're doing are actually during the workday or, you know, we're having different work related activities that we have to partake in. So that's true. But it is just interesting to me. I would say they're the idiosyncrasies and the quirks of both men and women where in our community, I don't know, it's like the ladies will do something and it's just, it's just something that's funny and quirky, geared around the feminine sensibility. But all the men are like, oh, that's adorable.

[Brian Sauvay]

We love, like, we're not annoyed by women. We love women. We love the way that they are. I love my wife. I love the women of the church that they are. Like, they're just quirky. I mean, we all, I think people know we're getting at, but like the quirks of women that they, you know, we talk about, like my wife was driving somewhere the other day and man, like, I was worried when I saw it. You know, the women get together and like they, they love to spend $600 and 400 hours to make a quilt that they could have bought at target in five minutes for $13.99.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. Or even like the ladies toward the men. Right?

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

Where you're like, you know, they're like, oh, yeah, we're kind of joking about which man was leading them and being so obsessed with the recent activity. And the ladies will joke about it.

[Brian Sauvay]

You know, they're like, fun Eric. Or like, Lexi and I were talking the other day about Ben's just wild overconfidence in his ability to do certain things like sing or play golf or do a standing back tuck.

[Eric Khan]

But he believes.

[Brian Sauvay]

But he 100% believes. And the thing is, like, men have to have that gear of wild, unearned overconfidence because otherwise we would never do half the things we do. And so it wasn't Lexi being like, oh, Ben, such a. She wasn't disrespecting him. She was actually respecting him. She was saying, this is such a funny, great thing about Ben and about the men in our church is that there's a lot of guys who are like, no, dude, I could, I could, I could hit the thousand yard target, like with, with. With this, with the 300 win mag. And like, have you ever done that? Well, no, but I mean, like, I could do it.

[Eric Khan]

I could do it.

[Brian Sauvay]

I could land 747, like, if I needed to. And it's like, well, God put that wild overconfidence there in men so that they would go out and do like, ridiculous, impossible things like build suspension bridges and create civilization.

[Eric Khan]

So I totally agree. I want to ask you, on the sex piety question, just, just overall, why do we put such an emphasis? Because some people could say, hey, that's really not a central issue to a monoculture.

[Brian Sauvay]

It'd be wrong.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. And. And what? But, like, we really have. I know even before I got here, like, I was seeing culturally that sexuality was one of the central areas that we were being attacked and that we needed, like, the church was not really putting up a fight.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And we need to be like, if you can't decide what a man and woman is and what they're for.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

How are you ever going to keep a consistent culture now? It's hard. But we have said no. This is a first order, first order thing. And so for you, why?

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, I mean, because, like, here's the thing. We are making people. And I don't know, this is maybe controversial, but people come in two flavors, the men and the women. Okay. So if you're going to make somebody sanctified and mature, like raise them up in Christ, they're going to become the godliest man and the godliest woman. They're going to come together and have marriages and children. Our lives are lived. Our righteousness is carried out or not carried out as a man or as a woman. The culture is attacking this in particular because of that, because if they can subvert this, then they can assault the glory of God and they can also make everybody miserable. So I'm convinced that most people today in feminist, egalitarian land are just absolutely miserable. They're miserable in their marriages, they're miserable in their high body count, promiscuity, they're miserable in all these things because they don't know how to be a man and how to be a woman. And so Christians should be those who are like, of course we know how to be a man or woman. We worship the God who created them, male and female. So a whole lot of our practical life is just, it is going to matter what sex you are. And if the culture is actively trying to teach you everything opposite of what would be good for you, you're going to have to be obnoxious and talking a lot and guarding fiercely against the errors of egalitarianism about what a man is, what a woman is.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, it's interesting. I. I think, too, we've had people kind of self select out of the church.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

One of the conversations I had with one was basically they were talking about, you know, I just. It just annoys me how much you guys talk about sexuality, because, I mean, yeah, it's important. I just don't think we should be talking about it that much. And my reaction, and I didn't say this directly to them, but my reaction in general would be like, I think you might need your eyes checked.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

I don't trust your discernment about our culture that you look out in. Everywhere you are being bombarded with, like, transgender gay pride rally book readings, at libraries. Like, everywhere you look, there's androgyny, there's effeminacy, there's feminism, and it is wickedly destroying almost every part of our culture. It is bent on destroying marriages and households which are the foundation of a community and nation.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

I mean, everywhere you look, it's like, that was when I started the Hardmen podcast. You can go on Twitter and it's like, you don't even need to look for fodder to talk about things. No, it is literally everywhere. It's Almost like saying like living on the Wasatch front and being like, yeah, it'd be cool if there were some mountains around here. I just don't think it's that important.

[Brian Sauvay]

It's too flat. I don't.

[Eric Khan]

It's pretty flat.

[Brian Sauvay]

It'd be like being a trainer on the show the Biggest Loser and being like, why are we talking so much about diet and exercise though? Because there's 700 pounders all around you.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, that's right.

[Brian Sauvay]

And they need to lose some, like they need to lose three people worth of weight. Okay. So it's gonna be a lot of diet and exercise. When you look around, you're like a lot of feminists, miserable men, passive men, hyper aggressive of men. A lot of like really catty, rude, loud women. And wow, what do we need to talk about? Well, definitely we shouldn't overdo talking about masculinity and femininity. I'd be like, yeah, I'm sorry, but you're just running around during a flood with a fire extinguisher and CS Lewis wants to hit you over the head.

[Eric Khan]

With the fire extinguisher.

[Brian Sauvay]

With the fire extinguisher. Which would hurt.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. So that's sex piety. We've had lots of episodes on that. One thing we kind of wrap up here. We're not ecclesiocentric.

[Brian Sauvay]

No.

[Eric Khan]

We have a lot of friends who would claim to be ecclesiocentric. Just to be clear what we mean. We do believe that the church is very central to our community and our way of life. We do believe that where we're not ecclesiocentric in this sense is that we don't believe the church is the only sphere that we're going to talk about. It's not the only thing in the community. And even like with John Calvin, he would actually rate the king as the higher social ranking than the pastor. Right. So we talked about this earlier, but kind of getting away from the idea that the church is responsible for absolutely everything that happens in society, sort of shifting where that I guess that hierarchy and society of institutions.

[Brian Sauvay]

Because if you believe that then it would make you do what we've been doing, which is focus all, everything on church planning. Every high quality man needs to be a church planting lead pastor instead of like a lot of them actually don't. They should be other things. They should be. A lot of these guys, the reason they fail as church planners is because they were actually just entrepreneurs and they were trying to be something they should. God didn't actually call them to ministry. He called them to go start a really kick butt business and like franchise it. And they tried to do that as a church instead. Like, well, yeah, you were doing the wrong thing, but maybe it was because we kind of gave you the impression that you needed to. One thing I will say is that one of the places that this ecclesiocentric instinct arises from in the midst of a culture of chaos and degeneracy is one of the realities of hierarchy is at play. That in that state, what you often see is that God raises up powerful charismatic leaders who go and have a hugely disproportionate effect on society. The judges were like this. God raised up a powerful judge and he would just, everything would change. And so yeah, when the church is the locus of a lot of people seeing some of these issues, you should expect for there to be pastors who actually do rise up and they have an outsized effect not only in the church but in other spheres in speaking to those. And so there's an instinct to have a powerful like ruler that would come and lead well. But we, when we're thinking categorically, we want to make sure that as a church leader, as a Christian borough, that you're not actually making it seem like the walls of the church are the walls of the borough because they're not actually the same thing. There is a church in a borough.

[Eric Khan]

And maybe at the center, at the.

[Brian Sauvay]

Center, worship is going to be at the center. But you know what else there's going to be as you grow in scale, there's going to be political leaders, there are going to be business leaders, elites in different areas of human life and thought, academics, trade and vocation, all sorts of different areas. You're gonna have elites rise up and you need to resist the instinct for the ecclesiastic, the ecclesiastic as an institution, to swallow it all.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah.

[Brian Sauvay]

So it's why one of the reasons, like New Christian Press is not a ministry, New Christian Press is a business, it's a publishing house. Because categorically, when I look at what we do and what we set out to do, it was increasingly obvious what we're describing is not an office of the church, it's a publishing house. It functions by the rules of a publishing house, not the rules of the church. That's an important distinction to make so that you can think and act clearly when it comes to those things. So yes, everybody in a Christian borough, we want them all to be in the church. And in that sense, the church swallows the world, but not institutionally. Not when you're thinking in terms of function, office, hierarchy and the relationship of institutions. Those things actually also need to be distinct, in a sense. And I think a lot of guys who are Klesiocentric would agree with a lot of what we just said. But there's emphasis and there's areas where we probably thread the needle differently.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, I think that's helpful. One thing we would say in light of that is robust reform Protestant worship is central to who this community is. So you really couldn't talk about Ogden, for example, which I do think is funny, that Ogden. When people in our camp say Ogden, they mean refuge church.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And if you ask the average person in Ogden, like, do you take credit for these people?

[Brian Sauvay]

Ogden would be like, who are these? What are you talking about? Who they'd be like, are those. Those crazy people?

[Eric Khan]

Oh, and we hate them. If we do know about them, we. We dislike them. But that is central. We won't beat that to death. But being Reformed liturgical confessional psalm singing we're acknowledging that this isn't the full extent of the borough, but it is a heartbeat, as it were, of what's going on here. So obviously we want to encourage people and we'll do more on this in the future too. But really to think through those aspects of worship, why we do them, why we participate in the Lord's Supper every week, why we preach expositionally, why we have robust pastoral counseling as a ministry of the church, all that is so important to who this people is and so worshiping rightly is really important. Number this is the fifth point. Learning, education and academic elements. I guess just briefly so we can wrap things up. There's a reason we have St. Brennan's and the next thing that we'll talk about in the next episode, there's a reason we have the Guild, which is training leaders. But just talk about St. Brennan's why was Christian education and an institutional form of it so important for community shaping? There's just a reality. I had a pamphlet the other day from. I think it was like church and family life. Great group, Scott Brown. But I think some people will hear that and transform the culture by having really good homeschooling and Christian stuff in the home. But the school and doing something as a community is different than just you and your household.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, that's right.

[Eric Khan]

Monoculture requires more than just that.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. We were convinced that a school is very important. And actually it's one of the ways that we can notice something about the world too, that God gave people particular gifts. So I think that on the average, having a really good Christian school in a community, provided you avoid some of the pitfalls, like making it so unaffordable that your whole community ends up having a lot of women working so that their kids can afford the school. Like, that's bad. Don't do that. But the way we built the school intentionally, I think, is what it does is it brings up the average level of education overall for everybody, and it creates more togetherness. This is one of the most important things. The kids, the people, the families, they're more together more of the time, and then they're also eating from the same table. So all of the households in the school are all reading and being formed by the same historical, theological, political, cultural resources over time in a way that's directly overseen by the ministry of the church and the elders of the church and also the board of the school. And so coming together, that creates a potent institution. And institutions have gravity and power in a culture that scattered, smaller groups don't have.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. And even on the homeschooling side, one of the things we've encouraged, because we do encourage that as well.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. A lot of people homeschool in our.

[Eric Khan]

Church as valid, but still, like, we'll have group events where we invite the homeschooling families to participate, whether it's, you know, group activities for the young boys or just a school function. But I think that the point that I would get at is what you said, that when you eat at the same table, you think about your family. You're consuming the same things, consuming the same content. You're in a space together. That is why it becomes uniquely like a Sovay household.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And. But you get the same thing at the community church level, where you're like, those are refuge people. You can just tell.

[Brian Sauvay]

It's amazing, too, how much comes out, like so much of pastoring and shaping people and doing the gatekeeping and discipline and training and forming. It happens because you're together. So, like, if you're at the parish event where you're all going down the water slide or you're at school, that's where you see, as a leader of tens, fifties, hundreds, or thousands, who are those leaders? But you also see what the problems are. Oh, our people think they know how to do discipline of kids. But I just watched three families this week at school discipline in a way that was absolutely off base, like, it wasn't effective. So then you can go in and say, let me coach you on this. Let me help you on this togetherness flushes out issues and gives you opportunities to do even yet more cultural formation and alignment.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. I'd also say there's the, there's just the reality, like Charlemagne knew this, Alfred knew this. This is why he required learning for his elder men. Right. That the, the stuff that you were reading, including the scriptures, but being able to read, being able to communicate well, rhetoric, being steeped in the Western canon, all of this creates a certain kind of culture. Yeah, it's sort of like a compost pile. You, you put all the stuff that you read in a compost pile and what you get out the back end is something unique.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

It's to what was put into it.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

And those are going to be, you know, hopefully quality Christian people who understand the world God made and can go do productive things. I want to close with this, which is really going to be a tee up for next time, which is the importance of replicating leaders who can then replicate the culture. So when I was reading Dan and I were reading Tribal Leadership, I think you've read that as well. But the basis for a lot of this was thinking through how do you get great culture, tribal culture, a great group of people doing great work, they're bought in, they love the vision and they're productive. How do you get that? And they said, well, at the heart of it, you have to have great leaders. And this is kind of like, duh. You know, a lot of people hear that and be like, yeah, duh. But a lot of it is that those leaders are a certain culture of people who can replicate a culture. So we started a guild program to train future leaders. And one of the questions. And we can kind of end with this. One of the questions that we asked was, it's not just that I need a guy to know Calvinism, because Calvinism alone doesn't really define our culture. And you can probably hear that in everything we've talked about. It's not just that I need you to read Berkhof, I do need you to read Berkhof or Needham's church history. Those are great. But what are the other things that we have to read and study and work through as men so that we become cohesively part of the same culture? So I just want to ask you, as we can kind of close with that, why is the cultural aspect of leadership so important as cultural transmitters, creators, formers of the community?

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, it's because God made a world where one person with the right gifts, cultivated in the right way and put in the right time and Place can influence millions of people. Millions. I mean, not even tens or fifties or hundreds of thousands. Millions. So that's true about the world. God made one leader can absolutely change the course of an entire nation with the words he says and the things he does. Words like these things that are just air and vibrations, he can go out and it will change everything. So when I look at our culture and I think, who are some of the most important people in establishing the culture that is just holistically. Ogden. Some of them have absolutely nothing to do with theological education. Or even. Some of them. Even words. They're not even that important with the words, but it's what they do. Like, Ethan is a guy like this. Ethan has a way in our culture of just embodying a masculine energy and cultivate and cultivating context for masculine formation that aren't related to teaching.

[Eric Khan]

No. And it's crazy. He does this thing where he'll take the concepts that we've talked about or I've talked about on hard men and he'll say, hey, we put together a boys camping trip that's in.

[Brian Sauvay]

He actually called it a field training exercise.

[Eric Khan]

Yes.

[Brian Sauvay]

He's a fighter pilot who was kicked out of the armed forces for being too awesome.

[Eric Khan]

That's right. They couldn't handle his awesomeness.

[Brian Sauvay]

Covid.

[Eric Khan]

But he's the one, like, where he'll. He just gathers men, he inspires other men, but he just trains the young men. As you said, gravitas. It's the kind of guy where it's like, we're speaking and doing a lot of that, and then he's taking it and he's going, I know the things we should be doing to knead that leaven into the dough.

[Brian Sauvay]

So tonight we're all going to the rodeo. Who did that? Ethan. Like, it wouldn't have happened. Ethan did it. He's the kind of guy that you go, man, we've been talking a lot about this. That'd be cool. And the next day, an itinerary shows up in your inbox. He's like, I planned the event. We're all getting together here. I got the tickets. I figured out what we're doing.

[Eric Khan]

We got a bunch of the kids involved in the mutton busting.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah. Like, my wife is going to be making the, like, a big jar full of, like, Tom Collins mix that we can pour over ice when we're there. Like, there's a whole. Like, a whole thing is just materialized. And I'm terrible at this. This is like, a huge weakness in me. Praise God, though, he brought this other guy. And this is just one guy. There's. There's dozens of examples of this in our community.

[Eric Khan]

Tate Taylor.

[Brian Sauvay]

Tate Taylor's another guy like that.

[Eric Khan]

We were talking about, hey, the need for. For men to be physically strong. And I just. I'm in a season where I'm like, I don't have the bandwidth to go, like, run a gym.

[Brian Sauvay]

No.

[Eric Khan]

But then Tate comes and he's like, I'll start a gym. I'll have workouts where all the men in the church can come. We're gonna go hike together. We're gonna camp together. We're gonna. I mean, literally just Tate Taylor is like, you know, the brutal American vibe. Like, he lives that.

[Brian Sauvay]

He trains my boy. My older boys, three times a week now.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. Same with mine.

[Brian Sauvay]

And it's not because I don't have a home gym and I couldn't teach him how to do it. It's because there's something. There's a network effect when you get another node of connection now between my family and my boys and him and all the other guys there who are in the church, and you start to build this web, a cord of many strands, and it is so potent.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. And then realizing, like, we have that, like, I can have a lot of ideas and we can work through principles, but you and I can't affect, nor any of the leaders can affect all the change that needs to happen. This is why Paul, I think, is so wise in saying you're equipping the saints to do the work, to do the work of ministry.

[Brian Sauvay]

Huge mindset shift. So we need to talk about that in the next episode.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. So we'll talk more about this, including the Guild, including leadership. Brian, it has been phenomenal, dude.

[Brian Sauvay]

What a good six or seven hours that we've been in this room. You know what I'm thankful for, Eric, is that we don't have air conditioning. Because if we had air conditioning, I'm not gonna lie, the King's hall, it would be kind of the ninny's Hall. It would be like.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, that's right.

[Brian Sauvay]

Soft men's haul.

[Eric Khan]

It would. In fact, my deodorant has worn off.

[Brian Sauvay]

It has failed long. It's gone long ago.

[Eric Khan]

Long time.

[Brian Sauvay]

Hours ago.

[Eric Khan]

So thanks to all of our listeners, everybody who has followed along. Stay tuned. We'll have more on Christian Borough building. We're looking even to write a book. Brian and myself really hoping to equip more of the church to replicate. As Brian said. This is the question that we get most is how.

[Brian Sauvay]

How.

[Eric Khan]

Walk me through the things. Like, because there are details that matter, not just big ideas and principles and universals.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

So stay tuned for that. Also encourage you to check out the Patreon Channel.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

Tons of great content. We've been doing the Conquistadors. So Cortez, dude, go check. I mean, the Spaniards.

[Brian Sauvay]

You got to check that out.

[Eric Khan]

Amazing.

[Brian Sauvay]

We've got after hours there where we do some, you know, after the King's hall recordings, where we'll do some conversations about whatever the heck we want. So buckle up.

[Eric Khan]

It's like the fun stopper comes out.

[Brian Sauvay]

Dude, the fun stopper is it comes out and you throw it away. You can't find it.

[Eric Khan]

No.

[Brian Sauvay]

No. You can't find it. Of course. Thanks to all of our great sponsors who make the King Saul possible and support our work at New Christendom. Support those businesses. These are great Christian businesses that support our show. And so every time you skip an ad, a new mosque and a new synagogue is established within American borders.

[Eric Khan]

That's.

[Brian Sauvay]

I've heard. Like, I don't. I can't. Our lawyers are saying right now, wildly behind the camera, that I'm not allowed to say that. That's absolutely true. But, like, what if.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah, what if it was true? I'll tell you something that is true, and we can end with this. If ladies and husbands are looking for a great gift for your wife. Lexi Sauvay's book.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yes.

[Eric Khan]

Is out wisdom on her tongue. I've been reading this. I was laughing along hard.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah, it's. It's. Got it.

[Eric Khan]

It's a.

[Brian Sauvay]

It's Lexi.

[Eric Khan]

It's very funny. It's very good. But just encouraging ladies how to love their husbands and children well. How to be a godly woman and speak well in the home. So really edifying, encouraging content. You can go to newchristenimpress.com and you can order your book now.

[Brian Sauvay]

Yeah.

[Eric Khan]

Sign copies. Lexi was signing for hours. And I said to her, oh, do your hands hurt? Well, because now your back's gonna hurt. Cause you just pulled landscaping duty.

[Brian Sauvay]

You just pulled garden duty. He did say that, but he was joking.

[Eric Khan]

She smiled.

[Brian Sauvay]

She smiled. But she also fell asleep when I tried to show her Happy Gilmore like, five years ago.

[Eric Khan]

Yeah. Totally disagree.

[Brian Sauvay]

She gets the reference because I've said it so much. But, yeah, great. Newchristenimpress.com Wisdom to pick up a book. And it's a premium hardcover, gold foil. Love the design. And it's just a great book. We hope that it's one. It's very practical. Practical. Every chapter is very, very practical, actionable type of stuff. So we hope that it will serve wives, but also daughters, women who are not yet married. It's about marital communication, but there's a. There's principles there for women in all seasons of life. And even like I've. I've. Obviously I read it before anybody else did. Helped edit and wrote the foreword and also the conclusion to the book. We just hope it's helpful to Christian households and building some of that sex piety.

[Eric Khan]

Best forward I've ever read.

[Brian Sauvay]

I needed that after this episode. I needed that. Awesome.

[Eric Khan]

Well, we'll catch you guys in the next episode. We'll be talking about leadership in your local context.

[Brian Sauvay]

Awesome. Great news here at the new Christendom Press warehouse. Lexi Sovey's book, My Beautiful Wife. Wisdom on Her Tongue. It's in stock and shipping. Look at our team go here. Totally not child labor. An elite team of official experts getting these books out to you. And what that means is that if you order this book, it's going to be in the mail and to you within like a week or so. Pick up a copy [e-mail] Wisdom. We're killing it right now. We're gonna keep on dancing.