Hosts And Guests Of This Episode
Jared Sparks, Bo Hutches, Brian Sauvé, and special guest, Douglas Wilson
Intro And Overview
The men continue the conversation on forming communities of Christendom, following the last episode, “The Importance Of Owned Space,” by bringing in everyone’s favorite pariah, Douglas Wilson, a man who has done the work of leading a community which creates, owns, and builds for multi-generational Kingdom impact.
Douglas Wilson answers questions and provides insight in relation to decades of institution building, localized culture creation, pastoring through major theological changes, the culture shaping power of music (especially the Psalms), leading men, and living patiently, entrepreneurially, to take dominion and build Christendom.
This conversation comes from a bit of a pastoral leadership angle, yet is relevant to any man as leader of his family and part of a local church community.
Video Recording Of Show
Transcript Of This Episode
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[00:01:10] Jared Sparks: Welcome to The Majesty’s Men show. We are excited to be back today. Thank you guys for being here with us. We are on today with our co-host Brian Sauve. Brian, how’s it going out there?
[00:01:21] Brian Sauvé: We’re doing well here in the evangelical Mecca of Ogden, Utah —future Mecca.
[00:01:28] Jared Sparks: There we go. Amen. Bo is in Colorado and he’s back with us. Bo, how’s it going, man?
Boom. Great. And we also have a gentleman with us that we’ve all learned a great deal from. We have pastor Doug Wilson, Doug, how’s it going out there in Moscow today?
[00:01:43] Douglas Wilson: Going great. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:45] Jared Sparks: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for joining us. Well guys, let me go and pray and then I’m going to pass it off to Doug here in just a minute, but let’s go before the Lord and trust that he hears us.
[00:01:53] And uh, and then we’ll go from there. Father, we just thank you so much for this time. I ask for blessing upon this conversation. Thank you for the conversation that we had last month, talking about the importance of own space. And it’s going to be great to hear from pastor Doug. We’ve all learned so much from him.
[00:02:08] We’re excited to talk to him. And I just ask that you would lead everything in this discussion and to help build us up as men who are leading families, as men who are in churches and as men who are in communities, help us God to do what you’d have us do for your glory. And honor it’s in Jesus name. We pray.
[00:02:25] All right. Well, in light of our conversation that we had and what I just told you about Doug, what’s you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself, and then if you could give us maybe instead of the 30,000 foot view, maybe the 15,000 foot view of the last, you know, 30 or 40 years in Moscow about all that God has done.
[00:02:41] And then as you’re talking, we’re going to be thinking through questions. And so when you wrap it up and put a bow on it, we’re going to shoot you with a bunch of questions. That sound good.
[00:02:48] Douglas Wilson: That sounds, that sounds. So, um, uh, my name is Douglas Wilson. I’m the senior pastor at Christ church in Moscow, Idaho.
[00:02:58] If you know that, uh, if you know the shape of Idaho, we’re up in the panhandle, up in the chimney of Idaho. And I’ve been here since I got out of the Navy in 1975. So. Uh, my parents moved here in 1971 and, uh, I helped them move. I graduated from high school, helped them move here, uh, and was here for a few months.
[00:03:26] Then I went in the Navy and when I got out of the Navy in 75, I came here to go to school at the university of. And I tell you that a little bit personal background, but it’s also a part of this story. Uh, prior to this back in the sixties, my father, who was an a Naval academy graduate, um, had written a book, written a series of articles that turned into a book called principles of.
[00:03:55] And, uh, that what he did was he took military principles of war. You know, the clouds, wits sunsuit sorts of things, mobility, surprise, economy of force concentration. And he wrote this book, applying those principles to spiritual war. How, how can you apply the, uh, the principles of war to a different kind of.
[00:04:22] And, uh, it was subtitled was thoughts on strategic evangelism and what his interest was. There. There were a number of things going on there, but, uh, one of the things that military strategists interact with is the idea of a decisive point. A decisive point is a target that is simultaneously strategic and.
[00:04:50] So it’s strategic. It matters to the enemy. If you take it and it’s feasible, meaning that it’s possible to take that you can, you can actually take it. It’s vulnerable. You can do it. And it’s a big deal if you do it. So if a target is simultaneously strategic and feasible, that’s a decisive.
[00:05:16] And a particular decisive point or a particular work could have a decisive point. Um, and so on. So, uh, uh, a target that’s strategic, but not feasible. It doesn’t do you any good? Uh, New York city is strategic, but not feasible. If we, if we took New York city for Jesus, it’d be all over. But the problem is it’s not feasible.
[00:05:41] There’s a little bend in the road. Just east of your called bubble Idaho, which we could take for Jesus in two weeks or however long it took to unload the moving van. Uh, and then, but when we’re all done, all we’d have is Belleville. So that’s feasible, but not strategic and that’s feasible, but not strategic, the other strategic, but not feasible.
[00:06:07] And my dad had decided, and this was back in the 1960s that know. North America. The decisive points for spirits of warfare were small college towns with major universities in them. So a small town made it feasible. The university made it important. The university made it strategic. The small town made it feasible.
[00:06:34] And then he found out that Moscow, Idaho and Pullman Washington were two small towns. Eight miles apart with a, is your university in each one. So he moved here. That was, uh, he had written on it. He thought through these things. So he moved here and everything, everything is going on in Moscow currently.
[00:06:57] And there’s an awful lot is downstream from that decision, every everything. So his decision to move here. W when we arrived, it was just another sleepy little college town. With not much going on, uh, spiritually, there were, there were some evangelicals here and there, uh, evangelical churches, but it was, uh, it was a sleepy college town that was, uh, Idaho is a very red state.
[00:07:25] Uh, Moscow was a little blue.in this red state liberal, but not crazy, not bonkers. Um, not like today. And so, uh, it was just sitting there. So his, his interest was evangelism, but one thing led to another. So, um, when I got out of the Navy in 1975 and got married, uh, almost right away, and we started having kids right away.
[00:08:00] And when my oldest was a topic. One day. My wife said to me, Doug, I just can’t see it handing her over to some, we don’t know and saying here she is educator. I didn’t know anything about education at the time, except that I knew that I agreed with that. And so I said, don’t worry, we’ll have a Christian school started by the time Becca hits kindergarten.
[00:08:25] And that’s an example of how these things have gone. So. Planted the church. My dad started an evangelist at bookstore first, then a church plant came out of that. Then low school, uh, was planted then, uh, Canon press then knew St. Andrew’s college. Uh, we found ourselves regularly having to do the next thing.
[00:08:56] And, uh, and that’s how this thing that Aaron ran wrote. Uh, took shape. It w it was not as though we had this master plan and D day forces. All assembled and then invaded and put everything up. It was, it was more strategic. Long-term thinking by a visionary, my father, who said, this is a, this is a place where we could get a big bang for the buck.
[00:09:27] If we do anything significant here, it’s going to have repercussions, which is precisely what has happened. It’s
[00:09:34] Jared Sparks: wonderful. So strategy God. Uh, DSST is the mother of invention. We have to have a school because we can’t give our children, uh, to the state kind of thing, all working together. And here is Moscow, you know, 30.
[00:09:50] When was it when you first started, when your dad moved there? I mean,
[00:09:53] Douglas Wilson: he moved here in 19 71, 19 71, 71, and I got out of the Navy and came here in 1975. Um, and, uh, Logan school was planning. 80 81, somewhere in there. Um, 80, 81. Uh, our, our church was founded in 1975, uh, low Goss and 80 81 Canon press in 1988.
[00:10:24] Thereabouts, um, credenda agenda begins. Published in 1988, which was a magazine that ran for 20, 20 years or so. Um, and then new St. Andrew’s, uh, was started I think in 93. Um, so. Yeah, do the next thing. Yeah,
[00:10:44] Jared Sparks: that’s good. I want to pass it off to Bo and Brian, and just have you guys ask any questions that you have for Doug?
[00:10:49] I know you guys have been thinking a lot about these sorts of things, and I think a lot of people have turned their attention, you know, with that Aaron wrote an article and I just read a book that, that Chronicle what’s happening in the Pacific Northwest by looking at Moscow, I forget the name of. Now, but, uh, I know Beau and Brian had been thinking about it,
[00:11:05] Douglas Wilson: survival and resistance.
[00:11:07] That’s it. And resistance in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah. Phenomenal
[00:11:11] Jared Sparks: book. So much fun, but bow, you had something go out and throw it out there, man. Yeah.
[00:11:14] Bo Hutches: So, so Doug, one of the, uh, the, uh, you know, topics we talked about last time is, you know, I think we, all of us outsiders looking into Moscow think, man, it’s the greatest place ever.
[00:11:25] You know, the grass is greener over there. Is where I’m planted. And I think that there’s always a temptation let’s just uproot and then move to Moscow. But I, as I was thinking about it, you know, the, the, uh, one of the things that occurred to me is, you know, why don’t we just build our own Moscow? You know, why do, why do we have to transplant?
[00:11:40] Why can’t we just do that and do that? What you guys have done here. But I w I want to ask for some, maybe some words of wisdom for, you know, myself and for the guys listening, you know, maybe not to fall into. Formulaic approach, you know? Cause it seems like what you guys are doing up there has been spirit led.
[00:11:56] It’s been just a call to faithfulness and doing what you have to do. So how can we avoid, you know, the formulaic approach mechanic mechanical listic let’s just start a school like Doug let’s just, you know, start a magazine like Douglas just started college, maybe some words of wisdom, not to fall into the formulistic approach, but also still stay in that same, same vein of the strategic and decisive.
[00:12:18] Douglas Wilson: Yeah. Um, th that’s a great question. I would, um, I would jump back to my dad’s emphasis on principles, principles of war, and I would distinguish principles and okay. There’s there’s principles and there’s methods of principle. Um, if you had two armies come together, uh, 500 BC, all the principles are operative, even though the weapons are.
[00:12:46] Bows and arrows, chariots, horses, et cetera. Then you have a modern conflict with, uh, destroyers ships, anx. The principles are the same. Okay. The methods are different. What, what happens when people, um, when people want to reproduce. What I think we ought to want to do. So the, the great commission is to disciple the nations, not to disciple Moscow.
[00:13:18] All right. We’re, we’re supposed to disciple the world. We’re supposed to disciple the nations that the temptation is for people to look at Moscow and copy the method. Okay. Instead of grasping the. All right now, the principle is educate your children. The method is a K through 12 day school, or right.
[00:13:41] That’s a particular method, but the principle is parents are responsible for their kids being brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. That’s the principle. So I use different, uh, analogies to try to get at this. We don’t want a burger king franchise. All right. You can go into a burger king in Delaware and get a Whopper that tastes exactly like the, the burger king Whopper that you’re going to get in Washington state, right?
[00:14:14] Because they, or, or it’s a Coca Cola bottling plant. You’re going to get the same formula. You’re going to get the same product. Well, the Christian faith is far more organic. And non formulaic than that. And it’s instead of a Coca Cola bottling plant, I compare it to vineyards with the same kind of grape, right?
[00:14:40] So it’s a, it’s a Merlow, uh, grape, but the vineyard in a different place. It’s going to have a different kind of soil, different kinds of sunlight, different kinds of weather, different kind of, uh, terroir for the growing of the grapes. And so you’re going to, uh, uh, a wind Somalia would be able to take a sip of a Merlow from California and, um, or low from France.
[00:15:07] And tell you what, what country was from and a good Somalia. It would be able to tell you what vineyard it was from, because it’s going to have its own distinctive personality and character and flavor. Um, at the same time, you don’t want everybody doing their own thing. You know, planting coconuts and calling them grapes.
[00:15:27] You want to have a shared vision, a shared understanding of what we’re after. Uh, reformed theology on fire evangelical conviction, gins. Uh, the Bible applies to everything. Those are print. Those are principles. Those are the principles. Um, Here in Moscow. Uh, the personality of what’s going on is going to be the personality of the individuals involved in it, the preachers and the teachers and the instructors and what I would want, what I’d be after is people who say, if we do, if we do something here locally, I would rather have it be inspired by Moscow than have it be Moscow.
[00:16:13] Two points. Yeah,
[00:16:15] Jared Sparks: very good. Very good stuff. Uh, Bo, you got any followups with that before that? That’s great.
[00:16:20] Bo Hutches: That’s great principles and methods. I think that’s a good, a good thing to keep in
[00:16:23] Brian Sauvé: mind. Yeah. Um, pastor Wilson, that was, um, that reminded me a lot of, one of my, in my top three favorite books that I’ve read of yours and rules for reformers.
[00:16:34] W which most people you can’t. Um, my top three favorite books for, so thank you for being prolific and serving all of us. My, my question is in the same vein, but I guess taps into in a specifically the category of pastoral theology in that you’ve. Uh, in that process, when you ended up pastoring this congregation out there, it seemed like the theological and cultural identity of the congregation was very, very different from what it is today.
[00:17:07] And I think you say you were the, you were the guitar, the guy with the guitar. And then the, I identify a lot with that. I was the guy with the guitar and then the pastor disqualified himself in there, like. Good. Good luck, charismatic church thing, and you know, songs I would cringe Stephen consider now.
[00:17:27] And, uh, our church has been on a path of reform culturally theologically for a decade. And so when you’re, when you’re thinking through shepherding, not just abstract theological concepts, where some guys sit down at a desk and they read a book and they go, I’m a Calvinist. Now I’m post-millennial now. Or they watch a YouTube series.
[00:17:48] Uh, what principles would you appeal to, or have you applied in your ministry in terms of pastoral theology to lead actual sheep with names and their own convictions on that path of reform culturally and theologically?
[00:18:04] Douglas Wilson: I would say the big virtue that you have to practice is patience. So one of the, one of the temptations that theologically minded.
[00:18:16] Leaders have, is they read a book, the whole system assembles in their head, but they say, oh, this is what a, a new Geneva would look like. Right? This is, this is it. Right. And it’s very clear in their head. And that is the temptation of the idealogue. The idealogue is a perfectionist. He’s got the whole thing, man.
[00:18:43] And then you, you go into the actual kitchen to make this. Uh, you know, the you’ve read all the books, you read all the cookbooks, you know exactly how a perfect omelet is going to be made. And you go into this kitchen and, and there are all these ordinary people who don’t, who haven’t read your recipes, who haven’t read your book, who are.
[00:19:09] Some of them are a little surly you’re having to deal with actual people. Um, so an ideolog is a revolutionary. The, the revolution of the reformer wants to change the world. The revolutionary wants to change the world. Evolutionary is impatient. A reformer is patient. And that means that you have to give people time, um, in that you, you happen to know where you’re going the whole time, because otherwise it’s mission drift.
[00:19:41] If, if you’re too patient, then you just settle in and you go to sleep and everything goes back to the way it was. You have to be impatient enough to get. Pushing it, but not so impatient that you annoy everybody that’s
[00:20:00] Brian Sauvé: helpful. That’s helpful. And when I think of some of the things that you, I mean, Pado baptism, Pado communion.
[00:20:05] Galvanism um, I think it’s easy for guys like me or, um, Jared or Bo
[00:20:13] A lot of guys they look at Moscow and they don’t see, what is that, 50 years? They see the finished thing and they, you know, "Okay, by June of 2023, we’re going to get there. It’s just discouraging because there’s no real group of people that you’re going to be able to lead to that pace.
[00:20:34] Douglas Wilson: Right. But it won’t be discouraging if you have that built in from the start. Christopher Dawson, the historian, once said the Christian church lives in the light of eternity and can afford to be patient. We should understand that a thousand years from now, my town is going to look very different than it does now. If you have confidence that your town is going to be totally different in a thousand years, it’s probably going to be different in 10 years. But if you want it to be different in 10 years, it probably won’t be.
[00:21:11] Brian Sauvé: Yeah. That’s that’s that there was, there’s even a point of this that I’ve been curious to ask you about for a long time, because when you, when you, when you were talking about cultural theological reformation theology coming out of our fingertips, well, one of the most important ways allergy comes out of our fingertips is actually out of our mouth since.
[00:21:33] And the, the, if, if Christ is making a new humanity and redeeming every aspect of what it means to be a human, including our art and our singing, um, you should be able to tell something about a people when you hear them sing. And I remember the 2018 missions conference, our elder team. Up to the stove fighter.
[00:21:55] And we sat down and said, pull out the hymnal. We’re like, what is the app? And then, you know, they struck up the song and I, I think it was now looking back, I think it was Psalm 98. I was singing a new song to the Lord desert and we, we just looked at each other like what, what is happening? There’s a guy dressed like a trucker sitting next to me and he’s singing the perfect base Bart on.
[00:22:23] Uh, you know, later in a few gink tune and I didn’t, I don’t even know what that is. Um, and that there was lots of good stuff that came from that conference in the, the, the speaking and the, the George Grant I think was speaking. And, but the thing that we went away with as an elder team was when Doug said your, your church needs a drum kit, like Johann, Sebastian Bach needs a kazoo.
[00:22:43] That’s what he means. So when, when you’re thinking back over teaching or leading the church, A real, again, a real group of people from these skills that they didn’t even have singing in parts practically. What did that, what does that process look like in a local church?
[00:23:04] Douglas Wilson: Okay. Here, here’s a thank you for asking that question, because I think there’s, there’s something really critical in this and you described one time.
[00:23:14] Um, in your experience, so you, sir, you were going 60 miles an hour and walked right into a weird song. And what are they doing? Well, I make the distinction between what I call some candy and acquired taste song. So we S we sing all kinds of weird. Okay. All kinds of weird, but some of our weird music, like the feuding tunes and for the people watching a few game tune is a distinctively American.
[00:23:44] Uh, form of congregational singing, where you, everybody sings a verse together in four parts, uh, the baseline starts singing and then a few measures. For example, the tenor comes in, then a few measures later, the Alto part comes in and then the soprano part comes in. Sometimes it’s a different order, but it’s a, and then it all lands together.
[00:24:05] That’s a, that’s a few things. Um, and if an outsider coming in. Uh, we’ve had this experience before my sister once visited, uh, up here for a wedding and, and it was just the congregation singing at a wedding. And she said, I felt like it was in the middle of a choir. You know, what’s going on? What’s what’s going on.
[00:24:26] Well, som candy is the kind of Psalm that you encountered for the first time there. It was totally weird and totally unusual. What’s my part. What am I doing? I don’t know how to do this. From from the first few seconds where you hear it, you want to know how to do it, right? Yes. Right. Okay. It’s like a, this is glorious.
[00:24:51] It’s over my head, but how can it look, look at all these ordinary people doing this. I’m an ordinary people. Why can’t I, why can’t I do it? All right. So that’s what I call some candy. Then there is what you might call oatmeal stout. Psalms. Where, uh, it’s an acquired taste. Okay. So there, if Psalm 98 is the, is the one you mentioned.
[00:25:18] So 95 is one that we do is that there was a through composed version of Psalm 95 by Thomas Tallis and Elizabeth. Uh, composer and it’s it’s oatmeal stout with the bark still floating in it.
[00:25:35] Um, so when someone’s, if you sit some 21 year old guy, who’s never had a beer before and he takes a sip of a dark oatmeal stout. His first reaction is going to be, um, his first reaction is not. How, um, how can I learn how to do this? His first reaction might be, why are you making me do this? Okay. So what I would do is I’m introducing into a typical American congregation.
[00:26:09] I would emphasize those songs. That are melodic that are American feuding tunes are a good example. There they’re distinctively American. There’s something in our DNA that resonates with it. Right. And I would, but I would also include the oatmeal stout Psalms because once you acquire a taste for it, it’s, it’s wonderful, but everybody’s, you’ve, you’ve got to that’s where the patients come got.
[00:26:40] Hmm. Thank
[00:26:41] Brian Sauvé: you. That’s very, that’s very helpful. We’ve we’ve started this home singing weekly and learning, learning how to do some of those. And we’ve naturally gravitated, I think, towards the song candy once and now I’m getting Y and then there are some that you start in your you’re going, man. How, how do they learn how to breathe through this long meter double, you know, fast, uh, in a more difficult, but when you get them.
[00:27:05] There’s just a glory of having learned a hard thing together that you couldn’t do. You can’t do it by yourself. You need a, I mean, you can sit there and hum it and it’s okay. But it shows you, or you have collage of Colossians three sing to one another and there’s a peculiar glory there. Yeah. That’s helpful.
[00:27:24] Jared Sparks: That’s good stuff. I had the privilege of being at that same missions conference and the way I’ve described it. And Marty McFly. The first scene that Marty McFly in back to the future is at doc’s house. And then that first scene he’s at doc’s house. There’s the big speakers on the sides and the ma the church experiences that I had been a part of.
[00:27:41] And in the past that were loud and that were in your face. We’re kind of like the scene where Marty strums the guitar and it gets, he gets thrown backwards and the speakers explode and the whole. Image that I could have in my head when I heard that singing, was it not coming from the stage, but it was almost a shocking is Marty McFly getting, I mean, just shock back from those speakers, because the loudness of the singing, I walked away with brought with that with Brian’s elder team thinking the exact same thing that this is remarkable.
[00:28:10] I want to be a part of more of this. This is an amazing thing, but it
[00:28:13] Douglas Wilson: isn’t has another feature to this. And that is, uh, years ago we had a woman who came to the Lord. Uh, she worked at a. She worked at a local department store. And so many of our couples were coming in there to register for weddings, but she got to know, she got to know people from our church because she worked at the place, registering them for weddings.
[00:28:35] And so she visited our church and the thing that blew her over blew her over was she said that. Man sin. Yeah, it’s not, it’s not just singing. It’s not just a musical congregation. It’s men sentence. Right. And, uh, and when you’re have four-part harmony, you have an assigned role for the men. There’s something for the men to do.
[00:28:59] There’s something for the men to learn. And oftentimes in song, lovey, the melody is carried in the tenor, which not only means that the men have a part to play, but they have a leading, they carry the melody. They, they they’re, they’re carrying this. Oh, so you want music that is masculine, masculine music includes the women feminine music.
[00:29:20] Doesn’t include the men.
[00:29:25] Brian Sauvé: That’s a very good to when we had the first time as a congregation, that we took some of these Psalms out of the Tuesday night, learning how to do it into the congregation. But by far, the most incorrect of it is how much more vigorously the men can sang when they have a base part, a tenor part that’s suited to their range.
[00:29:45] And they’re not being asked to sing these songs that are written by. First tenors that have a soprano range, the guys look, and they go, how am I supposed to sing that without becoming a castrati or, you know, taking Paul’s advice and going all the way from glacier.
[00:30:08] Jared Sparks: Okay guys, let’s switch gears a little bit. I want to talk post-millennial theology earlier. You said it gets the post-millennial vision and getting a group of people around you with the shared values and even theological values. I’ve been in pastoral ministry now for about 14 years. And actually it was.
[00:30:22] The span of those 14 years that I met Brian and we actually, our friendship started around whispering the word, Doug Wilson to each other. And we found out that we appreciate each other. We were both part of the sojourn network for a little while. And then we, you know, we had both been very, very much helped by you.
[00:30:37] And, uh, I didn’t get into the post-millennial bandwagon till about three years ago and not necessarily a bandwagon, but I didn’t get on the train until three years ago. There are two and a half years ago, and it’s changed everything for me. And in the same way, you said you couldn’t plant a hedge the same way as you could before you were post-millennial.
[00:30:54] Everything has opened up, opened up for me as well, and even in our church, but here’s the deal. Some of our. Are not post-millennial, you know, we have four other elders and then a lot of the people in our church are not post-millennial. In fact, if, if I say post-millennial to some of them, they would be thinking, you know, I’m saying post tribulation pre-millennial if I said, post-millennial just because we’re not in a highly theological area.
[00:31:17] Uh, but yet some of the stuff that you guys did in this process over the last 50 years from your dad forward a lot of the stuff you did the first half of it, it seems like it was. Through the lenses of the post-meal vision. I mean, you, you became, I think post-millennial in the mid, mid eighties. Is that, is
[00:31:31] Douglas Wilson: that right?
[00:31:33] Yeah. Well, I became personnel mid eighties. Yeah. Mid eighties. Okay.
[00:31:36] Jared Sparks: And yet at that point, loggers had already been started. It sounds like, and some other things have been happening for the decade prior. And so, uh, it seems like there is a way to build and to think long-term, even if you’re not post-millennial without being able to plant hedges in the same way, but.
[00:31:55] Build have a healthy family and work with people who don’t, who aren’t on the post-millennial, you know, train. How would you encourage a church? You know, like our church, that very few of us are post-millennial and here I am pastoring a group of people that this is all new to. And how do you encourage somebody like that to build an environment, to think long-term and think over the next thousand years.
[00:32:15] Douglas Wilson: So I answered that. Examples again, part of this I would owe to my dad. And this is, this is an area where I disagree with him and have been benefited greatly by him. Okay. Uh, he’s not post my dad’s not post-meal. Um, because, because he has a phobia about systematic theology. Um, so, but if the verse in front of him, it sounds Calvinist, he sounds terrible.
[00:32:45] If the verse sounds post-meal he sounds post because he just wants to say what the text says. Okay. So what he’ll, what he did when, when we were first getting off and we weren’t post-meal formally or anything like that, uh, we were still trying to fulfill the great commission in Moscow because. As my dad would say, that’s what Jesus told us to do.
[00:33:12] We’re supposed to disciple the nations and this is here’s where we are. So we should seek to win this town for Jesus Christ, because that’s the great commission. If he didn’t have a system to put it in for him, that was just a matter of obedience. Jesus said, Jesus said to do this. The second thing is something I.
[00:33:32] A number of years later, and this has to do with vocabulary sometimes when we learn something from the, uh, from the scriptures and we learn it in a certain category, like post millennialism or Calvinism or water, we don’t just learn the thing from scripture. We also adopt the vocabulary of historical theology, five-point Calvinism, or, you know, um, that sort of thing one, and I discovered this when I.
[00:34:02] I was invited to preach. I forget why or how, but I had a friend was a pastor of a discipline, a pre-meal dispensational church back on the east coast. And I was invited to preach there and I preached a high octane post-meal sermon. Okay, but I didn’t use any of the buzzwords. You know, I didn’t mention eschatology.
[00:34:30] I didn’t mention schools. I didn’t mention any of that. My talk was all about missions. I just preached, I just preach missions and, and everything I said was assuming post millennialism and the, and the people in this dispensational. We’re eating it out of the can with a spoon. They just, they loved it because Christians love missions, right?
[00:34:58] Your Christians are mission minded. And, and if you, if you simply adopt an optimist, an optimistic outlook and use the vocabulary of evangelicalism missions, evangelism outreach, you know, mercy ministry, it’s amazing. Uh, it’s amazing how much could get done.
[00:35:22] Jared Sparks: Yeah. Very, very helpful. I think that’s kind of the case in a lot of theological categories where you use biblical language and stay away from certain buzzwords, not out of fear, but out of, out of wisdom to bring people along.
[00:35:34] That could be helpful. Right. It’s very good. Um, but boy, you got anything else?
[00:35:40] Bo Hutches: Yeah, I was actually a really, and it kind of follows along this idea of, you know, the post-meal vision, you know, but in Wren’s article, he mentions, you know, that you guys have, you know, um, you know, real, it lets people in your church have real estate scalable, uh, wealth generating businesses, consumer orienting oriented businesses.
[00:35:59] And my question was, you know, what are some of the other ideas outside of post millennialism that have motivated the congregation, you know, to those things. I think that you mentioned in your blog or on a, on a podcast that, you know, it almost sounds like you’re the one pulling the levers. Um, but you’re con you kind of said that your congregation has just embraced this and done it.
[00:36:18] What are some of the. You know, either theological beliefs, convictions, you know, it just seems like there’s an earthiness to the ministry up there in Moscow. It gets outside of the church into, into, you know, physical spaces in the town. What are some of the ideas that have motivated your congregation to those things?
[00:36:37] Douglas Wilson: Questions and they’re all going to right to the heart. It’s actually helping me think through some things. So here we are Christ church and Trinity reformed our sister church here in Moscow. Um, one thing we have in common with all the other churches is that our people have jobs. Okay. But nobody’s yelling about the Nazareen church or the free church or the nondenominational churches, even though their people have jobs.
[00:37:04] So our people have jobs or people have jobs w you know how we’re supposed to live here without a job, but there’s so having said that there is something unique about our, our people in this regard. If, if, if we didn’t have the mentality we, we have, and there was a big factory outside of town and all our, all our people had jobs at the factory, along with the people from the other churches had jobs in the factory.
[00:37:33] Nobody would nobody notice anything? There wouldn’t be anything different. The thing that’s different is summed up in the word entrepreneur. So, um, our people, our people are interested in starting businesses. They’re interested in planting businesses. They’re interested in providing jobs for other people.
[00:37:53] Um, so we have basically a lot of aggressiveness when it comes to, um, Hey, I could start this. I can start a restaurant or I can start a publishing company or I could start, you know, we have a lot of aggressive people, um, planting things, starting them, renting spaces, um, writing code, doing these things. And as is the case in any entrepreneurial, um, climate, there are people who shoot, shoot the moon and then.
[00:38:31] There are people who go for it and you don’t have a hundred percent success. But entrepreneurship and that this kind of economic development depends upon people willing to risk. And one of the things I’ve taught for many years, and, and I think this has been internalized, um, in our, in our culture, in our community.
[00:38:53] I’ve said when the first pioneers got here to Idaho, there were no. Um,
[00:39:02] when the first settlers got here, there were no jobs. Nope. Nobody was hiring
[00:39:10] there wasn’t anybody. There was, there was a lot of work. But no jobs. And so when, when people think if you’ve got a Christian community where everybody thinks exclusively in terms of finding a job, that means they’re not thinking, I don’t believe they’re thinking, getting the way, the same sort of thing. I think the states ought to be taught and instructed to think in terms of work, not in terms of jobs.
[00:39:40] Work. If you have Christians pursuing work, what that’s going to do is going to create jobs. If you have, if you have people coming in, looking for a job, then that’s the mentality ultimately of a slave. Okay. And so what I’ve wanted is to inculcate the mentality of a free man, what work, what work means to you?
[00:40:06] Alright, you, you arrive, you, you look around and you see a pasture that needs to be, uh, have some cows in it. You see some trees that need to be cleared. So a house going to be built, you see work. And so when you arrive, you see work and if you set yourself to that work, good things follow that’s really good.
[00:40:29] Bo Hutches: You know, just kind of looking at things from the outside, it seems like, you know, you, as the lead pastor are very entrepreneurial and have that virtue of risk in your own life, you know, with, with your books and with your blog and with, you know, the school and the publishing house and stuff like that. So I think it, you know, for us listening in who are in the ministry, Trying to replicate that in our own lives, I think can be a really powerful thing to our congregation.
[00:40:52] You know, if, if we’re going to preach entrepreneurialship and we’re not doing those things, I mean, it seems like it’s only going to go so far. So it seems like viewing your life in ministry. You’ve embraced those things personally, and that’s been a big factor too, you know, the culture of the church. So, um, yeah, all those things are really good.
[00:41:09] Douglas Wilson: There was a businessman, I forgotten his name. Um, one of my favorite. He said nothing was ever accomplished by reasonable man.
[00:41:22] Jared Sparks: Amen. Amen. That’s good stuff. Well, I would love for your thoughts on the Aaron Renn article before we wrap up, uh, you’re friends with him, I know. And an avid reader. And so I would love to know what you thought of the article and the assessment that the assessments that he made.
[00:41:36] Um, can you remember back to when that was written and what your initial thoughts were about that article?
[00:41:42] Douglas Wilson: Doug? Yeah. My initial thoughts were, I was pretty impressed at how much. Uh, an outsider like Gran was able to grasp, you know, and because he was an outsider, I think, and this may be fuzzy. I think there might’ve been a detail or something here and there.
[00:42:01] That was not right. But I think he grasped the essential thing that was going on the essential spirit of the thing. And I have, sorry, I can’t remember this, but there was something that he saw that I hadn’t. It was, it was like, oh, oh, okay. It’s like a, a visitor to your home pointing out the picture on your wall.
[00:42:25] Uh, what the pictures on your wall have in common and you didn’t know that. Um, so I thought his article was very insightful, uh, to the point. Um, it was very grateful for
[00:42:39] Jared Sparks: awesome. Now, if we embrace some of these principles and things, You had been talking about and see God continue to work in our city. I think we can all expect that our city in turn is going to love us and care for us and treat us very kindly at all times.
[00:42:52] Correct.
[00:42:54] Douglas Wilson: You don’t read the most popular person ever. I’m also fond of saying that. No. Has ever been accomplished to the polite background sound of golf applause.
[00:43:10] You’re going to be called every name in the book and, and you just have to be willing for that. That’s that’s the price of doing business. Yeah. Amen.
[00:43:20] Jared Sparks: Well, we appreciate your time. Thanks so much. Thanks for doing what you’re doing and answering the call of God on your life and keep pressing on. You got a lot of years ahead of you.
[00:43:29] We’re excited to keep learning from you. So Doug Wilson, thanks so much for coming on the show today.
[00:43:33] Douglas Wilson: I really appreciate it. And Jared, my hand with you. All right, well,
[00:43:36] Jared Sparks: fellas, thanks a lot. And uh, everybody listening in, thanks so much, make sure and like share, subscribe, do all the things you’re supposed to do.
[00:43:44] Leave a rating and review, and we hope that you will keep coming back. Have a great day.
[00:43:52] Manly Voice:
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