Developing as a Servant — Frank Reed

Well before Anabaptist Perspectives existed, I worked with Sharon Mennonite Bible Institute to record two classes taught there by Frank Reed called Developing the Servant and Servanthood That Enriches. These were released back in 2014 on DVD, but didn't really see wider release since then.

Recently, we've collaborated with SMBI to get this old footage and remaster it. Despite the footage being pretty old and having to remaster all the audio and sift through a lot of old files, we believe the quality of content that Frank Reed shares in these two courses will offer significant value to our audience. So we are very excited to say that this project is now live. This course by Frank Reed has its own dedicated YouTube and podcast feed and will also be freely available on our website. The first three lectures are already up, and there will be new releases each week. We are releasing the first lecture of this new course here on our main podcast feed, but if you want future releases, you should subscribe to our new channels, which are linked down below.

Thanks again for your support of Anabaptist Perspectives, and now on to the first lecture of this series by Frank Reed.

The materials in this class are adapted from many sources. It's not possible to credit every source. I did go to college. I did study psychology. I don't have a degree in psychology. I took a lot of electives in that area. I also took some courses in Christian counseling. So that's basically my academic background for this. As we study this, and by the way, I know some of you have studied, and so I'm not trying to replace the things you've learned, but I'm trying to present a biblical approach to the subject of understanding human life. As we study this, think of it as pieces of a puzzle. As we study different aspects of the class, just think about it like you're putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

Anybody put together jigsaw puzzles? Every Christmas, our family puts together a jigsaw puzzle. I can't tolerate it myself because I can sit there for 20 minutes talking to people, but all those pieces don't look like anything to me. But when I do this, I think I can make some sense out of it. So think of it as pieces of a puzzle coming together, and eventually you start seeing a picture, right? And so hopefully that will happen in this class, that we'll start seeing a picture of what's happening, what's happening in our own lives, what's happening in the lives of people we live with.

So this class will attempt to create a meaningful collage of lessons that will emerge as a biblical approach to understanding human life. That's the goal of the class. We recognize that humans are complex. That's one of the first things we're going to talk about. You are complex. Anybody feel complex? Okay. Anybody feel complicated? That may not be a big surprise. Okay. So the first thing we learn, and it's always the way out. If there's a question we can't answer, we just say, "Well, humans are complex," so we just stop with that one. We are complex people. That's the way God made us. And so no class can really be a total and comprehensive treatment of this subject.

The class is not professional psychology. It's an attempt to bring Bible answers to the daily life of God's people. That's the idea of what we're doing. Okay. And last evening, you heard Val and Cliff talk about irritations. Life has many irritations. What we don't want to do is we don't want to become those irritations to other people, all right? So hopefully in this class, we can learn how maybe to not do that. Maybe learn how to deal with people who are irritating us, okay? Learn to understand what's going on in your heart and your life and somebody else's heart and life so we won't become those people. And the truth is, there's no way to escape it, especially if you get married.

You'll live with somebody who irritates you, probably. Okay. On Sunday morning, I was teaching a young married class.

Just as an introduction, I said, "Well, I'm an old man. I've been married 45 years. Most of you are just married for weeks or months or a couple of years." And all of a sudden, they just had questions came rolling out of the class, okay?

And I discovered they have some irritations between each other. And so we started talking about those kinds of things. So we want to realize that life can be a joy, okay? And we'll talk about some of those things as we go along.

We're not afraid of terms like counseling or psychology. I know that some classes, some people think the word counseling is a bad word. Well, we'll talk about that. You'll hear me use that term. It's not going to mean secular counseling when I say that, and we'll try and explain some of those terms. So I'm not afraid of the word psychology either.

Psychology, the Greek word psyche. Anybody, any Greek students here? I can pull on when I need some. Okay. Greek. Okay. Good. Psyche. The word psyche means soul. It's a Greek word for soul. It's pronounced psyche usually in Greek.

So who made your soul, would you guess? God made your soul, okay? And if He wrote this book, do you think it has anything to say about your soul? So this should be the best book on psychology. It's not really a psychology book, but God knows something about you, okay? And so psychology is not a bad thing. So we want to be careful we don't just throw terms out because we don't like them. Useful terms must be kept in context. Next paragraph. Every class is an uneven class. This is an uneven class. When I look out over a group of people and I do a fair amount of speaking here and there, what I discover is the group of people is what I call uneven.

By uneven, even though most of you have been raised in similar types of homes, you're still uneven. As we talk about some subjects, some of you are going to say, in your mind, you're going to say, "Why are we talking about this? Is this a problem?" And some of you are going to say, "Oh my, that's exactly what's going on inside of me." So what I'm saying by uneven is that there are things that are going to impact you dramatically, and the person beside you may be wondering why we're even talking about this. It's not an issue. In my own life, in my children's lives, four of my five children have been students here over the years.

They're all married now and have their families. But as my girls went to Bible school and my oldest daughter went to college, and she wanted to get a doctor's degree, so she took a different track than the rest of us. But as they got out into the world, so to speak, even the world of SMBI, and they came back home and they said, "Dad, we just can't believe how many girls have been abused." Okay. I mean, it's just a shocking statistic how much pain there is in so many people's lives. They just can't believe it. Because in our home, there was nothing like that, right?

I'm sort of a heavy-handed guardian, okay? So I was very careful where my daughters went and what they did and who they spent time with and so on. Maybe a little too careful sometimes, but I don't regret that, you know, when they get out and discover how much pain there was out there. So it's what I'm saying, uneven. That's very uneven. When one person says, "I have no idea what you're talking about," another person says, "That's me." Okay. So when we talk about an uneven class, that's what we're talking about.

Some of you will wonder why we're speaking about some of the subjects. Some of you will be seriously impacted. Take the information and use it for your own use and keep it filed to help other people may benefit from it. So if we're talking about something and you say, "I don't know anything about that. I've never experienced anything like that," just file it away, okay? Don't tune it out. File it away and say, "Hmm, maybe someday I'll need that," okay? And so if you can do that, it may be useful to you. So there are two classes. This one's called Developing a Servant. This one's intended to help you develop into a stronger Christian person and become a better servant for God.

The second class is in fourth term. And by the way, how many of you will be here fourth term? Anybody? Okay. How many not here fourth term? A couple of people will not be here fourth term. All right. I would say of the two classes, this one's most important. So you'll be getting most important information. Servanthood That Enriches is in fourth term. It's intended to help you bless and teach other people. What Servanthood That Enriches is intended to do is take the content of this class and make it useful so you can use it in working with other people. That's the idea.

So we realize we're created by God to fulfill His purposes for His kingdom. Our goal is to be effective and obedient servants of the King. So this is the idea of being a servant. All right. You should have another paper in front of you. This one should be called Developing a Servant: Understanding Human Behavior. Let's take a look at that. It's just being introduction. Then we'll hopefully today get to go over your syllabus and see what's expected of you. Human life is a wonderful gift from God. It's God's breath of life that makes you a living soul.

The value of human life, what is it? Well, the value is that Jesus died for you. The extent of human life, how long will you live? Well, some of you, part of you will live forever. That's pretty important.

So the value of your life, what is the value of your life? It must be pretty high if Jesus was willing to die for you. And if you'd have been the only person here, He would have done that, okay?

And you're going to live forever somewhere. So let's talk about some of the goals. What is our life all about? To bring honor and glory to God and worship Him forever. We should be worshiping Him here, today, in this life, but also we think in terms of worshiping God forever. And just that fact can put into perspective what goes on in your life. Hasn't been all you want it to be?

Might not be everything you want it to be, but what is the purpose of your life? To live in harmony and communion with yourself, with others, and with God. So do you have a lot of internal conflict? Do you have a lot of cognitive dissonance? I won't use a lot of big words here, but cognitive dissonance is the idea. Dissonance is the opposite of harmony, right?

Harmony, if somebody hits a wrong note on a piano, do you ever hear that happen? That's called dissonance, okay? How does that make you feel? Something's wrong, right? Well, what about when you get wrong notes hitting up here?

The information comes in, doesn't match, right? This is coming in here and this is coming in here. That's called dissonance. And you get dissonance in your mind. It's like somebody hitting a wrong note on a piano and something's a little bit wrong. So we want to learn to live in harmony with ourselves so we can take the concepts and harmonize them, not only with ourselves, but with others. You probably have parents.

You probably have siblings. You probably have dormies, okay? All kinds of people in your life. And can you live in harmony and communion with those people and with God, of course, indeed? To overcome sin and sinful tendencies, you know, sin is out there. The devil's out there to destroy us. Laws and I are having some struggles lately with all kinds of difficulties. And you know, one night we just said, "You know what? This is the devil trying to destroy us." That's what it is. And he tries to use sin to destroy your life. And he will. Your sin, somebody else's sin, sin that gets entrenched in your life, sins that come against you. Just got an email this morning from a good friend.

He was writing out some Bible verses and he said these things have impacted him. And there's a theme that goes through there because some people have been saying very unkind things about him because he's a godly man and people, some people don't like him.

And so, you know, we have to learn to overcome that sin. The sin that's in your own heart, sinful tendencies that are there, the world that's constantly trying to bombard you with bad things, okay? We need to overcome those things. To overcome injuries and wounds of soul and spirit by God's power and spirit. You know, we all have, we all have injuries. I suspect, anybody here have a scar on their body somewhere? Oh, yes. We all have scars, okay? Some are big, nasty ones and some of them are just little tiny ones.

Some of you have had, probably had serious physical injuries, maybe car accidents or maybe cancer or something of that sort. On the other hand, some of you may just have had a scar from stubbing your toe or cutting your hand with a knife, okay? Those things are very different.

Some of you have had very serious emotional injuries. Some of you have only slight emotional injuries. So you're very different. But we need to understand that God is here to bring healing to those things. Can we overcome those injuries? Can we overcome the wounds? The wounds, not just to our physical body, which tends to heal itself, but also to our soul. And our soul, as we'll talk about sometime later, is our mind, our will, and emotion, okay? This is the way we're going to define it for this class. You have a body.

You have a soul, which is your mind, will, and emotion. And you also have a spirit. Or I usually say you are a spirit because it's your spirit that's going to live on and on and on into eternity. So what we need healing for our bodies, we need healing for our minds, for our will, for our emotion. And sometimes those sins and pains get so entrenched in our lives, we get almost impossible to get rid of, okay? But God can do it and He will. To develop the gifts and talents God's given you, everyone in here has gifts. Everyone in here has talents. You might not think yours are as great as somebody else's, but everybody has them.

God's given them to you and He wants you to use them. We want to develop those. To be a member of the body of Christ on earth, in other words, to be part of the church, you're a useful member of the church. Whatever God's given you as a gift needs to be used and hopefully is being used carefully and consistently. To edify other human beings. Edify is the word it means to build up. So your life should be a life that builds up other human beings, the people around you, dormies for the next six weeks or 12 weeks or however many weeks you've been here, will be here. The siblings, if you're dating, your mom and dad, your grandparents, all the people in your life, are you building those people up?

You know, what are you using in your life to bring edifying to those people? Edify, let's see, the German word is aufbauen, I think, okay? And the Greek word is oikodomaio, I think, where are my Greek scholars here?

Aufbauen means to build up. Oikodomaio means to build a house, okay? And so to edify somebody, you're constructing good things in that person's life. To marry and live in harmony with a spouse as a type of Christ in church, if God brings that to your life, you don't have to do that, of course.

To procreate life in a godly marriage, to raise children, to fear God and live productive lives. You were raised in a home. Maybe it was a great home. Maybe it was not so great, you know, but you can create a home that's a good home regardless of what kind of home from which you have come.

To proclaim the good news of redemption in the Lord Jesus Christ. I'll teach it. I miss the one to raise children, to fear God and live productive lives. It's really important. And I think not in this class, but in another class I teach here, I think it's called Society. I talk about the way, well, let's see, we're expecting a baby to be born in our family maybe today, a grandchild. And anybody have any little babies recently born into their close kin?

And it's little tiny people, right? They're all there, but they're less. And I think about that. Every time I see one of these little babies, I think, and then I think about all the people I've had to counsel and I think, now wait a minute, how did they get from that charming little innocent life to this person who's just despairing of life? Well, that's our job, see?

Our job is to take that little bundle of life that God gives us and take care of it and make sure that little bundle of life doesn't get hurt. Can't avoid all the hurts. They're going to fall off their bike and all that kind of stuff. But try to make sure that the sin does not come in there and impact their lives, okay? So think seriously about that, you know. Was your life cared for? Did somebody care for your life? Did somebody care for your heart? Or did they not? And what about you as you look at your little nieces and nephews? Are you going to be able to care for those hearts?

To make sure, you know. As I said, I was a pretty tough guardian for my children. And sometimes they'd ask to go someplace and I'd say, "Dell, I'm not going to do that." And they didn't always understand that. Hopefully they do now.

But we need to protect. We really do need to protect. And when we don't protect, those damage gets in there. To raise children to fear God and live productive lives. To proclaim the good news of redemption in the Lord Jesus Christ. And you know, part of raising children, I'm still back on this one. Part of raising children to be healthy people is you being a healthy person. If you're a healthy person emotionally, then probably you can help your little siblings or your little cousins or whoever it is, nieces and nephews, to go up to be healthy people. And if God provides you with marriage and provides you with children, you can probably guide them to be healthy people if you're healthy.

You know, my father was an emotionally unhealthy man. He was strong in many areas, but he was very emotionally unhealthy. And so I've had struggles to overcome those things that he put in my life. My parents did not get along very well.

So that causes a lot of cognitive dissonance, okay? That causes ideas that come into a little boy's mind that don't make any sense. And when you're 10, you can't figure it out. When you get to be 15 and 17 and 19 and 24, you start trying to figure, you know, what was, what's this all about, you know? So part of my goal in teaching classes like this is that the healthier you can be, the healthier next generation will be.

The healthier you'll be able to bring, the more health you'll be able to bring to the next generation. So to have a godly attitude toward material things, you know, there's a reason why you're here. Maybe it's because you're independently wealthy and you don't need to be home farming in the cold or wherever you could be. Or maybe it's because you've saved your money and came here and you've put the material things behind you. I've had a struggle doing that. I was awake pretty much last night, you know, with these kinds of temperatures and this kind of wind, you know, I've got things at home that are at risk, okay? And my sons are home. And I sent my one son an email at 11:30 or 11:45, just because of some things I'm concerned about, you know, are the water pipes okay?

You know, we think they're okay, but when it's four below zero and I looked on the weather report and it said gusts to 42 miles an hour, you know, four below zero and 42 miles an hour wind, that's going to challenge some things we've got at home, okay?

So, you know, it's been a little bit of a challenge for me to be here. And I know I need to be. It's a decision I've made. It's a decision I made a long time ago to spend time teaching instead of just buying more farms, you know. And so we want a right attitude toward material things, whatever they are, whatever God's given you, you need a right attitude toward them. If He's blessed you with six farms or 60 or whatever, you know, maybe that's what He wants you to do.

So let's have a right attitude toward material things so we're not just constantly building, okay? Be angry at sin and confront evil, you know? That's one thing I saw in my father. Even though he was an unhealthy man emotionally in many ways, he was a man who was angry at sin. If somebody did something wrong, his fist was on the table. I mean, he was really angry. And I think that he built that into me, you know, to be angry at sin. We really need to be angry at sin because sin is what destroys you. When Jesus came to the grave of Lazarus, remember what He did?

He cries out. Why? And He weeps. I think He was angry. He came to defeat sin. He came here to defeat death. And there's death right in front of Him. And He was God. I mean, sure, He could have just said, "Okay, Lazarus, wake up. Everybody wake up." He could have done that. But He knew that you would have to face difficulties. And we see the anger that He has toward sin and wrong. And so we need to have that too.

Too many times, and yeah, I'm making this into a lesson that I didn't intend to, but the Catholic Church has been dealing with sin for so long. And it's not just the Catholic Church, it's the Mennonite Church too, by the way, abuse of girls and children.

And as they've been investigating the Catholic Church, one of the things they've been saying is we cannot find anger. They talk to the bishops, they talk to the priests, and they say, "Well, we just do the best we can." And the people who are investigating this are saying, "Where's the anger? Why didn't you get that priest and get him out of the church?"

But they didn't. They just took him from one diocese and put him to another diocese so he could continue his sin and hurt more people, okay? Where was the anger? I know in our churches we're not supposed to be angry, right?

Anger is bad. Anger, no, it's not. Anger is not bad. Anger at the right things is God, okay? God is angry with the wicked every day, we're told in the Bible. Okay. I don't want to get too preachy here, but you know, there's some things that are pretty important. So to have a consistent behavior in private and public life.

Wow.

You know what hypocrisy is all about? People have one behavior in public life, but a different behavior in private life, you know? I mean, I've heard it here at this school. You know, my dad is this preacher man, but you know, he treats me terribly, okay?

How do you deal with that? How do you? Well, this is something we don't want to perpetuate. You know, we want your behavior to be consistent, public life, private life, consistent. To have one's inner self and outer self be consistent with each other, we talked about that a little bit. Have an absence of inner conflict. You know, if there's conflict inside of you, we want to talk about how to get rid of that. To have total integrity in all attitudes and dealings. Are you completely, are you a person of complete integrity?

Any woodworkers in here? Anybody do any woodworking? Yeah, okay. So tell me, Ben, is this, this is a wallet, right? Is it a solid wallet?

It's actually for Micah over top of probably flake board, right? So is this, is this thing a piece of integrity? No, as we're describing integrity, it's not. If we took a saw and cut right across the corner here, we wouldn't get wallet dust out all the way. We'd be getting flake board, right?

So what's your life? Is your life pretty because it's covered with nice wallet for Micah? Pretty important, isn't it? You know, something I never thought I would see. I never thought I would see or hear young people like you tell me they don't want to hear what the Bible says. But the last five years, I've been hearing more of that. I'm talking to somebody, they need some help. I say, "Well, the Bible says," and they'll interrupt me and say, "I don't want to hear what the Bible says."

It's happened to me in this school building. Not this year yet, but only got here yesterday. But I say, "Well, what do you want to hear?" And they'll point their finger at me and say, "I want to see you live this."

You know what I'm talking about? You know, we cannot afford a lack of integrity. Can't afford it. That doesn't mean you always have to put on your beautiful face because there's something wrong inside of you. But we all have problems. We all have issues. But at the same time, you've got to make sure that your life is through and through godly.

It's so important. Because if you don't, you're going to have trouble convincing your children, God gives you children, that you really are a real person. To display maturity in all areas of life. Are you a mature person?

If four people in your dorm and there's one shower or one bathroom and, you know, you take 45 minutes and the other three have to divide the next 15 minutes, right? Does that sound like a good dorm you used to be with or something? Okay, I'll let you figure that out. Does that sound like maturity? Might not be, okay?

To have an humble, healthy, godly self-perception. What do you think of yourself? If I were to ask you, "What do you think of yourself?" What would it be? We'll talk about that. Do you have a godly self-perception? Is it humble? Is it healthy?

So are you trash? Anybody in here trash? Anybody in here God's answer to all the problems in the world? Those are kind of the extremes, okay? But right in the middle, God made you who you are. And He made you to do what He wants you to do. He gave you gifts. He put you someplace. He put you in His room today.

And me. So I guess we're supposed to be here together. So we need to have a healthy, godly self-perception. Very, very important. To deal with stress and change in a God-honoring manner. Change is all the time. Stress is all the time. Can we deal with that? To have respect for all of God's creation, the people, the animals, the trees, everything to allow others to easily enter one's life. I'm going to be talking about that. You know, what kind of boundaries? Your life needs boundaries. That'll be a subject we talk about. If you make the boundaries too tight, nobody can get in.

If you make the boundaries too loose, anybody can just do whatever they want to. But you need healthy boundaries that control some things in your life, okay? To live a life of virtue, of goodness. To have an attitude of worship in all areas of life. To have the fruit of the Spirit displayed in life at all times.

To develop spiritual discernment. Can you see something and say, "This is godly" or "This is not"? To develop the ability to stand alone. To develop an internal spiritual gyroscope or plumb line. Let me say a little bit about the one about standing alone. How many of you like to stand alone?

Make sure I got everybody here. It's sort of uncomfortable, right? It's nice to stand with a group. Maybe we'll get time to talk about the ash experiment, okay? Where people were placed in situations to find out if they could stand alone or if they cannot do that. My father was a man who, in spite of all of his imperfections and troubles, and he was a troubled man, but he would stand alone. I believe he would, no matter what.

The whole world could be wrong and he wouldn't go that way, you know? So we need to learn to stand alone. It doesn't matter who is pushing us in a wrong direction. We're not going to do that. To develop spiritual discernment. To develop the ability to stand alone. To develop an internal spiritual gyroscope, plumb line, whatever you want to call it, inside of you, is there something that is guiding you that's always the rule by which you're going to live? To use words wisely.

Do you use words wisely? Are you considerate with your words? Speak kind words. Why, you know, why would we need a class like this? Why all the counseling? I don't know how many Mennonite counseling centers are out there. When I was a young boy in the 1950s, one counseling center started called Philhaven. Anybody here at Philhaven in Pennsylvania? Okay. I think that might have been the first Mennonite counseling center. I'm not quite sure. And since then, they're just, especially in the last 15 years, they've just increased and increased and increased. And so they're just everywhere. And so the question is, you know, what's going on that would, why would that happen? Reasons for emotional and spiritual stress in modern society.

One of the big things is the loss of structure. Loss of structure. Loss of external structure. Life has gotten more complicated. External structure has gone away. I went to public school and the public school teachers typically had paddles hanging right there on the end of the chalkboard. And they were not idle threats. They were to be used. I witnessed, didn't have a lot of experience with them, but you know, I witnessed them being used. They were used, okay? That's an external structure. Are those paddles still there in public schools? No. No, okay?

Unless a teacher wants to go to prison, you know, probably they're not going to do that. So that external structure is gone. External structure is like the policeman on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. External structure is like a home with a father and a mother in a healthy situation. That's external structure. That's outside of you. How much of that exists today? How much, how many intact homes are there today? Even in the Mennonite brethren world, we're losing that, okay? And when you don't have the external structure, it requires internal structure.

All of the stress is on the internal structure. And the question is, how do you develop internal structure? You mostly develop internal structure by having external structure that develops the internal structure. External discipline develops internal discipline. When you don't have external discipline to develop internal discipline, there's no discipline.

You following what I'm saying? We'll talk about some really simplistic things here, but sometimes you have to listen a little closely because, you know, you don't want to miss some of these concepts. What's going on here is a lack of external discipline means you've got to have it inside of you. If it's not in there, it's not anywhere.

And so all kinds of crazy things are happening. This requires more structure for the individual, which means there's more stress on you.

I mean, for example, most of you have laptops. Most of you have cell phones, maybe iPhones. That takes a fair amount of internal structure, you know that? That takes quite a bit of internal discipline. I mean, what kinds of things can you see on your laptop? What kinds of things can you see and do on your iPhone?

And is, am I going to be standing there watching you? Is your dad going to be standing there? Is the bishop going to be standing there? Probably not. Then where will the discipline be? If it's not inside of you, it's nowhere.

It puts a lot of stress on you, okay? If that has not, if that's been developed into you by a healthy church, by a healthy family, by healthy contacts, you probably can survive it all right. If it hasn't, that structure inside of you is going to be maxed out, okay? And that's what we're seeing. So why do we need classes like this? Why do we need to talk about the things we're talking about? So we cannot depend so much on a society to support us because the world has found ways of getting around us, okay? You know, one of the illustrations I use sometimes is that when I was a boy, we were told, "Now don't you go to the movies," okay?

So if you were a good little boy, you did not go to the movies. Well, that rule is still in the books many places. Is that still a good rule? What do you think? Good rule or bad rule? Good?

Bad. Don't know. Okay. Does that rule still work? That's the question. Well, when you can take your laptop in your dorm room or anywhere else in the world and do whatever you want to do and you didn't go to the movies, right? You can check off the "I did not go to the movies" box. Boom.

But you can see any wicked thing this world has to offer. So we're talking about a stressful life, okay? Really. Okay, what is it that's going to say, what's going to prevent you from taking your mouse and clicking on something that looks pretty exciting?

Going to click or no? How will you decide? Where will the energy, what will be the source of the energy to know you're going to do this or not do it? Okay, let's talk about some specific things. Lack of a servanthood concept. Instead of thinking of yourself as a servant, think of ourselves as, "Oh well, life's pretty tough. I guess it'd be fun to go do something silly or bad." Lack of responsibility for self and others. You know, will it impact your life if I do something wicked and sinful?

I can argue that it won't, but the truth is it will. It really will, okay? Will it impact my life if you do something wicked and sinful? Well, you can, we argue that it won't, but the truth is it will. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. Lack of teaching and application of biblical principles.

The level of teaching we're getting in many places is not as strong as it used to be. Lack of eternal perspective. We tend to think about the focus of here and now. I mean, I call it the McDonald's, McDonald's syndrome, right? You drive up to the first window and you will, or supersize number six, right? Okay, next window, they take your money. Next window, you get your bag of stuff and you're out of there, right? How long did that take?

Five minutes. Five minutes? If there's not a line. If there's no line? Yeah, maybe a lot less than that, okay? And we want everything right now, you know? It's lack of community. Our communities are stressed and we don't think so much in terms of community. We desperately need community. We need each other. You need the people in your church and they need you.

Whether you think so or whether you don't, and all these church struggles we've had. I also teach Mennonite history. And if you look at the history of the Mennonite church and the brethren, by the way, from 1950, before 1950, things pretty much stayed intact. Not completely, but pretty much intact. Since 1950, it literally looks like an explosion in a wire factory. I mean, there's just lines going everywhere.

You know, this church doesn't suit you? Start another one, okay? Lack of that community. Lack of training in childhood. Lack of discipline in childhood. Children are allowed to do things they really should not be allowed to do. Make decisions they should not have to make. For example, parents will say, "You want to wear your blue socks or you want to wear your yellow socks today?" Well, you know, at my house, you wore the socks I put on you, okay? When you were five years old. You know, but you know, do you want peas or carrots, you know?

You know, we put the carrots on your plate and you ate the carrots, right? And the peas. And if you didn't like them, you got another spoonful. So you learn not to complain. So you find out I'm a pretty tough guy when it comes to discipline.

But what I'm seeing is the parents are asking these little children in the high chairs to make decisions they're not equipped to make. And then when a child gets to be 10 and 12 and 14, the parents are trying to figure out what's going wrong. Now they're trying to say, "You better eat your carrots." And when they were three, they said, "Do you want carrots or not?" Do you understand the problem here? This is a serious problem. It doesn't work. It's not working.

Lack of role models for adulthood. Too many men are passive. Too many women are aggressive, which produces angry children. And that's where I encountered a problem. So I've been teaching youth for a long time before you were born.

And more and more, I'm running into people your age who are underneath everything, they're angry. And sometimes they don't know they're angry. We'll talk about that too. Educational processes, rationalism and relativism. Modern psychology and counseling is mostly non-directive and humanistic. Well, if that's what you think you ought to do, then why don't you just go ahead and do that? Modern beliefs like postmodernism, existentialism, individualism, entitlement and rights, horizontal integration of society. When you're here at Bible school, you're pretty much horizontal integration. In other words, the same age group across the board. I'm one of the exceptions, of course, since I'm a little older than you are. The deans are supposed to be exceptions, okay? It's the staff supposed to be.

When you get horizontal integration, which is what we get in public school, put all the first graders together and put all the second graders together. I went to public school. There were 300 people in my class. Not in my school, but in my class. There were nine sections of seventh grade and nine sections of... That's horizontal integration. There we were, a whole wing of the school, same age. Well, what's to determine the control of the class? Of course, it's going to be the teacher. God's plan is for vertical integration. We have the little babies, we have the older children, we have mom and dad, we have the aunts and uncles and the grandpas and grandmas, okay?

So vertical integration is God's plan. Horizontal integration is man's mistake. So here you're horizontally integrated and you have to decide if you're going to do the things everybody else does or etc. Expectations, influence of media, the virtual reality, the movies.

I guess I'll start today. One of my hobby horses is telling you all not to watch movies. They will destroy you. They are destroying the Anabaptist community. They're destroying the young people. And even in a school like this, most of the young people are watching movies. Everything Hollywood produces, we're going to go see.

Or get it on a DVD or something like that, you know? It's desensitizing you to violence, desensitizing you to immorality, desensitizing you to wicked language, okay? And you know it. I don't have to tell you. You cannot desensitize yourself to that in your heart and think you can live a godly life and think that you can go ahead and live a life that's going to be in harmony with God and your family for whatever, you know, duration of your life. I've lived long enough and taught long enough. So I've seen some students who, you know, were watching movies back in the 60s and 70s and I've now been able to watch their lives and watch their children grow up.

And sometimes I think, you know, I know what that girl was doing when she was 16. I know what she was watching. I know what that young man was doing when he was 20, what he was watching, where he was going, okay?

And you can't just think those things are not going to impact your lives. So two things to stay away from: movies, professional sports.

I'm just totally opposed to those things. And so please, these are why we're having some of this emotional stress. Double-mindedness, think we can have life both ways. We can do sin and do good at the same time. We can have it both ways. It's not going to work. Compartmentalization of life, we'll talk about that sometime later. But we put life in compartments so that, well, in this, I'll be a good boy at Bible school, but, you know, on the weekends or at Starbucks or whatever, you know, I'll do something different.

Doesn't work. Doesn't work. Fractured hearts, that's what we're getting. People whose hearts are broken apart, and so they're trying to make some kind of sense out of life while they're trying to have one foot in the Christian camp and one foot experiencing things of the world. All right, those are reasons for emotional and spiritual stress in the modern society. And as I've said before, I'm not about to say that's the whole answer or those are all the things that are going on, but there's certainly some of the things that will bring a challenge to you. All right, if you have your syllabus, let's take a look at what's going to happen.

Course objectives to become individuals who see themselves as servants of God. We've talked about these things. I guess I won't go over them. Course requirements that attend all classes. There are some exceptions, which the school has probably told you about last evening. Read the textbooks.

You have two textbooks. One is The Knowledge of the Holy. The other one is Safe People, and I see it on some of your desks here. Make sure you get a copy of that. The way The Knowledge of the Holy works is you need to have a copy of this or read it from somewhere.

We will discuss this book in class. So tomorrow morning, come prepared to have read and ready to discuss chapter one in Tozer's book, Why We Must Think Rightly About God. It is one, two, three, four pages long. Very easy reading, very straightforward, simple.

And I typically don't get much involved in this discussion. I typically say, "Okay, good morning. Let's talk about Tozer. What did you learn?" Okay? Why do we do this? We do this because when we study a class like Developing a Servant or Counseling, we can get very ingrown, okay? We can come here and just think about me all the time. And we can go back to our dorm room and think about me all the time, okay? And we don't want that.

This class is not just about you. This class is about God. Tozer is straightforward, concise. I mean, the other thing is we could read a theology, which would be this many books, you know? Tozer has put this in some pretty concise language. So we're going to read a chapter a day. It'll take us all the way through the term. So tomorrow's chapter one. Next day's chapter two. The next day's chapter three. It's very straightforward and simple. So, and I say, "What are your thoughts?" And I'm going to expect you to not waste time by sitting here saying nothing, but saying, "Okay, here's what I learned from Tozer."

If that doesn't work, probably what I'll do is start assigning people. Well, it's likely that I will because some days it works good and some days it works better, okay? All right, so that's the purpose of Tozer. The purpose of Safe People is for you to read a book and write a book report on it. So read textbooks.