Christian Education in an Urban or Church Planting Venture - Dwight Nisly | CGS 2021

Well, it's good to be here with you, and we have a variety of ages here, but I do see a number of younger people here, and grateful for that. But I'm also grateful that there are some older people here; I might feel a little insecure if it was only young people here. Welcome to all of you.

I would like to just begin this session by telling you that addressing educational considerations and options for church planting, especially urban ones, would seem like a very unlikely thing for me to address.

I was a rural Kansas farm boy and loved animals, loved—I wonder if maybe we should—are the two mics too close together? See whether this would help us out a little. I loved animals. I loved nature and considered myself a farm boy. So thinking of ever in my life being in the city just didn't even occur to me. I remember as a third grader we had from our school teacher this little sheet where we were supposed to dream about what we would be when we grow up. Well, my dream at that point would be that I'd be a cowboy when I grow up.

I think most of my students in Brooklyn, New York, could hardly imagine me as a cowboy today. But that was my perception as a little child.

My initial experiences in school were not so easy. And in fact, I would have perceived myself as basically an academic failure as a young child. I remember as my first year of school felt like the longest year of my entire life, which of course was only seven years at that point.

But it seemed almost like an eternity. It just went on and on and on. It was not an easy experience. It was a very hard experience. I would consider myself a late bloomer in almost every regard, but certainly academically.

And I remember as a third grader reading an autographed book, one of my classmates, and one of my first grade teacher had written in it a poem about all of my classmates. And of course, I knew that would include me. So of course, my eyes quickly went to what she would have to say about me. And to this day, that's the only piece of that entire poem that I can remember. But my line went like this: "And Dwight, who was so slow."

That came from my first teacher. And honestly, it didn't necessarily knock me out because it wasn't a new idea to me. I realized I was slow. I didn't see myself as an academic giant. And that didn't really shock me. It just kind of confirmed in my mind that school was not for me. I remember when I was in the fourth grade that the state of Kansas decided that the Amish could stop school at eighth grade. And I thought, "You know, I will claim my Amish roots and stop my suffering as quickly as possible."

And so that was some of my early journey into academics and education. But when I was in the seventh grade, I had my first male teacher, a godly man, and the first teacher who ever apologized to me. And the thing that he apologized to me about was something that he wouldn't have had to. But it meant the world to me. And school wasn't that I was opposed to the children. I love children. I've always loved children. Children have been just something really special to me from the time I can remember, from as far back as I can think of. But it felt like school brought the cross to everything. It just was the thing that was so difficult.

And suddenly I realized if teaching meant that I could work with children the rest of my life, maybe it was a cross worth bearing. And for the first time, I started thinking about teaching. But then it was quite a little journey. And at one point, I asked, I prayed this question to the Lord. I said, "God, where do you want me to teach?

I've grown up in this community. Do you want me to teach here? Or where do you want me to teach?" It seemed like God responded to that question more clearly than about any prayer I've prayed. It wasn't audible, but it was so distinct.

It went like this: "I've given you many things. I've given you loving parents. I've given you a loving church. And I've given you a loving community. And if you really want to say thanks for that kind of a gift, give that gift to children who don't have it."

Oh, wow. Okay. So my next question was, "So God, where's that?" And I didn't get as clear an answer to that, but the answer that just—I mean, I never could feel at peace with any possibility besides a major inner city or overseas. And from then on, that was just so clearly in my heart what God meant for my life. And it was so powerful that I, from then on, considered nothing else.

Well, that prayer eventually took me to New York City. And I've been there ever since. That was in 1997. And this is 24 years later. And in that period of time, the Lord blessed me with a wonderful wife, three wonderful children. And we have lived there ever since.

Brooklyn, New York, is the home of our children. And I've heard it said that when you go to a new place, the point at which you can really call it home is when you've got children who call it home, when you've been transplanted, especially to something very foreign and very different. And so I would say there's a lot of truth to that. This journey could raise a lot of questions. And honestly, it did in me. It's one thing to—I would consider myself an intense idealist. And it's one thing to live out your ideals as a single.

It's a whole nother thing to live out that ideal as a couple. But it takes it even a step further when God blesses you with children. And then it takes you even a step further when you consider being in that setting that most might consider dangerous and would feel like at a certain point you need to bring your children back into the home community because, well, they need to experience—I guess there's a number of reasons. I won't even explain all of those. But as a father, that weighs heavily on a father's mind. And it feels like an entirely different consideration than being an idealist as a single. And it raises questions, questions such as, how safe is the city?

How wise is it for a single visionary man to ask his new wife to live in a city like New York City for perhaps the rest of their productive life? How advisable is it to raise children in this potentially dangerous setting, especially through their teenage years?

And I do have teenagers in the audience here. And I just felt like maybe at the end of this session, it could be useful for them to answer some of these questions. They might offer it from a more completely child's perspective than as a father I might be able to present it. So at the very end, I might, if it's okay, take the freedom to have them help me out in my presentation today.

And so this morning, as we take a look at how do kingdom followers plant kingdom schools within a church plant? And I would propose that we should increasingly be thinking of church plants being where the majority of people are, the cities. And so I would take that to that level as at least a consideration.

I would just say you might say, "So in talking about this, why would we bring in children?" Well, I would just say that families are probably in a church planting team—families are some of the most powerful parts of a church planting team in presenting the gospel. People may watch your children more than they watch you.

And they may deduct what Christianity means through what they see in your children as much or maybe more than what you might have to say. And so children are an incredibly significant part of a church plant. And so if they are, then how do we nurture them? How do we take care of the educational needs of our children if that's where God has called us to minister?

How do we adequately care for the children that are in our care?

Just earlier this summer, as I was doing a little painting project with some of our children, and it was actually the same day that I got the phone call that my father had died. But we were on the front porch. We're doing stuff together. We often do stuff together.

We usually eat our meals on the front porch together for several reasons. We don't have an air conditioner in our house. So in the summer, it's a lot cooler on the front porch than in the house. But it feels like it's also a place to display to a watching world a family that enjoys being together for meals. That's really become an amazing rarity in our culture. And it opens the door for interactions with people that are walking the streets like eating in our house wouldn't do.

And so we were out there, and a Caribbean man walks by, turns around, and comes back and says, "You know, I've been watching your family ever since they were little babies. And I've been watching the way they play together. I've been watching the kinds of play that they have, so different from how most children in the neighborhood play. And when I walk past your place, I feel at peace. And I've recently discovered that I have leukemia."

And he ended up just talking a little bit about his own life journey. But the thing that shocked me was people are watching beyond what we have any idea. And they notice children. And I could give you another story, but I think I'd better leave that story.

But children are such a critical part of church planting. And if they are, how do we continue that church planting effort in a setting that seems very dangerous in a way that rightly and sufficiently really does protect and care for our children and addresses their academic needs well?

Well, if you're going to start a church plant, there's probably just so many options that are available for education.

There's the option of homeschooling. There's the possibility of developing a church school in that new church plant. In the past, often a boarding school was an option. I'm so thankful that that's increasingly not an option. It feels like there's some really sad stories that come out of the boarding school option. I just personally couldn't do that to my children, I don't think. At least not unless it was a very unique—I don't know. I haven't come up with a scenario bad enough that I would want to do that for my children yet. There may be that exception. I don't know. And then the public school. And in some places around the world, that is the only option that is legally allowed is the public school.

So those are options that—educational options that we can look at if we're developing a church plant and we're thinking how do we academically nurture our children. I think there's economic considerations. If you're living on a shoestring budget, as many missionaries are, the most economical option is public school because it's free.

If you're looking purely at economics, the next most economical, I would say, would be homeschooling. I'd say the church school is the most expensive one.

And so how big a role should economics play in this journey of education for your children? But maybe there's issues even bigger than economics, I suggest there are. Another question to take a look at—and I'm not going to be answering some of this immediately because I want to kind of stir our thoughts as to what's there before we zero in on what might be the best options—what priority should a church school have the first year of a church plant or the second year or the tenth year? For our church plant in Brooklyn, New York, the church school option didn't happen until about the tenth year of the church's existence.

The vision there was that whole families within the church plant team would provide homeschooling for their children to, at the same time you start this big adventure of a church plant, if you have beside it also the huge venture of starting a church school. Those are two pretty huge ventures. And it's pretty hard to give them both the level of focus and development that are needed. And so in my personal journey in Brooklyn, New York, I came at a—ten years after the church plant had started.

And I came not to primarily support the church planter's children, but instead, the church was seeing that as they were reaching out to the community, they had community families that were broken, community families of single parenting. And just the sense, how fair is it to be offering what we are to our children while a single parent isn't able to do that? And the only option that is left is to place them in the public school where faith is already a very difficult thing to nurture and develop. And so there was just a sense that this is not fair to our single parents within our church to not provide that for them. And so for us, the initial target audience was the single parent families within the church.

And I think that is a critical question for us to take a little look at as we consider the schooling options. Who is our target audience? Is it the church plant team? Is it the church? Or is it the community? Or is it all three of those? What is the target audience? But I think a similar question could also be asked, what is your target audience for the church?

Is your target audience for the church your church planting team? Is that the extent of your target audience? Or does your target audience extend to the people you're ministering to in the community? And if that is the case, that it extends to the people in your community, should your school also perhaps extend to that? If it doesn't, I think it's important to ask, why does it in the one case and not in the other? Something to think about at least. An additional question might be, what is or who is your church for?

What is the extent of its purpose? Is it for your team, your church, your community, and your neighborhood?

In considering our target audience for school in a church plant consideration, here are a few questions that I think are at least important to consider. They may not answer every question, but I think they're important to think about. What does it mean to, as Jesus said, suffer the little children to come unto you?

How do you suffer the little children to come unto you if you have a closed door to them on Monday through Friday? What does it mean, as Jesus said, to love your neighbor as yourself?

What does it mean to snuff out the smoldering flax? What about Jesus' words in Matthew when he said, "Inasmuch as ye have not done it to one of the least of these, ye have not done it unto me"?

Children, especially broken children, hold a special place in the heart of God. And think about the passage where Jesus said that it is really serious when you offend a little one. It would be better if there was actually a rope put around your neck and you were thrown into the midst of the sea.

Jesus takes personal offense when we offend a little one.

And then Jesus said, "Inasmuch as you've done it unto the least of these, you've done it unto me." And so who are the least? I think there's a lot of ways in which children could qualify as the least. They might be the least heard. They might be the least able to advance their interests. They might be the least have the least experience.

They have the least options and resources. Both their voice and their abilities are pretty limited.

Jesus also said, "He that would save his life will lose it. But he who loses his life for my sake and the gospels, the same will find it."

In what ways does our school policy—in what ways is it driven out of a desire to save my life? And to what extent do we see a willingness to risk our lives for the sake of the little ones who very easily could be destroyed without our involvement?

And then just another thing to consider, what should be the academic strategy if you are to develop a church school? I would suggest—and this is not exactly how we did it—we started with being available for grades 1 through 12. That is a pretty wide field to start out for the first year. The Lord was gracious. We survived. But I think in many cases, I would see wisdom in maybe starting out with, say, K through 1 or 1 through 2, whatever your lowest level is, and maybe each year add another two grades. And then in that way, you're not needing to get teachers for the whole spectrum. And you can grow the school. You can start seeing some of the challenges.

You can start understanding the community on a smaller scale. And you can build small and strong. I could see wisdom in that kind of an approach. I think we should see the church, on a broader sense, as a place of educational resource, not only just in the traditional educational sense, but how can we equip parents to care for their children? I know that Brother Alan Roth, who was the administrator of our school for many years and under whom I began teaching in Brooklyn, New York, the challenge he placed on us as teachers was, he said, "I really believe you need to be connecting with the parents.

If you don't have the parents, then on the long haul, you don't have the children." And he said, "I would like to see you be in every home maybe once a quarter and every week be in one or two homes."

Does that sound big? It sounded huge to me, especially my first year there trying to get used to a whole new urban setting. And I confess we didn't do a very good job of that. But I would also say he had an excellent idea. And I wish we would have done a better job. And I would say that the more that we see parents as a very significant part of the purpose of the school and that the more that we invest in parents, the more that we are investing in the children in the long haul and that we don't just see it as a purely separated two entities kind of thing.

Brother Alan also had the perspective that while children's ministries are great and they can provide certain levels of influence and exposure that are good for children, he said, "I don't think any long-term church plant is going to really happen if that's the primary focus of a church plant."

And in my years of observing church plants, I see that to be true.

Investing in the actual families is where you develop church, not through primarily focusing on kids' clubs. Kids' clubs are a lot easier. They're a lot more exciting. I think they maybe kind of fill up our emotional tank of satisfaction more easily and quickly. They're a lot easier to do. But I don't think they're quite at the real core of our presence there advancing the kingdom well if that's our sole dependence. And even when that is an active piece of it, unless it's coupled with a fairly active involvement with the parents of those that we are ministering to, then I think it's a very limited ministry.

I might just give you a little bit of a background of my own personal journey. My first eight years were in a small public school a half mile from our home. At that point, our church didn't have a church school. But our principal was actually from our church.

And so it was about as close to a church school as you could have gotten without being a church school, probably. He hired all of the teachers. And they were all professing Christians. We had devotions in every grade, I think, or at least prayer in every grade from first grade through eighth grade.

So first through eighth was in a small country public school. High school was in our church school. I then later went to junior college and then to a private Christian college.

In terms of teaching, I taught two years in Canada before I went to college and then eight years in a public school in Kansas and then the past 24 years in Brooklyn. And so though I had really wanted to escape school as quickly as I legally could, the last nearly 50 out of 60 years of my life have been in school either as a student or as a teacher and in some ways kind of both. My wife has homeschooled our children through all of their school years, though there have been a few classes they've come to school for. When they were just little toddlers, they'd come into my class for art class because I taught art, and especially when I did ceramics.

But I think most of it for several years. And then they also went there in high school for Spanish and for algebra two. I think those were the main classes that you had taken there. So some people look at me and think I'm a really strange mixture. And I probably am.

And they ask, "How could you, who have invested in education, public and private all these years, be homeschooling your children? Isn't that almost a betrayal of what you're doing?" Well, it might depend how you define betrayal or I'm not sure what all. But I will tell you that when I was just a third grader, homeschooling was first being pioneered in our community in Kansas.

And during that same time, I saw my little sister going to first grade and crying almost every day. And Dad, who was the school bus driver, would often come in to try to comfort her. And the teacher didn't really like that. She felt like she should just toughen up. But I was just seeing all of that. And I was thinking, "God did design parents to nurture their children." And I'm seeing my mom nurture my sister like this teacher isn't. And silently, without telling my parents or siblings or anyone else, the ideal of homeschooling started to be birthed in my heart and mind. And I just always dreamed that if I ever had children, regardless of what the other options were, my wife would be my teacher of our children.

I just felt like that was the ultimate level of nurturing that is possible on this side of heaven. So being involved in education isn't because I'm this great admirer of public education or private education. And so to not have my children in those institutions is a betrayal of my vocation. That's not really where it's at for me. For me, we are called to nurture children. And the ways in which we can do that best, I believe God wants us to do. And I think sometimes, as conservative Anabaptists, it's time for us to think a little outside the box on that front and really think, "How can that best be done?" and ask God to show us how to do that.

And so I'm kind of a strange mix of having been involved in public and private teaching but having my own children in homeschooling. So I don't know how you would process that one. But I just expose that to you for you to realize how your speaker has lived his life.

I have found it interesting that before COVID, our children were a little bit cautious to tell their neighbors that they were being homeschooled. And even if they did, their neighbors would wonder, "What's that?" COVID has done a wonderful work for the homeschooling front. Since then, if people ask them, "What is your educational experience?" they say, "Oh, we homeschool." "Oh, great." And suddenly, that is an honorable and acceptable option. COVID did bring acceptance to that option, it seems.

And so in conclusion, before I have my children talk a little bit about the risks of a church-planting family being in a setting like an urban setting, how those risks look to them as having personally experienced that, they have more of an understanding of that world than the world I did as a child growing up on a farm.

But I just thought it might be interesting to hear that. But before we do that, I would just like to think a little bit about the heart of Jesus. When Jesus said, "Suffer the little children to come to me and forbid them not."

But he doesn't stop there. He makes it into a kingdom issue. He says, "For of such is the kingdom of heaven." And so I think it's right for us to really seriously think about children when we think about church plants.

How are we going to take care of them? But perhaps we need to think beyond just our own children. How are we going to take care of the single-parent families that come into our churches? Hopefully, our heart is to care for the broken-hearted and for the needy within the place he has called us to minister as a church plant. And so if that brings those additional needs, what are we going to do with those needs?

How are we going to suffer those little children to come to Christ and not forbid them? How are we going to do that? What about our neighbors that we are reaching out to? How are we going to are we going to be open to caring for their children?

And how do we view the risks that ministering to our neighbors may bring and even the risks that that may place on our family and on our children? How do we look at risk? I think that is so important. In the last session, I had talked about risk. And there's an excellent book called Reaching America by Gary Miller. And some of you may have read this book already. Excellent, excellent book. My daughter saw this this summer and quickly showed it to me and said, "Dad, we got to get this book." And she says, "Gary Miller is my hero." And I was glad to hear that. And of course, when she said that, how could I keep from saying, "Yeah, let's get a book?"

So we got the book. And as we were driving to Kansas, where I grew up to visit there, she was reading excerpts out loud. And I was saying, "Boy, that's really good. I should have that as a part of my talk." But Gary Miller raises an interesting question. He talks about risk and how we deal with risk and which risks are worth embracing and which risks are wrong to embrace.

And he suggests that we actually aren't that scared of certain risks and that actually some of the risks we aren't scared about, Jesus calls us to be pretty scared about. That's a little sobering. And then he goes on to say the risks Jesus calls us to are sometimes the risks that we are least willing to take.

I think as we consider church planting, this question about risk is something we really need to take a look at. What are the risks that Jesus considers worth our taking? And what are the risks that Jesus does not consider worth our taking? And does our life represent that?

I'm here to say that if it doesn't, then the verse where he said, "He that would save his life will lose it. But he who loses his life for my sake and the gospels, the same will find it," is very true.

And so I just challenge you to maybe daily ask God, "What risks do you want me to take today?" And I guess it's the only way we can do it. We look at risks through our mental framework, our perception, and yet our perception of risk. And yet our perceptions so often are super faulty.

And they really need to be confronted with Jesus's perception of what is really the true risk. So I'm going to, at this point, before opening it up for questions, give our two oldest an opportunity to communicate about some of the questions that typically are raised about children being raised in an urban setting, in a place of what would from our local and rural communities seem like a risky place and maybe too risky a place. And so I'm going to just ask them to share what they have prepared.

So yesterday afternoon, we were at the Byers Conference Center where we're sleeping. And Dad was preparing for his message. And our children were sitting around. And we ended up talking about his message. And Dad was like, "Oh, you should share your thoughts."

And so here are my thoughts that came to me last night. So I was born Dad and Mom got married in 2000. We were there. And I was born in 2002 there and have been there all my life. I'm 19 now. And I plan to stay there for a foreseeable future. I doubt my whole life. But I don't plan to move away too soon.

And so this topic kind of like raising children in the city or I guess the way it has affected me, when I think about it, it really causes a lot of deep feelings to rise up in my heart. I guess in the last, I don't know, year or a few years, it's been something that our children have been thinking through and the way we relate with cousins and friends who are not from the city and the way it has formed us and made us have a different perspective on certain areas of life as to those who didn't grow up there. So there's just so many things you could talk about this topic. It's just a huge range.

But I want to share with you three effects that growing up in the city has, at least has had on my life and I assume on many children have. And the first one is that living in a city gives children the opportunity to interact with people that are very different than themselves.

And so for me, I grew up and we still live in a community that is majority Hispanic. And so there are very few white people there. And it's starting to change a little bit. But especially even now, especially when we were younger, there was almost no one that was white there except for some people from our some others from our church. And so I learned what it was to be a minority.

And it gives me that perspective that growing up in a traditional minority community wouldn't have given me. And just, I guess, sometimes feeling how it feels to be a minority and kind of feel a little bit down or kind of below. For example, something that was a little more recent, there was this person that would call me white boy. And I told this person, "I don't like when you call me white boy. Would you like if I called you black and their gender?" And I could just see the anger rising up just the thought of me saying that. But they would still call me white boy. And I told them repeated times, "I do not like when you call me that.

Please don't call me that." And they eventually stopped. But there, I experienced what it feels like to be that different person who's not normal in the community. And these differences also play out in our church. So we have different people or people from different ethnicities in our church besides traditional Mennonite. And so one example is Carrie and Meal. So we'll have Meals. When everybody brings food to church, it'll be very non-traditional Mennonite food. And I love the food. And one interesting fact. So we had this tradition at church. You bring your food. And then you don't expect to take it home. So after we eat, you can take any food that's there home with you.

And so it's great. And then already a few years ago, I was at my grandparents' church. We had a Carrie and Meal. "Oh, I love whoopie pie." So I just took a whoopie pie with me home. Mom's like, "Ashford, you don't take food home. You just eat what's when you're there."

And anyways, so I guess that's an example of different cultures. And then one man that I just really want to tell you guys about and just historically take a long time to tell. But anyways, his name is Marcus. And we got to know him when I was just a little toddler. And he was a man who was semi-homeless, lived in an abandoned house, and a drunk. He would collect cans and bottles, collect a little bit of money. Anyways, and he would terrorize the VPS when we had VPS in the park. Anyways, so we got to know him. And he became a family friend over the years. And he would stop in any time of the day and eat food with us.

If we were eating supper, he'd offer me supper with us. And so that really gave us an in-depth view of interacting with someone that's very different than ourselves. When he wasn't drunk, he was just the nicest guy. And he would gladly help with any projects going around the house. But when he would come dead drunk, he was a very different man. He would speak very foully. And anyways, yeah, he passed away almost three years ago now. That was really hard.

But yeah, it really gave me an experience of interacting with someone and coming to love someone who was not a Christian and who was a drunk and who was just very different from us. And my second point is living in the city calls the children, as they grow older, to make a deliberate choice as to who they will serve.

I feel like in the city, there's a starker contrast between the way of light following Jesus and the way of darkness. And so it forces you to choose along this way or that way. And there's not as much of a middle grayish area. And so we've had to stand alone a lot. And sometimes I've gotten so tired of standing alone. But I think in the end, it's good for us because it forces us to make the choice.

Who will I serve? Will I follow the way of light and, yeah, follow the teachings of my parents? Or will I do things that are not right to try to fit in with those around me? And kind of going along with that, my last point, living in the city gives children a unique perspective that is both valuable and challenging to deal with. So it's almost like and this is the same for children growing up in Third World or other countries. You almost feel caught between two worlds. And so, for example, even though we live in the city, we kind of did things a little more of the country way, if you want to call it that, at least from the people who live there, their perspective of us.

So we were blessed with a rarity of having an empty side lobby inside our house that was owned by the same landlord as the house that we live in. And so we fixed it up into a backyard and had a little backyard there. And so when I was about 8 or 10 or somewhere in that age range in the summertime, I had a weed eater. And I was weed eating some of grass and weeds that were out by the sidewalk. And I was barefoot. And it was a hot summer day. And all of a sudden, this man in a truck comes. And he pulls over, gets out, and yells at me. And he's like, "Where's your dad?" or whatever.

And I go and get Dad. And Dad comes out. And this man is angry because I'm there weed eating. And I'm barefoot. And I guess he thinks this is not safe for a child to be doing. And so those that grew up on farms or whatever, this is just normal. But for their and it was normal for me. But there, it's just they can't understand that a child would be working like this. And then from the other side, when I go visit family in Kansas or wherever, they just can't comprehend how I could love the city or how I could call it home. And it is home for me, even though there's things I love about the country.

And I'm like, "Man, if I live in the country, I would love to do this. But that's not my home right now. My home is in the city." And they just can't get it. And so it's kind of like, "Where do I belong?" Because I live in the city. But I'm not quite like the people who live there. And so even though I was born there, they still don't consider me from the city. But yeah, I don't live in the country. So I'm not from the country. And so that can kind of be challenging to deal with sometimes. But it gives a unique perspective that is different. And I think it's really good to have that.

And I just want to briefly respond to the common objection that Dad was mentioning. The city isn't safe to raise a family. And so one thought that Dad likes to say is along these lines, "Whoever God calls you is the safest place to raise your family."

And so the question has to be asked, "What is safe? Safe from evil influences?" The country needs Jesus every bit as much as the city does. Now, the sin might be a little more obvious in the city. But that same sin thrives in the country. It might be a little more under the rug. But it's still there.

Also, I would strongly argue that with the rise of social media, worldly influences are increasingly just as strong in the city or in the country as in the city. And almost what you would see in the city and say, "Oh, that's worldly," that is being made nowadays through or is being formed through social media. And so things that once just kind of were isolated in the city, if you want to call it that, are now being spread worldwide to the same lingo or whatever.

And so I want to give you an example of this. So last month, Sarah and I were with the traditional Mennonite youth group, conservative youth group, in a rural setting in the country. And so we were out in the evening. We'd gone some food and then went to a park. And we were just hanging out in the park. And a few of the youth had learned this dance from TikTok and decided they wanted to teach all of those that wanted to learn. Now, this was something that Sarah and I had never seen before.

And as we observed it, yeah, we don't use social media. And we know about it from people who are not Anabaptist. But to see actually an Anabaptist youth group acting like this was it was just we'd never seen it before. And so we had to think, "What would our non-Anabaptist friends in the city think?" They would be if we can think of people, if they would have seen what went on, they'd be utterly shocked.

Even though they participate in those behaviors themselves, they don't expect us to be that way or live that way, act that way. And they might not even want us to. They might respect us less if they would see us live or act like that. So in conclusion, am I saying that the city is the only good place to raise a family? No, I'm not saying that. But it is a good place to raise a family if that's where God is calling you to.

And so I just challenge you all, go where God is calling you, whether that be in the city or in the country. And if you follow His if you walk in His will, not only will He guide your path, but He'll also guide the paths of your children.

So I'm just going to make this really quick. But one story that I thought of when we were talking about this last night, when we were in eighth grade, we were studying New York State history. And then we were also doing New York City history. And I remember one day, Mom said here to me and Isaac, "Look at this paper." And it was a map of the boroughs and the communities of New York City. And it had places with green, yellow, and red areas, with the green being the safest and the red being the most dangerous. Guess what? Cypress Hills is very, very dangerous to live in. And we thought it was where we live in, we thought it was so funny because we're like, "It's not even dangerous.

What are they talking about?" Of course, you have to lock your car doors. You have to do that everywhere in the city. So it just reminded me of that. I think last night, I was thinking, I think often what Satan does is he makes what's really risky look harmless. It's not a big deal. But the actual worthwhile risks, they might be risks, but they're worthwhile. He makes them look irresponsible.

With the whole thing of bad influence, I've actually found that having a much closer look at sin has been an example of what you don't want because you don't only see just the glamorous side of sin. You see the results of sin. And yeah, with even a lot of immorality, you see what comes out of it. You see the broken families. And you realize there's no way, when I'm the age of these people, do I want to be dealing with what they're dealing with?

Yeah, like Isaac said, standing alone has definitely been a big thing. But I think since we started it from young up, it has strengthened us. And also, like Isaac was saying, there might be that our friends from the city who haven't embraced the way of life that we have, they don't actually expect us to participate in the activities that they participate in. And so it might be lonely. But it's not the level of temptation that it might seem like it would be. And as I was visiting our family who's in a more traditional Mennonite setting and through different experiences, one including the night at the park, I was realizing that in the smaller issues, the issues where personal, where people, or where families land in different areas, I think for me, it's actually easier to stick to those choices that maybe Dad has made for us or that I personally feel in the city because I'm already different.

And they don't actually expect me to. Whereas in a traditional community, they would think, "Well, we're all Christians anyway. And we're all really the same. So it's kind of awkward if I'm telling someone who's just like me, 'Well, I'm not going to do that.' But we're already different in the city. So it's not really a big deal."

And like Isaac was saying, I think social media, some of the things that friends in the country participate in, like he was saying, my friends in the city, they would make fun of me if I would do that because they do it. But they think it's really weird if I would do it. And sometimes it's annoying. But it's like it actually keeps me not being part of social media and not being a part of that culture. They don't really expect me to participate in those things. And so we're still friends. We still relate. But in certain areas of life, they don't want me to. And I think one thing that I've really appreciated about the city is that worldly versus non-worldly, the contrast is much more vivid.

Whereas in the country, some things might seem now, this is generalization, of course. But sometimes things that I would see as worldly, I see my friends participating in in the country because I don't think they see the people that are doing that in the city. If everyone who's participating in a certain, say, dance or use of slang is like you, it doesn't seem like a problem. But if you see someone who's doing it that you don't want to be like, it gives you more of an incentive to not do that yourself. So yeah, I guess those are just my thoughts.

Living in the city has definitely had challenges. But I wouldn't trade it for anything because of the perspective it has given me and because of the person that I think it has helped me to become. There's definitely been challenges. But I'm thankful for it as well.