"Piercing the Darkness Through Media, Business, Community Development, and Apologetics" | KFW 2024

Okay, well, welcome to our panel discussion. We are excited to see what God has for us tonight through this panel discussion. It's a blessing to have four brothers here to share on four relevant topics that I think we can at least find ourselves in one of these, and hopefully it can be a blessing or an encouragement to you in your journey.

So the order of the discussion will be as follows. I will do a quick introduction of the panelists, and each panelist is going to open up with a five-minute talk followed by a discussion among the panelists right after each talk. So total time here we're shooting for around 40 minutes, and after that we will be taking questions from the audience. Now, there's two ways that you can submit questions. One is you can go to the back, and there are two drop boxes back there where you can write out your question that you would like to have answered by the panelists. And the other way that you can submit questions is online. So if you go to kingdomfellowshipweekend.org, it's on the front homepage, and you should be able to submit a question electronically.

So you're welcome to do that during the time that the panelists are talking. Okay, so brief introductions here. So Melvin Lehman is a pastor and schoolteacher. He has been teaching for over 45 years. He works at Faith Builders Training Institute. It has been there for quite a while. He has seven children, 29 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Melvin Lehman ran a half marathon when he was age 60 with five of his sons. So if you want to run a race with him, feel free to talk with him about that afterwards.

Leo Eby is a lumberman by trade. He's been in the lumber business for about 40 years. He has eight children and six granddaughters. And Leo is passionate about reaching out to the local community and has been intentional about doing that through business. They have been hiring local community people for their family business endeavors.

One of Leo's favorite topics is to talk about the Sabbath Day or the Lord's Day. So if you're interested in picking his brain about that, you can do that as well afterwards and throughout the weekend.

Pete Garber is from Washington State and is part of a German Baptist church out there. Pete spent around six years in Haiti with the majority of his time working with a microfinance program called SALT, and it's designed to assist with community development. He enjoys reading as a hobby.

And then Kinley Coulter and his wife grew up in a nominal Protestant context, and their journey into the Anabaptist faith tradition started about 16 years ago. They are currently dairy farmers, and they take their milk, cheese, butter, and yogurt to Washington, DC, and they sell it at the farm markets there. They have seven children, and he serves as a deacon at Shade Mountain Christian Fellowship.

So it's good to have you all here tonight, and God bless you as you share. So we'll start with Brother Melvin Lehman. His topic is media, and he will give a five-minute talk, and then we'll follow it with a brief discussion afterwards.

Thanks, Brother Sean. I'll dive right in since I have just five minutes. I seldom read my sermons, but I will give one this time. The media subject immediately points toward the study of linguistics, how we communicate with one another, especially by our words. It has been quite a journey from the Tower of Babel era to the advent of the smartphone and virtual reality. We wonder what might be in the pipeline for the next generation.

The focus of this subject is how digital media may offer help in spreading the gospel. Clearly, there are negative dimensions to the digital media scene. Perhaps the words communicated by Samuel Morse when he sent the very first telegraph message in 1844 gets at the question before us, "What hath God wrought?"

While we do not know the story behind the Tower of Babel experience, at least not in detail, we do know something about the last 500 years or so. The beginning of the modern information age may well be traced to Johann Gutenberg's movable print press all the way back to the 15th century. That's chasing down 600 years now. Some historians hold that the Reformation had little chance of happening without Gutenberg's invention. It was a game-changer, not unlike the internet.

Changing or looking at this issue from another angle, I note that Paul told us that preaching is ordained of God to communicate the good news. First Corinthians 1:21, "For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe."

But preaching happens in many different forms and through many different venues. We live in an era when electronic media has opened doors previously closed to preaching. Most of us live in kind of a love-hate relationship with this phenomenon.

In this audience, I'm quite sure there are varying levels of acceptance or rejection of the role of electronic media in its various forms. And thank God it's beyond the scope of my assignment to sort that out. A brief listing would certainly include such things as telegraph, which I already cited, telephone, landlines, party lines, and all for some of us who are old enough for that, radio, think Harolds of Hope, television, think Billy Graham, video in its various forms, electronic recording, storage, and dissemination, and I suppose the big boy on the block, internet.

And that has given rise to personal computers, smartphones, now think Billboard evangelism. A number of you are deeply involved in that, praise the Lord, podcasts, YouTube channels, think Anabaptist perspectives, Zoom, think COVID and then forget it real quickly, translation apps, ABT. I don't know what they're doing with those, but I'm amazed at what translation apps can do, Spotify, social media, virtual reality, and the newest kid on the block, AI or artificial intelligence. And all of this in the last 100 years.

So how should we then live?

The issue in front of us is piercing the darkness, and the question is how can it be used in that way? So electronic hardware is all moral, I think, and should not be viewed as the primary problem. I know we might look at it that way, but I don't think so.

Automobiles were also a problem. It follows that electronic media is a tool that may be used for good or ill. We are specifically asking two questions, the one I already mentioned. Can this tool be used or should it be used to pierce the darkness? And of course, then the million-dollar question, if so, how should it be used?

You'll see a chart there on the table on the screen, and I'll just look at them briefly and sit down. On the pro side, it reaches a wide audience, much wider than we ever dreamed of before. However, it tends to be impersonal. Two, it's efficient and it's economical. But note, it reduces the high value, the very high value of face-to-face interaction or physical presence. Three, it can create healthy connections among believers. It also can struggle to connect seekers with local church membership and local church fellowship. Four, pastors have immediate access to members for the most part. I can't help but tell a little joke. If I go over time, let me know. Not a joke, but a truth.

Some people have told me, "Ah, to get onto Facebook." And I told them, "You know what? I'm not getting on Facebook." They said, "You would know a whole lot more about your members than what you actually know." I said, "Thank you, but I want to sleep at night." So on the con side, everybody has a platform and a voice. Five, incredible resources at our fingertips. Unbelievable. Can bypass deep immersion in the Word of God.

This one, yeah, I want to break out into preaching, but I have to let it go. Number six, it creates an easily accessed digital trail for the record's sake. However, it clouds the difference between the important and unimportant. Look at the messed-up inboxes and all of that. Seven, it creates a platform for community interaction, but community buzz increases, but personal touch and common geography decreases.

So what am I pointing at here? We ought to support and laud the efforts to capitalize on digital spreading of the Word of the Lord. We should continue being concerned that we do not replace physical community with digital community, and we should never neglect the assembling of ourselves together. Thank you.

Thank you, Brother, for sharing that. Okay, we'll open it up to the panelists to ask Melvin any questions about what he just shared. So go ahead, anyone.

Melvin, so what are some of the ways that you personally have used media? Which one of these do you use the most to advance the cause of Christ that you've found it actually helps to make that easier or better?

Which one? Well, I'm old style, so I use an awful lot of email, to start there, just to communicate. But in terms of actual communication with people, so Sheila and I just met with on the way down here, we met with a girl that I had a student years ago, a very troubled girl. Much of the conversation started with texting and WhatsApp.

But I see those as beginning connections, and we were careful to say, "We'd like to take you out for supper. We want to talk with you." So yeah, the communication apps we've used heavily. I've used Zoom.

Preach from my living room, sitting there over COVID and using Zoom, so I've used that significantly. Maybe you have a more specific question on that. So how has digitization changed your study habits as you prepare and think and that sort of thing? Enormously. I have a question. Can I see a raise of hands of those of you who have been on gammeo.org?

Never heard of it. All right. Never heard of it? Okay, you should. It stands for uh-oh. I just go to it left and right. But it's like Wikipedia, but it's a search engine on the old what we used to know as the Mennonite Encyclopedia. When I first started teaching school, that was a $500 item that we all wished we had. Today, it's online. It's digital. And you can search for it. Look for your church. You'll find it. It's on there. I'll almost guarantee you.

Now, maybe not the German Baptist. I'm not sure, but thank you for that. Maybe we'll open it up for one more question from any of you.

Melvin, what would you say to people that say they can hear better preaching and hear better singing and connect with people more aligned with their interests through virtual church? Is virtual church an oxymoron?

It's not going to work long term. Virtual church will not work long term. I would just simply say you might have some short-term benefit. We gained some of that over COVID, but I'm quite confident it won't last long term.

Thank you for that. Do you have time for one more question? One more. We have about a minute. So obviously, the media has shrunk our world, right? Has that increased our accountability?

Yes, it has. In a sense, it certainly has increased our accountability because we have better capability, and more capability means more responsibility. But again, I really want to push back that we don't let that push out too far from center where we're not paying attention at home.

Thank you so much for that. Okay, Brother Leo, we'll be sharing about Piercing the Darkness through Business.

Good evening. Piercing the Darkness with Light. The question is, what kind of light? Using business and hospitality for this purpose. So the question is, is business and hospitality as usual? Hardly. Seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness puts a hard reset to how we think and do business and hospitality.

If we're going to pierce the darkness with business and hospitality, we will need the true light because there is alternative lights. Luke 11:35, "Take heed, therefore, that the light which is in thee be not darkness." Matthew 6:23, "If the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness?"

Business and hospitality are not in competition to apologetics, community development, or media.

Business and hospitality provide a perfect platform for apologetics, community building, and right use of media.

Business and hospitality provide a structure to life to show true light.

I have found that these things provide discipline and structure for my life to actually accomplish more rather than less.

Our homes are an unmatched place to demonstrate the love of Christ. Seek and pray for opportunities to bring seekers into your home.

Sisters, be prepared in season instantly to be instant in season and out of season.

I have secretly texted my wife when I had a hitchhiker coming home with me to give her a little bit of time to prepare. But don't sweat these small details.

In 2020, Marcellus asked me a question. It was on Good Friday of 2020. He said, "Leo, why do we call Good Friday Good Friday if Jesus was crucified on Good Friday?" So I had an opportunity to explain to him why such a horrendous story is referred to as good.

Almost exactly a year later, Marcellus began to lose energy and strength where he could hardly make it through a day. It was during COVID, and he had a hard time even getting a doctor's appointment. And when he finally did get one, it was like two weeks down line.

When he went to the doctor, he discovered that he had two types of terminal cancer. One was stomach, and I think the other one was pancreas.

He ended up in the Pittsburgh Hospital immediately, and he was told he only had barely two weeks to live. It was over the time where we couldn't visit him. His wife was allowed to go see him. He called my brother, and he said, "What can I do to be saved?"

So we took a Bible. I think it was either New King James or International Translation. And we took highlighters, and we went through the Bible, and we highlighted some verses that he needed to read immediately.

He decided to come home and die. He came home on a Monday evening. Wednesday evening, my brother and I went over to see him and had a Bible study with him. He said, "I want to be baptized." We talked to our bishop brother. He said, "I can make it Friday evening."

Friday evening, we went to his house. When we got to his house, he was laying in his bed, too weak to get out. So we offered to baptize him in his bed. He said, "No, I want to get up."

So we gave him a half an hour to get together strength to come out to his kitchen table. And as he sat at his kitchen table, the bishop brother went over the baptismal questions with him to make sure he understood what he was committing to.

And his testimony was, he said, "All my life, when I ran up against hard things, I used sheer force to get through them, and he was a huge man. We called him the gorilla." He said, "I used sheer force to get through my problems in life, but this problem I need help with." He was baptized that night at his kitchen table.

And Friday night, 36 hours later, he went to meet his judge.

There's a risk in sharing the Word of God because you might become converted and have your sins forgiven. Good policies can be the very thing that ruins the best opportunities. Business gives us opportunities to correct mistakes. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Brother Leo, for that. We're having some issues with the mic, so we're getting new ones up here.

Lots of powerful ways to share the gospel through business and hospitality. Do any of you panelists have any questions that you would like to ask Brother Leo right now? Go ahead, Brother Pete.

So you don't seem embarrassed at all about business as though it were some necessary evil to get through so that you could evangelize. Why is that?

I guess the very first thing that comes to my mind is that the kingdom of God doesn't happen in a vacuum. And if you can prove to me that the kingdom of God happens in the absence of business, then I'll rethink my position.

I'll extend the question just a little bit. So being involved in foreign missions, I have heard more and more and more interest and even action on business being used as the vehicle by which to enter countries and to actually be the vehicle for missions.

Do you have does this sound like a good idea? Or do you have any experience in it that you want to talk about?

It may be an opportunity. I don't know exactly how to address that question. I'm a little skeptical of the

I'm concerned about the Moties, but I certainly think it definitely could be an option.

Any other questions? I have another one if nobody else does. So you're ordained at the church you're at? No, sir. Oh, you're not? Okay. So then my question's good. So how are you coordinating your business opportunities, your business connections with the church discipleship program?

Are you working at trying to and if you're not, say so. But I'm just wondering. How's that working? Well, my first approach is I invite them to come along to church with me. Secondly, if I can have Bible time with them, that's also.

But usually, these people have humanitarian needs that are so You hold your mic just a little bit so I can interview away. That are so monumental that sometimes it's hard to get behind the humanitarian problem to get to the bigger problem because they don't see it as a the problem that they're facing is so enormous in their own eyes that they can hardly comprehend that there's a problem bigger.

We have time for one more question.

I have one question. So how do you navigate being an employer in your business and yet paving the way to be approachable by your employees regarding spiritual matters?

Working shoulder to shoulder with them.

One of my goals is when a visitor comes, that they have a little bit of a hard time discerning who's the boss and who's the employee because we're so integrated side by side.

I have just a real short story. Could I add to this to answer his question? Sure. In 2019, we had an employee that lost his arm in a horrendous accident there in the sawmill. And I'm answering your question a little bit in development for that. That problem in that man's life of his missing arm is so enormous that it's hard to get beyond that subject.

But it has given me the opportunity to know the man better. And I know the accident didn't happen for no cause.

Okay. Thank you so much for that. Okay. Next, we will have Brother Pete Garber come up and talk about Piercing the Darkness through Community Development.

All right. So I was really glad for what Leo said. These ideas aren't in competition. They actually complement each other well. Piercing the Darkness through Community Development. So all of my experience has been in community development and developing countries, what used to be known as Third World countries or, yeah, the Third World, but it's more politically correct now to call them developing countries. Community development believes in the inherent dignity and value of people. That's the first thing. The second thing, community development believes in the latent resources and capacities within communities.

And thirdly, community development believes in the comprehensive plan and provision of God for human flourishing. So if there would be a way to unpack that, then I think maybe I could help you understand what community development is. But I'm going to try to give you a few stories to illustrate that. The first one comes from the Water of Life Church in Phumphari Zien, where we served for a couple of years.

And that church never had money for anything. They were a church of about 250 members. They had a pastor and then a leadership team. And they never had money for anything. If they needed money, they always came down to the mission and said, "Hey, we've got this issue.

Give us the money for it." They looked to the mission for everything until the day that the local ministry took ownership of the problem.

They took ownership of the problem and decided, "This is something that we need to solve. We can't keep relying on the mission. We can't just keep going to the mission and asking them to provide for everything." So together, we worked out a plan for transparency and for security. The way the transparency worked was that we helped them develop a reporting system. Here's where the offering here's how much offering came in last week. Here's how much we have in the till. And here's some things that we've been doing. Here's like a weekly report on what the finances of the church were. And they also created it was a huge metal box. I don't know what they were really dreaming big when they had this box welded up to hold the donations in.

And it had three locks on it. But it was big. I mean, it was half the size of this lectern. And all the offerings went straight into that box. They were locked with three different padlocks. The keys went three different ways, and the box stayed somewhere else. What that did was it made sure that the money was secure, that nobody was going to come and use that for any other purpose. That did something amazing.

Almost immediately, as soon as these things were in place, the church began to give. And it was astonishing what they were able to accomplish. They had funds to help their own widows, and they even remodeled the church with no funds from the mission.

So that maybe is a little bit of an idea of what we're talking about of community development, where the resources were there. There's a provision. There's a plan that God has laid out if we just understand what it is and enter into it. Another story is the problem of rural exodus in an area called Pai Paris. So just to the south, I think it is, up in the hills, about 5,000 feet elevation gain, is an area called Pai Paris.

And all the children, all the youth, anybody that had passed fifth or sixth grade would go down to the city, which was about an hour walk or more down to the city to school. Well, you're not going to walk all that way every time. So they would end up staying down in the city almost the whole school season. And you can imagine if you sent your 13-year-old down to school and they only come home on weekends, what that could look like.

The community built a road up into this area. The way the road was first built was through a work-for-food program. Christian Aid Ministries had a container load of food boxes, some of which may have been packed by somebody here.

That container load was available. They brought it out to Phumphari Zien, and it sat there. And they gave food boxes to people to work on the road. Well, the food ran out before the project was completed. But the people had caught a vision for what could be. And they finished the project, over half of it, with their own, on their own initiative, with their own resources.

And because they did that, because they owned that project, it was their road. Every other road that's ever been built by someone else in Haiti, it's their road. So if it washes out, people stop using it until the person who built it comes back and fixes it, just the way those things are.

One minute? Thank you. So I asked Cine Jackson, he's a community leader there, why the young people are still leaving this community. Why don't you have better schools? Why don't the people just stay up there? And they said, "Teachers won't live here because there's a lack of health care. There's a lack of security. There's a lack of family sense of connection." There were still some components of community that were missing. And it just serves to highlight the fact that there's many different components that go together to make a community someplace where people can continue to invest. And they want to stay. They want to invest.

The challenge is the challenge to community development. The reason fewer people use it as a technique for outreach is that it takes being present. We can't just fly in for a week. You have to be there. And it takes time to build relationships and understand the culture. The reward, however, is that when the community looks and says, "Look what we can do.

Look what we can do." So I'm encouraging you to get some training, to get involved, and to join the work. The harvest is great. The laborers are few.

Thank you, Brother Pete, for that. We'll open it up to anyone from the panelists here to ask Pete any questions.

Well, I guess I'm the blabbergot here, but I have a few questions for you. I guess one of the questions I have is, so do you run into I teach history. So there's a big reaction to colonialism and much blame laid on colonialism for the state of the Third World countries. How real is that when you're in the village or whatever and you're trying to help them? Do you have any comment on that? So there's different aspects of the way we talk about colonialism. So maybe I'll ask you to clarify which part. Are you talking about the noble savage myth? Are you talking about a resentment towards the people that came and developed their countries to the extent that they are?

Yeah, the second. The second one. So is there feelings of resentment? That's right. Yeah. I wouldn't say any feelings of resentment that I have encountered would be with regard to the past. There may be a sense that America controls all of our coming and going and that we can't do anything unless the ambassador says we can. There's a little bit of that and a little bit of the foreign meddling.

There's some resentment to what is perceived as a dependency but also a dependency that was contrived. So a conspiracy that maybe they're making us dependent on them. So there's some of that dynamic. And there's probably some people that could answer that question better sitting in the room.

Well, since you brought up the other question, I'll just ask you too. So the noble savage, I'm assuming you're talking about the Amerindians and the idea that we should have just left them alone to be who they were. Yeah. So I've never encountered that from someone.

They're always eager to learn. That myth comes from anthropologists that I don't know what their agenda is, but they're not thinking about the individual, the person. Thank you for that. Any other questions from any of you other panelists?

Something I'm curious about is whether our culture as Anabaptists of church planning and building new communities brings anything to the mission field in a developing nation.

Yeah. I think that there's something unique about the way we function as communities and the way we're used to interacting and the way we're used to seeing that everybody plays a different part and contributes to the whole that really does help, that sets us up uniquely to be involved in these kinds of cross-cultural ministry. What is more difficult when it's not a brotherhood situation but just a community?

Which aspects are the most difficult about that? Probably the biggest, the most difficult part of community development is so you have to understand who the stakeholders are. And by that, we mean who stands to lose by an intervention, by this community becoming whole, becoming healthy. There are people who will lose. The loan sharks may lose. It's going to mess up their game. And there are other kind of predators in the community that will lose by this community developing. And so they're going to be finding ways to sabotage your work.

So the question I would have for you, Pete, is how important is industry for community development? And then the other part of the question I would say is, what's your gut reaction to an American with the goal of providing industry in a community that needs industry development with the thought of providing employment? So industry, that's some stage 9 or 10 development stuff. So what we're talking about in very rural or very underdeveloped areas, we're talking about really basic stuff about food security. And we're talking about water security and those kinds of things.

But there are what's called appropriate technologies that are really fascinating to explore with them. But they have to see them as a solution. They have to see, first of all, that there's a problem. And then they have to be involved in the process of looking for a solution. So if we show up and we say, "What you really need is this industry," they'll say, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah." Maybe it'll always be our industry. And as soon as we leave, it'll die.

Thank you for that. That would be interesting to keep diving into that a little more. But we'll turn the time over now to Brother Kinley Coulter.

Well, I want to greet you all in the worthy name of Jesus this evening.

This is a big group. It looks smaller from back in the seats somehow. Someone asked me today if I was nervous about speaking to over 1,000 people. And I said, "No. What I'm really nervous about, I probably should be nervous about speaking to a large group, is communicating something in five minutes." And that's just a bit of a challenge. But I have a timer running here. And we're going to try to do just that. I don't know too many of you very well. I've been getting to know some. And I'm glad for that. A lot of very interesting people here enjoying our time here.

I might just ask to familiarize myself with the audience a bit. If you are a gifted apologist, would you stand at this time?

Maybe I should get a few brothers to help me count.

There's a few in the back, but I think they were already standing.

Thank you, brother. I'm going to ask if you are a self-professed child of God, if you would stand at this time.

Change of position feels good anyway. You can stay standing. It would be my position that the work of being an apologist falls on all of us as the children of God. It's a little bit like singing or praying or serving, acts of charity. These are things that we don't designate to the gifted few.

Apologetics is a labor. It's something that needs to be cultivated. You can be seated. Thank you. A few things about apologetics. It's not a very familiar discipline, but it is a discipline. That is a work for disciples. It's a hard work. It takes effort. It takes investment.

One thing in apologetics we're not doing is apologizing. Those are two different words. We've come in our culture to understand apologetics as apologizing, perhaps for things about the faith or about the scripture or about the character of God or the person of Jesus Christ, apologizing for shortcomings or slights, insults, intolerance, things that people find offensive.

We're not apologizing when we're engaged in the work of apologetics. Evangelism is a little bit of a different animal from apologetics. Evangelism would be proclaiming the faith. Proclaiming the faith. The field of apologetics is defending the faith. A little bit of a subtle distinction. But there is a distinction. We're not proclaiming the good news. We're defending the faith once delivered to the saints.

Apologetics, someone has said, is sowing seeds of doubt in an unbeliever, responding to their objections with an intelligent defense of the faith. I think all of us probably do that more than we think. I wrote down a couple of questions I've been asked just in the past few weeks in the marketplace. In our business, we rub elbows with a lot of people in a bit of a post-Christian city. I was asked, "Your church would teach that if I died today, I would wake up in hell. Is that what you say?"

That's quite a question to answer. Maybe you've been asked that.

I was also confronted with the fact that the professing church Christians are guilty throughout history of committing more atrocities against humanity than all the unbelievers put together.

Ouch. What do we do with that? Well, as apologists, we give a reasoned defense of the faith. We don't look to the one brother among us that accepted the mantle of apologist and funnel all these difficult questions to him.

In Philippians 1:17, Paul used the word, the Greek word, for apologists. It's apologia. He used it in this verse, "I, Paul, am set for the defense of the gospel. I'm set for the defense of the gospel." I'll ask you tonight as we think about apologetics, are you set to defend the gospel?

The word is also translated as answer. Peter uses the word apologia in First Peter 3:15. He commands us. He sets it up as a Christian imperative. That is, it's normative. It's expected. It's, can I say, demanded of all Christians, "Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you."

And we notice in that verse, it's a familiar verse. The command for us is to be ready to give an answer to every man.

But the reason that that man asks that question, according to Peter, is because of the hope that's visible in us. And I'll ask that question this evening to consider. If people aren't asking us questions that demand apologetic skills, is it because that the people we rub elbows with do not perceive the hope that is within us? Is that hope on display? Because Peter says that will drive every man. And you are to be ready to answer that man's questions.

So we're called. We're commanded to be developing the discipline, developing the skill of defending the faith. God help us.

Thank you, brother. I think the point was well made. We are all called to give an answer to every man that asks a reason of the hope that is in us. And when he mentioned, when he asked everyone to stand that considers himself or herself a child of God, most of you stood up. A huge responsibility for us.

Okay. Any questions from the panelists for Brother Kinley?

Yeah. Do I need training to be an apologist, to practice apologetics? I'm not sure if I want to use the term apologist exactly.

That's a very good question. I think that you need to invest. It's a skill that needs to be developed and cultivated. I believe that it's an exercise that's not to be attempted in the flesh. So the equipping that would be the minimum requirement for an apologist would be the spirit of God. But when I say minimum, that doesn't minimize the impact or the ability of the spirit to give us an ability to defend the faith. But I would agree that disciplining ourselves, training just like we do in Bible study and reading and singing, Bible memory, these are things that we work at. And I believe very few of us have the minds to perform effective apologetics without working at it.

Reading, I would say, I have a long ways to go in my understanding and ability to perform apologetics. But any ability that I do have has probably come from reading about apologetics.

I would raise a question. So I know here in this crowd, there are a number of people who are involved in the CAMS billboard ministry. And I know a couple of them personally. What do you think of the possibility of having younger men? So I'm thinking about our 16-year-olds. I agree. We're born of God. We have a leg up in the discussion.

I wonder about putting the 16-year-old out into the, I don't know, college campus or wherever he's going to have to defend some positions. Would it be a good idea to have, oh, I hate to pick on John D. Martin. I don't know if he's in the congregation or not. But would it be good to have 16-year-olders sit with him for a day or so and some of these other men who have done really well as they discuss over the phone, talk to unbelievers, atheists, the whole list of things? Do you think that might be a good idea? I'm sure it would. We understand our call to be makers of disciples. And the idea that the white-haired and shiny-headed among us are the only ones qualified is just not the model of scripture.

I think we need to be passing it on. When you suggested younger men do it, I was thinking you meant men in their 50s.

Somehow, that seems to represent younger men in these days. But no, I totally agree with you. The reason I suggest younger men is because the world we live in, if you find a 19-year-old who can articulate the faith and defend his faith well, people sit up and take notice.

They can write us off pretty quickly, but not so easily, a younger person. So I just would encourage us to think about how we can actually help brothers and sisters to do well, to have some tools in their toolbox.

Since you mentioned it, something I appreciate about the idea of younger brothers and sisters involved is, I don't know about you, but their minds are quicker and sharper than mine. And apologetics requires an ability to think on your feet, to be extemporaneous, to answer shocking questions. And young people have a leg up there.

I think I heard that you said that you benefited by Ken Hamm's apologetics. I did. And there's quite a number of apologists out there that are very interesting to listen to and to learn from. And yet, they wouldn't necessarily fit in this crowd of people here. So where do you yeah, what do you recommend? How would you feel about that?

Well, we need to be cautious. Our bishop at my home congregation would use the term, "We need to swallow the meat and spit out the bones." And if you're discerning enough to do that, then I would point you to some of these apologetics ministries that maybe don't see the faith quite exactly how we do. But that needs to be done with caution. And I'm not certain that we need to step outside of Anabaptist circles to do that.

So where can I find a setting to practice?

Because practice makes perfect. If I'm a farm boy, where do I start?

As a farm boy, I can tell you, if you take jugs of milk to the city, you will run into these people. Are you hiring? Huh? Are you hiring? I am. Let's talk after the session.

I personally learned a tremendous amount in prison ministry where you're in contact. There you go. Wonderful. All right. Well, thank you so much, brothers, for sharing. One thing that these four brothers all have in common is that they all thought that they had more information that could be shared in a five-minute opening talk. And that's very true.

So I'm sure they would love to hear from you after the service if you want to continue to engage with them and throughout the weekend. Okay. We have a lot of questions coming in from the audience here. So we're going to go ahead and get started with the questions. And the first one goes to Brother Melvin Lehman.

So the question is this. You listed the fact that everyone has a platform in the digital age as an overall con. Can you expound on that? And in this same question, it's kind of two questions. Also, what are your thoughts on Christian films and television?

Just in case I need You're there. Just in case I need protection. He's my second-and-a-half cousin, so.

Oh. Yeah. Restate the question. The question was, you listed the fact that everyone has a that everyone having a platform in the digital age is an overall con. Can you expound on that? Okay. I'd be the first one to say that that's not all negative.

Those of us, pastors experience it as a negative. Sorry. It's just the way it feels. In my opinion, the great question of our generation is the question of authority. Who in the world says so anyway at the end of the day?

Okay. And I'm not talking about some kind of an authoritative structure that some big cheese passes down whatever the answers are, but some way to make sense of the questions as they hit the floor. There's got to be a way to deal with this. And when everybody can get on don't get on a roll here if I'm not careful. So you can defend anything off of the internet almost. And then you become an authority on it. And then it's kind of tossed around in the community. And then some of us spend a couple of hours or maybe even longer trying to get it to okay. So that's what I mean about the con side of it.

I'm a teacher. Students sit there in an institute. Well, they've got their phones. And, I mean, they can check out if your date is right and everything else. And that's good. I kind of like I really don't like it. But it keeps you honest. Okay. So there's a side of it that I just want to admit that is not only admit, just say that it's an okay thing. It's a good thing.

I'm troubled by the reason I put it in the con column is because the felt reality for leaders who are trying to lead almost anywhere is if there's too many voices out there just shouting and shouting from every corner, you can't get anywhere. You just can't get the thing tracked down. That's what I mean by that. What was the second part of it? Yeah. The second part of the question was, what are your thoughts on Christian films and television?

Relatively negative. Sheila and I don't work this out perfectly. So I want to be very clear and honest and transparent. Do we ever watch any films? Yes. We're very sensitive about the fact that we wouldn't have any man and woman who are not husband and wife walk into our living room and sit down there and put on a little show and kiss each other and carry on and carry on. We wouldn't permit that.

I mean, we wouldn't appreciate it at all. Well, pray tell them, why would we support or just be okay with that all over the if we are okay with movies, do we have any sense of ethical, I don't know, ethical framework to be watching them? So we watch a lot of documentaries.

I say a lot. We don't watch many at all. But when we are watching something on the internet or whatever, it's going to be a documentary for the most part. And again, I want to be honest and say that we fudge here on occasion a little bit. And we don't like it. I don't know if that helps or not. But in general, I say it this way. We should buy our lives frown on some things and smile on other things. So you're hearing me frown on, I don't know, the typical video movie industry that's out there trotting everything around. Did you want to do a two-sentence on television? On television?

Well, somebody already has said here that there's something not very sensible about ruling out television entirely when you can pull the things out of your pocket and it's quite available. But somebody has to call the shots somewhere. And you've got to cut the line somewhere. So in our church, we just decided to at least say, "Look, we have traditionally held the line against television. It's not quite as controllable as the phone is it. Boy, you know this arguable."

So again, a really strong frown from me. Thank you for that. Okay. Brother Leo, how do you reach people in business if your job is remote and you can work from home?

If I understand the question right, it implies there's media involved there, right? That's right. So I refer that to Melvin or my second-and-a-half cousin.

That's good. Okay. Leo, that's not fair. But all right.

I would just use the same argument that I already presented. So if you have physical distance between you and your employees, there is something lost. I don't care how it's argued. There's some loss. If you can bear that loss, well, bear it. And if it somehow works best for your business, well, okay. But the rule of thumb is close proximity. I'd love this brother. I know him. I can touch him and so on. And the closer we can keep it there, the better. But we have to be sensible in knowing that we can't always keep it there. Sure.