Family Foundations International
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Podcast: [00:00:00] if people would just do those two things, you retain emotional connection. Now you earn the right. To disciple your own children, meaning they want to be a part of your team. They don't want to disconnect with you and go find somebody else because you're emotionally unavailable.
Hey friends, welcome to the 1000 Houses podcast, where we encourage and equip households to make disciples in and through the home. Every episode, you'll hear interviews, teachings, and conversations around what it looks like to turn your home into a hub for mission, community, and discipleship. If you'd like to learn more about what entering into a season of coaching might look like for you and your household, visit 1kh.
org for more info. Let's jump into today's episode.
Podcast: Hey everybody. [00:01:00] Welcome back to the podcast. I am super excited today. I'm joined by Craig Hill. Craig, thanks so much for being with me today. It's great to be with you, Jeremy. So glad to be on the podcast. Yeah. So, so fun. So Craig and I, we have a mutual friend, Greg Gunn, who's uh, over at family ID.
Um, and, um, we were on a, on a zoom call and Craig started talking about, uh, his perspective on family on discipleship, um, and on Abraham. And yeah, my head exploded, um, because, uh, we have such similar ideas. But we've never met. And so Craig's got, um, some great books I've been diving deep into. Um, and, uh, we've got this one, which is the power of, uh, of parents blessing, um, on audible.
I've been, uh, I've been diving into, uh, this amazing book, the ancient paths, but that Craig has written, um, man, this is so, so good. So aligned with what we talk about a family teams at 1000 houses. Um, and so I wanted to, [00:02:00] uh, first of all, Craig, I'd love to, to understand, um, just a little bit about your backstory.
So you, you have an organization called family foundations international. Um, yeah. Tell me a little bit about like, how did, where did these ideas come from? Like, give me kind of a little bit more of the personal connection or for you and your family. Yeah. You know, the way that a lot of things happen, Jeremy, is they come out of problems and you end up having to try and trying to solve a problem in your own life.
And then once you solve it, then other people are interested in the solution. And so my wife, Jan and I met in YWAM. Uh, 1975, actually, a long time ago, we were on a, uh, missions team together, smuggling Bibles into Poland. Uh, and the Lord began speaking to us. And we've, we felt like God was, uh, perhaps, uh, wanting us to be married and, and we had a romantic interest in each other.
And so when we came back to the States, uh, we pursued that, uh, you know, and ended up getting married in [00:03:00] two years later. And I thought marriage would just be really easy because we both loved the Lord. We were passionate for Jesus. We had a common vision and a common purpose and we were in love with each other and we got married and we had nothing but conflict and problems.
And I thought, well, how can this be when we both love the Lord? Why is this so difficult? And we were wounding each other emotionally. over and over again. And this went on for the first seven years. And, uh, I, we, we went to marriage counseling. We read marriage books. We, uh, you know, went, uh, did marriage courses and, and all kinds of things and nothing seemed to help.
And after seven years, God gave us a revelation, really three revelations that were, that changed everything. And, uh, bottom line is what I discovered after seven years. Is that there was a level of communication that we neither of us understood and we were totally blind to the [00:04:00] ways that we were hurting each other.
And when God opened our eyes, uh, then we were able to, I was able to understand how I was hurting Jan. And when that happened, then I could repent and ask her to forgive me. And God began to restore and heal our marriage. Well, as soon as that happened, a bunch of people started coming to us and saying, well, can you help?
Can you help my brother? Can you help my parents? Can you help my adult children? Can you know all these people that were having similar problems? So I ended up doing, uh, we were doing quite a bit of marriage counseling for a while, just sharing with people the things that we had learned and how to, how to resolve marriage conflict.
And the next thing that, uh, that I stumbled onto is a lot of the things that were going on in people's marriages. I could not solve because it tied back to wounding and damage that had happened in their lives growing up. So they were carrying trigger mechanisms and a lot of trauma and wounding on the inside into the marriage.
[00:05:00] And that was just being triggered by the other person. And I found out, uh, we weren't able to bring resolution to that until, uh, I could resolve the relationship between a father and mother, uh, with an adult son or daughter and, and allow the Lord to identify deep wounds and lies in the heart that were then removed and replaced with truth.
And, uh, when that happened on an experiential level, then that was life changing for that individual and life changing for that marriage. And then we began looking at How could we do some preventative work so that those, those people who had been wounded in past generations would not repeat those patterns with their children so that maybe their children would not have to have the same kind of healing in their adult life if the parents learned how to create a culture of blessing.
And that was sort of a key concept that the Lord really gave us [00:06:00] was the concept of blessing from Genesis chapter 12, verse three. And we saw it again in Genesis 27 with Isaac and Rebecca and, uh, and Isaac, uh, giving an impartation of blessing that both of his adult sons wanted, but, uh, Jacob ended up getting it through, uh, defrauding his father and Esau did not.
And, uh, I just saw carrying that through. Jacob actually prospered as a result of the blessing of his father. And, uh, Esau and his generations never did prosper. And I saw there was an incredible power in impartation of blessing from parents and creating a culture of blessing where people would grow up in a blessed culture rather than a cursed culture.
And I just define blessing and cursing in real simple ways. Blessing is just. Imparting to the heart of another person what God says about them. Cursing is imparting to the heart of another person what the [00:07:00] devil says about them. And many times it happens on a level of communication that we're blind to, so that we don't realize we're actually imparting to the hearts of our children.
that they have no value or that, uh, that they're worthless, uh, and not realize that we do that. And that creates an emotional disconnection. There were Children disconnect from their parents. And what I found in the present generation is that we are losing many young people. Growing up in Christian families that are disaffiliating from Christianity and adult life, not walking with the Lord.
And it's not because they didn't receive the right information growing up. it's because they had an emotional disconnection within their family. Where they did not, they were not able to function as a team and those children disconnected and ended up being discipled by somebody else. So, uh, sort of been working in that area in the present time.
So [00:08:00] good, man. Yeah. There's, there's certainly such a problem that it seems the Christian culture has adopted kind of this, um, aloof. Um, especially within kind of the, uh, Western masculine culture where there's just, they're like, you, you see there's such a difference within the Middle East where there's just all this affection, like, like men, men and affection towards, you know, other men, there's not that, that sense that we have.
And it's like within Christianity where there's like that, that, like, I want to speak life directly into you. Um, like we're, we just find that very awkward. And, um, I was, I was watching recently, um, you know, a British TV show, you know, and, and like, you know, father sending his son off to world war two. And they, they shake hands like gentlemen, like we won't even hug.
Yes. And I'm like, we've so many of us have inherited. A style [00:09:00] of, um, fatherhood that is so sterile. Um, and yeah, what you're describing, like, and for me, it was really helpful to, to say, okay, I want to be like my father, Abraham. I want to, I want to give a blessing, but it's culturally awkward for me. Um, I have to like, admit that.
Um, have you seen fathers get over that? Um, just, just practically, I'm curious, how, how do you overcome the, uh, the, the sort of the sense of distance, especially between, you know, father and son. I see that among European based culture, which, which we are, and, and I've worked a lot with Asians. And so, uh, even when I began to talk to them, they say, Oh, that might work in America.
That won't work here. You know, because Asians are, you know, Chinese are not affectionate and they don't, uh, you know, show emotion and that kind of thing. And yes, I've absolutely seen that overcome where we've been teaching families four basic [00:10:00] habits. That if they would establish these habits, uh, it would be life changing their family and it would create generational teams rather than generational disconnection.
And the very first one I know that, that you teach, uh, as well, and that is a very simple thing. The Shabbat blessing. That on Friday night. A very simple thing that Jewish people do that retains emotional connection from one generation to the next for them and really empowers their generations to prosper is simply a very simple thing, having a meal together, having dinner together, and, uh, and they teach each other.
They do it as a priority on Friday night. So it's people are not going to youth group. They're not going to basketball games. It's like, no, no, no, no. This is Shabbat. This is the family time. This is where we will gather as a family. And it is a priority. And they do it. Absolutely. Every single week. And, uh, and what we've been teaching [00:11:00] is, first of all, uh, would you look your wife in the eyes?
And, and as you look her in the eyes, would you bless her? Would you speak well of her, tell her how much you love her, tell her how valuable she is, how precious she is, the things she does right, the things she does well, and do that in the presence of your children, let them see you, uh, bless your wife and then, uh, have the husband, the wife bless her husband, uh, and, and do that at the family dinner.
Then together. Look each of your Children in the eyes and speak to them. The things that are good in their life, not the things you want them to change, but the things that they actually do well call out the character qualities that you see in them, uh, that are are good and and, uh, and right that you're proud of.
And, uh, and, of course, I was saying this in one congregation, a lady, uh, [00:12:00] She said, you know, I tried that with my 16 year old son. Uh, my husband and I, uh, we wanted to bless him. And so we sat, uh, in a chair and, and Looked at him. Well, he was wearing a hoodie. He took his hoodie and he went, he just pulled it down over his face.
And she said, how do I, uh, how do I bless somebody like that? Uh, I mean, how do I bless my son? And I said, why do you think he did that? She said, I really don't know. I said, well, I can tell you why he did that because you wounded him and, uh, you've never made it right. She said, well, I don't know how I wounded him.
I said, well, uh, here, here would be a key. Why don't you ask him? Just tell him, I sense that, that I've hurt you. Uh, is that true? And if your heart is sincere, he'll open up and say so. Uh, and then, uh, ask him what happened. How did I make you feel? And when he [00:13:00] shares that rather than everything within you is going to feel falsely accused.
And so you're going to want to defend and explain and justify, but don't do that. Just express some empathy toward him. The fact that it grieves you that you've wounded somebody that you love. And, uh, and ask him to forgive you for hurting him that way. Well, I saw her another week later and she said, you know, we did that.
And it was something that we had not thought of. Something that we didn't know was significant that had wounded him. But when he shared that and it made me weep. And as I began to weep, he began to weep. And, uh, And we reconnected and I was able to ask him to forgive me. Uh, and so what I found, uh, back to your original question, when we simply have asked husbands to do that, uh, and, and the second habit that we're teaching them is would they do a similar thing between husband and wife on a daily basis?
And the very first thing I'm asking them [00:14:00] to do is would you just look your wife in the eyes? And again, if there's ought between you, if there's emotional disconnection, if there's been wounding between you, uh, you're going to find out immediately. And, uh, and if you simply ask the question, what happened, how did I hurt you?
Uh, what I, what I always tell people when you ask that question, whatever the person says is probably going to feel to you like a false accusation. You're going to want to defend and go, well, I didn't mean that. Well, no, that wasn't right. No, I didn't do that. And if you do that, you will never reestablish emotional connection.
You'll never resolve that problem. But if instead, You'll ask, how did I impact you? How did that make you feel? Well, you made me feel like everything else is more important to you. All you care about is your ministry and your work and your friends and your money and your sports. And I mean nothing to you and everything [00:15:00] within you will come up with a list as a husband.
Well, wait a minute. I did this. I did this. I did this. I died to myself and did this other thing for you. And you're accusing me that I don't love you. You know, that's no, that's not right. If you do that, you will destroy that relationship. If instead you'll acknowledge the pain that you've caused another person and repent and ask them to forgive you, you'll reestablish emotional connection.
And now, uh, you're, you'll find that the feeling of romance is restored within a marriage. And if you learn that in a marriage, then you can do that with children. So the way that I've asked, uh, I've found that people break through, and this is true with the Asian people, uh, as well as, uh, those of us who come from European or African background, uh, the same thing, the moment you look somebody in the eyes, you're going to find out if there's an emotional disconnection.[00:16:00]
And if you fix that, if you repair that, Then you can become a team again, instead of being too isolated individuals. So good. I love that. That principle, Craig, I think that's, that's something for me that I had to, took me a long time to just admit that I struggle with just being emotionally, um, unavailable to my family and that I learned that, um, you know, I think culturally and familially, like it's just.
It's almost all, all I knew. And, and, and I think that a lot of us have to, because we come from cultures that practice emotional unavailability, especially for men, like you have to decide if that's something you're going to embrace or repent from, um, and relearn and come out of, and I completely agree with what you're saying that basically your multi generational family is largely dependent on you coming out.[00:17:00]
Of your emotional unavailability. And if you can't figure that out, if you don't repent of that, and you don't create, um, rhythms and practices in your, in your life with your family, then your kids will see you as emotionally distant and maybe even unsafe. And their decision to hit the reset button generationally will largely be.
Um, caused by that. Um, and absolutely. And they'll do it even on a short term basis. I mean, just, they will, they will shut you out and say, I don't need you. Yes. I talk to parents all the time who say, well, I took my kids to church. I prayed for them. I read the Bible. I put them in a Christian school and I just don't know how I lost them.
I don't know what happened. What happened is what we just described, emotional disconnection, emotional unavailability, and that children will disconnect from people who hurt them or who [00:18:00] isolate from them. And they will go in search of somebody else to connect to. And unfortunately the people that, uh, that kids are connecting to today tend to be very ungodly people.
And, uh, they get sucked into a very ungodly culture, unfortunately. Man, so important. Well, if you guys want to dive deeper into that, uh, Craig's, um, uh, ministry and books are really, really helpful and in healing and describing the practices that come out of that. I want to go down. I want to go from the 5, 000 foot level we've been at to the 40, 000 foot level.
Craig and I both enjoy like high level strategic, um, conversations about, okay, where's the kingdom going? What are the systemic? Really flaws in the way we're pursuing kingdom ministry. Um, I think both of us are obsessed with Matthew 28 as the, um, the way in which Jesus was telling us how to, how to go about, um, what it, what it means for the kingdom to expand, right?
Jesus says in Matthew 28 in the great commission, he [00:19:00] said, therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptized in the name of the father, son, the Holy spirit. Teasing them to obey everything I've commanded you. And I'm with you always at the very end of the age. Um, are we doing that, Craig? How are we doing?
Yeah. I had always thought we were doing pretty well until one day, a few years ago, the Lord really highlighted just one word jumped off the page at me where he said, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. I had never seen that word nations.
I had always interpreted that to be individuals rather than nations. And, and we know the word is ethnic. So it may not mean exactly political nations, but it may be people groups, but it really doesn't matter whether you're talking about people groups or political nations. We haven't done well with either one.
And I began thinking, what would a discipled nation look like? And of course, we've got a lot of teaching and people talking about the seven mountains of culture or [00:20:00] seven spheres of influence and that sort of thing. Uh, those, those areas where whoever controls those governs the, or really rules over that nation.
And I thought, well, a discipled nation would be a nation in which all those spheres of influence are based on the Bible. And managed by godly people so that you're basically creating a godly family culture, a godly business culture, a godly entertainment culture, godly government with justice that, that's, uh, that's truly just.
And, uh, these things are based on, on biblical principles where you have a godly culture in a nation. I thought, well, how many nations have we discipled? Where we have a godly culture where, where it's easy. If you go to school, you're going to be taught biblical principles because the education system is based on biblical principles.
And if you turn on a television, you're not going to see somebody promoting immorality or evil. You're [00:21:00] going to see people, the promoting and living life in a godly lifestyle on the television or the films that you watch. I thought, uh, so how many nations do we have like that? And now the answer is zero in 2000 years.
We have not yet discipled one nation. And I thought, huh, that's not a good thing. That's that, that, that shouldn't be. I thought, who is actually discipling nations? Who's doing a good job discipling nations. And I realized who is actually discipling nations is Islam. Muslims are discipling nations. They are doing what Jesus actually told us to do.
Uh, and, and he just asked this question, can you think of any entire nations where the whole culture is based on the Quran and it's managed by zealous Muslims? And the answer is yeah, you can think of seven or eight that come to your mind right now. They've already discipled. And, uh, I know you talk about Genesis [00:22:00] One verse 28 that that we have a five fold mandate from God.
We're to be fruitful. We're to multiply, fill the earth, subdue it and rule over it. They've done those five things in those. They're at the ruling stage in many of those nations. They've already done that. And, uh, and what made me really sad was when I realized we're told that now in Europe. Muslims will capture 5 to 7 new nations within just 25 to 30 years from now.
Nations that have traditionally at least embraced Christianity as the state religion, uh, are actually being captured by Islam. And we know how they do that, right, Craig? They, they plant, um, mega mosques and they try to convert all of the French and British nationals. Is that, is that how they? Yeah, that's right.
And you're saying that facetiously is that has basically been the Christian missionary strategy where we send out missionaries, they plant [00:23:00] churches and do personal evangelism. And what I, what I realized is that mission strategy has not ever discipled a nation. Uh, it's not a good strategy for discipling nations.
What Muslims do, very interesting, they don't send missionaries, they send families. And they, I, I found in capturing nations, the Muslims actually do three things that the Christians don't do. Number one is they understand Genesis 1 28. So they get married and have children. They know how to be fruitful and multiply their birth rate is six or seven to one.
Uh, I was ministering recently in Korea. The birth rate in Korea is 0. 72 extinct in 40 or 50 years if they continue that. So if you don't have any children, I mean, here's the obvious point. If you want to disciple a nation, you do need people. You can't just have a nation without people. So you are going to have to do Genesis 1, 28, the unfortunate thing we have, uh, in the church is we [00:24:00] have a lot of young people that are totally deceived and, and that say, well, I don't want to get married because the world is so evil, uh, or I don't want to have children because it costs a lot of money.
There's no way I can afford to have children. And that is a deception that needs to be repented of, uh, that gross negligence sin, uh, that needs to be addressed, confronted, addressed. And, and, uh, and a lot of people say, well, I'm just going to be like, uh, I'm, I'm going to be, uh, uh, uh, a, uh, just a prayer warrior.
I'm going to just seek the Lord. And I'm just going to be a single celibate person. Who's a hundred percent dedicated to Jesus. Uh, well, there might be 3 percent of the population that is actually called to that. 97 percent of the population is called to be married. And have Children. So the Muslims do that effectively.
The second thing they do is they're thinking generationally that they're not thinking one generation. Uh, they are basically [00:25:00] Thinking my grandchildren, my great grandchildren will be the mayors of cities. They will be the top scientists, the top doctors, the top lawyers. They will be the politicians. They will be the filmmakers.
They will be the book writers. They will be the top scientists. They will be the key influencers and rulers and leaders of society in three to four generations. And the third thing that they do is they effectively transmit vision, values, and mission from one generation to the next. Meaning. Their kids believe their stuff, that they're the kids and grandkids walk in the ways of the parents, maybe not a hundred percent, but to a lot greater extent than 90 percent plus.
Yeah. Yeah. In the United States, statistics tell us that we are losing 65 to 90 percent of the youth right now that grow up in a church. So 65 to 90 percent of the kids that grow up in a church In adult life, disaffiliate from Christianity and say they don't believe in Jesus. [00:26:00] So if you, first of all, if you don't get married and have kids, and then secondly, the kids that you do have, you lose, that don't walk in your values, there's no way you can disciple the nation.
And again, you facetiously said that the Muslims are not going to France. And, and doing mosque planting and hoping to win a bunch of French people. They are planning to, they, they don't just want to plant a mosque. They want the whole culture. So they are not discipling a nation through the church. They are discipling a nation through families by preparing their families to do the five things that Genesis 128 says.
So their, their children and grandchildren will rule, uh, the, the nation. And I thought, okay, why Would we not do that same strategy? Why would we not plant families and multiply culture through families? And I mean that's a good missions strategy, but [00:27:00] you don't even initially need to go anywhere to do that to capture a nation.
You could capture your own nation where you live by families simply doing that. So that's what I got to thinking. when I got to thinking about four key. Habits. Two of them we just talked about eye to eye husband and wife communication and prayer every day. I call it the six minute prayer. We're teaching people just three topics.
Two people, one minute each, six minutes, not a prayer meeting, but eye to eye communication, reestablishment of emotional connection between husband and wife daily, then once a week, having a meal together and doing the same, reestablishing emotional connection and prophetic impartation to your children once a week.
If people would just do those two things, you retain emotional connection. Now you earn the right. To disciple your own children, meaning they want to be a part of your team. They don't want to [00:28:00] disconnect with you and go find somebody else because you're emotionally unavailable, uh, or emotionally disconnected and so blind that you don't realize you're emotionally disconnected or don't know how.
And I think that's a really important thing to do to reconnect because in our culture, again, fathers think my primary job is to go to work, earn money and provide a living for my family. Well, that is probably, uh, that that's a, an important function, but it's certainly not the most important function.
Yeah. In, in a family. Yeah. It's crazy. The, uh, yeah. I love how you are drawing the connection. Between our family theology and the way that we think about discipleship. I think, I think one of the things that, um, I realized is that family theology, like church theology, um, disciple making, all of that is downstream of family theology.
And, and we [00:29:00] somehow abandoned family theology. Family theology is primarily in the Hebrew scriptures. And so for people that, that have basically, you know, um, just a new testament in their pocket. Um, they don't realize that we have this incredible, uh, rich family theology that Jesus and the apostles were building everything they were saying on top of that theology.
We've abandoned that. We've started over with just the new Testament. And I think this is the massive disconnect we're experiencing. So, um, I want you to talk a little bit, Craig, about. Okay. In the U. S., since we're both Americans, um, how does this work here? Like, and what is discipling our nation? Well, here's an interesting thing, Jeremy.
I got to thinking about who actually had, in reality, discipled our nation. And the answer is Jewish people. Uh, I read a book that was called The Jewish Phenomenon, written by a guy named Silbiger, [00:30:00] and I just wrote down some statistics here. I mean, these were really interesting. He said, uh, the Jewish population is only 2 percent of our population, but they are 40 percent of the top 40 of the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans, all billionaires.
They win 25 percent of all Nobel prizes. They win 30 percent of all Nobel prizes in science. 20 percent of all our leading professors are Jewish. 40 percent of all the partners at leading law firms in New York and Washington, D. C. are Jewish. We, we know they're the top doctors. They're the top lawyers. Uh, you think about the most famous film director, producer, anybody ever heard of?
Steven Spielberg, a Jewish man. The founder of Facebook, that one of the key most widespread social media, Mark Zuckerberg, a Jewish man, the founder of Google, Sergei Breen, a Jewish man, uh, so they are, they own the banks, they own the movie [00:31:00] studios, they own the, the social media, uh, they, they are top educators, uh, in, uh, in the school system, uh, professors in the universities, and, uh, And yet they are only 2 percent of our population.
And the reality is they are the ones who have discipled the United States. And unfortunately, the unfortunate part is many, many Jewish people are not followers of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Uh, many of them are, are people who hold very ungodly values. Uh, and yet they are promoting those values from one generation to the next.
Again, I began thinking, how? How did they do that? And the way they do that is they create multi generational family teams. So they learn from their, uh, I mean, why do Jewish children think the way they think? Because they were taught by their parents, their grandparents, their uncles and aunties. And, uh, and there is a cultural impartation and an emotional [00:32:00] connection from one generation to the next to the next.
And they do that through what I call ancient paths. These are ways of God that are not Jewish, they're actually just God's ways of how society functions, and how humans function, and how the world functions. And they have remnants of them, one being this very one we're talking about, the Shabbat blessing that takes place every Friday night.
In, uh, even in cultural Jewish families that are, that are not particularly religious or particularly really connected to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but yet they still have that family practice. And so they are connected from one generation to the next to the next to the next. And, uh, And they are actually discipling our nation, uh, the United States.
And I thought, well, why is it that we don't do the same thing? And the key that I really found to that is impartation of blessing. [00:33:00] Jewish people know how to bless their children and retain emotional connection because blessing creates emotional connection. Christians I don't know how to do that. It's not in our culture.
It's not normal for us. We re initiate again, these kinds of family rhythms and habits that happen on a daily and weekly basis that create, uh, emotional connection and family teams. Yeah, it's interesting because I think, you know, when Paul was evangelizing the Gentile world, it seemed that a major part of what he these Gentile pagan cultures into was he was introducing them to Abraham as their father.
You can see this in Galatians. And he, he was using the Old Testament scriptures as the curriculum for discipleship. He was saying, you know, when, when we read all scripture, as God breathed and is useful [00:34:00] for teaching and rebuking and correcting and training, he's talking about the Hebrew scriptures. And somehow, so, so Paul was, was helping these And it feels like what's happened is like, as we talked about, we, we have our own culture and instead of, instead of adopting an Abrahamic culture, um, and training new believers to, to really think, um, from the ground up the way their father Abraham thought, and then begin to help them understand kind of a Torahic lens through which to see the world and then to see Jesus and all of the New Testament through that lens.
And now the whole story makes sense. We, we've, we sort of like, we start with. Okay. We're going to keep your culture intact, your bankrupt family culture, your, your emotionally disconnected. Patterns, none of those are really affected by our discipleship. We're going to assume all of that. And we're just going to sprinkle some Jesus on top.
It doesn't, it doesn't work like, and this is going to be saved and get to go to heaven. So it's like an escapist weird. It doesn't, it doesn't actually [00:35:00] transform societies or people. You know what actually happened? I think Jeremy is what you were just describing of, of the way it's supposed to be. That was an organic messianic movement for the first 300 years.
Yeah. That's what was happening, is there was an organic movement that was spreading from family to family. Every father was a Bible teacher. Every father was a prayer leader. Uh, the, the foundation of this movement was the family and it was spreading, uh, you, you couldn't kill it because every time you kill a leader, five more rise, uh, you know, raise up.
I mean, you, you, you kill James and, and you get Steven, you kill Steven and you get Paul and, uh, Rome's strategy for 300 years was kill the leaders. And it wasn't working because there was no, um, Top leader. Uh, yeah. There was just an organic movement spreading from family to family. And what killed it was [00:36:00] Constantine.
Yeah. In 3 21 AD when Constantine allegedly became a Christian and made, uh, created this new religion that he called Christianity, which really didn't exist before Constantine. Uh, there was just a Messianic movement. of people spreading the fatherhood of Abraham, uh, and, and Yeshua, the Messiah, who had was now had, had made this covenant, this Abrahamic covenant available to the Gentiles, to everybody.
And this thing, this movement was, was spreading. And when Constantine allegedly became a Christian, he transformed it into a state religion. And he, he actually made it illegal To because he was a huge anti Semite. He made it illegal to worship on Shabbat. He made all the feasts of the Lord, which were the rhythms and the cycles that the whole everybody was gathering in at these [00:37:00] times made those illegal.
And, uh, and deposited, I mean, he, he syncretized, uh, this, his, his near religion with Roman paganism and deposited it in buildings with a, a meeting that was run by professional clergy and a hierarchical style and, uh, and Martin Luther reformed the theology, but left intact this, this disconnected, uh, top down, uh, institutional structure that we have, uh, continued to walk until this day.
And I think what God is doing, honestly, in our day is, uh, Is restoring the pre Constantinian messianic expression of the body of Messiah that is organic in families and creates generational teams. And as that happens, that is the key to discipling nations. I love that connection. I've never made the connection between that [00:38:00] and the discipling, the nations.
I think, I think part of what you're describing in the, that's really been helpful. For me to understand as well as is, yeah, the, if you don't restore the household, I don't know that you can get away from the Constantinian structure. Um, I think, I think that you have to choose. And if this, if the families are so weak.
Um, there seems like there's no, people can't even imagine another structure than this top down institutional hierarchy. But once you start to see these multi generational families, um, you see how, how resilient they are, how well led they are, how consistent it is with scripture. It starts to make sense.
And, and, you know, part of the way I've thought about this is. In Acts two, when Peter was, um, we had all these new believers that came into the kingdom of Pentecost. Um, I feel like we kind of imagined that there was some kind of, um, meeting they had and they said, okay, guys, we got this new thing going on.
Like what, what model do you think church we should, we do house church. Should we do mega church? [00:39:00] Like that, that conversation never happened because they, they, the first century Jewish household was such a powerful entity. Um, this Oikos that you hear talked about. And, and referred to in the same breath as the Ecclesia, you know, greet the Ecclesia that meets in your oikos, the church that meets in your house.
And you see that in Romans 16. And so there was such, these households were so resilient and so, so well led. Um, and, and so if we can't restore these households, I don't know if we're going to be able to pierce past the third and fourth century kind of, uh, transitions that happened in the church back to the first century.
Um, have you seen like, yeah, talk to me a little bit about like, like that movement, trying to get past Constantine back into this sort of first century. It's happening in the nations. It's not happening really yet in the United States, but you see the house church movement in China, for example, you can't stop it because there's no head.
Like, who do you threaten to kill? You know, whose kids do you [00:40:00] kidnap? You can't find the leader, the head, because it's an organic movement. Uh, so it's happening in some of the nations like India and China. Uh, it's beginning to happen. I think it's starting to happen some in the United States again. And, and again, I, I'm not saying that we should not meet, uh, in church buildings on the weekend.
I don't have a problem with that. It's just that I've realized you cannot disciple people through the church. Uh, I know that's a radical statement to make, but let me say it again. You cannot, there is no discipleship movement that can happen in church for a very simple reason. There's not enough contact hours.
There's not enough time. You disciple through modeling, not through speaking, not through telling somebody. You can be discipled at work. As a matter of fact, everybody is discipled in the workplace. They are taught, uh, they, they learn values, they learn worth, work ethic, they learn skills. You're discipled at work and you were discipled at [00:41:00] home in your family.
You are not discipled in the church. The only thing that can happen in church is you can be envisioned. But you can't be discipled, uh, and so I think, I do think God is on this thing of beginning to restore families again, uh, and I see it beginning to happen, but it's, it's accelerating much faster in the nations, uh, than it is here in the United States.
Yeah, I've, when you study these rapid, like these disciple making movements that are erupting and overseas in China and India and Africa, um, all over the world and South America, but they, it's not happening in the West. It does seem like the container is, is part of the problem. As long as you think it's got to be contained in a worship service ministry.
Um, I like what you're describing the, the level of the immersive life on life contact is just not sufficient for, for real life transformation. The family was designed for that. The household [00:42:00] was designed for that. And of course, in the first century, you had people that were very integrated into the household.
These new believers would come into a household and live life as apprentices in, in, in households. And this, this kind of, uh, deep interaction, as well as creating Um, but yeah, I think thinking that we're going to, you know, take an entity that's really designed for, like you said, like worship service or vision casting or kind of high level teaching, um, sermonizing and think that that's going to be sufficient for immersive life and life discipleship.
There's just a, there's a disconnect, but again, if people don't, are not experiencing kind of a household, Um, like a re, a re emergence of the, of the, of the biblical household, then it becomes really difficult to, to see discipleship come back online. And, and to your point earlier, that the loss is not just in, in kind of, kind of [00:43:00] downstream, like for evangelism, the loss is you're going to lose your kids as well, because you're also pushing your kids out of the house into different immersive institutions that they're spending more time with instead of their, their own, their own family.
So what you can do in the church is you can give people vision to disciple their family, but you can't disciple their family, but you can give them tools. You can give them vision so that they can disciple their family. But, uh, but the family has to, the families who disciples children, not the youth pastor.
Right. Not, not the senior pastor. It's, it has to happen in the family. So the job of the church is to equip the saints, to do the work of the ministry, not to do the work of the ministry. Right. Yeah. And so if we, if we can, I mean, that's a, that's a good function for the church is to. Train and teach fathers and mothers how to disciple their family.
Transgenerationally, how to [00:44:00] create transgenerational teams. Mm-Hmm. Uh, that we can envision Yes. Through, uh, weekly meetings. Yes. But, uh, but the actual discipleship has to happen in, in primarily two places in the workplace and in the family. Yeah. And we, we can do these kind of immersive. or intensive training environments.
I know you've, and I'd love to like for you, Craig, to share, um, what your ministry is doing and like, what, what does it look like to be trained in some of these transitions you're talking through and then where people can find you is kind of now the cutting edge of your thinking is, is really pushing into this discipling nations.
I'd love to, to share with people how they can be connected to that as well. Yeah, they can connect with us, uh, on craighill. org, just my name, uh, craighill. org. And one of the ways that, that we're helping to begin to impart vision to people is I just have a daily devotional, uh, called daily spirit and truth.
It's a video devotional. It's just five minutes. We send it out by [00:45:00] email every day. And if you go to my website, craighill. org. You can just put your name and email address in, uh, in the little pop up box and you'll begin to receive that daily video devotional and that's our, our initial way of beginning to.
information to people of how they might begin to train their family, how they might begin to transform some of their thinking, uh, in that way. And then we've got, uh, weekend seminars that we do that are really focused on bringing healing to people from the past wounds, uh, that have taken place because we found, uh, For a lot of people, as you started out talking about, the biggest problem people have is not that they don't know what to do.
They have an inability to do what they know because they've got inner blockage, uh, damage on the inside that just stops them from being able to emotionally connect. Uh, so we, we are doing weekend seminars that bring healing to people. [00:46:00] Uh, and then we do, uh, what we call an eight day school of ministry, which is an intensive time where we can train people, uh, how to actually conduct ministry for others.
Uh, and we, we conduct several of those in different nations. Uh, so we've got teams of people that are doing this work in 56 different nations, uh, so people can connect with, with our teams, uh, all around the world. And, uh, And we've been, uh, just talking about, can we get as many families as possible to simply gather once a week, have a meal together and bless their children, husband and wife to look in the eyes on a, on a daily basis and asked, what has my impact been upon you in the last 24 hours?
Take responsibility for the ways I've wounded my wife or husband, repent, ask forgiveness, pray and bless on each other on a daily basis. And, uh, we found just those two habits [00:47:00] retain emotional connection so that I don't lose my kids. Uh, and now I can begin to learn to disciple them and, uh, and create teams, uh, a team within my family that has a chance of being transgenerational.
Awesome, man. So, so grateful, Craig, for your ministry. So craighill. org, um, people can get access to all those resources, um, and get connected to now that you guys can tell this is just the beginning of, of, um, our collaboration, Craig and I are so glad to have met each other. I can't wait to see what God has for, uh, for both of our, our ministries.
As we, I think we have like different elements of a, of a very similar vision. Um, so I get, I am so encouraged that. Um, that God is, is presenting and giving us this vision. Um, you know, when, when different people from completely different areas, uh, of, of the, of the country and ministry are hearing the same thing, you guys can, you know, that a [00:48:00] movement's coming that's born of the Holy spirit.
So Craig, as we, as we close up, did you mind praying that blessing over, over everyone listening to this? Um, and just this movement of the Holy spirit that's happening to restore households and, and disciple nations. Yes. Father, I thank you that it is your movement and Lord, we just blow on it. We fan it.
Father, let your kingdom come. Let your will be done in our families. Father, I pray that for Jeremy and his family. Protect them. Father, protect the marriage. Protect the children. Father, physically, spiritually, emotionally use them to transmit what you have deposited in them and multiply it through many, many families and many, many Generations.
Father, I thank you for family teams that you are creating teams of families. And I pray that that you would blow your wind on this ministry, Lord, that you've given Jeremy and his family, that you would increase it, Lord, and that you would touch [00:49:00] nations. Father, I pray that Uh, that you would speak to each one of us what you want us to do that father that you would restore and heal Lord that you would create a culture of blessing in every family that's hearing this podcast father that you would identify the areas where we are emotionally disconnected.
Either in a marriage or with our own children and grandchildren and how we can reconnect emotionally. Father, would you pour out your anointing and your blessing upon family teams and all those every ministry that you're using father to reestablish a culture of blessing in families and transgenerational teams.
And I thank you for doing that. I pray blessing on Jeremy and his family in the mighty name of Yeshua Hamashiach, Jesus, the Messiah. Amen. Amen. Amen. Awesome. Thanks so much, Craig. This has been fantastic. Thank you, Jeremy.
1KH OUTRO: [00:50:00] Well friends, thanks for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to learn more about a thousand houses or discover what a season of coaching might look like for you and your household, visit one k h. org. We'll see you for the next [00:51:00] episode.
