The L3 Leadership Podcast with Doug Smith

Building a Ruling Household with Jeremy Pryor

• Doug Smith | Jeremy Pryor • Season 1 • Episode 440

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In this episode of the L3 Leadership Podcast, host Doug Smith sits down with returning guest Jeremy Pryor, founder of Family Teams, for a wide-ranging conversation on leadership, family, faith, and legacy. Jeremy shares how viewing the family as a team—not a temporary stage of life—can reshape how leaders think about generational impact.

00:00 – Welcome to the L3 Leadership Podcast
01:00 – Introducing Jeremy Pryor and Family Teams
04:00 – Multi-generational families and shared rhythms
09:00 – Sabbath dinners, hospitality, and family culture
17:00 – The biblical vision for a ruling household
26:00 – Generational leadership, wealth, and stewardship
36:00 – Why traditional discipleship models struggle
45:00 – Making disciples who make disciples
55:00 – Church, family, and leadership sustainability
1:03:00 – Final thoughts on legacy and long-term impact

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🔹 People

🔹 Organizations & Programs

🔹 Books & Concepts Mentioned


The L3 Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Andocia Marketing Solutions. Andocia exists to bring leaders' visions to life. Visit https://andocia.com to learn more.

To find more leadership resources and helpful content for your leadership journey, check out our website at https://l3leadership.org/ today.

Doug Smith:

Hey leader, and welcome to another episode of the L3 Leadership Podcast, where we are obsessed with helping you grow to your maximum potential and to maximize the impact of your leadership. My name is Doug Smith, and I'm your host, and we recorded this episode live from our Virgo Realty Studios. Today you're going to hear my conversation with Jeremy Pryor, who's the founder of Family Teams. He's been on the podcast three or four times. And I can just tell you this that nobody has had a bigger impact on the way that Laura and I lead our family team than Jeremy and his organization. So always, always, always love getting to connect with him. And we cover so much in this episode. We talk about Sabbath dinners. We talk about how to create a ruling family. We talk about why Jeremy doesn't go to traditional worship services and what he does instead. And we also talk a lot about why we need a better strategy for discipleship in the church. And so I think you're going to love this conversation. Again, there's links to everything that we discuss in the show notes. Make sure you connect with family teams. Can't encourage you to do that enough. And with that being said, let's dive right in. Here's my conversation with Jeremy Pryor. Jeremy Pryor, welcome back to the podcast. I'm always looking forward to times where we can jump on together because I consume all of your content and I'm always like, I need to ask Jeremy about this. I need to ask him about this. And so I look forward. I have a bunch of topics I want to dive into, but welcome back. What have you been up to?

Jeremy Pryor:

Awesome. Yeah, thanks, Doug. Thanks for having me back. Yeah, life here is uh been awesome. And we've got uh now our kind of house has four generations living here, and uh we have four grandkids now. So five kids, four grandkids. Uh my third, our third child, Sydney, she just had her first. So um, yeah, that's been awesome. My two son-in-laws, uh, they started a construction business together, so he didn't do that. And then my son has just jumped over and started helping me and all things family teams and our nonprofit 1000 houses. So just really in that sweet spot right now where it's just like very much working together. My parents are still living and very much a part of our our you know, our our weekly rhythm. And so yeah, I I've I'm just really enjoying this season. It's been amazing.

Doug Smith:

Yeah, I'm curious. You know, you always encourage us to parent with the third generation in mind.

Jeremy Pryor:

Yes.

Doug Smith:

Uh, and now that third generation is in your house. What what is it like transitioning into? I don't are you grandpa or papa? Do you have a papa name?

Jeremy Pryor:

Yeah, we kind of went with the Hebrew because that we knew no one else would have to would pick that. So I I'm I'm officially Saba, and my wife is yeah, Safta. Yeah, that's that's how our our grandkids call us. So Saba and Safta. Um, yeah, and it is awesome. I mean, having those four grandkids in that third generation, you know, at this stage, and then you know, my parents who are still very healthy and and a part of our lives, seeing these grand great grandkids for them, and my my wife's mom, um, yeah, it's been amazing. So, yeah, we there's something that um you know we really advocate for, and we've talked about this is like this multi-generational family meal, and the way we break this down is if you ever get to a time in your season of your life where you get three generations around one table every week, three generations, one table every week, you transform your family into a multi-generational family, and that's what you know you know we're all about. So yeah, we we we get to see that, you know, in our case, it's it's four generations, um, one table every week. And when that fourth generation, you know, showed up, my my oldest daughter, when she had our grandson Elijah, it was, I mean, it was like winning the Super Bowl. I mean, it was so it was so incredible to to see that that child, that you know, my first grandson come in and just for us to see, and for my my parents and my mother-in-law to get to see uh that fourth generation. Uh and then every single week to kind of reignite that excitement and just sense the the depth of that meaning and get to see all those generational connections. It's like it's the best.

Doug Smith:

Man, that's amazing. Yeah, we've been doing the three generations, one table every week, probably for the past two or three years, like at your recommendation, and it has been transforming for all of us. It's something we all look forward to. The conversations are so rich, it's it's unbelievable. I I wanted to get into this a little later, but I guess I'll just throw this out there when we're talking about that dinner. Yeah, I'm reading a really interesting book right now. I don't know if you've read it. It's called The Gospel Comes with a House Key. Oh, yes, yeah. Yeah, Rajar Betterfield, yep. Oh, it's it's phenomenal. It's the best books I've read. Yeah. I'm curious how you integrate neighbor into family. So, you know, the whole idea is hospitality. Man, you should have an open door uh to your neighbors that love them well. Who how do you think that through in the lens of family teams and this whole generational meal weekly?

Jeremy Pryor:

Yeah, I I think that that is the ultimate evangelism. And I think um what Rosario Butterfield is saying in that book is is right on. Um, I I we have constantly tried to figure out ways to integrate others into our family. Tonight we have a big Sabbath. I think we have 16 people coming over, probably at least six or seven of those are not family members. Um, you know, that this actually happened when we so when our kids are pretty young, um we started this multi-generational family meal. At the first, it was just the two generations, you know, before my parents moved here. And we were constantly trying to practice the Sabbath and felt kind of chaotic and we're like, oh man. Um, but we we went on a little retreat with um some friends of ours. We were all kind of starting a church planting uh team. And one of the elements of the retreat was let's go around and everybody share their three biggest spiritual milestones of their entire life. And so it was probably like 10 people there. And we went around and I was shocked because everyone that wasn't a family member of our family that was at the retreat said that one of their top three biggest milestones of their entire spiritual life was experiencing a Sabbath dinner at our house. Wow. And I was like, we're just like trying to survive usually. Like, how do we cook this meal? How do we clean up? How do we, you know, get through this? Um, but it was very meaningful and we experienced depth of meaning. And and what they were articulating was we were we we like we really saw what fatherhood is, sonship is, daughterhood is, which it these are the essence, this you know, brother and sisterhood, the essence of what it means to be in the kingdom of God. God is a father, Jesus, you know, is his favorite entitled for himself was the son. He says the church is like family, brothers and sisters. And I think that part of what hospitality allows you to do is actually make concrete all these spiritual realities that we read about in the Bible. And if you don't have those experiences, if you don't have that table culture, that Abrahamic hospitality that you know that that is commanded of us in the book of Hebrews, like go out there and make sure you practice hospitality in the way that Abraham did, because he entertained angels unaware. So there's a that we need to have that that kind of experience. Like, let's keep our tables open. Um, and that that I think is the essence of what not only evangelism, but also discipleship. Like it's incredibly hopeful for people that are not believers to come into and see a functional family that loves each other. Um, but for discipleship, it's like, man, to see, oh, that that's how a husband and wife you know interact. This is how like we've we've all only ever grown up in one family or one kind of family, usually. And so if we don't open our tables and open our doors, how do the how does the next generation who may be coming into the kingdom not having seen a lot of these things? How do they get to experience the kingdom and what it's like for them to become fathers and mothers and sons and daughters if they'd never see it? So yeah, we we need to find ways to open our tables.

Doug Smith:

Yeah, and when you do them, I am curious because there is a format to the way you guys have your Sabbath dinners. Do you just regardless of who's coming over, do you just kind of go through the same thing, you know, praying over your kids, blessing, all of those things, or do you change it up at all when neighbors are coming?

Jeremy Pryor:

We try not to freak people out too much.

Doug Smith:

That's well, that yeah. I'm like processing. I'm like, how would I do this? And how do I not? Yeah.

Jeremy Pryor:

Yeah.

Doug Smith:

So what you've learned, yeah.

Jeremy Pryor:

It is, it is, it is interesting. And and and I I think sometimes we've, you know, we've gone both ways on on that. We've had conversations as a family, okay? How much do we get into? So I'll just say our normal Shabbat, our normal Sabbath, like kind of liturgy rhythm is we talk about the importance of the Sabbath, what it means, what, and how it's centered on Christ. That's I always start there. So I share that like for two or three minutes. Yeah, I have different ways, different quotes, or different parts of the Bible where I just want to make sure that our family takes them in and just pauses and understands and experiences that shalom, right? That that comes over you when you have a day of rest. And so it's a kickoff to our Sabbath day. So that's how it starts. We usually do that piece no matter what. You know, if we have friends over or people that are neighbors, they know they're coming over to our Sabbath dinner. So hopefully, you know, they can handle that. Um, then we light a candle, and the mom, the uh the oldest mother in the house lights a candle. This really helps her because she's oftentimes trying to rest in the same house where she does most of her work. It's like, how do I create that reminder? So she lights a candle. April usually says something around that, you know, and then says Shabbat Shalom. Now we have a song that was really designed for little kids to sing Shabbat Shalom. That's one that sometimes I'm like, I don't know if we should sing the song.

Doug Smith:

Uh I know the song. Yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Pryor:

That's funny. So that's that's the that's the uh the decision. And then the the the last part of it for us is we bless the sons and daughters, and that's also, and sometimes the wives. Um, and so there's a a blessing we've written for sons, you know, may God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh, which comes right out of the Bible. And then we've added, um, may he give you the faith of Abraham, the heart of David, and the righteousness of Christ as you build our family from generation to generation. Now that putting your hands like my my dad putting his hands on Elijah, his great grandson, and saying every week this blessing over him, you know, may God, may God make you like David and Abraham and Jesus as you build our family, because he's passing his blessing, all that he has accumulated in life, on into that child. And the same thing happens with the daughters. May God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah. May she may he give you the the uh faith of Ruth, the heart of Mary, the righteousness of Christ as you build our family from generation to generation. So we I you know, most people can handle that. Um, we do like to bless everyone. So everyone's a son or daughter at the Sabbath table. Um, so that's that's something we want to be kind of careful of. Now, we do try to practice other open supper opportunities. Um and so we we for a long time are we have a house church that would practice just a literally a weekly open supper where you can invite anybody. Like literally, we had people like inviting people at the grocery store or whatever. Hey, you want to come to dinner, you know? Oh, that's awesome. Um, and we're very, very like kind of missionally oriented in that meal to make sure that you know it it isn't something that is gonna freak people out. This is just an opportunity for us to get to know our neighbors, get to know people in our lives. Um, now we're trying to transition to do that something called summer suppers. So we we discovered that part of what really causes, you know, our culture is very uptight about this stuff. Like we don't, we're not used to being in people's houses, we're not used to being subjected to other people's cultures. Um, and so oftentimes there is a hesitation um that, oh wow, what am I getting into here? Somebody just says something religious, like that's that's so weird. And so what we try to do to try to bridge that gap is in the summer, you can do things. We have a huge front porch and a nice like yard in the front of our house. That's a lot less intimidating. Just come on our front porch. We're gonna like fill out and experience a meal together and kind of try to bridge that gap. Now, once you've once you're like comfortable with us, you probably will be fine to come to a Sabbath dinner and see us do kind of a liturgy based on our faith. Um, but I do want to be careful, especially with neighbors who you want to have a long-term relationship with, um, to not weird them out right away. Yeah, yeah. You want them to get to know you first. Um, and you know, that doesn't mean you want to hide anything, but you definitely want to like probably stair-step, you know, the experience a little bit so that you can preserve an opportunity to continue to have that relationship and and how talk about meaningful things.

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Doug Smith:

Last thing on the I just more coaching on on the Sabbath dinners is do you guys literally like not cook that day? I'm trying to figure out dinner because I still find myself, we do ours on Sundays. Okay. And so I still am finding myself cooking, like I don't prep dinner the night before or anything like that, but I'm like, it would really be nice if I didn't have to do that. Yes. Uh any any quick, I'm sure it's a simple fix, but any advice there?

Jeremy Pryor:

Yeah, I mean, part of it is so we do a Friday night, and so it's not technically a rest until the sun sets on Friday night. That's like the typical kind of biblical um, you know, and there was evening and there was morning the first day as it says in Genesis 1. Yeah. So so yeah, I I do like I like to cook. Um, I I have a obsession with recipes where I can cook a delicious meal for 20, 20 people in 20 minutes. Like I'm gonna do that tonight. I'm gonna make um, you know, I'm gonna make a uh a filet mignon with um like herb butter. And um, you know, I I can do that in 20 minutes for 20 people. Um so there's just like I I'm I I just enjoy that challenge. I know that that's doesn't sound exciting to some people. Um I love it. But I I think I think getting around fire and meat to me is just like, okay, I'm I'm in, I'll I'll do something like that. So I've got probably like 10 recipes that I I I like to and they all kind of fit that category 20 minutes um and about 20 minute prep, sometimes 30 minutes, and I can cook for up to 20 people. Um, so that that that has been really important to kind of crack that code. We did do a crock pots for a long time. We've tried lots of things um to try to cook in advance. If you're doing it on Sunday afternoon where you're trying to be restful, that might make more sense is to find those meals where you can, you know, Saturday night kind of like put it together and this is just get to enjoy it. Like we study our Sabbath um from that perspective. Like, what's causing us to feel restful? What's causing the meaning to feel really deep and causes us to connect to you know the purpose of this day? And so once oftentimes what we will do is just experiment with things, um, try different things, and then as soon as you find something that really works, like, whoa, that that kind of worked, like that recipe, you know, that order of things, doing it in that at that time, that felt more restful. Well, you just want to make sure you repeat that. What I've we've noticed is a lot of people they will do the experiments, but then they won't repeat what's working. So they'll be like, Well, I remember that one time it was really awesome. Um, yeah, like there were some variables that made it really awesome. You can do that every week, you know. That's part of the cool thing about repeating a rhythm. So you I think it's okay to say, look, we haven't figured this out yet, um, but let's keep trying things. But the important thing is pouring cement around the things at work, making sure that you repeat those things and that you capture the learnings.

Doug Smith:

Really, really good. So is there gonna are we gonna get a family team cookbook soon?

Jeremy Pryor:

I thought about it. I'd love to do it, do it. I I feel a little intimidated because I definitely on the on the side of the cooking that I'm not I'm not I'm not obsessed with it being the most amazing meal you've ever had. Because I I am all about speed, but I it does have to taste really good. Like I I definitely care about that. But somebody who's spending four hours or um I'm watching these these cooking shows, I'm just like, oh my gosh. Like I don't I do not have the patience to be, I'm not a chef, I'm not a Michelin, like whatever those guys are doing, yeah, it blows my mind. But man, I do love the challenge of like like lots of food quickly and it tastes great, you know, done. Let's figure that out.

Doug Smith:

Well, if you buy, if you uh do write it, you at least have one customer. I'll make it. Awesome. So um, if you don't follow Jeremy, all great content, family teams content, and he's everywhere. Um, but one area that I really appreciate is your writing. You write on Substack, and I I know are you are you in the middle of like publishing or writing your book? I know you you know published several chapters. What is the title called Ruling in Five Generations or was that just an article?

Jeremy Pryor:

Like the the kind of the the um the working title is uh the ruling household.

Doug Smith:

The ruling household, yeah. So yeah, I want to talk about that because when I read the article, I mean it it just set vision for the next 100 years for our family. Um, can you talk about just that concept? What is the concept of a ruling family?

Jeremy Pryor:

Yeah, yeah. So it starts in Genesis one, and we get in Genesis one the preloaded family mission statement to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and rule. And I began to realize that there's a sequence to uh to that whole idea of the there's a guy named Sean Morris who first pointed this out to me like 10 years ago. He's like, Jeremy, you you become like each of these is a step. And and so I started studying it from that perspective. And I I find, first of all, people are all the time asking, what is what is a family's mission? Like, and people are inventing you know different family mission statements. We've got a family mission statement. Like, I I think it's great to do to figure out what is the unique calling of your family so that you actually give your family something to cohere around and and to aim at. However, it's important to first acknowledge that the kind the family comes preloaded with a mission statement. Like God, when he created the first family, he told us why he did it. Like he had created a garden, he wanted to create these creatures who would steward the garden to keep it, to guard it, but also to expand it so that it's his presence, the order and the beauty of that garden would extend throughout the earth. Well, this is not something that one generation can can do. And so he decided to create a family and he gave them this blessing. It says then Genesis 128, he blessed them and said of them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over creation. And so this five-part mission I think is really, really important that we uh take very seriously. To be fruitful is the command to have children, to multiply is the command to have grandchildren. Um, and so that there's a big mandate there that I think often violates the way we think about family as being a one-generation kind of thing. Like, well, I what do I have to say to my kids about their kids? Well, I think it's really important to create the kind of family culture where your kids want to have kids. And this is what you were mentioning, like aim at the third generation. So be fruitful, multiply, right? Then he says to to fill the earth and subdue it. And so to fill oftentimes is to actually identify the geographical area that our family is called to and to find ways that we we want to fill that out, not just to fill, but also to subdue, to take positions of influence that can be in business or in ministry. And so we want to make sure that that is happening, that there's a subduing happening, that we're using our God-given talents to make sure that we're maximizing whatever it is we can to bring the kingdom of God to earth uh in in in and through the family. But the purpose of all of this, of course, is this final step, and and that is to rule. Uh, and that's God created families to rule, to rule over creation. And I think it's really important that we create ruling households. And this was very normal, you know, historically, and it's kind of odd today, because when we think about even a any project that is going to require a lot of effort, we think, well, we got to start a 501c3, we gotta spin up a church, we gotta create a business, we gotta, you know, and so we don't think about families as being kind of productive entities any longer. We sort of think about families as almost like recreation uh entities where we come back together, kind of get a little have some fun, create some connection, and then we all go off into our individual lives. That's an extraordinarily new idea. And it makes sense of why families that think that way, cultures that have that idea family tend to have a really high divorce rate because it's it's a very fragile thing, uh the these one or two generation families. Um So that that's the the mission we take very seriously, seriously. Like our job is to create this ruling household. We've been we've been fruitful to the extent that we can. We've got five, we had five children. Our children really are uh and believe in having children uh themselves. And so we've got now four grandchildren, and God willing, we'll have, you know, many more. And then this just continues. Like we we've got to fill, subdue, and rule. And so this mission we want to take and and absorb as a family and be working together, the resources of the family, the ministries of our family, the business entities of the family, it needs to all be in service of this five-part mission.

Doug Smith:

Yeah, I love that. And and really, I mean, the vision that really grasps me too is just like, hey, if you do this right, like imagine if your whole family, how many descendants you'd have five generations from now, intentionally pursuing this family paymon mission. And not only that, but even in their own vocations and callings in the world, the impact that you can make in a community, in a city, uh a state, and maybe even the you know, US or the world. Any any thoughts on that? Just because that vision always fires me up.

Jeremy Pryor:

Yes, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you can think about like in our generation, so you got five, you know, uh five kids. If I our kids had five kids, that's 25 kids. If those 25 kids had five kids, you know, you're now talking over a hundred uh descendants just in three generations, and then two more generations, that's over three thousand uh descendants in five generations. And this this is really important to think about what that could mean. And if if you are aiming at ruling, um if you do want to make sure that, hey, we and ruling, of course, in the biblical sense is really an act of service, it's ministry uh to that community. You we need ruling households, we need people who know how to rule wisdom and justice, who aren't afraid to stand alone and to stand for what's right. Um, and a lot of times the reason why we don't do that, the other option is to have a sort of professional political class. And what they actually care about is, of course, popularity, because they they have no actual basis from which to to to fall back on if they lose their popularity. And so we need to create, if we want, if you want a culture to thrive, you've got to have uh wisdom in in ruling. And so part of what we want to do as a family is create the kind of strength so that maybe my grandson or you know, great-grandson or somebody in the in future generations can start to you know invest their branch of the family into a ruling household and can begin to, we can work together to try to help that person. Again, not to get, and we think I think so backwards about this, not to get unusual advantages and privileges at the expense of other families. Like ruling at that point is like, you guys, we've got a lot going on here. And one of my favorite examples of this in history was uh Teddy Roosevelt, you know, the Roosevelt's really interesting family. Um, and part of what like he, if you read his biography, he he was uh their family was uh in Manhattan, you know, in around the 1600s. I mean, they they had spent many generations. Um, and Teddy Roosevelt's biggest hero in his whole life was his dad. And part of what he experienced was there was enormous corruption in New York at the time. I mean, it's it's hard to even imagine how incredibly corrupt the political machine was in that city and in that state. And Teddy Roosevelt sort of single-handedly started to destroy it from the position of a ruling family. Like he had for several hundred years, they've been building this family, uh, and they they were wealthy. They were they were a very strong family, had incredibly deep roots, a lot of strong identity, but that really allowed him to stand alone. There were these moments in the uh in the state legislature in Albany where you know Teddy Roosevelt was just constantly fighting. They were like, there was just grift everywhere. People were like, Well, we'll just take five cents from every person this way and ten cents. And he would go and and discover that and just expose it. People are like they're constantly trying to buy him off and say, Hey, like you can be a part of this. Like, we'll we'll he's like, I don't care. I don't care about your money. You are robbing the people, you know, and and that kind of ruling requires often that there be a family that is is is impossible to buy off. Um, and if you don't do that, you end up with an entire society where you're ruled by corrupt people. You are just uh at the whim of whoever uh can bribe them. And there's whole cultures based on a governed governance of bribery because the family has broken down. And so that's we talk about a ruling household. It's to create noble men who have the capacity to rule without constantly being corrupted because they're in these very fragile one-generation families, and they they really feel like they have to grasp for something because their identity is so fragile.

Doug Smith:

So good. I remember in one of our earlier conversations, something you said that really impacted me. I think I asked you, you know, I heard about uh like Kevin O'Leary on Shar Tank, you know, he was talking about his generational wealth, and he's basically like, yeah, like after my kids turn 18, they get nothing. I'll pay for them to go to college, but they need to figure it out on their own. And and then I look at Dave Ramsey's model where he's really empowering his kids. And you basically just said, um, why if you and your generation have an opportunity to become financially, you know, well off and actually put your position in a family to roll and reign over the next few generations, why would you stop that? Right. Um, so I'm uh can you just talk about that? Uh the other thing that I saw you posted that really impacted me uh was it was a video on how how you can actually enable some a mom that wants to stay at home to stay at home with her children. And basically, it was this guy said that I don't know if he heard about someone that wanted to stay home but couldn't because of their financial situation. And her dad was an investment banker, and he called the investment banker and he's like, Hey, why don't why don't I tell you about the best investment you could ever make in your life? The guy's like, What? And he said, pay for your daughter to stay home. That's right. And because of his generational wealth, he was able to do that, and what a gift. And that actually gave vision to my wife and I was like, can you imagine being able to do that for for the next generation of the Smith team? Uh, can you just talk about setting up your family to rule and reign? What that looks like.

Jeremy Pryor:

Yeah, a lot a lot of this does come down to do you believe in the generational connections? And we have kind of a weird relationship with this idea in our culture because we don't believe in multi-generational family, because most of us did not inherit a lot of resources from our parents and then that we're stewarding that might be go might go back five, 10, 20 generations. We kind of see ourselves as sort of self-made, right? And each of us that have been somewhat successful, and then what we don't want to do is rob our children's ability to become self-made. And so we want to be careful to not give them anything so that they get to start from scratch and have this great experience. And that this is a very unusual and very recent idea that has emerged in a very particular place and through a particular group of circumstances. I mean, if you look at the idea that you can sort of cut your kids off from any resources and they're going to thrive and survive and maybe even do better uh because you've not, you know, sort of given them any resources, uh, that that idea does work in in a tiny, tiny, tiny um circumstances. Uh, for example, from 1945 to 1960, after America won World War II, uh, there was the rest of the world was so devastated. Um, and we we became this incredible manufacturing superpower. Um, and we were like the real, the last like developed functioning society. And there was just so much wealth that the middle class just exploded. And for some reason, in those little 15 years, it erased everything that had happened for thousands of generations before that. And we just reset our whole expectation of what it means to start a family. It's like, oh yeah, anybody can do that. You can just have one income and you know get a job at the manufacturing plant down the street and provide for your family for the rest of the rest of their lives. I did it. Why can't you do it? Well, that that's that's incredibly unfortunate. I mean, this kind of just weird, like historical um amnesia that this is just not the way the world works. Like, this is not the way that most people that kick their kids out at 18 and say, good luck. Um, I'm basically giving you a gift. Um, you do your best. That would have been a death sentence in most cultures and most times in history. Like, you don't do that to your children. This is why in the prodigal son story, it was like such a weird thing for the son to leave. Of course, he didn't leave with nothing. I mean, he left with the the inheritance of his father, but if he did end up starving uh regardless. But this is this is what life is like in most parts in the world. And I think there's a generation that's coming that's potentially going to actually have a similar struggle. And so what we need to do is figure out how do you bless your children without hurting them? How do you make that your success, your resources, do you wait until you die and they're 55 years old and they suddenly get hit with an inheritance that you know maybe they don't even need at that point? Or do you find a wise way to like distribute resources to your children to really help them? And in our case, we've, you know, we've created a family bank that basically there's three ways you can tap the family bank. One is that you we'll give you a 50%, like a basically a 50-50 grant for educational expenses. Number two, we'll give you a 50-50 grant for a business startup. And number three, we'll give you a 50-50 grant for anything that's blocking you from having more children. So, because that's part of our mission. Yeah, yeah. Fruitful to multiply. And so we want our kids to have kids early and often. And that's that's a huge part of our family mission. All of our kids are excited to do that. We don't wield authority over the next generation, but we do, we do steward the resources of the family. Like me and April have an outsized um influence over the resources of the family. And I I'm saying that intentionally, it's the family's resources, right? It's not just my resources. God's entrusted that to us to steward, right? But part of that is to steward that not just on behalf of whatever I want to do with the money, but what is best for the family. And so, and so we we have the family bank. We can also give a zero percent loan for those three things if if they can't afford to match. Um but we really want to make sure that our kids are getting the education, starting the businesses, and uh having children in a way that allows them to really thrive. Um, I think the other part of this that is really important is that April and I intentionally set up our lifestyle in such a way that we could really help our kids with their kids. Like we really want to be available to be able to provide, you know, not just like basic childcare, but to be really engaged with our grandchildren. Um and our kids are also engaged with each other's uh nieces and nephews. And so uh we we all live on the same street. You know, my daughter lives across the street, my other two married kids live in our, you know, our house. We have a kind of a four-family house. And so this allows us to constantly be helping each other. And for some reason, we think that success is every single person needs to kind of split up and try to somehow survive in a totally isolated environment. And this is why just sort of the weird myth of the um 1950s housewife as being kind of the normal way that uh successful or even a Christian family should look. Again, this is very strange. Like most families lived tribally in most times in history where they were sort of like constantly helping each other. I was reading an article recently. This woman that grew up in Uganda got very successful, moved to Switzerland, and had her first child after she had gotten married. She said, I can't, I don't know, I have no idea how people in Western cultures do this. I feel so alone. I'm I'm just at home with this child. And so she's begging her husband, can we please move back to Uganda, where every single person in my family lives on the street? And so her husband is like, you know, I think he's Swiss. He's like, Oh my gosh, really? Like you'd rather move to like an undeveloped country. You we have all the resources right here at our disposal in Switzerland. So that he's like, We'll try it. And so then she wrote this entire article about what it was like to return to Uganda, live on a street that was just filled with aunts and uncles and cousins. And she's just like loving her life. And she's like, This, it makes sense of why, like, I'm a mother and why how I can actually thrive as a mother in a having lots of kids because we live in a particular kind of lifestyle. Well, we've completely cut off this generation. Um, and this oftentimes has happened, you know, several generations ago, where we stopped thinking about how do we become interdependent with our larger extended family. We are constantly trying to find ways to become atomistic, individualistic, totally isolated. And as David Brooks says, when Americans become wealthy, they purchase loneliness. That is our goal. We are all trying so hard to make sure that we live the kind of lifestyle where we get to live and then die alone. And I'm like, like, we don't have to do this. Like, there's other ways to do family, and we want to kind of get the word out. Like, this is a strange idea. Let's uh let's go back to an ancient way of doing family where we are constantly helping each other.

Doug Smith:

Yeah, I was just talking with this uh young leader who worked at a prestigious club. I'll just leave it general, and uh, and basically was a general manager there. So he got to you know interact with 800 plus members of this wealthy place. And I said, Man, what was it like? Like, what did you really learn interacting with all those families who are you know really well off? And he basically just said, I think it's really important for you to know that you can have everything and not really have everything. Uh and the translation is like, you can have everything and absolutely have nothing. And I feel like our culture is just pointing people there. And I said, How many people do you feel like actually had everything? And he said, five. Five out of eight hundred plus families that he actually looked at and was like, man, they're doing it right. Um, so thank you. And again, that's why I think your work is so important with family teams. And if you're listening to this, and again, have never been exposed to Jeremy's work or family teams. Uh really encourage you again. They're the biggest impact on how Laura and I lead our family team. They have a website, they have a family team accelerator. Jeremy, I'd love for you to talk about that. And we're gonna get into some other things. You also have Family Inc., lots of ways for people to get connected around um everything that you've been sharing. Anything you want to add there?

Jeremy Pryor:

No, that's great. Yeah, that you know, that every family's journey is different. And we always just encourage people to start by just saying, hey, what kind of family do you want to build? Like you've inherited a certain idea family, this sort of springboard for individual success, or we kind of think of as the nest idea family. You can choose to be a family team. Um, but if you do that, oftentimes it's such a different way to think about family in a Western context that we wanted to create lots of tools for how to make that transition. And so that's what some of these uh these different programs are there to do. We we love getting to coach families to begin to transition from being a nest to a team. Um, that's it's so much better. And it's I just want to encourage people to do that. But it does then create a very different trajectory. And that's when people start to think about things like, well, maybe we should build a family business, family assets. Maybe we need to think about ministry in and through the home. And so that's part of what we uh really love coaching people as they begin to have go deeper and deeper into living an integrated life with their family.

Doug Smith:

Love that. And we'll include links to everything in the show notes. I want to take a little bit of a um another journey with you. I I have some more questions on family, but you wrote an article, I don't know, maybe a year ago uh on it. The title was Why We Don't Go to Traditional Church Services, we do this instead. And again, I'm someone who I've worked at a church, you know, very involved with the church. But man, I I read that, I've probably read that thing like a hundred times. Um, and listen to the podcast that you and your wife did on it. I'm just curious, and and again, I know you're not trying to sell anyone on that, but I'm just curious of how you actually view the church and how you all live that out, what you do instead. Can you kind of give people an overall summary and then you know we can dive a little deeper into some of the things?

Jeremy Pryor:

Sure, yeah. Yeah, so this is a like a branch of theology called ecclesiology. This is like what do you think the church is? And I'm very interested in this question. Um, I also grew up, you know, very much integrated with traditional churches, and I was on staff at seven different churches. Um, I've attended five different seminaries. I'm very interested in this question, and I've constantly tried as a and I'm really I see myself as like a second generation believer. In other words, my my parents were very involved in church. Both my parents worked at a mega church. We were, I grew up in a very churched uh kind of culture. And so I think oftentimes when you have that experience, you like, all right, there are some really amazing things about that experience. There's some things I'm reading in the Bible that don't seem totally to um you know connect with that experience. And so it's good to as a second generation person, just really begin to ask, okay, what's the next step? I want my, you know, just the same way that I want my ceiling to be my children's floor. Like, I feel like I I need to continue to to really lead our family into, okay, what what what are we missing here? Is there anything that we can do that might help us uh have an ecclesiology, an understanding of the church that's really um that that's even you know more rooted in what we read in the scriptures? And so that's just been a journey for our entire uh life as as a as a family. And um, and as we've really tried to run some experiments, some really didn't work well at all. I mean, this is not easy. I I think it's for for most families, I tell most families, hey, if you find a really great traditional church that's really um you know creates great community, you're growing spiritually, like like that's a gift, and and I really encourage you to to dig in there. Um, but there are some of us who I think are kind of in this state where we're like, okay, there doesn't seem to be um there seem is this really the way that the Bible describes it? Is there is there maybe some things that we can explore here? And so part of what we want to restore or consider is um a few things that that to me I I'm very convicted of and that our family has really gone after. One is disciple making. Like I just really am frustrated when I see a thriving church where there's no real discipleship that's multiplying. And sometimes I, as I've talked to many, many pastors about this problem, um, oftentimes they're so burnt out trying to pull off the worship service, small group ministries, that they just don't have anything left over, or their people don't have enough left over to actually make disciples who make disciples. There are churches that are exceptions to that. I love, I love studying that. There's a couple of churches here in Cincinnati that have really pushed past this issue. And um, I just published on our podcast a friend of mine who's a pastor who's doing a fantastic job of leading his church into disciple making. But these are often the exception. And so part of the reason why we want to do church in a more simple way is to just to create a lot more space for us to make disciples who make disciples. And so this is something our family is very committed to. We do this very intentionally. We have a whole program for how to make disciples who make disciples over at 1000 houses. And so that's one reason. Another thing that I'm very interested in is is there something about the home itself, the relational connections between a mother and a father, the household that that is uniquely um can uniquely reflect the kingdom of God? Again, like around a table. Like when you think about how Jesus at the Last Supper, there there was an experience of the table that was so beautiful. And when you walk into a church and you have that little, you know, cup thing where you uh take communion, you know, it's like the cell of thane. And I like I'm just like every time I look at that, I'm like, this is so odd. Um, in some ways. Like we know they had a love feast, um, but we know that's very difficult to experience the kind of meal that was happening in the first century when you're trying to do it at an industrial scale. And so sometimes I'm like, okay, do we lose something there by trying to run people through an experience of church that doesn't involve a meal, that doesn't involve, you know, deep connections, relationships, doesn't happen, you know, in and through houses. And so I've been and we have constantly been trying to figure out are there elements and there's ways to do this? I I think the actual most healthy way I've ever seen is kind of a hybrid model where you have opportunities to really do this well in houses, but there's also times where you can experience the larger church, you know, great worship, um, you know, dynamic teaching. Like I really believe in both, um, but it it is difficult because in the way that our current kind of churches tend to go, they really favor the bigger experience so much more than what's happening in the home that oftentimes you don't see a lot of this vibrancy happen in the home. And probably the hardest thing for us that we've experienced is when you do try to put a lot of church activity on the family and in the house, oftentimes when you're talking about these modern Western families, they're not used to doing productive things as a couple and really hosting uh something that that is that dynamic. And so part of why we even started family teams was out of a desire to see a different kind of family emerge that could actually reflect the kingdom culture in a home. Uh, and that's that's when we see families that know how to start businesses, that know how to host ministries. Really awesome, dynamic husband and wife teams whose kids are really on the team and are flourishing and they're able to pull things off as a family team. Well, that kind of family actually can experience something closer to the first century idea of the household, the oikas that you read about in the New Testament. And we we no longer have households in most Western contexts. And so I think this is why house church doesn't really work in most western contexts. But if you do start to restore the household, I think you can restore an expression of the church in the home that I think is really healthy. Again, I think still needs to be connected to something a little bit bigger. I think that's much, much better if there's something like a city, even in the even in the first century, they did they didn't just do house church. They did house church, but they also had a city church. It's very clear when Paul is saying that he was writing letters to the city churches or Jesus in Revelation 1, 2, and 3, he's he's writing letters to the churches in the cities. Like these different, I believe in these three expressions of the church. There's the the very local, uh small expression of the church that could happen in the household. There's the city church expression, and then there's the universal church. And each of those layers, I think, are really important to be connected to. And so uh we really we've really experimented with and have really tried to restore a more household expression of the church, but we also want to do that constantly in partnership with a larger city church expression. Sometimes that means, you know, connecting with traditional churches uh that are friendly to the house church model that we're working on. Sometimes that means creating a larger network of house churches that can then gather together in a kind of a city church expression. So we've tried lots, lots of those things, but we we we believe in each layer. Um and it's really important to have each of those experiences. Um, but I do think it can be overly idealistic for a young family listening to this to say, we're gonna launch a, you know, like restore a house church expression. It's hard work. It requires a certain maturity in terms of the household itself that is hosting that activity. Um, and but we we are seeing a lot of these kinds of households begin to re-emerge. And I do think it allows us to experience an expression of the church that is fairly ancient, but also very functional and and I think really beautiful.

Doug Smith:

Yeah, you mentioned your your passion for discipleship and that you rarely see that done well. Yeah. Um, I'm curious, like, yeah, what have you seen work both in church and outside of church? Um, and kind of give us that vision of what you're doing through a thousand houses.

Jeremy Pryor:

Yeah, so we've constantly studied this question, and the question is really simple, um, but very difficult to answer. The simple way to describe it is does your disciple making make it to the fourth generation? So if you if you can trace a disciple, somebody you've discipled who's made a disciple, made a disciple, has made a disciple, got to the fourth generation. There is almost no disciple making movements in the entire West that get to the fourth generation. Um, and you know, I just had somebody on my podcast um a couple of weeks ago who uh his full-time job is is tracking and participating in disciple making movements all around the world, including in Western contexts. There's over a thousand disciple making movements in non-Western countries that are getting to the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh generation. But I said, Well, hey, could you just tell me, just can you just give me one disciple making movement that's getting to the fourth generation in like a Western country? He's like, I don't think I can list one. And I'm like, Wow, so that that is appalling to me. Yeah. Um, and so so we we we decided to study this problem very, very at a like like get it under the get the microscope out and really study it for years. And we have, and we've tried, and so we are starting to see um some of our disciple making efforts um make it to the fourth generation. It's not uh anything I would call a movement at this point, but I do think the blueprint is working. Um, and we've had to like tweak and tweak and tweak. Um and it's really I I've really enjoyed this process. So what we do, just to kind of put it in a nutshell, is um our coaching is that we we so we take on groups of three. So I'll take on three guys, my wife will take on three ladies, um, usually for about a five-month period, and we do a pretty intensive period. We take them away for a 24-hour uh getaway um to kick off all the disciple making. Then during the five months of discipleship, there are three different kinds of like kind of meetings I do with the guys I'm discipling, training meetings where I'm imparting very specific things to them as apprentices. Um, we also do um coaching meetings where I'm one-on-one with each of the guys, trying to figure out, okay, what is something that that I can really help you with. And then the third thing is a discovery of Bible study around the person of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, the life of Jesus, teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded. And the fourth thing I would also add is that we try to find ways to integrate them into our normal life so they can see the way that we live. So we do that for five months. And then so they really get a DNA transfer during that, during that kickoff and during those five months. Then at the very end, I then take them away for another 24-hour getaway. And at that getaway, we only focus on reproduction. So basically, I am helping them prepare to make disciples uh uh as soon as possible. Um, and so they, by the time they're done with that getaway, they're like usually one click away from starting a group. They know who, they know exactly what they're gonna teach, they know how they're gonna do the getaways. Like they they understand. And when I tell them you've got to do this for the people you're discipling, right? You've got to give them, you also have to carve out some time for the send-off getaway to make sure that you are putting the seed in the fruit, right? So that there is actual multiplication happening, and then we track and then we celebrate. So April and I actually are hosting a banquet on a couple of weeks where everyone we've discipled over the last couple of years is coming, and they're coming with the people that they've discipled. And so we have this all in a spread. So we can literally see the ripple effects. Um, and I know it's for some people it sounds like a pyramid scheme. It's like this is like multiplication, like we absolutely need to track our fruit because this is not working, you guys. Good. This is a disaster. Jesus told us to do this to make disciples who make disciples, and we're not doing it. So um, anyway, so it's working, and I'm very committed to this. So, yeah, every three months we launch another cohort. Um, it's called Life on Life Discipleship over 1,000 houses. So, anybody listening to this, if you guys want, it's free. I love, love, love coaching people. My wife and I do this uh personally. We will coach you in how to make disciples who make disciples. Um, and so we usually do, we usually you know, coach about 20 or 30 families every three months. Um, so if you're interested, please, you know, uh sign up for that because we would love to coach you and we want you to develop an actual disciple making practice, right? We want you to experience what this is like. And then every year, and we say this in our community, um our house church, basically one of the requirements is everyone has to um either be discipled or make disciples on an annual basis. And so these four or five months, sometimes six month, like intensive discipleship groups that we launch, everyone has to do this at least once a year, right? Um, and so pick the best five months of your year that you have the least going on, help each other. Sometimes a husband and wife have to do these in opposite, you know, seasons in order to make sure that you know that they're they're figuring out how to do this. Sometimes husbands, husbands, and wives can do this together, but we we've got to figure this out. We've got to stay dedicated because this is what Jesus came to do, right? He came to launch a disciple-making movement. It's very clear when he left, he told them to go and make disciples. You know, he said, I will build my church, but he told them, he commanded us, go and make disciples. We've really reversed that. We've said, well, we'll build the church. We think discipleship is just going to magically happen. And unfortunately, it doesn't happen that way. If you do make disciples, churches will happen. Like we can find ways to the church emerges from good discipleship. But if you just plant churches, you won't necessarily be multiplying disciples. Oftentimes what happens is they're almost like like nurseries where people stay spiritual babies. Like they don't actually mature. Maturity happens through life on life DNA transfer that happens in the process of apprenticeship. And so we want to make sure that discipleship is an actual apprenticeship experience and that every person who comes to the kingdom of God should have multiple discipleship experiences with various people that help them mature all the way into the full stature of Christ. Like that, that's the vision that Jesus gave us. And we're just we're just off mission. And so we we really want to recapture that mission by giving people really practical ways to make disciples.

Doug Smith:

Yeah, and I'm just saying I love this. Uh, I am curious. Like I'm thinking about several people, like, how do you find people to disciple, right? Like, do I just walk up to someone, you know, 27, be like, hey man, what's up? You look like you could uh use some discipleship. Come with me. Yeah, like well, how have you yeah? I'm just curious, how do you actually do that? Because I feel like a lot of believers want to initiate, want to make disciples, but again, it's just kind of like they hope it kind of happens and then nothing happens.

Jeremy Pryor:

Right. There's like five or six major like defeaters in our culture that make it really hard for us to do this. This is one of them. We we we have an obsession around expertise, and so it did we all feel like this like imposter syndrome. Like, who am I to go up to somebody and say, hey, can I disciple you? It just feels like, what are you, you Jesus? Like, so this this is really tough for us to figure out. So we oftentimes, first of all, say, look, this is very similar to becoming a parent. Like, if you were to ask the question, who's the best person to raise my son in the table in the whole city? It's probably not you, you know, 25-year-old guy who just had a kid. Like it's probably somebody else, right? Me and my wife are joking, like, you know, now that we've raised our five kids, now we feel, you know, we're finally prepared to raise kids. But that the God decided to do this, to give broken and immature parents like us children to help us mature. And so we have to be okay with making disciples. And and part of what I think creates a lot of this, a lot of the confidence is we really believe you give people what you have, not what you don't have. Part of what we do when we are coaching people to make disciples is we catalog the lessons that they're stewarding in their own lives and say, look, you should limit your discipleship to those lessons. And you can go into the gospels and learn how to follow Jesus together, but there are things that that that the Holy Spirit has imparted to you. You're stewarding those things. You need to pass those on. And in terms of just finding people, you know, I always think that people are usually like one relationship away from almost an infinite pipeline of people to disciple. We need to get a lot more connected to each other in the kingdom of God. You know, we need to be like more parasitic. Like you need to go and attach yourself to a ministry that is like seeing new people come to faith. Because what happens in most cities is you have a ministry over here where there are new people coming to faith, but they have no one to disciple these new believers. You got all these believers over here that have been believers for 10, 20, 30 years that are all hanging out together, experiencing awesome, you know, worship experiences or whatever, but they're like, no new believers are coming out. It's like, guys, look, like this is not rocket science. We got to get together. There's one kingdom, and and the city church is something we have to honor. And so let's actually figure out ways for us to meet people who are connected to pipelines of new believers coming in. Now, there are ways to start your own pipeline, you know, to participate in evangelism, to begin to to integrate, you know, uh find people that are definitely hungry and ready for discipleship. But in most cities, we just find it it's it's sort of just a networking problem. Like you've got to connect yourself to those places where people are coming to faith and begin to serve um those ministries. And as you do that, you will likely never lack for uh groups of people to come and disciple.

Doug Smith:

Yeah, and how do you, I'm curious, like just how you would explain differentiating this from small groups. I think a lot of churches uh would say that the small groups are the way they disciple people. They may have classes and things like that, but what's the differentiation between what you're talking about and just leading a small group with curriculum?

Jeremy Pryor:

Yeah, unfortunately, small groups are almost the opposite of discipleship. Like the way that the way the whole small group ministry, uh whole idea started was there was a we were very focused in the church growth world and how to how to create an amazing worship service. But there was a problem, you know, back when I first started going to church when I was like a teenager, um, you know, or a young adult, small groups were almost almost didn't even exist in churches. They had like Sunday night worship, Sunday morning worship, Wednesday night worship. Um but basically after we started getting better and better at crafting worship services, there was a new problem that began to develop in the church, which was they called it the backdoor problem. And that what they discovered is if people do not uh form two or three meaningful relationships, within six months, they'll leave the back door of your church. So you sort of have this giant leaky bucket. And so the church growth people all got together and said, well, how do we how do we stop this? And so they started looking around for you know experiments that were working, and the churches that were um, you know, were initiating this new idea called small groups, they were they were closing the back door. And so this was the this was the emergence of the small group ministry. And so it was really, and if you think about the best way to make sure people create a relational connection with people uh that are meeting maybe at the worship service or are going to the same worship service, but need to experience relationship, you want to get them involved in peer groups. Like, and so oftentimes you'll see like on a church's website, like, hey, we're kind of the you know, the young, the young married small group, or you know, we're the whatever. And so you you meet peers and you get together and you form form those relationships. And I think that's really valuable. Like it's great to develop good connections with people. You can do Bible studies with those people, but there's all kinds of differences between that and discipleship. So, first of all, discipleship is like I said, that's almost the opposite of that idea where what you're you're always doing in discipleship is there's a there, there's an apprentice and there's a clear disciple maker. And these people usually need to be 10 to 20 years apart in age. Like that's ideal, right? You know, Jesus was older than the disciples for a reason. Like you need to have some life experience. Well, this is this requires that disciple maker to actually form a different kind of relationship. They're not trying to form a relationship with a group of people that are, you know, that are their age to try to develop a friendship. They're trying to develop a connection with people that are younger than them that need something that they have, and that is maturity. Like, and so they need a way to deliver that. Now, the other problem that emerges with small groups versus disciple making is okay, you've got to create disciple making is more designed to be intergenerational, where small groups tend to be life stage uh oriented. The other problem is that it immediately will burst outside of the realm of that small group because it's designed to multiply, right? So if you think about a multiplication movement, so you're discipling these three, and then you've trained them up, now they're discipling three, now they're discipling. Well, this should immediately blast way past not only the small group's scope, but also the the church's scope in terms of its own worship service. Like if you try to contain a disciple-making movement in a small group, or try to even contain a disciple-making movement in a particular expression of the church, like you're going to immediately throttle any ability for it to get to that fourth, fifth, sixth generation. Again, this these are very different models of ministry. And so what we're describing, what we're having a conversation about right now, is the philosophy of ministry. And the Bible has a particular philosophy of ministry that is at odds with the way that we tend to do church in our context. And so one has to win out. And what we've decided over and over again is to double down on our particular philosophy of ministry at the expense of the way that the New Testament describes ministry. And so we need to be a lot more sensitive to these things. I understand why we do it. I mean, we've we've got so much invested in this model, but I really think it's important for some people to begin to take a step back and say, okay, you know, are there ways either to tweak the model or to sort of begin to experiment with other ways to get back to a way of disciple making a particular? Because this is the part of it for me that is non-negotiable. Like we have to make sure that in the kingdom of God we are we are making disciples who make disciples. That's so clearly the mission that Jesus sent us on in Matthew 28. And so whatever we have to do to make sure that happens, we've got to be willing to do. Um, and so yeah, it we can't just constantly be tweaking um the different elements of our current model to see if they would somehow magically create the thing that that Jesus commanded us to do. And I think we've tried that so many different ways. Um, I I I like I said, there are people that are I think are are are more committed uh to that, to that effort and are attempting to do that. And I have a lot of uh desire to see them succeed. However, I think that we have to be, it starts with being realistic that these are not the same thing. Like some of my friends who are pastors have had to come to this conclusion. Like um, the ones who are really successful at beginning to see disciple making movements happen, they they they they are not trying to do it through small groups, and they are also not trying to do it in a way that's limited to their church. Um, because again, a movement cannot be constrained by those things. Um, and so you have to be willing to be realistic about the tension between these philosophies.

Doug Smith:

Yeah, and if people are listening to this and fired up like I am, as you said, a thousand houses, is that where they can learn more about what you're doing?

Jeremy Pryor:

Yeah, so one thousand houses, yeah, onekh.org is where you could find us. Um and yeah, like I said, we we have cohorts uh there for discipleship. Um and we'd be happy to engage churches in how to help them start a movement. Um, definitely take a look at listen to that podcast, my friend Chris Marlin, who's the pastor of the church here in Cincinnati that's really going for discipleship. I also did a another um podcast with Matt Massey, who's a uh who's a local megachurch pastor in Cincinnati, and and he is really going for discipleship. Um so I I I am seeing some pastors get super serious about this. Uh, I I've been so encouraged, and every time I can find one, I'm like, please, I want to talk to you. I want to share your message with more people because um I think there are we definitely don't want to say there's there's not multiple ways of doing this, but you do have to take the problem very seriously. Like there's a reason why we can't find any movements that are consistently getting to the fourth generation in in America. Um, and we've got to fix that problem.

Doug Smith:

Yeah. Um, I want to ask one more question before we start to get into Joe Rogan territory and go for hours. We'll have to do another show. But while we're talking about church and ministry, um, I lead a, I call it a pastormine group, but a bunch of ministry leaders, we meet once a month, we do life together, go on trips. It's it's been amazing. Uh, we've been meeting for five years. And part of the vision of why I started this group was when I was young in ministry, my pastor, and again, I don't know if this was like a factual stat, but it could have just been estimation. But he said, Doug, I think about 2% of Christian leaders actually like make it to their finish line intact, their families intact, and fulfilling what God called them to do. And whether the 2% is real or not, I know the number's not much higher, right? And so you wrote an article after uh a pastor fell, and I don't know if I wrote the name of it down. It said, How to predict a Christian leader will fall. But this is huge because you know, when we gather together as a group every month, it's basically just a reminder of, hey guys, we're in this together, we're locking arms and like, man, let's do everything we can to make it there. Um, can you talk a little bit about that article? And even the, I think, I don't know if it was in seminary or in college, you had a professor uh throw out an interesting challenge in the beginning of the semester. But one, talk about the problem, but also what is your proposed solution? Because as you said, this just happens far too often and it's just so sad.

Jeremy Pryor:

Yeah, it is really unfortunate. Yeah. Yeah, I had I had the seminary uh prof who basically said, Look, there are so many pastors falling right now. I'm gonna basically issue a challenge that I'm going to begin every single one of our classes and describe to you a person who this week has fallen from from ministry. And so for the entire semester, he came and he made good on that promise. And there were some famous uh moral failure failures from major pastors. Um, you know, this is back in the in the in the 90s. Um, man, I I was so bummed. I mean, and he this professor, he was he he was sort of shell-shocked, honestly. Like he he was he was um he wasn't gloating. He was in he was in incredible grief. Like, what is going on? Why why is this happening? And um, and it it is incredibly discouraging. And I do think it's important to have a thesis for why this keeps happening, because we need we need exactly what you said. We we've got it, we've got to increase the percentage of leaders who are making it to the finish line. But I do think there is something like really unfortunate about the way that we're propping up leaders to fail. Um, that we're not creating, you know, the kinds of uh the kind of uh leadership culture within our churches that that make it possible to attract the kinds of people who are going. to be mature. We're so fixated on, okay, like we need a growing worship service. So we got to have a a dynamic, charismatic speaker. And there's, you know, somebody who's very comfortable on the stage, somebody who's got a, you know, a charismatic personality. Like these are the kinds of things for so many churches that become, you know, sort of front and center in terms of what they're looking for. And it's not surprising you look at the, you know, kind of kind of the the personality profile that we are going for, that it's not the same as the person of character that is going to make it to the end of the finish line. And so this is part of why I think we have to take a step back and say, okay, are have we sort of created a system? Like they they always say that, you know, your system is perfectly designed to give you the results that you're getting. And so I I do think this is sort of a system wide problem. When you design the entire system around creating a dynamic worship service and that all hinges on this one particular kind of leader. That particular kind of leader is also very consistent with the kind of person who is likely to uh have these kinds of struggles. And so these things are interconnected. Again, it's not, it's not 100%. I mean there's there's amazing leaders who are have got incredible teaching and charismatic gifts that are very, very high character. But man, you're you're just creating this kind of unicorn expectation where it's just smaller and smaller and smaller percentages of people. And I'm just like I don't think like again we we've got to I'm I'm in this second generation. I I'm comfortable with taking a step back and saying okay I've I've seen a lot of the results. I've lived through so many of the the challenges you know my parents they've you know done a good job of like processing the challenges with their generation with me. And and it is important for us to now take stock and say okay uh do we need to make some some foundational shifts to how we think about ministry so that we don't continue to get the results we're getting um and so I I'm I'm on that train. I'm constantly asking those kinds of questions. I know that there's been a massive movement late lately of people converting to you know Catholicism and orthodoxy and yeah just our frustration with kind of the the typical Protestant non-denominational evangelical experience. And I you know my my um bent is to kind of go back into this these ancient roots as well I just like going like a little bit further back like into the Hebraic into like what the New Testament like what what what do we see there? And if we're doing some things that are consistent with the New Testament why do we getting these results but that's really not what's happening. Like we're we're we're we're oftentimes disrespecting the models that are being described in the New Testament um that might have a lot to teach us.

Doug Smith:

So good um well thank you so much for this conversation I know we're running long but um thank you for everything you do. Anything else you want to share with us before we wrap up man it's been great.

Jeremy Pryor:

Yeah I would love to like get to talk to especially a discipleship conversation Doug thanks for opening that that door you can tell that's a huge passion for me and our whole family and um we want to help so if if people are listening to this and you're like wow like we'd love to check that out please go to onekh.org and you know jump into into um one of our cohorts and we'd love to hear as well if if you've got a model that's really working um and you want to share that with me I'm constantly doing podcasts where I'm just going doing deep dives into disciple making models. And if you're like you know pulling your hair out saying we've figured out how to make small groups make disciples talk to me. I'd love to hear it. Let me understand the model like let me let me see what what's working. And if but if not like like please uh jump over and let's let's have these conversations. So yeah thanks for opening those doors. I I really I really am excited. I think I think we're gonna we're gonna find ways to to to really change the way the trajectory things are going on um uh I I see I have see a lot of great ministries that are have made amazing strides and so um you know I I'm excited to to participate in that and to celebrate that um and and we but we gotta stay focused on fixing this.

Doug Smith:

Yeah have you heard of Dave Burning before in Lion Chair? No I don't think I have okay he's somewhere I think he's in Tennessee. Anyway I'm I may end up connecting you he he's super passionate about discipleship. My uh my good friend who's been on the podcast Ken Chevalier is the Steelers chaplain he also is super passionate. So yeah if I'm always looking for connections and people who are doing it well I think those two would be great. Okay. Um so yeah I'll include links to everything. Thanks again Jeremy always love doing this and look forward to the next time awesome thanks Doug appreciate it. Hey leader thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Jeremy I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did. There are links to everything that we discussed in the show notes so make sure you check those out and connect with everything that Jeremy is doing. I also want to give a special thanks to our sponsor endosha Marketing Solutions. They are the producers of this podcast and if your organization needs marketing expertise I wholeheartedly recommend their services. You can learn more about what they do at endosha.com that's A-N-D-O-C-I-A.com and as always I like to end every episode with a quote and I'll quote Jeremy Pryor himself today he said this he said strong families are not built by accident they are built by intentional rhythms shared purpose and spiritual leadership in the home could not agree more. That's going to wrap up today's episode as always remember leaders don't quit keep leading the world desperately needs your leadership I'll talk to you next episode

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Doug Smith

Host
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Jeremy Pryor

Guest