Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Joel Penton: Reaching Kids With The Bible ‘Off School Property’

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Joel Penton: Reaching Kids With The Bible ‘Off School Property’ · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

• 0:00
  Decades ago, the Bible was systematically removed from the public school's age.
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  There is still constantly Bible reading and prayer recitation in the public school.
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  Yes, the Supreme Court has made a judgment.
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  How did they put the battle around in the public schools?
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  The most transformative book in all of human history,
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  banned from the one place we educate 90% of our population.
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  The Bible's impact is hard to overestimate.
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  It's the foundation of modern science.
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  Faith and common sense is really nonsense,
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  and it is destroying all the beautiful things the Bible had brought to the Christian civilization.
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  Yeah, it's a problem.
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  But what if the separation of church and state has been widely misunderstood?
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  And what if the solution to reintegrate the Bible into the public school day
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  has been right under our nose for the last 70 years?
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  It's not atheism that's going to bring peace to the world.
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  The Bible as the key resource in every child's education is indispensable.
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  There is a way to bring it back.
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  Many call it a movement.
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  Others call it a loophole.
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  A loophole so big, you could drive a bus through it.
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  Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues,
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  discerning current events, defending biblical Christianity.
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  No topic, off limits.
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  And now, here's your host, David Firazo.
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  Hey friends, family and Christ, thank you for tuning in for praying and sharing the podcast.
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  I know by this trailer you just watched,
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  you know what the topic is going to be today.
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  We're going to talk about life-wise academy.
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  And off school property is a new project coming out.
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  October 23rd, it's a film you can see.
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  I'm going to talk to Joel Penton in a minute,
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  but I wanted to go by one of the stats again.
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  Where was it? 90%.
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  This is shocking to me.
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  And I consider myself somewhat informed.
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  90% of U.S. kids, that's about 50 million,
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  a 10 government run schools, public schools.
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  So the film produced by life-wise academy directed by Dove
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  and Emmy award-winning filmmaker Nate Lundquist,
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  the film traces the cultural and educational decline in America
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  since the Bible was removed from public schools.
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  The spotlight's a rapidly growing movement to bring scripture back to students
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  during the school day through what is called released time,
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  religious instruction.
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  This is happening.
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  And I'm going to bring in Joel Penton right now.
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  This brother is a former defensive tackle for the Ohio State Buckeyes.
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  And he is the author of three books.
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  He's the founder and CEO of Life-wise Academy.
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  And what they're doing is really amazing friends.
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  This is a groundbreaking program providing Bible education
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  to students in over 1,000 public schools across the country
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  during school hours.
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  And I want to bring Joel Penton in and tell us more about it.
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  Brother, good to see you.
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  Thanks for having me, David.
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  Thank you for your time today, brother.
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  So, okay, before we get to this fascinating movement,
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  what you guys are doing is really outstanding.
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  And I think a lot of our viewing audience and a lot of our listeners
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  are on board like 100%.
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  But we've got to take care of something here.
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  I grew up in Michigan.
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  So, I'm a Wolverines fan.
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  You're a Buckeye.
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  You're in Columbus, Ohio.
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  But I have to say, I always say this to friends.
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  I warn people about idolatry whether it's pro sports, college sports.
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  A couple years ago, when some of your guys on the Buckeyes,
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  actually a lot of players were believers in Christ, outspoken Christians.
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  And I was really encouraged by these young men of God.
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  I would just love for you to share a little bit about what you know,
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  but what was going on.
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  And if it's still going on, do they have a good chaplain?
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  Is it the coach?
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  Was it just that one group?
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  Because I was rooting for Ohio State, believe it or not.
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  Yes, Michigan fans, don't hate me.
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  Joel, tell us a little bit about that before we jump into Lifewise Academy.
• 4:23
  Yeah, well, it has been very exciting to see the spiritual fruit
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  on Ohio State's campus, particularly through the Ohio State football team.
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  Yeah.
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  I think what it is, I said fruit intentionally,
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  because I think it is fruit from the seeds that were faithfully watered,
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  planted, and then watered over the last really couple decades.
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  When I got to Ohio State in 2002, there was already a strong Bible study,
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  ministry leaders who were pouring into the student athletes.
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  We always saw fruit from that in the lives of the student athletes,
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  but also an outreach.
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  But they have been faithfully doing that year after year after year.
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  And by God's grace and through the move of God's spirit just in the last several years,
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  we've really seen that flower.
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  We've really seen that grow.
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  And it's manifested in some major outreach that now two years in a row,
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  they've held these campus-wide major outreaches with college football players,
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  sharing their testimonies.
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  There's been impromptu baptisms.
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  I mean, it's just been incredible to see the impact.
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  Yeah, I've been really encouraged.
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  I mean, this younger generation, maybe generation C.
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  I think we lost it when it comes to the millennials.
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  I don't think we handled that right.
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  But generation C seems to be seeking spiritual truth.
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  Maybe God, maybe they're more open.
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  It's really fascinating.
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  And one more thing, I was watching Michigan Game last weekend after the game.
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  And they rarely ever show this.
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  College or pro, there were a lot of players gathered at midfield praying,
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  kneeling and praying.
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  And I thought, wow, that's really encouraging when there was so many players.
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  I would say maybe 30 or 40 players were praying.
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  And you know that probably happens every game I'm guessing to some degree pro or college.
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  But they actually showed that.
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  So we're in an interesting time here, Joel, which now we have to turn over to the Lifewise Academy
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  and find out what you're doing because the subtitle here is almost as important
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  as the title itself off school property, which is in theaters October 23rd.
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  The subtitle, Ready Friends, solving the separation of church and state.
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  Joel Pettin, I wrote a book several years ago, one of the books I wrote,
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  one of the chapters I called it, the separation of Christianity and state.
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  Because that's essentially what's been happening in America.
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  Since you took God, the Bible, voluntary prayer, 10 commandments,
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  you removed the biblical worldview, something's going to fill that vacuum.
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  Speak to us about that first.
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  Yeah, well, as we all know, and even the trailer mentioned,
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  decades ago, our nation systematically removed Bible education from the public school day.
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  And as the documentary really demonstrates, that has had disastrous effects.
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  It's had disastrous effects on students, on families, on communities, on mental health,
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  on character, even on academics.
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  I mean, we live in a country where the public school system was really, in many ways, founded
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  so that children would be able to read the Bible.
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  I mean, the first law we have on the books about mandating public education explicitly says
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  communities need to fund the education of their local children so that they can read
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  the Bible.
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  And we have gone, the pendulum has won the complete other direction.
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  It's had disastrous effects.
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  And it's all been in the name of this concept of the separation of church and state.
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  And while there can be some great discussions, great debates on what does that really mean?
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  How should that manifest?
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  One thing that this film makes clear, one thing we continually try to make clear,
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  is that no matter how you slice the separation of church and state, what lifewise does,
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  it really is a manifestation of it because students are physically separated from the public school
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  to receive the Bible education.
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  It is separate from state dollars.
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  It is separate from state, ocean.
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  And that's why this really does solve this dilemma of the separation of church and state
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  because there is a practical way to reach students with the word of God.
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  There really is separate from the government.
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  This is such a great story and so needed in America because I think a lot of Christians,
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  conservatives, independents, just open-minded people understand there's major issues with the government run schools.
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  And a lot of problems, a lot of home schooling, man, that movement is booming.
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  But what you're doing is incredible.
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  I want to give the website friends, I don't think I did lifewise.org, that's lifewise.org.
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  And Joel, it's one night in theaters, the film, off school property, that's October 23.
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  That's just several weeks away.
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  So people can do the, can they get tickets on your site or how is that going to work?
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  Yeah, so the movie is being released nationwide through the same company that brought the chosen to theaters nationwide
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  through Fathom Entertainment.
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  And there's a variety of places you can get tickets.
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  I mean, you could go to your local theater website and get tickets.
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  But perhaps the best way is to go to our website, lifewise.org.
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  You can look up theaters near you that are carrying the movie.
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  It's not in every single theater across the country.
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  So if you go to lifewise.org, you can put in your zip code and they'll show you any, any theater that's carrying it that's near you.
• 10:01
  Great. Joel, what explain released time, religious instruction for us?
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  Yeah, so release time, religious instruction is the strategy that lifewise uses to provide Bible education to public school students.
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  And we know the Bible was taken out of schools, but very few people realize that in 1952, the Supreme Court ruled that public school students can in fact be released from public school during school hours to attend religious classes if the program meets three criteria.
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  If it's off school property, privately funded and students have parental permission.
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  This is sadly the best kept secret or maybe what I would call the greatest missed opportunity of the American church to reach the next generation because we've been bringing our hands about how the Bible has been taken out of schools.
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  Here's this great opportunity. It's been around for over 70 years to integrate it back into the public school day.
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  It's funny. I wait when you were talking. I was thinking about just the terminology released time. And I for some reason I heard set free.
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  Like so they're set free from the from the bars and the prison of school to be able to go read or understand or be taught about the Bible.
• 11:23
  It sounds like taking the kids off of school property can bring about some challenges to for a Bible class. How does that all work though? The logistics, Joel?
• 11:35
  Yeah, well, you're hitting on it. I mean, perhaps the reason that this has been around for 70 years and you know, the Supreme Court ruled in 1952, but it hasn't really spread. Most people hear about this and it's surprising to them. They never heard of it.
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  It's because there are so many logistical barriers, right? You got to find a facility that's off school property. You got to find transportation. You got to find curriculum staffing, funding, all those things.
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  And that's why life wise exists in 2018 is when this I kind of as the founder bumped into this thing of release time and wrestled with the question, how can this great opportunity be here?
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  But it's not being utilized. That was our conclusion because there's so many barriers to entry. And so we set out to provide a plug and play program. Any community could implement without having to reinvent the wheel.
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  And so there are a few obstacles to overcome. Like you do need to find the church down the road. Sometimes there are transportation issues to figure out.
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  I mean, the way it works with our classes is usually we have a big red school bus that pulls up and picks students up and takes them down the road to the usually the local church and brings them back.
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  But we provide all the resources training templates and tools to walk communities through that process so that at the end of the day, it actually is pretty simple.
• 12:52
  Wow. I'm looking at the navigation bars on your website, sponsor a student, start life wise, find your school. Of course, people can donate. But under a bow, you've one of the tabs is for churches. Explain to us. Is that what you just shared that this is where some of the students go to learn the Bible during the day at churches?
• 13:18
  Yeah, we need some sort of facility that's off school property and that typically is churches because nearly every school building in the country has a church within a mile. And so just practically speaking, the infrastructure, the literal physical infrastructure is already there. These facilities where students can learn the Bible.
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  But more than just being a facility, this program really is a local church driven. We are providing the tools and resources. But sometimes we say life wise is just a t-shirt.
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  You know, it is a tool for local communities to pick up and put to work. And that's typically done through the churches. And so when a life wise program gets started, a committee comes together.
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  We like to see at least three churches partnering together on that committee. And then to pull it off, we have volunteers and donors and all sorts of people contributing from churches all over the communities.
• 14:11
  So how are these programs funded? This is all private, right? You don't take any government money, obviously, because then there would be red, there would be strings attached. It's privately funded, Joel.
• 14:22
  Yep, it's entirely privately funded. And that's usually through individuals. I mean, it does cost money to get a bus, put gas in it, to have curriculum, those types of things.
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  But honestly, what we find is that financing the operation, that finding the donations in community by community isn't the greatest obstacle because when local individuals find out it's possible when you have parents that are finding out grandparents that are finding out that
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  their students can receive Bible education as part of the public school day. I mean, we have people who've been waiting for decades for this type of opportunity. And so people are quick to raise their hands and get involved.
• 15:02
  I would imagine that there, I don't want to put this, so I don't want sugar coat this, that whenever you hear something like this, a great program like this, especially when it's Bible based, there's going to be opposition, there's going to be adversaries, and there's going to be haters, you know, they call us haters, right, for saying the Bible is true and Jesus is the only way.
• 15:21
  But they actually hate the fact that this is going on that people can kids can go learn about God in the Bible. What kind of opposition do you guys face? Because I read something in the notes about life wise and a connection to alliance defending freedom.
• 15:37
  Tell us what the opposition or any lawsuits or what happens there? I'm sure there's pushback on this.
• 15:44
  Oh, yes, as you can imagine, there's certainly opposition. I'll say this. It is, it is a small number of people. It's a very small minority. By and large, people are incredibly excited about what life wise doing educators are excited, parents are excited. However, there's a small segment of communities that sometimes will be very upset. I mean, they don't want students to have access to the Bible.
• 16:10
  They think the Bible is bad, you know, they think it was a victory to see the Bible taken out of schools. And so they, you know, they can even mobilize, you know, for example, the freedom from religion foundation based out of Wisconsin.
• 16:27
  We started to see a lot of rapid growth where we're based here in Ohio. They took it upon themselves to send a letter to every single school district in the state of Ohio saying you shouldn't work with life wise, you don't need to work with life wise, stay away from life wise.
• 16:42
  However, it became comical because then immediately thereafter, our attorney general for the state of Ohio sent his own letter to every school district saying, no, you can totally work with life wise and you don't need to listen to this atheistic organization from Wisconsin. So it's been entertaining.
• 16:59
  Joel, I'm embarrassed. We are in Wisconsin. We're just south of Green Bay and I'm embarrassed of what comes out of Madison, which, you know, some people call it Moscow East, but that's for another story is at Moscow West. Anyway, so one of the things I wanted to ask you is there's been recent Supreme Court decisions on religious charter schools. What did that mean or any of those decisions mean for life wise?
• 17:27
  Well, what it means for us is we've seen nearly every issue that's come to the Supreme Court in recent years regarding religious liberty go in the direction of expanded religious liberty. And so that just strengthens our case. And in fact, that's what we're seeing even specifically with what we do release time religious instruction.
• 17:49
  People will often hear what we do and they think, oh, this must be some holdover from a different generation. This is probably on the decline. This will probably eventually be taken out of the, you know, out of our laws and this will not be allowed. But in fact, it's going the other direction. Just in the last 18 months, seven different states have passed laws specifically about release time to expand the practice to clarify that.
• 18:18
  If a parent wants this for their children, schools don't even have the ability to say no. And so what we're seeing at the Supreme Court level at the state legislation level that this is just expanding and the freedoms are growing.
• 18:32
  This is, you know, I'm hearing your responses and I'm thinking, man, this, like you said, is one of the best kept secrets. A lot of parents that still have their kids in the public schools will be really encouraged to hear this is out there. And this is possible.
• 18:46
  If it's not already happening at their school. So again, friends, I want to point to October 23rd. That's when off school property will be in theaters October 23rd. It's a fathom event. And you can go to lifewise.org to get so much more info or even donate.
• 19:05
  And find out what how your church or how what's going on locally that you can get involved. So Joel, you know, Oklahoma has a mandate. They've been talking about teaching the Bible in their schools. Now this is sparked a national debate.
• 19:20
  Oklahoma, God bless them. I know a pastor's there. It's one of the most the most conservative state. Maybe or one of the most. So it's no wonder they're pushing this praise God. But it has sparked a debate. Is this, does this present any kind of a conflict?
• 19:39
  And I think I know part of your answer is going to be any kind of a conflict with teaching someone who's going to teach the Bible in a public school, right? Is it going to be the history teacher? You know, what's the curriculum going to be? Does this present any conflict with what you guys do with your instruction off school property and thoroughly teaching the word of God?
• 19:59
  I don't think it presents a conflict. I think it's complimentary. I think that, you know, we want in every way we want more Bible. We want kids to and church on Sunday mornings. And we want kids to attend Bible studies. Maybe it's Wednesday evenings. We want kids. If there's an opportunity to receive Bible education as part of their literature class or their history class, that sounds great.
• 20:23
  And then we certainly want them to receive it through a program like ours. And I would say a distinctive, and you mentioned it, is who's teaching the course? What's the lens through which the course is being taught? And I'm sure it's positive if it's being, if it's the Bible being taught as history being taught as a literature. However, it may be, it may be taught secularly as well as simply history or simply literature.
• 20:49
  Whereas what we're able to do because it's off school property, we're able to teach it devotionally and we're able to teach it as truth. We're able to teach kids Bible lessons and say, this is Jesus. He loves you. He died for you. You can turn to him. You can trust him. You can be changed. You can be forgiven. And so we're able to present the word of God in that manner.
• 21:10
  So off school property from I was reading some of the notes in the description of it. In part, they you guys address generation Z's spiritual hunger and their search for purpose. Can you give us a little bit more without giving too much away? Just share a little bit more about that because I find that to be fascinating.
• 21:27
  Yeah, well, what I think we're seeing in our culture today and in fact, you just turn on the news and nothing else. The recent events have shown us that our culture is hungry. The next generation is hungry. It feels as though the pendulum reaches for this point and is swinging back. You know, we tried to as a society to push God into the corner to marginalize the needs of God. We tried to create this secular, this neutral market square.
• 21:57
  And I think we're all finding that that was that project has failed that there is no such thing as spiritual neutrality that people are spiritual beings that they're hungry to talk about to learn to grow in spiritual matters.
• 22:14
  And that's nowhere clearer than in this next generation, which is one of the reasons it's such an exciting opportunity to be able to reach them during school hours. And it's one of the reasons is such a big responsibility. We need to do everything we can to get the word of God to them.
• 22:29
  So truth, we need to promote the truth, get this out there friends, you know, back to the subtitle and the separation of church in state or the separation of biblical Christianity and culture.
• 22:41
  That's a problem for a lot of people because of a miss education on that. How far or how deeply does the film go to maybe reeducate or inform people about that is just not in our constitution.
• 22:56
  It's not it was in a private letter Thomas Jefferson most of people know the whole story, but maybe not a lot of Americans because of the media and the usual suspects.
• 23:06
  Yes, it certainly does touch on that. In fact, we had the wonderful opportunity to interview several scholars. I mean, you have George Barna is in the film. You have Carlos Campo, who is the CEO of the Museum of the Bible is in the film John Stone Street is in the film.
• 23:23
  But one of the individuals interviewed is Kelly Shackleford who leads first Liberty this organization that number one represents us and also has one multiple supreme court cases in the last several years.
• 23:37
  And his interview he's able to break that down of this thing of the separation of church in state and what religious liberty we really do have access to in this country.
• 23:47
  So Joel, we're running out of time with you. So two more questions. Hopefully what misconceptions or maybe what kind of ignorance do you want to dispel or when you use this film does what what are some of the most maybe confusing things to people that they have this idea that's wrong about what you guys do taking children off of school property to teach them the Bible.
• 24:12
  Well, I think the main thing is that most people are walking around thinking that it is impossible. It is illegal to make Bible education available to public school students during school hours. And so this film utterly shatters that by explaining how it is legal and not only that how practically people could even get involved in making that happen in their community.
• 24:33
  I think the other thing it dispels for those who are skeptical or who are uncertain is who are trying to create this neutral zone in the public schools might think that giving access to Bible education all of a sudden takes a school out of neutral territory.
• 24:51
  And the film argues quite differently that to mandate Bible education may be a non neutral position, but also to completely eliminate it and to prohibit it also makes the school to be not neutral.
• 25:09
  And so the way to make it neutral is to create an option where students were parents can opt to their students in to take Bible education, which is what you have with something with release time and something like life wise.
• 25:23
  So Joel life wise dot org I need to get a lot of people to go there after hearing this and watching this what's one of the steps that parents or churches can do to maybe start one of these I'm looking at right on your website under the navigation start a life wise and one of the things is collecting signatures it's not that complicated please explain that run that down for us.
• 25:47
  Yes I'm so grateful that you're asking this question you know what next steps can you take they are very simple we have laid out a simple ten step process to get a local program started to reach local students but it starts of course with step one and it is very simple.
• 26:04
  But we ask communities to do is to collect 50 signatures of people who are simply saying yes I would like to see this in our community that helps kick things off helps get us going in the right direction and we've made it simple through our website.
• 26:20
  If you go to life wise dot org you can click find your school and you can find any school district in the nation there's a page dedicated to every school district you can just put in your zip code you can search your school district name.
• 26:33
  You can find your local school district and see where you are in the process are you still gathering signatures maybe there's already a steering committee maybe you already have school approval.
• 26:43
  There's 13,000 school districts and we literally have thousands of them that have begun walking through this process so go to life wise dot org find where your community stands and find out how you can get connected.
• 26:55
  Brother thank you so much this is so good October 23rd in theaters friends you can find life wise on Facebook Twitter or X YouTube Instagram Joel anything else we've just got like 15 seconds or so.
• 27:10
  I just one more time reiterate that website go to life wise dot org you do two different things there you can find your local school district you can get connected to the local movement and you can find out how to get tickets to that film coming out on October 23rd and I just also want to say thank you so much for this opportunity to share with your audience you're welcome very important God bless you brother thank you so much for your time thank you.
• 27:33
  Alright guys share this one too God bless you and as always keep speaking the truth about things that matter.