A Solid Foundation

“You talked about math. Where do these invisible laws of mathematics come from and why don’t they randomly change? They come from the mind of God, and they don’t change because God doesn’t change. Laws of nature. The whole reason we can do science to begin with is we have laws of nature that are, they’re not tangible, but they don’t change. They’re consistent every time and that’s why you can do an experiment today and tomorrow and get the same results if you do it the same way. Well that’s only possible because God made not only the tangible world, but the non-tangible world. He made the laws of nature. He holds them together so they don’t randomly change. They reflect Him. And so the only reason you can do science to begin with is because God is real and the Bible’s true. And you can point out all of that when you’re teaching it from a Biblical perspective.” – Bryan Osborne, Answers in Genesis

Listen to Bryan Osborne on The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast

Bryan Osborne is a well-respected speaker, author, and curriculum specialist for Answers in Genesis. He holds a master’s degree in education and taught Bible history in a public school for 13 years. He has been teaching Christians to defend their faith for nearly 20 years.We had the privilege of interviewing Bryan for Schoolhouse Rocked, at the Creation Museum, and that interview was one that dramatically shaped the direction of the rest of the film. We can’t wait for you to see his contribution when the film is released, but in the meantime we were able to interview him for The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast and we know you will be encouraged by his insights into education, Biblical worldview, and discipleship.

Yvette Hampton:           Brian, welcome to The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast.

Bryan Osborne:             It’s really good to be here with you. It’s so good to catch with you and hear what God is doing with Schoolhouse Rocked.

As you mentioned, God has blessed me to be a part of Answers in Genesis. For about the last five years I’ve traveled over the US speaking at multiple churches, a lot of different conferences, equipping Christians to defend the faith, to defend Biblical authority where it’s being attacked today at a real level, and then to proclaim the Gospel. That’s really the heartbeat of AIG. We are not about winning an argument or debate, but about defending Biblical authority and to proclaim the Gospel. That’s our heartbeat. And so I’ve got a chance, a great privilege to travel a lot across the US and actually to different places as well outside the US and to see what’s happening over there in places like New Zealand or Africa or Malaysia or Japan and the fellowship of believers over there to see how God is working, to see how God’s Word’s being attacked in different ways in different places, and how really literally Christians all over the world need to be ready to stand on God’s Word, to defend the faith, and to proclaim the Gospel.

Backstage Pass Members can watch Bryan Osborne’s full interview for Schoolhouse Rocked on the Backstage Pass website.

And so that’s what we like to do. That’s what our ministry focus is. So, whether it’s speaking, whether it’s writing books or curriculum for homeschooling, which we love homeschoolers, we love equipping them to do a what is so needed in our day and age. And we’ll talk about this more later on, but homeschooling is such a powerful mechanism to really equip your kids to defend their faith. And God’s doing great things here at AIG.

Yvette Hampton:           Yeah, he is doing great things there. I was talking to a friend the other day who is planning to go to The Creation Museum and The Ark Encounter for her anniversary in May. And they’re really excited about it. And I told her, “You know, there’s no way that anyone can walk through there and not see the power of a divine creator.” I mean, it is just absolutely amazing when you go there and you just see so much of God’s creation all in one place. And you guys have done such an excellent job of displaying and portraying the awesomeness of God. “The heavens declare the glory of God.” And I don’t know how anyone can walk through there and just say, “Yeah, Nope. It all just happened by chance.”

Bryan:                          Praise God for that. We hear that so often. And as people come through, and not only do they see the glory of God’s creation, but also they realize there are answers to a lot of questions that for many people, Christians and non-Christians alike think the Bible has been really disproved by certain ideas, like “millions of years”, like the so-called “fossil record of millions of years” or evolution or distant star light or the age of the earth or modern day science. And you start to realize that no, there are actually really good answers to all of those issues. If you’ll stand on the Bible and use a Biblical worldview, there are  some great answers for those questions. We use all those answers to point them back to the Gospel, to proclaim the creator of creation, and to give them the Truth.

And I like to compare the quality of the attractions here at The Ark Encounter and The Creation Museum, they’re so well done –  Ken Ham likes to say “equal to Hollywood if not better.” We’ll have real wood in our attractions! The ark is made of real wood.

But you know, if you look in the old Testament when God had the Israelites build the tabernacle and he had brought people with different skill sets who were good at different things to come and build a different part of the tabernacle. I think of that here at the ministry of AIG. There are so many talented people who God has brought to do different things to make this ministry flourish and to be done at such a top notch level. All of the attractions, all of the sculptures, all the clothing, all of that stuff you see in the attractions, that’s done in house. The paintings are by our own artists. The writing for the signage is done by our guys. We write the curriculum in house, because God has brought some incredibly talented people in different areas to do all these things. And so we just praise God for that and definitely give him all the glory.

Watch the video of this conversation on the Schoolhouse Rocked Backstage Pass website.

Yvette:                         Yeah, that’s so awesome. It’s the body of Christ working together just as it should.

Bryan:                          It really is. And then you mentioned that, I’ve got to say this, one of the things I love about working in the office, when I’m actually here, is that there are so many different denominations represented in this office, and we all fly under the banner of Christ and under the authority of God’s Word. And that’s our heartbeat as a ministry – Multiple denominations of Christians standing on the the authority of God’s Word. It’s just an awesome thing.

Yvette:                         So cool. I love it. I want to talk with you about a couple of different things today. So you had mentioned briefly that you used to be a teacher, and you taught in the public school system for 13 years.

Bryan:                          I did.

Yvette:                         And you know, we interviewed you for Schoolhouse Rocked, and yours is by far one of the most powerful interviews, and we have a lot of good interviews. But yours was so powerful because you were able to just talk about your experience of being in the public school and how even just in your 13 years there, and this was a few years ago, it’s been a few years since you stopped teaching, how you saw the transition of our culture in the kids and just the things that you were experiencing as a teacher and that they were experiencing as students. Can you talk a little bit about your time as a public school teacher, and just what you saw going on?

Bryan:                          Yeah, no, absolutely. As you mentioned, I taught for 13 years. I mentioned that too. Also, my wife was a teacher for 13 years in a public school, so both my wife and I have that real boots on the ground experience of teaching in the public schools. And of course, I’ll say up front there, we have some really wonderful memories and so many great friends who are still in that system. And we taught many wonderful kids. And so there’s some highlights, no doubt about that.

But if you’re just looking at the trend of where the schools are headed and the philosophy that’s driving education today, it has drastically changed. I think I mentioned last time when we were talking about, when I first saw… I taught an interesting subject. I told Bible history in a public school. People need to understand that. It was in Tennessee, a very unique thing, a great opportunity. But I taught Bible history in a public school setting. I started back in the year 2000.

And when I started in the year 2000 teaching that particular subject, most my kids, and I was teaching the buckle of the bible-belt. They had a general foundational understanding of many Biblical things. They understood some of the basic lingo. They could speak some of the Christian lingo. They understood those words because they grew up in a church setting. And then here’s what I found in my classroom, that year by year as I taught my students, each coming generation knew less and less about the Bible. They knew less and less. And these are kids who grew up and the buckle of the Bible belt and they’re like we said earlier, maybe the shiny part of the buckle of the Bible belt, and each year they knew less and less about the Bible. And so what I had to do with my curriculum is start at a more foundational level each year.

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Eventually it got to a point by year 13 when kids came into my classroom, my first lessons were on how to understand a Biblical reference. You know, what does Genesis 8:22-23 mean? A lot of my kids didn’t even know what that meant because they weren’t used to reading their Bibles. They didn’t have that foundational understanding. You know, easy things from a Biblical understanding. What’s the Bible say about marriage or sexuality or different things? They didn’t understand clear, easy Biblical teachings because even though they grew up in a very churchized area, they did not have that foundation. And so I saw that in my own classroom.

And then with what you saw in the culture of the school was also changing. More and more a secularly influence was dominating the thinking of the system.

And I tell people all the time there were and still are many good godly people in the system. There are some great Christians who are in the public school systems and they are doing their best to be light in a dark place, and we praise God for them and we pray that God uses him in a great way. There are many great in the system. But what people really need to understand is that the system itself is inherently atheistic, and has increased in a secular philosophy over the years while I was there and since I’ve left. And so even though there are good people in the system, the system itself starts from the basic premise that you can explain all of life, all of morality, all of sexuality, you can explain all of reality without God, without the Bible. And that by definition is a religion of secular humanism also called atheism.

So that’s the undercurrent of much of our educational system today in America, throughout the West. And more and more the undercurrent has pulled the kids along with it. So what you see is with the kids in the classrooms, they’re thinking is that becoming more and more secular, more and more aligned with the secular persuasion, less and less Biblical. And generation by generation that they get less in terms of a Biblical framework and more in terms of a secular framework. And of course as we know, that has real world repercussions in how they live and how they act and what they do and what we see happening in our schools today. So lots of change happening for sure.

Yvette:                         Yeah. One of the things I remember you talking about in your interview for the movie was that if Christian parents are putting their kids in a public school system, they need to be ready to undo all that’s being taught to them when they come home. And I actually just recently, I talked to a mom who they feel very strongly that God has their kids. They have a very, very strong solid Christian family. And they have their kids in a public school system intentionally. And she said when they come home from school at night, I have to undo all that they’ve been taught. She said, “But my kids are making a difference. And they’re holding Bible clubs and they’re doing all sorts of things, which I think is fantastic. And, and like you said, you know it, there are so many great people in the public school system. There are teachers who love Jesus, there are administrators who really it is their ministry, their mission that God has called them to, to be in this role because they’re really making a difference.

But I know it’s a very difficult position to be in. And there are kids. There certainly are kids who love the Lord, who come out of public schools loving God. You know, we’ve said it many times. Our listeners have heard us say it a million times. Homeschooling is not the Gospel. Homeschooling is not what saves our kids. And Jesus is what saves them. And there are plenty of kids who come out of Homeschool families who go off on their own way and they, they choose not to follow Christ. And then there are lots of kids who come out of the public school system or private schools and they go on to have an enormous impact in our world. And so I love that dynamic of it. But I think sometimes today, parents don’t really know what’s going on behind those doors. Or they choose to maybe ignore it. Not all, but some.

“Dear Christian, please recognize that God’s Word is being attacked at a foundational level, and that’s why so many of your kids and grandkids are walking away from the faith. We’ve got to give them the right foundation, which is based on the idea that the truth that God’s Word is the absolute authority, and all things will go from there.” – Bryan Osborne

Bryan:                          What I think a lot of times in our ministry, we talk about this so often in Answers in Genesis, what so many I think Christians are missing in the culture at large, including in the schooling arena, is that they don’t recognize that what’s really happening is a foundational attack on the authority of God’s Word and the foundation of Christianity itself. And so I think for many, they think, “I’ll send my kids off to a public school and they’ll learn some ideas that are Biblical, but that’s okay. I’ll still give them some Biblical teaching and they’ll be fine.” What they’re missing is what they’re actually learning from the secular institutions of our age, including the school system, is they’re learning a different foundation. They’re learning that man’s word ultimately as the authority and that God’s Word is not. They’re getting a different foundation from these different places. And so in a sense, what we allowed to happen quite often is we’ve allowed the secularist, ultimately the enemy who’s driving those secularists, whether they recognize it or not, we allowed them to get a new foundation put into their lives.

We try to stack up Christian doctrines as a framework on that foundation, and eventually that framework’s going to fall because they’ve got the wrong foundation. It’s not based on God’s Word. They put their house on sand, not on the rock. And so it looks good for a while. Oh, they got some of these Christian doctrines. They seem to be fine. But when later off they leave, and according to multiple studies, over two thirds are walking away from the faith by the time they reach college age. Why? Because they’ve been given a different foundation. It wasn’t built on God’s Word at all. They’re falling away because of that wrong foundation.

And so if you’re going to do those, we talked about before putting your kid in that particular setting, if God’s called you to that though, that can be a thing and you can do that, but we must recognize, be sure your kid has that right foundation truly in God’s Word that they are indeed saved, they are His. His word is their rock. They’re going into this environment recognizing the attack that they are engaging with, they’re coming home and decompressing all of these ideas and engaging with your parents to understand, “Okay, how do I deal with the fact that a drag queen spoke to a bunch of fifth graders at a public library? How do I understand that from a Christian perspective?” I mean, these are ideas I couldn’t even think about engaging when I was a teacher just five years ago before I left. A drag queen speaks to kids in America. And so we got to recognize that all of these things are not just peripheral attacks on Biblical ideas about marriage. Ultimately these things are attacks on a Biblical foundation of how we understand all of reality. And if we allow the secularist to give our kids their foundation, don’t be surprised when the kids embraces that entire worldview ultimately. And so we’ve got to be really careful.

And for my money and for what I’ve seen, my wife and I both as we’ve gone through teaching for a while, recognizing what’s happening, we’ve recognized that the best way from our perspective to give our kids a good foundation on God’s Word to equip them with a Biblical worldview is through homeschooling because we have control of the content. We can teach every subject to the glory of God. And from that Biblical perspective we can still talk about what’s happening in the culture, but do it through a Biblical lens so they understand it from a Biblical perspective. And we’ll present them with the secular arguments, but in the right context and how we can probably break it down over time, and then we can do that. And then after years and years from now when our kids get older, if they’ve got a great foundation and God calls them to that, we’ll work through that then as well.

But what better way to give a Biblical foundation than through homeschooling? And there’s so many practical benefits to that. I’m sure you guys talk about it all the time and the homeschooling setting as far as your classroom size and the student teacher relationship and love for students, it doesn’t get any better than the homeschooling setting. But just recognizing that foundational attack. And so often that’s what we’re trying to as a ministry, bring awareness to it with Christians. Dear Christian, please recognize that God’s Word is being attacked at a foundational level, and that’s why so many of your kids and grandkids are walking away from the faith. We’ve got to give them the right foundation, which is based on the idea that the truth that God’s Word is the absolute authority, and all things will go from there.

Yvette:                         Yeah, that’s awesome. Let’s continue talking about this idea of setting a Biblical foundation, because you know, you said homeschooling is the best way to do that. But then you’ve got parents who kind of say, “Okay, well how? How do we do that? How as Homeschool parents is the best way? How do we do that? How do we set that foundation for our kids and say this is truth, and integrate that into every part of our teaching in a day to day setting with our kids at home?

Bryan:                          Sure. I mean I think there’s a lot of ways to do that when you, especially in a homeschooling setting, there’s a lot of flexibility. It’s one of the things we love about homeschooling is you do have flexibility to do this in different ways. I would say overall getting the resources you need to help you to teach yourself and your kids to think Biblically.

Of course, from our perspective as we as a ministry, we deal more with history, origins, scientific issues, getting resources into the hands of believers that they can use to equip themselves and their kids and their grandkids or their homeschooling kids to think with a Biblical perspective. Whether it’s the answers, Bible answers books one through four. I wrote a book called Quick Answers to Tough Questions. It’s actually kind of cool thing. I talked to a guy the other day at a Christian school who uses my book as his curriculum for his Bible class. It’s really kind of neat to hear that to hear that.

So, whether it’s one of the books or the DVDs or in the curriculums, the ABC Curriculum is a great Bible curriculum, whether it’s some of the homeschooling curriculums we have on chemistry or science or mathematics. And there are other good ministries out there as well. But finding curriculums that’ll help you teach that subject from a Biblical perspective, to recognize that the goal of that curriculum is to honor the savior, to honor our creator, honor our god. And that we don’t learn and we don’t gain intellect just to lift up ourselves. It’s not about that at all. We learn to glorify our creator. And I might use this in a great way for his glory.

And so, I think there are lots of ways to do that within that setting. I’ll say also with that, we recognize the Biblical encouragement that at all times whether we sit down, rise up, eat, that we are teaching our kids to think through a Biblical lens. We’re teaching them God’s Word, connecting the real world to God’s real word and connecting those things for them to help had that Biblical worldview. And again, homeschooling has that wonderful benefit of as you live together and there’s more engagement, there are more opportunities to have those really good teachable moments where you can talk about an issue or something you saw or a trip that you took or whatever, and filter that through that Biblical lens to equip them with that Biblical worldview.

And so, I think all those things of course, I think a consistent Bible study within the family, which is rurally something we want to encourage families to do, especially have fathers lead in that, to recognize the importance of that with their families. All those sayings, you can just do them step by step, moment by moment, year by year, not all at one time, but as do life together and do those things and teach them from that perspective, it’s going to give them that foundation brick by brick by brick on the word of God. That foundation will need to have good structure that’ll lead to hopefully a life that glorifies him in that setting. So yeah, I think you can do it a lot of different ways, but there are some ideas.

Yvette:                         I love it. Well, I’ve said this so many times on the podcast, so for listeners who’ve heard me say it, I’m just going to say it again. As we started homeschooling our girls, the Lord really opened our eyes to the fact that it’s not just about the academics, it’s about teaching everything from that Biblical perspective because it always points them to Jesus. And you know, the one I think that really surprised me the most is math because people will say, “Well, how do you teach math from a Biblical perspective?” And it’s not that we teach, you know, two plus two is four. Jesus loves you. That is true.

Bryan:                          I might steal that for later.

Yvette:                         Maybe you should do one plus one is two, Jesus loves you. That would make more sense that rhymes. But in teaching it that God is a god of order, he is not a god of chaos. So math makes sense because God created it to make sense. Man didn’t create math. God created math. And teaching science. I mean that’s the whole ministry of AIG is science and history. And so you teach science from a Biblical worldview because it helps us to understand our creator. If you can understand Psalm 24, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” You look at the heavens, you look at the universe that God has created, and how do you look at that and say there’s no creator? And when you teach that aside from apart from a Biblical worldview, then you’re not really teaching science. And history is the same way. History is the story of God’s world, and of God’s plan for mankind. And so when you don’t start history in the beginning, you know answers in Genesis, if you don’t start in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, then you’re not teaching history as it’s meant to be understood. And so we, we see it as such a great opportunity.

And it doesn’t have to be taught perfectly. I think that as Homeschool moms especially, we feel like we have to know everything. Like we have to have mastered all of these topics and in order to teach them to our kids. And I’ve learned, I’m just learning right along with them. There’s so much that I don’t know. And Garritt always reminds me, “You just have to stay one step ahead of them. That’s all you have to do.” And if that means reading the page 10 minutes before I read it to them, or even sometimes just reading it for the first time when I’m reading it with them and if there’s something I don’t understand, we pause and we look it up, or we ask Garritt and he answers the questions for us.

Bryan:                          Is that a new sort of ask Siri?

Yvette:                         Yeah, yeah. It’s like Wikipedia, but it’s Garrittpedia. That’s what we have in our house.

But you know, there just are so many opportunities, like you said, to teach our kids from a Biblical worldview. And it’s not all about academics, it’s so much about character as well and just taking that time to teach our kids who they are in Christ, why God made them on purpose and for a purpose, and what God’s purpose is for them in this world.

Bryan:                          Yeah. That’s good. I like that purpose. The trilogy of purposes you just used was good.

Yvette:                         You can use that too.

Bryan:                          That’s great.

Yvette:                         I should trademark that.

Bryan:                          But even as teachers, my wife and I would often comment, especially your first couple of years as a teacher, you’re always one step ahead. And that’s it. That’s how it kind of rolls. That’s not uncommon. And you’re not going to know everything, especially as you advance the subjects. But that’s one of the blessings of doing homeschooling now in our current age, there are so many good resources to help you do even the difficult subjects, and you can tell there’s enough to choose from. We can find some that are still going to be Christ honoring, and you can help filter through those and that’s part of the process. And so you have such a plethora of resources to choose from to do so in a good way. And I loved what you were saying until my other favorite topics to talk about, is that not only does creation show our creator, but also the invisible attributes of our world show the invisible attributes of our God.

So, you look, and you talked about math. Where do these invisible laws of mathematics come from and why don’t they randomly change? They come from the mind of God, and they don’t change because God doesn’t change. Laws of nature. The whole reason we can do science to begin with is we have laws of nature that are, they’re not tangible, but they don’t change. They’re consistent every time and that’s why you can do an experiment today and tomorrow and get the same results if you do it the same way. Well that’s only possible because God made not only the tangible world, but the non-tangible world. He made the laws of nature. He holds them together so they don’t randomly change. They reflect Him. And so the only reason you can do science to begin with is because God is real and the Bible’s true. And you can point out all of that when you’re teaching it from a Biblical perspective. I love that stuff.

Yvette:                         Yeah, that is awesome. You touched really quickly on it, and we have just a couple minutes left, but I’d love for you to talk to the dads out there who you touched on the topic of dads leading their family spiritually, talk to those dads. How would you encourage them to do that?

Bryan:                          You know, my kids are younger right now, five and one. As I think about my kids and being a father, the weight of being a father, the weight the responsibility Biblically we’ve been given by God as the head of the household, that weighs on me more and more. So I think about my kids and raising them correctly. And it’s interesting. I think in our culture that’s so secular in its nature, it’s easy to get wrapped up in that secular thinking, so we tend to think, “Okay, if I’m meet their physical needs, if I bring home the bacon, which Peter says we can’t say anymore, but if I put a roof over their heads, if I’m giving them clothing, if I’m giving them opportunities and I’ve done my job, and I would say to myself and anyone who’s thinking that way, ‘If that’s all you’ve done, you’ve missed the whole thing entirely.'”

I say that to myself first and then to other dads as well because our primary responsibility is to raise our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord that their focus will be on Him. And the only way to do that is to build our thinking on the word of God, where we see God on display, his attributes clearly portrayed for us, reaching on through that grid to give them a Biblical worldview by standing on that right foundation.

And God has called fathers to lead our families in that endeavor. It’s not the mom’s job. Now, praise God if he’s giving you a wonderful wife that can come alongside you and be an incredible help mate and can do some wonderful teaching in a homeschooling setting and do some great things. That’s a blessing and that’s a gift from the Lord and we praise God for all those incredible homeschooling going parents or moms out there doing a great job.

But ultimately when we stand before heavenly father, God looks at us men, dads, did you lead your home in such a way that I was the center of attention, that you showed my kids how to know me and love me and pursue me from my word? That’ll come directly to us as head of household. And so it is our responsibility to be sure a home is being run in such a way that our kids are getting that. So I know the situations will vary in households. Fathers may work in different ways, different capacities. They may not be home as much as the mom. That makes sense, right? But still are you engaged when you are home? And then are you adding to what your wife is doing within the curriculum with teaching a Biblical framework? Are you doing what’s really needed? And in those devotions. Spending time together as a family consistently around the word of God, that you show your kids that you know what God’s Word is preeminent and my heart is preeminent in our founding because it’s worthy of all honor praise because it’s from the creator. Is that on display?

I managed to convict into myself even as I speak it. But is that you’re clear joy to your kids and your clear passion to your kids so they see that from you, not only what you speak, but how you spend your time with them, that you’re not just merely bringing home the bacon, but you’re bringing home the word of God to them they may feast on that and know that God’s Word is true? And for me the more I think about it, the more I grow in this role that God has put me in, the more I speak to people, the more that responsibility weighs clear and heavy on me. It’s a precious responsibility. And it’s also a privilege to have that, but it does bear weight and we need to take it seriously that again, if we’re not equipping our kids with the right foundation with a Biblical worldview or give them all the other things I need, but not the spiritual truth based on the word of God, we’ve missed it entirely and we are accountable.

But on the flip side, if we’re obedient for helping our wives and helping our families to stand on God’s Word and we’re equipping them with the truth of God’s Word, we see God work through that, and then when we stand before God, you get those words well done by good and faithful servant, and what a beautiful thing that is, and so it’s serious. God counts it as serious. We see those commands in God’s Word over and over and over again to be sure we’re building our thinking and thinking of our families on God’s Word, and we need to take it as such. But when we do so, we’ll see God work in an amazing way.

I think as you mentioned too, you mentioned that sometimes the homeschooling moms, whoever’s doing the homeschooling will feel inadequate. You know, “I’m not up to tasks. It’s Too much to know.” Well, dads are going to feel the exact same way, right? They’re going to feel inadequate quite often. “I don’t know enough. My theology isn’t robust enough. I don’t have these understandings I should that teach my kids.” But dear Father, study God’s Word, put it in the work, do your best, and then watch the Holy spirit of God work in an amazing way to his glory. Because honestly, our call is not perfection, but our call is obedience. Do what God has called us to do, and then watch him work and do great things to his glory through your family.

Yvette:                         Yeah. Oh, I love that so much. You know, God’s Word does not return void.

Bryan:                          He does not.

Yvette:                         And I think it was Scott LaPierre, I can’t remember who said if you can read, you can lead your family spiritually. All it takes is just opening up The Word. And quite honestly, even if you can’t read, there are, how many apps are there that you just open it up on your phone and it will read the Bible to you?

Bryan:                          I might steal all that from you later on, by the way.

Yvette:                         You got it.

Bryan:                          I’ve got some great stuff from this interview!

Yvette:                         Yeah, well you’re welcome. Oh, well, Bryan, I am so grateful for you and for the ministry that you have there at Answers in Genesis, for Ken Ham and the whole team there. I know you guys really work tirelessly to just help parents and families to set that foundation of Biblical truth. Where can people find you? You were talking about curriculum and parents being able to just set that foundation by using some of the Biblical curriculum that you have. Where can people go to find that?

Bryan:                          So, the easiest way to get there is to go to AnswersInGenesis.org. Go to the website there, plug in in the search bar, “homeschool” or “homeschool curriculum”. And we have a whole store set up online that has so many different resources on so many different subjects for different age groups for a homeschooling setting. And so, there we have many dedicated curriculums to homeschooling and you can find those on the website at Answersingenesis.org. There are also many things you can add to your curriculum. We have many books and DVDs that are good supplements to what you’re already doing, and it can help make it more robust in what you’re teaching from a Biblical perspective. Also, they can follow us on Facebook or Twitter. I’m there personally. Also the ministry is there. You can find those pages. Just look up Answers in Genesis or look up Bryan Osborne, you’ll find us on those particular platforms. And you can follow us there. And then as you know, as time goes, we are putting stuff on those places, useful tools for teaching, whether in a homeschooling setting or a church setting to equip Christians to defend the faith. And so typical media platforms that people use, but they’re so handy. And they’re on there, so I encouraged people to check those out and look those up.

And of course, if they are in the area, and by that, I mean in the US, they should probably visit the Creation Museum and The Ark Encounter. I even mentioned it earlier. I know I’m biased. I work here, I get. But it is incredible.

Yvette:                         It is incredible.

Bryan:                          It’s amazing what God has done. It’s all his and Ken was saying this the other day, “it’s God’s ministry” and God’s done wonderful things, and it’s so unique in what it is. And it’s such an encouragement to the Christian’s faith and a challenge to a nonbeliever. And so if you’ve got unbelieving family or friends, it’s a great place to come and to look at these things together and to talk about these things. And it opens up great conversations. You’ll hear the Gospel numerous times. It’s really powerful in multiple ways.

Yvette:                         So okay, really quickly, for those who are not familiar with the Creation Museum or The Ark Encounter, give like a one-minute brief overview of what that is.

Bryan:                          Okay. So we’re located in Northern Kentucky, right below Cincinnati. And the Creation Museum is a, there are two separate attractions, the museum and The Ark Encounter. The Creation Museum is a 75,000 foot walk through Biblical history. And we use the seven CS to walk through Biblical history. Creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion, Christ, cross, consummation. And as we go through that Biblical history, we are answering the skeptical questions of this age and showing how the Bible really does have answers and actually the Biblical worldview is confirmed as true time and time again by real science.

And then in the midst of all that, we’re giving the Gospel in numerous ways, numerous times. And there are multiple lectures, there are workshops you can go to. There’s a special effects theater. It’s a 4D theater. It’s now 3D with added affects their like wind blowing, all new change in temperature of water. Really cool stuff. We’re adding a [base] [phonetic 00:35:03] right now to the Creation Museum, phenomenal. And then The Ark Encounter, that’s also Northern Kentucky about 40 minutes South of The Creation Museum. Same ministry, two different attractions. It’s a life size replica of Noah’s Ark. Over 500 feet long, 85 feet wide, 50 feet tall, three different levels. There are over 130 exhibit bays as you walk through The Ark Encounter. And again, in that context we’re answering multiple questions defending the faith.

And really The Ark Encounter, it’s an attraction within an attraction within an attraction. And what I mean is you walk up to it at first, the size of it would blow your mind.

Yvette:                         It’s massive.

Bryan:                          So immense. It just gives you a whole new perspective that you can get about Noah’s Ark unless you see it like you do there. And then once you go inside, the architecture of The Ark Encounter is incredible. It’s the largest timber framed structure and the world. And so just looking at the woodwork, it’s so well done. And then all the exhibits, all the answers you get, they are… The artists God has brought to the ministry to put those things together, they’re phenomenal and they do a fantastic job. And so it’s so good on multiple levels. We’ve got Emzara’s, a buffet by The Ark Encounter, which I know I’m biased again, but it is a great buffet. We have a whole east village and west village by them, by The Ark Encounter.

The answer center’s opening up soon. There’s a zoo behind The Ark Encounter. And I really encourage people if you’re coming this way to the Northern Kentucky area, you want to get just the get the pass to both the museum and The Ark Encounter, it’s cheaper, it’s multiple days, it gives you good time to see everything there is to see. And you can spend easily two days at the Creation Museum. I mean sincerely, in addition to the museum there is the botanical garden outside. And then The Ark Encounter takes a good day or two. So the people hopefully can make plans accordingly. But again, I’m biased, but it is incredible and it’s amazing watch God work.

And I will say this to wrap up, we’ve had over a million people come up for each of the last two years to The Ark Encounter, and so it’s been amazing to see that. And we’re averaging around 500,000 a year now at the Creation Museum since the Ark has been open. So it’s just been awesome to watch God work through all that.

Yvette:                         So cool. While you guys are having a great impact for God’s kingdom, and we are so grateful for what you’re doing and all that God is doing through the ministry there at AIG and through you personally through the books that you’re writing. And I did want to mention one book really quickly that this just came to my mind. I thought about it when you were talking earlier about setting a foundation and children walking away from faith. Already Gone written by Ken Ham. That is a fantastic book. We’ll link to that in the show notes, but Garritt and I read that years ago and that was actually pretty instrumental and in part of our decision to start homeschooling. It is a fantastic book. It talks about why children are walking away from the faith once they get into those college years, because it’s not really in those college years or young adult years. Oftentimes it’s earlier than that.

Bryan:                          Their foundation was shaken a long time ago.

Well, praise God for what you’re doing. I’ve known you guys for a couple of years now, and just to see your heart and to watch God bringing this all together, I’m excited for you guys. I’m so thankful for what you’re doing, how God is using you, and it’s so cool to partner with you in ministry. It’s a blessing.

Yvette:                         Thank you.

You can find Bryan Osborne online at the Answers in Genesis website and on his Facebook page.

Get Already Gone, by Ken Ham and Britt Beamer and Quick Answers to Tough Questions, By Brian Osborne

 


Ready to take your children back? Stream Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution for free tonight and learn how. After you have watched the movie, download the Free Homeschool Survival Kit. This free 70+ page resource will give you the encouragement and tools you need to start strong and finish well.

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Biblical Parenting

Ginger Hubbard is an encouragement to me and thousands of other homeschool moms as she speaks at conventions all across the country on the topic of biblical parenting. She is the author of several books including Don’t Make Me Count to Three, Wise Words for Moms, and I Can’t Believe You Just Said That!

Yvette Hampton:           To some of you, she needs no introduction, but some of you, especially some of you younger mamas, may not have heard of Ginger Hubbard. Years ago, Ginger wrote a book that was a life-changer for me, called Don’t Make Me Count To Three! I started reading that book when my oldest daughter was a baby, and it was such a powerful book and had a huge impact in my life and in my parenting. So, ever since then, I’ve been kind of stalking Ginger. And God saw fit to introduce the two of us and we became fast friends. God has just been so faithful to develop this friendship. And I have loved getting to know Ginger and her family. Ginger, introduce yourself and your family to us.

Listen to Ginger Hubbard on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast.

Ginger Hubbard:           Well, my claim to fame is, I’m married to Ronnie Hubbard, who is the absolute greatest guy in the world. We’ve been married for seven years, and got married on April 23rd, which was Easter weekend. And it was just such a sweet, sweet weekend. And Ronnie came as a package deal with two stepsons, Hudson and Jackson. And so, between the two of us, we have four kids.

Yvette:                         That’s awesome. And your kids are pretty amazing. And they’re now all adults, right?

Ginger:                         They are. They are. Wesley is 25, Alex is 22 and then my stepsons, Hudson is 21, and Jackson, our youngest, is 18. He just graduated high school.

Yvette:                         So, you’ve been around, you’ve done the parenting thing, you’re one who can actually speak from experience. It’s not just, “I’m testing this out and let’s see how it works.”

Ginger:                         Yeah, but I still would say I didn’t always get it right. And looking back, I can certainly share some of the mistakes I made to help those moms out there not make some of the same ones that I did.

Yvette:                         Sure. I love that. And one of the things I love about you is that you’re so transparent and so honest just about where you’ve been and about what God has done in your life through your desire to follow him through parenting and through marriage and through family. Like I said, you wrote Don’t Make Me Count to Three. You have Wise Words for Moms, that’s a pamphlet that I had up in my kitchen for many, many years. And we’ll link back to those things in the podcast notes. But we also are so excited about your new book that you have, it just came out in April, correct?

Ginger:                         Right.

Yvette:                         And this book is calledI Can’t Believe You Just Said That, Biblical Wisdom for Taming Your Child’s Tongue. And I love this book so, so much. God has given you a gift. He has given you the gift of wisdom and the gift of being able to just be that Titus 2 woman. And this is why I stalked you so many years, is, without you even knowing me, you were one of those Titus 2 women to me, where I just felt like God had just blessed you with the wisdom of training the heart of your child, because it’s not, and we’ll talk about this, but it’s not just about obedience. It’s not just about teaching your kids to do or say the right thing. It’s really about getting to the heart of your child.

So, tell me a little bit about your new book, I Can’t Believe You Just Said That, what led you to write that book? And give me kind of the premise of it.

Backstage Pass Members can watch the full video of this episode.

Ginger:                         Well, as a national speaker, Yvette, I have listened to parents all over the country express their heartache over their inability to tame the tongues of their children. And they’ve read the books, they’ve tried the advice, but they just still remained frustrated because nothing seemed to work. And so what I wanted to do with this new book, I Can’t Believe You Just Said That, is I wanted to just expose some of those faulty child training methods which fail to reach the heart and equip parents with biblical principles, and then provide them with a toolbox full of illustrations and examples for implementing those principles in a very practical way.

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And, don’t get me wrong, you and I, before we started recording, we were talking about Shepherding A Child’s Heart, and there’s some really, really great parenting books out there. That was actually my personal favorite as well out of all the ones that I read, just so thankful for Tedd Tripp and the wisdom that he shares.

I’ve read lots of parenting books and plenty of books are out there that focus on what the Bible says about parenting. And that’s great, but … And they’re just full of scripture that are helpful for parenting. But what I found is that few offer the information that parents need most, which is how to actually practically apply those Scriptures to those tongue-related struggles that their children are facing in everyday life.

Yvette:                         I love that. And yes, you give such practical things for parents to do. One of the things that you talk about in Don’t Make Me Count To Three, and we have used this with our kids for their whole lives basically, is do-overs where maybe my daughter speaks to me disrespectfully, and instead of just saying, “Don’t talk to me like that,” I will say, “Honey, that is not the correct way to speak to me. How should you have spoken to me?” But before, I would even say, “How should you have spoken to me,” for the past 12 years, I’ve taught her, “When you respond to me, you need to respond this way.” And I teach her, “This is how you’re to respond.” And it’s with … I mean, it can be with anything. If your two-year-old is throwing a tantrum because their toy isn’t being put together the right way, you can take the time to say, “Okay, honey, let’s do this the right way. Let mommy show you how to put the toy together so that you don’t throw a tantrum.” And then the next time they throw a tantrum, you can say, “Okay, how did mommy teach you to do this last time? What is the correct response?”.

And teaching kids and training them to do things over the right way. Because I think, as parents, we assume that kids are going to just know the right way to do things. And I love that I learned that from you early on of don’t just assume that they know how to do it the right way, or that they know how to respond the right way the first time. You have to teach them first, and then train them by teaching them to do it over, and over, and over again until, hopefully, at some point they actually get it.

Ginger:                         Right. And that’s what I refer to as the practice principle. And imagine, Yvette, trying to teach your child how to tie his shoes without the practice principle. Just verbally walking him through that process, that’s not going to be enough. At some point, you would have to physically demonstrate how to do it, and then not only that, then require him to practice it on his own. And so, the way that I look at it is if the practice principal is vital for teaching such a morally neutral task as tying shoes, how much more important is it for training children in Christ-like character? Right?

Yvette:                         Right.

Ginger:                         That’s what we want to do. We always want to require them to practice that biblical alternative to the wrong behavior, because it is never enough to just verbally instruct our children in what not to do. We have to instruct them in what to do. We have to teach them how to replace wrong behavior with right behavior. And then, most important, we want to require them to actually go back and do it.

So, you brought up the thing about children speaking disrespectfully. That’s pretty much across the board with younger kids, and certainly as they grow a little older. And so many parents, when their children speak disrespectfully, they’ll say something like, “That was disrespectful. You shouldn’t speak to me like that. Now go to your room.” But you and I know that is ineffective child training, because that most important part is left out. We shouldn’t just rebuke and discipline the child who was speaking disrespectfully. We need to have him come back and practice the biblical alternative by communicating the right way, using the appropriate words, and the appropriate tone of voice, and for many kids, particularly mine as the grew into their teen years, the appropriate facial expressions.

Yvette:                         Oh, yes. Oh, the faces.

Ginger:                         The face, yes.

Yvette:                         The rolling of the eyes.

Ginger:                         Right. But when we train our children in what’s right and require them to practice what is right, we’re teaching them how to grow in wisdom. And we’re preparing them to govern their own actions in the future.

Yvette:                         Yeah, I love that. And as you think through Scripture, all throughout Scripture, God does that with us. He doesn’t just say to us, “Obey me,” he doesn’t just say, “Don’t sin,” he gives us very specific instructions on, “This is what I expect of you. This is how you will be wise. This is how you will have blessings in your life. And when you choose to obey me, you will have blessings.” And he doesn’t just expect us to know exactly. I mean, of course we have a God consciousness and we get that, but God is not void in his word of teaching us what he expects of us. It’s very clear in Scripture. And so I love, love that we get to do that, in turn, to our kids and show them, “This is what God expects of you.”

Ginger:                         Right. He has provided us with everything that we need for life and godliness. We just need to go to his word, and there it is. And that’s one thing that I would tell my kids is … You just said that it goes well with us when we obey God. Now, that doesn’t mean that there’s not going to be trials and tribulations. But certainly, when our children choose to obey us, ultimately, they are obeying God, because God has called children to obey their parents. And he says that when they do, that it will go well with them. It doesn’t mean that they’re not going to have trials, but it means that they are under that protective covering of being in the will of God when they obey their parents. And so it’s important that we help them understand that.

Yvette:                         Absolutely. Ephesians 6, it talks about that. And God is a faithful God. We tell our girls all the time, “Sin causes pain, but obedience brings blessings. Sin causes pain, but obedience brings blessings.”.

Ginger:                         That’s right.

Yvette:                         We desperately want our girls to grow up and having a life of blessings. But like you said, that doesn’t mean that they’re going to not have pain in their life, but it is a different kind of pain. If you have pain in your life because you’ve made poor choices and you have not sought God’s wisdom, that’s a different kind of pain than the pain that just comes because we live in a sinful fallen world.

Ginger:                         Right. So, those are the things that we want to show them, that no matter … And even when we do blow it and there are consequences for our sin, there’s blessing in being able to go to God and ask for forgiveness, and repent, and turn away from that. And God can even use those times to show us new things that he’s doing in our life, and equip us to share those things with other people.

Yvette:                         In the book, in I Can’t Believe You Just Said That, your new book, each chapter talks about a different verbal offense. Walk me through a few of those. And you also, in there you offer a simple three-step plan for dealing with each one. Tell me a little bit about those verbal offenses, and then your plan to help parents learn how to deal with that.

Ginger:                         What I did in the book is I have broken just common tongue-related struggles down into chapters that all kids are going to struggle with at some time or another. And just some of those different chapters and topics are, like whining, and lying, and tattling, defying, manipulating, interrupting, complaining, blame shifting, teasing, aggravating, bragging, arguing, yelling, gossiping, bickering. It’s everything that I could think of as far as those tongue-related offenses. And certainly, you know, kids are not going to struggle with every one of those. But at some time or another, they may struggle with several. And so, what I wanted to do is to take each one of those tongue-related offenses and then break down each chapter into a three-step plan that would help parents deal with those issues from a heart-oriented biblical standpoint. Rather than just that outward behavior, really learning how to get to the heart of the matter. And then when we do that, we’re able to address it in biblical ways.

And so, each chapter opens with a very common relatable scenario in accordance with that particular struggle. I’ve had so many parents at my conferences and through emails come up and say, “Oh, that chapter that you did on wining, that opening scenario, you were totally in my house last week.” And so it’s just very relatable scenarios.

And then the three-step plan, step one is heart-probing questions. If you think about it, in all the stories in Scripture, when someone did something wrong, Jesus, what he did not do is wave his finger in their face and say, “This is what you did wrong. And this is what you should’ve done instead.” In all those stories, Jesus often used heart-probing questions. And in order for the people to answer those questions, they had to evaluate themselves, because Jesus knew how to ask those questions in such a way that the people would have to take their focus off of the circumstances and the situations around them, and onto that sin in their own heart.

So, for each verbal offense, I offer two or three very simple questions just to help parents get going in the right direction and help them to reach past that outward behavior and really pull out what is going on in the heart. Because we know if we can get to the heart, well, then the behavior is going to take care of itself.

So, that step-one is the heart-probing questions. And then step two and step three are based on the Ephesians verse that says that we are to put off our old self and put on our new self. And so, step two is what to put off, what God’s word says about that particular behavior, and what it can lead to if it is continued. And then step three is what to put on, how to replace what is wrong with what is right.

Yvette:                         Okay. So let’s take it one step further. Could I give you one of these situations, and can you walk me through what it would look like for a child who is struggling with this specific thing? As I’m looking through the chapters, interrupting keeps coming up, because, though my girls deal with some of these other things, I have a seven-year-old who loves to talk. God has given her the gift of gab, and she loves to be the center of attention. And she is super cute, and so people always think she’s cute and funny. But she is an interrupter. And we’ve really been trying to work on this with her.

So, you and I are having a conversation and she walks up, and she says to me, “Mommy, did you see blah, blah, blah?” Tell me then, what do I do?

Ginger:                         Well, first, we ourselves want to understand what is at the heart of that. Before we get into how to instruct them, we need to understand what is at the heart of it and help them understand too what’s at the heart. So we know that that children … first, let me just say, Yvette, that that was my pet peeve. You just really grabbed something with me, because that was my … we all have our things that get under our skin, and that with me was really the one that got under my skin is that when I would be talking to another adult and one of my kids would interrupt our conversation.

But if you think about it, children have a natural bent towards selfishness and pride because, like us, they are born sinners. And so, children automatically place a higher priority on themselves than on others. And so they look at what they have to say as being more important than respecting that conversation of others. And so, what happens is they all of a sudden have this thought, and then they have this sense of urgency that they want to express it immediately, which is the most important thing to them. And that leads to impatience, which leads to interrupting.

So, from the heart, it all boils down to really selfishly placing their wants and needs above the wants and needs of others. And so, say that they come up and … you and I are talking, and your daughter comes up and she interrupts. We want to ask some heart-probing questions. It could just be like, “Sweetheart, do you think it is kind or rude for you to interrupt while I’m talking to someone else?” And, “Are you thinking about others or yourself when you interrupt?”.

And then, as far as the biblical teaching there, we might say something from First Corinthians 13:4 or Philippians 2:3. And instead of just directly quoting Scripture, we can do that, but we could also talk about it just in a comfortable and conversational manner, and say something like, “Sweetheart, the Bible explains that love is patient, love is kind, love is not rude. And God instructs us to do things, not that are selfish, but instead, that we’re supposed to consider other people and their feelings as being more important than our own.” And so that’s the direction that we want to get them going.

And then, you and I talked about that we always need to provide our children with a means of escape. And we want our children to know that we value their thoughts and their feelings, and we want to hear what they have to say. So it’s going to exasperate a child just to tell them to never interrupt, because especially when two mommies are talking, it can seem like an eternity before there’s a pause in that conversation. We want to always provide them with a means of escape. And I think about First Corinthians 10:13 that says that when we, as God’s children, that when we are tempted, God always provides us a way out. He always gives us a means of escape. And that goes back also to not just teaching our children what is wrong, but also training them in what is right. So we want to provide that means of escape.

So what I did with my children when they would interrupt is I taught them to, when they wanted to say something to me and I’m engaged in a conversation with someone else, I taught them just to place their hand on my arm, and to wait silently for me to give them permission to speak. And as soon as there was a pause in that conversation, I would give them permission to speak. That way, usually when they would put their hand on me, they knew that what that communicates is, “Mom, I need to say something, but I don’t want to be rude.” And while I would be talking, I would put my hand on top of theirs to let them know that I’m acknowledging that they have something they want to say, and that I want to hear what they have to say, but we all want to do that in a way that shows respect for everyone.

So, as soon as there would be a pause in that conversation, then I would give them permission to speak. And so that’s not, it’s not a biblical mandate- that we have our children place their hand on our arm. It’s just a tool, it’s a way to prevent exasperation. It’s a way to show respect for them the same way that we’re wanting them to show respect for us.

Yvette:                         That’s so powerful, because I know you encourage that the Bible is the best instruction manual for parenting, but it doesn’t specifically address interrupting. The Bible doesn’t say anywhere, “Thou shalt not interrupt. These are the rules for children. Thou shalt not whine.” But, like you said, I mean, there’s always a root cause for those things. Whether it’s lack of self-control, or selfishness, or pride, or greed, whatever it is, there’s always something that’s causing them to react that way.

Ginger:                         Right. And that’s our job as parents. We need to understand that all behavior is linked to a particular attitude of the heart. So, as parents that want to train our children in what is right and use biblical wisdom from God’s word, we have to learn how to reach past that outward behavior and pull out what is going on in the heart. And then, you better believe God’s word addresses it, because God is concerned with the issues of the heart.

Yvette:                         Absolutely, he is. One of the things that you write in the book that I love is, you write about, why do they act like that? Our kids do something, and oftentimes parents will say, “Why? Why do they act like that? Why did they give me that look? Why did they just roll their eyes at me?” And you say, “That’s the wrong question to ask when our children misbehave.” What do you mean by that? Why is that the wrong question to ask?

Ginger:                         Well, I first, I can relate to that question, because when my kids were little, I used to be constantly shocked by some of the things that would come out of their mouths, whether it was whining, or lying, or talking back, or whatever. I would typically, like most parents, I would look at them and ask that question, “Why do you act like that?” But after a closer look at the word of God, I realized that I was asking the wrong question. In Matthew 12:34 Jesus explained, “For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” In other words, yeah, in other words, there’s merit to that old saying we’ve heard a million times, “What’s down in the well comes up in the bucket.”

And so, our sin does not begin with our mouth. It begins with our hearts. The sin that shows up in our words comes from inside us. And it starts sooner than we might think. King David proclaimed, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” So when parents really grasp the origin of sin and just the overall total depravity of the human race, we no longer question why our children sin.

I slowly began to learn that I was asking the wrong question. I slowly began to learn to stop asking, “Why does my child sin?” And instead, I began to ask myself, “When my child sins, how might I point him to the fact that he is a sinner, just like me, in need of a savior? How might I help him understand and live in the transformational power of Christ?”

Yvette:                         Yeah. I have a really good friend, she’s probably my longest childhood friend. We’ve been friends since kindergarten I think, or first grade, and have remained friends all our lives. And she has two daughters who are now, the grown one’s already in college, and then two little ones. But I remember when Brooklyn was probably around three years old maybe, we had gone to her house, and she was kind of in the tantrum phase, and I was trying to work through that and trying to just rein her in and trying to train her heart.

And my friend Robin said to me, she goes, “When you are talking with her and correcting her,” she said, “You need to pray with her.” And she said, “Say this,” tell her, “Dear God, please help me to obey, because I cannot obey without you.” And we still do that with both of our girls. Oftentimes when we pray with them, we just lead them in that prayer of, “God, I can’t do this without you. I am sinful, and I am incapable of making the right choice without your power and without you.” And so-

Ginger:                         That’s great. That is such a powerful, powerful prayer. And they need to see us praying the same thing.

Yvette:                         Oh, absolutely.

Ginger:                         That God would help us, you know? That we would obey him in training them in what is right. I can’t tell you how many times that I would go through ruts where I would just not be consistent in training my children the way that I should. I would find myself just ignoring things, letting things slide, or even just administering consequences instead of really taking the time to train them up.

And in some of those times, God would even use … when I would blow it in those times. So I would go weeks without being consistent, and then God would convict me, and I would sit down with my kids, and say, “You know what? I need to ask your forgiveness, because I have not been consistent in training you to obey and training you to do what’s right. And you know, honey, I just love you too much to allow you to disobey and to live foolishly. And so will you forgive me?”

And then we would go back over the standard, go back over what’s expected. And then we would just start following through, and I would step back up. But my kids … Instead of just doing that without helping them understand that I failed too, and that I have to go and I have to confess, and I have to ask God to help me and empower me to live in a way that is pleasing to him. Even in the times that we fail, Yvette, those could be powerful teaching opportunities for us to demonstrate our personal relationship with Christ. And what repentance, and turning from sin, and starting fresh looks like in our relationships with God.

Yvette:                         Yeah, I love it. So you homeschooled your kids, right? Did you homeschool all the way, kindergarten through 12th grade?

Ginger:                         I did.

Yvette:                         One of the things that I love about your books and about just your wisdom and parenting is that, through homeschooling, we have the opportunity to practice these things and to speak truth into the hearts of our children all day long. We don’t have to undo the damage that may have been done to them in school. If they’re in school and maybe being taught things that are contrary to God’s word, instead of spending time undoing those, we get to spend our time speaking into their hearts.

What did that look like for you in your homeschool environment with your kids? And how has that turned out? I often wonder, parents write books on parenting, or marriage, or something like that, especially parenting books when their kids are young. And then their kids grow up, and oftentimes I’m like, “Okay, did it work out for you? How are things going?”

Ginger:                         Right. Well, that is the great thing about homeschooling is that we really do get to grab all of those opportunities. Because we are with them all day long, and so, as sin creeps up, we are able to address it and to deal with it in that moment instead of having to wait until they get home from school or finding out what happened at school. That’s one of the most powerful things, that we have the opportunity to train our children in the context of the moment.

And that is when they really learn how to apply God’s word to daily life, because teaching them in the context of the moment, that’s when they’re really going to learn how to apply God’s word to daily life. And so, as we can grab those opportunities, it’s kind of like on-the-job-training, you know?

You learn better. You could learn from textbooks, but you really don’t learn something well until you’re actually doing it and putting it into practice. And so it’s sort of like on-the-job training all day long. And when they put that knowledge gained into practice at that very moment, it’s really going to stick better because they’re learning how it applies in that moment to their life in that particular situation.

So that is one of the great things about homeschooling is that we’re provided with those opportunities. But at the same time, we don’t really get a break. And so, we could become weary in having to train them all day, every day. And we can quickly view it as a burden or a trial. But we’re told to consider it pure joy whenever we face trials of many kinds because we know that the testing of our faith develops perseverance, and perseverance must finish its work so that we may be but sure and complete, not lacking anything.

Yvette:                         Yes. I have often thought about how many opportunities I would miss out on with training my kids and just being able to spend time with them, if they were in a traditional school all day long. And like you said, it can get tiresome sometimes. And there are days when I’m like, “I need to go for a drive. I need to get out. I need to breathe. I need to just have some mommy time,” if that means just going for a walk around the park, or whatever that looks like. But, gosh, I’m so thankful for the time that I get.

And when they’re away from you, and this could be at church, or sporting events. Or whatever, when they’re away from us, we usually don’t know what’s going on. It’s not like they’re going to come home and say, “Hey mom, this is the sin I dealt with today. Can you please train my heart?” You know?

Yvette:                         We’re going to miss so many opportunities. And with being able to homeschool, I love that most of those opportunities are not missed. And we get to help them, first hand, experience truth and the love of God through our parenting.

Thank you so much, Ginger. I love you. I am so grateful for our friendship, and just for what God continues to do through you. We are excited we actually got to interview you for Schoolhouse Rocked. And so we’re super excited to have you as part of that. And I appreciate your support and encouragement with the movie and all that God is doing through the ministry of Schoolhouse Rocked, because you have been such a blessing to me. And you have very much helped shape me into the parent that I am. And I shouldn’t say just me, I do co-parent. I do have a husband, and he parents with me. But he’s always very good about, when I say, “You know, well, what about this? I read this in Ginger’s book. I read this in Scripture. And what do you think about this parenting method?”

And, like you said, ultimately, the Bible is the instruction manual for parenting. There is not a book on the planet that is more important than God’s word. But it certainly is helpful to have excellent books that God has provided us with that can help shape us and encourage us as parents. So thank you for your ministry and for all that you do.

Ginger:                         Oh, thank you Yvette. And I’ll tell you, I have such a tremendous respect for the ministry that you guys have and what you’re doing with Schoolhouse Rocked. And it’s just such a blessing and a huge privilege to get to be even just a tiny, small part of that. And I, too, am just so thankful for the friendship that God has given us. You were just one of those people that, I meet so many people, but you were just one of those people that I just immediately clicked with, and we were kindred spirits and just knew that we were destined to be friends. You’ve been such a blessing and encouragement in my life too. And I’m very thankful for that.

Yvette:                         Aw, thank you so much. So, all right, well, love you, friend. Thanks for talking with me today.

You can find Ginger online at www.GingerHubbard.com.

 

Read Ginger Hubbard’s Books:

I Can’t Believe You Just Said That!

Don’t Make Me Count to Three: A Mom’s Look at Heart-Oriented Discipline

Don’t Make Me Count to Three: Six-Week Study Guide

Wise Words for Moms

Ginger and Yvette also recommend Shepherding a Child’s Heart, by Tedd Tripp.

The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast brings you the homeschooling conversations to encourage and equip you to start strong and finish well. On this weekly show, Yvette Hampton speaks with today’s homeschooling leaders – speakers, authors, activists, curriculum publishers – and homeschooling families just like yours. These conversations will build you up and give you important resources to help you homeschool your children with success – from pre-school to graduation!

We want to hear from you! Click here If you have a question for the host or would like to suggest a topic or guest for The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast.

Ready to take your children back? Stream Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution for free tonight and learn how. After you have watched the movie, download the Free Homeschool Survival Kit. This free 70+ page resource will give you the encouragement and tools you need to start strong and finish well.

Do you believe in homeschooling? Here’s your chance to help spread the word that homeschooling is good for students, good for families, good for culture!  Go to SchoolhouseRocked.com/support and join the movement to spread the word about homeschooling through movie theaters nationwide.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

What is Schoolhouse Rocked? An Interview with Director, Garritt Hampton

“The mission of Schoolhouse Rocked is to encourage and equip homeschool families to start strong and finish well. And so everything we’ve done has been guided by that goal. Our primary goal is to glorify God in all we do, but we want to do that by building up homeschool families. We know that it can be difficult, but it’s super rewarding. So we want to be a part of the process of making homeschooling great for your family. That’s what we’re doing with the film. That’s what we’re doing with the podcast.” – Garritt Hampton

Yvette Hampton:           Welcome to The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. I’m Yvette Hampton, producer and host of the upcoming documentary Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution. On this podcast we bring you the very best from today’s homeschool leaders to help you start strong and finish well. This podcast is for you. If you have a guest or topic suggestion, email podcast@schoolhouserocked.com.

Listen to this episode of The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast.

We are so excited to have you here. This is the first official episode of The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast and I have an amazing guest with me today. I can say hands down that my guest today is my absolute favorite guests that I have had on and that I will ever have on the podcast. My guest today is Garritt Hampton, director of Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution and he also happens to be my wonderful, faithful, loving husband of 23 years, and the father of my two amazing, beautiful daughters.

Garritt Hampton:                        Proudly.

Yvette:                        Welcome to the podcast.

Garritt Hampton:                        Thank you. It’s exciting to be here. Yeah, I’m really excited about this podcast. We’ve been talking about doing this for over a year and kind of, it’s been kind of in the back of our planning process as we’ve been working on so many other different things. And you know, God’s just put us in a great position where over the past two years as we’ve been recording for the movie and filming, we have had a chance to meet so many amazing people and it just made sense to be able to reach out to those people again and say, Hey, will you be part of the podcast? And so, we’re excited to do that. I mean, do you want to tell them what the purpose of the podcast?

Garritt Hampton:          Well, the purpose of the podcast is very much the same as the purpose of Schoolhouse Rocked, the movie, which is to encourage and equip homeschool families. We set out when we, when we started production, when we started pre-production, one of the first things we did was write out our mission statement. And it’s very simple. The mission of Schoolhouse Rocked is to encourage and equip homeschool families to start strong and finish well. And so, everything we’ve done has been guided by that goal. Our primary goal is to glorify God in all we do, but we want to do that by building up homeschool families. We know that it can be difficult, but it’s super rewarding. So, we want to be a part of the process of making homeschooling great for your family. That’s what we’re doing with the film. That’s what we’re doing with the podcast.

Yvette:             Yeah. So maybe we could give him a little bit of an idea of kind of where this podcast is going. We have actually, this is podcast number one, but we have actually recorded five already and we have several more already scheduled to record. So, I’m really, really excited about who, who we have. so far have recorded interviews with, Israel, Wayne, Ginger Hubbard, Connie Alberts, Carol Swain, and Scott Lob here.

Garritt:             All of them. Excellent. I’ve, I’ve heard them also.

Yvette:             all of them. Excellent. And all of them. Part of the cast. Right. And then we’ve got Pam Barnhill coming up. We’ve got Dr. Christopher Perrin, we have Andrew Kern and we have several others that were still actually just trying to work out dates with, but it’s actually not going to be all the expert types as people would know. It will also be regular just homeschool moms like me who are just in the thick of it right now who are working through this great thing that we call homeschooling. And um, and so we have several moms who just have different stories maybe. I know we’ve got one mom who’s going to be on, and she dealt with cancer a few years ago and so she’s got just a great testimony about her journey of dealing with cancer and homeschooling at the same time and how God brought her and her family through that. We’ve got calling Kessler. We’ll be on talking about kids who are twice exceptional and gifted. And we, we’ve got just a great lineup of people who will be on the podcast and just some great moms and dads who will come on and just share their experiences and wisdom so that we can encourage and equip people to be able to homeschool. So, we’re very excited about that.

Garritt:             Now can I ask you a question about that? Sure. You say moms and Dads, and already we’ve recorded five episodes and two of them have been homeschooled dads. How does listening to homeschool dads build up encourage quip homeschool moms?

Yvette:             Well, I actually, my hope and prayer is that with the podcast that it won’t be a podcast that just moms will listen to. I’m really hoping that with the dads who will be on that they will be able to encourage the other dads because dads have such a very important role in homeschooling. And we actually talk a lot about that in the movie. And we’ll talk about the movie in a few minutes. But in the movie, we talk a lot about the important role of dads to lead their families to encourage and support their wives and how they can do that. And so that if anyone ever asked me what my favorite part of the movie is done, hands down my, my absolute favorite part because I think many dads don’t realize how, just how important that is in their day to day family life and how much their wives need. That.

Garritt:             It’s definitely been a fun part. Um, as we’ve interviewed just great Christian men who are leading their families well and going through this journey and being spiritual leaders, we’ve always taken a minute to step out of the homeschool part of the movie and just ask them what it’s like to be the spiritual leader in their home. How do they do that? What does it look like? What are they trying to get? Um, get into their kids and get out of the, out from their kids. And it’s always been a huge encouragement. We’ve had some great discussions and I will tell you there may be another movie in that. Um, we have not talked about this, but there’s so much good stuff there. You will see it on the backstage past site for sure. Um, but there may be something else in the works.

Yvette:             Yeah, I think so too. Um, I want to back up a little bit and talk a little bit about Schoolhouse Rocked too because some people listening to this podcast may not know that Schoolhouse Rocked is actually a movie. It’s a full-length movie that we are currently in production on. And so, let’s, let’s tell them a little bit about the movie, kind of our story, what we’ve done and how we’ve come to this place of doing this podcast. Do you want to go?

Garritt:             I think you’re wanting me to go there.

Well, I kind of want to start from the, not the very beginning of time, but um, start a little bit.

Garritt:             God created the heavens and the air. Yes, he did. The earth was without form and void in the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the year 2016. That’s a big jump. And that is a big jam. K 2016. So, we’ll go back to the very inception of the movie. I was teaching film at a private school in Lancaster, California. And in that year, I got asked to help out with a student film. Um, the crew, the girl doing the film was a friend of a teacher that I was working with and it was a short film on homeschooling that really was the beginning of this project. And I saw the short film that she did and thought, wow, what a great opportunity to just build up homeschooling families to show that homeschooling is a great option for families and really to legitimize the movement. And so, but this film was short. It was seven minutes long, I think. And even in that seven minutes, it was really powerful. So, I actually asked her if she wanted to do a feature and she said no, she was done with that project. So, I said, you know, that would be an awesome movie. And we started thinking about it at that point. Um,

Yvette:             and I think you should mention previous to that, you had worked in the Hollywood film industry for many years, right? That was part of your background and then you’d worked in the music industry before that.

Garritt:             Right. My, my background is really entertainment. Um, and I’ve had a varied background, but the, the last 10 years I’ve really spent doing movies and prior to that I had done music. Um, and so it wasn’t like I was just jumping into this movie thing cause a man, it would be a hard thing to jump into. But I had taken a year where I was teaching film at a school really because the movie industry had just become such a crazy mass for our family. I was, there was a lot of travel, a lot of time away from the girls in it. It needed to slow down a little bit. So, I had an awesome opportunity to teach film to junior high and high school students for a year. And it was a great time. Um, but it was also only a year. And so, we knew something was coming after that year. We knew we’d have to make a decision about where we’d be because it was going to end.

Yvette:             Can I interject here in, in, on, on my end of it I was the homeschool mom. I was the homeschool mom who said I would never, ever, ever, ever, ever homeschooled my kids. We said that for many years. We had been married for about 11 years before we had our first child. And so, for this whole 11 years, we were adamant about it. We said we would never homeschool. And the reason for that was because we had so many misconceptions about homeschooling and what it was and all the negative stereotypes of, you know, what, how we saw homeschooling as kids because it was very different when we were growing up in the eighties and nineties

Garritt:             yeah. It was different and we just didn’t get it too.

Yvette:             Right, right. It’s not, it wasn’t bad. We just didn’t get it. That’s exactly right. Yeah.

Garritt:             Right. It has changed though. It’s ironic because even, even though it was different, we still just didn’t get it and it was still a great movement, but we just saw all the negative things that people from the outside see. So, we really, I mean, we were, we had so many discussions about this saying how we would never homeschool our kids and so we didn’t want them to be socially awkward. Yes. The obnoxious. How will you socialize your kids? Argument came out of our mouth as many times and we’re ashamed of it.

Yvette:             Well, I wouldn’t say that we’re ashamed of it. I’m actually glad that we were on that side of the fence because I think it has given us, I mentioned better understanding of people now who are on that side of the fence that they just simply don’t get it, which is why we’re making this movie.

Garritt:             Yeah, absolutely. We wanted to answer so many of those questions because we had all those questions and when, when it came time to decide what we were going to do with our daughter for school, we had to work through all those issues. And it was by God’s grace that he changed our hearts about homeschooling. Um, I’m sure we could get into that, but it might take the whole show. But God changed our hearts. But to do that, he had a breakdown, a lot of misconceptions in our minds. And so, part of the reason we’re making this movie is so that we can show what homeschooling really looks like and that so many of those things aren’t true. And homeschooling can be really, really good for your family.

Yvette:             So, yeah. Yeah. I agree. Okay. So, so we started our, we, I guess you stopped at that you were teaching film at a private school. And this was in, this was into the summer of 2016 so two years ago,

Garritt:             right. So, two years ago, I knew that my time at the school was going to end at the end of the school year, and we didn’t know quite what we were going to do. And yet we had felt God just prompting us to make this movie. And it was in little ways. He never spoke from heaven. We never heard the audible voice of God. I wish we would have. Right. Maybe it would have been, it would’ve been helpful, but we were also feeling that it was time to get out of California. Um, for many reasons. We Love California. Our family is, there are churches there, our friends are there. Um, but we were feeling like it may be time to leave. And so the, the break from the school job and the, and what I was doing was a good opportunity to determine if it was time to go which over the, over the months as I, as it lead up to the end of the school year, God just made it more and more clear that it was time to leave and that it was a good idea to do this film.

Um, and he would just confirm it in great ways. It’s funny, this weekend actually, we, we got to see some friends and it was great just seeing friends from California and getting that fellowship, but I was reminded of how God confirmed things for us. One day after church, we went out to lunch with some friends who we loved, some friends for our homes from our homeschool co-op and they had another friend with them who we didn’t know. And we were just at the point where we were ready to tell people we were going to do this crazy thing, which was make a movie. And we’re sitting at lunch and, and you know, somebody asked, so what are you guys going to do? And I said, well, we’re, we’re going to make a homeschool movie. We didn’t have a title for the, for it at this point.

We didn’t even really know what it was going to look like. But we said, we’re going to show homeschooling. Like it really is. We’re going to show that it’s a great option for families and we’re really excited about it. I think that’s about all we knew. Right. And the friend who we didn’t know at the table said, “Oh man, you’ve got to meet our friend Scott LaPierre.” And we said, okay, great. Tell us about Scott. And they, you know, told us about Scott, you’re going to get to meet Scott in an upcoming episode. We have already recorded his episode and it’s fantastic. But within a few weeks of that meeting, we were on a plane up to woodland Washington to meet Scott and Katie, his wife and to interview him and several people from his church. We actually ended up doing a day in Portland where we did street interviews and then all day at a church from, well just after lunch because we did go to church in the morning.

We had lunch with the congregation and then started recording interviews and we got done at like as like 10 or 11 o’clock at night. It was a long day, but we had great stuff in the movie, was off to a great start. So, God just kept confirming in such interesting ways and definitely made it clear that we were supposed to do that. So, we set off on this journey. Long Story Short we sold everything we had. We sold our house, we sold our cars, we sold our furniture, we sold everything and bought a travel trailer and a truck and headed off across the country to make this move knowing where we were going. Right. We

Yvette:             literally go, we, we knew that we were just going to head to Georgia because we had family in Georgia. And so, we said, well, well we’ll head there because it was December. We left on December 16th. And we said, we just need to make it to Georgia by Christmas. Cause we had promised the girls that we would be with family on Christmas Day.

Garritt:             And so, we drove away from California really not knowing what God had in store. And up until that point, we had recorded interviews on three different sub sessions, three different occasions. We had done the interviews in Washington and Oregon, which were great. We had done a day of interviewing at our Classical Conversations group, which was really fun. And then we had interviewed Andrew Poodle. Ah.

Yvette:             Oh, that was, that was a neat story too. You want me to tell that one? Sure. Yeah. Okay. So that was really cool. We had kind of made our list of people that we are wanting to kind of start the movie with. And Andrew Pudewa was one at the very top of that list. And so, we, we worked for melting. We were doing IEW curriculum with our daughter and stuff. And so, I was very familiar with him and I thought, you know, he would just be great. He’s just got such a great personality and hang, there’d be a great one to start with. And so Garritt sent him an email I think, and just said, hey, we’re making this movie again. I don’t think at the time we even had a title yet for the movie. And we said, we’re filming this documentary on homeschooling.

We would love to have you be part of it. And our thought was, we’re going to be traveling across the country from west coast to east coast and we can just kind of hit, oh, we knew he was in Oklahoma. We can hit Oklahoma on the way if we need to and interview him. We would be willing to do that. And so, you sent him an email, Garritt, and he responded within like a few hours and he said, yes, I’d love to be part of this documentary. You know, how do we work out the details of it? And, and then anyway, long story short, it turned out that he was heading out to California. He was going to be just a couple of hours from where we, where we lived and he said, I’ll, I’ll be happy to come to you because he was going out there to visit his family and it was going to be a personal trip.

And I remember he said, if I go out there and we filmed this and it can turn my personal trip into a business trip and I can write it off, you’re like, you’re welcome. And he was so gracious. He actually drove I think about two hours to where we actually were. And he spent the day with us. We got to interview him, we got to take him out to dinner that night and just got to spend some great time getting to know him. And, and he said, you know, here’s all the, a list of people that you, you know, you should get in this movie and if you have any problems getting in touch with them, let me know, I’d be happy to help you. And he was just so gracious and his name alone really, really kind of brought, you know, credibility. Right. Credibility. That’s the word I’m thinking of to the movie because as soon as we said to so many people, oh, you know, we’ve interviewed Andrew Pudewa while they would say, Oh, we love Andrew, he’s wonderful and well if he’s in it, it must be a real movie. And um, and it was just so great. And so that got the whole thing rolling and God just opened up that great door and we were able to connect with so many people because of that. And that was nothing but God’s doing.

Garritt:             Yeah. And that was how he worked and has worked since. Um, we had also done Master’s College too. Oh yes. We knew that we were, we were going to need the college perspective for the movie. And so, one day we got to drive down to master’s college and we had done some others at the house where we did Andrew put a while, but we didn’t have much of an idea still what we were doing and we headed out across the country. And how long have we filmed? I mean we, we filmed for about a year and a half.

Yvette:             Well, it’s been almost two because I think our very, very first interviews that we did, we’re in August. Right. I want to say they were in August because it was when we were still on our house. Sure. The test was in August, right. August, September. So, but, but our first interviews that we did, official interviews were in December of 2016 so, right. So, it’s been little more than a year and a half since we filmed those first interviews.

Garritt:             Yeah. And it’s been great. God has provided the, just the best people. Um, we, we go into every interview not really knowing what to expect and event has kind of some questions in line just to get things started and make sure the interview moves in a certain direction. But it always goes somewhere better. I think in every case. And we’ll be, we’ll be watching together as the interviews going on and thinking about how interviews will work together with others that we’ve done in the past. And it is just such a friend. Fun Process. We finished interviewing

Yvette:             in Nashville, right. And Nashville, which was just a few months ago in March of 2018 and over the past year and a half or so we’ve traveled ally, we’ve been to, I think we’ve traveled to, I think we filmed in 20 states. Have we, something like that. Yeah, it’s been a lot. Um, or at least had that many states represented cause some people have come from other states and, but we’ve taught, we’ve, I think we have traveled to about 20 different states and it’s been so great just to get her perspective of homeschooling across the country. And part of it has been that people have just opened up their homes to, as we’ve traveled and said, hey, you know, come stay with us. We have made friends. I mean across the whole country; it has been the most amazing thing. You know, we were kind of part of our little bubble in California, which we love.

We love our California bubble; we love our friends and family there. And it was really hard to move out outside of that. But it has been such a blessing meeting people in all different parts of the country and getting to see all these different parts of the country and interviewing. So, it’s not like we just stayed in one place and got just, okay. Here’s perspective of people homeschooling in California. I mean we have people from New York, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, California, of course, Alabama, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, Ohio. I mean a lot. And it’s been a really exciting to see and it’s been neat to see the homeschool community just rally around us and come together and really people, people are people. And there is just a real great community of people in the homeschool movement who love each other and work together. And you know,

Garritt:             and we found so many similarities too. You would think that things would be different, and they are different from community to community. But really the homeschool community is very similar. I’m very, very open, very family oriented of course, because it’s, it’s really a movement of families. Um, and we have been so blessed by getting to know them. I, I, yeah. It’s,

Yvette:             and the struggles are all the same for everybody. You know, it seems like every mom we talk to has, you know, more or less the same fears about, you know, am I doing it right? Am I messing up my kids? Am I teaching them enough? Um, you know, am I making it fun? Am I doing this the right way? And so, it’s been neat to just be able to just come alongside those people and say, you’re the same as everyone else. We all are in that same boat. And then you have those older moms like Doretta Wilson and Heidi St John and Connie Alberts who have been through it. They’ve done it. They’ve graduated their kids and their kids are thriving as adults. And those are the moms and dads who are coming alongside Zane. You’re doing a great job. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Garritt:             What a great encouragement they are to them.

Yvette:             It really has been. It has been. Yeah.

Garritt:             One of my favorite things we’ve done to, I don’t mean to keep going on this, but I was thinking about as you say, Heidi and Connie and these people is um, it’s been a blessing to be at homeschool conventions where these people speak because you see the homeschool community come together and there’s nothing more encouraging than being in a room with 4,000 homeschool families and all knowing that everyone is going through basically the same things and dealing with similar issues. But having these people on stage say, you’re okay. This is what you need to do to move forward. And it’s going to be all right. Your kids are going to be great. We have been blessed. We’ve been able to be at several conventions across the country. And to me, I always leave energized. I leave energized as a homeschool dad, as a husband, you know, encouraged to do my job.

I leave energized as a filmmaker because I know that that stuff is just so impactful and we’re going to be able to incorporate that into the film, but so much more highly selfishly encouraged. Um, it really is a blessing. The other thing that’s a blessing is seeing how many families are together at these things. Homeschooling. Um, it, it’s always encouraging to me to see the movement of families who are intentional about raising their kids up in the right way. Um, we believe that that right way is in the, in the fear and admonition of the Lord. And you see so many families together walking hand in hand through these conventions who are all walking in the same direction. It really is. It’s encouraging.

Yvette:             It is. And you know, as you were talking about conventions, one of the things that we have realized is that almost across the board, every curriculum company that’s out there, I won’t say every single one, but most of them were homeschooled families who saw a need and met that need and they created their curriculum, Classical Conversations, apology, a not cross history. Um, I just, I mean there are so, so many of them that are, we’re just, there are families that, you know, mom or dad saw a need and just said, hey, you know, let’s create this curriculum. Oftentimes it was for their own kids and then it just turned into something bigger. And so, most of the curriculum you see out there nowadays is created by homeschool families and often still being run by those families themselves. Right. Which is really exciting because actually in the movie we talk a lot about family business and entrepreneurship and things like that.

And so that plays perfectly into homeschooling. And how and why homeschooling is so powerful for families because it allows families to be together and work together and learn together and teaches kids work ethic. And you know, our girls work with us. That’s been a really exciting part of filming this movie is that we, you know, we went from gear up being gone pretty much all the time when he was working in, in the Hollywood film industry. He was just, I mean, he’d be gone for days at a time and it was really hard on our family and now we’re together 24 hours a day, seven days a week and, and we love it. And you know, sometimes we need to get out and breathe a little bit, but we really enjoy being together and, and it has brought such a different element to our family and to our girls lives that they get to be part of this amazing thing that God has called us to, of making this documentary.

Garritt:             Yeah. So back to the podcast, we, we have been talking about this for a year and we’re, we try to keep them around 30 minutes. So, we’re at 26 minutes right now and I want to get back to what people can expect. But one of the reasons we did the podcast was because we had such a wealth of great stuff to share with people. When you make a movie like ours, you go out and you film a lot of stuff and it can’t all make it into the movie. And we didn’t want to just let it down and go into a hole and disappear. We wanted to really build up homeschool families. So, an outgrowth of that was the podcast because we had forged relationships with great people who just had so much good wisdom to share. So, we wanted to bring those to you. Um, another aspect of that though is that we went out to our news newsletter subscribers early on and said, what do you want to hear in the podcast? What can we answer for you? And we’ve already started answering some of those questions you’ve had, do you want to share some of those?

Yvette:             That was so much fun. We, we didn’t know how many responses we would get from that. And we got well over 80 responses and they were such good suggestions for topics and guests to have on. I mean the interesting thing is so many people asked the same questions in different ways. A lot of people are, you know, just wanting to know how I balance my homeschool day or how do I balance my homeschool day with little ones. You know, I’ve got an infant and a two-year-old who are running around like crazy and I’m trying to homeschool my seven and nine-year-old or you know, whatever your family dynamics still look like. And so, we have Pam Barnhill is going to be on, she’s going to talk a little bit about some of that stuff and um, we’ve got some other guests actually that are coming on as well that will help address some of these questions.

We have people who’ve asked about children with learning disabilities and how you homeschooled those kids. And so, we’ve got people who are going to come on and talk about that. We’ve got a, one of the questions we were asked, which Scott Lob here does such a beautiful job of answering is what do, what do your moms do when their husbands are not on board with homeschooling? And so, I talked with Scott about that and he just, he addresses it so perfectly and biblically and I’m just gives a great answer to that question. And um, you know, how do I make homeschool fun? So, Trish Corlew from hip homeschool moms is going to come on and talk about how to make homeschool fun. She’s a fun one. She is really fun because it doesn’t have to it, you know, the thing that we’ve realized is that with homeschooling, so many moms think that when you homeschool, you have in your brain the school room as we know in, into your home.

And it’s really hard to replicate what school looks like at a traditional school. And that’s not what homeschooling is. And so, we can encouragement from moms again, you know like Durenda Wilson who’ve been through it and who, who have walked that road and can give encouragement of just relax, just relaxed and have fun with your kids. I’m gender hybrid, talks about parenting. We had some questions about parenting and how do you deal with discipline issues because obviously that’s part of homeschool and that’s part of raising our kids. So Ginger Hubbard addresses that beautifully and she talks about just training the hearts of your children. And so many of these questions are getting answered and then we had a whole list of guest suggestions and we’ve already been able to connect with some of those people and they’ve agreed to come on the show. And some of them we’ve actually already recorded podcast interviews with. So that’s been really exciting.

Garritt:             I see a couple here that are really fun to me and they’re the one-word ones. We have one, somebody just said encouragement. And I would really honestly say that as the heart of what we do is encourage homeschool families. We want to equip you by giving you great resources and great, you know, pouring wisdom into you and instructing you. But really, we want to build you up and encourage you so that you can make it through. So, we will do that in spades. That is our highest goal. The other one is road schooling. And on our journey, we’ve gotten to try that out and we have now almost a year and a half, well actually a more than a year and a half of roadschooling under our belt. So, we’ll get to that. Um, maybe we can have on another guest who’s done it and talk about the joys of traveling.

It’s awesome that homeschooling allows you the freedom to get out and travel and you can still do school on the road. So, it’s fine. We get to say that our girls get to actually drive the map and said, I just look at it on a piece of paper. And so that’s been a big blasting. So, we’re almost to 30 minutes and I want to tie up this episode, but really quickly I want to talk about the two other things that we have that we can offer to people, which is the website and then our backstage pass membership site. Cause those are great resources as well. Um, the websites – go to SchoolhouseRocked.com. We have some guest bloggers who are just wonderful and they, they post such encouraging things and all kinds of different topics that you can find on there. So, you can find guest blog posts on there and we actually will have a whole lot of more guest posts coming up in the near future.

There’s already a wealth on there though. There’s stuff on special needs. Homeschooling was special needs or stuff on family business. Um, there’s just general encouragement for homeschooling. It’s a wealth of information. Then the backstage past membership. Um, the backstage pass site is where you get an inside look at the making of the movie and you get the value of all this video that we’ve done. We’re going to release basically everything over time. Um, in addition to the movie, you’re going to see the uncut interviews with our guests and you’ll find that at the backstage pass site there’s a free subscription that gets you access to clips that you can search by topic and, and they’re going to answer your questions and build you up quick. But if you really want to dig down deep, we have a paid membership and it’s the Co cost of a cup of coffee, coffee a month for four 99 a month you can get access to complete interviews and there’s already several hours up there. We have a Heidi St John, Sarah McKinsey and her, Andrew Kern, Connie Albers is up there. Josh Tolley. His is amazing. That was Brooklyn’s favorite. Do we have Sam up yet?

Garritt:     Her whole interview isn’t up yet, but there’s a few minutes there and it’s great. And I want to just elaborate a little bit on what that is. So, as we’ve filmed interviews for the movie, each interview has been, I mean I would say the average time that it taken for an interview is probably close to an hour and we have a ton of them. I mean our cast list is, is massive. If you go on the website, you can actually see who several of our cast members are and then families as well. And so obviously, you know, we can’t put an hour of Heidi St John in the movie because that would take up, it would be a good movie, it would be fantastic. But we’ve got so much great content in, so, you know, we can’t, we want to do something with the remainder of the footage that’s not going to make it into the movie.

That’s just so powerful that we really want people to be encouraged by it. And so, well that’s what’s going to be on the backstage pass membership site is you’ll get some behind the scenes stuff and then you’ll also get the full exclusive interviews from the cast members and you get to see us record this podcast live in color.

Garritt:             Just to go on that for just one more second. Our first big interview, like we said was Andrew Pudewa and his interview was almost two hours long and there’s not one minute that’s not excellent. I don’t know how I’m going to cut that interview. It was so good. We were sitting there just dying because it was two hours of great stuff. So that’s coming to the Backstage Pass site, and just so much more if you want to be built up, if you want to be encouraged and equipped check out Members.SchoolhouseRocked.com and it’s a great way to support the movie.

Yvette:             All of the paid memberships that come in actually goes to support production out of Schoolhouse Rocked. And so that’s a great way to support the movie and get something for yourself in return. Yep, absolutely. Why support the movie? Well we, we actually, right now the plan is that the movie is going to be in theaters and early summer of 2019, but we have a huge budget that we still need to meet in order to get it in theaters by next year. Um, we’re working with fathom events, which some of you may be familiar with them. They’re the company that does a lot of Kirk Cameron’s documentaries and, and live events and stuff like that. And so as of now, the plan is that the movie will be in theaters across the country, probably 850 plus theaters. And we’re really excited about that, but that is going to take an army of people to get it done. We have to hire, and we’ve already had to have all these people in place, but we have to pay for a composer and a colorist and a second editor. And I mean there’s just an, a marketing angel in a marketing budget, right? The marketing budget is huge. And so, we need to raise the rest of our budget to get it in theaters. And it’s a whole lot of money. And so, every year

Garritt:             thing that, you know, whenever people pay for the backstage pass membership, that goes to help support that, right? Yeah. Every, every membership goes straight to production on the movie. And you can also donate to support. If you believe in what we’re doing, come beside us and help make a movie. You will be doing a great thing. Um, and you will be building up the homeschool community just like you’ve been built up.

Thank you so much for listening today. We are very excited to be here with you. We hope that it’s been an encouragement to you and we really hope that this podcast will encourage and equip you in many, many ways on this homeschool journey for great homeschooling videos, articles, giveaways, and more. Check out Members.SchoolhouseRocked.com and use the coupon code “PODCAST10” to save 10% on any paid Backstage Pass membership backstage pass members get exclusive access to full interviews from the cast of Schoolhouse Rocked and so much more. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and leave a review. Until next time. I’m Yvette Hampton. Wish she knew the joys of community and the wisdom to teach and learn.