The Circle of Influence, Part 1 — Freeman Miller

In Part 1 of "The Circle of Influence," Freeman Miller speaks to parents about why a child’s surrounding circle of influence—especially peers, smartphones, and social media—largely shapes whether that child will embrace or reject Jesus. Drawing on roughly thirty years of raising six children through hard years of illness, church conflict, and a son at a spiritual crossroads, he argues that time together is not enough; parents must know what is actually capturing their children’s hearts and must win their children’s respect and trust. He testifies that living Jesus transparently in the home, coming to God like a trusting little child, and guarding the circle around a child do more than rules, preaching, or memorized verses alone.

Key Points:

– Every child is shaped by a circle of influence, and the "squishy-cheek" friends—not just parents—are often capturing a child’s heart.

– Spending time together is good but not sufficient; parents must know what is shaping their children, because a child can be physically present yet emotionally attached to destructive influences.

– Social media and the internet have changed parenting since around 2005–2010, and the old ways of parenting no longer suffice.

– Freeman warns that Anabaptist peers can be among the most dangerous influences, and that respect for the parent, not family name or church, is the true basis for who belongs inside the circle.

– He shares candid family stories—Justin’s crossroads, his years of dizziness and using a cane, and his daughter Christy’s two years of close accountability—to show the personal cost of guarding a child’s heart.

– The goal is not a super-spiritual or isolated life but living Jesus in a way that makes sense to children, coming to God like a trusting little child, so they gain a clear understanding of who Jesus is.

Scripture References: John 17; Psalm 23; Matthew 11:28–30 ("Come unto me, all ye that labour"); Ephesians 6:4 (nurture and admonition of the Lord)

Guide me, O the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. Oh, greetings to each one of you in the name of Jesus.

So, from our little church fellowship, Dayspring Christian Fellowship in Amherst, Virginia, we’ve been looking forward to the opportunity of being together. I appreciate Elam and David Brubaker, who have been communicating with me and arranging this for us, so I appreciate the privilege of being here.

You can open your Bibles to the Gospel of John, chapter 17. I’m going to start with reading several scriptures, starting in verse 20.

I don’t know what you’re expecting me to speak on this morning. I think some of you expect me to speak about families, some about teenagers, some about social media. In a very real sense, I want to talk to you about a living, real, practical way to think about Jesus. You can go ahead and do the second slide there. I have a lot of slides that I’m going to go through this morning. I’m going to take you on an interesting ride. I can promise you that.

There’s a lot of experience represented here this morning. And for any of you who will be watching or listening to this later, I want all of us to think about this. We as born-again believers really have one mission.

Let me tell you how I’ve come to the conclusion that Jesus must be the reason. As we read stories of the early Christians in the book of Acts and in the Gospels, I should say in the epistles, and then we read some of the stories of believers over the years, and particularly what I’d be familiar with, the 1400s, 1500s, 1600s. And when I read stories about mothers, like some of you here, torn away from their children, in prison, knowing they’re going to be dying, that brings you to the point that you decide deep in your heart what is the most important thing. And I know in today’s world we also think that our children are the most important thing, because they’re very important.

They’re willing to die leaving their children for the sake of Jesus for two reasons. One is they personally believe Jesus is the hope and the only hope that we have for eternity. And they’re committed to be an example to their children that will give them that message unquestionably clear. So basically, no matter what the subject, whether it’s a business seminar, a family seminar, or a revival meeting, I have to start with Jesus and end with Jesus. And I’m one that cannot compartmentalize like some of us do. For example, I don’t have a compartment to put work, another one for family, another one for vacation, another one for church, another one for evangelism. To me, it’s one continuous circle. And if you see the paper, there’s a circle on it. Very simple.

It’s a circle. I want you, as you can, to take notes right on it. The back of the paper’s blank. You can take notes on that. And at the end of today, what I want us to do is understand some very simple but absolutely necessary things that have to be in place in today’s culture, in today’s environment, if you want your children to have a high possibility of adopting your values.

Some of you have been on this journey longer than I have. For me, it’s about 30 years long where I’m really processing this and watching and observing and my wife and I doing our best to raise our own family. We have six children. Four of them are married. My goal today is to share things in ways to where it impacts us enough to make a difference.

It’s not all going to be neat and tidy. Some of it you may feel is a bit inappropriate. Some may be a little over the top. Some of you may feel is too radical. But I want to share. Elam, Brother Elam, and Brother David both gave me permission to do this, but they don’t know what I’m going to say. But they gave me permission to share what the Lord put on my heart. And as I was traveling up, I was telling Elam, I started kind of second-guessing myself because I don’t really know who I’m speaking to.

Years of experience that may or may not fit this congregation. But it does seem like there are families here, some young families. I’ll give you an example. I was preaching in Canada one time, and I told them, this next thing I’m going to be talking about is when I start getting "do not come back and preach to us again" responses. And afterwards, one of the mothers came up and said, "Freeman, when are you going to get to the hard part? I never heard it." And I said, "How old are your children?" She said, "The oldest is 12 years old." I said, "I’m going to get to the hard part once your oldest child is 15 years old."

And she looked a little crestfallen. Most any of us can raise a child up to 12 years old. Some of us up to 18 years old. Few of us up to 25 years old. And I’m just pulling from past experience on that. We have watched some of the greatest men of God in our time with some of the most stable families in our time with some of the greatest shipwrecks in history. I’m not standing here with all the answers. But I do have some questions that must be answered. Someone told me years ago, there’s a lot of good answers, but only a few good questions. And what I want to bring this down to will help you understand how to deal with social media.

Social media and the internet has brought something in that has never been faced before in history. We are being blindsided, and we’re reaping the benefits, the results, the fruit, some positives, and some negative. I’m not here speaking a message of doom. I’m here to tell you it is possible to raise families in this culture. Our youngest child, our son, is 21 years old. And particularly, our youngest three would have been raised in the culture of social media, internet, peer pressure.

While our children were growing up, our church seemed more like an inner-city mission than an Anabaptist church. We did tent meetings one year, and some of our 10-, 12-, 14-year-olds cleaned up $400 out of the visitors’ vehicles while we were in there listening to the preaching. We had conversations in the back of our church Sunday after Sunday by 14-, 15-year-olds about disrespect, about sexual nonsense, about what they were going to do once they leave home after our church services in our church building. That’s the environment mine and Emily’s children grew up in. Those are the people our children played with, the ones we had over, the ones that we integrated with on deep levels. Over the 30 years of observing, there’s a few things that I’m finding that are ultimately important.

More into how a child is actually shaped. This session is more of a shotgun approach. We are going to open it up for questions and answers. I have the questions, you have the answers. I would like for you to be willing to ask any hard question you have. I’m not claiming to have the answers for all of them. But I think every question is a fair question.

And if we can’t answer them, then we can continue searching until we do find answers. We must find answers to some of today’s questions. We have watched homes that were ultra careful with this circle, that would draw a circle around their family to where the devil could not get in. But unbeknownst to the father, the devil was already inside. And at some point, the explosion blew the whole thing apart. We’ve watched other families that didn’t have a circle.

We’ve covered it everywhere, if you have actually turned out to love the Lord Jesus Christ in meaningful ways. The pat answer is freedom doesn’t make any difference. It’s largely just what a child decides. And a child needs to make his own decisions, and he needs to have the information to make decisions with. There’s a very common idea right now, floating through what I would call the younger generation, that we just need to give them information, different ideas, and they need to make a decision. I haven’t bought into that personally. I believe what I believe because I believe it’s a biblical thing to believe. And it is very important to me that my children adopt the values I believe in, not because it’s me, but because I am living what I believe is the most accurate understanding I have of who Jesus is. We need to leave some margin for that. I understand that. But we cannot just say, as long as they love Jesus, then it’s okay.

Many parents change their theology as their family progresses to keep their children from going to hell. Changing your theology does not change the Bible. But because our children start living certain ways, we become more and more permissive than what we have been before, or it brings condemnation to the children.

I’m going to be very candid, very honest. A lot of emotions coursed through me as I prepared for this. Life is filled with a lot of pain. Mine included.

I’d like to stand with our oldest son when he’s 17 years old, and he’s telling me, he said, "Dad, I’m at a crossroads. I’m either going to follow a friend from church who today is in prison with 67 years over his head for murder, or I’m going to follow Jesus, and I don’t know which it is."

When Justin was born again, it took him about a year to stabilize. During that year, I knew what it’s like for my wife and I to be weeping at night, knowing that if he continues in the direction he stumbled, we as church leaders would actually have to put him out of the church.

It took Justin about a year to stabilize, and he got on his feet and he started running. And he’s still running well. I also know what it’s like for our youngest daughter, who we first met when she was almost 16 years old, finalized the adoption two days before her 20th birthday, and made some very difficult, painful decisions in the last year. I, as a father, know what it’s like to be up in the middle of the night at 2 o’clock in the morning and sobbing due to the pain of ones that mean more than life itself making poor choices. I know what it’s like to baptize young believers to watch them fall away.

I’m one that has to — life has to make sense to me on some level. Several weeks ago, I was in a conversation with a customer at a restaurant, and I don’t know how we get on subjects about Jesus. I really don’t know, but we get on a lot of them. I’m not a pushy evangelist type person.

Acts — like, some of you are like way more spiritual than I am. But we do talk a lot about Jesus. And I’m in this conversation with this couple. They’re probably 50-some years old. And he starts asking me questions. And I asked him, "Are you a Christian? Are you a follower of Jesus?" I asked him. He said he used to be, but he’s not. He said he’s a Buddhist now.

He said, "Well, it’s like this." He said, "I spent three tours in Iraq in the war. And watching the devastation, the immorality, and the twistedness that Christian believers bring to countries like Iraq brought me to the point to believe that Jesus doesn’t exist. And the Buddhist religion, actually, believe it or not, matches so much of Jesus’ teachings" — that he took the Buddhist religion and left Jesus out of it because it made a lot more sense to him.

The reason that’s important to us is our children do that same thing and make that same decision every single day. They determine who Jesus is based on the value they see within that circle. And this afternoon, when I draw that wheel, I’ll draw it in detail. I have handouts to pass out on that, that you can actually see what shapes your children and how they’re shaped. And God can give you the grace. God can give you the wisdom. God can give you the emotional connection to where you can provide an environment that teaches them about Jesus. And sure, they can still make choices at a later point that won’t take them away from God. We’re creatures of free choice.

Children are responders. When we stop and think about it, we actually agree with everything I’m going to say and we just don’t know it yet. For example, most of you here — I’m not going to ask for a raise of hands because I don’t know this group. Most of you aren’t sending your children to a local, secular, public school. There may be a few, but most of you are not.

It tells me you believe in a circle. You believe that children are impacted by influence. If we actually believe that — for example, let’s say you have neighbors who are very ungodly, walls covered with porn, all kinds of cursing, swearing, anger, violations going on by that family. Am I right on that? Is that fair enough? So that tells me you believe influence has a lot to do with what shapes your child. Okay, so that means if you have the wrong influence, chances of your child being destroyed is much greater. Which in turn means if you have the right influence, the chances of your child being saved is much greater. Okay, you may still argue with that and say it’s about the grace of God. Okay, let me ask you something.

Why is the grace of God less effective in inner-city New York than what is around little country churches? It’s because environment influence is significantly involved in shaping a child’s thinking. Why is the grace of God so much greater in a Christian nation than it is in a Muslim nation? And so I’m not saying the grace of God isn’t real. I believe in the grace of God.

Fathers often cop out at the altar of grace and praying. I mean, when I grew up, they said fathers need to stop playing and start praying. That was true. I turned around and said, fathers, get out of the closet and go play with your children. A true story. I’m sitting in a living room and our children are older than 14, 15, 16 years old.

Spiritual giants are sitting in my living room and we all have families. One had like eight children, the other six children. We had like four or five at the time. Twice I made the mention. I said, "Look, our children are outside playing. Could we take this conversation out under the trees so that we can observe and be involved and integrate with the children?" They kept around talking. And I said, "Look, brothers, what if y’all went outside with me?"

I’m going to tell you, they were having deep, meaningful, life-changing conversations. It was wonderful. One of them lost all his children to the devil. And he himself and his wife are very confused spiritually. The other one has a son that’s a homosexual. Other children confused. And he’s confused himself.

The guise of spirituality — another true story. An elder from another church was in our congregation visiting. His oldest child was maybe 10, 12 years old. And I was getting a few reports from the outside that things weren’t completely well. Something I did that y’all may want to adopt or to think about, when our children were little. I mean, I like conversations too, right? And so I didn’t want to be running out on the playground all the time seeing what was happening to the children.

So here’s what we did. I told our children, check up on Dad at least every 20 minutes to make sure Dad’s doing okay. And about every 20 minutes, I’d feel a tap on my leg. And I’d look down and they said, "Dad, I’m here." And I’d look them in the eye. I said, "How’s things going?" "It’s going fine." "Okay, you can run play, 20 minutes later, see you again." And they didn’t have a watch. They just kind of figured it out. But I’ll tell you what it did.

You know how sometimes children get so involved? You know, if it keeps going, someone’s going to get hurt. Or something’s going to happen. It broke them away from that. Got them reconnected with Dad. And I knew where they were. Like, it didn’t just get farther and farther and farther away until all of a sudden there was a bunch of children playing behind the trees and nobody knew what was going on.

And we did that for years. Because I was way too distracted to be keeping up with all my children. But I will tell you, we must know what’s shaping our children. I was thinking the other day — and that sounds very harsh, I know that — but I was thinking about Russian roulette. I first heard of that when I was a boy.

I was told when I was a youngster, you take a revolver with, let’s say, it’s got eight rounds in it. And one of the chambers has a bullet in it. And so, like in the young people’s party, it started in Russia. They would spin the cylinder, and it would spin an unknown number of times. And when it stopped, they put the revolver to the head and pulled the trigger. Hoping that there was a blank in the barrel instead of the bullet.

He had his brains blown out. But this is what I was thinking the other day, and it makes me weep. In many ways, when it comes to watching the influence and the shaping power, in particular where it comes to peers, smartphones, and the internet, social media, we actually play Anabaptist roulette. And you’ll understand more of why I’m saying that as we go on.

I want to make a confession. I want to openly confess that I love the Lord Jesus Christ more than anything else. I’m not suggesting I love him with all my heart, soul, and mind like Jesus says that I should, which is the greatest commandment. But I will say, I love Jesus very deeply. And it used to be that trying to make up the gap of my humanity with who Jesus really is, I would beg God to change me, tell God how bad I was, tell him how much I’d failed. Can we put the pictures back up and go to the first picture? First picture.

Jesus says, be like a little child. And the more I mature in understanding Jesus, the more I’m like a little child. And when I see my failures, I just look up at Jesus and say, "Thank you for loving me. Thank you for changing me." It’s not my distress that changes me. It’s my trust in my Father.

And when I saw that photo, that photo is what my wife is on a regular basis — just allowing Jesus, the light of Jesus, to flow into the very core of our soul. I remember Brother Danny Kennedy.

He was just in talking to me in the middle of a very low point of my life. And he said, "Freeman, there’s something about Psalm 23 where it says, ‘He restores my soul.’" And there came a point when I started understanding that on a much deeper level. The first several years of me being an ordained leader, I took two sabbaticals because I was absolutely burned out, as God restored my soul.

Learning how to sit and allow God to love me just because he’s a good Father — it changed my life. I still get discouraged sometimes. But I approach it differently. And I want that picture to be imprinted in your mind. One of the examples of what Jesus meant when he said, be like a little child.

One of the scriptures that I would read as a little boy that didn’t make sense to me because life was hard, when Jesus said, "Come unto me, all you that are heavy laden. And learn of me, because I’m meek and lowly. Because my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Just imagine if we actually realize the extent of that. We as believers are going to come to Jesus like that. Instead of like an old, worn out, beat up person coming to God, weeping because of our failures — instead, with our failures, we know where the grace is. We know where the love is. We know where the safety is. And we just come before God and just say, "Thank you, God. Thank you for loving me."

You know what? That’s the greatest life-changing thing that can happen to a man. Let’s go to the third picture. That’s not a very flattering picture of myself. We didn’t have photographers following us around, so I just pulled some random photos out, and I’m going to show you a lot of them. Some of them will shock you. Some will surprise you. Some will make you cry. Some will make you laugh. But I’m going to be real.

The reason I put that photo up — our youngest son, Ryan, and his pony, probably in reality, rode 800 miles like that. Right there. With me. Dad and Ryan.

I have several goals this morning. One is to convince you that we are not an above-average family. If you know the struggles our family went through and what it put my wife and I through to get to where we are today, you would believe me.

I do remember in 2003 being in a prayer meeting with a group of men, probably a dozen of us, and I didn’t realize I was losing my family at that point. I didn’t realize I was losing the heart of my oldest son. I can raise children up to 12 years old probably better than most can because I understand the feel and timing and some of the training techniques that work. So I just assumed it would work until they’re 25 years old.

I’m finding, unless you have the respect and trust of your child, no matter the method, no matter the environment, no matter anything else, if you do not have the trust, if you don’t have their heart, if there’s not that two-way bond, your chances are low in today’s environment. Much lower than they were at one point.

And the data is clearly tying it into Facebook and social media. There’s a lot of other platforms by now. What I want to talk to you about is the power of influence, not about gadgets. One of the reasons speaking about gadgets is complicated is by the time I’m finished studying and understanding, they come up with three new ones I don’t know anything about. But I tell you, the power of influence is the same.

I’m in the living room, believing they have a good family time, where the children sit around their smartphones, communicating with evil friends a thousand miles away. And then the parents are in tears, wondering, "What in the world happened? We were such a connected family." Now, sure, you were connected with the universal world. It’s like we must understand what’s happening on a core level. Somebody is winning the heart of your child. What I found out — there is nothing that replaces time.

But do you know time alone is not the answer? Over the last 20 years, I’ve watched many families leave the corporate world, coming into believing biblically like we believe, and they’d leave their jobs, and they’d start family businesses because they needed to save their families. And you know what happened? They destroyed their families. And here’s what I am believing.

Family will be accelerated if you spend more time with them. Now sure, time is good. We need to spend time. So let’s say you take your family on a vacation to the beach because you need to spend time together. That’s a very bonding time, but it’s also very destructive time, if your children are out getting their hearts attached to things that lead them away from Jesus. Let’s say you go camping together.

Let’s say several families do something. It’s like time alone is no longer the answer. It’s like since — probably since 2010, it started in 2005 maybe — parenting has changed forever. My generation of parents still tries to parent the old way. And why not? It’s worked for like 6,000 years. Why should we change? But it no longer does. We must change the way we think.

And I’m going to use some terms that are not catch-all terms. I use them as if they were. So you need to sort through that. For example, I talk about the generation of the 15- to 25-year-olds. I talk about the 40- to 55-year-olds. When I talk about 15- to 25-year-olds, I’m talking about a young person that’s 15 years old and the group that goes on up to about 25.

And so let’s say your oldest child is 15 and you’re 42 years old, you hardly fit into the 40- to 55-year-old explanation. But let’s say your oldest child is 25 or 30 and you have younger children scattered through that, then you fit exactly in it. But here’s what happens. The 40- to 55-year-old parents, as of today, have a very difficult time understanding what changes they need to make.

They spend time with the children. They try to integrate the children with their friends. We’ve done that for years. But what they don’t realize is, how do I know what is shaping their heart? And there’s so many different things in place now to catch a child’s heart than what there was 25 years ago that my generation of parents has done a very poor job of catching up with that. You know what I found out when it comes to social media?

The atheist world is more concerned and more careful about what influences their child’s heart, because they do not want them to believe in Jesus, than we as Christians are, because we believe in the Holy Spirit. And we are so concerned about being the Holy Spirit for our child that we’ll let the devil guide the child, afraid we’ll teach the child legalism if we give them guidelines when they’re 15, 16, 18, 20 years old.

So understanding the change that has come in is ultimately important. One of the reasons children don’t know how to do church, one of the reasons marriages don’t know how to do church, is because we don’t know how to do family. Your home should be a place where your child is being trained to be what Jesus said in John 17. How does God work? How does God work in our lives? How does Jesus work in our lives? How does me loving Jesus relate to me loving you? How do we resolve relationships? The circle I’m drawing this afternoon will explain it in more detail, but that’s what the home is for.

Something else I want to convince you of today: local evangelism is not what destroys your children. You’re not understanding influences — it’s what destroys your children. I’m going to show you some pictures of how our family grew up. We have found that the most dangerous element out there to our children’s belief in Jesus is the Anabaptist peers. And once you understand that, it’s a complete game changer of how you approach life. But here’s the question.

Accept that there’s a circle of influence, and that circle will largely determine who your child will be and who that child will serve. And if you believe that, you will do whatever it costs. You will do whatever it takes to provide that circle, to create an environment within that circle that shapes your child to have a clear understanding of Jesus.

The reason I am is because I also need to convince you, this is not about some super-spiritual-looking way of living. To me, super-spiritual means living Jesus in a way that makes sense to your children. I don’t know of a higher calling than that. Sometimes by the time I’m done preaching, people get almost nervous. Like, can we like go on a picnic?

Like, that’s kind of secular. Like, what if you go canoeing or something? I’m going to show you pictures to blow all that out of the water. These are real pictures of real people, basically our family, so you know how we grew up. But I want you to remember something. The five children that we have that came up through the ranks have adopted our values. In the middle of a lot of my peers’ families falling apart.

I’m not saying that to say that I have all the answers and lift myself up. I’m saying that so you understand that praying and preaching and memorizing Bible verses is only a small portion of it. That’s only a small portion of it.

We lived on slippery slopes most of our married life. We know some slopes are slipperier than others. We lived on the slippery slopes. I’m going to give you an example. There was about five years for two of our sons who were professional horse trainers. We built a little horse farm, built an arena, the round pen, and the whole — in our area, the whole shooting match. Even did a lot of shooting.

That’s a very dangerous world to live in for several reasons. One is most horse activities have a lot of ungodly elements to them. Another reason is the horse world in our area is largely a non-church-going group, because a lot of horse events are weekends, and you work during the week, so it’s Saturday and Sunday when you go riding. So it’s very much a slippery slope.

It took us around, and horse training was only one of the ways that God gave us to do that. But we made some very careful decisions. There was a horse training event that we wanted to go to to learn and to be taught, and some of the fathers from church asked my 18-, 19-year-old son, Wes, who’s here with us this morning, "Would you mind taking some of our youth along?" Wes and I talked about it. Wes got back to him and said, "We think it’d be better not to."

This is strictly like a business seminar. But there is an event that was more family-friendly, and we’ll take them along to that. Clear, conscious decision. We had many clients ask our boys to ride their horses at rodeos, because the way they trained the horses — we basically trained for trail riding, so it wasn’t like we were training for events. But the level of training was such that they could have blown the competition out of the water just simply due to the obedience and the responsiveness of the horses.

Our sons helped me decide we’re not going to go to rodeos. Not because we couldn’t have handled it. I really believe we could have gone to rodeos and been fine. But my 18-, 19-, 20-year-old son said, "Dad, if we go to rodeos and the young people start going to rodeos, it’s over. We’re going to lose too many of them there." Okay, we’re living on the slippery slope. A lot of my peers looked at me cross-eyed.

Have some super-spiritual giant look at you cross-eyed, and you’ll know what it means. Because we train horses, we should do something like build picnic tables. Do you know some of the picnic-table builders’ children are serving the devil? There are other things that must be in place. And I just want to remind us again, this is not about bringing condemnation to anybody.

My oldest son — I remember that prayer meeting I was at. In 2003, we were praying, and I remember kneeling on the platform with a bunch of other brothers. And all of a sudden — and I can’t describe it, but I felt the hand of God in such a real way. I just broke down weeping almost uncontrollably. Just totally out of the blue.

Praying about families. And God put his hand on me and said, "Freeman, you must win the confidence of your children." I’m going to tell you, that experience changed my life. And so fathers tell me, "Freeman, I didn’t have that experience." And I tell them, "Look, can you learn from mine though?" We must. And from that point on, I walked with my children in a totally different way. Not by causing a circle that was so isolated that they became hermits and ended up rejecting me. But I walked with them on a very close level, on a daily level.

Something else a lot of people don’t know about me. My wife and I have had some very difficult years. I had a whiplash when I was in my mid to upper 20s. Fairly minor whiplash. Ran into a good old Mennonite clothesline. Over the next three years, I lost a lot of vision and then a lot of balance. Almost ended up in a wheelchair. We had some very dark years. I still get emotional thinking about how hard some of those years were.

I was losing my balance. My head was spinning. During that time, I had two of my loyal friends write me handwritten two-page letters to tell me I’m just making this up because I want attention from other people. We felt totally misunderstood, totally trapped. Not by everybody. Both of our sets of parents and a few other friends believed us and walked with us and supported us. But in that time, things like this happened.

Driving was very difficult for me because it made me really dizzy. At the worst, if I even drove 45 minutes, my head would start spinning even worse. I would get up in the morning and literally hold on to the walls for the first several minutes so I could walk. I used a cane for about 15 years. The earlier days of us going to the leadership seminar at Ephrata, they remembered this young man with a cane.

I would lie back in the men’s nursery all day long because movement made me dizzy. If I even walked past the doors and looked at those 600 men, my head would start spinning. And I would lay back on the sofa and have one of the brothers bring me food just so I could be there and drink in what was happening. And then when I’d get outside, I felt better again.

But I remember traveling to a doctor five or six hours from home, and we didn’t have anybody to take us at that point. Emily drove. And Emily’s a fighter. She’s a strong person in a lot of ways, but she also gets emotionally overwhelmed. And I couldn’t drive. Shouldn’t have driven. But I remember on the way home, we were probably an hour from home yet, and she was physically getting sick.

Ryan was sitting in the back seat in the car seat, just screaming bloody murder for, I don’t know, the last hour. Emily was so exhausted. She was weaving to the point that I decided it’s better for me who can’t walk to drive than it was for her. I remember pulling up beside the road. I had to put my hands on the car because I couldn’t walk. Work my way around the car like I was under police arrest and get into the driver’s seat and drive home. A lot of what I learned about guiding my children was laying in bed during the day when I couldn’t work.

I’d drag myself to where the children got into difficulty. And then I would whistle, and then they’d come into the bedroom and I’d give them some guidance. I’m just going to tell you, if God could save our family, he could save yours. It still takes me probably twice the energy to live that it does the average person to accomplish much of anything. I had to get to the point that I was willing to pay whatever price it cost to stop my children becoming the normal statistics. And again, not every family has to pay the price that I did. I’ve always said I wasn’t a good enough father to do it any other way. Somehow I just influenced the children while they float around the larger circle. I couldn’t do that. That’s why I was losing mine. And I wasn’t willing to lose them.

Let me read, before we go through the slides, let me read what’s on the bottom of your paper here. I wrote a few bullet points down. Again, the first two are not original with me. Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future. I want you to take that home with you. You look at your children’s friends and you’ll know who’s shaping your children. I’ve also put it this way.

If you look at your social media and look at their — what I call their squishy-cheek friends. There’s this big thing right now that’s actually kind of shifting out of it. Let’s say they’re at a coffee shop, two girls in particular, their cheeks squished together holding a cup of coffee, taking a selfie. It’s like at one point that was the only real way to take a picture, especially if you’re going to be best friends forever. So I’ve said it’s your children’s squishy-cheek friends that are actually capturing their heart.

Let me tell you what can happen. A young girl from our church was literally betrayed by a friend. And it was very hard for her, like questioning her faith. And I remember looking at our church basement.

Remember the squishy-cheek friends that shaped your child’s heart. Looking out the window on the steps and seeing this 18-year-old girl sitting beside my mid-50s wife. I can’t say her age because she’s a lady, okay? I will say she’s a year older than I am, and I’m 57.

She’s two years older at the moment. I don’t know if y’all can do math or not. But anyway, this 18-year-old and my wife are sitting out there, their cheeks squished together. Tears flowing down their faces. Who do you think was shaping that young girl’s heart? Where do your children go in times of distress?

I know a very stable family, so to speak, whose 17-year-old daughter started spending a lot of time on the internet searching some of the theology her friends were getting into. Realizing that it’s about Jesus and not about rules and regulations. And she became very burdened for that. And as of today, at 18 years old, this young girl, in following her friends, deviated from Jesus and is shacked up in town with her boyfriend. From a family just like ours, and just like many of yours. It’s heartbreaking.

I remember several years ago — and just so you know, if someone says "some time ago" or "several years ago," it means it doesn’t matter when it was, don’t try to figure it out. If I say some time ago, it could have been yesterday, it could have been 20 years ago. So some time ago. There’s a public trail that runs past her house, and at midnight, our oldest daughter, Christy, and another friend from a family like ours — she was 20 years old. There’s a bridge that crosses the river out there, a wooden bridge, like it’s now a hiking bridge, used to be the railroad bridge.

I’m standing there, and she’s talking. As we’re out there, she’s telling me she’s going through a chemical-induced abortion. She’s been raped countless times. She was so drunk half the time she doesn’t remember it. She’s on drugs, living on the street, and she doesn’t know what to do. This girl comes from a home like mine and like yours. Grew up in a minister’s home. A very influential elder’s home. And I was asking her, what happened? Because I knew the family when they were young, and they were a beautiful family, connected family. Nobody would have thought that would happen. What happened? It was at the time that I was starting to understand this.

And as I was listening to her, I realized that their home shifted when her daddy was deeply hurt due to church conflict. And he became very bitter. He didn’t walk away from Jesus. But it changed him. He became very bitter. Because at first she was telling me, "My home’s always been this way." And I said, "Look, y’all have been in our house for many weeks. We’ve been in your house for a number of weekends. I’m going to disagree with that. Your home wasn’t always this way." She said, "Well, you know what? I guess it wasn’t always this way." I said, "Well, when did it change?" And as she’s talking, we put the pieces together. One of the reasons — I’ll qualify this as much as you ask questions for me to qualify — but one of the reasons our children are leaving is because they’re tired of being Mennonites.

Let me tell you why they’re tired of being Mennonites. Today’s youth, more than ever, because of the entire environment they’re in, must understand and know why they’re doing what they’re doing. Doesn’t mean they can’t be cheerfully obedient and learn respect and all of that. But telling them to do something just because they’re supposed to do it — there’s too much opposition out there for this. You can go on social media, Facebook, blog sites, whatever, written by spiritual people, that militate against most of what I’m preaching this morning. The ex-Anabaptist world has a lot of animosity towards what I’m teaching. Not a lot of them, but a lot of them do. And so, within our home, we had youth from church coming into our house that we invited over, talking to my children in my house about how old-fashioned and strict Dad’s ideas are.

Like when I started drawing a circle based on one thing. I said, if you respect Dad’s values, you can come in this circle. If you disrespect — let me change that. If you respect Dad, you can come in this circle. If you disrespect Dad, you stay out. Didn’t matter what the last name was, didn’t matter whether they’re relative or non-relative, whether they went to your church or my church.

Not our church at one point. But let me tell you something. The five of our children that grew up in our midst are still with us, and a lot of their children are not. That respect is so important. We had derelicts coming out of home that respected Dad that were way less dangerous than a given disrespectful person from our youth group. And once we came to understand that, we didn’t draw lines as such. I just drew a circle. I pursued the hearts of the ones that disrespected me. We didn’t try to cut anybody out. But they must respect us. You have people coming into your home. Remember, it’s the squishy-cheek friends that are capturing the hearts of your children, whether you know it or not. Some of these things are absolutes. And again, the reason it’s hard for you to believe that is because there’s so many exceptions.

Our church at home is full of exceptions. I asked our deacon Mark Rhodes — which is not a Rhodes from Harrisonburg. He’s a Rhodes from Elon Mountain Hollow. His first introduction to Christianity is when some mountain preacher came by with a station wagon back in the 60s picking up little children to take to Sunday school. He grew up in a terrible home. The drinking, the anger, the dirt bikes, the sports cars wrapped around trees and you name it.

So he’s an exception. So that means you live like the devil and everything’s fine. No, it doesn’t. I asked him once, "How many of your peers are believers?" And he starts looking at his fingers and saying, "I’m trying to figure out how many of them are even alive." One of our other deacons, Tim Croft, comes from a completely non-Christian background. Some of you know him.

Grew up as a surfer boy in Florida. Inner city, parties, drinking, and whatever. He’s an exception. But how many of his peers that he grew up with are following Jesus? And to just give someone an exception doesn’t mean that you model after how they came up. And the 40- to 55-year-olds are willing to take the risk because they don’t know what to do. Not all of them, but a lot of them.

The families aren’t saying no. What I want to talk about this afternoon is how can we capture the hearts of our children. I wanted our daughter, Kristen, and her husband to be here, but schedule-wise they couldn’t. When she was 15 years old, her and I were very bonded. She was a beautiful child. Probably four of our children, when they were born again — and again, I’m being very candid here, okay?

I live in a glass house. Please don’t throw stones at my children. I think four of them, when they were born again, really didn’t have any sins to confess. Except the fact that they were born a sinner. We lived current. We lived transparent. We lived connected.

Relational attachments that boys and girls get into are designed to teach a child that he needs grace. Sure, that’s what happens. But what do you think the scripture means where it says, bring your children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? And instead we say, well, let the devil get a hold of them to teach when they need Jesus. That’s not biblical. Many fathers say you must let that struggle happen. The rebellion is natural. Sure, selfishness is natural.

To allow that to take root in their hearts is not bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Our daughter Christy, during an extremely difficult church time for me — I was completely overwhelmed. Even without having used a cane, it would have been overwhelming. And Christy was connecting with a family I trusted from church. And I had no idea that she was getting in an emotional tangle with a young man. Nobody told me. They should have.

Because several knew it. Finally, one of my son’s girlfriends — one of my son’s girlfriend, not that he had multiple ones — found out about it and told Christy, "One of us is telling Dad now." And so Christy told me. Okay, here’s what I did. We put Christy in a circle about this big.

She was 15, for two years. Every single letter that came in, I read. Every single text sent to her was on my phone. Every single letter she wrote, I read. Every friend she spent time with respected me enough to update me on the conversation. We worked side by side. We started an ice cream bar at that point.

And in those two years, I started giving her more space. And two years is not a magical time. It just took us a little bit of time. But I remember three weeks into this, Christy — at first, she dug her heels in and said, "Fine, Dad, I’m not breaking." I mean, she’s my daughter. She’s tough. About three weeks into it, there was an event that she wanted to be involved in and said, "Personally, I think you singing there would be like hypocrisy."

Well, there’s going to be some major repercussions here. But just prior to that, our church had a normally scheduled communion service. She said, "Dad, should I participate in communion because I’m in rebellion to my dad?" That’s a fair question for a 15-year-old girl to ask. She’d been born again at like 12 years old. And I said, "Well, what do you think? I’m not going to tell you what you should do, but we’re going to go to the scriptures and look at it." And I said, communion is a celebration of our relationship with Jesus, not our level of perfection.

We need to be careful. Remember that little child saying, "Jesus, thank you for loving me. I’m not perfect. I’m still human, but my heart’s open. Your grace is available. Your grace is coursing through me, and I just thank you." Okay, so I told Christy, I said, "I’d say there’s some negative issues of being in known, open rebellion and going into communion and pretending you’re not. But I’ll let you decide what to do." At 15 years old, at that service that night, I didn’t know what she was going to do. I didn’t tell her what she had to do.

When we open it up for comments, questions — I mean, testimonies, confessions, whatever — Christy said she wants to say something. 15 years old, remember? How we live at home teaches you how to think about church. To her, church was family. Church was transparent. Church was where the value was. That’s what she said. She said, "I just want you all to know that I am in direct rebellion to my dad right now, and I want you to pray for me. But I, Christy, decided it’d be better not to participate in communion." I wept. Not that I was concerned about what her decision would be, which way she would go. I’d have been okay with it.

Either way, in context of how I was walking with her. Three weeks later, she broke. She said, "Dad, this isn’t worth it. This is terrible. I won’t be able to do anything." And I said, "Well, just open your heart to Jesus. Ask for forgiveness. You and I walk together. We’ll work it out." So she did. And it was beautiful. I said, "It won’t change the rules because I need to trust you." Respect and trust.

She even had non-Christian friends that respected me enough that I could trust Christy with them. I didn’t base her circle of friends on what their name was, what family they were from, what church they came from. I based it on their respect for me and whether they were willing to respect my values. Christy got to the point, by the time she was 17, 18, 19, 20, on up into early 20s, she would freely go in and out of a local home. The woman was a lesbian my age. Her partner was a young girl Christy’s age. Christy won their trust. She’d freely float in and out of the home to the point that the my-age woman, who had adopted a son, like a nephew that needed a home, she said, "I want you to have this boy."

Christy was thrilled. She wanted him. I mean, the boy was like 10. And I’m thinking, do you know what that guy’s like when he’s 18? Anyway, the woman didn’t die, and so Christy didn’t get the boy. But building the trust to where our children can truly become the evangelist that God designed them to be and understand church on meaningful levels.

Thank you.