The Wheel of Influence, Part 2 — Freeman Miller

In Part 2 of "The Wheel of Influence," Freeman Miller opens the session for discussion and unpacks his "wheel" diagram: at the center is what mom and dad actually believe about Jesus, which then filters out through the parents, through life and spiritual principles, and finally through every "pie slice" of life—church, job, social media, vacation, cousins—before reaching the child. He urges parents to guide children by emotional maturity rather than biological age, to win their hearts young, and to link arms with other fathers as a brotherhood and community rather than making isolated, independent decisions. Through candid stories—including his own near-fatal highway accident, families destroyed by hidden technology, and lessons from horse training—he presses that the margin of error today is small and that parents must build trust, transparency, and respect if they are not to lose their children.

Key Points:

– The "wheel" places mom and dad’s belief about Jesus at the center; everything a child absorbs is filtered through the parents and every area of life.

– Guide a child by emotional maturity, not biological age, and win their heart while they are young rather than waiting until they are teenagers.

– Fathers should not act as independent "kings" but link arms as a brotherhood and build a positive community, since "it takes a village" and the community really does raise the children.

– Life principles like cheerful obedience come before outward spiritual performance; a child who cannot cheerfully respect authority will often reject the inner circle later.

– Every slice of life—church, job, vacation, social media, extended family—ripples back to shape what a child believes about Jesus, so hypocrisy and double living quietly destroy children.

– Hidden technology, secret phones, and stronger filters are no substitute for winning a child’s heart; Freeman repeatedly warns that today’s margin of error is far smaller than a generation ago.

Scripture References: Ephesians 6:4 (bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; provoke not your children to anger)

Guide me, O the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. Okay, this session will be a little different. I want to leave more time for open discussion. So if there’s questions you feel are important for you or important for your congregation, start writing them down, because it’s a little hard to get a discussion going.

Often, by the time it’s time to quit, we’re just getting into the deep things. So I’d like to jump in feet first. Whatever is important to you to talk about. Several things I’d like to mention, just in thinking about what all we talked about in the first session. Again, there’s a lot of things I don’t understand. Two particular things I don’t.

I don’t understand much about eschatology, but I know Jesus is coming back and he’s going to repair everything. And so we must understand how to deal with the shaping factors while we’re waiting for Jesus to return, so that we and our children are ready to meet him. One of the things that impacted our oldest son, when he was 20 years old, he went to funerals in 12 months’ time, four of his close friends.

He convinced me that we have unlimited time to live. All four of them died in tragic accidents. Three of them in vehicle accidents. One had a high-speed vehicle mangled under a semi. Another had a 90-mile-an-hour motorcycle laid under a vehicle in the middle of an intersection in town. A third one was driving on interstate, fell asleep, got flipped out of his car. The fourth one was a construction accident.

But with three of his friends dying from negligence and high speed, it sobered him. I don’t want to paint a picture that it’s simple and easy. What I do want to do is tell you that it’s possible, even if it’s hard.

One of the things that my wife, Emily, and I went through. Imagine you’re on a wagon train west, somewhat by yourself. You don’t have the safety of 50 wagons. Even if you’re in a group, you can find yourself very alone sometimes. And you’re out of food, and the Indians are surrounding you. So you’ve got two things that must happen. One is you must go hunt for food, and you must stay home and protect your family.

I believe in the grace of God. I believe in prayer. And we still sometimes find ourselves in impossible situations that we do not know what to do. Either decision is a bad decision. We’ve faced multiple ones of those. But what I want to tell you is that God’s plan should be possible to be carried out. And the more we can connect with brothers and sisters, the more support we have. And so somehow, we have to find answers to these hard questions. Otherwise, we’re playing Anabaptist roulette.

Many fathers have told me, well, I just don’t notice when the contemporary music or the rock artists or whatever are starting to impact my children. Well, I just don’t notice when men and women are dressing inappropriately and immodestly. I tell them, look, you noticing it or not is not what determines whether it’s shaping your child. Just because you are not at home does not mean your children won’t have an eternity somewhere shaped by somebody. And then the flip side of it is, rules and regulations don’t cut it.

If you have the tightest circle, that looks really neat and tidy. But at some point, your children will decide based on the perceived value that they felt within that circle. And if there’s not an adequate social interaction, children become very restless and they do not see the value.

Our journey. With my dizzy issues becoming worse, feeling responsibility in my family as a young family, probably 25 years ago. I tried a lot of things to find out why the whiplash was affecting me so much. Went to a local doctor, Charlottesville, UVA, Johns Hopkins in Maryland. Finally found a neurologist that actually had an office in Europe and one locally.

I felt that due to the whiplash, it was affecting the blood circulation in my brain, which was causing the dizziness, but he couldn’t fix it. Finally, I found a cranial doctor that had hands like a railroad man, that I really thought was going to crush my head, and I was disappointed when he didn’t. During that time, I was on a prescription medication to see if that would help my dizziness, by the neurologist, and what I didn’t know is one of the side effects was it causes drowsiness. You need to be careful when you drive. I’d never had any issues with falling asleep.

I was coming back from hunting, had my cruise set at 70 miles an hour. All of a sudden, I woke up in the middle of the median. It was like riding a bucking bronco, going over rocks through the median. Two things I remember clearly. There was a bridge abutment right in front of me, and I was headed towards it. There was a guardrail around it. It’s kind of like trying to steer a floating balloon, because the steering wheel had very little oomph because it was off the ground so much. I drifted towards the other interstate lanes to where it just side-swiped the guardrail protecting the bridge abutment.

The next thing I remember, when I got onto the other lane, there was a brief lull in traffic, but looking ahead, I could see two lanes of traffic coming to a complete stop. And I was going at a high speed, careening. I don’t know what careening means or not. Wildly veering back and forth on both lanes and just kept fighting it until I got back into the median. And I pulled off the road, and I remember the interstate traffic picking up speed again and coming on past.

I remember sitting there, putting my head on the steering wheel, and weeping like a baby. Because I survived. I thought I had such a good chance to die, and I missed it. I was impacted so deeply, I got my wife, as a very loyal wife, convinced. I cannot tell anybody what happened.

I snuck my vehicle to the repair shop, borrowed a vehicle from family from church, told them my vehicle was in the shop. And it’s amazing we got by with this, because it was in the shop for a week. The undercarriage muffler was torn out, the manifold was busted, the doors buckled in. Our closest friends didn’t know about that for 10 years, because I’d burst into tears for the very fact that I had survived.

Those are deep years. So I’m going to tell you, if God could save our family, he could save yours. I want you to believe that. Bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And don’t provoke them to anger. There must be value. Glasses and crying don’t mix.

You can find it on YouTube. Watch it free of charge. Some of you already have. Brad Huddleston. Digital Cocaine. We watched it as a church. And he goes, this is what he says. He says, we no longer live in a land of theories. We live in a land of x-rays. He says, we live in a land of x-rays.

They listen to it, and guess how much they change? Almost none. I despair teaching this subject because of the lack of change to the people I teach it to. Sure, I’m funny when I preach. They laugh, and they like it, and they cry with me. But a year later, they’re losing their children just like they were before. I’m calling for change. I’ve pulled out all the stops. I make no apologies, pull no punches.

Our children’s lives are at stake. We must, we must link arms and pull together. And as the 40- to 55-year-olds in our church know, is that we are calling them to link arms and walk together. For example, let’s say I want my son to do something, whether it’s going to the rodeo or going to I-58 or going to some Bible school. I may believe it’s okay, or maybe I’m out of control.

I want my home to where the children do what they want to do, but either way, before I make a decision, sit down with the other fathers who are going to be impacted by my decision. And we discuss this. What happens, we as fathers make independent decisions because we’re kings and priests in our home. We’re recovering from the Bill Gothard teaching, and there was a lot of good in that teaching, but there was some negative. We’re recovering from the Bill Gothard teaching and the wrong use of the godly home.

That’s the home series that Brother Denny Keniston preached. And we become independent as fathers, claiming, believing brotherhood, but we only believe it if it goes our way. We must start linking arms together. A family wants to move into our church, and we go over all of this with them. And here’s one thing I tell them, especially if you’re from Amish or some type of what’s called rural-oriented background. We leave those churches so afraid of authority that we’re not about to listen to anybody else tell us what to do.

Father of my home, bless God, that’s true. That’s very true. And as you know, I’m not relinquishing that. End of discussion. But I’m also part of a brotherhood. And that brotherhood must work together, or you have independent satellites that are constantly destroying each other. My decisions affect your decisions. I mean, my decisions affect your home. Your decisions affect my home.

And we must stop believing it doesn’t, and that we don’t have that responsibility. I’m not talking about micromanaging each other. But let’s say you want your child to do something even that he’s mature enough to do. But there’s others that are really going to be struggling by it. For example, let’s take the horse training for an example. Let’s say I just said, look, my family’s all game to go into rodeos. It’s good for business, good for relationships, good for evangelism.

One of our families just fell apart. So let’s say we would have. We’d have been fine. But a vulnerable youth would have gone with us and would not have been fine. In this day and age, our margin of error is so slim, we need to stop taking chances. Thirty years ago, the chance was much greater.

Here’s one thing. I’ll tell you what, one thing I agree with Hillary. How many of you are familiar with the almost-President Hillary Clinton? Raise your hands. Remember that name? How many of you cringe when I say that name, when I say I agree with her? One thing I agree with her on, even if I totally disagree with her approach, she said it takes a village to raise a child.

I tell you, the village is impacting your child, whether you know it or not. We need to have a community that is positive for our children. We as Anabaptists have gotten that all twisted and messed up by default. We started a good thing and it ended up becoming norm and we haven’t realized what’s happening. Community raises our children. Some of us are used to church school, church Sunday school, going to church, youth groups, families hanging out, going to cousins’ houses. The community will raise your children. If you have a good community, you have good children.

If you have a bad community, you’ll probably have bad children. But the community does raise your children. And what we can do as a church, we can link arms together to provide as much as possible a community that shares our values. And let’s say I wanted my children to go to the rodeos, which I didn’t, but let’s say I would have, with all my good reasons. I’d have gone with them, you know, everything in place. But your home would have been too vulnerable.

And you’d have said, look, Freeman, I’d like to support you, but I’m not sure what to do about this. What is submitting one to another if it’s not helping each other save our children? Whether it’s a Bible school or a mission or whatever it may be. We must walk together and support each other. And if you have someone disrespecting another father, we as a church need to band together against that. Stop taking in the rebels that are disrespectful in the name of caring about them, when you’re supporting their disrespect or tearing someone else apart.

Reach out to the struggling ones. By all means, reach out to the struggling ones. I spend a lot of time with our young people and with the fathers and with many others. One-on-one time. We must do that. We must talk about the hard things. We must hear them out and listen to them. Not just give them guidance and tell them what to do, but we must relate to them and build relationships with them.

Right now, our son-in-law Wendell, he’s big into hiking. He was zealous for moving our community. I remember when he was going to hike one time and I had a little bit of an issue with it. He said, I didn’t know you asked the elders of the church to go on a hike. I said, look, it’s not about asking the elders of the church to go on a hike. It’s about, can we do something that actually benefits our church instead of some negative? He understood it once we talked about it.

Every once in a while, he’s inviting fathers and sons if they want to, sons, young marrieds, and they even do an overnight hike once in a while. But he actually creates a circle on that hike that’s stable, which means you can take unstable ones along as long as you’re monitoring what’s happening. So it’s not about creating a group of the elite. As you look at the photos, our home did not have a gathering of the elite. But I would not take someone on that hike that’s committed to disrespecting what our values are.

And if he’s committed to disrespecting it, then we keep talking and having conversations until we figure out whether he can support it. I know Luke agrees with me in that. Thank you. Amen. We struggle understanding the value of support. And we get that confused with authoritative church government.

They’re actually very different. We should voluntarily come along and support. Okay. Shifting to this circle, the one with the multiple circles. I call that the wheel. I didn’t write it on top of the paper. You’re welcome to write that on there just for identification.

Read the lines I have underneath it. Children gravitate towards the perceived value, which I had on the other paper. A child’s environment must have — which means not high stress. If you have no stress, I guess that’s okay. A child’s environment must have low levels of stress and tension as normal. And your child needs to learn how to deal with stress. Working on a poultry farm at one point, we found out if the place is too clean, the birds will get sick because they don’t build up the immune system. Believe me, most of our homes have enough stress to build a healthy immune system.

So don’t worry about getting it too low. But you must have a low level of tension and stress for a child to really buy into what’s going on there. Because children pull away from stress towards the perceived value. The wheel is where cause and effect — which means I do this and this happens — feel and timing, which means when to do it, and love and forgiveness is effectively lived out.

The difference between an average horse trainer and a phenomenal horse trainer is maybe half a second. Or maybe one or two seconds at the most. Of knowing exactly when to step forward, when to step back, when to move, when to give pressure, when to release the pressure. Child training is very similar. Knowing when to move. Feel and timing is so important. So important in raising our children.

And respect. Not the biological age alone. That’s a tough one. Most families get their driver’s license at a certain age, regardless of the maturity of the children. We didn’t do that. Our oldest son was driven around by his three-years-younger brother sometimes, because the older one’s driver’s license was in Dad’s pocket instead of his own. It’s not about biological age. Sure, at some point that takes over, but if that’s what’s driving it, you’ve got a tough uphill battle.

And respect is actually what determines it. Most of us, most of our children get phones and stuff because they age out, not because they’re ready for it. We must stop that. We must — the emotional maturity of the child determines what level they need to be guided, and that’s different for each child. A child who is not typically cheerfully obedient — by cheerful obedience, I’m talking about most of the time he happily responds to do something, even if it’s something he would rather not.

It doesn’t mean the child doesn’t fuss sometimes or cry sometimes or his poor little heart breaks. But all in all, he is known as a cheerful, happy child. A child who is not typically cheerfully obedient will likely reject the values of the inner circle and throw the baby out with the bathwater. You ever wonder why some children look like they were doing well and all of a sudden they just like threw it all away? That’s why. Eventually, what was really happening comes out.

And then the bottom: respect a child based on the biological age, guide based on the emotional age. I would like to quickly — I’ll draw the wheel on the board and talk about it as you go through it, but you’ve got it in front of you. Where this wheel comes from — our deacon Tim Croft kept asking me, he said, Freeman, you talk about the wheel all the time. What do you mean by the wheel? About eight years ago, I was driving out to the office and the Lord gave me a diagram, and I went out to the office and in 20 minutes’ time I drew it out.

And this is what I was. And I’ve been using it pretty well ever since. I’ve fine-tuned it just a little, but the amazing thing was that I got a word picture or drawing picture. I’m big on diagrams. I draw restaurant napkins all the time. But to me, this diagram is very helpful. I’m going to have you draw some pie wedges in on it then as we’re fine-tuning it.

Okay, for the inner circle, you’ll notice mom and dad’s belief about Jesus. And you may wonder why I have their belief about Jesus instead of who Jesus really is. I, for one, being a son of Adam, being imperfect, not understanding everything about the Bible, eschatology included, I don’t know Jesus perfectly. I’m learning more about him, more and more.

I sit there like that baby, just in loving, allowing Jesus to love me. But I live what I believe. I live what I believe. But I don’t believe it perfectly. As I’m maturing, my understanding is deepened. So deep within, the inner circle is mom and dad’s belief about Jesus. No matter how right it is, no matter how wrong it is, that’s the very core of who mom and dad are, and we live out of that.

Let’s say you come from a very nominal Christian background, mom and dad, and live out what you believe about Jesus. They probably go to church on Sundays, and especially Easter and Christmas a few, that’s what they believe about Jesus. Let’s say you come from a very deep, dark, cultured Anabaptist background. And you believe that if you deny yourself, and you suffer enough, and you whatever, that’s what you believe about Jesus. Okay, the very inner circle is what mom and dad believe about Jesus.

Out around, you have mom and dad. Out around that, you have life principles. And I used to really struggle, do you have life principles first, or do you have spiritual principles? And since I wanted to be spiritual, I put spiritual principles first, and life principles second, until my observation told me that’s not the way it works.

I had a given family come visit us in church, and I was always insecure about my family, because I’m not a real good — I mean, I’m not a good Bible teacher. I’m not real good at teaching, not good at singing. Family devotions was erratic. I was too dizzy. I was too busy. I’m just not a very good spiritual leader in the home in a lot of ways. Like, I’m not some super giant. And we have these families coming to church, and we let them get up on our platform and do the little thing, and singing songs, and quoting Bible verses, and I thought, man, that’s terrible.

And then after church, they’d be getting ready to go and be back at the coat rack, and these little angels would be stomping their feet, and, Mom, I don’t want to go home yet, and they’d be screaming, you know, six-, eight-, ten-year-olds. And I’m thinking, what in the world happened with that person from the stage to the coat rack? And I very unapologetically put life principles first, and said, if that child does not understand cheerful obedience —

it’s the worship of Jesus Christ. And life has proved that to be true most of the time. Life has proved that to be true most of the time. The best thing you can do for your child is teach them how to love respecting authority. Why do you think three, at least three of ours, didn’t have any sins to confess when they were born again? It’s because they had open hearts. They had a clear countenance.

How do you think young men can grow up in today’s environment with never having gotten into the moral sins that every single young man thinks it’s normal to get into? How do you think that happens? You walk with them as one and two and three and four and five and six and eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen-year-olds, and you keep communicating and bonding and relating and working through it as they happen, and they keep a clear slate. Their conscience is clear.

And guess what? My children were still born again and realized they couldn’t have eternal life without Jesus. But they didn’t have the scars. And keep this in mind, too. The first half of our family was raised by a different dad than the last half. I often said parents, but I changed much more than my wife. I needed to change more than she did.

And there was a stark difference, a stark difference in how the younger children responded versus our oldest son. And our oldest son took him much longer to stabilize. There was a lot more struggles. And I chalk it off directly to the fact that the environment had changed within the home. We spanked less and less as our children, as we went down the line, with more and more stable results.

Just understanding the feel, timing, understanding the relationships. Fill your children with joy of being in a good relationship with their parents. And imagine what that would do to a young believer then once he gets to where he actually connects with God. Because we as parents impact our child’s belief. So the life principles are just getting up on time. Following orders. Doing something because it’s the heart of your parents.

An example. When two of our children were maybe 18, 20 years old, we had a youth riding with them. And ours — I think Brad was driving. They were driving past the church family’s house. And they thought, hey, it’d be fun to stop in here for a bit. It was maybe 8 o’clock in the evening. And they whipped in the driveway and called me real quick and said, hey, Dad. We were just driving through town. And suddenly thought, you know what? It’d be nice to stop in here and hang out for a while.

You know, maybe 20 minutes. He said, what do you think? And I said, well, you know, I like stopping in sometimes. But I said, no, let’s just come on home. He said, okay, thanks, Dad. And he started turning the vehicle around, and the youth that was with him said, what are you doing? And he said, we’re going to go home. And he said, why? I thought we were going to stop here. So his dad said he’d rather us come home. And he said, you’re not even going to argue?

He’s going to change his mind. And Brad and Christy looked at each other and said, we never thought about that. And Christy is the one that had to go through that little circle. It’s not that our children are perfect. But once they get to where their heart is to follow the heart of their parents, then you’ve got something in place. But that starts when they’re little. It doesn’t start when they’re 15.

We taught our children to make an appeal. It’s not that they couldn’t discuss it. Let’s say they came and said, Dad, because of this and this, it feels to me that maybe you’re making the wrong decision. Are you okay if we talk about it? I said, sure. And it wasn’t about me being a drill sergeant. But the relationship and the walking together was tremendously valuable. Okay, so we have the spiritual principles.

And then out here is the child. Okay, here’s what happens. This child is impacted by its environment. I think we understand that now. So what mom and dad believe about Jesus first filters through mom and dad. So not only do I have a poor understanding of Jesus, but I have an even poorer ability to live out what I believe.

For example, I believe true victory in Jesus, with who Jesus is, should mean I should never struggle, never depress, never have a wrong thought, never anything, never get angry, never get upset. Imagine the true power of the risen Lord and Savior living in you and in me. That’s what I believe. But by the time it comes to his poor old tired body, sometimes it looks a little grouchy.

And so they’re saying, Jesus is grouchy, it sure looks like it. Okay. By the time it gets through mom and dad, and then gets through my ability to train them how to listen, and then it gets through my ability to present God in an accurate way — look at all the filters it went through before it ever reaches the child. And then we wonder why the children are confused.

Okay. It only gets worse. So just hang in there with me. For one, you have more children. And it doesn’t matter if you have two, four, ten, or seventeen. It’s like the same thing happens. Now, here is an interesting factor. We tend to stack our children in biological order. That’s a mistake.

A child goes to the inner circle as their emotional maturity requires them to be. And again, I know at some point that’s a moot point because they’re 30 years old or, you know. Our children were given a lot of space. I mean, imagine your 18-, 19-year-old daughter going to some of the places she went. But she had to be mature enough. We debriefed all the time. We stayed in touch. She would call me on her flip phone.

Her fiancé gave her her first smartphone, because she didn’t really need one while she lived with me because she could use mine. He was kind of pleased with himself. She was too. So let’s say you have six children. Don’t just stack them with the order they showed up. I mean, what does that have to do with anything?

The age that you’ve been winning their hearts and that they’re mature. Here’s the classic example. Let’s say you have a 12-year-old son and you’ve got a 15-year-old daughter. The son’s not real stable, and the 15-year-old daughter is. Mom and dad are in town for the night. So they say, men are in charge of the home. Men provide leadership. 12-year-old, you’re in charge. He’s got a heyday. Well, it looks like a tornado went through the house too. We get it all mixed up because we provide a structure that is doomed to fail.

So out here, your paper has it on better than I do here. Let’s just put the environment in here. I ran out of board. I should have ordered a larger whiteboard. I’m just glad to have one. So thank you for whoever furnished it. So once you get all through here, then you start touching into the environment that life brings, which is friends and church work and all of that.

So by the time a child — let’s just go this way — by the time a child out here is impacted by the environment, you see those multiple filters that everything has gone through. For me, once I understood this, I knew how to respond to it. You don’t have to be perfect. You just need to know how to communicate.

The touchy edges, the fragile, the vulnerable spots are — but it starts when your children are little. And if you work this system all the way through, and your children are cheerfully obedient at 8, 10, 12 years old — and if you read the paper, I just sat down at my desk one time and started writing out some things, both papers, just wrote out some thoughts that I had. So those aren’t hard and fast guidelines, but this is a suggestion of — kind of give you some thoughts of, you know, are my children close?

In several years, then your children are probably close. Each home’s different, each child’s different. Okay, now what I want to do, I’m going to move straight into drawing the pie shape. Take your pen and let’s just do like six pieces on this pie. Start in the very center and go out like this. It doesn’t matter if you have six or eight or something like that. But what you’re doing is you’re making a pie.

Put that in on your paper. I have one pen. You can borrow. You can pass that one. Borrow each other’s pens and pencils as needed. But make a pie shape. Okay, each pie shape — let’s say here we have church. Over here, I’ll put down social media. On this one, let’s put down job.

Over here, we have vacation. Over here, we’ll put down cousins. And it could be extended family. There’d be a lot of things you could write down. But each pie shape represents a piece of life. Not something you’re involved in all the time. Take cousins, for example. You’re not with the cousins all the time.

It goes into the center. You’re not at church all the time. But church impacts you deeply. So let’s take church, for example. And this is something that crystallized in my mind probably six months ago, of why church is not only impacting, but it impacts the very center and ripples its way out. This is very important. And it took me a while to put words to this idea. So let’s say mom and dad are in church.

A wonderful church experience. Love the brothers and sisters. They feel it’s a good church. They’re fed. Not perfect, but they work out their differences. Love and forgiveness. Great leadership team. They go to church to worship, to singing. They feel they’ve got good friends for their children. That impacts how they feel about Jesus. When that family comes home from church, mom and dad are happier. Mom and dad are encouraged. Conversations around the dinner table are fun.

Whether it’s a tent meeting, whether it’s a vacation Bible school, whether it’s a Bible study. It’s like enthusiasm. Children want to be there. That impacts what they believe about Jesus. Now remember, everything in this center filters out through the child. Let’s say mom and dad had a bad experience about church. After every service, dad gets really quiet. Or the children see dad in conversation with somebody and dad looks troubled.

Or maybe what’s really impacting, on the drive home, dad says, I can’t believe so-and-so did this again. Or, you won’t believe what Freeman told me after the service. Man, that guy is so self-righteous. I can’t believe that he believes he’s following the Lord when he’s so heavy-handed, or whatever it may be. Okay, that’s what mom and dad are struggling with. To the child, church represents Jesus.

Why do you go to church? Oh, because all good Christians go to church. That’s where you follow Jesus. That’s where we support each other and worship together. That’s where we find God. And the child’s thinking, that doesn’t make sense. And so church is impacting the very center, and it ripples out. It changes the filters. Very much. So let’s say it’s a job. And dad works with brothers and sisters from church, or brothers from church, or whatever it may be. Depends if you have a bulk food store or construction crew, I guess.

And he comes home from work. He feels beat up by his boss, who’s a preacher at church, or a brother in church. And that kind of comes through. And all of a sudden, his job is impacting what they believe about Jesus. Or let’s say dad goes to work, and he comes home and says, you know what? We were in a conversation today. We were working. And such and such a brother was such an encouragement to me. And the children are thinking, you know what? Life is good. Like, you go to work. You go to church. It’s all the same.

Why do you think our children go to brothers’ meetings believing it’s an important, nice place to be? It’s because that’s the impact they had when our family was growing up. And remember, we grew up in the war. We grew up in the war. I know what it’s like after a Gettysburg battle to stand on the hillside, seeing the shattered houses and dead people and the cries of the wounded.

We grew up in the middle of it. From brothers’ meetings that didn’t go well. And they still believe in church. They’re tenacious about church. Because somehow, Jesus came through instead of a critical attitude, no matter how much I was being machine-gunned at the time. There were brothers in church that gave me a very, very rough time, and my children thought they were my favorite brothers until they were old enough, 15, 16, and 17 years old, to discern for themselves.

And they started saying, Dad, that comment that brother made doesn’t make sense. And then I’d say, you know what, I think it’s time that we talk a bit. And they said, you mean for 10 years he’s been doing this to you? I said, sure. But we’ll work it out. That’s what brotherhood is for, is a safe place to be. And we deal with issues. But the child’s filter didn’t become clouded. And now they know how to relate to those brothers, even if it’s complicated sometimes.

Because they learned it at home. Take vacation, for example. I personally see social media pictures from people dressed like you are today, with ladies and men, but ladies in particular, in skin-tight, scarce clothes on the beach. Some of them on paper you see, don’t put anything on social media that you wouldn’t want to be seen wearing at the next church picnic. It blows my mind.

How we think we can put stuff on social media that violates our beliefs without it violating our beliefs. And without confusing our children. Okay, so you go on vacation. And I’m not saying you can’t travel to Wyoming and watch a rodeo. It’s not something you do all the time. I’d love to watch one of the rodeos out in Cheyenne, Wyoming. But it’s not what we feed on. It’s not what we do. I’m going to put movies over here, too. And we have music.

It’s not that you can’t live somewhat differently on vacation, but you don’t violate the principles on a core level. Your children will know the difference. We tend to live like hypocrites, double-life, two-faced people. Way more than we realize. Because we do one thing when nobody’s watching. With the entire family. I’ve watched many families move into that. And you can pick it up pretty quick once you’re discerning and have some experience.

But families move into that where they live in a double life. And then they come to church. Everything’s fine. Or a dad will even say, look, don’t talk about this with your friends, of what we did. It’s fine if we didn’t do it, but don’t talk about it with your friends. You’re creating the finest hypocrite you’d ever care to do church with. Until you need to resolve conflict and be transparent, and it blows apart. But we design them to do that.

Let’s stop that. Let’s not do that. Teach them transparency. Teach them respect for each other. Teach them care for each other. All I’m saying is, they will become like what’s shaping them. And once we get that through our skulls — and it took me a long time to actually realize that — that there are two things that have to happen. One is, they were being shaped by the environment I was providing, and I must emotionally connect with them to where they felt alive.

A love, a respect, safe, and trusted with dad. Both of those had to happen. And again, the energy, as the picture showed — the energy we put into connecting with our children and providing environment for them and their friends — we had more group events at our house than what showed up on the slide. I’ll just put it that way.

Events, local events, birthday parties, whatever it may have been. We took our family into some of the local alcohol environments. We left before it got too bad. We expect to send them to I-58, where there’s all kinds of stuff going on with those refugees, but we don’t teach them that locally. My goal was to teach them locally while I was walking with them, where I could discern the heartbeat of their heart and their emotions. And we could guide it, tweak it, nurture it, talk, and walk through it together.

And frankly, it’s done us well. I found I would much rather walk on the very edge of hell than to have my young people influenced by what I call the departing culture of the Anabaptists. Our daughter didn’t go to music camp in Harrisonburg until she was stable. The music camp is fine, but the influences there are terrible, simply because there’s distracted young people there.

They’re going to — just like most of the Bible schools. I’m all for some of those things, but I’m not for sending young people that aren’t mature enough to handle it. And our family made some hard decisions. We missed a lot of family events because you cannot live what you believe about Jesus and keep up with what’s expected of an Anabaptist family. It’s impossible. I have a niece getting married today. Do you know that? I missed another one of nieces and nephews’ weddings.

A niece got married like two months ago. All but one of my siblings was there, except me. Motel rooms tight side by side. Had the biggest party ever. I’d have loved to be there. I’d have paid a lot to be there. But I have a life to live. I’m all supportive of family gatherings and events. But I will not let family events militate against what I believe about Jesus. And let’s say we have cousins that you know aren’t walking the way that your children are being shaped.

We get a free pass in most of our homes. Look at what cousins do. Anabaptists have a besetting sin that needs to be called out. One is, family gets a free pass, and church is supposed to be safe without us supervising it. That’s unbiblical. It’s very foolish and it’s wrong. Non-Anabaptist families coming to our churches —

we never encourage them to integrate into their family the level that we do with ours, whether ours is Christian and a good influence or not. And this isn’t about anybody’s family, but let me tell you something. Here’s the way it works, in a beautiful way. When we go out to visit Grandpa Yoder’s in Kansas, my nieces and nephews would come to me without me saying a word. They’d come to me and say, Freeman, can we invite your children to go to this youth activity?

This and this and this. We’re going to go here and go there and be home at a certain time. And I didn’t say anything. They just knew what my values were. And I said, sure. You can go. And our children would go. And we debriefed when they came home. And we’d talk about the positive and negative. And it was a great time. You don’t have to be a prude, but you must stay in touch with what’s going on and know that the environment will end up shaping them.

Making your decisions based on your goals. You must change the way you live. Some time ago — and you know that means don’t ask any questions — some time ago, I was in a distant state. After the fellowship meal, we were talking with three or four or five brothers, fathers. And they were asking me lots of questions. And we talked for two hours.

I’ll be straight with you men. And they said, sure. I said, in the time that we sat here talking about how to keep up with your children, what shapes and what influences are going on, not one of you has checked on your children one time. And I said, if my children were the age of yours, I would have gone in that back room where you don’t know what’s going on at least three times during this conversation. Like, broken away from you, brother, and said, look, I’ll be back in two minutes.

The children would have been coming out, checking up on me to make sure Dad’s doing okay, so that I not get overwhelmed in the conversation, right? No. Just to pull them out, stay in touch. And I said, not one of you has done this one time while we’re talking about doing this. And they looked a little taken aback. Like I had just slapped them. The next day, one of the fathers called me distressed. Freeman, I just found out.

That over the last 12 months, there’s been some inappropriate behavior going on with his family and some of the others. You know what I told him? I was very kind, very loving. I said, brother, I am hopeful that the conversation the day before will make more sense now than it did when we were talking. Will he change? Culture runs deep.

Back to the story of the elder that was in our church house talking to me about their prayer meetings and their connections, and why the children were outside unsupervised and mine every 20 minutes coming in and giving me signals of what’s going on. And he is so animated and so happy, and, Freeman, you just can’t believe how the Spirit of God is moving. And our group of brothers did so beautiful. And I’m saying, hey, should we go out and talk to the children? But look, we’re talking about prayer meetings here, and he keeps on and on.

And I just look at him and said, brother, you’re missing something. But the prayer meetings and the Spirit of God and the anointing of God — and I just shut up and I listened for about 30 minutes, and I was sick to my stomach. This is a church leader. Three years later, his son at like 13, 14, 15 years old finds out — he’s been sexually molesting who knows who all. And I’m thinking, God, help us.

Didn’t he listen? Another given family. For 10 years, I told him, there’s something wrong. He said, no, I’m on top of it. I got protectors and I’ve got — what are the technology terms? — the filters and blockers. And I said, look, I’m watching your children. Something is wrong. And then he’d say, Freeman, I found out they had a secret phone.

And I said, oh. And they were watching porn. And they were watching bad movies. And they were listening to bad music. And I said, what did you do? He said, I increased my filter. Six months later, oh, my one son’s very techy. He figured out how to bypass the filter. So I need to get a stronger one. I’m thinking, no. Stronger filters aren’t the answer. Get rid of the stuff until you’ve got hold of your family.

Weeping, just broken. He said, Freeman, my children are being sectioned in the home. What do I do? And I felt like telling him, start listening for once. It happens over and over and over. I just weep. I don’t know what to do. That diagram will save your family. You must do what it takes to win your children’s hearts, or you will lose them. Our margin of error is so much less than it used to be.

So much smaller than it was 30 years ago. We used to get back — I’m looking at how I was raised. I was introduced to porn on a camping trip at 12 years old. We didn’t know better. Our parents loved us, but they didn’t know what was going on. But most of us got through it just fine. Now, with the internet and with the social media, our children can have secret gadgets. It’s actually surprising how many of the given congregation have gadgets in their rooms and their homes that the parents don’t know.

Let me tell you what’s even more surprising. A lot of young people who their dad trusts, they will take their dad’s phone and set up accounts on their dad’s phone that the dad doesn’t know. Because the dad gives them the phone and lets them do some internet research, and they go on their private Instagram accounts and all of that, and the dad doesn’t know because he’s not techie. I mean, like me — he could scream bloody murder at my home. With the exception, I’ve learned how to read the body language.

And it doesn’t take long to know whether your children are tied into technology and social media, regardless of what the dad says. And I’ve come to believe the children more than the parents. Here’s a quote from the horse world. Horses never lie. Owners do. We’d have a person bring a horse and say, oh, this horse loves me and respects me. And the horse is stepping on the lady’s foot and bumping around with her head and pushing her with the body and trying to get up in the side.

He’s stepping and going around in circles. And she’s like, oh, this is a bad day for the horse. I’m sorry. I mean, I said, listen, will you just go home? Leave the horse here. Once that horse respects — you know the horse that was standing on its back? A local cowboy. That horse comes from a derelict farm. She raised horses that were, I’ll just say, the goofiest, weirdest horses. Like, in their bloodlines or something.

But anyway, he was riding one of her newly broke horses. And it was the horse Wes was standing on when he was standing cracking the bullwhip. Anyway, the cowboy told us this story later. He said, I rode this horse. And he said, we were riding in the mountains. And that horse suddenly started bucking. And he said, it just — its head disappeared between its legs. It bucked like crazy. Down over the mountain, through the mountain laurels, over the rocks. And in the process, he was jerking around trying to get this thing straightened out.

It tore. So he pulled out his knife to cut the rein to be able to tie it together, and slashed his finger. Anyway, he could ride, I’ll tell you that. And he said, by the time that horse stopped — he said, God — this guy’s not a Christian, but he said, God, if I get off the horse alive, I will never, ever ride this horse again. Well, that’s a promise he could keep. Later, we’re at a horse event and meet this local cowboy. And he gets talking and telling this story.

He had a banner over there that we had, with the horse, maybe that picture on it. And, you know, we had some horses there and stuff. And Wes says, would you like to meet the horse? He said, you got that horse here? I said, yeah, that’s his picture on the banner. And the one Christy’s riding right now. He said, you serious? So he went over and looked at the horse. He wouldn’t even touch it. And Wes said, go ahead and get on it. He said, no, no.

God — he said, I am not getting close to that horse. You get what you create. You get what you create. The design is not to be a bronc buster, brothers and sisters. The design is to gentle the horses to children and build trust and confidence and respect.

And unless you do that, the peers are going to pull stronger than you will. Real quickly on the wheel again. Every single pie shape affects the very heart of what mom and dad believe about Jesus and affects the filters on the way out. Children are sick and weary of being Mennonites.

Because they have a wrong view of what Jesus is. In a lot of ways, I don’t like to use the word Mennonite. Because it’s been so abused and twisted and who knows what it means by now. But I do know what it means. A living Jesus, living within us, that flows out in cheerful, willing, biblical obedience, looks an awful lot like a Mennonite sometimes. But it makes me no difference.

You know what I’m saying? We are so afraid of looking like something or not looking like something that our children get confused. Children need life. They need reality. They need to see lives changed, not just churches destroyed. The tension within our homes, because they’re being pulled one way and pulled another way. And this family is doing this and that family is doing that. And the disrespect. I want to be very gentle.

I want to use the word disrespect. Because if there’s any young people here that do not respect their parents, in spite of how wrong it is, my heart goes out to you. Because disrespect is usually driven by pain and confusion. And once you understand that, we deal with the pain and the confusion. We win the confidence and we’ve got something to work with. Children are responders. We know that. That’s why we take time to play with the little ones. That’s why we play in the sandbox with them. That’s why we wash dishes with them.

They’re responders. Children love to be loved. They love to be valued. Okay. What I’d like to do, ask my son, Wes, if he’s got his life back together by now. Since he’s the one that fell apart a bit ago. That crash at the bench, that is. I asked him to share a perspective of what it was like to live in an attempt to follow the preaching and teaching.

And then, since Grandpa Yoder happens to be with us, my wife’s father, I asked him if he wanted to share a perspective. That’s a little dangerous. Don’t know what he’s going to say. But I’m going to turn it over to Wes, and then I’m going to let Grandpa Yoder speak a bit, and then we’ll open it up for questions and comments.

Thank you.