The Village Church Institute Forum - Tech-Wise Family

Hey good evening how are you doing well all right it is good to see if you want to come on in and have a seat let me introduce the night tell you a little bit about the flow and then introduce you to our speaker that the first thing is I want to remind you what this is the village church Institute does a lot of different things from the training program to classes it's kind of it's one of the major discipleship engines of our church and and we're gonna do TBC I is going to do forums several times a year and here's what when we say forum here's what we're talking about we want to take an essential topic and then we want to grab an expert in that topic and then we want to just invite you to be a part of us having that conversation so the essential topic for tonight is technology and how we think about technology and use that technology and then our expert tonight is Andy Crouch now there's a lot of different ways that I could introduce Andy Crouch I like I'm tempted to just say that he's from the deck of a system and if you know what I'm talking about there then you're with me and if you don't then then I'll let you Google it later but that's just where Yoda was from but but what we're gonna do is I'm gonna introduce Andy and he's gonna teach for about 60 minutes and then we're gonna watch a five-minute video and then we're gonna come back out and j.t Andy and myself will be on a panel and will answer any of the questions that you have asked us along this way of asking so we're gonna use slide oh if you've come to events we've done before that you know what slide oh is I'm gonna just stall until they get that slide up that explains slide Oh and it'll be your know it's already up there it is Q&A so if you want to submit your question there what you can then do is toggle up somebody else's questions so if you go there and you're like oh gosh that's a good question I want him to answer that you can like thumbs up that thing and move it up the line of questioning so feel free as Andy's teaching or before he says anything just to ask the question and then maybe it'll just get toggled down because he answers it in his 60 minutes let me just read and ease his bio to you I I'm I'm a huge fan of his work been significantly influenced by his writings but there's no way that I could correctly say what it is he does and you'll know why as I read it Andy Crouch is partner for theological and cultural he's the partner for theology and culture at praxis which is an organization that works as a creative engine of redemption in entrepreneurship his two most recent books 2017 the tax wise family one per family please on that with it we're trying to gift that to you every day steps for putting technology in its proper place and then in 2016 he wrote probably my favorite book that year which was a book entitled strong and weak embracing a life of love risk and true flourishing and and really what he does is he he writes and thinks around this compelling vision of faith culture and the image of God and so when we started dreaming about who we might have come in and teach on this subject Andy was our God and so we swung for the fence and and hoped that it worked out and it did and so will you warmly welcome Andy out here and we'll get started gonna love you have fun thank you very much from now on I insist on being introduced as from the data system that's awesome I am excited that we're together I am excited about what I have to share with you about the good life with technology but I want to start out by saying what I'm not going to talk about tonight I wrote this book called the tech wise family which Sevilla will get one per family I guess and I would tell people I'm working on a book on technology and family and they would say oh I'm so glad you're writing that I need a book about screen time limits for my kids and I would have to sort gently say I am NOT going to write a book about screen time limits for kids for three reasons first parenting by limits is the worst kind of parenting I honestly think like this is the worst way to parent I do not want to write a book about parenting my limits in fact I thought about I understand why people think about this when I was growing up the people talked about parenting by limits but the limiting experience they had was when you went to the grocery store with small children and you had to go through the checkout line and there were there was candy like on both sides from a three-year-olds point of view like looming up liked hours of candy and there was this moment in the week where you had to like get your child through there without them getting like seven examples of tooth decay in one afternoon and I realized I understand why people are talking about limits it's because now the candy is like in our pockets all the time it's always the candy store but parenting my limits is terrible so we're not going to do that instead of talking about limits I want to talk tonight about what we really desire what do we really want that's what I want my life to be about not about primarily about some limits on my life I know my life needs limits but what do I really want second thing screen time limits our kids okay it's not limits number two it's actually not just about screens there's a deeper story that I want us to think about tonight that's the story of technology much much more broadly what I'm gonna call devices all devices not just our screen glowing rectangle vices that's what we call them on my family glowing rectangles but it's not just about glowing rectangles and maybe most importantly this is definitely not primarily about the kids this is about all of us so I'm not gonna be talking about how to like fix your kids I'm gonna be talking much more about how to fix you possibly because who really needs fixing in this when we in the process of writing this book we did some research and we asked teenagers what's the number one thing you'd like to change in your relationship with your parents if you could the most common answer was I wish my parents would spend less time on their phone and more time talking to me that's the kids answer about their parents so this is not going to just be about screen time limits for kids not about lemma it's not about screens not about the kids it's about what we all desire in a world of devices and what all of us could do differently and to me that is both more fun to talk about it's a deeper subject and it's a subject that all of us have a stake in because we have got to figure this out in our world that's offering us I think a form of life that's not what we really want so let's start by talking about what we really want I I want to get us thinking what do you deeply desire in life and I want to do it with one thing that I think a lot of people do want and especially a lot of kids want a lot of children want and let's just think about this one word play and what it's like to play this is a fundamental human delight isn't playing and especially we all enjoy it of all ages to some extent but it's kind of the work of childhood is to play that's what kids do for a living right they play and I want us to think about a more specific form of play and that's what we mean when we talk about playing music what's it like to play music and it occurred to me a while ago that this phrase to play music actually has two possible meanings so on the one hand you could mean that you're going to play an instrument so you could be talking about let's say playing a violin so you pick up the violin put it up to your chin the bow across the strings if I do that it sounds horrifying but maybe you could play the viola and it sounds better but now we have another kind of experience that is just as likely meant in fact I would say much more likely meant when we say let's play some music we no longer primarily mean playing an instrument instead we're thinking basically of pressing play now first when I first start think about this I was able to say you know there's playing a violin but then there's playing a CD but I realized that's like ancient history now so like ok so the CD was this item that your grandparents used you know they stuck it in a you know receptacle so I realized that's completely up moated so it's just call it pressing play playing an instrument on the one hand pressing play on the other and both produce music both we use the same word for both but they're very different kinds of experiences and it's really at the heart of what I want to talk about tonight the difference between those so I actually want rather me just tell you what I think I actually want to give you time to think out loud about these two kinds of play so if you would I'm gonna give you three to four minutes we'll see how it feels but I'd say longer than you think to turn to one neighbor or maybe two neighbors and ideal if one of you has something to write with make a list of all the things these two kinds of play have in common so all the ways they're similar but also especially all the ways they're different how is playing a violin different from pressing play playing an instrument versus playing recorded music and make as long a list as you can and when you think you've gotten all of your ideas out try to add a few more so find one or two neighbors and for the next three and a half minutes talk about what it's like to play in these two different ways go ahead about one more minutes keep adding to your list one more minute all right finish that thought so I hope you were able to come with quite a list there's a long potential list if we didn't have folks remotely I'd ask us even in the room to call out things that we thought of but since we're in many different locations tonight let me just say the most common contrasts I hear from folks as they think about how do these things similar different I mean they're they're similar in some ways you can get music out of both of them you can even get violin music out of both but there are some really striking differences maybe the most common thing that people say is one is active that's playing the violin and the other we often describe as passive we're not as engaged in it in some way one is quite difficult to do especially to do well and the other is extremely easy to do well which means one is impressive and the other is not impressive so if you say I play the violin I'll be impressed but if you say I play Spotify I will not be impressed I like feeling like oh my two-year-old figured out the technology I'm like that's because it's very easy it is not impressive that your two-year-old figured out technology that this is designed for the cognitive level of the two-year-old but if your two-year-old plays a violin I want to meet your two-year-old right so there's a difference in the kind of demandingness of this and then there's some more interesting things like what can you focus on while you do this kind of player the other with playing the violin really the only thing you can focus on is playing the violin it's absorbing of your attention I guess you can stroll around looking for tips maybe but that's about the only other thing you can do whereas when you press play on on recorded music you can go off and even leave the room and it keeps playing you're able to re-engage your attention somewhere else while you have some nice background music for the kind of soundtrack to your life right and then there's even this interesting thing that like what senses are involved and I realized a while ago that actually that I think the violin has all five of the what we think of it's the five senses obviously you're touching it you're hearing it but you can also look at it it's quite beautiful and there is actually an aroma wood and the rosin and and all this that comes up and did I miss one I always feel like I'm missing taste normally not involved in playing the violin actually so four out of five eight bad whereas you know with digital music I mean all you can do is hear there's not anything to see necessarily definitely nothing to taste don't don't try to lick the you know computer so quite different experiences and many more things we could lace but I want to focus on actually one more interesting difference and that is what I'm going to call satisfaction and actually I'd like to try to graph it so we're going to put satisfaction on the y-axis so for those of you who are engineers or math people this is the graph moments of the presentation so you're going to feel very like you're going to come fully alive during the next few minutes and the rest are going to be intimidated but there's no calculus there's no quiz but we're gonna graph satisfaction over time first were the experience of pressing play playing recorded music and we're just going to ask over time as you play a particular piece of music let's say how satisfied are you with with what's happening around you and what you're experiencing so think about the first time your favorite artist comes out with a new song or these days would be a song it used to be an album now we kind of break them just up into saws new single i I don't know if I'm still supposed to be a Taylor Swift fan but I am kind of still a Taylor Swift fan so I imagine like finding out there was a new Taylor Swift song and it seems to me that for a lot of recorded music that the first time you press play your satisfaction is actually quite high you're excited to hear this you often like the music so you start out high but then every time you press play on that same song you listen to that same song over and over what happens to your satisfaction over time this is still always just so happy to hear that song again like I remember the first this is a different example I have no idea if there's going to be more or less controversial than Taylor Swift but um I remember the first time I heard maroon 5 I was like oh my gosh that's awesome right but I don't feel that way when I hear maroon 5 now I'm like oh yeah I've heard that song like a thousand times right and so I actually think what happens is your satisfaction start so quite high maybe you know gets a little higher as you get to know the songs sing along but courage windle's right doesn't ever necessarily become unsatisfying maybe maroon 5 has become that for me but not necessarily and so your satisfaction sort of dwindles off and you don't have that same sense of just engagement and delight that you did the first time now human beings like to be satisfied so what are we gonna do well fortunately new songs are always coming out so you can press play on another song and it'll repeat the same pattern right but as long as there's new songs to come out and to listen to you can actually stay you're kind of mean satisfaction this little dotted line that I'll put on this graph can stay pretty high like you're at every day you're enjoying the music you're listening to it's just different music and a lot of the stuff you used to find a lot of satisfaction in is just sort of dwindling and this is why I do have a very large collection of CDs in my basement that are proof of this graph I don't ever listen to them anymore because I got that initial hit out of them but it didn't continue I think this is a very familiar pattern and I actually would call it the basic pattern of consumer culture so consumer culture is based on purchasing culture purchasing not just music but clothing and in some ways food I suppose or other kinds of experiences and what consumer culture gives you if you if you have enough money to participate is the opportunity to constantly purchase very satisfying things right up front the only problem is they don't always kind of continue to be satisfying but there's always more to purchase there's more to experience and enjoy and I don't think this is necessarily entirely bad I actually think this is basically the pattern of this is the pattern of a basic human appetite like eating I mean this is how eating is I'm satisfied when I take the first few bites of the round-robin burger but by the end it's less satisfying and but the next day I need another round robin burger right and it you know you get hungry again there's another form of this pattern however that is just a little different that I think you'll also recognize and it starts out exactly the same way with a purchase that delivers very high levels of satisfaction early on though it kind of trails off so you go to make another purchase the difference is that in this pattern the second purchase is not quite as satisfying as the first it's still satisfying but not quite as much as before and it may be trails off a little more quickly so you make another purchase but that is actually not quite as satisfying and then you make another and another and eventually you were actually getting negative satisfaction from this pattern of consumption and you and often you feel kind of stuck and enslaved and can't get out and this is called binging Netflix okay no actually well this right like and they tend to in there like the next show is in 30 seconds here like okay I want to see I wanna see but like you get feeling like iller and iller like in your stomach about after I've sewed eight in a row right and there it isn't as satisfying the eighth one is not as satisfying as the first but maybe there are some shows that are so great you're like no no I get satisfaction so high with every episode but what this really is is the pattern of addiction this is what addiction is something that first off is incredibly rewarding but does not continue to be rewarding and in fact it's reward dwindles to the point that it may ever even eventually get completely below the axis and so even that next hit is in no way satisfying but you're kind of stuck in this pattern now this is not the same thing as the previous pattern but they do look similar don't don't they they have a kind of family resemblance and think about how different this pattern is from a completely different thing playing the violin playing any instrument now you'll notice that if we're going to talk about satisfaction playing the violin we have got to add an egg a large negative area here so right so think about the first time if you play an instrument especially like the violin I have chosen it because it's an it's a clear example of this think about the first time you know maybe you're a kid and your parents brought this violin home for you to try and it's this beautiful little instrument and it's in its case you take it out and you draw it up to your chin and draw the bow across the strings and a sound comes out that makes every cat in the neighborhood you know run for safety mothers walking their children outdoors hug them closer to themselves your family exiles you to the worst you know the worst room in the house because it is horrible it's I I don't know how many of you have either done this or have parents and children who do this like you find out you really love your children if you do not kill them the first day they're playing the violin because it is for the player and everyone in the vicinity the satisfaction is negative it is unsatisfying so it starts out quite low and it stays low for this is years most people quit right around there right so most of us quit just what we could cross the axis we're like I am out of here right no more and I repair or else our parents say no more but a few of us our parents made us keep playing right and the interesting thing about any instrument really and by the way this also applies often to things like any kind of real skill probably smell a lot of sports different kinds of sports same basic pattern at first it's just not that great but if you keep doing it there's one day when you pick up that instrument and it's not absolutely unsatisfying there's this little moment of satisfaction and the incredible thing is it just keeps growing I do not play the violin I did pick up the cello in my 40s and for reasons I don't have time to go into except basically we needed we had a mom who played violin a son who played viola a daughter played second violin if dad would just play the cello we would have a family string quartet so I was like alright I'm gonna try it and I went through this exact curve I mean the first couple years were just hell but the the second couple years were purgatory like quite got to heaven know if you believed that in that here but I purgatory is real I was there with the cello okay Alvie my next book ha ha purgatory is real my friends and it was just satisfying enough to keep me going but I did do this with another instrument with the piano which I learned as a child and I still play the piano and honestly I'm getting more delight and satisfaction out of the piano today then I have in my whole life after 40 years 45 years of playing the piano it just keeps getting more satisfying this is a totally different pattern from those two related patterns of consumption and addiction that we saw and it leads to kind of an interesting question what the question is not so much what do you want we want satisfaction as human beings but the question is when do you want it when do you want to be satisfied if you want to be satisfied today like right now musically speaking your only option if you don't already play an instrument is to press play and you will you can have some very satisfying musical experiences today by pressing play but then if you ask the question a different way and you say but what if you want satisfaction in the long run then you should pick up not a purchase but a practice think about this is the difference between purchases and a consumer culture and practices and a life that's built around a kind of discipline that's going to start out hard but actually become better and better over time and in a way the kind of paradox and tragic comedy of our modern technological world is we now have all kinds of ways to be satisfied today but we have lost the art of being satisfied in the long run so that's what I want to expand on a little bit what do we altom utley want what do we want is people well I think we want to become something we want to become capable of deep satisfaction lasting satisfaction and here's a biblical way of putting this this is the most basic statement in the Bible in the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament of what we might want for our lives that's very famous this is the called the Shema Israel the Creed of Israel that every faithful Jew to this very day memorizes and recites every day the first part of this here o Israel the Lord is our God the Lord alone and then here's what we're meant to want most deeply want you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your might and by the way when Jesus reaffirms this when he's asked the greatest commandment he just quotes what everyone knows is the greatest commandment and then he adds and with all your mind so heart and soul and mind might source strength and then it tells you how to become the kind of people who could actually love in that way keep these words that I'm commanding you today in your heart recite them to your children talk about them when you're at home and when you are away when you lie down and when you rise bind them as a sign on your hand fix them as an emblem on your forehead and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates it's basically a prescription for practice it's a prescription for a life of rehearsal of going over and over again the words of God that will allow us to eventually become the kind of people who can love God with heart soul mind and strength the basic challenge of our technological world that I want to talk about next is that we no longer live in a formative world a world that shapes us a violin world a Shema world we live in a press play kind of instant device world so let me expand on this a little more generally and give you a picture of what I think is going around so I said let me just map out where we are here I want to talk about what we really want not about limits and so that's what I've tried to give us a sense of what what should we really want well we should want true satisfaction it is absolutely a Christian thing to want to be happy God seeks your happiness he seeks the fullness of happiness and not just momentary but lasting and evermore increasing and that happiness comes ultimately from love from being people who can love and so we're meant to love and not just to love in some very sentimental way but to love with heart and soul and mind and strength to develop all these human capacities to their fullest and to bring them all concentrate them all in love that's what we're meant to want for our lives that's what we I think it's what we all desire on our best day that's what we're meant to desire so then we're going to talk about not just screens but devices and how have devices kind of interrupted the formation of us as people who could be lastingly satisfied so here's the progression I want to give you like a super brief history of the human race in terms of culture and technologies so it starts with human beings what are we as human persons we're basically a complex you might say a complex interconnection of heart soul mind and strength so you have heart and heart for the Hebrews didn't just mean kind of st. Valentine's Day like feelings but it meant much more like will pursuing something you desire so it had that sense of desire and longing but like will that goes after what you want when you have heart in the biblical sense you have the will to go after something with great kind of conviction because you love it and you desire to be with it and have it and then soul which is the hardest ones to define but I think of it as having something to do with depth of self after I learned to play the piano in the Western classical tradition i apprenticed in a black gospel I went in a black church african-american church African Methodist Episcopal Church where we played black gospel music and they needed a pianist for the junior choir which was everyone under the age of 55 who wanted to be in the choir and and I said well I you I would love to learn and they they invited me to play I said well I would love to learn but you may have noticed I'm white and I don't know black gospel they said that's fine we'll teach you and they did over two years i apprenticed in this church I learned enough gospel to fool some of the people some of the time but what I really learned aside from rhythm which somehow my white background had not given me I don't know what I was missing but anyway I learned rhythm and groove and like where the beat actually goes to have real group but the deeper thing I learned I'll come back and teach you that's another time the deeper thing I learned was actually soul because the black church sings with soul and worships his soul and it's about bringing all of yourself it's not standing you're singing like this from your neck up it's like singing with your full being bringing everything you are everything you've suffered everything you hope for its fullness of self and to be a person as to have fullness itself and then mine to bring your your capacity to think your capacity to reason to sort things out and then strengths like actual physical strength that's what it is to be a person I have all four of those things and have them kind of ordered together all towards the love of God and probably also love of neighbor and the fascinating thing about human beings is from the very beginning we start to create things that extend our heart soul mind strength capacities in the world so we create things and I want to call these things tools or instruments I like the word instruments because it calls worth musical instruments right but or surgical instruments you could say but probably the broader word is tools and at the very beginning of the human story we start making tools and what do these things do well they extend some aspect of heart soul mind or strength or maybe several of them at once so when you play the violin well that instrument allows you to use the strength of your body and your mental ability to start memorizing rehearse music to bring emotion to that at heart and then ideally to express the depth of the human soul in a way that of course you could do a gist your voice but when you add an instrument it just extends it in this amazing way and so tools or instruments go along with being a person they help you kind of fully express what it is to be a person and human beings have developed all kinds of tools as complex as a piano or violin as simple as a hammer like even a hammer just extends and concentrates and and applies your strength in a particular way what happened about a hundred years ago a little more complicated than that but I would say roughly a hundred years ago as we started to create a new kind of thing and I want to call it I want to call these things we started to create devices and devices are different from tools and instruments in a crucial way and that is basically they work by themselves or they require less and less skill to use the better the device becomes so I take the like one of the simplest tools is a hammer all right and anyone who's used a hammer for the first time knows you actually do have to learn how to use a hammer like you can do very embarrassing things with a hammer like oh it's a workday for the village church I'll go serve yeah I have me a hammer give me something to do and like the amount of chaos you can create with just a hammer and danger you can pose to your own thumbs and other things nearby is amazing because it actually requires skill just use the simplest possible tool on the other hand if I give you a nail gun you're like oh yeah now now we're cooking like and you just hold that thing like imagine like be given the option of hammering nails into a roof which requires an incredible strength skill like to do that in an efficient way get that job done or I can just send you up there with a nail gun which admittedly you could do a great deal of damage with a nail gun but really the amount of skill required is much lower I mean you just hold that thing down it right and it also feels like strangely powerful to like just nail things without actually being able to nail anything because you can't wield a hammer but you can wield a nail gun and the nail gun is just the first step of what I suppose will eventually be nail robots that will just go up there and do it for us and we'll all be like oh that's an even better device it requires even less of us and this there's a dividing line here that's I think really important between tools and instruments which extended human capacities but still required human beings to use them to wield them to play the instrument to use the tool and devices which actually more and more allow us to back off and just watch the device do its work does that make sense as a distinct and now our world is full of more and more effective devices that take things that used to require a great deal of human skill and now just almost magically do them for us now some of these are in areas that actually I'm perfectly happy to let the devices take over right I welcome our robot overlords in some respects like in our house vacuuming is now done by little round robot that comes out and just scoots around apparently with no plan at all but nonetheless the house basically gets clean you know I used to have to use a tool a broom Oh remember those days like animals we would clean our houses with brokes it was horrible right and now you know the robot just comes out and I watch it and lift up my foot one foot left out the other foot right and honestly vacuuming your house it's pretty dredge work I really don't mind turning this over it's not like anyone ever paid to watch someone sweep a house the way they'll pay to watch you play a violin you know and really what we're going for as the devices get better and better the ultimate promise is what I think the ultimate promise of all technology is it's what I want to call easy everywhere this is where we all hope we're going and this is why we always buy the next thing is we want to have devices do for us the things we find burdensome and the things that and we want them to do it in ways that give us kind of instant satisfaction and the sort of dream is that as the devices get better and better it's going to get easier and easier and they're going to become just you just easily available it's kind of everywhere so think about talking talking to another human being I mean once upon a time you had to do this face to face thank goodness we have passed beyond that bonide adage in the human race and now you can you know we developed a telephone but initially the telephone was a lot like a tool in the sense that you it was like in one place you had to go to it I know some of you don't remember this but actually I grew up in a rural area where we had party lines so we actually shared one phone line with our neighbors which gave a you've got really interesting information about your neighbors from the party line you'd like carefully pick it up you would hold down the little thing and just listen and see if anyone was there and then listen in and then make your call well then we got our own line but it was still courted and then we got an extension cord for our phone because I felt the need in 10th grade to talk with a girl named Janet for four hours a night which was a horrible idea in every respect looking back on it but at the time seemed like the right thing to do and I would take this long cord like into a private place and just what in the world that we do in my ear would get tired and what was I doing with that girl Janet but anyway we talked on the phone well then we got rid of the cord and this is one more step and easy right and now you could carry that then we had cordless ones but now of course I've got just telephony with me everywhere I don't have to go to the phone the phone's just in my pocket and this progression is how we know technology is improving it's getting easier it's getting more ubiquitous it's easier to access yeah you may not be old enough to remember party lines but you probably if you're an adult you remember when you had to go on the Internet do you remember that people would be like oh I need to go on the Internet you have to go on the internet like it's all it's just wafting over us all the time we swim in the Internet right easy everywhere right and and that's the progression of technology now in its place I don't think this is all bad let me give you one more example though that that starts to get it what we might have lost in this transition let's let's think about transportation how do you get from place to place if you want to go a long distance for a long time your only option if you weren't to walk was to use a horse and horses of course are not even tools they're fellow creatures who we have domesticated and learned how to train and ride and think about how engaging it is to ride a horse I admit that if you do it every day it becomes somewhat utilitarian but but if you've done this for the first time or done it if you do it more for fun and I got to ride in Wyoming just this past summer after having not ridden a horse for probably 20 years it's amazing how much of a heart soul mind strength experience it is its very strength requiring in fact I discovered muscles in certain parts of my body I did not know existed until the next day and but also like it required a lot of my mind now admittedly I was not even pretending to guide this horse this horse had new I had no idea what I was doing but I nonetheless like was trying to be helpful to the horse you know like you know not just be a totally total dead weight and and really it called out something in my soul in me to have this beautiful creature that I'm sitting on and we're riding through this beautiful part of creation and that draws out your heart it's a heart soul mind strength experience and it requires you to be personally present and engaged the whole time well we started to replace the horse about a hundred years ago with something that was kind of tool like the early automobile the early car and think how much kind of work was required to use those cars now this is not a particularly early one I mean you usually you have to crank them and it took a lot of force to steer them but even kind of in the golden age of the automobile may be represented by a car like this think about how much heart soul mind and strength especially men let's be honest put into these things and there are some men who still have these and they still put all their hearts online strength into them rather than say their wives or less interesting things in their lives but it's partly because it's kind of an amazing thing the automobile and and you can it's beautiful and it requires you to drive it right now what's happening for all of us right now is we're making this transition to a much more device like form of car even though we still a lot of us have the basic same internal combustion engine car so you know you could have a picture of a Tesla but which is kind of the next step but really all of our cars now are basically computers on wheels right they're they're largely run by micro processors they don't really require that much skill of us and there's much less that we can do with them and I discovered this when we got a new car about two years ago new to us that I wanted my daughter to my daughter's 16 she was learning to drive so so I sort of remembered when my dad would take me out and show me like how the carburetor worked and how you know how how to change the oil and there's stuff he could do with the car and lots of us grew up with our dad's working on cars in the driveway using their strength using their mind we also learn new vocabulary from this that we didn't hear from our dad in any other context so it's very educational alright so I thought well I should take Amy out and just show around the car right so we go out I'm like so Amy uh let me show you this new car we've got your it's a Ford c-max it's like a hybrid right so it's like well here's how we pop the hood so let's walk around lift up the hood well this big plastic thing covers the engine and this blue place is where you put the windshield wiper fluid and we're done all right whoo I mean it's just that I don't know what's going on under that plastic thing I'm not qualified to service it even my mechanic like unless he has the codes from Ford you know even the mechanic doesn't know what's going on it's so different right and it's so much better in so many ways gets better mileage it's cleaner it's safer it's just way less engaging of my heart my soul my mind and my strength and my ability to impress my daughter which I failed to do and of course this is not the end of this progression because we all hope in our technological dream of easy everywhere that soon we'll have driverless cars now this one is not gonna be made this was an early prototype by Google but they're working on it and when you get in a driverless car the first time the first time you get in a driverless car if you haven't done this yet it will be astonishing you it will the doors will close there will be Norse no steering wheel it will glide off to your destination and the next time you will be unbelievably bored and the rest of your life will I call another trip in the driverless car where is the Netflix there will be Netflix in the driverless cars I'm quite sure right because the ultimate result of easy everywhere is not just easy and everywhere but it's complete disengagement of your heart your soul your mind and your strength and you can have all this at the mere price of being continually a little bit bored and not really having anything to do the word boredom is interesting well before I talk about bored just just think about this progression this is our story and it's happened in literally like three lifetimes max like three generations my grandparents did not grow up essentially with any of these devices and now my children will live in a world full of them easy everywhere everywhere easier and everywhere and think about what we used to experience routinely just to get through the day you had to have these engaging heart soul mind strength experiences and that brings us to where we're going to go which is a world of lots of ease and lots of boredom and the fascinating thing about the word boredom is it doesn't even come into any language until the 19th century before the 19th century which is the age of the Industrial Revolution people literally had no word for what it is to be bored I think because they always at some level were engaged that's not to say that there wasn't lots of difficulty and tedium in the lives of people before the 19th century but no one had leisure which is having absolutely nothing to do and the word boredom first enters the language in the leisure classes there aristocracy who have servants who do all the real engaging work the servants cook the servants tend the animals the servants often go out and hunt and and the the leisure class is left to sit in the drawing-room and and its really boring and so they come up with a word for it like let's call this first it's all wheat on French and then let's call it boredom in English and now we all live that leisure life the only difference between us and those aristocrats is we have something else to deal with the boredom and it's distraction because now we have a way to never realize how bored we are and how boring many of our environments are because we've always got this device with us that will distract us the only problem is that distraction doesn't form us as people it doesn't make us people capable of satisfaction in fact it often feels to me at least like the distractions I turn to to avoid my boredom are really some of my most fundamental addictions that curve that just gets less and less satisfying and the more and more of it I consume and maybe the greatest tragedy of this is one of the things you discover when you do some real creative work is that they're the only place you find creativity is on the other side of boredom when you really want to create something when you really want to do something new you actually have to sit there with a blank page or a blank canvas or an uncarved piece of wood and you just have to let it be a little boring and then if you push through that you discover capacities of hearts online and strength you don't discover any other way but now we're able to shortcut that with the superficial shallow addictions that are not nearly as satisfying and are in no way formative so this gets the last part of why I want to talk about what what should we want we should want to become a different kind of people people capable of love people capable of deep satisfaction what's happened we've ended up through the world of devices that don't ever give us any chances to be formed do things that shape us into the kind of people who could be those people and so what can we do not just the kids but all of us well we have to choose formative experiences now I have hardly mentioned screens so far I'm going to talk a little bit about screens in the last 15 minutes here but this would all have been an issue for us even if the smartphone hadn't been invented all these devices that fill our lives even if this sort of uber device of the smartphone had been invented it would still be an issue and I don't think that all this technology is bad in fact let me pause it you may be thinking well this is kind of negative take on technology I don't think technology is bad I don't even agree with people who say well technology is neutral you can use it for good I actually think technology is very good for some things so here are three things I think technology devices and easy everywhere that they're actually good for number one is safety so if I'm in the hospital and an IV line needs to be inserted to deliver some drug that will make a big difference in my health I would love to have a device doing that rather than a potentially distracted human being I mean as much as the nurse may bring all of heart soul mind and strength to inserting that IV line once it's in I really would like a device to keep track of dosage timing frequency all that stuff because there's a there's a level of safety in that technology that is not present when human beings are involved and I flew on an airplane this morning and it's not perfect and this past week we're reminded it's not perfect but it's amazing how safe it is and I welcome that kind of technology that and I welcome driverless cars if they could make our world significantly safer and reduce accidents I would welcome that so technology is good when you need safety technology is good when once you're replacing is not really formative our great-grandmother's spent one or two days a week just doing laundry some more some did a lot more some that was their work and it's it's not like playing the violin all right I mean there's something beautiful about a well folded pile of clothes but no I put it in the washing machine it's fine all right I feel the same way about doing dishes I loved I actually love doing dishes I do the pots and pans every night I'm so happy we have a robot dishwasher I mean it's not very impressive robot it doesn't roll around but still I put the dishes in I close the door I goes and I have clean dishes and it's not like I would be so profoundly formed by an extra half-hour of dishwashing I'm happy to cede that to technology and the other thing technology is good for and maybe this is a different kind of thing that I think is important is actually productivity when you have something to do when you've been formed into someone who can do something worthwhile it's amazing how technology helps you do it efficiently and at a large scale so I wrote a book and I use lots of technology to write and publish that book the only thing is that technology did make me the kind of person who could write a book you see the difference once I had something worth saying technology helped me to spread it and I hope I have something worth saying tonight and we're using technology were using amplification in this round we're streaming to other sites and I hope it's worth it I hope it helps but technology did nothing to form me to have something worth saying in the first place nothing really if you ask me what shaped your life such that you had something to offer for an hour on this subject to the village church uh all of the answers I'd give you would have nothing to do with devices in my life because they didn't form me in any way so we should be most concerned about technology when it replaces formative practices and when you could say it colonizes formative places the places where we're meant to be shaped in heart soul mind strength and learn to love and what are those formative places well school is formative so I think we should be very careful about technology in school because it's so easy to make it so easy that we don't actually learn and grow I think church is meant to be a formative place - we should be careful about Church but but by far the most formative place for human beings is the home the home is where you're meant to be formed as a person from the smallest person all the way through all the growth that happens - has to happen as we age all the way into our old age we're meant to live with others many of us in biological families all of us in some kind of household relationship is further house of God with other people who help us grow and become different become more capable of love so our family realized we had to really rethink how we did devices in our home we ended up making about 10 choices I read about 10 in the book I'm just gonna talk about four now and you can ask questions about others of course I'm the first choice we felt like we need to make was a choice about space like sort of the actual interior design of our house and here's the way I would put the principle we didn't quite I these principles long I give you we didn't necessarily have when our kids were small but as they grew and as we reflected on what we're doing here's how I'd sum them up we realized that we wanted to create more than we consume I think there's just what human beings are made for we're not consumers we're not made in the image of a consuming God I mean consuming fire I guess but that's not quite the same thing as binging on Netflix but we are made in the image of a creative God so we wanted to fill the center of our home with things that reward skill and develop skill and require active engagement so what this meant concretely is that when we finally bought a TV which we didn't for the first the kids first ten years but once they were in double digits I worry less about screens after double digits under double digits not such a fan they were both over ten we bought a TV where are we going to put the TV like in many many homes I'm sure many of ours the natural place for it it's kind of in a very central place and we decided we wanted it at the edge so we put down the basement it's perfectly fine down there and there's a nice sweet surround surround sound system around it because I like my my movies but it's in the basement it's not in the heart of our home which is kind of the first floor where we spend most of our time in our house instead if you walked in the first floor of our house you'd see and this is completely intentional you would have a very hard time spotting any devices now there's a thermostat on the wall there's a refrigerator I don't know any other way to get things cold and through a device icebox I guess but no thank you refrigerator but really the first floor is full of things that require skill so we put a craft table in front of this big picture window with lots of different art supplies for the kids by the way the tech wise home is a messy home that you just have to deal with that you know you basically choose between clean home and friends and you decide I'm gonna have friends I'm not gonna have a clean home and especially if I have a craft table in the middle of my living room and yet every day the kids would just naturally go there when they were small and even up into their early double digits and start making stuff and there was lots of supplies to make stuff we bought a grand piano a Steinway grand piano we use the kids college savings for this it's very expensive any kid can go to college I mean what's the big deal about college but a grand piano like that's awesome and it's since there takes up a huge amount of space in our relatively small house and basically it sits there every day and it says you want to play me you want to try me and it's indestructible it's like digital keyboards are kind of can be a little fragile but a Steinway grand like there is nothing a three-year-old can do to damage that thing I can bang on it all they want and then they can try playing things and both of our kids learned a little bit to play and and and they also heard me practicing and it just sits there saying let's make music in this house not just press play books fireplace kitchen place to cook put devices at the edges put things that reward creativity of the center then we realize along with space we need to think differently about time so here's what we've ended up doing and this is this is a very consistent practice in our home and it's been one of the best things we've done one hour a day and one day a week and one week a year we turn off all our devices all the ones that have an off switch and we just worship feasts play and rest together this is the basic biblical practice of Sabbath especially the one day a week part but we realized we needed an hour a day for the whole family this is not just about kids time the whole family for us it's the dinner hour and we a little charging station for all the glowing rectangles so they all get plugged in and they get to have their dinner of electrons and they just stay there and they're all on silent mode they don't beep they don't buzz they just quietly eat electrons and we sit down at the table and stare at one another in desperation and then one of us goes and grabs our phone no that's not true we actually have so actually it's not just our glowing rectangles we turn off at dinner time we turn off the electric lights because that's a device to like easy everywhere illumination but something amazing happens when you light candles instead like I do you have power outages in Dallas I don't know if that happens here in our part of the world everyone said well you know winter storm or something and people love it like I admit it's terrible if it lasts some days and days you know but for a few hours it's so magical to have a we get to have a power outage at our house every night at dinner and it's great and I will add that candles which the kids love to light the candles the kids like them but as you grow older it's amazing how candle light causes your spouse to once again have the glow of youth it's it's sort of like oh yes my beloved you know it's awesome so and the kinds of conversations that happen by candlelight are amazing and it's just different it's just different so we just turned off all the devices and then we do that a whole day on Sunday Saturday night we shut all the laptops down turn off all the devices we keep one phone on for you know logistics but we just don't use it and unless there's some just unavoidable need and we have a day as a family and you're thinking that sounds awful I mean what would we do and then it gets worse one week a year we turn them all off actually for us it's often two weeks we are we're very fortunate to be able to take two weeks of vacation and it's device free and I will say there's kind of a one-third one-third one-third principle to this the first third of any withdrawal from these devices is is detox none of you like each other you're frustrated the next third you start to rediscover all kinds of things that you love that you haven't been doing alone and together and then the last third you think I never want to go back to that world of always on screens and it pretty much happens no matter how long but so the first few days of our vacation we're all a little irritable and then we get outside and we start making more elaborate meals we start playing board games and reading books out loud and we just fall in love as a family with each other again in a way that we wouldn't otherwise I put up a vacation message at the beginning of that vacation I get rid of all my email in my inbox I put up a vacation autoresponder you know that's the subject line is unfortunately I will never read your email and for two weeks it all just gets shunted into an archive that I literally never look at I come back to an empty inbox after two weeks it's a happiest day of my year is when I put up at vacation isn't two more quick things and I'll be then we'll be on to our conversation these are the foundational ones I just would so encourage you like literally do go home and look at what's in the heart of our house what could we put in the heart of our house and think about what rhythm of work and rest we want in our lives and then to more specific one specific place in one specific time that have ended up being meaningful to us bedrooms 82% of teenagers sleep with their phone 70 plus percent of parents sleep with their phones I cannot emphasize how bad an idea this is for all of us all of us this is not a kid adult thing it's it's just a terrible thing to have this glowing notification mechanism with you 24/7 it and interestingly when you ask teenagers what they wish their parents would help them with with technology at least when a group of teenagers in the United Kingdom was asked this last year a big survey of school-age teenagers you know parents have many concerns about Technology we're concerned about content that our kids could access and that's very real concern and a very real concern if the phone can just wander into the bedroom that's another good reason but the kids themselves they say the number one thing that their phones are causing trouble with that they wish their parents would help with is sleep it's disrupting their sleep because kids are on phones to stay connected to each other most of them don't have the discipline to disconnect from those relationships overnight and so literally all night messages are coming in those are your teenagers know how this is and of course you want to respond to your friends but this completely disrupts one of the god-given ways you restore your heart soul mind strength capacity to love other people and you have ended up doing really foolish things when you're fatigued and you say foolish things and you're not well-equipped to love your friends at 3:00 in the morning so in our house we wake up our before our devices do and they go to bed downstairs all of them parents and kids we have discovered this amazing thing called the alarm clock it's amazing how it works and it wakes us up I thought only phones could do that but apparently there are other things all of this by the way everything I've said so far applies even if you don't have children know the space of your house the rhythms of life what you do at bedtime having that buffer zone of going to bed without a phone waking up before before the notifications start just being awake with God and perhaps with your spouse and just being there it's so good one thing though that is a little more kid specific there was a time a kind of time of day or a situation that I dreaded before I had middle school high school kids and it was the car I I just thought about all the hours we'd spend in the car with these kids shuttling them to and from all the activities we need to prove that we are normal Americans just like our neighbors and which clearly you can tell we're not but we need to put on a show if once in a while and you know what when I'm driving now I sort of if I'm stopped a stoplight or whatever I just look in the cars next to me or if I'm the passenger I look at the cars passing me and it's amazing how consistently I see the white earbuds in everybody except sometimes the driver which is alarming and we decided to do something different we decided car time is going to be conversation time and so we told the kids when we first got an iPod years ago we said this is called a we pod they were young they didn't know better like if when we listen to this we all listen to it together we can listen to it in the car but on the car speakers we're not gonna it's not an iPod so we pod and mostly we just talked and we ended up having some of the best conversations of our whole children's lives in the car driving from place to place short trips long trips because we sort of didn't give you give ourselves the option of checking out and checking into the headphones I'll end this way by telling you about one of those car times so our kids are 21 and 18 now they are so grateful we raise them this way they are awesome awesome young adults in their own right but it was not easy and I remember one car trip where Katherine and I were sitting in the front Timothy and Amy were in the back I think there were maybe 16 and 13 and they were talking about how awkward it is to live in a family that is tech wise I'm realizing to a whole generation of kids I'm going to be author of that red book that your parents read at a terrible moment and it changed your family's life forever but anyway my kids got to experience at first and they were talking about this in the backseat specifically how awkward it was to go to school and not know about like TV shows that the other kids knew about just amy was talking about this in middle school and her older brother like starts to take this sort of brother of the interest in her and he says well I mean you have to understand that that this is because our parents are not like other parents and he says our parents are actually intentional he used this word 16 year old and we start sort of listening more carefully they're intentional about what's good for us and they really think through like what would be healthy and then Amy says yeah and it's sort of hard right now but in the long run it's going to be so much better and they start having this little conversation and Cather and I just silently raise our hands and high-five one another as we're driving ah you do not get many triumphant moments in parenting so savor the ones you get and that was our triumphant moment and and it's proven to be true like it's possible to have this so much better life and it doesn't involve getting rid of it all it doesn't involve becoming Amish it doesn't involve like spending every moment your day policing screen time limits just most moments of your day for certain periods of parenting but it's really about what do we really want I want to be the kind of person who can love I want to be the kind of person who has these conversations I want to be the parent who sees my kids growing up and capable in the world of using their hearts on - strength what is it gonna take it's gonna take these practices with our devices that don't let them take over the areas of our lives that should form us and who gets to do us it do this it's all of us together not just parents not just kids we're gonna do this together it's gonna be so good that's so much better than easy everywhere so let's just pause and pray and then we'll see what technological questions you've asked via slide oh let's pray together God the moment we stop stop to think the moment we take just take in one breath and let it out the moment we cease from our distraction even sit a little bit in the boredom and just stay and remember who you are we remember how good you are you've made us to love you with all our heart all our soul all our mind our strength God you know us you see this little flock here in the Metroplex here in this Western world here in this world of devices you know how hard it is for us just to become what you made us to be but but at moments when we even stop to think about for a moment we want to become we want to become capable of deep satisfaction capable of deep love this is going to take such courage for us when we have so many easy options we just pray it would set us free of the addictive promise of devices and open us up to your world and help us help one another as parents and children brothers and sisters in your family to live the life that really is life and to serve our neighbors and love them too as we love you in Jesus name we pray hey will you guys do me a favor and thank Andy one more time he hates that [Applause] two things I want to just highlight real quick before we jump into some what are some great questions here just referring quickly to the video that we just watched the training program we're gonna be on our fourth year this next year the applications are open I see several of you who are in it right now we've had a great year this year but we're looking forward to next year so if you're interested playing we would love to see you jump in second is this I saw a lot of you like taking pictures for his for commitments we have a handout for you that you're going to receive on the way out that will have all of them on the back as well as some discussion questions for you to walk through when you leave with family friends or homegroup sir or have not so here let's gonna jump in here is you kind of address this there at the end related to how your kids dealt with this but I want to ask you this question you know extent there could be some more depth explored as a parent how do you deal with your kids not having a phone laptop and their desire for it while their friends do and often as schools could require it we were talking like that earlier like an iPad being a replacement for a textbook yes yes so the reality is at some stage I mean all of us in a way required to have access to these or most of us are at some point so I think there's two things one is there's a lot of reasons to entirely hold off on glowing rectangles before roughly double digits and I don't know that too many schools yet to require it under about age 10 though I'm sure it's coming I honestly think one thing we have to do as parents as advocates not to do that I don't think there's no evidence that it helps in education the OECD has study this have found no effect of introducing technology in the early and middle grades but then at some point you're going to need to have access to these things and kids will too so I think maybe the best way to think about it is how can you use it as a tool and an instrument rather than as a device so an instrument right is something you actually you engage with and you learn as you as you use it and there are ways to use iPads and laptops maybe to some extent phones in that way that really develops us and I think this is best done with other people not in your bedroom by yourself but in the living room and for a certain amount of time and for the purpose of growing and developing skill or learning something rather than just kind of distraction or boredom relieving relieving and then the other thing is we all know this is the way a lot of kids just stay connected to each other and so I think one helpful thing that some of my friends have done at around the middle school stage or maybe a little older is while avoiding having the always everywhere easy everywhere phone for the kid is sharing some screen that has access to messaging and we come home from school it's totally fine to have an hour catching up on you know what's happening in the text messaging world but not not 24/7 not in the pocket now I know kids are not gonna like that idea but I think that we all need breaks from our relationships and you need those most when you're in that really pressure cooker of like 13 to 16 or so and once our kids were wielding a 3,000 pound encasement of steel and glass we thought they could probably handle the phone as well probably yeah let me try it on a car but we but earlier on it's we have to think about how to limit it in time and limited in purpose rather than all-purpose all the time yeah this next question you address briefly to but I can think of 10 people have stuff in my head we're here right now who this would apply directly to because this is what their role requires of them yes they work from home haha and so their work that it's work they were required to be on their phones and the computers just regularly interacting at work and those those kinds of jobs tend to be 24/7 type jobs because since you're not in the office space going in clocking and clocking out it's kind of like I'm never really done working yes how do you what kind of rhythm of life would you suggest to somebody like that so and I work from home a good chunk of the time and so I've experienced this for sure and I've experienced how I can kind of go wrong and taking over every corner of my day and my attention essentially I'm a first 24/7 is not meant by God in two respects the 24 part we're not made for this none of us is made for 24 hour availability and and we're and that's kind of obvious I mean we fall asleep but the seventh day this is not like just some random idea this is a fundamental commandment and if you're in a job that doesn't give you the option of having a full day of rest you are that you're the victim of injustice now I understand there are jobs like that but you need to realize you are being I mean in a very this is a word that I feel like as gut cheapen in some way but you are being oppressed you're being misused by your workplace if they expect seven-day availability this is a violation of God's intention and of course if you're a supervisor or manager who expects that of people you are oppressing people or if you're giving the impression that people ought to reply to your emails 24/7 you are contributing to a Sabbath of life for others and one of the tricky things is you get to a certain level in organization and you can have boundaries but everyone else below you as it were thinks they can't so what do you do I think you advocate it to the extent you can that you'll be better at your job if you have rest on a daily basis and on a weekly basis you'll do you'll answer those emails and phone calls better and you just start to build in a rhythm and I think that's a perfectly like you will be more productive 24/7 is like the least productive schedule on the planet yeah and a lot more productive is 9:6 you can get much more done in nine six that's about what I work I work six days a week some Saturdays I take off I work lots of Saturdays but I take every Sunday not being a professional Christian like these guys I take I take every Sunday off and I'm way more productive than if I tried to cram more yeah Matt you've done a great job I think kind of beginning to instill and you've used this language I've heard you do it a few times around kind of rhythm of life yeah and Sabbath being a particular part of that you preached a sermon to our staff sure months ago that I just loved about abiding in Christ and abiding in this rhythm how would you kind of encourage people to start thinking about Sabbath thing particularly from technology and it was a part of your your Sabbath was a part of that would you mind kind of sharing that experience yeah I i'll teach much more on it i think in probably the next year in regards to my hopes for us as a community of faith and and how we're going to look in in this part of the united states in in the Metroplex that it like we operate at a crazy pace and so I think honestly starting with kind of a daily rule of life looking towards and then we have taught some of this before where we're looking at what are the natural transitions in my day and how can I use those transitions to slow down and not speed up so how can I use my drive to work not to kind of begin to be frenetic but to prayerfully sit with Jesus as I think about what I'm walking into and how can I create in my schedule instead of cascading meetings just create this 1015 minute buffer between this first part of my morning in the second part of my morning where I can just stop for a second and remember that I'm a child of God that the Spirit of God lives inside of me that God has not asked me to operate on my own strength but to be with him and he longs to be with me and then move on with intention to my next man and then how do I redeem my drive to lunch how do I I think probably and again we've taught on this but out of John 15 but the that for me the drive way prayer is probably the most significant and my Brides right over here like to pull into my driveway and go I have no idea what I'm walking into I am not done I have been given the privilege by God to love and serve my wife and to engage the hearts of my children that's not an unbearable task that's a beautiful privilege I've been given it's only been given to me when it comes to Audrey Reed and Nora and Lauren so to just stop before I walk in that door because I could walk in and smell dinner and I mean there could be coloring going on or we could be missing a kid no idea what we're having for dinner and Lauren could be so frustrated about this or that and and I need to not walk in with a deep awareness of all that I've done with these high lofty expectations of what everyone else is gonna be when I walk in the room and and so for me eat even that's a part of rule of life let me just stop for two minutes before I walk into this house and orient my heart for a second so then a Sabbath day is just the extrapolated its its but but Sabbath is never gonna come easy for anyone in fact Josh and I've been having this conversation a lot lately about how do you even do this and so without some prep and without some failing at it we're just never gonna figure it out and and what are the rules around it and are those rules flexible and and these are some of the things I want to teach on but I but I feel like I need to grow some more in my own practice of Sabbath because you know in our rhythm here at TBC is just really unhealthy it's I mean per even covers it like there's not a day that we're going yeah you're not gonna get an email from us on that day because we're not we're gonna stop and and do nothing today except remember that we belong to the Lord and sit in his good pleasure not by our effort by by his goodness and because we have Saturday services for now there's no possible Ike I think about and this is per my conversation with Josh and this is why this is an important thing in the life of the campus here in Flour man we're a Friday I'm budgets errands household chores Saturday I'm getting ready to preach yeah I mean there isn't ever a day to just be there's always do and so we we need to practice this I think and and that's why I started it restore with our staff let's let's learn how to do this so that we can Shepherd and help our people to do this for me the reason I ask that question is this next one it's gotten voted up to the highest spot now relates to it's my biggest obstacle to entering into that kind of life related to a life of intentionality but being distracted then it has to do not just with technology but social media in particular like it's not just that I'm looking on my phone for any purpose it's that for me and I imagine for a lot of us given how it was voted so highly is that social media in particular comes into a kind of a distracted age to just I don't have that five minutes of space anymore cuz I'll just jump on it see what's going on on Twitter or Instagram or whatever it might be so do you guys have any rules in your life particularly not just as it relates to technology with the social media use I don't have it on my phone or my it is not on my phone or my I do have an app for social media no no any of my social media everywhere no no we have to go to H it has to be an intentional first of all in more impassioned moments my filter isn't on right what do you mean I don't know I just they're suitable there's sometimes a filter like the voice of me that's normally like easy it's going to know you say that but it rarely is so I don't want quick access to it so I don't have an app on any device that would take me to a social media site I'm not on Instagram because it would it felt like another thing to manage Twitter to me doesn't feel like it needs to be managed I feel like I can link to things and say things for the most part that are intentional and helpful yeah so if you're gonna get on social media it's you walking over to your computer having to login yeah or open up Safari on my phone and I think the most important rule is not something you do or don't do but it's a question what does this do to my heart well really heart soul mind and strength like how does this shape my desires that's my art does it develop depth of self is it like causing me to be very physically passive and spending way too much time like just sitting when I could be moving or walking or creating something and what am I thinking about for me that that led to various choices but I'm not sure that my choices are the rule if the rule is paying attention to what it was doing to me it changed the way I followed people on Twitter I'm Twitter's I'm on Instagram and Twitter I left Facebook I felt like it was not I just it was not bearing fruit in my life in any way partly because of the architecture of Facebook but I really have paired way back how I use it and I use in very specific ways to learn very specific things and share specific things and otherwise I just don't use it but that's I I wouldn't want to make that a rule as much as you've got to learn who you are as a person and how all the practices of your life either make you more into this person who has capacity and capability or is kind of in this cot in this you know swipe I mean tinder I'm told the average tinder user swipes I know as a family meeting but the swipes eight-and-a-half hours a week swipes eight and a half hours of their lives every week left right right like if you just step back from that for a moment you'd realize this cannot be what I meant to be doing with my body with my mind with my heart so it's so contextual on who we are and what the app is and what it offers us and how it rewards us I also think to guard compulsions so one of the things I would pay attention to as compulsions like if you can't stop at a red light without checking the problem this is a deal right where you're where you're at a light and you sit through the light because the car didn't move in and you can see clearly because the phone is on the steering wheel that you know not driving that's what I'm saying like if you can't handle the compulsion of I've got ten three seconds let me check that I just think that's probably a problem like that compulsion is probably a problem maybe I'm just I'm just idea there are four five it's half-baked so one of the things you talked about in the book at the beginning and obviously at a church like the village we have a we have families who are here we have singles who are here we have people who raised families and kids are gone we have like my family were just at the very beginning of raising a family families who don't have kids yet but more importantly than that we are a family yes right in the New Testament describes us as being more related to each other than our blood families is being bought by the blood of Christ and being a family of mothers and fathers brothers and sisters and so how would you and how do you Matt think about this being that tech-wise family or the tech-wise church what would be some things that you think about there well this can be the community where everybody has a place everybody is being known everybody's being formed and that's going to require us to actually show up in person with one another and not mediated through devices I mean I think there's a place for technology in church obviously you all use a lot I don't necessarily object to that as long as you're really connecting with other people here and the other thing the church can do that we desperately need is help us have these disciplines so you alluded to this Sabbath is almost impossible to practice by yourself yeah it was meant to be a whole community that did it and of course the Jews still do this and it's proper that Christians don't have the same like legalistic Sabbath observance that might have been the case in Jesus time but you can't do it without having a community of people who are with you and it makes such a difference even if there's one other family if you're trying to hold off on glowing rectangles you know under the age of four and your four year old is like but mommy although their four year olds have glowing rectangles and you can say no remember that other family from church they don't have it I just one makes it's like exponentially better than having to say well you're right but we're really weird and it's not going to change right so the if the church can start to be the place that Spurs one another on to more heart soul mind strength engagement and less virtual easy everywhere engagement that's one of the most important things we can do for each other so I think organizationally we we want to be a church that that meets in homes face-to-face for the one anothers not necessarily for Bible study we want to study the Word of God but like homegroup sir let's one another one another let's be present with one another so that would be kind of an organizational decision around we want to be in living rooms and kitchens together yeah we want to look at each other's faces we want to feel each other sorrows we want to celebrate each other's wins and then on the other front I will oftentimes just try to I say I think often in sermons you know your Facebook friends there they're probably actually they're not your friends you don't know these people like you know about them but there's a difference between knowing about someone and know and and there's significance in that gap and and so I want to highlight those things and then like if you look at two weeks ago what I wanted to say is be careful what you're doing because you could hurt your brother yeah you know in the Beatitudes talking about being peacemakers and there and and I don't I don't know if Andrea I didn't get a lot of angry emails I was expecting just just to say there are more than likely Democrats who love Jesus Christ and love the Bible and they're sitting right now so when you turn them all into demonic baby killers on your Facebook page this is a problem for unity in the household of faith so if can we not do that can we not participate in this part of our culture right now can we just be a group that goes we're not gonna we're not going to participate in this polarization we're just not going to do it we're gonna seek to understand we're gonna be peacemakers we're gonna give the benefit of the doubt we're gonna disagree charitably yeah one of things I thought about when you preached that sermon and made that point and is we've had this conversation and you mentioned a book earlier the patient firmament of the early church it was a book we were talking about in a side conversation about how the early church was living a kind of a different way of being in the world in the age of distraction what would it look like if the church was living in an age of an attention yeah attention to each other to another the way the New Testament calls see that it could be a kind of a counterculture in an age of distraction anyway this one's funny this is from Jackson he tells us he's a nine year old that's on here okay so you know what's gonna win should parents give my cell phone to ask the question I love Jesus mom so and this actually wraps in with a few questions that I think that are trying to address sinning you made a comment at the very beginning of the forum that you don't want a parent from kind of limits right it's almost so somebody asks a similar question can you elaborate on your views on why setting screen limits or limits and general limits on a cell phone you elaborate on why that might be the most helpful kind of lens to think through right nope hey we all need limits and said that there's a limit so it's not at all that I don't want to serve limits for ourselves for children that's part of what parents do parents are kind of like an emotional cognitive Exorcist for their kids we provide boundaries that they can't kind of do for themselves and that's absolutely part of parenting I just don't want to become the only thing we talk about yeah so it's a good idea not a bad idea to have limits all of us I need them you need them every children of every age need them yeah so the timing of actually cell phone yeah I got no problem with cell phone smart phone you aren't getting one of those so there is a difference between the this cellular telephony foot phone to be able to stay in touch yeah sure great that's not what you're asking for though Jackson nine-year-old you are asking for a glowing rectangle that will give you unfettered access to everything ever created by human beings and allow you to connect at all times and I would say so people ask me this a lot and I think well I think most 45 year olds can handle it but I'm 50 and I barely can handle it so maybe 52 is probably the right age to be safe I mean really this adults struggle to handle these things without them becoming compulsive yeah and and we need to be just very honest about how hard this is for those of us who are allegedly adults so I know it feels when you're young like you can handle it but let me just tell you some really smart even cool adults that you know really struggle to use this in a healthy way so it is your parents love for you that is going to have them say well what I would recommend if I would recommend a single thing is around the time that you are capable of driving a car and can be trusted with a car I think you could be trusted with the complexity of a phone I still wouldn't take it to your bedroom and if I were your dad I would never let you take it to a bedroom and I not even when you come home from college they all get plugged in and I don't take it to my bedroom either so but I would say you know driving age is a reasonable age to start using this stuff it's great he was kind of a I really appreciate this question it's kind of a right turn from where we've been but I think it's really applicable to probably a lot of people in our congregation can you speak to online dating specifically as it relates to what cars should we be addressing as a churchman this is a brand new phenomena be able to fit really well you haven't ever interacted with the forge online and in preps go on a date how would you instruct Christians to think about that I think I don't think it's the best in this I don't mean for any given person I think it is kind of a symptom of our society that we don't have thick enough and lasting enough relationships in our communities that we would be able to meet potential mates in our communities and even our churches I think that would be better and of course what's really better is arranged marriages I mean clearly that is the idea it's the biblical way I think so I think so I'm in so we might have already started the process never mind then so we arranged marriage in the sense of a family in a community or families and communities this is the best form I realize it has very oppressive forms but ideally it's a whole community thinks about young people who they could marry fruitfully marry have a fruitful life with that would be so much better than than our modern dating at all right so and and I think anyone who's been through the ringer of dating would love to have arranged marriage by people you could really trust and I actually try to do this for friends my wife and I do is to try to help facilitate that being said we don't live in a world where that's very easy and the good thing about online dating I it I think it depends if it's tinder I don't think it's very good because tinder equates it so much we can agree on that weights it so much towards the superficial both the superficial presentation of the person and the superficial response swipe left swipe right but there are other online dating platforms that really help you in a first degree get to know someone as a person that seems great to me and way better than going to a bar and way better than your median church singles ministry to be totally that's it you have have someone described what they care about what their and their goals are for their life what their deepest values are in writing that seems I mean as a second best to really communities helping people for marriages which is I think the way it's meant to be but but that is very hard in our modern technological I think online dating is a good way to meet potential people but you want to quickly of course move to face to face and all the complexity of that I would agree yeah one of the things I've noticed that if I if I was trying to answer this question that I were emphasized I've had a lot of friends come to me six months after meeting somebody like so how did you guys meet and the answer is typically online dating I'm like why are we just now finding out about it because they can online dating you don't have to and I still think it's kind of a it's not quite yet a norm although I think we're almost there yeah so it there's still I think like in the people I know that have met someone online there's almost like this embarrassment like this shame you know like I mean like I was I'm pathetic or something so I had to go online and we're not know no it's certainly not true it's it's a stigma around it which is why I also think that's not the lead foot yeah you know we met on Christian mingle or whatever yeah that's good so I think a really important question here for you relating to your book some of the things that you put in the book what would our world look like and what would this community and our families look like if we don't put these things into practice like what's the cost there's lots of them but what are some of the top in your mind I think we're starting to see it in various ways especially for adolescence we're seeing a spike in depression you have spike and anxiety this is well-documented spike and self-harm spike and suicide so and this is because oh gosh it ultimately it's not good for people to be alone and the more you're engaged with technology the more alone you are in the sense that you are not heart soul mind strength in relationships of love with other people and so it's lonely and I think we can expect more and more loneliness I think we can expect less and less healthy well less and less learning I think you learn best in a fully embodied way and you don't learn well when it's a flat surface we have some evidence it's not it's not overwhelming but we have a lot of that for certain kinds of reading a book is so much better than a screen because the book has weight and is multi-dimensional and your hand are involved in turning the pages so it is multiple you can taste it if you want great I mean as eqo was told to eat it so I mean it happens but by us until the cook so I think what we would see is people's lives would get thinner and thinner while very pleasant we got richer and richer like the world GDP could happily keep going up but world gross national happiness would keep like trailing off I think that's a real possibility but I don't think it has to be that way I think we can change it well I would just add because I've mentioned this a couple of times in preaching Matt McCauley Chris groover myself Bruno Paiva one of our elders and Daryl layman one of our elders are a part of a cohort that's meeting out at fuller in California we've been out there twice and and then we're getting to sit in on some research and some discussions about what's happening in this next generation and and we're seen all the historic markers of rebellion go way way down so teenagers aren't getting high as much they're not getting drunk as much they're not getting pregnant like they were but then depression anxiety suicide and self-harm are men if you could see the graph I mean they're just hockey stick blowing through the ceiling and so this this correlates with the introduction of these devices in a real pervasive way and so there's no way to just go there's some other thing introduced into the environment that's led to this this is directly correlated to a removal from real legitimate contact with human beings into a faux world where they they know people and know about people but they feel completely unknown they don't even know how to get into real meaningful relationships and then as moms and dads we're not helping them by demanding that they not have that phone or put that phone away at the dinner table or you don't get to listen to headphones in the car you and me are gonna talk you might hate it but we're gonna talk and part of that's on us not even knowing how to have a conversation with them anymore and that can be just as simple as what was of and we've talked about this somewhat like every night at dinner here's our game high-low what was the best part of your day what was the worst part of your day that's easy and you can't answer it yes you just can't answer that what's the best part of your day and if my kids will try to say I didn't have a lo we're gonna no it doesn't have to be bad it might be just your least favorite thing that happened today but you're gonna share your high and low and actually my nine-year-old is now the police around this this game at dinner we're playing high-low go Audrey because she wants to flex on her older sister and so but just figuring out things like that for the car or for the now forced conversation and connectivity where you're saying in a really simple way I want to know what's going on in you I want to know what's going on in your heart I care about what what's going on in you and you're communicating that by saying get off that device take those headphones out and I'm gonna ask you questions that you hate and and Laurance it like I'll Audrey literally said are you always gonna ask me these questions and and I said for the rest of your life like for the rest of your life like a when you're 42 and coming I'm gonna ask these questions sans if you're married the the boy question and I'll just replace it with husband questions but I'm always gonna have questions cuz you're my daughter and I love you and I care about your heart and I and and so I think that's the we're seeing and we're starting to lose a generations capacity to interact as human beings in a way that that's historically defined by the way we actually have a running experiment on this in the nations of Japan and South Korea which are ahead of us in a lot of this technologies ation yeah the most kind of stunning result is collapsing birth rates people are simply not conceiving children because that requires risk vulnerability bodily connection personal connection that when you have the option of ever present screens people just defer it and avoid it and I mean so you literally could end up in a world that where people just don't even dare to like make babies that collapses but in so that's coming and you know about 15 years unless you read the tech wise family they we gave it to them for free no the but I think you're already starting to see the first fruits of this in regards to like people getting married later and later later and but like I read gosh I read something where like there's the Bible no but young single men in their late 20s have spent something like 10,000 hours playing video games that you can get a masters and I think because I don't have one I think you can get a PhD or certainly a demon in 10,000 hours no Josh I'm just saying there's a lot you can do in 10,000 hours and and so like you're seeing and and there's been plenty written I think at this point where Anna we're we're young room but we're young men are choosing even in some case pornography to real women yeah and so now you're you're not getting married till you're in your 30s if you're even wanting to get married anymore and and then you're choosing pornography over the pursuit of an actual intimate covenant relationship so I think it's all we're already seen a lot of these things that I think are somewhat directly tied to the introduction of all of this into society there's no doubt so that's the cost I think it's we're gonna end here in about five minutes or so silent both of you to spend some time talking about the game like what what how could this change my relationship with my community with my family with the Lord perhaps my spouse my kids like what do we have to gain specifically well you have no idea how happy you can be hmm no idea how much joy is waiting for you in the world you also have no idea how much pain is waiting for you and how those two are actually connected and all these devices not just the glowing rectangles they flatten out our experience of the world and they do insulate us from certain kinds of pain they're not they don't insulate us from the worst kinds but they definitely insulate us from the best joys so what what is waiting for us is a level of just ah too light laughter celebration of God and his world that is it's all just waiting for us right now to experience and to grow into happiness is not something you have an amount it's something that you become capable of it's like it's like strength trainer or something like you you can do happiness training to become more capacious of joy and all our devices if they're at best they don't form that in us and at worse they start to deform and rob us of that but if you choose this other life you just become more capable of genuine joy and you become able to love in a way that that you couldn't otherwise so and maybe even be loved absolutely and be known I have a group of six other men I meet with every we only meet once a year because we live in different parts of the country but we meet very intensively completely device free certainly and we just deeply know each other and we have wept like I've never wept with anyone other than my wife I would say and we have laughed like I've never laughed with anyone I'm known by these guys like that is possible there's no reason every human being can't experience that level of intimacy not just family type intimacy or marital intimacy but friendship intimacy we're meant for this and the early church totally knew it and experienced it in a very unfriendly world that they lived in a world with its own modern kind of technologies of its time that we're very dehumanizing so that's what we're that's what is out there for us I also think about one of the most common places we resort to devices with our kids is when we have to go out to dinner with small kids and it's so easy and then the glowing rectangle it's like magic or a drug or something you know there's quiet they're compliant mom and dad can talk and somebody asked me once what would you say to that family who you know I totally understand why we do this who is Henry their kids the devices to just occupy them at dinner I said I want you to think about dinner with your 19 year old like maybe there are five years old now or four years old think of 10-15 four years from now and thinking of having a son or daughter who just wants to be with you and who can carry out a whole conversation with you and enjoy it and enjoy the food and like that's I would want to say to every family that is for all obvious reasons tends to resort for the devices think about what your relationships could be like 10 years from now yeah and it's it's all available the I mean yes and amen I don't the only thing I would add that then I know I'm always hungry for and fighting for is I want to be where I am in that moment I want to be fully present where I am I don't want to be after this I want to be right here and I want to be right here with you and I mean we right here with you because there's we've got a shot in this moment to be sons of God in image bears of God shared experiences and and maybe in this conversation with you if I'm here and I'm not here then then God's gonna give me insight into myself and inside in you in a way that I can minister to you and you can reflect back to me my value and Worth and and and I think if if you don't kind of establish true life you don't fight for space then I just think you're always 45 minutes ahead which means you're never where you are which which means you're missing a thousand opportunities a day to have someone reflect to you or to reflect someone else what it means to be distinctively human and so that I tell us for that in my own life like I just want to like I want to be here right now with you brothers I want I want to when I'm with my why I want to be with Lauren I don't want to be working on my sermon or I I want to be there with the kids and and so because and you're feeling this I'm I'm just getting a glimpse of it Audrey's a ninth grader I mean what do I've got three more yeah and she's talking about wanting to go to UNC I don't think she will but she's talking about that and now and I'm not dogging my daughter I'm saying if she chooses to go to college in North Carolina I mean that first that's gonna be really hard on her daddy and Mama but on top of that it it I've got this space and and she's not fully formed and if I miss an opportunity to step into what is my privilege alone because of Twitter like I don't it's just a stupid price to pay kids it's a dumb price to pay yeah you know it's just not a smart trade yeah I mean I have a three-year-old at home and a nine month old and I'm already I'm already beginning to feel that just technically it's going so here's how I'd like to end I want to pray for us in a moment and just ask the Lord to perhaps do some of these things in our hearts but would you just do me a favor just make him uncomfortable one more time would you think Andy I would I would guard against a couple of things one I would guard against Shane I would just want to love you enough tonight to say you have not out send the grace of God look at you have not destroyed your children you are not past the ability to have a conversation with your children and to re-establish what you're hoping to be new rules you just are not passed any of these things and so if you leave here tonight with man we've blown it then then I think I think you have not heard well what our hopes are for our families at the village church so you have not out send the grace of God and you have not out send or ruined you have certainly not ruined your children we we they're resilient amazingly resilient little souls so we have the opportunity moms and dads to mirror the gospel here and and just have conversations about hey mommy and daddy love you mommy and daddy need Jesus just like you need Jesus and we have done some things that that we want to do differently because we think it's ultimately gonna be better for us and for you and our relationship with one another mom and daddy love you we want to know you we want to be dialed in and we think this is a hindrance so I just don't want you because I I know the tendency to go oh my gosh we are my kid is on a device in this forum you know I I don't want you to I don't want you to feel paralyzed but feel empowered is ReWalk out of here to trust that there's new mercies for you tomorrow morning and and that you haven't destroyed your kids okay there's hope for your parents yeah pray right I'm gonna pray and as soon as them they're praying you're dismissed I'd remind you we'll have some folks over here to hand these out to you go ahead and grab one some of these tech wise commitment that you might think about implementing your your life or your family around the back and if you came with somebody you're in a home group these might be some good discussion questions to talk through tonight or during this week let's just pray for a minute to you Father and to the Son and to the Spirit we just commit ourselves into your presence right now divorcing ourselves from distractions divorcing ourselves from the things that might take our attention away from your glory and from your beauty from being in awe of who you are and what you've accomplished in history on our behalf we love you your glorious and your beautiful grateful for an opportunity tonight to reflect on my own life reflect on my own habits and how those have its shape and form my affections and my desires moments of pain and conviction also moments of opportunity and joy I pray for every single brother or sister either here in this room or at one of our campuses listening I just pray for them that you would put not guilt or shame into their heart but opportunity in front of them opportunity to look more like Jesus Christ opportunities more reflect his image by the power of the Holy Spirit so might you just prick our hearts but with perhaps one or two steps to take that we might be more fully human we'll be more fully in line with the gospel and fully human as image bearers that's ultimately our hope so I just pray that you would put those things in front of us help us to have conversations as a community and as a family of faith of brothers and sisters so that we might not just look like this and our families but also hear that the village church would be a place in an age of distract and an age of distraction in a we would be a people who are drawing attention to one another but most importantly to you that we'd be living intentionally gospel centered lives that is our hope and that is our plea but we need you to do it so please act on our behalf it's in Christ's name we pray amen we love you all thank you for coming

Channel: The Village Church Resources

Views: 7,942

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Keywords: Matt Chandler, The Village Church, Tech Wise Family Forum, Andy Crouch

Id: FeszZRwtQUg

Length: 110min 44sec (6644 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 24 2018