On this episode, we talked with Jacob about the documentary Into the Light.
You're listening to the Dudes and Dads podcast, a show dedicated to helping men be better dudes and
dads by building community through meaningful conversation and storytelling. And now, here are
your hosts, Joel Daman and Andy Layman. Joel, you're awake. Andrew, listen, man. Detroit Rock City,
man. Beck, fresh from the great motor city in Detroit. You're in a late night. Late night,
overnight baseball tournament. I don't recommend it to anybody, but we're here.
I don't, my body doesn't know what time it is right now, but I'm feeling,
I'm feeling lively and engaged and ready to go and ready to do this thing.
Sweet. Sweet. Well, I'm glad because we're doing this thing. We aren't. No, there's no turning,
there's no turning back now. How are things with you? You know, going while, going while just
getting ready for our vacation and going on vacation. We are, we are. So we're, we're,
we're, we're going to the Florida, to the Florida, to the Florida with the family. So
are you doing like Disney? Oh, that's right. That's right. Disney. Disney with the kids.
So is everybody equally as excited about this? Yes. We all are very excited.
Like the Disney thing. Yes, we do. That's good. I've not done the Disney world. We did the
Disneyland a few years ago. We went with, may he rest in peace. We went with uncle Gary, who
uh, uncle Gary, uncle Gary, disabled Vietnam vet who got us to the front of every single line. So
this is how my kids think Disney operates. When we do the next visit, they're going to be really
disappointed. They're going to be like, they're like, where's uncle Gary and his jazzy? Get me
in the front of the line. Yeah. Do the whole like weekend at Bernie's thing and just bring him along
anyways. That's, that's dark. But yes, we should bring along their dead great uncle. Why not?
Um, hey, everybody, welcome to the dudes and dads podcast. Glad to see, to see, to hear,
to experience each and every one of you as you join us each and every week.
Guys, thank you. Uh, we do just want to say continue to say thank you for your support
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support us financially over there. Be a Patreon member. Glad for each and every one of you to
come alongside of us. So thank you. Okay. Great. So tonight we have Jacob with us. Jacob, welcome
to our show. Hi, Jacob. Gentlemen. I'm so stoked to talk to you guys. Yeah. Oh yeah. So Jacob reached
out to me and said, Hey, I've created this documentary. And first off, I do want to put
this warning here. We are going to be talking about a little bit adult thing themes. So we've
talked about things like this in the show before we're talking about porn tonight. So would you
say we're PG or we are PG 13 plus? We're just going to be, I'm just warning parents that if
there are little kids in the car, we are going to be talking about the topic of pornography. So
fantastic. The documentary that you guys created is about, uh, pornography and the freedom from
that. And so we wanted to bring you on and talk a little bit about that tonight. So welcome to our
show. Man. Again, really excited to be here. So I, the, uh, the thing that, uh, everyone wants to know,
I don't know if everyone wants to know, I want to know. I'm always just curious. I guess maybe take
us back to the beginning of the journey of this filmmaking process. Cause there's always,
for every filmmaker, for every documentary, there's always the things that led up to it,
the, the, uh, crossing of paths of different people, the hearing of the stories, the, the,
the kind of the initial grounds well, if you will, if I can call that, um, that led to what,
uh, the ultimate end product here is we talk about the documentary. Um, so I just love for
you to tell us kind of the story of what, what got to the point of you saying, Hey, we need
to make a film. And by we, you also have another, you have a partner, which you can tell us all
about too. Uh, he's was going to be with us. He's, he's under the weather. So we want to
extend our, our well wishes to him as well. But yeah, tell us, tell us the, uh, tell us the story.
Yeah, man. Um, so that, yeah, my partner, film partner, John Michael Bout, uh, honestly,
I'll say we probably 90% of this whole story, cause that lovely saint, like the two of us are
like brothers and pretty much everything we do, like weaves together. So, um, but yeah, so, so
to our, the, the documentaries about pornography and specifically it's about freedom from pornography.
And so the reason that we're so stoked to be, to be working on something like this or have
finished a documentaries because freedom from sexual sin from pornography has been such
a big part of our like testimony and actually coming to Christ. And so if you go all the way
back for my story in particular, um, I had a bit of a unique story. My mom, amazing Christian woman,
she talked to me a lot about pornography from when I was really young. And I had this incredible
opportunity just because of my mom and by the grace of God to not actually get hooked on
pornography proper at any point in my life. And that's really rare. So I had this really,
this fortunate opportunity to not have that particular area, but I was completely addicted
to masturbation for like almost all of my teenage life. So, you know, uh, Jesus is very clear about
that, you know, Matthew five, that, that lust in your heart, just pursuing that over and over again.
And so I gave into that. And, and you know, I had this Pharisee card too, where I was like,
I've got friends who watch porn, but I don't do that. Right. Um, and I went through my Bible,
but didn't see masturbation in there. So I was good to go. Um, I'll tell you Michael's story was,
was, he also had incredible, incredible godly parents who talked to him about pornography,
but he discovered porn when he was very young and he had a decade of being completely hooked to it.
So we kind of became friends, um, at about the point in our life where God really gripped both of
us and it was a combination of really good friends, you know, getting our hands on some solid resources
and kind of one of those slow, but you know, really cataclysmic moments in your life where
like I started realizing I'm not walking the Christian life at all. And I've got this sin
that I'm just, just recklessly giving into and, you know, I, and then going with all the
diff, some different idols in my life. And so God threw some really good friends, really freed me
from this bondage to sexual sin. And honestly, that, that might've been the time as about, you
know, 20 years old or so that I genuinely became a Christian. And I felt just a level of freedom
that I, it's almost impossible to articulate to me or I wouldn't even believed it was possible
at some point before that. So, so anyways, this is, I started, you know, investing into my
accountability groups in my hometown back in Canada and Jemical, my film partner, he did too.
And that just became a really regular part of our lives. You know, these accountability groups
were still important to us as we're growing in holiness, investing in other guys. And we had
all these books that, you know, Heath Lambert wrote, Garrett Kell wrote, that we're so meaningful
to us. And we give them out and not, not everyone had the time, had the space to read them. And
it kind of just became this consistent thing where, you know, these books were incredible, but
not getting opened. Fast forward, I go to seminary. And I had this really cool opportunity to get
coffee with Tim Chalice. I don't know if you guys have heard of him. Yeah. Yeah. So he wrote this
really great book called sexual detox. And Tim, Tim's hilarious. I asked him about it. I'm like,
you know, what was the process of writing that book? And he goes, you know, the book's fine.
He's like, we've got better ones. Yeah, I thought it was so funny. He's a really down-to-earth guy.
But then he kind of stopped and he looked at me and he's like, you know, it's interesting.
We have this video problem of pornography. And in answer, we typically write books. You know,
there could be a space that could be used for like a video-oriented resource that tackled the
problem. And he kind of just said that and just kind of kept on going with the conversation.
But I was like thunderstruck because Tim didn't know that film was my background. That's,
that's what I did. Gotcha. Yeah. And so I kind of left that conversation like, huh. So immediately
called Joe Michael, who is back in Canada. He's, he's since joined me at seminary where we go to
the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary here in Louisville, Kentucky. And I said, bro, you know,
we're freedom from sexual sin has been this has been so important in our lives and in our walk
with God. And we've both been invested in like, in accountability groups and things like that.
We're filmmakers. Is there room for us? Could we potentially make a really counseling oriented
resource that walks through the problem of pornography? And so we kind of chewed on it.
We started like kind of baseballing ideas back and forth. And eventually, you know, we realized
really quickly like, okay, our faces should not be in this thing. So can we reach out to all of
these writers, these authors, these speakers, these counselors who have meant a lot to us and see if
they'd be willing to kind of come together and form this team, that would be like the backbone
of the documentary. Praise God, they did. And we just, it started, it kicked off many, many months
of Zoom meetings and I'll put you in contact with this person and swapping emails. And, and
let me know the whole process, which you guys can ask about. But the end result is, you know,
into the light is a teaching documentary that walks through the process of change, right,
from bondage and sexual sin to freedom in Christ. So it's a resource for strugglers. And our heart
is that we want it to be, to be a tool for the church to give people resources who might struggle
to read. And so that's, that's the sales pitch. And it's done. What's really, what's really awesome
about it, which I'd love to talk about this is it's free, 100% free for churches, families,
for anyone to jump on our website, into the light documentary.com. And yeah, let's talk,
let's talk about that. Like, so how, how, how are you able to make that free?
Let's talk about that. That's awesome. Yeah, because I don't know about you guys,
but like, I don't know if you're on Facebook and you see like, you know, offering this free course.
Yeah, right. Yeah, bait and switch, 100%. Yeah, you're like, or, or bait and switch,
or you're like, if it's actually free, it's probably crap. Yeah. So what we did, so one
of our convictions was we really wanted to offer it for free. If we could, our other
conviction was Starving's not a great idea. So we, and you know, Joe Michael has a, has a wife
and, and his second kid on the way. So we couldn't just loan a year and a half of our life to this.
So what we did is we tried to do a crowdfunding model. So what we did is we invested about
$40,000 of our own time and money into it upfront, spent that time to film with, with
Heath Lambert, Garrett Kell, Ellen Dijkess, all these different speakers. And then we started
crowdfunding in the summer of 2022. And then one of the most humbling things I've ever been through
in my life, just Christians across North America, like praise God, saw the vision stepped up and
we raised $85,000 in about six weeks, um, six, uh, 10 weeks, but six weeks. And, and so now, um,
that, that paid for the whole film. And so now we, now it's a free, free resource. And I'm,
I'm stoked about that because I don't have to do a bait and switch. I don't have to, you know,
sell anything on the other end. It's just, I hope it's helpful.
Sure. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about, you said it's a teaching resource and when I watched
it, I did watch it, um, and it's in, in chapters. So how is this meant to be consumed? Is it meant
to be consumed as one giant documentary or is it in different, you know, small setting, small group
settings or how does, how do you envision this going for people watching it?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, we did the chapters so you could have that flexibility. So the way I
kind of think about it is, you know, if you're, if let's say you're a pastor of a church and you're
like, I would love a resource that like I could just invite the church to and kind of get everyone
on the same page, kind of get some of those resources or some of those kind of key ideas,
accountability, um, like, you know, the, how addictive pornography is hope for people who
are struggling, God's good design for marriage. Just kind of get some of those foundations out
there to a larger group of people than watching it like, like a documentary is one of the best
ways to do that. So it's a, it's like 90 minutes long, a little bit less, and it's, it's a full,
it's a full film. But then we also broke it up into six teaching sections, so six chapters.
And so someone could run a six week, um, like kind of small group study guide style and then
watch each one, have that discussion, talk about it. And so, and then each of those speakers
take up those, those six chapters. And then we are a week or so, maybe two weeks from releasing
a study guide. Okay, awesome. You know, you could grab question sets, take home, um, material and
stuff like that, that can kind of accompany those chapters and, and people can walk through. So
it's functionally the same material, but we, we chopped it up on our website in two different
ways, just depending on what's most helpful for people. Yes. You know, I've been thinking, and
Andy, I don't know if you, I, I know Andy probably had similar thoughts as he was watching this and
as I was watching it. Um, so my two eldest boys are 13 and 12 years old and we are, you know,
I've got, uh, I've got four kiddos, but those two right now are, you know, the ones, yeah,
those are the ones Jackie and my wife and I are routinely just had another conversation this past
weekend about like, we do the regular check in of like, how well are we doing at talking to our
children and then into our boys and, you know, about sex in general, just to sexuality in general,
because they're obviously bombarded with a lot of different narratives about that mostly right now.
Um, uh, not explicit explicitly, but more like, uh, it's just sort of kind of like bubbling into
the culture, right? Like there's, there's just kind of all these assumptions that are made.
Um, you know, so whenever I, like, I heard one of my boys even use the term, like,
use the term gay the other day, like accurately, like not pejoratively, but accurately. And I'm
like, so we're, again, it's like, well, where, where is he hearing this? And if he's hearing
this, what else is he hearing? And you know, your, your mind begins to go like, okay,
there, there's a level of exposure there, obviously. Um, but as I was watching this
documentary, I thought to myself, like even like, like age appropriateness for this
documentary and for the, and for the audience, I did, I felt like at least at the, I mean,
by and large that my 12 and 13 year old son could watch this with me and have a really clear
and, and, and again, so great. I think a real, uh, pat on the back to you guys is that it's
so clearly communicated. There's not, uh, there, there's not a lot of confusing, uh, content to
a very, I'm biblical kind of, biblically straightforward, uh, clearly communicated.
But like you said, and kind of these, these bite-sized pieces that, because I just, I know,
like with my kiddos, it's like, okay, if I get a 15 minute, uh, viewing session with them, we've
done well, right? Like that's, like that's, that's good. So that was, but what began to turn around
and, you know, kind of turn in my brain of kind of the audience that you guys were hoping for,
just in terms of age range, what were you, what were you thinking about there? Cause I'm sure
that those conversations were, were at play. Um, as you thought about this being a church,
because as a filmmaker, and I even as a communicator myself, you're always thinking,
okay, how broad do I want this to be? Where do I want it to go? Narrow? Where do I need,
want it to go wide? What is the purpose? You know, you're trying to kind of reverse engineer
all of that. Um, what were you guys's thoughts of, like thoughts about that kind of conversation?
Cause I know plenty of the dads that are listening right now are going, is this something that,
you know, my kid at age, X, Y, Z could, could engage with, you know, with me.
Yeah. Dude, I, I love some of those things you noticed about it too. I really appreciate that.
And yeah, it's, it's a tough question because, and you guys know this too,
like as parents, culture and, and the ubiquity, like the ubiquity of pornography kind of forces
your hand a little bit for the conversation. So, you know, in a different world, it would have
been really nice to let most of our kids grow up to the 12 without really having the talk and
just, just let that go. But you don't get that option really anymore. Um, especially the majority
of my friends, they've stumbled across pornography when they were about eight or nine years old.
And so it's like, so it's kind of hard because, you know, part of me wishes,
we didn't have to have that conversation. You guys, your parents, you know, you know what's up.
One of our commitments was when we were creating the documentary is to just radically stay away
from anything that would be either triggering or pointing to lust. So there was, there's no scare
tactics. There's no shock value. Like this is how bad the porn industry is, which has its time
in place, right? I'm, I'm not against that, but this is very much, Hey, you love Jesus,
you're Christian. We're not going to sit here and try and sell you on why porn is wrong. You've
got that. But let's just, you're a struggler. Let's walk through the process. Just starting with
step one, all the way to, you know, ending with Garrett Kell, who talks about like,
you're hoping Christ and what it looks like to be part of a church walking alongside each other.
And so all that to say, yeah, it's cool. It's cool for me to hear that you feel like you could,
you could hit that maybe carefully with your, with your like 12 year old. Yeah. Cause that was
our, that was about where like kind of the minimum are of where we were thinking because, you know,
there's heavy, there's heavy stuff. Yeah. Really walking through God's design for marriage,
you know, we touch, sorry, we, you know, we talk a little bit about masturbation,
trying to walk through that conversation, which is complex. And just going through a lot of the,
you know, the foundational steps to like cutting off access and things like that.
You know, and so our target, our target was a little older, probably like late teens or something.
Obviously you really hope it's, it's, it's, it's a simple documentary in the sense of
we don't do a forehand to marriage. We don't really go into like dating conversations.
We don't really dive into this, the porn industry. It's a really simple,
what does the process of change look like for somebody struggling?
Well, yeah. And I think a base level, like even as you begin the film, like a base level of
what I would kind of say, a core theology and sexuality in general. Like, and if we start,
and if we start there, and I think about that's probably the biggest, I mean, it's really
interesting for me, like as someone with a, you know, advanced theological degree, like I,
I think to myself, that's all well and good. But when you sit down across from your 12 year old
and you try to, you know, like, it's like all of daddy's fancy learning, you know, at that,
in that moment, it's kind of like, okay, how do you succinctly and appropriately and, and contextually
bring your child into the world of sexuality? Yeah.
In a way, yeah, in a way that they're going to navigate it in a healthy way, understand core
kind of foundational biblical principles. Because that's the other thing, like I didn't feel,
I don't know, there's sometimes where I can almost feel myself getting on the defensive
for, for like the potential listener who is already struggling. And I think you said it so
well, it was already struggling. And basically what they're hearing is, is not going to help
them move forward, but basically is just going to confirm, you know, that they feel like crap
already. And then it's just a confirmation of no, you should feel like crap and good luck,
you know, and good luck with that. Yeah. There's hope. There's hope there, which I,
you know, I would hope that all of us, you know, could, could see on the other side. So.
Yeah. It was interesting, Joel, my, as we're coming here, both of my boys are actually here
at the church tonight. And they were like, you know, who's going to be, you know, who you're
interviewing. And so I took that time and said, Nope, there's this guy that a couple guys that
created this, you know, documentary on porn, and we're going to be talking about that and how to,
you know, free, you know, to become free from that. And so that was a good opportunity for me
to talk about that. And I probably actually will end up watching with them. I didn't watch it last
night with him, but I will probably will end up watching with them. But yeah, so it was a good
opportunity for me. My boys are, you know, my boys are older, you know, there's high school age.
So they're, they're definitely that that's ready. They're ready for the conversation. They're
definitely, they're, they're, they're definitely hearing. I mean, they're hearing plenty of things
elsewhere. Well, and one of the things I appreciated too in the documentary was you guys
touched on the fact that porn isn't just a dude problem. It's also female. Like it's not, you
know, obviously not people that are female also struggle with that same thing. So I appreciated
you guys touching on that too. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So that's like that again was one of the
things that we kind of settled on pretty quickly was like, we need to have this conversation.
You know, we need to include women in this conversation, if that makes sense. That kind
of started off as, as a conviction, but a bit of a fuzzy idea, if I'm honest. So the kind of the
first thing as a couple of guys making this, we're like, hold on. So we contacted every woman,
biblical counselor, every author we could and said, and just basically were like, Hey,
a couple of guys making a documentary here, please tell us what you think. Just give us,
just start kind of pouring into us your thoughts on this problem so that if we're going to make a
resource, we're going to do it right for our sisters in the church. And oh my goodness. Like,
well, first of all, a lot of them were really grateful that we reached out to them, but they
just started just be like very clearly said, don't for a second buy that this is just a man's problem.
I can't tell you how many girls I get through our doors at our counseling office,
who are just hooked on proper hardcore pornography, just like guys. And, you know,
I've read some of the sociological literature, you can slice and dice the statistics in a
few different ways. And there's there's meaningful differences when you want to have that level
of conversation. But on the whole, it's just, there are so many girls, women in the churches
in churches who are just really, really struggling with this. And one of the things that a lot of
the the women we're talking to us about, they're like, you don't understand, like it's very,
actually, I couldn't say you don't, it's very hard for especially guys to understand the extra
levels of shame that women go through because we've talked about it like a man's problem for so long.
So a lot of women are in the pews when just a casual reference to and, you know, the guys
with pornography, they go, what kind of monster am I that I struggle with this man's problem?
And when you really boil it down, like, it's so horrible to throw out a problem in the church
context and then not follow that up with the good news of the gospel, the person to work of Jesus
Christ, and then offer that to both men and women. Because when you just offer it to men, you're
tacitly saying, women, look, if you if you struggle with this problem, we're not really
going to address you or include you in the conversation. And that's, I mean, that just
needs to change. I'm sympathetic, right? Like, it's hard enough to have this conversation,
which let's do it fully orbs and well, and none of us are going to do it perfectly.
But we were really committed. So we have Ellen Dykass from Harvest USA, who's
the best. She's awesome. And then Jenny Solomon, who's she, she's the wife of a professor at Southern,
and she's incredible too, like so much fun to work with. And both of them just killed it for
their chapters. So I'm just, I'm super grateful that they were willing to put their time into it.
Yeah. And that's the, you know, that's the reality of the,
the, yeah, I mean, the engagement with pornographic material within women, I mean,
the number is on the, it's on the, and on the rise. And I don't even know actually what the
current statistic is, but, you know, I know the last time I looked at it, it was somewhere around
the 38, 38 to 40th percentile. And that, that the time was shocking to me because I know I
probably had some, I, you know, whatever, I had the traditional misconstrued ideas, you know,
way back when about, again, like you said, the primarily the guys, a guys issue.
And yeah, there's, there is a sense in which the reasons, the reasons for pornographic,
you know, engagement can vary from men to women and how they're initially,
you know, exposed to it. I think the stories that I've heard from a lot of, a lot of women,
like, while you do, like you said, you know, kind of proper, there's kind of proper hardcore content.
There's also the, like within pornographic content, content within like what they're
reading specifically. Like there's usually, like there's other, because there's a need,
a need, a desire for sort of like, and this is how it kind of, I think it ties in together. And
I'd be interested to see if you guys kind of experienced the same thing, what you saw.
A need for intimacy, like a need for intimacy. And then there's engagement in that kind of
material on the women's side, can be on the guy's side too. And so there's, that's how
maybe women are engaging it. And then men for other reasons, and then these two individuals
come into a relationship for, for the very reasons of what they're lacking, you know,
of what they're lacking relationally. But what they've been engaging in is actually creating
this kind of, it's like they're pulled together, but then pushed apart from each other for the,
for the very reasons of what they've, you know, what they've experienced so far. And I think,
you know, it's said in the documentary early, like one of the early chapters, it was, you know,
they talked about this couple who, you know, had not talked with each other about what their
experiences had been. Both of them had, you know, were struggling with this. And then they get into
their marital relationship. And there's an assumption that that the marriage itself will
fix things or it will overcome those things. And almost what it does is actually just puts a
giant magnifying glass on, on the problem, right? It kind of forces you into this, into this place.
And, you know, I, so all that to say, anymore, it feels like, and I know within my own, within
my own counseling practice, I know that men and women, when they come into my office, increasingly
so, there's a conversation about some sort of sexual malformation in the lives of both of them.
Because of these things. And it isn't, it isn't one or the other specifically.
And I think that's an important thing that you guys, again, highlighted, highlighted well,
gave a balanced perspective too. So hopefully that's helpful for people.
Yeah. Yeah, I, it would have been, it would have been really nice if we could, you know,
explore and, and really address some of those like relation, like relationship marital dynamics
more. And that's not quite the heart of this, of this documentary. And you guys know this as
communicators, you know, you, you, you really got to pick what you want to say. And you know,
but yeah, it's so, I mean, it's so hard because it's, you know, pornography, sexuality is,
sorry, let me rephrase, scrap that sentence, sexuality, God's gift of sex is just this
incredible, beautiful gifts to human kinds, to humans in the context of marriage. It's like one
of, you know, the fact that marriage image, images Christ in the church, like there's just these
deep rich theological depth there, that is such a beautiful thing. And then pornography enters that
equation. And then there's pornography, Roman, like romance novels, the worst kind. And, and all of
these things just pull this distortion in almost every key thing that God designed sex for, takes
it the same thing, and then just orients it back towards yourself. And so when you've been trained
with pornography so long to, to hunt for what gratifies yourself more, to then take what God
used that for, and then reapply it to the, like, to, for someone else becomes this like extremely
foreign concept. And, and, and then people have to relearn how to use sexuality. And for a lot of
people relearn how to use sexuality that they discovered when they were eight years old, years
before they hit puberty, years before they were ever, years before they were ever supposed to
know what that is, which is then years before they were ever supposed to put that in practice in the
context of marriage. So it's hard, man, you're, my heart goes out to sit like if someone's listening,
right, they're, I don't know, 18, 19, 25, whatever, it's possible they're decades
plural deep into a struggle of pornography that started long before they really had like the
wisdom categories to navigate that. And it's hard, like it, and that's, that's why we kind of what
you said, Joel, like about like, like having that part of compassion and offering the hope of the
gospel, it has to be there. Because like, honestly, a documentary being like, ooh, porn's scary,
porn's bad, you're a sinner. It's not, it's not necessary. We know plenty of guilt out there.
There's, there's enough guilt to spare. Right. But to offer the hope of the gospel,
let's say you can change and it's going to be hard, but there are steps that work. Like,
that's, that's what I'm the business about. And that's what makes it fun. Like, that's what's
exciting about that. Yeah. I'm not, we're not trying to scare anybody. And you guys are, as
counselors, as pastors and stuff, you, you know, that it's just not helpful to scare people, right?
Well, yeah. And yeah, well, because what you get them in with is what you have to keep them there
with. And that's, that's the thing, like the, the, the scare tactic, it can go, it can go one
of two ways. You can, the ditch, the ditch on either side is bring them in with it with a,
hey, everything is super easy, fun and shiny. And so, you know, hey, try Jesus on and, you know,
the, you know, religious good and service on that side, or bring them in with the fear and the
shame and, and whatever, but then you have to like keep, you have to keep perpetuating that.
And surprise, surprise, people don't grow well under that. And, you know, that's a whole other
episode for why we exist in kind of a national discipleship crisis because of those same reasons.
Like to see actual transformation and change happen in lives is, I believe 110% possible,
but we've, we've got to, and I think you guys have illustrated it well and the content that
you've made. We have got to talk about the things that actually matter and actually,
actually yield, yield change. And then we have to be obedient to those things. That's the other
thing, like not just mentally, mentally assenting to truths, but, but following and walking and
walking them out. And that's the, that's why we need each other. That's why, you know, I think
viewing, like viewing this documentary in the setting of, of a communal setting, like I'm even
thinking about the small group, you know, the men's group that I'm in with. We're all a bunch of dads,
you know, I've got kids from every, every age range, but you know, we're, we're always having
the conversation with like, Oh my gosh, like how do we, how do we actually get our, like how do we
clearly communicate this? Not frighten our children to death, but also not allow them to be ignorant
or unprepared. And, you know, and then, and even in that conversation, it's like, and then by the
way, Joel, like, how are you doing? Like you're, you're trying to, you know, lead, lead young men
well. Turns out, you know, you need, you need to have your radar up and you need to have an
awareness there too. So yeah, super, super helpful. A question I would have is in this, in this
process, like you guys are still pretty early. How long has the documentary been like a re like
out in the wild to this, to this point? Yeah. Uh, we had our official Canadians. We're a couple
of Canadians, by the way. Sure. I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't pick up on that a boot.
My accent's all muddled up. I was born in New Zealand. Oh, even better, even better. And now
you're in Kentucky. My gosh. And I've probably picked up a teeny bit of a Southern twang song.
So we had our proper Canadian premiere on the 28th of January. Okay. And then, and then we had a, we
like a lot of incredible people at, at the Southern Baptist Theological Assembly got together.
We had a second kind of US premiere there a few weeks ago. So it's been a bit about a month or
yeah, a month, couple months. Yeah, you're, we're, we're fresh on it. Andy, we're, we're early adopters
and that's really what I, that's really what I heard him say. Uh, so what I'm wondering in the
process. Um, and because you guys are early on, what are, are there just some, maybe general stories
that you're hearing coming, coming out of this or, or maybe we're early enough that I don't know,
like maybe they're still sort of emerging, but what, what has been the response to this, to this
point? Yeah. Yeah. Um, so one of the, so I, I, we have a couple of stories which are, which have
been really funny. Um, one of the cool stats that I love is we are at, I think 94 churches and small
groups have, um, have locked on, like build out a form locked on committed to showing it at their
church or in a small group context. So, which I reeled about because that means, you know, saints
are, are grabbing hold of this resource and then doing the hard work in their local community,
yeah, doing accountability, which is awesome because I'm a resource creator. I'm a creative.
I love storytelling. I love teaching, but the real work is going to be the months that you're
walking alongside each other that you're having those conversations, like those hard conversations.
And so I'm really excited to see it. Exactly what you said in the context of community and in
the local church. Um, but one of the, like one particular story that I was, that I was really
thrilled about, um, is one, there was a kid who around here who went to the Asbury revival,
all that stuff that was happening. And he just got really convicted of, of his addiction to
pornography. And he came back and, and he just came back to his house and his sister who, who
he had a really good relationship with and sister's friend were there. Um, and he just came to sister
and just, and I just said, look, I need to confess to you. I've, I'm completely addicted to pornography
and I need help. Um, her friend was there and said, Hey, I just heard of this documentary
that just came out about pornography. Do you want to Google it and see like it maybe will
be helpful? And they watched it and apparently it was really helpful. And I love that because
I assume this kid probably didn't have, I say kid, I don't mean that in a disparaging way,
but I don't think he had, you know, Deepak's book, Keith's book in his back pocket. Like
he didn't probably didn't intuitively just know the steps, the first things, locking down your
phone, accountability, but the documentary in an hour and a half, you can get some of those,
at least those handholds to first start those conversations, like, or start, you know, a journey
if you will. So that's the one that kind of kicks out to my mind of, of, you know, and all the
debates about Asbury aside, this particular individual was convicted by the Holy Spirit of his sin.
Praise God for that. And God used our documentary to, to be at least the launching pad for him.
And I don't know where his story ends up. God knows. Hopefully he has a community around him.
But man, I'm thrilled to death that that, that was a little story that we got to hear about.
That's great. And I'm sure you'll hear, yeah, and I'm sure you'll hear more though,
um, as, as things, yeah, as things roll out, that's a, that's a really, really encouraging thing.
And we're like, where do you guys hope to go from here? I mean, is it, is it really just,
and I think after we're off air here, I've got, I'm even thinking of some ways I can connect
to you guys to some, some other networks that we're, we're connected with. But I, I think about,
you know, like you said, you've, you've got the, the small group resource coming out,
which I think will be, as you know, and that's the reason why you're doing it,
I think will be immeasurably helpful. Give some handlebars there to, to work through the content.
What, what's the, what's the dream for this? What would you say if you look at it at the
end of the day and you say, like, here's how we would like to see this documentary
really fully played out and even maybe next steps beyond that. What, uh, what are you guys hopeful
for? What are you praying for? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, every person who creates something
wants it to be seen by people or no exception. Um, so view count is awesome, but really,
I hope it's slowly and steadily, our prayer is that the documentary slowly and steadily
works its way into church contexts and that people just get on it and, and say,
this will be helpful in our small group and our Bible study and our discipleship training,
something like that. And it seems to be what's happening so far,
solid day of Gloria. Um, we're really, really excited about, about how it's gone so far. So next
steps, um, man, cause you guys, you guys already, uh, we're talking about this, parents keep coming
to us and saying, and Godly Bible believing love their kids, parents and say, Hey, how do I have
this conversation with my nine year old? And you know, these, again, these parents are, they're
really keyed into the problem of it, but they don't know what a VPN, VPN, they don't know how
a router system works. They don't know. So there's all these steps. And then they're also questioning
like, how do I have these conversations? Like from the kind of parenting, like growing up side
of things. So we're in the process of really early process, having those conversations,
beginning the, the fundraising process, cause that's just a reality of we want to make a
really tight teaching series for parents that walks through how to have that conversation
with your, with your children. And then also how to form proof your home. Let's walk through the
tech. Let's walk through some of the principles about locking down your home because that's not
the be all and end all, but you can do a lot. And when you can do a lot, you're giving a breathing
space for a curious nine year old to never come across that. And that few years can make a lot
of a difference. So those are a lot of conversations. We're really just reaching out to as many people
as we can learning, having those conversations, kind of getting people in our orbit to, as we start
to kind of write this out. And it's a lot, it's more complicated than the documentary by a long
shot. Sure. As parents, you know, there's nothing, there's nothing about it. So many parents are,
that's the first thing on their mind. How do I talk to my kids about this? So God's given us,
God's given us a few tools, a few connections. We trust that he'll provide funding because he
did it last time. So yeah. And that's kind of where we're headed for the next one. So that's
kind of, that's sort of 2023 ish. Beautiful. Great. Well, then we want to, we want to get
on the bandwagon and support you guys. And so we'll just, we'll keep on telling everybody
everything we can about, about the project. And I think, I mean, as I listen, I know,
you know, it's just like, again, how, how needed that resource is, how helpful it is to,
I don't know, I talk a lot about going upstream, you know, we're, we're trying so hard pulling
dead bodies or barely lifeless bodies out of the river downstream. What, what does it look like to
go, dare I say, on the offensive a little bit and to say, man, how can we keep, how can we keep
them from falling into the river to begin with? How could we, you know, we are only ultimately
chasing safety. I don't even think safety is quite even the goal, but godliness and faithfulness
is, and we will bump up against dark things like that. That's, that's going to happen.
Do we have the things in place, however, to, to live faithfully in the midst of it? I, I don't
know. I just been in the world that we're in right now. I know you guys, you guys can feel it.
It feels like we're, you know, there's like attack and darkness from every side, you know,
you're, you're just wondering all the time, like, can we actually get, get through this?
Can we actually parent without having kids that, you know, despite our best efforts,
just go into the world completely confused and sideways on so many things. And it's going to
take intentionality, but it's going to take the use of resources like you guys are, are providing.
So I'm, I'm grateful for that and excited about that. And we want to, we want to promote it.
Want to get it out there. So. Hey, I, I appreciate that, man. I don't know, like,
maybe a word of encouragement. You guys have a lot of dads listening to this. I'm younger,
like I'm, I'm not married, by the way. I'm 25. I, a word of encouragement, because I've got,
I sit in this weird position where I hang out with the adults and talk to the adults, but also
like, I got a bunch of like 17 year old, 18 year old friends. It's possible. It's possible. It's
possible to have those real heavy conversations to, it's possible to have a 15, 16 year old kid
who's like, I mean, it's going to be a dipstick, you know, but who loves Jesus and he's fighting
this as much as he can, maybe stumbling, but whose head screwed on straight. And that's not,
it's not a promise. It's not just, you know, days from the sky, like your kid's going to be fine.
We don't get those, but it's, it's possible. And I know that because I've been a part of church
communities who took this seriously, did the work and, and by the grace of God, have, have a good
community of young people who are aware and thoughtful and, and working on it. So, um,
yeah, it's, it's, I'm sympathetic, man. It's hard, but it's possible to have, to have kids,
have your kids walk in freedom from pornography. It's not a, it's not an all consuming fire, right?
Um, I don't know if that, I don't know if that's helpful or not. I'm sure you guys can speak
on that more than that. That's great. Yeah. But you have to, God is good. God is good. He's not
going to leave his church just floundering with, with no like handholds, right? Yeah.
Well, we really appreciate you being on the show tonight, but we can't let you go at all without
doing the following. Now it's time for the Jews and dads pop quiz. Get ready. Oh, right. All right.
So if you've never joined us before, we just pepper you with random, random questions. So,
but have nothing to do with the topic going on. So Joel, are you ready for, are you going to do
this first? Yeah, I'm going to start. I'm looking at my trying to get some good questions. Yeah,
I'm looking at right now. Okay. Here, first question for you. What is, uh, what crazy
activities do you dream about trying someday? A crazy activity you dream about trying someday?
28 foot yacht cruising through the Bahamas. I got a spearfishing pole,
like a spearfishing pole. I'm just spending my days trying to marble grouper through just
what to do. I would, man, if I could subsist off of spearfishing fish for like a weekend or something,
bless me up. That's what I want. Best answer yet. Just hands down. Hands down. Well done.
All right. What is something that you like that most people don't like? Oh my.
I don't know. That's hard, man. With the internet, you're going to find a sub community of every
single thing that you're nerding out on. Where am I an island on?
It can be sometimes like, like a thing that when you're out and you try it, or you do it,
or whatever else is like, dude, what is, what is the matter with you?
I actually like Greek. Okay. In my, in my seminary world, that's you're, you're a,
you're an island. If you, do you find that most of your Greek, most of your, this is, and this is
just, uh, yeah, Greek student Joel speaking. So, so my, for my undergraduate program, we were,
so we required coin a Greek study. Like you, you take full courses at the undergraduate level.
I would agree with you. There was a heavy, heavy division in the class. We had one kid who was
not even a ministry major kid. He was an engineering student and was just taking
Greek for fun. I freaking hated that dude because he was the best. He was the best at it. He was
the best Greek student in the class. I didn't even need to take it. I didn't even need to take it.
And all the rest of us are looking at, like the professor's like swooning over him,
like he's some sort of golden child. Do you, do you get that sense when you're in the class?
You're like, there's a heavy division between, uh, or is everybody like, I'm just taking this
because I have to. Yeah. I mean, Southern's huge. So there's a massive spectrum, but like,
there's one girl who's like such a cool person. She's like 19. She's in the undergrad level.
She bumped up to the seminary level for kicks and is taking, and she's my engineering student.
That's, she's that one. There's always one. No, I can't diss her cause she's awesome and she's
way smarter than all of us. I'm just like, all right, good for you. It is a little bit like,
I'm like, I got like seven years on you and I'm struggling with this participle nonsense at this
point. But I don't know. It's what I found is more funny is the division between Greek and Hebrew.
Sure. I, I cannot stand that language. I can't, Hebrew makes no sense to me. I don't know why
every verb has to be three root letters. That seems insane to me. Greek, Greek is poetic.
It's beautiful. I'm here for it. Hebrew can't spoken. Like it's your Greek student. Good for
you. Good for you. Yeah. Okay. All the, all the, all the, your listeners are like, what, why?
But, but you see this is how this is what this question elicits that kind of response right
there. So it's so wrong with problems. Okay. Here we go. If you were, if, well, excuse me,
where would you try? Again, ask the question, right? Where would you time travel if it were
possible? Where, where would you go at what, at what time period? What, where are you going to,
and if you say something like, oh, I want to be there at the, at the feeding of the 5,000 or
like whatever. I'm like, if you give me the Bible answer, we're all going to be really
disappointed. Yeah. No, I feel that. I feel that. It's good. That's a good point. That's a good point.
You nearly like the 20s. Okay. 20s. Yeah. I feel like, because like, let's be honest, I,
you, you kind of want to be able to have civilized society. Yeah. The cute answer is like, oh,
somewhere in the mid, no, you're going to die. But like 20s is safe enough. But like,
I feel like we're, it's interesting times, you know, 100% middle of it creeping up
somewhere around that. And maybe between World War I and World War II would just be an
interesting time period to kind of get a, get a pulse on, like go to a couple,
go to a couple of coffee shops, start talking to some locals, see what's up. I think it'd be fun.
That's interesting. Good. Yeah. All right. Who are your heroes in real life?
IRL. Yep.
There's a real life. Man, there's a guy, his name is Gary. So here's the thing. I grew up,
you can, I don't know if you guys have been chatting with me for a little bit. I've got
somewhere in between a nerd and like California skater boy vibes, you know, kind of there's,
there's a little bit of an odd dichotomy there. So I'm passionate about resource creation,
about pornography, but I've also said, bro, probably four times in this conversation.
So I grew up in this deeply conservative Dutch reformed church context up in Canada,
you know, Calvinist to the core, baby sprinklers, men like showing emotion is
mmm. Yeah. Heavy stoicism, 100%. You got it. You got three forms, unity, Westminster,
all the good stuff. I was born in, I was born in West Michigan. So I know all about Dutch
reform culture, 100%. Dude, let's go and also look at me like clearly. You joined the club.
I got it. Yes. I'm quite, I've Dutch. Everything in me is fresh off the boat. So,
but there's, but I say all that as a caricature. These are some of the church I grew up in has
some of the most wonderful men I've ever met. And I had my punk stage where I was like,
Oregon music sucks. This is the worst. And then did my own thing. But when I came back and,
and really actually started paying attention to some of the men there and like go into Bible
study, I met these old guys who just would be honest about how they were doing, really crack
open the Bible, love Jesus, and were surprisingly radical. They had a couple ideas. I was like,
really? And they wanted to, they wanted to invest in the people in their, in their church. They wanted
to reach the community. And one guy in particular, Gary, he's just this old Dutch dude. And him
and I are so different. He's just conservative as the day is long. I'm not, but, but I just learned
a lot from him because he was careful and thoughtful and intentional. And then every once
in a while would be like, no, you're the idea that you have of me right now. I'm about to blow
your mind because I've thought a lot about this. And then I was like, wait, what? You're, you're,
you know, it was, it was great. And so, you know, 20 year old me just got the opportunity to learn
a lot from, from a group of saints. So he's one of my heroes because that guy has done so much
quiet work in the church for decades. And I, I need that as a young guy who's, you know,
bouncing with ideas, want to go film and save the world. To have someone who's invested in his
local church and has done incredible impact in one place means a lot to me. Beautiful.
We'll ask you this. What is your current, you know, what we'll say current or you can do past
television series, television series. What's your, what's your faith? What's your go to?
I haven't watched TV in a long, long time. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Listen, I am, I am the guy
that will pick up a Systematics textbook and read it for kicks. I've embraced it.
Well, hey, it's been a great evening everybody. Thanks for watching.
Hey, ask me, like listen, ask me to fiction. I'll talk Dostoevsky for off your ear for an hour,
but like I'm not staying away from TV. All right. All right. Last, this is the last question.
What is your most treasured possession? Good.
So Joe Michael and I, we lived in a van for two months while we were, we were traveling.
I love this already. We were traveling through Florida and Texas. We were working on an old
documentary and one of the things we did, one of the things we did, we had this thing we invented
called tub hopping. I cannot believe I should not be saying this. I love it. This is what we live for.
Here we go. So what, so tub hopping and we were younger. Okay. This was young. We're living,
we had a go look, hit me up on Instagram at it's the Valk. You'll see there's an old 1977 Dodge
tradesman van high top. We got it rebuilt and lived in it for, for two months. And so young,
young lads, short on money, high on risk factor. And we, as you guys, if this wasn't only handful
of years ago, we have a tub hopping. So we found out this beautiful thing where there's an inverse
correlation between the level of security and the niceness of the hotel. The nicer the hotel,
you can just stroll on in there. And so what we did is we'd chuck on a pair of bathing suits and
stroll into hotels, chill in their hot tubs and then rate them on the way to then leave. So
we invited ourselves into dozens of hotels across Eastern United States through Florida,
through Texas. During the travels, I bought a guitar, a crash guitar for the process.
And during the travels, I just collected stickers from, from all over the place we went to.
And I just stickered up this whole, this old guitar. I don't anticipate having any
period of two months in my life that was more fun than living in the van. And so I have that guitar.
It's awesome. It's all stickers. It's got all these stickers on it. And I would be destroyed if I,
if I wreck that thing. That's amazing. It's got all these memories from all these ridiculous
things that we did. I'm, I'm, I'm passionate about having fun. And God is, God is good. And he's
given me some fun opportunities. I can't say that Michael will probably shoot me for telling
that story. I can't say that I haven't done the same thing. Like we didn't necessarily rate them,
but we've been into plays hotels that we have not been a guest at before to go swimming. So
guest quotes. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Well, can you tell us where we can find the documentary
where, how people can get a hold of you? Yeah, I'd be, I'd be happy to man into the light
documentary.com. It's free. I genuinely, my, my request is of your listeners is
if you would prayerfully consider if this documentary could be something that you could
bring to your local church, to your pastors, to your small groups. And if you watch it,
and if you like it, I hope it's helpful for people. So into the light documentary.com.
You can also hit us up on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and all this stuff,
all the socials for at into the light documentary. If you want to stay in contact with us or yeah,
that's all the, that's all the needs. Yeah. As, as always, we, if you head over to dudesanddadspodcast.com
Andy will put all this good stuff, all the contacts and all that, the show notes, you can
follow up and find the info we've talked about here. So yeah, engage there, dudesanddadspodcast.com
and on Instagram. Well done. You always said that. Like, where am I supposed to pull in there?
And Instagram dudes and dads podcast tightly run ship around here. Hey dudes and dads podcast
at gmail.com. If you got any show ideas, feedback, all the goodies we'd love to hear from you,
you know, just engage our voicemail too. We have 574 213 8702. I had to get that one there too.
Thank you so much. Please call leave a voicemail. We love it. It's good. Hey guys, we're grateful
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listening community couldn't do it without you. So until next time, friends, we wish you grace and peace.