Iron on Iron Group Tue, Feb 11, 2025 2:14 - Steve Brooks I'm saying something. I'm talking. I can't hear you though. 2:29 - Unidentified Speaker Best meeting ever so far. 2:36 - james mauney Oh, I can hear you. 3:02 - Bryan’s iPad How about now? 3:06 - james mauney Loud and clear, Ryan. 3:11 - Bryan’s iPad Zordy just waiting around. 3:16 - Unidentified Speaker There we go now. 3:21 - Bryan’s iPad Can you hear me? 3:26 - Brandon Zortman There you go, yeah. 3:44 - james mauney You guys have a countdown until you're at summer camp yet? Or is that just us? 4:11 - Unidentified Speaker Not quite yet. 4:13 - Bryan’s iPad I think we start that like 30 days before. 4:18 - Nathan Riley There's too much math. 4:20 - Brandon Zortman We've been counting down to our Valentine's banquet that we've got this weekend, because that's our big fundraiser for camp. So it's kind of, we get, We got to get through that first. 4:37 - Bryan’s iPad That's fun. 4:38 - james mauney What do you guys do for your banquet? 4:41 - Multiple Speakers The students, like, serve a meal, and then couples will buy tickets. We do two nights of it, so it'll be Friday night and Saturday night, so they'll buy tickets to come. 4:53 - Brandon Zortman Students will serve them dinner, and then they do, like, a little, like, kind of comedy play type thing, so we've been doing that. For like weeks and then they'll do a cake auction afterwards where people will bring like 40 or 50 cakes each night and then sell them and some of them are like known like have legendary status in the church and they'll go for like sometimes four or five hundred bucks a cake. 5:23 - james mauney Wow. 5:23 - Snowbird Outfitters So I've never paid that much for a keg. No, that's reasonable. 5:30 - james mauney Cake, cake. We don't have that kind of fundraiser. 5:36 - Snowbird Outfitters We can play different fundraisers at our show. 5:40 - Nathan Riley That's a Catholic fundraiser. 5:43 - Snowbird Outfitters That's what that is. 5:45 - Multiple Speakers OK, so we're the least tech savvy people on the planet. 5:52 - Snowbird Outfitters And we just now got our audio and visual to work. And it's not in the way that we want it to be. We've got all these cool microphones and cameras, and we're just using the computer stuff now. We gave up. So there. All right, did you guys introduce each other to each other again, like you did last week, last month? 6:20 - james mauney No. Do you need to? 6:22 - Snowbird Outfitters Are we good? Yeah, we're fine. All right, y'all want a good start? 6:27 - Bryan’s iPad We were just talking about cakes. 6:29 - Snowbird Outfitters Did you guys need to finish your conversation about cakes? Are y'all talking about creative fundraising? 6:34 - Brandon Zortman I just brought up, I think it was James brought up like Countdown to Camp, and I was mentioning we have our Valentine's Banquet this week, that's like our fundraiser. So like, we got to get through that first. Is that the one where there's like, it's like a date night and you guys put on a performance as well? Yeah. Yes, I remember that. 6:56 - Snowbird Outfitters The keg auction. Not a keg auction. 7:00 - Multiple Speakers Right. 7:01 - Brandon Zortman Don't get that rumor started. That's fair. Schindler's Drive is my favorite church because of the auctions. 7:12 - james mauney The keg auctions. 7:14 - Snowbird Outfitters Okay, so let's get started. I want to, in case, so ideally, for these meetings, we want to, we don't want you guys to have any more homework, because I know that you're all busy. And a lot of you are reading other stuff and always constantly studying to teach. So we don't want to, we don't want to give you any more homework and feel like you have to do any more stuff. That's why we also sent out that cheat sheet from this book. And again, if you didn't have a chance to read that, that's totally fine. What I would like to do is I would like to just throw out some kind of summary ideas from the book. And if you're not familiar, Jonathan Haidt is a professor in New York at NYU. He's not a Christian, but is very sympathetic to Christianity. In fact, he wrote a book called The Righteous Mind, which kind of talked about how we're wired for some sort of religion. And even in this book, when he's talking about religion, he quoted Blaise Pascal talking about how we have a God-shaped vacuum inside each one of us. But he's not a Christian. The first book I read by him was called The Coddling of the American Mind, which is just It's just really amazing. If you haven't a chance to read that, you should also. And then I think this book is really timely and it's really beneficial for us working in student ministry. And I really like it because in this book, he sets up the problem really well. And then he also provides really good solutions. And so in just in summary, I wanna throw this out here And then we'll, I want, I really want this to be an opportunity where we can share and talk through stuff. But he talks about how, and from between 2010 and 2015, he refers to the great rewiring of like adolescent minds. And, and he says that this is because of the advent of both smartphones and with social media usage. And what's really interesting is if you follow his argument and look at the studies that he cites, that he's saying there's a lot of people that would just say, oh, there's a correlation. There's a correlation between heavy social media, smartphone usage, and all this anxiety, depression. But what he's doing is he's actually saying, no, it's more than a correlation. The advent of of smartphone technology combined with social media, combined with early, with students, kids getting them younger and younger, that it actually is causing this anxious generation. And I agree with him. He says that it's more than just a correlation, but this is the cause for what we're experiencing. And I think the reason why I think this is important for us is because we are dealing with predominantly kids who the first phone they ever had was a smartphone, and a lot of them get it before they're 10 years old. And so what he, a lot of the book is him talking about the difference between what we now have as a phone-based childhood and comparing and contrasting that with the play-based childhood, which for most of us, we grew up with a play-based childhood. You know, I can remember as a kid I would be outside most of the time. You know, my parents were the kind that were like, oh, you just go ride your bike. And I can and I can remember being less than 10 years old and riding my bike miles away and being told to come home when it gets dark. And he's saying that there's so many of and again, he's coming from a an evolutionary mindset. He he's talking about relationships and he he goes into detail about how human relationships are supposed to form, and they're supposed to be, you know, synchronous and, and where you have face to face people doing things together. And then he even talks about specifically with with girls, how they are, they long to have a real community. And it is so fascinating, because he's doing this from an evolutionary mindset. And he's saying that we've developed that human, human, humans have developed into being communal people. And we would say, no, we're image bearers of God who've been created for community, both with our creator and with others. And so he, so we'll talk about that and he'll say play-based and phone-based. And then what's, what I think is really interesting is he talks about the rise of safetyism, which we have all seen this. I mean, we actually, for the college retreat, which was last month, for the college retreat, we had some college pastors say that they canceled coming because it was supposed to there's supposed to be ice on the roads, which, again, I was totally fine with that. But then they said they couldn't do it because some of their students parents told their kids they couldn't go. And it's like, oh, OK, so these legal adults, their parents are telling them what to do. And and it really just highlights this idea that in our American culture, we've moved into this like he I think height calls it the cult of safety ism, where we're we have so it's we have tried to eliminate any type of obstacle that could come into our kids ways. And in the continent of the American mind, he talks about, you know, people refer to helicopter parenting, that they're always watching their kids doing, making sure that whatever's happening that they're in control of that he says, He says that what we've moved into is a period of bulldozer parenting where parents want to try to push anything negative that could harm their kids out of the way. Well, that combined with our kids retreating from a real life based like play based childhood to a phone based childhood that we have we have increased safety in the real world to the point where kids aren't able to have free play, they're not able to have unsupervised playing, they're not able to work out conflict resolution on the playground or on the basketball court. And, and we've, we've gotten rid of any ability to take risks, which he, he counteracts that with quoting a guy who wrote a book called anti fragile saying that human beings are actually anti fragile in the sense that it is risks and difficulties that make us stronger, and that we're actually, he would say, evolutionarily wired, and we would say, that created by God, to learn from these risks, and to experience a greater ability to take risks so that we can learn more about ourselves and the world in which we live in. And that actually creates, that creates stronger, more confident adults. So he all of this, and then he moves on, he talks about specifically with girls, how girls are affected more. And a lot of the reason why girls are affected more is because they are more visually stimulated in the sense that they are comparison oriented. So they see pictures of girls on Instagram and they automatically compare themselves to that. They're drawn to emotions and they're drawn to connecting and they've moved their connecting online. And then with guys, he talks about video games and pornography. And how the smartphones have increased that. And then I thought a couple, two other things. One, when he talked about social media, if you guys, we talked about this, this past summer, one of the youth pastor breakouts that the social media leads to social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction, which we can talk about that. And then the last thing I wanted to mention, as far as for summary, anybody who hasn't looked over this is that he, um, he says that what we need to do, there's four things that parents need to do, which is really interesting because at the end of the day, this book is really a parenting book because he'll say that parents need to, um, not have a smartphone until they're in high school and not have social media until they're 16. And then we need to have schools. We need to be advocates for schools to be bell to bell. Phone-free, and then the last one is, I think, more play-based childhood, less phone-based. So there we go. That's my summary for you. Anybody that got to read it or look over the notes or just are noticing what's going on with your students, what are you guys seeing? What do you guys think about this? And then what are y'all doing? What do we need to be doing? Go. I'm going to add something. Never mind. But I think and I think we're on the same page with this. But the reason we're passionate about this and really the thing that he leaves out is that this is such an issue of discipleship or becomes that because if students aren't taught how to rightly use their phones and students are able to do whatever they want or have an inability to deal with problems because it's bulldozer parenting or whatever. All of that fleshes out eventually in discipleship. And I'm sure you guys see this as much or more than we do with your students, but that this isn't just a, we're not, you know, we're not separated beings. We're not, well, that affects our physical life and everything we do over here, but it's not affecting our spiritual lives and the reality of our relationship with Christ. But we're seeing that as these, collide, and as they intermix, it's affecting students in the area that they can be discipled. And it's affecting students in the way we can even engage with them in discipleship, both from things like confronting sin and calling out sin, where they're so uncomfortable with things like that because they don't know how to deal with conflict, but even just the practicality of having the attention necessary to study scripture for more than 10 minutes, having the attention necessary to sit through a sermon and actually understand points or the finer points of the sermon. So it's so, so quickly becomes an issue of discipleship because we're, you know, I think John said it maybe at the college retreat that, and he mentioned it kind of but he just said, you know, so many of us are being discipled by our phones more than by the word. And that's terrifying. You know, that's, that's a terrifying reality, but it's a terrifying reality that I would assume that most students that we're dealing with are in the trenches of And so I just, I just say that to, to make sure we're all on the same page. And I think we are all on the same page, but obviously that's what height leaves out because he's not a believer. He doesn't see the discipleship principle. And he kind of does. I think that's why the positive thing he promotes for parents to do. He's just not making the spiritual connection to how it's even more deeply affecting us than just our ability to communicate in person. Now, now, now they can talk. Okay, also, oh my gosh. Well, look, Taylor Taylor said their local school, the local private school read this and they went bell to bell. And Taylor, I thought you weren't going to meet with us today. I'm gone in 12 minutes. Hey, OK, did you have you talked with any of the leadership of that private school and what like how it's working, what's happening with that? 19:51 - Taylor Crouse I this reminded me I just text them and I said, hey, guys, I'd love to hear what it would have been some wins, what any drawbacks, but I mean, we've got a good chunk of students that go to that school. So I'd even wonder from them. I mean, we see it at camp, like, I mean, we take their phones for the week. And, uh, I mean, we we've had some major pushback from students and parents sometimes doing that. One girl like had a borderline, like panic attack when we took it from her. And I was like, Oh my, Goodness. This is like, I mean, this is proof of addiction right here. This is like withdrawal. You are under, you are about to, you're starting to experience it and you're losing your mind, but we'll get to the end of the week. And some of them are like, I don't even want it back. This was an amazing week. And so it's just having, you know, I mean, you're just reminded every time you hear it. Yeah. We need to be doing some more about this. We need to be talking about this more. So I'd love to hear any ways that you guys have been regularly like talking about this. I don't know if you do so many sermon series or if you just work it into your regular sermons or what you guys have seen success with if you do a weekend retreat or whatever it might be. 21:25 - Snowbird Outfitters I'll reiterate something real quick. It is really funny to me where I'll have conversations with students every summer where they will say the best thing about being here this week, which, you know, it hurts my feelings because, you know, I think probably like the teaching, the leading and worship's got to be top 10, but they'll say, they'll say the best thing was that I didn't have my phone for a week. And I can't help but be sarcastic because that That's my native language. And I'll say stuff like, man, wouldn't it be amazing if you could do that when you're back home? And but that's the case. Like, I mean, there is a legit freedom that kids get from coming here. Now, obviously, they are surrounded in Christian community, which is awesome. They're hearing solid teaching from scripture. Awesome. But they're doing it in a phone free context. And it just adds to the benefit they're getting from it. 22:24 - Taylor Crouse But yeah, what are some of y'all doing? Yeah, my favorite thing is the video at the end of the week, but I don't know about you guys, but that's just, yes, that was me. 22:37 - Snowbird Outfitters Didn't Issa just make you a video like this past weekend? 22:41 - Taylor Crouse She did, it was awesome. 22:43 - Snowbird Outfitters Yeah. Thanks for sharing her with us. Yeah, she's pretty great. You can have her. Okay. Well, I'd like to jump in. 22:51 - Jack Caldwell I think in a lot of ways, Snowbird, the week of Snowbird, hits a lot of the points that they're making in the book, Anxious Generation, of what we're supposed to be doing. We've been phone free every year we've been coming. And at first, because I think I read in the rules somewhere, phones weren't allowed. And I was just like, we ain't doing it. And my kids do the same thing. They go through the withdrawals. Day one, by the time we're done with our six and a half hour to 12, depending on how bad our buses are drive, we, you know, they're looking up, they're talking there. And then by Wednesday, it's almost like that full detox is over. And, and they are fully engaged. They are. And, and then they're, they're doing outdoor play, which they don't often do. They're doing things that are challenging. They're going, they're climbing stuff. They're doing doing stuff that's scary. They don't have their parents lording over them, no matter how much they text me and all that jazz. And so it's one of those things that I have every year is that just like you said, I have kids who go, you know, man, one of the best parts about this week is that I'm free from the temptation of my phone. And for some of them, it's free from they had first week. They've not looked at porn, you know, you know, in a week or even consecutive days for some it's just that anxiety of comparing. And one thing that we implemented several years ago because of the effect it had while we were at Snowbird, before we knew this kind of information, was our youth times, we have phone boxes for small groups. And so if we have a youth event that's like on campus, we do our best to be like, hey guys, phone's in the box, you don't get them back until the end of youth. And for a lot of our kids, it actually is. It's the excuse they need to not have to now for a lot of my kids, I'm a halfway through the service. I'm like, Hey, go put your phone in the box, you jerk. Um, but, but it is, it is something that their attention and their focus and their engagement goes up exponentially. Whenever we have that happen, we have that phone pulled away, even for the hour and a half that it is. So that's kind of what. What we've experienced with the phones and removing them. Go ahead. 25:16 - Multiple Speakers Can I ask a question on that? Just thinking about phone boxes, like do you, I mean, one, like initially when you jumped that out, any pushback? 25:26 - Taylor Crouse Two, is it an optional thing? Like we've got the phone boxes here for you, drop your phone off. If a kid keeps it, are you like chasing them down and you tackle them? Rip the phone off and throw it in the box. Like, what is that? Is it just an optional thing? Or how, I mean, how have you built a culture where the phone box is like, Hey, this is an, we're not policing this, but this is kind of an expectation. I think that's where we all would want to get to, to where they just kind of know when I get here, I put my phone in this box and then I pick it up on my way out and we're not having to police it all the time. 26:04 - Jack Caldwell Maybe talk a little bit about that. Yeah. So initially I didn't have pushback for parents for the phone boxes at youth at Snowbird. I have parents who actively work with their kids to sneak phones, but but for yes, every year and it's like, come on. Almost said their name. Don't never mind. But as far as the kids had a little bit of pushback and getting whatever and basically for me if they sneak the foam and I don't see it. I'm not actively like looking at their pants pocket be like that a phone shape what is that you know we don't do stuff like that but if if for us I'm like hey I need to go do it most time they do it if they don't I give them the option I said you can you can go put it in your box for your group or I can put it in my pocket which which one you prefer 100 of the time they'd rather go put it in the box for fear of for somehow I'd be able to get in their phone but um a little bit of pushback from students but again honestly after we We had about a month of, and I still remind them, in the middle of our announcements, welcome, glad you're here. And don't forget, we ask that you be respectful. One of those things is put your phone in the box. I know you may have forgotten. How about you can get up during this first song and go put it away and stuff like that. And some do, some still keep. And if they pull it out in the middle of small groups, whatever, we're like, hey, awesome, put it in the box and we'll go. So we don't, we're not dragging it, ripping it out of their hands. And it's one of those things. Were to, we have our system, we have a three strike system, stuff like that. If someone was to blow up about, you can't touch my phone, you can't have my phone. Okay. We're going to talk with parents about it because of how you just responded. Um, and sometimes that works sometimes, you know, whatever, but it's really just, it's been a pushing through it because everyone, no one needs their phone for that hour and a half, you know, like, Oh, my Bible's on that phone. Well, luckily I put every verse up on the screen. I have enough Bibles. I can give everybody a physical Bible. If they need one. Um, you know, and so we, we, we kind of counteract those measures, but as far as Wednesday night youth, I don't have much pushback at all. And parents are excited about like, they have no power over their children either. So, um, but, but yeah, so that's kind of just the expectation. We set it up. In fact, like these are, these are our boxes. And so they come, they show up and they put their phone in and we have a journal for them take notes that we give them and they pick it up and it's like an exchange thing and and all that and it's just kind of become the culture and I have a couple dunderheads who constantly push back against it and and I just get to put their phone in my pocket for the night and and they you know they 28:44 - Multiple Speakers will say they'll make sure to say bye to me because they want their phone back so that's kind of that's kind of how we run it um how about anyone else has anyone else experienced this within their their group 28:54 - Nathan Riley & Jacob Range I think one of the challenges is um kind of like what y'all and I think y'all mentioned it a little bit, like going for a week of camp when the kids are stepping away and you're getting them out of their mindset, like the students might even be okay with it. I get the most pushback when I talk about those things from the parents. Because in reality, here I am trying to train students to do something when I have them for one day a week or one hour a week when they're coming into youth. And so like if they have an addiction, I'm not going to break the addiction in this one hour. In reality, and I'm going to play devil's advocate a little bit. If they are so tied to their phone and that is part of their identity when they come to your place, I think eventually, yes, they'll get to the point that you're talking about, Jack, where they are open, they're welcoming. But in like a first time guest person, like you're taking a part of themselves. That's like taking their left arm. So like, is there benefit in that. But the other side is I am ministering to kids who parents are also addicted to their phones. And so, like, I would say even the anxieties of not having the phones for the parents is portrayed and projected onto the students. And so how I don't know if there's a simple solution other than the fact that, like, we're not called just to be to be pastors of students, or called to be pastors of families, and to equip their parents to be able to say, hey, here's some tips on how to disciple your kids. But just wondered your thoughts on that aspect of like, if you take it away, which I think there's good, I think there's benefit, like, that's not going to break an addiction that they have where the other however many hours a week they have it. 30:49 - Jack Caldwell I would just say in our context real quick that because we push through to that point that that it is kind of the cultural thing. I very rarely have a kid show up who doesn't have somebody they're coming with like off the street. It's usually a friend bringing a friend kind of thing. And when they see their friend put their phone in, it's like it's like he talks about in the book. He talks about trying to get more people on board to where the social pressure is not there. But but you're right there. And again, I'm we're we're not searching pockets. We ask and we you know, if they pull it out, then we talk about it, but you're, you're right. It is something that you have to push through. And again, it's not a deal breaker. You're not kicked out of youth because you kept your phone, but you know, working on that, that luckily we've, we've reached a point where a majority are doing it. So it's not as devastating because they're matching what, you know, Billy, who brought them is doing, but I agree. 31:40 - Unidentified Speaker That's a definitely a valid point. 31:42 - Brandon Zortman In our context, we were a little bit different where we, most of, most of the time, if we have somebody they usually are coming from a friend, but we're also in a spot where we do sometimes have kids that are coming kind of off the street a little bit. So we, pretty much since I've been here, we pretty much had a no, pretty quickly after I got here, we went to a no phone policy. Initially we were letting students like in small groups or in youth use their phone for their Bible. That was pretty quickly obviously being abused. So I was just like, no more, like use a physical Bible. So, but then I don't know, it was maybe like a year or two we started doing kind of like a hybrid of what you're talking about, Jack, of basically making it an option on, like, they know they're not allowed to use their phones on Wednesday night. Like, if Mayor or Leader sees a phone out, they put it away. But we started giving them the option of turning it in. And, like, I'm basically like, and then there's, we have, like, points for different things. So it's like, hey, if you turn in your phone, when you get more points, basically. Basically, just like a little extra incentive where it's like, hey, you don't, you can't use your phone during service anyway, might as well do that. And basically being like, hey, it's good for you to just have physical separation away from your phone every week anyway. Like even if you, even just leaving it in your pocket, there's that like constant anxiety, like whenever it buzzes or whatever. As far as camp, we've done, and this isn't like prescriptive, every group is different, but we haven't done phones at camp or even on the bus. And when I came here, it was pretty easy for me to do that because Jonathan, who's our lead pastor, he was previously the youth pastor here years ago. And that's what they did. And I was like, hey, that's all I need. All I need is to be able to say, hey, there's precedent. Our senior pastor did it whenever he was a youth pastor. So we just kind of took that, because initially I is going to be like, hey, we'll collect them whenever we get to camp. And some groups do that. And that's great for us. We went ahead and took the extra step. And I mean, we're coming from Jacksonville, Florida. So it's not a short bus ride, but they basically just being like, hey, this is an opportunity that you don't usually get to basically figure out how to entertain yourselves, like hang out like we watch movies on the bus or whatever. But I encourage them like, hey, bring stuff to entertain yourself on the bus and make your brain work a little bit instead of sitting there like this for the whole the whole bus ride, and yet whenever I've gotten pushback, and this kind of surprised me whenever I first started in youth ministry, was I didn't anticipate how much parents would be pushing back. Because I'm like, whenever you were going to camp as a teenager, your only lifeline to home was to go to the office and use a phone that was attached to the wall. But the last thing I'll say is I have seen our students, like whenever you're separated from it, all of a sudden you see other people with it, and you see the effect that it has on it. We had, I think it was maybe two or three years ago at camp, evidently whenever, it was on Wednesday night, so the girls were at, guys were at main campus, girls were at north campus, and our girls were sharing a bus with girls from a different group that were coming back. All the girls from that group had their phones, and my wife said whenever they got on the bus, that whole group was in the back, And it was crazy because the back half of the bus, everybody's faces were lit up from this other group because they're all looking at their phones. And all of our girls are in the front and they don't have their phones. So it's like dark in the front half of the bus. And our girls actually like commented, they were like, man, they look miserable. 35:26 - Unidentified Speaker Like they commented about how students who still had their phones looked like they were having a worse time. 35:32 - Brandon Zortman And when I worked at camp, the time most students that I worked with didn't have their phones. Times where I had students who had their phones, they always had, they didn't realize it, but they always had a worse week. 35:46 - Snowbird Outfitters Man, that's crazy. I want to, I'll say, I want to say a couple things. Actually, this is something that I would easily talk about for hours, so I need to limit myself. But one is, I really appreciated, Jack said something that was really helpful when he mentioned that I think there are a lot of students who actually want an excuse to be able to be separated from their phones. And when we provide that opportunity, it's really helpful. And I was talking with Harry about this the other day. I think it was the New York Times, I tried to look it up, I couldn't find it. But I read an article that was talking about the most read articles from an news organization from last year. And the first one was how to break free from your smartphone. And it's really interesting because, you know, there's a even one of the girls who works with us year round just got one of those light phones, which is like basically it's a dumber smartphone because she realizes, oh, she's using her smartphone way too much. And she really is. That's where she's spending all of her time. And it reminded me of a conversation I had with a student pastor this summer. His name's Barry Agnew. He's in South Carolina. And he said that he's ministering in the same context, the same high school that he grew up in, his students go to. And he found a video on YouTube that one of the guys that he graduated high school with had uploaded of walking around with a camcorder when he was in high school, and his kids saw this video, he was showing them a video in youth group. And they're like, Oh, man, it's so loud. Like he walked in from the hallways into the lunchroom. And they're like, man, why is it so loud in the lunchroom? And realized, oh, yeah, most middle schools and high schools now. And this is what I talks about are like zombie land, where you walk through the halls, and you walk in the lunchroom, and it's it's dead quiet because people are surrounded by their peers, looking at their phones. And it's just really interesting. It is I do it is so detrimental to our society. And then I think Jack said it also, you know, for a lot of kids, they are just doing what they've seen their parents do. And, and, and in reality, there's so many kids that the the only thing they see their parents doing at home when they get home from school is piddling on their phones. So, I mean, like, it is, it's pretty detrimental in so many ways. I did want to say, oh, a couple of things I wanted to point out. One is that in the book, he talks about in areas where schools have gone to bell to bell, and I'm actually, I gave this book to the principal at our high school, and I've been trying to talk with her of these things. Like I do think I see a huge benefit both with education and maturity and development. But most schools, the biggest pushback that they have is from parents who want to be helicoptering over their kids. And yeah, I think Brandon pointed out like, yeah, when I was in school, and I'm, you know, ancient, I was born in the 70s. The only way that I could get a hold of my parents if I needed to during the school day, which I never did. I never needed to get a hold of my parents. My parents never needed to get a hold of me, but you could go to the office. We'll go to the office and I could, there's a phone. I can call my parents. My parents can call me. Every classroom has an intercom where they can say, yes, so-and-so needs to come to the office. Their parents are on the phone. I mean, like that's how everybody else grew up and it's okay. And the other thing I wanted to ask, James, didn't you buy these for your leaders? And if so, did they read through it and how did that happen? 40:01 - james mauney Yes. Yeah. So this summer after Zach initially shared the book with me, before I had even gotten home, I ordered 20 copies on Amazon and they were waiting for me in my church office when we got back from camp. Passed them out to my parents at our annual parent meeting. And I think I've had five or six comments that they read it. The problem I've run into is the ones who read it were the ones who were already doing most of these things, and they're just confirmed in it. I have a weird subculture in our church where there's a sect of parents who are very into this type of thing, and they have offered their kids money. One parent in particular has offered their son $3,000 cash if he makes it to high school graduation without ever being found on social media, like no sneaking an account anywhere and without asking for it. And their justification is, is that they see other parents paying $200 a week for counseling. Um, and that like the $3,000 is going to get spent regardless for joy. And, um, that's kind of ingenious. 41:16 - Nathan Riley & Jacob Range Yeah, it's great. 41:17 - james mauney So, Um, but, but yeah, I mean, you know, it's funny this summer was our first summer going, uh, suffering free to snowbird. Um, and my ultimate motivation for it was, I just figured that I was, I was fighting battles anyways. Um, and the battles I was fighting was like stuff was getting home from snowbird that shouldn't have got home. I mean, parents finding out about kids doing things that weren't big deals. Um, you know, it's, it's summer camp. It's, okay. They stayed up till midnight. It's okay. They woke up at 6 AM and only got six hours of sleep. It's one week of their life. Like you wouldn't even know about this. If you, if you, if they didn't have a phone, like, or, you know, call in and, and, and tell him, tell him about dumb drama that like, should have been just resolved in the moment, but because they had a cell phone, they were able to call their mom and complain about it right then. And didn't let it get resolved. Um, so I was like, if I'm going to have to fight anyways and have to deal with things like I'm going to move that fight to the beginning of camp and just say, hey, I'm going to stand my ground here and I'm going to fight for this to be a phone free camp. And I mean, I definitely had some battles I had to face. And I think they're the most unexpected ones. Like we had a 17 year old boy who has pretty significant food allergies, but has gone snowboard every single time we've ever gone and has never had any allergy. I've never he's never had an allergy attack since I've known him. Um, and his mom was like, I just, I just can't let him go phone free. Cause what if he has an allergy attack? I was like, well, has he ever had one in the past? Like, when's the last time he had one? Whoa, whoa, whoa. Have you talked to snowbird about food? No, I literally he's gone to snowbird for six years and never once have they even called up to make sure there's going to be food for him. Like they just let him figure it out and then trust him. 43:05 - Multiple Speakers But now that they're taking away the phone. 43:08 - james mauney taking away the phone, it's this huge deal. So like, you know, fighting that battle, like, but it was worth it because we got home from summer camp that week and there were no battles that came home with it. You know, no drama got back. That wasn't supposed to get back. Like everything was dealt with in person. Like it was good. So yeah. I mean, I, I relate to all of this. Yeah. I'm, I, I think this book's got some really good stuff to say. I think for me as a parent, like, I'm just sitting here like, okay, my five-year-old, like, number one, I don't want her to see me addicted to my phone. And then, you know, how do I want to raise her? Like, let her do some dangerous things every once in a while and go outside without me. Like, we have a fence for a reason, you know? 43:56 - Will Morris So, but I've enjoyed it. We, on our, like, on the camp side of things, we always take phones from kids, but we, I have avoided I don't think in the five years I've been here, I don't think I have ever had a problem with a parent on phones because we carve out a 10 minute time every day that we give the phone back, the kids text their parents, and they give them back. And it's not long enough for them to do much damage, but then they get it back. And I don't remember a single time that I've had a parent push back. On that at all. So you kind of get both of it. If you if you have a large contingent of parents that are freaking out about it, even just like giving them a 10 minute chance to text mom and say, I'm alive. That has that has solved any anything that I've had to deal with. 44:55 - james mauney I'll add to when we brought our high schoolers up a couple weeks ago, I did not take phones. For that. They're my high school group. I trust them. It's three days rather than a whole week. But I had a couple students who, because of their summer camp experience of not having it, chose to leave their phones at home. 45:18 - Snowbird Outfitters Got immensely more out of it, I think. 45:21 - Will Morris I would add, just changing the direction a little bit and going back to something that was said earlier, is that we are pastors to families. And the most significant things we've done, I think, that address this are parent classes that we do. So we do a couple different things. One, there's two times a year we'll do a six-week course for parents. One of those times will be on a Wednesday night. One of those times will be on a Sunday morning. And those courses go over different things. So right now we're going through Andrew Walker's What Do I Say When book, and we're doing a six-week Wednesday night thing to talk, how do you talk to your kids about transgenderism or political engagement or whatever it is. So we take that kind of six weeks to do it. One of those chapters is on technology. So that's actually this week, and our senior pastor is teaching that one. Our senior pastor is teaching parents about how to talk to their kids and students about technology. But then almost every one of those six-week courses, no matter what direction we take that six weeks, there's almost always some kind of technology focus on one or two of those weeks. And I use that time to talk about dangers of pornography or social media addiction or whatever. I take it different ways, but I get multiple times a year where I'm putting that in front of them. I read Anxious Generation a year or a year and a half ago or something like that. And after I did that, I put it into one of those classes and kind of did a summary of it with parents there. And I also took a Sunday morning. We do sort of six-week courses with our students on Sunday mornings that we work through. And so we had kind of an open Sunday, and so I took a week there to talk about some of the ideas from that and put it into a kind of discipleship package for them. The time with the students, the students were really appreciative. They were excited to kind of hear. I told a lot of your parents, because I had already taught the parent one, and I said, a lot of your parents are probably on you about your phone. This is why, and a lot of them came out of that. A lot of them came out of that, and they were like, that totally makes sense. I'm glad. And really, after years of doing those sort of parent courses and consistently emphasizing this to parents, we have a lot of our students, I don't know what the percentage is, but we've got a lot of high school students who don't have phones. We have a lot of students who do have phones, but they're in every kind of friend group. You have students who don't have social media. They don't have phones. It's not an abnormal thing. So we don't take phones up at any of our big events and stuff. We take phones. But for student worship on a weekly basis, we don't take phones up. But there's probably only 10 phones in the room out of 70 people that are there. And that's a family discipleship thing more than a kid discipleship thing. So. That's really cool. 48:59 - Snowbird Outfitters The fact that you can get families on board. But I mean, that's even we're realizing that. Keller, my son, he just turned 13 in December. And so, you know, I'm more aware than ever of what, like, why do I have my phone in my hand when I'm at home? So I actually talked to Tanya, just my wife, a couple weeks ago, I was like, I want to actually be diligent when I get home, like put my phone somewhere and then leave it there. Obviously, that's good for me. It's better for me. But I'm so much more aware of how am I going to tell my daughter who's 11 when she's 15 to put her phone in if she's seen me every day swiping through something or clicking on or listening, watching, whatever. So it really is such a like family discipleship issue that I think everything we can do in our power, like what Jack's doing, I think is awesome because it's any step we can take in the right direction, any ground we can gain in that is going to be beneficial. And I think instruct students and show them, one, that they don't need the this, this really is an addiction. And two, how much more than they'll get out of whatever the activity is, whether it's a Bible study, or whether it's playing volleyball, it doesn't really matter. Well, it matters what they're doing, but just being actually engaged and even just able to be engaged in whatever they're doing. And then again, to me, the discipleship aspect of the reality that we're training ourselves for something? Am I training myself, like Scripture says, for godliness, because that has value in this life and also the life to come? Or am I just, because of the nature of phones, training myself to need constant input and constant entertainment and constant distraction that is discipling me away from the Lord in reality? So I think we're training ourselves to do something. We're being discipled by something. And why are we not actively pursuing the Lord? Why are we actively pursuing other things? I don't remember who I had a conversation with about this years ago, but for my children, and we have two teenagers in the house now, I've told my kids that my gift to them is that they're not gonna have any social media while they live in our house. Because I don't, I don't see any way in which the good outweighs the bad on this. And, and it really, it really is. I think that Haidt is right, like it has caused our kids to think worse, and to relate with each other in unhealthy ways. And one of the things that especially because, you know, I think about a lot about young men because my, my three oldest kids are boys. And I don't know if any of you guys ever read wild at heart, um, years ago, I think that wild at heart had a really great principle to begin with. And that went a little, uh, weird. Um, but he talked about how, um, every man has a battle to fight and adventure to live and a beauty to rescue. And I think that there's some truth to that. And what we're seeing for young men now is that that's being replaced with video games and pornography, and that the enemy is doing such a good job of manufacturing fake battles, fake adventures, and fake beauties, that it really is capturing our young men. And I think we see the same thing with our young ladies as well. Again, for me, that's not as preeminent in my thinking because my daughter is nine, eight, my daughter's eight. But I really want to be on guard to parent my kids in a way where they are living out what they've been created for. And unfortunately, smartphones seem to undermine that with most people who are not wise and discerning. Including a lot of our adults. And people who are wise and discerning. Yeah. That's, it's, yeah, it's so all encompassing. 53:45 - Jack Caldwell Um, Will, would it be possible for you to, um, share with the, maybe with, with Harry and them or with us? I would love to see what your six week plan typically looks like for parents. Cause that to me sounds pretty amazing. Amazing. And, um, and while, and I agree with, I'm not sure if it's Jacob or Nathan, um, who's wearing the blue, uh, forgive me. Um, okay. Yeah. 54:14 - Multiple Speakers Nathan, Nathan, thank you, Nathan. 54:16 - Jack Caldwell Um, hi, hi, I'm Jack. Um, but when we talked about, about that, you're, you, you have them for a week or whatever, but the parents have them for all the rest of the time. Um, and it can be kind of a bandaid what we do if we're not going back to the one that's affecting them most. So I think that sounds amazing. Um, it would love to see, I mean, you don't have to send us all your work, but just of what that typically looks like, Um, cause we've, we've never done like a class. We've done meetings for parents. We've never done a class for parents. And I think that would be, I don't know. It sounds awesome. 54:55 - Will Morris So, yeah, I can, I can send you some of the sessions we've done. Um, they're always different. So there's, there's a bunch of different ones we've done, but I can send you just kind of general overview of like what, what those have looked like, 55:10 - Snowbird Outfitters Yeah. Send that to send that to me or Harry or John, and then we'll send it out in this email thread and put it on that, uh, website, the web, the webpage, the electronic page of the internet. Um, one other thing I wanted to throw at you guys is, uh, there is is a company called yonder, y-o-n-d-r.com, yonder. And what they do is they provide magnetic lockable bags where people can put their cell phones into those bags and then they close and lock. Oh, it's over yonder, O-V-E-R-O-N-D-E-R. He's gonna put it in the thing. It's really interesting. This is what some, some folks who used to work at camp 20 years ago, are now teachers at the same school system in Atlanta, and they use these. And they, for for churches, or for venues, or for schools, they they wind up being like $25 a piece. But you put your because I think somebody mentioned it for new visitors, how there really is an anxiety that comes from a lot of people who don't have their phone on their person. And so you're able to put them in there and it magnetically locks. And then as you leave, you just, it's like the anti-theft things at the stores, you just hold it over the magnet, it opens up and they can put the bag back in whatever box you keep them in. But it's really interesting. Because we, I really do want to, especially for summer camp, you know, it is a rule that you can't have your cell phones. And what we've done in the past is we've left that up to student pastors to enforce. But I really do want to make sure that we are, that we're actually enforcing it from an institution. And I'd like to take that weight off of student pastors so that we just we can be the ones who are saying, Oh no, this is. And so for a student pastor to just say, I'm sorry, that's the rule. They, we have to do it. And I'm fine being the bad guy in that one. 57:33 - james mauney Yeah. When you guys changed the language to say it's enforced by the student pastor that like took away a lot of leverage that we had, like even just changing it back on the website to enforce by Zach. 57:47 - Jack Caldwell I didn't tell them they changed it. Like, Oh, it's enforced by us. They never knew that's their rule guys. 57:54 - Snowbird Outfitters Yeah, that's what I, and that's what I want to do. I want to, I really, it's such a big deal. And I, I just, I hate, I mean, I just despise kids having smartphones specifically with social media. And so if we can take that away from them, it really is a gift for their good to not their phone for a weekend. Tis. Tis. All right anybody else have things they want to share? 58:23 - Steve Brooks - 9 One cool thing we did our runner retreat over MLK weekend and it was during our retreat was on slowing down we had a silent retreat with Jesus time we had it was it was just pulling away and it was beautiful because I think it was God orchestrated, because TikTok was shut down right in the middle of our retreat. And then it was like, some kids were like, no, you know, but it was, it was beautiful. It's like, hey, this is what we're talking about. Hey, and is your life going to go on? And all this kind of stuff. So that was really cool. And then one cool thing that the students actually, they talk about, they still, they love it. Is when we're in the bus on our way to Snowbird, I give out a questionnaire with certain questions and I'll hand it out to each seat. And what they have to do is it's engaging conversation. So it's preventing getting on anything or all this kind of stuff. And they'll, so I'll say, okay, you get about five minutes, three minutes, and then they discuss the questions, like ask certain questions What do you think about this? What do you think about this? Tell me about this, your favorite thing at Snowbird, or just any questions I have a list. And then after the end of three minutes, I say, OK, change. And the way it works is all the students on the inside seats, on the aisle seats, at the same time, they stand up and they move a seat, one side forward and the other side back. 1:00:02 - Unidentified Speaker And then they sit down. 1:00:04 - Steve Brooks - 9 You got three minutes, a minute and a half per student to talk to each other. And then they get up again and they turn and they they keep going. I haven't done it where everybody's done everybody yet, but They love that and it's. Interaction, it's how do you talk with somebody? How do you and you get to know people that you don't even know? And then students at one student told me he said he says, yeah, it was my first thing I did with the group and it was like amazing. And then he says, and even I made it to your seat. I got to talk to you. Right? To talk to me. But that was cool to create that. That's almost like we were created to have these types of real-life relationships with each other in person. 1:00:48 - Snowbird Outfitters I don't know about that. Or at least, according to Jonathan Haidt, this is how we've evolved over millions of years. It's got to be wonderful. An unguided process over millions and billions of years. Cool. Is that what we're talking about next? Hey, do you remember what we're talking about next month? We don't remember. We're going to talk. Wilson, go ahead. One last thing. 1:01:12 - Steve Brooks - 9 Nathan and Jacob, at least you have to sit on the side where your names are. 1:01:18 - Unidentified Speaker Come on, guys. 1:01:19 - Snowbird Outfitters Get with the program. For our screen, it is. 1:01:22 - Steve Brooks - 9 It's correct. See, you've got to flip it. You've got to flip it. So I'm just giving you feedback. 1:01:28 - Nathan Riley & Jacob Range That's why we don't know who's who. Yep, that's really it. 1:01:32 - Unidentified Speaker helpful. 1:01:32 - Snowbird Outfitters Yep. On our screens, you guys are mislabeled. It does. 1:01:36 - Nathan Riley & Jacob Range The cameras flip. I forget that it does that. OK, there we go. 1:01:41 - Snowbird Outfitters We're not the only ones. Yeah. Well, I'm Snowbird. 1:01:44 - Nathan Riley & Jacob Range Yeah, this is Outfitters. 1:01:46 - Snowbird Outfitters Yeah. OK, so we'll send out an email. It's been an hour. We don't want to take too much time from you, but we'll send out an email with a summary of some of this stuff, some links. Will Morris is gonna send us curriculum on how we can all disciple our parents, and we'll send that out, and then we'll send out a teaser for next month because we've forgotten what we wrote down that we're gonna talk about. All right, we love all of you. 1:02:17 - Steve Brooks - 9 Yeah, love you guys. Love you guys. Yeah, thank you very much. Have a great day. You too. 1:02:23 - Multiple Speakers Is it snowing out there for you? 1:02:25 - Snowbird Outfitters It's a typical winter day. And Andrews. Gross rain. Gray and rainy. Come visit. No, it's raining here too. Terrible. Oh, wait. 1:02:35 - Steve Brooks - 9 Who's got? Who's that? 1:02:36 - Multiple Speakers Oh, Brian's got snow. 1:02:38 - Snowbird Outfitters Sweet. I think he's got snow. Brian, where are you at? Lynchburg, Virginia. 1:02:44 - Jack Caldwell How many inches? 1:02:45 - Unidentified Speaker That's a lot. 1:02:46 - Snowbird Outfitters I measured about two hours ago and it was just under three. 1:02:51 - Bryan’s iPad It hit about, started about five this morning. 1:02:56 - Unidentified Speaker Wow. 1:02:57 - Jack Caldwell Yeah, it's awesome. 1:02:58 - Bryan’s iPad It's supposed to stop sometime tomorrow afternoon. 1:03:02 - Unidentified Speaker Gosh. 1:03:02 - Bryan’s iPad Yeah, there's ice in the mix coming this evening, though, so good times await. And we're below the Mason-Dixon, so I'm originally from West Virginia, so this is normal, but on this side of the mountains, it's different, so it's always interesting. 1:03:24 - Snowbird Outfitters Shorty, what's the temperature where you're at right now? 1:03:29 - Multiple Speakers 66. Let me check. 1:03:31 - Snowbird Outfitters 70 degrees. 1:03:32 - Jack Caldwell Hey, two days ago, how hot was it for you? 1:03:37 - Brandon Zortman It was 83 the past three days here. Yeah, I think it was close to it. 1:03:44 - Jack Caldwell Well, the high today says 79, so. 1:03:48 - Unidentified Speaker Yeah. 1:03:48 - Multiple Speakers You're two hours south of me. 1:03:51 - Snowbird Outfitters Yeah. Bundle up.