Strong and Courageous in a Soft Church - Interview with Tom Ascol

The dads confront the modern "gentle parenting" movement head-on, arguing that its rejection of authority, restraint, and negative consequences has produced fragile families and weakened churches. Looking at Eli, David, and their sons, they show why Scripture insists that love includes rebuke, chastening, confession, and consistency. They discuss how to discipline without anger, how to correct while maintaining relationship, how to set wise family rules, and why children thrive inside clear boundaries. A needed re-alignment of grace and truth for Christian fathers.

Is "Christian nationalism" just a scary label—or is it simply what happens when Christians take Christ's lordship over every area of life seriously? Kevin and Bill discuss the latest polling on Christian nationalism, expose the myth of "neutral" pluralism, and show why every law system rests on a god and a worldview. From Saudi Arabia to Samoa to Washington, D.C., they argue that nations either acknowledge the Triune God or drift into humanistic anarchy—and that declarations alone aren't enough without repentance, justice, and obedience to God's law.

Did the true Church disappear for 1,500 years until the Reformation—or has Christ always preserved His people? Kevin and Josh examine the meaning of "the catholic church" in the Apostles' Creed, the promise of Matthew 16:18, and the role of church history in understanding Christ's ongoing work.

More than half of Americans now believe alien life exists—and many Christians are quietly wondering if UFOs might fit somewhere in their theology. In this episode, Kevin and Bill tackle the UFO craze head-on: the math behind life "by chance," the implications of Christ dying once for all, and the way alien fascination so easily becomes a distraction from evangelism, discipleship, and the worship of the living God. Is this curiosity harmless…or a spiritual setup?

Voddie Baucham, the Founders movement, the SBC floor fights over critical race theory—Tom Ascol has been in the middle of it for decades. In this conversation, Kevin and Tom remember Voddie's courage and ministry, then turn to the deeper question: Why have so many leaders buckled when the culture pushed back?

Sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Christmas, many families quietly slide from "season of gratitude" into "season of grumbling." In this episode, the dads discuss cultivating joy as a daily discipline grounded in the gospel—remembering what we deserve, what God has given, and how that perspective kills entitlement. They share practical ways to start young with your kids, model gratitude in marriage, affirm your children, and turn even hard providences into opportunities to see God's mighty works.

Can Christian parents faithfully obey Deuteronomy 6 and Ephesians 6 while sending their children to schools where teachers are forbidden by law to honor God? In this hot-button episode, Kevin and Danny "take the gloves off" and revisit historic warnings about secular education, the sacred–secular divide, and the myth of neutral math and science. Is this the sin we dare not name in the American church?

When governments tighten the screws, should Christian families stay and fight, or pack up and look for a freer place to live? Modern homeschoolers feeling pressure from the state aren't the first to ask these questions. But neither the Word nor history is silent on this matter. Kevin and Josh discuss the examples of Rahab, the Hebrew midwives, and the pilgrims. The common theme: faith and obedience to Christ in the face of tyrannical authorities.

Every blockbuster story lives on a simple structure: hero vs. villain, good vs. evil. But what happens when writers deny any objective standard while still preaching their own "justice"? Kevin Swanson and Bill Jack dig into the occult's promise—"you shall be as God"—and how it surfaces in feminist theology, pop fantasy, and even science divorced from the fear of the Lord. Only by recovering God as the source of all power and all ethics can parents help their children discern which stories point to the Creator and which seduce them toward destruction.

Most Christians sense that something has gone deeply wrong with manhood in the modern world. Nancy Pearcey joins Kevin to trace how the Industrial Revolution fractured family life, displaced men from the household, and created generations of isolation, escapism, and identity-confusion. Drawing from The Toxic War on Masculinity, she explains how Christianity once formed strong men—faithful husbands, sacrificial fathers, producers not consumers—and how it can again. If the family once broke, it can also be rebuilt. Christ renews men, restores homes, and makes possible a future stronger than the past.