Is Bible education allowed in public schools today?

Mark Turman: [00:00:01] This is Faith and Clarity, and I'm Mark Turman, your host. We want to equip you today again to find hope beyond the headlines so that you and the people that you're living with and among can live by faith and not by fear. This week, we're talking about teaching the Bible in public schools during regular school hours. When I first heard this idea of a conversation, I thought, can you do that in America anymore? Uh, is this a fresh return to religious freedom in our 250th year? Or is it maybe the manipulation of forgotten law? Who knows? Let's jump in. My guest today is Joel Penton. He is the founder and CEO of LifeWise Academy, and they bring the Bible and education about the Bible to public school students during school hours. We're going to talk a lot about that. Uh, he's been doing this work for 15 years as a ministry leader. Uh, some of you who are football fans, particularly Buckeye fans, are going to probably recognize Joel's name, uh, where he played football there and he actually received as a player what is called the Danny Warful trophy, uh, which is similar, I think, the college equivalent maybe to the Walter Peyton award in the NFL, sometimes called the humanitarian Heisman. Uh, he is also an accomplished author and public speaker, lives in Columbus, Ohio, uh, as all Buckeyes should, and uh, with his wife Bethany and their six kids. Joel, welcome to the Faith and Clarity podcast.

Joel Penton: [01:29] Dr. Mark, thanks for having me.

Mark Turman: [01:32] Yeah, we're glad to have you and uh looking forward to this conversation, learning about what God has led you to do. Uh, so just tell us a little bit, what in the world is a LifeWise Academy and why does the world need it? What makes it unique and how did God lead you to it?

Joel Penton: [01:49] Yeah, great question. Well, as you kind of summarized in your introduction, LifeWise provides Bible education for public school students during school hours, which does sound strange to most people in 2026, right? They think, oh, what about the separation of church and state? You know, prayer's been taken out of school. Everybody is aware that decades ago our nation systematically removed Bible education from the public school day. But very few people are aware that there's a legal and practical a way, there's a viable path to reinstall it. And it's this little known practice called released time religious instruction. It's a mouthful, that's a legal term, but it's referring to a 1952 Supreme Court ruling when the Supreme Court said that public school students can in fact be released from public school during school hours to attend religious instruction, religious classes if the program meets three criteria. Number one, it does have to be off school property. Number two, it needs to be privately funded. And number three, students need parental permission. But they ruled that if those three criteria are met, it is constitutional, it is legal. Sadly, this has been somewhat under the radar, underutilized for now more than 70 years. It was in 2018 that I became aware of this opportunity. I I had spent over a decade traveling and speaking full-time, doing evangelism, doing events. And I was in my hometown in 2018 and I ran into a guy who said, Joel, hey, glad I ran into you. Your name came up at a at a meeting, a board meeting of a ministry I'm a part of. It's a released time ministry. And I said, oh, what is that? I've never heard of released time. Is that a prison ministry or something? He said, he said, no, it's um, he said, no, it's a ministry where we pull kids out of our public school during the school day, we teach them a Bible lesson and then we take them back to school. And I said, well, that sounds illegal. I don't think you're you're you should be doing that. And he said, no, it's real. And that's when he explained to me the Supreme Court ruling. And he went on to explain that in my hometown, small town in Northwest Ohio, they started in 2012. Their goal was to have 30% of the kids enrolled, but by the third year, 95% of the entire public elementary school was enrolled in this program, being taught the Bible as part of their weekly schedule. So in the same way kids get art class once a week, they get music class once a week, they now get Bible class once a week. And it was starting to have a really transformative effect on the students, on the families, on the school, on the community. And their question they were starting to wrestle with was why doesn't every community take advantage of this? Why doesn't every community have one of these programs? And he said that they thought I might be able to as a guy with a background in ministry to public schools, I might be able to help answer that question. I tell people that the day I was asked that question is the day that I gave up sleeping because that question really haunted me and I thought, yeah, unless I'm confused, this might be the single greatest missed opportunity of the American church to reach the next generation. Here we are ringing our hands about how the Bible's been removed from public schools and right under our noses is this amazing opportunity. And so, did some research, pretty quickly concluded that this thing of release time, it's just really hard to pull off. It's easy to explain, but it's hard to implement. And I said, well, has anybody tried to put it in a box? Has anybody tried to make a plug and play, repeatable, scalable program so communities wouldn't need to reinvent the wheel? And that is that idea is really what gave birth to LifeWise Academy to be that plug and play program any community could implement to serve their local public school students, provide Bible education during school hours. That was 2019 when we launched our first LifeWise Academy program modeled after what was happening in in my hometown. And since then it's it's really started to explode.

Mark Turman: [05:56] So, uh, six, seven years in now, how many LifeWise Academies are there?

Joel Penton: [06:02] Well, I'll tell you more than we initially envisioned. We after we launched our first two, we set a modest goal to serve 25 schools by 2025. We now call it modest. At the time we thought that was really aggressive. 25 schools by 2025. We thought that was really cute. But we are confirmed this school year to be in more than 1100 schools across across 37 states. And so we have overshot the goal a little bit.

Mark Turman: [06:29] Yeah, just yeah, and that's another reason why you're not sleeping much these days, I would imagine.

Joel Penton: [06:35] That's probably right.

Mark Turman: [06:35] When something starts to scale uh at that kind of a of a rate, you can just imagine. Um, so, uh just tell us a little bit about is this was this something that kind of caught your attention because you were working, ministering to students and to families? Uh, is it did it grow out of your own journey as a parent? Um, what were some of the reasons that you think that this just really caught the the vision of your heart?

Joel Penton: [07:03] Yeah, that's a great question. I think it was a convergence of a variety of factors. I think, I know this, that I came to faith when I was in high school and the Lord really wired me to love the gospel and want to share the gospel. And so I found myself even getting really into ministry even even in high school, filling in to preach for my pastor, getting very involved in the fellowship of Christian athletes. I continued when I was in college and it was very clear I was going to be in full-time ministry and particularly, I I now looking back realized God wired me as kind of an entrepreneur or having an entrepreneurial mindset of how can we think outside the box? How can we find an idea and scale it and being efficient to reach the most people possible. And for a dozen years that manifested through a ministry that I started that was a traveling speaking ministry where we would do school assemblies in public schools and then we would have an event in the evening where students would come back and and share we'd share the gospel with them. But but again, God made me to be kind of an entrepreneur. So not only did we start that, but we start we began to scale it. We brought on other speakers, other musicians, brought formed a speakers bureau. And that kind of interesting mix of experiences of starting a nonprofit, of interacting with the public school, but also doing a lot of speaking in churches and kind of learning to just uh navigate those areas translated very well that when this idea kind of fell into my lap, even at the time I didn't recognize how almost uniquely prepared I was that the Lord had really kind of prepared me to again, speak the language of school administrators. I had been I'd been hired by school administrators to speak in schools across the country, you know, to speak the language of churches of all sorts of denominations as I'd been traveling and speaking. Um, and and also to to build something because we'd brought on other speakers and that type of thing. And as you pointed out, my passions never shifted in terms of the gospel, but yes, at that point I had now several children and many of them were young children and had a deeper understanding, appreciation and passion for reaching students at the at young ages when it's really upstream.

Mark Turman: [09:19] Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, I'm just wondering, uh, do you, do you try to, maybe I'll just say it basic way, are you marketing LifeWise into certain areas, certain markets or are people pursuing you? And I'm kind of along with that, how long does it take for you to be able to convince a school system or a community, hey, this really is legitimate and is legal, uh, under the Constitution. I I just wonder in the environment that we're living in these days, if you if you have to just repeatedly tell people, hey, no, this is legitimate, legal and here's the precedent for it. How how does that initial conversation go and how does it get started?

Joel Penton: [10:05] Yeah, that's a great question. We have a 10 step process for any community to get started. You asked about marketing. Um, we've done some, but very little. It's it's mostly word of mouth. It's mostly people that get excited. Um, and sharing it with others. And but following our process, which by design makes it a viral concept and I'll explain. We've said, we want this to, we have three main commitments. Number one being unapologetically gospel centered. We don't want to just teach biblical morals, we want to teach the gospel message. Number two, we want to maintain the highest standard of excellence in everything that we do. We're ambassadors of the king. And number three, this is what I wanted to discuss, we want to be local community driven. This is not about people from my staff going and moving into a community to import LifeWise Academy, right? This is about local Christians raising their hand and saying, we want this and we're going to step up and we're going to get it done. And so to systematize that a little bit, we have a signature campaign. The very first step is in a community, we say, gather 50 signatures. Show us that there are at least 50 people in your community that want this to happen. They could be parents, they could be grandparents, they could be it could be anybody. But show us that there's interest. And so if you go to our website, lifewise.org, you could look up any school district in the nation and you could see are they gathering signatures? Where are they on the 10 step step process? We've now received at least one signature from more than 80% of all the school districts across the nation. And so word has just kind of spread because what happens is when somebody in a particular community says, oh, I want I want this to happen. Okay, I need 50 signatures. They tend to go on Facebook, they post it and their friends start signing it. But guess what? They've got friends who live in other school districts as well. And so the word kind of spreads to them. And then once we have those 50 signatures, now we form a planning team, they meet with somebody on our staff, they put together a plan. That plan is then taken to the school and we're able to have the conversation with the school administrators. What might this look like in your community? As you guessed, there is often some hesitation on the front end because you're proposing something that feels at at first to be off the wall, right? Wait, you're going to take kids out of school and teach them the Bible and bring them back. But when they start to realize the legality of it, when they now start to see the scope of how many schools are doing it, and when they start to see the benefits of it, that we now have third party independent studies that show that their attendance will go up, school attendance will go up, that behavior will improve. When they start to see that, oh, there's maybe at that point hundreds of people in the community who have signed this list that they want it, then I mean the the conversation really changes and 90% of the time now we come to an agreement with the school and we start the process.

Mark Turman: [12:59] Yeah. Okay. So, uh, just for a point of clarification in my own mind, this this uh provision in the law uh that you found uh going back to 2018, it is it is a release program for religious education. It can't be for other purposes. Is that am I understanding the the law correctly?

Joel Penton: [13:20] Well, it depends. So the Supreme Court ruling, to clarify between the law and the the ruling, um, is specifically about religious instruction. That's right. And so there are many who would argue, in fact, I'd probably be among them that the way that the Supreme Court ruling came down and especially if you consider other Supreme Court rulings, which you should, um, that that it does guarantee it almost as a right to families who want to opt their child out. Um, however, with that said, there are many state laws specifically about it as well. So in fact, more than half of the states in the nation have laws about release time religious instruction. Yes, again, specifically religious instruction that spells out, here's how it's going to work in our state. You know, one state law may say every school district needs to have a policy about how this works. Another state may say, hey, if a parent comes and requests it, you just need to you need to release the student. And so it varies from state to state and we we one of the things we do is to advocate for the strongest possible laws around it.

Mark Turman: [14:23] Yeah. Okay. So, uh, I'm trying to think through this and uh and anticipate maybe play the devil's advocate a little bit. So, uh, so where I am, uh, in the North Dallas area, there's a significant Mormon population, um, uh, all over North Texas. Um, uh, I've heard, I I can't confirm this necessarily, but I've heard of a number of Mormon children and families that go to religious education classes before school, uh, not during school, but before school. Um, and I wonder if sometimes you might be facing the opposition of people who would say, you know what, teaching the Bible is the work of parents and churches apart from the academic purposes of public education. Uh, it should stay there. It should stay in the churches, it should stay in the families and not be a part of the school day. How do you respond to that? Do you get that kind of opposition?

Joel Penton: [15:19] Oh, we sure do. We get every kind of opposition imaginable. I mean, I would ask someone to give reasons why they believe that. I would say I hear that that's what you think. You want it to stay out of, you know, not during school hours, but I would say, do you have any reasons for saying that? Because at the end of the day, the Supreme Court seems to be fine with it. You know, the state laws seem to be fine with it. And here we have parents who want it for their children. And if somebody wants to talk, you know, point their finger at a parent and say, I'm going to tell you what you should do with your child, you know, I I would want them to express um, some reasoning. What I would want, in fact, want to point to them is here, look at all the benefits of why, well, for one, I'd say it's it's up to the parent, you know, let the parent decide what what they want to do with their child. And then number two, I would say, and look at all these wonderful positive benefits. You know, would you want to not have these positive benefits and would you want to take the choice away from the parent? That doesn't seem reasonable.

Mark Turman: [16:19] Yeah. Yeah, um, yeah, I I would agree, absolutely. Um, Right. Yeah, I just uh again, thinking through it. Um, there's a a large conversation going on here in the state of Texas, um, around, uh, particularly around public schools, communities, uh, and Islam and particularly Sharia law within Islam. Uh, that's one of the conversations going on around here. There's also a large or a significantly growing uh Hindu population uh in the uh in Texas and particularly in the Dallas area. Uh, I wonder how you would respond to, hey, this this is what God has led us to do uh relative to teaching the Christian faith and teaching the story of Jesus. Um, would would it be appropriate you think for us to say, well, if other religious groups wanted to do something like this, they ought to have the room under this same ruling, uh, to propose something similar.

Joel Penton: [17:17] Yeah, they do have room under that ruling and there are people those who feel uncomfortable about that. I'm not among them because I am a Christian and I I believe the gospel is true and I believe the gospel wins in the marketplace of ideas. And so I think that, you know, if if a different religion wants to do it, well, one, I would say, all right, raise the money, get the bus, get the classroom, get the, you know, like we as Christians have the infrastructure of a church on every corner, you know, that we can drive down the road and take kids. Um, that that's helpful. And but at the end, even if we didn't have that, I would say the answer to diverse thought and religious perspectives isn't everyone should be silent. You know, the the answer is that everyone should have a chance to speak. And it's when we share the gospel in the marketplace of ideas that the truth shines through and people can see, oh, this is the truth. Um, and so and maybe that's the American in me, maybe that's the football player in me, uh, but I say, hey, free country, you know, we we're going to compete in that marketplace of ideas. I'm we're not scared of competition. We got the Holy Spirit and Jesus on our side. Let's go.

Mark Turman: [18:30] Yeah. I mean, and you know, that's a a part of what we're celebrating, right? In this 250th year of our country is maybe the biggest gift or one of the biggest gifts that we've tried to give or that God has given to the world is this idea of religious freedom. Um, and that it's not just religious freedom for me or for us, but for all of us. Um, and that we ought to uh advocate for everyone to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience. Um, and that's one of the things I could say that maybe we ought to contend for. And this is a great opportunity. Totally agree with you. Uh Christianity can hold its own in any and every environment. Um, and we know that from Jesus and from a lot of other places. Tell us a little bit more, um, I I was clear to understand that the curriculum is uh non-denominational. How did tell us a little bit about the curriculum, uh, who typically does the teaching, uh, how, you know, questions like how do you make sure that there's not a theological bias in here? Uh, I'm also wondering, you know, like in the context of school, is is this class in any way for credit within the educational system? Is there an educational standard uh that y'all have introduced into the curriculum, those kinds of questions.

Joel Penton: [19:47] Yeah, those are great questions. And I will do my best to work through them as I remember them. Uh the curriculum in particular, uh we're very excited about, we're very grateful for. We have partnered with the Gospel Project, which is in my opinion, the best curriculum in the world. And I say that because when we first started this thing, we said, let's find the best curriculum in the world and let's just ask them if we can use it. And so we did that. So the gospel project and we have a licensing agreement that we're able to do some reformatting and make it fit kind of our context, but uh with that curriculum, we take students through the entire Bible. We tend to start with elementary school and a typical school that we serve would be grades one through five. That's not every time, but it's typical. And so the typical program, a kid starts in first grade in Genesis and studies through the Bible over the course of five years. And by the time they're done with fifth grade, they've been through Revelation. And every lesson has a threefold focus and that is head, heart, hands. So head starts with the information on the page, right? What does the Bible say? What is what is the story? And then heart, we take a step back and we say, how does this story fit into the bigger picture story of the gospel story? How does this story point to Jesus? And why is it that this uh gospel overarching story, why why does our heart need this? What's wrong with our heart that we need this this medicine of the gospel. And so we do that heart gospel work. And then hands, if we rightly understand this, then how does that change the way we live? How does that change our attitude? How does that change, you know, our character? And so every single week they're working through scripture, head, heart, hands. Um, and in terms of the teacher, it's it's local staff. And so again, we try to maintain the highest standard of excellence. And so when a program gets up and running and they hire a local director and they have a local board, they will post jobs for however many local teachers they need. It tends to be a part-time, you know, thing depending on the scale of that local program. But a lot of times it is a former educator, maybe it's a retired teacher from the public school system that's a Christian. Sometimes it's a homeschooling mom that, um, you know, maybe she wants to teach a little bit, but you know, um, or a or a new mother. Sometimes it's a pastor's wife. It it just depends. And that's those are local community decisions that we provide the templates, we provide articles, we provide, you know, technology, but but it's the local board and the team that comes together to make those decisions. Um, I think you may have been asking also about logistically, how does it um, oh no, you were asking about the the credit. Um, and so at the elementary school level, that's that's a non-issue because the credit doesn't function that way. But we do have classes at the middle school and high school levels as well. And at high school, there can depending on the state, depending on the state legislation, there can be for credit. And not only high school credit, it can even be um college credit, dual enrollment. And so depending on the state, we have some of those things going on. The the standards do change because then you need to have testing, you need to do a few different um things. But again, that's it's a perfect illustration of why release time it just hadn't really spread because there's a lot of details. It's actually pretty complicated. Um, and so by God's grace, you know, he's empowered us with this wonderful team that has put those details together that we're able to simply pass along to communities.

Mark Turman: [23:17] Yeah. Um, what's the what's the biggest uh either uh cultural or practical obstacle that you have to overcome when somebody says, hey, we might want to do this in our school district.

Joel Penton: [23:33] Yeah, the biggest obstacle, it will vary from community to community, but I think more often than not, it's just finding the right people because this really is a movement of God by the people of God. And in some communities, the right people just appear, you know, they just raise their hands, um, and we even have started calling them movement builders. You know, you just have the right people with the right skill set and the right connections and all those things. And there's other communities that progress would stall and it can be at different parts, you know, where maybe we've got 25 signatures. Why don't why doesn't it keep growing to 50 signatures, you know? Or we've got a a small steering committee, but it's not quite big enough. We like to have a steering committee of at least three people representing at least three churches. Or maybe we have approval, uh but we just haven't found that director. And so that's really our constant prayer is that God would raise up the right people for this task.

Mark Turman: [24:27] Okay. So I'm hearing a my uh, my board experience is kind of going off as an alarm because I'm hearing steering committee, I'm hearing director, I'm hearing board, I'm hearing. So how does this get paid for and all of what you just described sounds like an oversight uh group that is in charge of, I would say maybe holding the mission and ensuring excellence. Am I on the right page there?

Joel Penton: [24:59] Well, the at least the local board. However, our local, we have kind of you could think of the board in two different ways. LifeWise is one national ministry and so we do have a national governing board and then we have a local leadership board that technically is an advisory board, but even more than that, it's a working board. So we could get really nerdy and I could tell you about the five L's of LifeWise of leadership, location, logistics, loot and language, these five kind of operational categories and we like our local leadership boards to have one person that kind of heads up each of those and then the program director is the glue that kind of holds it all together. And but all of that is simply to empower the regular teaching of God's word to students.

Mark Turman: [25:44] Okay. So, how does this get paid for? How does it get paid for at the local level? Um, you know, I'm do these teachers get paid or they volunteer? Um, how do how do the finances underneath this thing work?

Joel Penton: [26:00] Yeah, it's all through private donations. Um, sometimes that's from some local churches, sometimes it's from some local businesses, but the vast majority is from individuals. It's from families in the community. And while there are some communities that struggle to raise the funds, um, what we found is that's usually not the biggest challenge because there's such an excitement around this concept. There's so many people who frankly have been waiting for decades to see something like this. There's so many people who are frustrated with the current state of things and the lack of Bible education. And so we train communities on the strategies, you know, and the we give them the tools to to fundraise. In fact, we call it trust raising around here. We say that it's really all based on showing you have the right heart and the right skills and the right plan in place. And when people trust that you're going to do a good job, you know, then all everything's taken care of in terms of you'll have the volunteers you need, you'll have the donations you need, you'll have all that if you can build trust. And so, uh but it is the local community funds their own local program and it's all done through private donations.

Mark Turman: [27:09] Okay. Yeah, because it's it it's just sounds like such a great concept from the standpoint. I, you know, I've pastored churches for 40 years, a number of families that, you know, went through and had struggles and chose to move their kids to private school, this being one of the main reasons that uh spiritual things and biblical things could be taught in the context of a private school setting that they were not able to access in a public school setting. Um,

Joel Penton: [27:39] Well, you just, yeah. And you just nailed, you just nailed one of the big reasons why we have a 90% rate of schools working with us is that they are even more keenly aware that there is a a back door to their school and families are leaving the public school and they are homeschooling, they are doing private school, they are open enrolling to send to the school down the road and they know this is a value proposition. This is a a distinctive that uh some of the families that they most want to engage because of the engagement level of the parents that tend to come with the children, uh of those who value Bible education when they learn that, oh, this is legal, oh, there are benefits and oh, this is going to attract more families to my school. Well, what's the downside?

Mark Turman: [28:28] Yeah. Yeah. And you know, and schools are doing that all over the place, right? Where, um, because of the movement, uh, to school choice, uh, to things like school vouchers and, uh, you know, and then people that move into the private school in environment really quickly figure out it's pretty expensive to do that, you know, taking a private school option is really, uh, a big financial decision for a family. Um, and it's really hard to start a private school that can be affordable to a large demographic of people. Uh, I was talking with a friend about that right now. I'm wondering, Joel, do y'all keep statistics on things like, uh, we are mostly serving families that are active in their faith and active in a church, uh, or are we serving more people who send their kids because they see value in it, but they are not, you know, faith engaged? Um, do y'all keep stats around that at all?

Joel Penton: [29:26] We track what we can. Um, it's sometimes that data is hard to obtain, particularly through the students and particularly through the younger students. Um, however, we know simply statistically that a huge portion of the students we serve are not part of local churches and that's simply because from the percentages, you know, we will often see more than 50% of the school enroll. We will see sometimes upwards of 80, 90%. And when we know very well then that less than half of those kids are attending church on a regular basis. And so we're certainly seeing um, the families that you know, they have some, they have some sort of affinity toward the Bible, perhaps it's from their childhood memories, perhaps it's from whatever's still kind of residually there in culture that the Bible's a positive thing, that kids need character formation, all those things. And that but maybe they're not engaged in the church community and they see this as an option and they're enrolling their student. And more than every now and then someone might say, well, does this become a a method for families to abdicate their responsibility and not, you know, teach and we're seeing the exact opposite. We're we're seeing that this is a way that families compliment what they're already doing at home or if they're not doing anything at home, this becomes kind of the gateway into or sometimes back into the faith community. The number of stories we hear of kids who go home after going to LifeWise saying, hey, we talked about church today at LifeWise. How come we don't go to church? You know, and then families getting re-engaged. I mean, it's really happening a lot.

Mark Turman: [31:09] Yeah, so it can can kind of be like every family does, right? What'd you learn at school today? Whether it's about math or science or history or in this case about faith and about um spiritual things. Um, I want to go back a moment to what you said about the curriculum from this this kind of rhythm of head, heart and hands. I just think that's just such a great way of approaching it. And I had read in some of of your online material that hey, the curriculum is really uh out of the Bible project based on, hey, we're trying to focus on the main things, um, not not the secondary things. Those are significant, but they are not the primary teachings of the Bible. I think that's a great idea. Um, talk a little bit more if you can about how you talk to families about participating in this or how local people would do this about, hey, this is, yes, it is about character formation, but it is about more than a moral code. Um, I'm I'm just wondering how you guys uh work and train people on uh in local settings to to really emphasize the spiritual transformation part of that. Uh, how are people uh guided, you know, how are children guided when they start saying, hey, I think I want to believe this or I'm choosing to believe this and they do that in the context of a LifeWise Academy. How do some of those processes work?

Joel Penton: [32:34] Yeah, well, we as I had mentioned, we make sure we keep the gospel at the center. Our curriculum really does help us with that. And as you mentioned, the head, heart, hands approach, we'll sometimes talk about it as our every class mountain. Um, in that kids, you know, we come to class, we approach the mountain and through our head, we kind of climb the mountain as we're learning, you know, the information, but through that, we climb, we get to the top of the mountain where we meet Jesus, where we see through scripture, the gospel, and we encounter Christ through the word of God. And then we come down the other side of the mountain, we come down having been changed by our experience with Christ in the gospel. And so we'll often also talk about it as fruit, right? We that too often Christian ministries, particularly children's ministries want to only focus on the fruit and so then do become moralizing and say, hey, the Bible says be a good little boy or girl. The Bible says to tell the truth, the Bible says to do these things. And we think that we can just glue fruit onto these trees when we recognize that the Bible teaches, no, we plant seeds of the gospel and we water them and then a real living tree, you know, grows and bears fruit. And um, so keeping that order of things very is very important to us. The head, heart, hands, right? That we're not starting with hands, we're not starting with character and then maybe eventually we get to the gospel. No, we're starting with the scripture which shows the gospel, which then changes our heart, which bears fruit. Um, in terms of students' response, you know, this is an area that we want to know our lane really well that we want to consistently teach the gospel, teach the word of God and very quickly say, hey, next step, the church is for next steps. You know, we're introducing these concepts. And so if you want to follow Jesus, praise the Lord. We want to encourage kids every every day to to follow Jesus and then we want to quickly say, and you're going to live that out in a church, you know, get connected. They're going to want to do something, they they may want to baptize you. They may want to, you know, do have this whole process, uh but that's not our role. Our role is to introduce kids.

Mark Turman: [34:58] Okay. So it it sounds it sounds like a lot of the focus of LifeWise is introduction and reinforcement maybe. Um, if you've if you're an active faith family, you're actively in a church, you know, you you could have kids saying, hey, oh yeah, we talked about this at church a week ago. That kind of thing, that kind of reinforcement. Um, uh, walk me through a little bit more of the of the um practical side of this at at ground level. My wife uh has for 20 years worked as an administrator in the school district, okay? Um, and uh, I know a number of school board members, um, in our community, that type of thing. Uh, I could see, uh, I could see an a local school administrator saying, oh, you know, I'm sure it's a good thing, but now you're asking me to accommodate one more thing. Um, uh, you know, and schools, particularly public schools are always handling what what are sometimes called unfunded mandates, okay? Um, so if I help walk me through um, how how you help public school administrators welcome this into their environment. Obviously, the value proposition you mentioned a moment ago, hey, this could help you keep school kids in your school, which is a good thing. That's obviously one thing. Um, but how do you, how do you, for lack of a better term, sell the the school administrators that hey, we're going to make this as painless as possible for you. Uh, and along with that, Joel, you you mentioned that this is kind of a once a week kind of experience for the student. Explain that model just a little bit more so people can get their hands around it.

Joel Penton: [36:47] Yeah, well, primarily we want the we want school administrators to understand that this is not to be a burden, this is to be a burden lifter, right? So this is the community coming alongside the school to be an an ally and to provide support that many schools in fact are very excited to receive, you know. Uh it's a common sentiment for maybe an administrator to feel like, you know, it used to be enough to educate kids and now we have to be their parents as well these days. And this is an opportunity for the community to come alongside and to provide, to fill some of those gaps that have been placed as burdens onto schools. And so we would want to frame things and talk about things in that way. And then we would also want to say, hey, this is going to be super easy. Um, from your perspective, you're not going to have to do anything. Um, we will talk to you about the schedule. Let's talk about how what what schedule is optimal. Um, some schools want to adjust their schedule to really make a time that's dedicated to this because they know so many families are going to want to take advantage of this. Other schools, they just want to roll it into an existing schedule, you know, that maybe it's during a lunch and recess time, you know, on Tuesdays that you know, the second grade uh for a lunch and recess, they actually go to the church down the road and and it's it's next to nothing in terms of logistically on the side of the school. Now on our side, we need to pull up in a big red bus, we need to take the kids down to the church, you know, we do all that, but that's not on the school. Or maybe it's during a a library time or some sort of other free time. And so what we try to do is say, hey, we've now done this over a thousand times. And so we can we can look at your schedule and we can say, let's look at some other schedules that were similar and let's find a way to do this that you that not only isn't a burden, but you get the maximum benefit out of.

Mark Turman: [38:40] So when you, um, when you go into a to a town and to a school district, um, is this something that can be introduced incrementally? You know, like I'm I don't know how many, there's more than a a dozen, um, elementary schools in the town I live in. Um, is this something that you can say, hey, you can you can start this or are you willing to start this in two schools or three schools and if more parents and more people become impassioned, we can expand it. Is it is it sometimes done that way, often done that way?

Joel Penton: [39:13] It's almost always done that way. Um, that it'll be I mean, at a minimum would be one school, one grade level, you know, and they and perhaps it's one school just the third grade and then the next year they expand grades and then the next year they expand into additional schools. And that's where it very much becomes a local local decision. I've been a part of meetings, especially in the early days when I could could go to more of these meetings where I was sitting with a superintendent and our, you know, proposal said we want to start with one school that we knew there were five elementary schools in this particular school district I'm remembering. Uh we want to start in this one school and then and then re-evaluate after a year and the superintendent said, can you just start in all five schools so that everybody feels, you know, like there's equity? And the local team said, sure, we can do that. And so we, you know, that was that conversation and and sometimes the a team will go to the school and say, hey, we're thinking we'll start in this school over here with you know, first through fourth graders and the school will say, you know what, that's probably not best to start there with that principle. You know who would who likes to pilot things? This principle on the other side of town. Okay. And so and that's where that local conversation happens.

Mark Turman: [40:26] Yeah. Okay. So it can be kind of shaped based on um how the culture of the community and the culture of the school district works at that point. Certainly. So, um, tell me if there is any other particular opposition that you face. Uh, I'm wondering if some people uh are are concerned or curious or even suspicious that LifeWise is being driven by a political group or a political agenda, certain things like that. Have you faced those kinds of things, other forms of of concern or opposition?

Joel Penton: [40:59] We have, we've most certainly um faced opposition. It is a very small um and yet vocal minority of those who do not like the Bible, do not like Christianity, do not want to see more kids having access to Bible education during school hours. And so you can anything you can imagine whether it's, you know, posting things online or showing up at school board meetings or um whatever it is. Um, but it does, I mean, ultimately at the end of the day it comes down to a group of people who want to say, hey, you parents that want this for your kids, we think we know better and you shouldn't be allowed to to sign your kids up. And and they'll come up with I don't know any reason, I guess, but you know, even some of the the reasons you you mentioned, maybe they'll try to politicize it or um, I don't know, just make it as divisive as possible. But again, that's a very small minority of people.

Mark Turman: [42:02] Yeah. Okay. Well, as we kind of get ready to wrap up, I just I would just wonder also just a little bit more about how in learning about LifeWise, this really has seemed to be like the outworking of your own sense of faith and calling. Um, uh, you know, I I don't know, I don't know why I didn't know about the Warful trophy, um, or if I have, I've forgotten about it. Um, uh, but we at our ministry, we talk a lot about how over the last 70, 80, 100 years, Christianity in America has gone from being highly respected, uh, to a season of being largely ignored and in some ways in our culture today is now viewed as dangerous. Um, so that that's a broad context for what I want to ask you, which is, um, the the biblical calling about how our faith in Christ should in many ways make us the best citizens, should make us people of not only service to others, but excellence in service. Can you kind of walk that out as some of your own testimony? It sounds like that's kind of the way your faith has been uh manifesting itself.

Joel Penton: [43:21] Well, I hope that that's true of me. I mean, I think that when one comes to faith and they're born again, they're filled with the spirit of God, the entire perspective shifts. You're you're now um, everything it's it's things are simultaneously less important because you're like, oh, if I get sick, like, you know, this this life is temporary and I have eternity. And so there's certain things that feel less important. But then there's a whole on, you know, a whole different way and this is um, you know, it's paradoxical that everything is even more important on one level, right? Because we're eternity is at stake, you know, eternity is, you know, hanging in the balance and um, and you know, you're serving not just, you're not serving an earthly king, you're serving a heavenly king and so you want to serve him well. Um, and so I yeah, I think that that is what the calling of the Christian is, you know, we are serving the king of the universe. When I played football at Ohio State, there was a big responsibility about representing the state of Ohio when we would play these teams like the Texas Longhorns. Um, that we needed to represent Ohio well and there there was real responsibility that came along with that. Well, with LifeWise and with the Christian walk, we're representing the king of the universe. That's a weightier responsibility. And so I do believe you're right, that's why Christians should be the best citizens, they should be the best neighbors. Um, and and and part of that is because our king, you know, he's always watching, which it which shouldn't, you know, be some sort of doom and gloom or, you know, fear of judgment, but it's it should be an encouragement, you know, that we do have this audience, this loving father who's right there with us, who's watching over us and in fact, helping us every step of the way.

Mark Turman: [45:19] Yeah. Yeah, great word. So, uh, I don't always remember to do this, but I am remembering it today. Is there anything else about LifeWise that you want us to know that I didn't ask you about?

Joel Penton: [45:31] I think you did a very thorough job. I would maybe just remind everyone of how they could get connected, which is through our website, lifewise.org. And again, there are all sorts of resources there, videos and articles and different things you can look at. Um, but most importantly, don't leave until you've looked up your local school district and maybe even the school district of your cousins or grandkids or, you know, anybody you're connected with and voice your support and and we'd love for you to engage with us in some way.

Mark Turman: [45:59] Yeah. And we'll absolutely put the website uh and other relevant uh links into the show notes so people can click on there and go and check it out. Like I said, lifewise.org, uh, you can find out about the academies, how to how to investigate starting one in your district if you'd like to. Uh, you'll also learn a lot more about Joel and that's a great story in and of itself. And uh, yeah, so uh if that's something that God puts on your heart, we would love for you to look into that and possibly engage in that. Uh, our goal at Dennison Forum and at Faith and Clarity is to help you to think uh critically, to live faithfully, to serve intentionally. And the last part really applies here, to build flourishing communities for everyone. And LifeWise is a really great way uh to help move the needle on that and move it along. Joel, thanks for being a part of our conversation today and for the work that you're doing in the kingdom. We also want to thank you as our audience for listening and being a part of today's conversation. If you're looking for more resources from us, you can go to Dennisonforum.org and we want to thank you. We are a donor supported ministry. Thank you for standing with us and helping us uh to make a difference in our generation. We'll see you next time on Faith and Clarity.