The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 73 – Ron Jung

Episode 74: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Dr. Jeff Show, host Dr. Jeff Myers interviews Ron Jung, the headmaster of Providence Academy, a classical Christian school in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Jung makes the case for classical Christian education as an alternative to traditional public schools and even secular charter schools that use classical methods.

He explains that this educational philosophy aims to raise “good people” in a philosophical sense – humans fulfilling their purpose as beings made in God’s image – rather than simply preparing students to be college and career ready or cogs in the economic machine. The key distinction Jung emphasizes is that classical Christian education is built on the foundation that God exists, created the world, and has revealed truth through Scripture, making it fundamentally different from secular classical approaches that lack this divine foundation.

Episode Transcript

Ryan Dobson (00:00):
Hi everyone. Ryan Dobson here for the Dr. Jeff Show. Summit camps are in full swing and kids are having a blast. In fact, my own son Lincoln is attending right now. There are so many kids who want to go to camp at Summit, but they just need a little help. A generous donor has agreed to match every donation to the Summit summer programs. Will you help a child learn the foundations of a Christian worldview at Summit? Donate online at summit.org/match and every tax-free donation will be doubled. Again, you can find that at summit.org/match. God bless and let’s join the Dr. Jeff Show.

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:40):
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show podcast. This show’s available on Apple, Google, Spotify, Edifi, Liftable, or wherever else you get your podcasts. But wherever that is, please go to that site and review the show. If you like it and give a positive review, more people find out about it. And that’s significant because this is the show where I interview major thought leaders who show that our worldview changes everything.

My guest today is Ron Jung, it’s spelled J-U-N-G. Ron has been the headmaster of a classical Christian school. We’ve talked about homeschooling, we’ve talked about Christian schools, but this is another educational option you might want to be aware of. I’ve asked Ron to make the case for classical Christian education. And it’s interesting because he’s also got a podcast, but all of this is about helping the rising generation develop a biblical worldview. So I’m looking forward to the conversation. Please welcome Ron Jung to the show. Ron Jung, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show podcast.

Ron Jung (01:40):
Thank you for having me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:42):
Well, I’ve been looking forward to this conversation when our producer, Dave, helped set this up. It reminded me that we have covered on this podcast a lot of things about Christian education. Parents are really concerned about what is happening in the government schools and their community. A lot of them became extra concerned during COVID because they didn’t feel the school was responsive or they actually saw what was taking place in the classroom and became alarmed. So Christian schools and homeschooling have both grown very rapidly, but we haven’t talked about classical Christian schools.

Ron Jung (02:18):
Yes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:19):
So this is our chance to, not to create confusion, but just to give an option here. And I’m looking forward to talking with you and you’re making the case for a unique kind of Christian education that is serving students in a really powerful way. And folks may be able to find a school like this in their community, but at least they can find out what it’s all about. So really grateful.

Ron Jung (02:44):
Absolutely. Yeah. We’ve seen the same thing a lot of parents leaving public schools for alternatives and we’re just happy that we’re around and picking up a lot of new families. I think that the big difference that we provide that other schools might not have is that we look at classical education has different ends in mind and therefore different methods and different subjects.

So the end in mind is one of the big things in the public school system. Every paideia has a police in mind. So that idea is that every kind of education has a particular thing they’re educating for. So in America, the idea is you’ll hear it often, we want kids to be college or career ready. Another way of saying that cynically is that we want kids to become cogs in the economic machine, or we want to raise individual taxable units.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:57):
So citizenship, when people say, “Oh, we’re trying to raise good citizens,” what they mean to say is we want to raise kids who don’t cause trouble to our way of thinking, but they do fund it.

Ron Jung (04:10):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. In a classical Christian sense, what we’re trying to do is raise good people. That’s the end in mind. And we’re talking good in a philosophical sense. Things are made with a purpose and if it fulfills its purpose, it’s good. So human beings, made in the image of God, male and female he created them. There’s a particular virtue that they possess and we want to train them in that way.

So good people tend to also be good students and good employees and good employers and good citizens, et cetera. But that’s the end in mind. So we are far more concerned with a student’s character, who they’re becoming than the grade they get in their class. And so with that as the end in mind, understanding God has made us in a particular way. We want to teach children in the grain of their development.

(05:22):
So a young child is not able to understand a lot of things, but they’re capable of knowing a lot of things. So I remember having a conversation with a public school educator who was really concerned because they had heard of a student and all the things that they could just recite and all these things that they could know. And her response to that is, “Yeah, but they don’t understand any of it.”

And that’s, well, of course they don’t, but they’re capable of knowing these things. And when they get older, they will be able to understand them. So in the grammar phase, we typically divide the K through 12 into three segments, the grammar stage, the logic or dialectic stage, and then the rhetoric stage. And so in the grammar stage, we’re teaching them how to know, how to apprehend truth, how to categorize that knowledge, how to know the grammar of subjects.

(06:31):
So every subject has a grammar to it, history, it’s names, dates, and places, math, it’s math, facts. The grammar of language, which I think we’re the most familiar with. So we want young people to know what the object of a preposition is, and they might not be able to know much about that, but boy, it sure helps when they get into middle school.

(06:56):
As their brains develop, they get into fifth, sixth grade, they’re not content with knowing. Typically, I explain it like this. My own children, every day when they got up, they’re supposed to make their bed and get dressed and come down for breakfast. Not necessarily in that order, but get dressed, make your bed, come down.

And every one of them at some point, fifth or sixth grade, they come down and we go, “Did you make your bed?” And they’ll ask this, “Why? Why should I make my bed? I’m going to get back in it.” And that’s that age old question, “Why should I make my bed?” But that didn’t occur to them before, but now they need to know why they’re doing what they’re doing. And so in classical education, what we do is we use that, right? That’s where their minds are at. We want to teach them how to understand things.

(07:57):
We teach them the connections in literature and history and theology and Bible and the whole gamut. We want them to learn how to think well. We teach them formal logic so they know what an argument is. The classical one is all men are mortals or all men die, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates will die, that type of logic. We teach them informal fallacies. These are not arguments, that type of thing.

Dr. Jeff Myers (08:33):
Yes.

Ron Jung (08:34):
As they get into high school, at 16-ish, their brain is changing again. They’re very much concerned with identity and how other people perceive them. They want to be able to express themselves. So what we do is, we think that by the time anyone’s in 10th grade, they should be able to pick up pretty much any book, any article, and tell you what the point of view of the author is, the argument being made.

And they should be able to say, “Hey, look, the conclusion follows the premises of the book, and so it’s a valid argument.” They can look at the premises and say, “Yeah, this is a sound argument.” But the big question then becomes, so what? So what? And if you can do that, it’s just a fancy trick. The next step is in that rhetoric phase, the 10th, 11th, 12th grade, is, we want them to reflect on that, so what?

(09:38):
So if you recognize this as being true, what does this mean for you or what does this mean for your community or for the church or for our world? And in other words, what do you believe about this? And then we want to train them or teach them how to eloquently and persuasively express that belief. So we teach them formal rhetoric.

(10:01):
Our students when they’re seniors, and I think almost every classical Christian school will do this, they have to write a thesis paper, 20 to 25 pages, convert it into a speech using the canons of rhetoric, and then they have to give the speech in front of everyone and defend it as the board and the faculty pepper them with questions. And that’s kind of the, so the methodologies are a lot of hands-on and rote kind of memorization and the grammar stage and the logics phase, they’re going to do some debating and reasoning, a lot of Socratic dialogue.

As they get to the rhetoric phase, it’s a lot more presentations and you’re kind of a little bit more, Johnny on the spot. You ask them questions and then you try to get them into fights with others. Is that true? And then you ask the other students, “Are they right?” And those types of things.

(11:00):
But the idea is that it’s training the intellectual virtues of knowledge, understanding, wisdom. And then also within that school and the culture of the school, we’re pointing them towards Christ and seeing how Christ is in everything and producing within them those moral virtues informed by the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. That’s kind of what we’re doing, and it’s awesome.

Dr. Jeff Myers (11:35):
It makes a lot of sense. I can see the phases, I can see how that works. So the grammar, the dialectic, the rhetoric, you’re teaching them about the world, then you’re teaching them to reason about the world, then you’re teaching them to articulate those reasons.

Ron Jung (11:51):
Absolutely.

Dr. Jeff Myers (11:53):
And so for people who aren’t familiar with classical education, this goes back to the ancients who had this form of education and it worked really well for a thousand years and then people sort of forgot it. What happened? Why was it forgotten? And then why is it important to reclaim that now?

Ron Jung (12:16):
Sure. Well, I would say that it was resurrected in Europe by Alkewin under Charlemagne. And as you go through the Middle Ages, the Brethren of the Common Life, Thomas Akempas, those folks, wherever they were in Europe, they started Latin schools, which continue this classical education. In fact, almost every reformer in the Reformation was educated at a Latin school. The exception is John Calvin, but his tutor was trained at a Latin school, so kind of fun.

The Puritans coming over to America continued with classical education. They believe that they should teach all their children to read so they can read scripture on their own, but they also believe that if you can’t think well, you have no business reading scripture, so they taught their children logic. In fact, the primary book they used for logic in the new world was written by Isaac Watts, the famous hymn writer.

(13:25):
So for hundreds of years, in America, in public schools, they used Isaac Watts logic to teach logic. What happened in America is progressivism and the desire for us to model our education after the Pressions, that in other words, we want compliant soldiers and workers rather than free people who are trained in the liberal arts to think.

(14:05):
I even, this might be a, I don’t know how far we want to go into this, but as I look at Plato’s Republic and you look at how the education of the, you have the philosopher kings are trained in all the virtues, moral virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. The guardians are not trained in prudence, only justice, which is obeying orders for the philosopher king and temperance and courage. And then the Hoi Polloi, the people, all they’re supposed to do is make money and be entertained, right? Keep the economic engine going and we’ll provide entertainment for them, and that’s good enough.

And I think that if you don’t have a Christian worldview, if you don’t have this understanding of what God has made us for and the purposes of that and how we can act as both a citizen and God’s kingdom and also in this world, what are secular people going to be drawn toward?

(15:21):
And I think you see this. I think that the powers that be have no interest in training students to think well, unless it’s necessary to make money. It’s, let the elites continue to run things and everyone else just needs to make money. So that’s kind of the sad part where we’re at in America.

Dr. Jeff Myers (15:52):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, we use the term liberal in a lot of different ways, but people usually mean politically left whereas the way in which you’re using it is the education for a free person, rural meaning of the term.

Ron Jung (16:11):
Yes. I’m sorry.

Dr. Jeff Myers (16:11):
So you’re not trying to train people who are just subservient. You’re trying to train people who can think well enough to be the sort of citizens who can lead a free nation.

Ron Jung (16:23):
Yeah. In fact, I would say that in America, it was very, very different in that in Europe, the liberal arts, the free arts, this classical education was typically for the upper classes, the nobility. If you weren’t among the aristocracy in Europe, you would be trained in the manual arts of some sort of trade. In America though, you look at our founders, right? They did both. They were farmers and philosophers. They were silversmiths and statesmen. They were citizens in a republic in which they worked and thought.

And it was a beautiful picture of what human beings could be. And that was our country. We were free people and the government existed to protect our rights so that we can remain free in our pursuit of happiness. And again, that word has been ruined in a philosophical sense that happiness has not to do with, I know some preacher at some point in time said, happiness is based on circumstances and joy is this other thing.

(17:49):
And then that ruined the idea of happiness for the rest of us. We can’t use it anymore in a philosophical way. But when our founders talked about the pursuit of happiness, they weren’t talking about some sort of epicurean or hedonistic exploitation. They were thinking of, the pursuit of happiness had to do with pursuing the good, that my life is, I’m pursuing the good that I ought.

And that’s really what that pursuit is because that’s what happiness is, is this fulfillment of that purpose or virtue that we have. And the government is established to make sure that we have the freedom to do that. And now when I talk about that to a lot of people, they look at me like I’m crazy.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:50):
Yeah, right, right. Yeah. Because the Constitution means whatever we want it to mean. And that’s sort of how people, because we are the center of reality, my truth is mine, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, this is a tough road to hoe. Not only do you have to develop a form of education that trains children well in all of the ways that you’ve described, but you actually have to make the case to parents that this is a better way to do it, even though it’s not at all what they learned growing up, and most people have no familiarity with this kind of thing. And one thing too, Ron, I should mention is there’s a Christian classical education.

(19:40):
And then there’s classical education, which I know a lot of people promote. I know there’s a college that a lot of conservatives love and they produce a lot of teachers and are starting schools, but they’re charter schools. They’re government funded charter schools. One of my sons went to one of them, my daughter went to one for a period of time, but that’s different from what you’re talking about. And I’d love for you to describe the difference a little bit. Again, people have a lot of choices to make with their kids. I understand how hard that is.

Ron Jung (20:12):
They do.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:13):
But make the case for a Christian classical approach.

Ron Jung (20:17):
So the hard part for me, and I have some sympathies with the charter school folks. However, we know better. We know that God exists, right? We know that he created this world. We know that he sent his son who died for our sin and salvation comes through him. We know that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. And if you can’t get those simple truths upfront, then I don’t care how good the classical education is. It just doesn’t seem relevant.

In other words, there’s a need to begin with God exists and he has communicated to us in his word how one ought to live. So when we’re thinking of, well, what is justice? Well, we don’t have to go to Plato’s Republic to figure that out. We read his word. It’s good discussion to discuss Plato’s republic, but you’re not going to find a definition of justice.

(21:29):
You’re not going to, what are the obligations we have to God and to our neighbors? Well, we know that from scripture and from the teachings of Jesus. What is the end of human life about? Well, it’s to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And so in a classical sense, I feel like you can get all the questions right, but you’re not going to get the answers because those answers, you can get close.

I think a lot of the church fathers, early church fathers looked at someone like Plato as almost in a prophetic way. He’s prepared the way for the Greeks to hear the gospel, but he’s not there. And so to me, if we’re talking about pursuing truth and goodness and beauty, and it’s not built on the foundation of God, and who’s the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, it’s coming up short.

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:50):
I could see, Ron, the good, the true, the beautiful Greek philosophers were pursuing the answers to those questions, but it occurs to me the way you’re approaching this with Christian classical education is you can say, “Whoa, what’s good, true, beautiful? Here’s what various people have speculated about over the years, and here’s how we can think about it rationally.” But the ultimate question is not what is the good, it’s why be good?

Ron Jung (23:19):
Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:22):
And that’s something you can’t answer just by knowing different perspectives about the good.

Ron Jung (23:30):
Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. Well, there’s everything. I mean, and true, even the question of who’s truth, right? What’s truth? The foundation, speaking from the biblical worldview, right? Adam, God brings the animals in front of Adam, Adam names them and that’s what they are.

So the Bible explicitly teaches that there’s a correspondence with our language to reality. We are able to name reality. We have the capacity to know reality because the word of God created everything and that he has given us the capacity to know what he’s created and use words to explain it or to do it. And we can have confidence in that. And right now we live in a world where we don’t think that truth is just subjective and we can name things in order to create our own reality. Well, guess what? It doesn’t work that way, right? It doesn’t work that way.

(24:39):
You can’t call evil good. And then there’s no beauty. God made us in a particular way and there’s that truth of that and we can comprehend that truth and have confidence in that truth and follow that truth in order to be good. And of course, also scripture shows us that there is no one who’s good. Even Plato got that right. In his republic, he says, “There’s no one that’s good. There’s only people that seem to be good.”

And if there was ever a good person that would come, they would beat him up and pull his beard out and spit on him and hang him on a tree or on a pole, I think they would pale him or something. And of course, Jesus was the just man who actually came and that’s exactly what happened to him. But we can’t, apart from Christ, apart from God’s revealed word, we can’t know God and what he wants of us.

(25:41):
We have to have that and that’s the basis and there’s no salvation apart from that. And so to me, I don’t know why you would have your kids, I get it. I know there’s options I don’t, I’m going to sound very judgmental here and I apologize in advance to your audience.

Dr. Jeff Myers (26:02):
No, I asked you to make a case for it. That’s exactly what I’m hoping you will do.

Ron Jung (26:06):
But I’m passionate about this, right? So your children are being taught in everything that’s happening when they’re at school. It’s not just what’s happening in the, and this is the part. The biggest lie that’s being foisted upon our children today is that you can live your life apart from God and that’s normal. That normal life is a secular life. And your parents can have this personal belief that you can have in their private life.

And you might want to go to church every once in a while on Sunday, as long as you keep that in your, that’s your business, but real life, real life is this one without a divine referent, and that’s a lie. So what happens is your kids grow up, they hear about God at home, they hear about God at church, but the rest of their entire existence is apart from him, at least it seems like it.

(27:05):
And then eventually they think that, well, maybe mom and dad are the crazy ones. They’re the ones that are detached from reality because this is reality and it’s just a horrible thing. I think that, again, I can go on. I think that if a school, I once had a conversation with an administrator of a high school here in town. I used to be a pastor and we were in church and we had started homeschooling our kids. And one of the things he asked me was, I mean, he asked why. And I started off very.

Dr. Jeff Myers (27:49):
Yeah.

Ron Jung (27:49):
The first one was, “Well, I think my wife and I would be good at it.” And my wife and I are both pretty … We’re sharp cookies, I guess you’d say. We could do well. And they were like, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can see that.” And then I said, “I’m a pastor of a small church and Saturdays are often workdays and weddings, funerals, you name it on Saturday and then Sunday I’m exhausted. If I’m going to be a part of my child’s life and my day off is on a weekday, it would be really great if he didn’t have to be at school.” And then nods.

And then I said, “The last thing is I want it to be relevant.” And he’s like, “Well, what do you mean?” I said, “Well, God created everything and can you teach that at your school?” And he said, “No.” I go, “Well, Jesus is Lord of all.”

(28:44):
And like I said, every need will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, can you teach that at your school? And he said, “No.” And I said, “Then it’s irrelevant. What good is it? I don’t understand.” My oldest son went to kindergarten because that’s another long story. We hadn’t figured out what we were going to do. We were planning on him starting school at six, but he started reading kind of early and we just threw him into kindergarten.

But I remember him coming home and saying, “Hey, we learned about Hanukkah.” And I thought there’s a good Jewish population here in Green Bay, that makes sense and tell me about Hanukkah. And he tells me about this miracle of the lights being manure being lit. And I said, “Did your teacher say it was a miracle?” “No.” “Well, how did it get lit?” “Well, it was a miracle. God did it.” “Did your teacher talk about that?” He goes, “No, but that’s what happened.” Okay. And then he came back a couple days later, “Oh, we talked about Kwanzaa today and we did a Kwanzaa thing.” I go, “Well, tell me about Kwanzaa.”

(29:58):
He told me about Kwanzaa. “Okay. “And then I waited for him to come home and tell me about Christmas and he never did. And I said, “So did you talk about Christmas?” No. So my son at age five knows the entire world changes for Christmas. The colors, the decorations, the sails, the Christmas trees, everyone, but you can’t talk about it in school, then schools are relevant. I just couldn’t. Yeah, anyway.

Dr. Jeff Myers (30:26):
No, I can see that. I remember years ago, David Noebel, the founder of Summit Ministries, showed me an article by a secular humanist named Charles Francis Potter, who just gloated and said, “What can Christian Sunday schools do in one hour a week against the 40 hours a week that we have those children?”

And I think you’ve hit on something that Christian parents need to take very seriously. It’s not that a lot of government schools have sort of put Christianity aside to try to be neutral. It’s that they’ve intentionally quarantined it, isolated it to the point where it’s the one thing in the school that can’t be discussed. Right. What do you do with that? I’ve got a lot of questions for, I’m actually speaking to a group here shortly. That’s a group of people who are helping students who are in government schools evangelize their peers.

Ron Jung (31:42):
Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (31:43):
But you wonder, well, so the time in between the classes is the reason to go? Because what do you do the rest of the time if the one thing that you know to be true is the one thing that can’t be talked about? That doesn’t even sound secular. That sounds anti-Christian.

Ron Jung (32:03):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s very true. I had a, well, I was going to say, I had a teacher here who taught in the public schools for years and he talked about, he would teach creation in his science class. And almost every year he’d have parents thank him and administration tell him to stop and write him up. And I said, “So you’d get a writeup and then what?” And they said, “Well, just go in my folder.” And then they do anything? “Nope. I got a whole stack of them. So you just never stop teaching about creation.” He goes, “No. What are they going to do? Fire me?”

(32:52):
And I said, “Well, they could.” And he goes, “It would be worth it.” But that’s how he taught and that’s how he lived. And then he told the story about how there was one other guy who’s now a pastor in town who also would get in trouble because he would share his faith openly and he would get the pink slip in his folder and be talked to by the administration and it never stopped him. And then they decided they should get together and pray.

And he said they got together to pray and these other teachers showed up because they heard that there was a prayer meeting and they were like, “Oh, you’re a Christian?” They had no idea that there were these, salt and light. What does that mean? I don’t know. I think it’s a comfort for some parents that there are Christian teachers who are doing a good job in the public schools and praying for their kids and they’re there for them. But I don’t hear about a lot of teachers getting in trouble.

Dr. Jeff Myers (33:59):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think this is a powerful point, very convicting. Let me go on. I want to talk about some of the work that you’re doing too and give people a way they can get connected because I think there are probably some people listening right now saying,” My children need to have this kind of education. “And if they do, your school is in Green Bay, Wisconsin. You’ve been the headmaster of Providence Academy there. So if you happen to be in Green Bay, you can look that up. But where do people go to find out about classical Christian schools and whether there might be one in their own community?

Ron Jung (34:40):
Sure. So we’re a member school of the Association of Classical Christian Schools. And if you go, you can Google that or you can look up classical education, what is it? ClassicalChristian.org and that’ll take you to their website. And right on the front page of it, it’ll say find a school. And there’ll be a map of the United States. You click on your own state and then it’ll tell you what schools are where. And you can find that through there.

Dr. Jeff Myers (35:15):
Yeah. Now you’ve begun to expand some of your thinking toward helping people start schools. And you’ve started a podcast and the name of it is a court of three strands. And people are probably saying, “That sounds really familiar. I wonder if that’s from the Bible.”

Ron Jung (35:39):
I think most of the time I’ve heard people talk about a cord and three strands. I don’t know, it’s a new thing with three things and it’s supposed to be the husband, the wife, and God. I mean, very clever. I thought I did the same thing. I tried.

Dr. Jeff Myers (35:57):
It’s my wife, and me, and our dog.

Ron Jung (36:02):
But in Ecclesiastes four, it speaks of, it’s better to have two to keep warm or to defend yourself, but with three, it’s even better and a cord of three strands is not easily broken. And I was thinking what I’m interested in is the development of Christian culture. And part of it is, I mean, you said this earlier, it’s one thing to educate kids in this and the students, really, the graduates, they get it. It’s phenomenal when you see the graduates of classical Christian schools go into adulthood, but a lot of times parents don’t get it. It is kind of a different way of thinking.

And for many of them, they’ve never read any of the great books. They don’t know why you would take Latin for so many years in Greek and those types of things. So one of the things I wanted to do was have an outreach to the community to talk about the development of Christian culture that would give them a greater understanding of why things like Providence Academy or why classical Christian education is important. The three strands that I talk about are the church, the family, and the school, or education.

(37:34):
I love homeschooling as well, but those three things, working in conjunction with each other is a strong force, I would say, in not only the building of a Christian culture, but of keeping the Christian community solid and flourishing. So there’s a couple convictions I have about this, and that is one is if it’s going to be very attractive. Okay. There are a lot of people who don’t know Jesus Christ and they have no relation with the church. And if the church doesn’t seem to be doing anything better than the rest of the world, there’s not a lot to attract it.

But if the church is flourishing, if it is preaching the truth of God’s word and it is forming a good community, a good people, there’s going to just be this beauty of that community that will attract people. And I think that’s one of the things that just is lacking in our world, is church communities that are flourishing in a way that’s attractive, that people are going to look and go, “I want that. I want that for my kids. I want that.”

(39:09):
Compared to what’s going on in my life, my life’s chaotic, my life is depressing, things just seem odd over there. There’s goodness. Just having a conversation with some young people not that long ago, my wife and I, we’ve been married, we’ll be married 30 years this November and just talking about some of our friendships that we’ve maintained.

If you’re a Christian and you know that you’re a sinner and you’re asking for forgiveness a lot, and you know that other people are sinners and you’re forgiving other people a lot, you tend to have long relationships and a minimization of drama in your life because you just simply deal with the sin and seek forgiveness and reconciliation. But most of the world is not trained to do that, nor do they know how to do that. And there’s no grounds for it because they don’t know Jesus.

(40:11):
And so just these young people were, I guess they were attracted to my wife and I and our family because we’re this stable thing and we still love each other and there’s this joy. So what I want to do is provide ways through the Palatine Institute to provide events and educational opportunities that’s going to encourage families and parents and the church and the school to help better form a flourishing community.

And the podcast, A Cord of Three Strands, is one of the aspects of that. We just finished, Noah Tetsner is our director of media. We just finished our first season of the podcast and the season one’s name is Burning Yet Flourishing from the Burning Bush. And the idea is that when a culture is centered around the word of God, it’s like the burning bush. It burns because it sanctifies, it purifies, but yet it flourishes and it gives off the light of God’s truth and goodness.

(41:40):
So season one is kind of the basics of what I’m looking at. What does a Christian culture look like? And season two starts soon, and that’s going to be on virtue and talking about virtue.

Dr. Jeff Myers (41:55):
Yeah. Well, this sounds great, Ron. Thank you for making the case for classical Christian education. I’m really glad to hear more about it and to let folks know that this is something that as you’re trying to figure out education options for your children, check this out, classicalcristian.org and go visit a school and see what the children are like and see what the teachers are like. See what the people who are involved as parents and on the board are like. I find this very compelling and I’m really grateful for the conversation today. So thanks for being on the show.

Ron Jung (42:31):
Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it too.

Dr. Jeff Myers (42:33):
Thank you to my guest today, Ron Jung, for being on the program. Ron’s last name is spelled J-U-N-G. That will be important if you decide to Google him and the work that he is doing, especially with his new podcast, A Cord of Three Strands. If you want more information about classical Christian schools, you can go to classicalchristian.org, type in your address and see if there’s a school like the one Ron is describing in your area. Thank you again for joining the show. I’ll see you next week.

Ryan Dobson (43:09):
Thanks for listening to the Dr. Jeff Show. And don’t forget, you can help a child attend Summit summer session by going to summit.org/match. All your donations that are tax deductible will be doubled. God bless, have a great week, and we’ll see you next time for another Dr. Jeff Show.

Dr. Jeff Myers (43:27):
Listeners, I want you to know that our podcast is on Edifi, which is a truly powerful app that brings together thousands of the best Christian podcasts in one place for your listening enjoyment, you can download it at edifi.app. Be sure to share this show if you have enjoyed listening to it and leave a review, if you would, on the site where you download the show, that helps more people know about the Dr. Jeff Show, and I look forward to seeing you next week.