Parenting in today’s culture can feel overwhelming, confusing, and sometimes even upside-down. But you’re not alone, and you don’t have to figure it out by yourself.
In this episode of Upside-Down Parenting, we sit down with Aaron Klemm, Director of Content & Publishing at Summit Ministries, to talk about an important shift happening at Summit Ministries: a growing commitment to supporting parents more intentionally than ever before.
For years, Summit has been known for equipping students to think critically and live out a biblical worldview. Now, Summit is expanding its focus to come alongside moms and dads—providing resources, training, and encouragement to help them confidently guide their kids’ faith and character.
In this conversation, you’ll discover:
*Why Summit is investing more in parents right now.
*What new programs and resources are available for families
*What makes Summit’s approach to parenting unique
*How a biblical worldview shapes practical parenting guidance
*Encouragement for parents who feel overwhelmed or unsure where to start
Whether you’re raising young kids, teens, or somewhere in between, this episode will remind you that you don’t have to navigate today’s challenges alone—and that equipping the next generation starts with equipping parents.
Episode 31: 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 Upside Down Parenting Podcast, hosts Matt and Janel interview Aaron Klemm, the director of publishing and content at Summit. They discuss Summit’s evolution from focusing primarily on students aged 16-24 to expanding their mission to include resources for parents. Aaron explains that Summit’s unique approach to parenting centers on worldview formation – helping parents develop in their children a pattern of ideas, beliefs, habits and convictions that helps make sense of God, the world, and their relationship to God in the world. He also emphasizes that this is a joint process where parents continue developing their own worldview alongside their children, and he encourages parents to have confidence in their capability to engage in worldview formation, even when they don’t have all the answers
Episode Transcript
Janel Greig (00:00):
Welcome to the Upside Down Parenting Podcast. We’re really excited to be here together, in person today for the first time.
Dr. Matt Jones (00:07):
First time together in person.
Janel Greig (00:09):
It’s going to be awesome. Here on the podcast, we love to provide you parents with practical tips, biblical encouragement and wisdom to help you parent. You’re not alone. Sometimes it feels like parenting can be upside down or really discouraging, but you’re not alone. We’re here with you at Summit and today we’re really excited to have Aaron Klemm on as our guest. Aaron is helping situate some parenting resources and a focus on parents at Summit. Aaron, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, about what drives you, about your family?
Aaron Klemm (00:43):
Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Matt and Janel, this is a lot of fun. We’ve been talking about the work of the podcast for so much longer than even you guys have now been recording it.
(00:54):
And so it’s fun to get to share in this time with you guys. I’m the director of publishing and content here at Summit, and I help with a team of wonderful people, develop resources for parents, including the podcast and books and articles and all sorts of things. We want to equip parents. And so that’s my day job. And then at home I am practicing hopefully many of the things that we’re talking about here. I have three young boys, 2-year-old twins and a 4-year-old, and yeah, wonderful wife, Nadine. I’m in the parenting journey with, so I’m right in the thick of it and in the tiring years as I think physically tiring years as many to refer to them as.
And so that’s much of what drives me and my work is my heart for the need for kids to be raised up godly ways and understand their faith, understand the way the world works, and to make sense of reality, whether they’re four years old, my kids are 16 years old, like the students that we have come to Summit or the current students we have in our gap year program. Just think well about the world and understand that the Christian worldview is big enough to make sense of everything. We don’t have to be intimidated by the world. My 4-year-old loves to ask questions.
Dr. Matt Jones (02:24):
Do you have a favorite question he asks right now?
Aaron Klemm (02:26):
Oh man, it’s all about how things work. So it’s always going deeper about curiosity about how things work. So I win in my better moments when I’m willing to engage with a better attitude, thinking about, oh, what am I cultivating in him that is going to do the same kinds of things that we can do with our students here at Summit? A curiosity and interest in the way that God made things and a love for it and an imagination big enough to fill it up with God’s world. So that’s what I love doing. That’s what drives me. I get to do that at home and I get to do it here in my work at Summit for 10 plus years.
Dr. Matt Jones (03:07):
Well, we appreciate the leadership that you’ve provided us in working at Summit, and I’ve known about Summit for about 25 years, and the focus has been worldview formation primarily with students 16 to 24 year olds. And what we’re grateful to be a part of and are seeing is there’s a shift going on at Summit, not away from students, but to include parents. And we’re just curious about the evolution of that. What was the motivation? How did that come about? And if you could talk about this expansion and focus.
Aaron Klemm (03:41):
Yeah, yeah. It’s been an exciting couple of years to get to the point that we’re at now. Many people know of Summit for the work that we do with students in our conferences. As you mentioned that 16 to 20, early twenties, I myself was a student years ago. It was a massively impactful experience that shaped me deeply. And so we’ve done that for over 60 plus years now.
And so hundreds of thousands of students have gone through summit programs and then a lot of people also know us for our curriculum, the ways that we engage with students through Christian schools, homeschool families, equipping schools and families to walk through biblical narrative, comparative worldviews, cultural engagement. And so we’ve been doing all that stuff for a long time, directly engaging with students through those means, especially in those conferences when students are engaging with our staff and we continue to just be students of the culture, students of the rising generation of what’s going on because they’re our heartbeat. That’s who we care about.
We care about those students. We care about the environments they’re growing up in, living in your survey data continues to tell us that students lose their faith over time. And students that come to Summit experiences we know statistically keep their faith, and that’s really encouraging. But we can’t have every student in our small hotel here.
(05:11):
All summer. Every summer. And so how can we reach more students because they’re the ones that we care about? And that kind of question just kept welling up in different ways. And we’ve worked with churches, we work with Christian schools obviously directly with students, but said, what are other ways we need to be reaching students?
(05:31):
And parents were just the most obvious people that kept coming up in that conversation of saying, parents, we know statistically have the most influence in students’ lives, so they have more hours that they spend with them, more influence, more just time together. So positively or negatively.
In fact, that influence is just so significant that we’re really neglecting a core responsibility if our mission is the rise in generation, if we’re not equipping parents to walk alongside their kids and do some of what I was talking about a little bit ago, help them understand what a Christian worldview is, why it’s big enough to engage with the world, how to embrace that as their own, as the students leave the home.
And so that was really just kind of all different corners of the organization kept coming up. And so we said we really need to create more resources specifically for parents. It’s not that we had never done anything for parents, but it was more, oh, we have this thing and yeah, that would serve you as a parent, wasn’t we had you in mind from day one when we were creating this or that resource.
(06:34):
And so about a year and a half ago is when we started really leaning into that and saying, this is something we really need to do, we want to do. We had some momentum from financial support and organizational support saying, yeah, this is a next step for Summit to grow and in influence and in just fulfilling our mission and doing the work that we’re called to do here.
And so that’s how it evolved and what’s put us here on the track to have a podcast and have more books with parents specifically in mind, not just because they happen to be, as we like to call, worldview enthusiasts and think like World Viewly or Follow the Colson Center and John Stonestreet. Those are all great people we want in our pipeline as well, but how can we expand that reach to the everyday Christian moms and dads who say, we want to be engaged, we just need help. We want steps, we want resources, whatever that might look like.
Dr. Matt Jones (07:27):
That’s great.
Janel Greig (07:28):
I love that. And I love the heart of that and where the Lord has led from the students to the parents because as you referenced, parents are the primary disciples. They’re the ones that we have our kids most of the time. And personally for me as a parent, when I was a young parent looking to equip my kids, it was kind of finding the different resources, different places, and it still wouldn’t be an all in one place necessarily, but there wasn’t one place I could go as a parent knowing that there were resources available.
So it’s super exciting to be a part of that and to know that summit we’re moving towards that. But on that note, maybe for parents, what are some of the initiatives or actual specific resources that Summit is developing for parents?
Aaron Klemm (08:12):
So we know parents have a lot of struggles. I have a lot of struggles as a parent in a lot of different places. And so it can sort of feel like a whack-a-mole sort of thing. Do I teach my kids Bible stories? Do I make sure they’re getting to VBS or Sunday school or youth group or whatever’s applicable? Do I send them to a Christian school? Do I engage with this cultural issue or bring it up at all? Whatever’s kind of going on, it can feel really hard to know what to do.
And so we’ve been looking at that problem and saying, okay, what role does Summit fill really to help parents where they are in the ways that they really need help? And so if we step back from that just a moment, I think it’s pretty intuitively known that as a Christian parent, you want your kid to have a lifelong faith.
(09:00):
We might all put different words to that, but ultimately we would say something pretty similar to that. If you say, what do you want for your kid? I want them to follow Jesus for their lifetime. I want them to have an unshakable faith. I want them to be confident in what they believe, whatever way that might take shape. It all looks pretty similar. And so, okay, we have this just chaos of life, busyness, activities, good things, distractions, all of the above. How do we keep that main goal, the main goal, and engage with all this stuff instead of, I think the temptation can be, well, I either get to do one or the other.
(09:34):
I get to deal with the distractions, I get to deal with the cultural issues, or I get to spend some time actually talking to my kids about the real things and much of what we want to do, much of what we believe a worldview can help students do, what can help a family do if we’re thinking worldview-ishly is look through the busyness of difficulty of responsibility of real life things, of choices of sending kids to Christian school or not, or what are we going to be involved in or what have you, good, decent things to be doing and say, how can all of that actually be a part of the journey of parenting and using those things to be the kind of launchpad for teaching and discipling our kids?
And so we want to create resources that help you think through, okay, there’s a really difficult issue such as the topic of gender. That was the first one on the list when we got this whole initiative started. And we said, this is a real on the ground issue that people are thinking about. Maybe they’re not thinking about it as in, their kid is struggling, but their kid is certainly going out into a world that is struggling.
(10:39):
And asking questions and trying to think through these things and dealing with language that’s very confusing and contradictory and all these problems. And so, okay, this is an issue and it can feel like one of those just overbearing issues. So how do we use this not as a here, let’s teach God’s truth about not exclusively as let’s just teach God’s truth about sexuality. We should do that.
(11:03):
Not just as a chance to talk about all the ways that the world has this wrong or messed up or confused. We should do that too, but how do we use this as actually a moment of formation for our kids? How do we talk through these issues? How do we make it part of everyday life? How do we have conversations about them?
So we wrote a book that did exactly that, and Dr. Jeff and Dr. Kathy Cook wrote a book that helps parents engage with that issue, looking through the things of life towards that ultimate aim of living a life that follows Jesus for all of life. So that’s the kinds of resources, books this podcast is, I know on your guys’ hearts to provide that kind of a resource as well, that’s helping parents not just get overbearing by the weight of the day today, which is really easy to do.
Janel Greig (11:51):
Yes, it is.
Aaron Klemm (11:52):
But see all of that as opportunity, and there may be things to strip out and work with, but instead of saying, oh, it’s this or it’s that, it’s actually how can I use the things of life to understand that God has something to say about them? Remember, Christian worldview is big enough, it’s big enough for the things of regular life, just like it’s big enough for the things of difficulty or not so regular life as well. So those are the kinds of resources and articles, videos, and the specific details, the podcasts, the books, those are specifics, and we just keep coming up with new ideas. We have probably too many ideas of things that we want to do, and so we want to hear from you.
Dr. Matt Jones (12:33):
Wait, is there an idea you’re really excited about at this point besides the podcast?
Aaron Klemm (12:38):
Well, we have another book that’s forthcoming that I’m really excited about. I’ll restrain myself. We’ll have more people back to talk about that later in the year, but that one I’m really pumped about. I think, yeah, there are many ideas that we often are tossing around and we want to hear from you. I think it’s podcast@summit.org, you can email.
Dr. Matt Jones (13:00):
If you’ve got ideas.
Aaron Klemm (13:01):
Send them. Yes. We want to hear what those resources are, the topics, the types of resources, who’s doing this sort of work really well that we can learn from because it doesn’t do any good if we create resources that we think are awesome and nobody else wants. We want to know what’s really going to serve people in that ultimate aim of helping their kids have a big enough worldview.
Dr. Matt Jones (13:23):
And we’ve been given insight on the idea, and I’m telling you folks, it is worth your time and investment and we appreciate Summit bringing that in the future. So that’s kind of a tease.
Aaron Klemm (13:34):
The book?
Dr. Matt Jones (13:35):
Yes, the book. Yeah. So what do you think makes Summit’s perspective on parenting different from other organizations? Because we do have parenting podcasts. Some are directed towards men, some are directed towards women, some are the combo, but what does Summit bring to the table that’s unique?
Aaron Klemm (13:52):
Yeah, as a part of this process, this evolution of this idea and how do we achieve our mission through this if we are truly convicted of that, what’s that going to look like was a question that we had to wrestle with early on. And it really comes down to, I’ll use some nerdy language and I’ll hopefully break it down a little bit, if that helps.
Dr. Matt Jones (14:13):
Depends on how nerdy for me, even though I look like one my kids will remind me. That’s right. My kids say, daddy, you’re such a nerd. Sometimes I’m like, well, I don’t know much.
Aaron Klemm (14:23):
There are things worth nerding out about, right?
Dr. Matt Jones (14:24):
Yes, that’s fair. That’s fair.
Janel Greig (14:27):
This is definitely one of them.
Dr. Matt Jones (14:28):
Okay, good. Well, if it gets too technical for me, I’ll step in and say, hey, Aaron, please bring it down to my level, please.
Aaron Klemm (14:34):
Throw the flag.
Dr. Matt Jones (14:35):
Yes.
Aaron Klemm (14:36):
Okay. So we say, okay, well, there are a lot of resources out there as you said, that are excellent, excellent resources, and I could name so many that you should be following and checking out and learning from. And I get information from tons of sources that aren’t Summit. But what does Summit bring to the table?
I think it really has to do with what we like to talk about is worldview formation. What does it mean to have a biblical worldview? What are the pieces that we can put in place that help that worldview come into shape over the course of a child’s life? And so this is the way we like to think, like in terms of worldview, a pattern of ideas, beliefs, habits and convictions that helps us make sense of God, make sense of the world, and make sense of our relationship to God in the world. That is a worldview.
Dr. Matt Jones (15:21):
And this is not too nerdy so far, so you’re doing well.
Aaron Klemm (15:23):
I’m doing all right. So that’s a worldview. How does my worldview come into, how do my ideas translate to my beliefs, to my habits, to my convictions? How much alignment do those have? Do they actually, does it make sense the way that my worldview has? Is it cohesive? Sometimes it’s not. I mean, we all hold contradictory beliefs, beliefs that don’t really work together. We live in ways that don’t really align with what we would say we would believe. And so that’s an ongoing process. A worldview is not something that just gets formed and then it’s set and then it’s gone. It’s done. There’s some research out there that says a lot of worldview development takes place in certain years.
(16:00):
But that doesn’t mean that it’s just set in some sort of stone and then it can’t be changed. We all have a maturing worldview that’s developing, that we’re learning. We’re deepening our desires for God’s kingdom. We’re growing in wisdom and stature, and this is part of the journey of following Christ. And so we want to help parents put the pieces together. How can I, as a dad, what role do I play in helping my kids do that?
I’m not the sole arbiter of making certain things happen. I have to trust the spirit. I have to trust other people to come alongside. I have to submit to God in this process for sure. I’ve obviously, my wife, the biggest partner in that process, so I’m not again even alone in that, but I have a role and a distinct responsibility to help my kids think worldview-ishly.
Okay, see that there are ideas in billboards, there are ideas in commercials, there are ideas in sermons, there are ideas in YouTube videos, there are ideas in everything. They influence us. They shape us, they form us. And so how do I steward them and walk with them to make sense of that so that as they leave the house, they can do so in a way that I’m confident and comfortable and know I’ve done what I can. It’s no guarantee.
(17:13):
But that they are walking with the Lord. They’re thinking rightly about certain things and the things that they’re not thinking rightly about. They know how to process and how to improve and how to seek out wisdom and how to learn and how to discern and all these sorts of things. And so that’s worldview formation, that whole process, and it’s not exclusive. Spiritual formation is still something that’s a part of that. It’s not like you do this and you don’t have to do anything else. Parenting’s not that easy. We all know that either we’ll admit it or we won’t, but it’s not that easy.
Dr. Matt Jones (17:44):
It’s not that easy. Also, because we’re still forming elements of our worldview, we raise our kids. So for me, as I’m listening, I’m like, man, this is phenomenal in terms of affecting my child’s worldview. But also we’re hoping by the grace of God and the work of the spirit that you as parents and as we as members of Summit, will help think through some worldview components and aspects that maybe could be further implemented, not only in our own lives, in hopes to assist and help our children grow in these areas.
Also, because I just remember so many areas of my worldview needing to be developed and wish I had the resources that Summit was offering whenever I was raising the kids that God granted me.
Aaron Klemm (18:31):
Absolutely.
Dr. Matt Jones (18:32):
Is that fair to add and consider?
Aaron Klemm (18:33):
Absolutely. I’m so glad you added it because it’s an essential part to the process that this is not something you’re doing for your kids. It’s not something you’re kind of doing at them or in some way. This is a joint process.
Dr. Matt Jones (18:45):
This is a width.
Aaron Klemm (18:47):
If a worldview is never fully developed, then mine isn’t either. And so it’s an ongoing process that I’m paying attention to this. I’m thinking about things I’m asking, what is really my desire in this? What are the things that I’ve said I believe? What is the way that I’m living? I’m engaging in that process alongside my kids, and I have to hopefully be a few steps down the road in that, but sometimes I’m maybe catching up kids as they get older, especially may point things out, and I’m sure you guys have some stories.
Dr. Matt Jones (19:16):
Yeah, because our kids bring phrases home, and some of them, I have to go, wait a minute, I got to think through this because the first time my kid said, you do you. I’m like, wait a minute. We got to wrestle with this one a little bit.
Janel Greig (19:29):
Let’s think through that. Yeah.
Dr. Matt Jones (19:30):
So yeah, it’s constant.
Aaron Klemm (19:31):
So sometimes they bring things home and sometimes you bring things home too. My 4-year-old will say, hey, daddy, we don’t say that. Be like, those are moments that I’m like, wow, yeah, I should not use that word. And it might be the word hate or something. And I’m talking about this.
Dr. Matt Jones (19:49):
The Cubs? Were you talking about the Cubs?
Aaron Klemm (19:49):
The Cubs, yeah. And he’s like, we don’t say it. You know what, Walter, that’s really, you’re right. You’re right. That’s a way that my heart is actually coming out. And yeah, I was joking, but that’s a thoughtful moment. So my kids might lead me or at least give a prompt there for me to realize that I have some processing to do and I’m hopefully leading them out in the same way.
And so what makes us unique is all of that coming together. And so whereas there are tons of great ministries that help you engage with a cultural issue, give you language for, hey, your kids are using emojis in this way, or your kids are using this new word language and vocabulary is a big thing right now of all kinds of new words that parents aren’t unfamiliar with, and those are real needs, and you should absolutely seek out those resources. And it’s not that we may never comment on that, but that’s not our sweet spot in the same way it’s saying, okay, well what are the ideas behind the words and how do we think about those?
(20:46):
How do we not say, don’t say that, but how do we think about what’s maybe underneath it, how it’s forming us, what it says about maybe our future lives or our lives right now? So that’s what I think Summit can bring to the table. It’s what we’ve been bringing to the table for students’ lives for 60 plus years, and so it just makes sense that we can help parents do it in the home instead of just in micro experiences over two weeks or something exclusively. I think those are great capstone events. Send your student. This is not, I do this at home, and then you don’t need Summit anymore. Oh, no, you’re just putting layers on this and it’s evolving the process even further down the road.
Dr. Matt Jones (21:21):
Appreciate that insight. That’s great.
Janel Greig (21:22):
Yeah, it’s great. I think one of the things you drew out there a little bit too, besides, well, and you kind of called it out with regards to us continuing to develop our own worldview in order to share that with our kids, but the modeling aspect of, I’ll learn alongside with you, and that’s something our kids need to see, and they will learn from that and hopefully grow with that too. Maybe as a wrap up for our parents, for our listeners, what’s a great place that you think would be for them to start with the resources at Summit? What’s a way for them to get plugged in to follow and to track and to learn about these new resources when they’re released and available?
Aaron Klemm (21:58):
Yeah, yeah, thank you. That you can get on our newsletter. We have a Worldview Weekly newsletter where we have podcast episodes all the time. You could subscribe to this podcast if you haven’t. Share it with other people, post about it. I mean, our social media is constantly talking about the resources that we have available. Those are all great places to start.
And also just keep an eye, if you’re watching those newsletters, you’ll see when we have new books coming out, we’ll pick up, there’s going to be continual momentum throughout this year with new projects and initiatives that are forthcoming and send us what we should be doing as I mentioned.
Because if you were like, I need to know where to start, tell us that’s what you need. I think the biggest thing, just in terms of a posture or position, a mental thought of where to start, which is maybe a step before even the resource is just having confidence that you’re capable of this. We can have this conversation and maybe Matt, you didn’t feel like it was technical, but maybe the listener does, and that’s totally okay.
(23:02):
You don’t have to do this alone. First of all, we’re walking with you. You don’t have to be the expert in this. You might not know anything about worldview. You might not know anything about certain aspects of theology or whatever, and you’re like, well, how could I be the spiritual leader if I don’t understand this or that?
The other thing, and sure, first you can learn about it, but you also can bring people into that process. You can learn alongside your kid. You can say you don’t know. I was teaching a class earlier this week and I was really nervous. It was the first time I was going through some of the content and I just had to keep reminding myself it won’t be a loss for those students. If I say, that’s a good question. I don’t know.
Janel Greig (23:40):
That’s a great tip.
Aaron Klemm (23:40):
We can explore it together. We can think about it. Let’s engage with it. Let’s talk about it more. When you ask that question, why are you curious about that? What do you really want to know? What’s the question behind the question? These are things we can practice even without a resource. And just being confident that, you know what? God gave us the role of being parents and he’s entrusting us, not just because he’s like good luck, but because he’s confident that we are capable. He created us capable. So hopefully we’re just coming alongside to support you in that. But that’s a great place to start is just being willing to engage and take a first step into it.
Dr. Matt Jones (24:18):
Yeah, and we really appreciate first of all, you coming on with us today on our Upside Down Parenting podcast. We appreciate the leadership and the heart that you have provided for our listeners and for us to help us understand, man, we’re really doing this because we love God and we will love you parents and love you in such a way that you love your kids well. And we do believe that worldview formation is extremely, in particular, biblical worldview formation is extremely important for that. So we appreciate your heart behind all this and the work that goes in, and hopefully our listeners will pray and continue to subscribe. But we appreciate you joining us in the Upside Down Parenting Podcast.
So listeners, thank you for being a part of our time together today. Hopefully by God’s grace, we’ll be continuing to make more of these resources available to you as you pray for us, as you pray for your kids, and as you invest in these kingdom matters that help us pursue this upside down parenting podcast and your role as a parent. God bless and thank you for your time today.