Pastor Story Hour (Daily Wire Full Interview)
THE DAILY WIRE INTERVIEW
On Monday, January 9th, a reporter from the Daily Wire reached out to me and wanted to ask a couple of questions about our Pastor Story Hour event. You can find his original article here, my interview here, and my Facebook posting about it here.
As you can imagine, the Daily Wire could not quote my responses in full, so I am sharing them with the church in case you are interested.
The Lord Bless you!
Ben Zeisloft: Hi Pastor Lankford, My name is Ben Zeisloft, and I am a staff reporter with The Daily Wire. Michael Foster provided me with your email address. I am writing a follow-up piece about the Pastor Story Hour movement gaining steam across the country over the past few months (here's my first article). Would you be willing to answer a few questions about your upcoming event?
Kendall Lankford: Hello Ben! Sure thing.
Ben Zeisloft: When and where are you hosting a Pastor Story Hour? Did your local library allow you to schedule the event without a problem? If you have documentation of them presenting you difficulties, please feel free to let me know.
Kendall Lankford: Our Pastor Story Hour will be at the Chelmsford Public Library on Friday, January 13th, in Chelmsford, MA. At this point, we expect between 50-75 kids from our Church and surrounding churches in our area. As of now, we have had no problems from the public library and are praying that this remains the case.
Ben Zeisloft: Why is this project necessary? What do you and other pastors across the country hope to accomplish from this project?
Kendall Lankford: This project is critical for a variety of reasons, but I will share three. First and foremost, God commands men to equip, train, and raise up the next generation of children in the fear and admonition of the Lord (Dt. 6:6-7; Eph 6:4). This means teaching the children in our homes to think about their entire lives and the world around them in robustly Biblical ways, not least, helping young boys to step into the kind of godly Biblical masculinity that will change a nation and young girls to aspire to kind of godly Biblical femininity that will raise up and nurture the next generation. Second, in Christ, we are also commanded to take that commitment for home discipleship and expand it to the nations (Mt. 28:18-20), sharing the hope of Jesus with everyone until every tribe, tongue, and nation has heard the Gospel. Christ has a vision for the entire world and not just for our homes, which means that the scope of the Gospel, the goal for which the Church is laboring, will not be accomplished until all the children of the world come under God's blessing and are taught a Biblical worldview (Gen. 12:1-3). With that, the drag queens, in particular, and the LGBTQ movement, in general, are the ones who are truly on the wrong side of history. And I will admit, the Church has much work to accomplish until that work is finished, but sloth, apathy, and hiding our heads in the proverbial sand will certainly not get us there. This is why I am so excited and encouraged by things like Pastor Story Hour, since it allows me and others to meet families, share God's truth with children, and it will enable us to tell the story of Jesus Christ, who is the only hope for this world. This gives pastors a platform to share Biblical truth with young minds, who are especially bombarded with a cacophony of perversions that this godless society is throwing at them, and to combat those lies with God's truth. Third, the good of the society we live in depends on movements like this since our future depends upon the kind of children we graduate into adulthood. The time has come for us to decide who will influence our children and shape the world around us. Will it be a group of rabid activists denying basic things like sex and gender, cheered on by a gaggle of middle-aged perverts twerking in sequined dresses in public libraries? Or, will pastors and men and women across this country stand up and combat the lies with the truth of the Word of God? To me, the time for neutrality is over. The ship is sinking. Out of love for our fellow man and obedience to God, we must engage before the next generation of children is polluted and lost forever.
Regarding what we would like to accomplish, I know that one pastor at one library will not achieve a lot. But, since I learned about this from my friend Michael Foster and heard of the efforts of Kirk Cameron and Dale Partridge, I was encouraged to start one of these at my local library in Massachusetts as well. I am hoping that men across the country would hear about this movement, call their library, sign up, and see a generation of children taught the truth instead of perversions and lies!
Ben Zeisloft: Why does the LGBTQ movement target children?
Kendall Lankford: There are two sides to this. First, the LGBTQ movement targets children because the Bible tells us all people are born dead in their trespasses and sins and are slaves to the God of this world, Satan. We live in a fallen world with fallen people who do fallen things, and without the redemption of Jesus Christ, we should not be surprised when a group of fallen people produce fallen cultures that invent new and increasingly perverted ways of being evil. The Bible also tells us that Satan is the original perverter of humanity and wants to produce children who will do his bidding (John 8:44). Like their father, the devil, the LGBTQ movement finds innumerable ways of slithering into the home, coming intentionally into the home through entertainment, social media, books, and other platforms, in order to present families with that same age-old question first posed by the serpent to Adam and Eve: "Did God really say?". The hope is that by casting doubt on the efficacy of the word of God, (Did God really say there are only two genders? That biology is fixed? That marriage is between a man and a woman? Etc.), a new generation of people will partake of the forbidden fruit, and be led into new kinds of slavery to sin. Thus, the problem is primarily a spiritual one, which is why the only hope is Christ and His Gospel. Until the soiled heart of sin is made new in Jesus, the LGBTQ advocates will continue seeking to pervert children because that is simply what a sinful nature does… It perverts everything.
Now, as a bit of an excursus, I do not believe that the LGBTQ movement is unique in this. All people have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and do things that manifest their rebellion against their creator (Rom. 3:23). No one is righteous, not even one (Rom. 3:11). We all need Christ. This applies to those within the LGBTQ movement and also without it.
The second, and more natural explanation as to why the LGBTQ movement targets children, is because they cannot biologically reproduce. Common sense and science confirm that two women cannot naturally conceive a baby, there is no such phenomenon as birthing people, and men cannot have periods. This is the fear that grips their heart and why they are so eager to adopt, influence Hollywood, have legislation crafted in their image, and gyrate their crotches in children's faces because they have no future apart from conversions. Left to their own sexual and biological devices, participants in the LGBTQ movement will have a dead movement on their hands in a single generation, that is, unless they rob from our families and convert our children. Yet, this is precisely why the Church must be involved in discipling our children and the children in this society, so that they are not vulnerable and easy pickings for a group that is in rebellion against God and cannot naturally have their own legacy.
But, as I close this question, it is essential for Christians to think about how passionately they are pro-evangelism and discipleship. They spend untold resources, give countless hours, and work their fingers to the bone trying to reshape this society in their distorted image. In a sense, that is commendable and also convicting to me. This is why I have been so emboldened to do a Pastor Story Hour because we, the Church, have the truth, and ought to be as bold, if not even more bold, in sharing it as they are.
Ben Zeisloft: How does the Christian worldview address the discipleship of children?
Kendall Lankford: As mentioned above, the man is commanded to disciple his children by teaching them everything God commands. We know that God's commands bring life and joy to God's people (Lev 18:5; Dt. 32:47; Prov 4:22) and blessings upon those who obey them (Ps. 1:1-3; 119:1-3). We also trust what Jesus said, that if we truly love Him, we will obey His commands (John 14:15), which also applies to how we care for children. If we truly love them, we will not sit back while the world, the flesh, and the devil attempt to pervert them. We will do whatever we can, even Pastor Story Hours, to make sure they know who Jesus is, what He commands for them and their bodies, and how they can have a relationship with Him that give them eternal life and blessings forever.
Ben Zeisloft: Do you believe most American Christians understand biblical and historical examples of family discipleship?
Kendall Lankford: Unfortunately, I do not. While we have a proliferation of Biblical resources these days and a Bible to decorate every dusty shelf, I do not think that the Church has been great at teaching people the importance and necessity of family discipleship and family worship. Over the last several generations, the Church has been asleep, uncritically and complicity participating at every level of the whims and fancies of this decaying culture. In some ways, we must face the fact that much of the moral slide we see around us is on us. We may not have perpetrated it, but by sending our children into increasingly secular schools, allowing them unfettered access to the internet and social media where they are being discipled by pedophiles, perverts, and activists, and by remaining quiet and not sharing God's truth, we have abandoned the world and countless children to their destruction. But this is also why I am starting to become a bit encouraged. Because movements like Pastor Story Hour are shining a light on the failings of the Church and how we must respond differently in the days ahead, we must stand on Biblical truth, proclaiming it publicly, boldly, and unreservedly before the rot becomes incurable.
Ben Zeisloft: Why is it necessary for Christian men specifically to have an influence in our culture?
Kendall Lankford: First, I do not believe culture is the product of a few elites in Hollywood and Washington with a top-down agenda. Instead, culture is built and emanates from the local level, with families impacting neighborhoods, churches influencing towns, and towns affecting the affairs of states. With that, Christian men can be some of the most potent agents of cultural influence by simply becoming godly fathers, having lots of children, and providing a well-managed Christian home for them (1 Tim 3:4; 5:8), and raising those children in the ways and instruction of the Lord (Prov. 22:6). If we could see a movement like that, where Christian fathers are encouraged to love God, get married, have kids, disciple them, and train those kids to do the same, then movements like Pastor Story Hour would eventually become unnecessary.
But, as it is, we live at a time when movements like this are very much necessary. And this job falls particularly to men because that is how God designed us. He created us to fight, build, tame the chaos, subdue cultures, and - in imitation of Christ - participate in the ongoing crushing of the serpent. This is why Paul admonishes the leaders of the Corinthian Church, and what I would like to encourage all the American pastors reading your article with as well, to:
"Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. 14 Let all that you do be done in love." - 1 Cor 16:13-14
The time for acting like men has come. The time for pastors to get back on the wall and defend the world of Satanic threats is here. Men, especially pastors, are not called to be squishes and live in the malleable middle. Instead, we are called to be strong, oppose error, and let God's love be our north and guiding star.
Thank you so much for asking me these questions. I pray that your article will encourage, inspire, motivate, and empower countless men to join the effort.
This was the end of the interview. Pray the Lord uses it!
