What does it mean to disciple children as whole persons?

In this Greenhouse episode, Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc continue the conversation from Episode 104 with Emily Riffe on spiritual formation for children. Drawing from Emily’s reflections on Charlotte Mason, education, nature, habits, and character formation, the conversation asks how parents, teachers, churches, and communities can better help children become people who love Jesus.

The episode challenges the idea that children are empty vessels waiting to be filled with information. Children are already whole persons made in the image of God, with unique personalities, affinities, desires, and God-given capacities. Discipling children is not merely about giving them more Bible facts, better curriculum, or higher test scores. It is about creating an atmosphere where their hearts, minds, bodies, imaginations, relationships, and habits can be formed toward love.

Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc also discuss the difference between schooling and educating, the danger of reducing faith to intellectual instruction, and why the Bible should be approached as a living book rather than merely an instruction manual. They explore what it means to form children through time, habits, community, attention, family rhythms, and a lived vision of the Kingdom of God.

This episode is not a debate about public school, private school, or homeschooling. It is a deeper conversation about child discipleship, whole-person formation, and what kind of people our children are becoming.

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How are children spiritually formed?

In Episode 104, Brian talks with author, educator, and homeschool mom Emily Riffe about spiritual formation for children. Emily introduces the work of Charlotte Mason, a British educator whose philosophy treated children not as empty vessels to be filled with information, but as whole persons made in the image of God.

This conversation returns to the Discipleship Dilemma from Season 2: to become more like Jesus, we need to know both God and ourselves. Emily and Brian explore why that kind of double knowledge matters for children, whose hearts, habits, desires, imaginations, and ideas are being shaped from the earliest years of life.

The episode challenges the assumption that spiritual formation is mostly about giving children more Bible facts, curriculum, programs, camps, or academic achievement. Those things can be good, but they are not enough. Children are formed through atmosphere, habits, relationships, nature, beauty, living books, conversation, attention, obedience, truthfulness, and the ordinary rhythms of home.

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In this Greenhouse episode, Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc continue the conversation from Episode 102 with Zach Leighton on Christian storytelling, testimony, and the role of story in deep discipleship. They explore why story is essential to how we understand God, ourselves, our communities, and the larger narrative of Scripture.

The conversation asks whether the modern church has lost touch with the power of testimony. In many church settings, story is reduced to a dramatic conversion account or a rare platform moment. But our testimonies also include the ordinary and ongoing ways God forms us: moments of struggle, healing, conflict, joy, suffering, provision, wrestling, and growth.

Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc discuss why safe communities are needed for people to tell their stories honestly. They return to the Greenhouse question, “How is it going with your soul?” as a simple practice that opens space for weekly testimony, vulnerability, and attention to God’s work in real life.

The episode also explores story as a spiritual discipline, the role of conflict and change in formation, the danger of reducing the gospel to plot points, and the idea that our lives can be understood as living parables. Christian testimony is not just something we share once. It is the ongoing practice of naming what God has done, what He is doing, and how He is forming us into people of love.

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What role does Christian storytelling play in deep discipleship?

In Episode 102, Brian talks with Zach Leighton, founder of Reliant Creative and co-founder of Kingdom Stories, about the importance of story, testimony, and narrative in the life of the church. Zach has spent more than a decade helping churches, ministries, and nonprofits around the world communicate more faithfully and effectively through story.

This conversation returns to the Discipleship Dilemma from Season 2: your story matters. Becoming more like Jesus is not only about knowing His heart more deeply; it also involves knowing our own hearts, histories, wounds, joys, conflicts, and transformations. This is the old theological idea of double knowledge — knowing God and knowing ourselves.

Zach argues that the church has largely lost the practice of storytelling. Much of modern Christian communication centers on teaching, doctrine, apologetics, data, models, and strategies. Those things matter, but story reaches the heart in a different way. Jesus taught through story. Scripture is filled with story. Human beings are formed by story.

Brian and Zach also explore the hero’s journey, testimony, vulnerability, the difference between salvation stories and lifelong sanctification stories, and why every follower of Jesus has a story worth telling. Christian storytelling is not just a marketing strategy. It is a discipleship practice, a way of bearing witness, and a means of helping people recognize the transforming work of Jesus in their own lives.

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Why does deep discipleship matter for culture, not just for personal faith?

In this Greenhouse episode, Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc continue the conversation from Episode 100 by asking the “so what?” question at a deeper level. If the Great Omission is real, and many Christians are not being intentionally formed to become more like Jesus, what does that actually cost us?

The conversation begins personally. Doc reflects on the ache of wanting more, the need for trusted people to ask honest questions with, and the wounds many of us carry alone. Handsome Kyle describes how deep discipleship has helped him become more fully himself, with Jesus turning up the volume on who he was created to be. Brian reflects on his own need to become more awake to his heart and the hearts of others.

The episode then turns outward, exploring how hidden ideas shape not only individuals but also churches, politics, education, culture, and civilization. Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc discuss integration, Christian fatalism, the Kingdom of God, the danger of simply “waiting it out,” and why Jesus’ restoration mission is bigger than rescue alone.

Deep discipleship is not merely private spirituality. It is the journey of becoming people of love whose lives participate in the renewal, reconciliation, and redemption of the world around them.

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In this special bonus episode, Brian celebrates Episode 100 by stepping back from the normal Season 5 flow and revisiting the major Soil & Roots journey so far: the Great Omission, hidden ideas, the Discipleship Dilemma, the Formation Gap, and the Forgotten Kingdom.

The episode asks a simple but urgent question: so what? If many Christians are not being guided into deep discipleship, what does it actually cost us? Brian argues that the lack of deep discipleship is not merely a church problem. It affects marriages, families, leadership, institutions, communities, creation, culture, and civilization.

This bonus episode explores how hidden ideas shape our hearts, why accurate doctrine alone does not automatically produce Christlike love, and why making converts is not the same as making disciples. If Jesus is the King of the cosmos and His people are called to participate in the restoration of all things, then Christian discipleship and culture cannot be separated. Becoming more like Jesus is not private spirituality. It is the pathway to deeper love, human flourishing, and the redemption of the world around us.

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What happens when we move through the early stages of faith but are not guided into the deeper ones?

In this Greenhouse episode, Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc continue the conversation from Episode 98 with Dr. Jim Reiter on The Critical Journey. They explore the six stages of faith, the Wall, and why many modern churches are well equipped for awakening, learning, and service, but often struggle to guide people through the inward journey, deeper self-awareness, and the life of love.

The conversation asks what happens to individuals, churches, and culture when discipleship stops at Stage 3. If the later stages involve wrestling, suffering, deconstruction, character formation, and deeper union with God, then neglecting those stages has real consequences. Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc discuss church safety, pastoral scandals, celebrity church culture, the rise of the “dones,” and why being right is not the same as being formed.

The episode also returns to Jim’s idea of cinema divina, asking whether Jesus can reveal Kingdom themes through movies, pop culture, and places many Christians might label “secular.” This is a passionate conversation about faith stages, deep discipleship, formation beyond information, and the kind of communities needed for people who know there must be more.

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What is The Critical Journey, and why does it matter for deep discipleship?

In Episode 98, Brian talks with Dr. Jim Reiter about The Critical Journey, the well-known spiritual formation framework developed by Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich. The book describes six stages in the life of faith, including awakening to God, learning the faith, productive service, the inward journey, the outward journey, and the life of love.

Brian and Jim explore why many churches are well equipped for the first three stages of faith but often struggle to guide people through Stages 4, 5, and 6. Those later stages tend to involve the Wall, doubt, disillusionment, deconstruction, deeper self-awareness, and a more personal encounter with God. They are often messy, slow, and difficult to manage inside church systems built around programs, sermons, volunteers, and institutional growth.

The conversation also explores spiritual direction, the rise of the “dones,” the difference between franchise thinking and Kingdom thinking, and why the Great Omission may be connected to a reduced vision of the church. Dr. Jim Reiter offers a hopeful but challenging vision: perhaps the Spirit is stirring new forms of formation, companionship, and community for people who know there must be more to life with God.

Connect with Dr. Reiter at https://zoe-life.net/.

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What is the relationship between spiritual formation and soul care?

In this Greenhouse episode, Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc continue the conversation from Episode 96 with Adam Ormord. They reflect on Adam’s definition of Christian spiritual formation as a lifelong process of experiencing God’s love and being formed into the image of Christ for the sake of the world.

The conversation explores why discipleship cannot be reduced to short-term programs, intellectual agreement, or religious performance. Becoming more like Jesus requires participation with the Holy Spirit, but it also requires receiving love, living in trusted community, paying attention to the whole person, and allowing God to reinterpret our stories.

Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc also discuss soul care as the practice of asking deeper questions: How is your soul? Where are you connected or disconnected? Are you living from control or connection? The episode explores why story, Scripture, community, silence, and relational safety are all essential to deep discipleship.

Ultimately, this episode invites listeners to recover a more integrated vision of formation: not just knowing more about Jesus, but experiencing Jesus in the Word, in community, in creation, in story, and in the slow work of becoming people of love.

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Web: ⁠⁠https://soilandroots.org⁠⁠ 

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What is soul care, and why does it matter for spiritual formation?

In Episode 96, Brian opens Season 5, Conversations, with Adam Ormord, founder of LifePoint Resources. Adam is a pastor, spiritual director, and spiritual formation guide who helps pastors, leaders, and everyday followers of Jesus pay attention to the condition of their souls.

The conversation explores Christian spiritual formation as a lifelong process of experiencing God’s love and being formed into the image of Christ for the sake of the world. Adam and Brian discuss why discipleship is often reduced to information transfer or short-term programs, and why becoming more like Jesus requires time, relational safety, story, experience, and the slow work of God in the inner person.

Adam also introduces soul care as the practice of paying attention to the whole person — body, mind, will, heart, relationships, and connection with God. For those who feel disconnected, burned out, or unsure how to receive God’s love, this episode offers a gentle invitation into deeper formation, spiritual friendship, and the God who is already present.

You can connect with Adam at https://www.lifepointresources.org/.

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Web: ⁠⁠https://soilandroots.org⁠⁠ 

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