Thoughts on Thomas Jefferson and His Town (Part 2)

Hello, I'm Dick Foth and I'd like to welcome you to known stories to make sense of it all. These stories are what I call walking books, real-life people, different places, different ages, different cultures, and I want to have some conversations with them across disciplines and generations and cultures in order to encourage a kind of knowing fresh lenses through which to see the world. One of those lenses will be scripture, or more specifically, Jesus of Nazareth, whose life I believe changed the course of the history of the world. So thanks for listening in. Great to have you with us. So I'm having this great conversation on the portico of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home near Charlottesville, Virginia. Wind is blowing, rain is coming down, children are running to and fro. So that's the context. That's the ambient noise you're going to hear in this conversation. I'm having the conversation with my two friends, Peter Hartwig and Peter Sorenson. And also in the mix was Peter Hartwig's son, Peter Hartwig the second. And I brought him into the conversation. This is part two. We did part one a little earlier. This is part two. And I've asked Peter to reflect on what he sees and has seen in the elder two Peters, Peter Sorenson, Peter Hartwig, in their friendship, their impact on the city of Charlottesville at the University of Virginia and so on. Peter, you've grown up watching this. You've grown up observing your dad and Sorenson here. Some thoughts talking about that. Yeah. So I was told some time ago that the periods in which you'll most change in life, at least most compactly are your first six months of college and your first six months after college. And of my friends who are doing truly impressive things and they're in DC and they're consulting the working 100 hours a week and their lives are getting off the ground and they're figuring out the adult world. I've had the weirdest six months after college because I spend three breakfast a week if I can get up, just hanging out with 50 to 70 year olds, sometimes 40 year olds, talking about life and faith and thought and leadership and Jesus. And you're still living your parents live with you? Oh yeah. They're very respectable tenants. I haven't had a problem yet. Perfect. Okay. And they keep place clean mostly. Yeah. Wow. And it's been tough in some ways to come out of the idea village that is a university and to meet people with real lives and real flesh and blood. And I think that's been a huge adjustment for me. But I've also seen a real sense of a generational gap in the way in which people who don't affiliate in their 40s to 70s, when they don't affiliate, they don't affiliate in a different way than people my age don't affiliate. If I don't affiliate, you're talking about being part of an organization. Yeah, or part of a potential something like that. Yeah. So people my age, if you say are you religious and you say no. And they say no. And then you say, what are you? They might say, well, I'm spiritual but not religious or they might say, I'm part of the religious nuns and O and E, part of the nuns. But people older than that's not the way they process their default mode of so to speak, not believing older people. Yeah. Okay. And so what I older, you mean 40 enough? Yeah, 40 enough. Okay. And what I have, so I've noticed a generational gap, but what I think I've really gained this year is a sense of the things that probably will bridge every ministry and every generation. The sort of things that every ministry, as each generation picks up the task of following Jesus with other people, they're going to have to do. And I think they are for the most part an imagination that's captivated with Jesus and the way he interacts with other people. So what what I think changes is the way you come to the scriptures to figure that out. I think what changes is what time of the day you meet. I think what changes is the vocabulary you use and the way you pitch it. But at the center of it, I really think are people with imaginations for what it means to love people the way Jesus loves people. Or maybe even just interact with people the way Jesus interacts with people. You know, when I used to live in when Ruth and I used to live in DC and people would come and visit I always liked walking the monuments at night. And the first place we would go is that that sculpture of Einstein seated on Constitution Avenue in front of the National Academy of Sciences, this big bronze where his feet are on this platform, if you will. And it's the solar system on the night he was born, 18, whatever it was, the night he was born. But there are lots of little sayings by Einstein. One of my favorite sayings is that in life imagination is more important than knowledge because because it has no limits. So you're saying that the thing that crosses the generations, if I heard you correctly, is coming to Jesus or the story of Jesus with with an open heart, open mind, not putting him in a religious box or am I reading into that? No, I don't. I think that's about right. I think here's a funny thing. A lot of people in my age have a little bit of a little bit of the word institution. But the funny thing is anything that lasts more than a generation is an institution already. Right. And I think that for a lot of us who are even families. Yeah, even families. So I think a lot of us who are raised in churches that when we were kids, we thought we're full of life and kind of edgy in a way. Well, now they're sort of the box. Yeah, yeah. And in order to break the box, I think that takes imagination. Now, you can either just be transgressive and kind of below the fish tank and watch all the fish die as they flop around on the floor. Or you can use that imagine or you can engage that imagination with the person of Jesus. Okay. So so when you two older guys, Hartwig and Sorensen, and you're not old at all, I'm old, but you're right. When you hear Peter talk like this, when you hear him explain, yes, what you do, yes, in essence, in that way. How do you how do you see that? What do you what are you hearing when when young Peter says that? Either of you. Well, I would say this. This is Hartwig. Right. So here's what I would say. Well, as you say, Dad, I would I I passed through a local church. Yeah. And I became keenly aware that my one percenter friends were not interested in coming. In this little exchange, obviously, the question is what are one percenters? In Peter Hartwig's vocabulary, one percenters are those folks in the top echelon of wealth in the United States of America, that sort of elite group. And in and around that city and other cities like it, there are numbers of those folks as sort of we talk about down and outers historically. There are a whole section or group of people who are up and outers. So Peter explains that. So a cursory reading of the gospel says you've got to go where the people are. And so in essence, what we've done is we have set up a format in two country clubs and in the hotel, we meet there weekly. And so I think the imagination part would say it is it's incumbent upon us to figure out how to get to them, not vice versa. Sure. And so in setting up in country clubs and in a hotel, I think that has just worked famously. And a lot of these men who've been with us for eight years, some of them have never set foot in a church yet. We are their church now. We are. And so they come every week to hear about Jesus. Many of them have been baptized in our friends pool who's on the leadership team. So it's literally become that. So that to me would be the imagination. Peter, I don't know what you'd say. Well, Dick, you know, I mean, as you look at nature and here we are in a very beautiful setting, you know that God's creative. And when God's creative and we have this incredible counselor that that shows us where to go and what to do and what to say, it means that God, we open a door and allow God to work in any number of ways. And I know that Pete Hartwigs probably most scary moments are when I call him up and say, Hey, Pete, what if? And literally anything could follow that. That's what if. And so one of the first things I did when when Pete and I met, I had had a trip planned Africa to go over in the middle of Joss Nigeria. And so I said, Pete, do you want to go to Africa with me? And I'd only been in the church, my family only been in the church maybe three or four months. And his knee jerk response was, yes, I will go. Absolutely. So we go over, we stop in London on the way to Nigeria, get a call and they say, listen, riots have broken out in the city you're going to. What do you want us to do? The team is already there. Do you want us to bring them out? Or what do you want to do? And we looked at each other and said, let's go. Let's just go do it. And I have to say that God has been so creative in the number of things that we've done and the impact of the things that we've done. It's been astounding. And I remember Chester Dennis said, you know, God following God is life's only perpetual novelty. And the ministry we've been able to do together. This is the writer GK Chester. That's right. And it absolutely has been. It has been anything but boring. It has been challenging. There have been times that we've kind of looked at each other and said, wow, you know, is this really going to work? And it does. And it does. And I think when you match creativity with a God-given relationship and the inspiration to go out and make a difference, then life is very exciting. Okay. So let me come back for just a minute to Jefferson and his two friends. Yes. Monroe and Madison, they want to be in proximity with each other. You two guys, Hartwig and Sorenson are friends. You're the older dudes. And then we've got young Peter Hartwig here, 22 years old. There's this wonderful number that I like where it says we're two or three gather when we get together in his authority or with him in mind with a non-paraphrasing here in his name. He shows up, right? So for me, the idea of you two guys being friends, it isn't that you meet in country clubs, although that's very cool or isn't that you, you're edgy and go out and find guys who, you know, just talk about Jesus mostly on the third hole when they miss a pot. Right. Right. But it's the fact that you like each other or the fact that you love each other, that that's really the message. Yeah. Look how they love each other. And then you get the next generation in this and you love him and he loves you and you hang out with your dad. Just give us a snapshot of what's like the hand. Well, we're going to let Peter the younger go first. Well, that's what I'm saying. I want Peter. Yeah, you, you guys talk. Yeah. I think people my age operate often under an incredible insecurity when we really have to work closely to people older than us. I, that's been my experience. When you leave the expensive baby sitting of college where you've done it incredibly well and everybody gave you an accolade for everything you did and you move into a world that's far more diverse, not only, you know, racially, culturally, socially, but also age wise. And then you're asked to side up next to these people who at any moment could if they wanted look over and just go a little baby thinks it knows what it's doing. Look at that thing crawling around on the floor trying to trade on the stock floor. Yeah, that's adorable. We're like, oh, look at that cute little Peter going up there talking about the gospel of Mark. Isn't that cute? He thinks he knows Greek. That's so adorable. There's an incredible insecurity that that I have worked through this year trying to talk about life to guys who have done life far more. But my experience through the whole of it has, through the whole of it has been one of incredible support even when I've fallen flat on my face on the Bible. And so I think for me that's been it is that my I've had this community of older guys and this really odd relationship where in theory I'm kind of ministering to them in air quotes. But at the same time they're really pouring into me this incredible vote of confidence. And so it's hard for me to imagine what it would mean to be 22 years old to walk into a consulting firm to have nobody assigned to oversee you and to start have to producing in front of people who are sharp and intelligent and scary and have no real loyalty to you. But I've had this year to watch this ministry where my insecurities that I don't have anything to contribute because the digits of my age only end up to four you know that even though I afraid that I don't have anything to contribute people behind me cheering me on and in the most humble way because cheering me on means they play my audience. I think that you want to talk about the giant laying down right what happens when the giant lays down and then listens to what you have to say and doesn't go off what a cute little toddler you know what I mean. And so that has been the way that these friendships have affected me is because the mutual affection there doesn't translate down into this kind of padding on the head way to go tiger authority structure. It upends itself so that these friendships support me actually and push me up as I move on on the one hand to do the ministry but on the other hand need to figure out my own life relationship so every fight with the best friend and break up and I don't know how to keep up with people from college and my sisters are smarter than me and that really bugs me. These are guys I can go to who can go why don't you take a look at it this way and then they'll cook me dinner too while they're at it. Yeah. Now we're talking. But let me just let me just wrap this up this way. You know Peter Sorenson and Peter Hartwood the first you're here in Charlotte. So it'll Charlottesville you're staying here you're hanging out and part of the power of all this is that you've stayed with it you've stayed with each other. Sure. Stayed with very much. You've added on to the dream. You do nutsy stuff every now and again and that keeps everybody off balance us good. Yes. And Peter the tooth young Peter you're off to Cambridge here in a few months and but one of the things that I observe about all three of you is that is that you have this wide range of friends that aren't your friends because they all believe the way you believe right they're friends because whatever because you you like them because because you go out to the farthest out or you do all these things you none of you seems to be afraid if I can put it this way of hanging out with people who are pretty different than you are in terms of how they think about things. Is that is that fair to say? But you know Dick if God is sovereign and if he orders our steps then I see literally every single relationship as a gift from him whether it's a waiter in a restaurant or a bus boy or somebody in a country club doesn't much matter to me. Yeah. Those are orchestrated of God and and I thank him for him. That's that's just fun. We're we're gaining part of the tour group here in Monticello so we're just we're just letting folks go on by this is part of the ambient noise of creative podcast production so so partway. Yes. If it's looking at those people. Right so here's what I would say. I am finding that there are a lot of men I'm 52 who are 10 years either side of me or 10 years below me and 20 years above me who really are lonely people. I'm finding this to be true. At this point Peter Hartwig introduces a theme that I find pivotal to a lot of conversations today. We live in a culture and I don't know exactly how this works but I observe that that women can sit and talk to each other face to face quite easily. Men oftentimes on the other hand don't easily start there where they tend to start as side by side and then might move from face to face but Peter has some interesting observations about how relationships work among men and the faith and leadership forum has been a model for some of these men of what man-to-man relationship can look like and they've confessed that to us and Dick I was sharing this with you in the car earlier today that there was a man who lives in this very wealthy community and he has come to the faith forum now for a body here and he pulled me aside about a week ago and he said listen Pete he said most of these wealthy men here I grew up with them they're the aristocratic southern wealth and he said until we came to the faith forum together we never really had meaningful conversation. We were like frat brothers that never grew up and since coming here and learning more about God and seeing what God cares about it's given us stuff to talk about that has really been completely different than anything we've conversed about before and so Jesus has become real to them in ways that I think truly matters and looks like the gospel that's what I see. I'm gonna circle back I'm coming to you young Peter here I'm waiting for you I'm coming I'm I'm right I'm all over it but but I want you to it maybe there's a verse or an idea that has been central to you oh yeah there it is. I'd like to share and I'd like to do that so it gives us another place to land but Peter so you've got you know you you're like Steve Martin you you you hang out with a group of wild and crazy guys you know who Steve Martin is he's a little yeah Inspector Cluzon so how do you how do you navigate or why do you embrace this broad reach of people that are just pretty different than you. I mean the actual this is the actual story about that I'll keep it short but I was in some real relational struggles with a girlfriend in college I hate that that's the worst it might be the best also the one depending on how you look at it depending on how it ends up that could have been the best and everybody in my college fellowship said you need to talk to Nick and Lindsay they were undergrads they were the power couple they'd been dating for three years and I went to talk to them and at the end of the conversation I thought you know they really haven't given me any new thoughts yeah this was not the most helpful conversation I realized they're about six months out from crashing and burning from where I am I mean their their advice has about it they've got like a nine-month shelf life and best you know what I mean like these thoughts are really about to go on sale and so I had this idea what if I could find a friend in every decade of life somebody in their 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s they were around and we would just go to dinner together and I could hear what a 70-year-old a 60-year-old 50-year-old 30-year-old thinks about where I met oh yeah because I'm assuming this gets better with age right and so that's been one way in which I've approached these relationships these older guys in the faith forum and so I can think of two guys out of the top of my head who talk about their wives and their eyes just grow the size of dinner plates they're in their 70s and one of their one of their wives is alive they're both in their 70s ones a widower when they talk about their wives they're just heart starts beating right on the edge of their sleeves and so I thought I like I want to be like that so I walked up to one and said would you like to get dinner and he said yes then I said can you cook and we went over to his place do you have the ultimate creative moochery I did bring I brought the German chocolate cake pulled my weight right so that's been that's been one thing is you think about the long haul of life and I want somebody who's kind of on every car of the train as this is moving down the track hopefully we all end up we all end up at the same place and one of the things that I've been surprised by is a lot of my friends and said you know you have a lot of older friends and I go yeah I think they're gonna be like I get ready for them to make fun and feel like don't you have anybody to take the prom and they usually just go why do you do that and I've noticed and research has also suggested that people my age feel incredibly ungrounded we're just kind of floating we don't have roots anywhere we don't have anybody to attach to and so in in big churches 20 something's ministries are trying to figure out where how do we help 20 something's attached but this is a curious fact to bounce up against that research also shows that we're the most generous generation in American history yeah not only will I give to causes I care about but dick if you're my friend and your two years older than me I'll give to causes you care about even if I don't really know what's going on I'd like to talk about that when we're done and that seems to me my son has no money am I a cause that you care about because your friends go to that too but that that suggests to me that we're also really ready to connect yeah that we're ready to put our heart out where our friends hearts are to connect there too yeah and so on the one hand we are ground we're we often feel rootless and ungrounded we're trying to connect on the other hand we are trying to connect okay and I've just had the joy of being able to do that with people in kind of every decade of life and you know I also have friends by on age guys I would just like to remind everybody a lot of them that I have that I have a good chunk of friends by on age and they also don't believe it I believe and that's funny yeah they keep me sharded and they're diverse yeah okay so here's the deal we're gonna wrap this up but maybe just one last thought it might be a scripture might be an idea or just sure some some thought so so quick thought sorry man it is not good for man to be alone and I personally believe that when God has an important ministry for you he'll bring somebody alongside of you and you think of David Livingston at in the middle of Africa and Henry Stanley had to go find him and I think God sent him down there well for me Pete Hartwig has been this incredible partner in this ministry he's entrusted to us and I know young Peter Hartwig will have a vibrant ministry I don't know what that's gonna look like but I know that the Lord's gonna bring people alongside of him in his future to be fruitful together and to encourage each other and that's what it's been for me great so Dick you mentioned a biblical something yeah and so this ministry is based on Nicodemus coming at night to see Jesus yeah he's a powerful guy's wealth he's got way too much to lose to come during the daylight and Jesus doesn't rebuke him for that what's amazing is when Jesus dies the disciples scatter and a guy shows up by the name of Joseph of Air Mathia and the gospels tell us that Nicodemus and Joseph of Air Mathia go get the body together from pilot and they put it in the tomb quite frankly that's how I see Peter Sorenson and myself is this idea that God has blessed us with connections with the one percent and what we do is we go in there we look for Jesus together and so it's been amazing I think he's more Joseph of Air Mathia and I'm more Nicodemus but I don't know if you disagree or disagree but I think through that God has allowed us to go and see Jesus show up in places that the men in the women that are there have told us they've never heard this before so it's exciting right yep any last thought young Peter you know I love both of those it's not good for a man to be alone going to people where they need to be met need to be met and one thought that's really become deeply meaningful to me is the idea that God cares God cares right when you if something is lost and you save it you save it because you don't want it to go to waste you care about it and you sometimes read these letters the New Testament and they sound a little desperate well maybe it's because they care like the pastor cares about Paul cares about the Ephesians and whoever wrote Hebrews cares about the Hebrews and God cares God has God's willing to put God's hand in anything and again that's you know there's no one who Jesus with whom Jesus doesn't want to be friends there's no place he wouldn't walk Jesus is trying to get in touch with everybody but I think in a world for people my age where we often feel alone to know that at least God cares that's a real place to start Peter Sorenson Peter Hartwig the first Peter Hartwig the second thank you this is Dick Boath for known it was fun that is one long recording no it's still going this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance do 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