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The Redeeming the Dirt Podcast
The Redeeming the Dirt Podcast
Rethinking Success: Family, Freedom, and the Durable Trades
What if the most “successful” version of your life is the one that brings your faith and family back to the center? We sit down with author and homesteader Rory Groves to rethink success through the lens of calling, freedom, and the family economy. Rory shares how moving from a tech career to a 10-acre homestead reshaped his metrics—from income and scale to presence, purpose, and work his kids can inherit. We unpack insights from Durable Trades, the research behind family-centered vocations that have endured for centuries, and why chasing scale can quietly cost the very life we set out to build.
The heart of the conversation is culture-making at home. We talk about forming a clear family vision, choosing vocations that fit that vision, and placing wise boundaries around technologies that promise convenience but often tax relationships. That sets the stage for Rory’s new season: launching a publishing house under Gather and Grow Ministries to get more accessible, story-driven resources into the world. First up is a revival of Henry and the Great Society, a short novel that follows a mid-century farming family as “progress” unravels their community. It’s a moving, practical tool—complete with an updated afterword and discussion guide—to help families and churches ask hard questions, draw lines with conviction, and take first steps toward a resilient, home-centered life.
If you’ve wondered how to prepare your teens for meaningful work without debt, how to resist fragile, consumption-driven living, or how to bring your household into shared labor that forms character, this conversation is your map and motivation. Support the all-or-nothing Kickstarter for Henry and the Great Society (ends November 6), start a group discussion, and share this episode with a friend who needs a hopeful reset. If this resonates, follow, rate, and leave a review to help more families find their footing—and tell us: what does success look like for your home?
Welcome to the Redeeming the Dirt podcast. This is Noah Sanders. So excited to be with you today. Today I'm here with Rory Groves, and we're going to be talking a little bit about the topic of what does success look like in our lives and how to continually challenge ourselves to reevaluate as fathers, as leaders of our homes, as those that have families, and whether we're young people, you know, looking for the trajectory of our life as we're starting out, or, you know, we're casting a vision for others, or what, or we're talking about life lessons we learned, whatever it is, it's very helpful to understand that we all have these assumptions of what success looks like in life. Um, and sin affects that. The culture dictates things to that, uh, to us in uh what that should look like. But um probably what God calls us to is a definition of success that is not our default and uh is definitely uh radical in this day and age, and it definitely looks different for each one of us because of our different missions God calls us to, but um, we need each other to challenge each other on uh on what that looks like and how to measure that. So Rory has done a great job uh through the work that his family does. Um, and uh I've really enjoyed his work, and I'm not gonna go into it that much right now because I really want him to talk about it and uh and how they are really encouraging families to pursue God in uh in a special way through family economics. So, Rory, thank you so much for joining me today.
Rory Groves:Oh, it's an honor to be here. Thanks for having me.
Noah Sanders:So let's go into uh just uh I know we've had you on the show before. We've talked about your previous book, Durable Trades. But for those who have not heard, or maybe you won't go back and listen to that episode, I would encourage you guys to go find it and listen to it. But uh give us a bit of um uh kind of a uh a little brief introduction of yourself, how you got to doing what you're doing today, and then go into for those who have heard the past episode, kind of an update. What's going on with your family? What's God doing through your ministry lately?
Rory Groves:Well, I think so I'm not sure. When we uh did a podcast before and probably was about three or four years ago, would be my guess. Durable trades has been out for a few years now. And um, that was uh kind of the beginning of seeking a new way of life for our family. We moved down to the country, uh, we bought 10 acres in southern Minnesota uh 13 years ago this summer, actually. So um, it was a huge change from us. We moved from one-tenth of one acre in the middle of South Minneapolis to literally 10 acres in southern Minnesota and tried our hand at farming. We're totally green at it. So everything that we were learning was as first generation farmers, which I'm sure a lot of your listeners can relate to. Um, but one of the things along the way as we were living here is that we always were um so excited about what we were learning. Like, like the first thing that we did was tap our maple trees the first spring. And for us, it just was like, I don't know, you know, I I'm come from a tech background, and everything was so superficial, artificial, I guess is a best better way to put it. It was all artificial and abstracted, and that's that just was my life, that was my career. Uh, and so there was something about farming, homesteading, the variety of things that we're involved with, um, the working with our hands, the working with our families, uh, knowing that this kind of work goes back centuries, maybe thousands of years. There was something that was like more meaningful to me, and it really began to open up this question as you as you started out this podcast with what is success in my life? You know, is it is it building up a company that throws off a lot of cash, or is it measured in other things? And I knew instinctively that it's it's other things. I mean, there's enough people that you run into in business that say, you know, don't don't uh don't climb a ladder if it's leaning against the wrong building. Right. You know, they or or they've they've gone through messy divorces, or they've had you know estrangement with their children and their grown children. And um meanwhile, they may be very successful uh businessmen or businesswomen, but they've lost this those things that are very near and dear to them. And so, you know, you know this instinctively. I don't think anyone has to point this out, but yet we live in this world where it's kind of like the only measure of success is scale, is money, is uh portfolios or this, you know, just stuff, right? And um and so you're kind of constantly corralled into that. Well, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, but to answer the question is we really enjoyed this simpler life, but we felt it was like more deliberate, and we invited people to come along with us and learn alongside of us. And so, I mean, the very I mean, all the way back to the very first time we butchered chickens, uh, to having garden tours, to the first time we were uh birthing, you know, lambs and goat kids and learning all about these things. We just always uh look for a way to make it into an event, like where we could invite our friends. And we did that for for pretty much the whole time we've been here. Every year we've done some kind of gathering. And uh that kind of culminated after durable trades came out. Um, it really opened a lot of doors for us to begin to share this message of the family economy. And we've started getting invited to homeschool conferences and homesteading conferences and writing about it, which is we're delighted about all of that because this is something that we've lived through. We've seen the value of it, and um, we wanted to share that with as many people as possible. And so a couple of years ago, we founded Gather and Grow Ministries, my wife and I did. And that's kind of the umbrella organization that we run all of our events through. So, Gather and Grow, we get together for a couple times a year for big events here on our property, or we're traveling on the road and speaking at other conferences and sharing all about this idea of the family economy uh and how uh how can we in the modern age bring families together for shared labor, shared work?
Noah Sanders:Hmm. Yeah, that's it's we've been working lately with some um kids in an after-school program in our local town using agriculture and some of our our um things that we've used with uh people over the years. And one of those things that we keep coming back to is we think about how do we create a pipeline of young people that can be open to agriculture is really this idea of you've got to redefine what success is because if you're just gonna go into agriculture or a more agrarian life and you're comparing it money-wise to other occupations, it's it's it's not something that's attractive. But I like to ask him, you know, well, what would you do if you had all the money in the world? And then let's the money is just something, you know, that's just a way to get there. But if if you could have through agriculture and and or a homestead lifestyle or growing a bit of your food while you do whatever job you have, a bit of the life that you would have if you did have all the money in the world, then why would you despise that kind of thing because it just doesn't make as much money? You know, so it just starts to get them thinking about, you know, what's really valuable in life. And yeah, actually family and yeah, actually relationships and the what I get to do and with the freedom that I have and all that kind of stuff that then helps them to see, you know, what we're doing in the garden, what we're doing as a family, the the opportunities we have relationship-wise, as something a lot more valuable than they were looking at it according to the measure of success that the world kept throwing at them, you know. And it's funny how the world has that double standard of we elevate and we romanticize the homesteading simple life, but then we tell kids, you know, you gotta go get the the highest paying job, be a lawyer doctor person because you gotta make a bunch of money. And so it's almost like double double standard of not really putting our time where our where we would say our heart is, which again is just part of that deception of uh I think a lot of get to that eventually, but when I retire. Uh but we're gonna go this other route to be able to get there somehow, and we never do often.
Rory Groves:I was just gonna interject a lot of those highest paying jobs, those doctors and lawyers, are oftentimes the most miserable jobs from in terms of job surveys from the people in those professions. They're locked into, you know, they've gone through how many years of schooling? Uh, and then they get on the job and they're it's a grind, you know, it's a factory farm just transplanted in a into a medical community or a legal community. And the difference is they can't get out of it. I mean, they have hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. I mean, they're locked in. And so I totally agree with you. And and one of the um really neat things with uh going to some of these homeschool conventions is the opportunity to speak to young people who are in, you know, at that age of ninth grade, tenth grade, or something, and talking to them like, you know, there's a lot of pressure to choose a college or to choose a major or you know, to choose a profession or career. And um just consider for a minute, not just like what do you want your job to look like, but what do you want your life to look like? Like what do you want your marriage to look like? Do you you know what what is the broader vision of where this is all going? Because vocation is a is an important, but it's very small part of who you actually are. And it's so easy to get all consumed in these things. And when you're young, I mean, you're just what are you supposed to do? You do what all the older people tell you to do. So we have you know run into many of those situations where they wish they would have taken a different route, not gone to college, uh, maybe learn a trade, or just do something that would give them more freedom in life than being kind of locked into having to pay for this debt that they've accumulated because someone told them that that's what you're supposed to do.
Noah Sanders:Right. I I was really blessed in so many ways by my dad and the mentorship that he gave me. But I remember one of the things that just had a huge impact on me when I was in high school is my dad said, so many people choose a career based on money and let that dictate their lifestyle. And he said, I would encourage you to figure out what's the lifestyle God's calling you to, and then just figure out something that fits that would allow you to not only make money and provide for your family, but would facilitate that lifestyle in the first place. And I think that's uh a really you know important element that we have to think about. And I just see so many people, even in the farming world, like we we love this idea of this lifestyle, but then we think to do it, we've got to make a living doing it, and then we've got to make a living doing it, we've got to scale and grow and hire. And and next thing you know, you know, you're just working in an office managing a bunch of people, and you're not actually doing any of the work that you, you know, you don't have that lifestyle um to because of kind of the growth model that you're following. And I think that's a really you know helpful to reevaluate.
Rory Groves:Scale is um a very uh slippery slope. I guess I'll I mean on on some level you have to scale, on some on some level you need to divide and conquer and in in some of those things, but it has gotten so out of hand in uh in the age of the internet and technology, and that um that's kind of the the default direction. You know, an influence for me has been Wendell Berry, who um if if any of your listeners have not been immersed yet, I encourage you to get some of his books he writes both fiction and nonfiction, but get a book of compilation of his essays like The Unsettling of America and um and just start chewing on that. And the thing that I'm really impressed about with this man is that he um he certainly has had his time in the spotlight. Uh, you know, much of his prophecies from the 70s and 80s have been fulfilled by now. And yet he resists trying to leverage things into some kind of big organization and uh make a name for himself. And um and and he resists the scale of the thing. He's still going out and tending his sheep and tending his farm, and he's still working with his wife, and they're you know, writing manuscripts, and she's the editor, and so they've they've kept managed to keep the family scale. And I do see uh oftentimes what might start out as a family business can grow beyond you know the the range of that. And and it's not bad, it's not bad necessarily, but you just have to recognize there's a cost to that. And if you're just if the justification for what you do is, you know, the worldly success, is the money and and the largesse or the scale, um, it's not necessarily gonna yield you the results that you actually want in the end. So, you know, th those are all just kind of cautionary uh examples of it's possible, it's certainly possible, but it's certainly against the grain to think this way when our whole culture is just saying, get big or get out, right?
Noah Sanders:Right. Well, and the the challenge with all this is as we really think of the idea of freedom, and especially as Christians, we want to have the freedom to live like God wants us to. You know, our culture says your value is determined by your consumption. The more you can buy, the more expensive your house is, the more expensive your car is, you know, your income, how much you know, your income is relative to it's assuming you're buying everything, right? You're making a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand dollars a year. It's all like that will allow you to purchase. So that's kind of how your value is equated. But freedom is one of those things that you can't actually um farm out or purchase or pay somebody else to create for you. It's only something that you can have through personal responsibility, both spiritually through Christ, He gives it to you, right? When you have a personal responsibility, and then it's something that uh, you know, the wealthiest people in the world, like the more you go to that scale where you're farming it out and you're paying for everything, it's a very much more fragile uh existence because you're more and more dependent on anybody that you're that's that you're doing business with in that way. And I think that's uh we'll probably talk about it later, but that's that whole idea of uh in Revelation where it talks about the mark of the beast and the control that will come through not being able to buy or sell, it implies that control uh uh is uh uh is possible because people are buying everything that they need, right? Um but even in just a lifestyle-wise, if you work for somebody in exchange for money and you buy and then you're limited to like you you can't dictate your lifestyle too much because you're there to serve their vision and your lifestyle has to fit how you're fitting into that. And then the you know, your lifestyle is also dependent on what's available to purchase based on the income you're getting from that, which is not always you know, you're kind of stuck with what you've got. So helping us understand that, you know, I think that's why a lot of people, even that are very wealthy, are interested in different lifestyles and getting land in the country and you know, all these kind of you know, when they want to purchase the ready-made homestead and things, and it's like, why would you want you've got all this money, why would you do that? Well, they realize there's a fragility, you know, and a shallowness to what you can actually have and purchase. Not only this the money's fragile because it could disappear through inflation or whatever, but the the access to the services and goods that you purchase from that could also disappear tomorrow. And it helps you to understand that uh the freedom that you have is is not really there. And that's where we can cast a vision for the sacrifices that personal responsibility take. Simple life often means more humiliating life, or I say humble, but it requires humiliation, right? To be limited, to live within your means budget-wise, to live within the energy that our solar panels can make on a daily basis, or whatever it is, is humbling, but there's a good thing that that does to us as individuals, and then you know, as we're raising our families as well. So if you could touch on quickly the um the concept behind your durable trades book, because I think that I just actually don't have a copy of yours right now because I your kind of books I'm always giving away or lending out, and so I never have one of them around anymore. So it's uh yes, please tell us about that because I I it's I love this book.
Rory Groves:So um this was this book was uh my own personal um quest, I guess I'd call it, where we had been on the farm for several years. I had experienced the contrast between farm life, which is you know a primitive way of life. Not not that it was primitive, but I mean it goes back to primitive times uh and uh my high-tech job, which is what I was I never planned to change that when we moved to a farm. I just thought, you know, I'd be home officing and and I did. That's exactly what I did. But when I started to taste, I guess you could say, the freedom, the connectedness that I had with my family, that was the huge one for me. Was this idea that, you know, it used to be where you would have a someone would learn a trade or a skill, a blacksmith or something like that, and they would train their children, their children would train their children, and it would go on for generation after generation after generation. And uh there is examples, you know, few and far between, but there's examples of uh uh companies that have been within the family for 10 centuries in old Europe.
Noah Sanders:So cool.
Rory Groves:And I just was thinking, you know, my my entire profession goes obsolete every couple of years. I have to constantly retrain. I mean, there's nothing I could, after 20 years of working in a professional capacity, there's nothing I could teach my children that would be useful to them when they become of age. And I couldn't build a business, at least not in high tech, that would that would have any kind of a lifespan that would be generational. And I just started to think of there's that, there's the longevity, the stability of the kind of work I'm doing, there's the connectedness with my family, or I could say the disconnectedness, because there wasn't really a way my family could work with me. And I just started to ask those questions. And and basically it just came down to this is are there any jobs left in the modern era where families can build something that's going to last and do it together? That was my burning question. And uh so what I ended up doing to like I knew that there was a you know, farmers are out there, but I I just didn't feel like I was gonna be able to make a full-time you know income being a farmer. So, were there any other jobs that I so I started researching, I came up with a list of 61 historical professions, and then I ranked them top to bottom on the basis of the historical stability, uh how family-centered they are, how um how many barriers there are to entry. You know, is it a super capital-intensive kind of a uh company to start up, or can you can you start it fairly easily? Um and and I just kind of went through all the his the historical research, and and what I did is I started before the industrial revolution. Because to me, and not just to me, the industrial revolution was the defining moment when it comes to vocation in the modern age. That is really what changed. When you talk about scale, I mean that was scale. And for thousands of years before that, uh life went on pretty much the same way in terms of it was family-scale agriculture. People were farming for subsistence for their, you know, for their own needs. Um, when it when it moved into the factory, that's where we have all you know, all of society reorients itself around this way of work. And so my so for the purposes of what of answering this question that I was thinking on, it was well, what are there any jobs left that were pre-industrial? And that's where I kind of set as my litmus test, because if it survived from the the pre-industrial times to today, that would automatically put it in that very narrow, you know, category of um of historically stable professions. Uh, and so what I found was that the professions that are the most stable also are the most family-centered. They're the ones who, in other words, um the ones that are involved with just basically making a living for your family and not trying to grow crazy beyond that, actually endured much better than uh even other pre-industrial professions um that maybe are um they're ancient, but they're not family centered. So I have them all in the book and I rank them and then I kind of do a summary of each one and score them according to these different things. But that was that was the book that I put out, and um, that is actually was the basis of why we're doing what we're doing now.
Noah Sanders:Well, as I have uh sons that are getting older, my oldest just turned 14. I know he's a little younger than your son. Uh, just this idea of casting a vision for them of what these trades are, you know, that could fit what their passions are for their lifestyle moving forward is very exciting. And I just love, I mean, obviously, several of the first ones on that list are you know, Shepherd and Farmer and that kind of thing. And then uh, but you have things like uh midwife, which is you know an interesting one, even though it's not as family friendly as some of the other ones because of the travel involved. But then there's uh Innkeeper. We love the idea of eventually starting some Airbnbs on our farm here and doing some things like that. So it really gets your juices going in terms of what uh what things you can you can do. So why don't we go ahead and go into you have a little bit of a new season that you're starting with your ministry and what does that kind of look like?
Rory Groves:So uh the the most the biggest news lately is that we're starting to move in the direction of publishing. Like we have felt that the Lord has been leading us in this direction of opening a publishing house specifically to try to get more resources out there for families. Um we we host these events and um we have we hear a lot of um hear from a lot of families all the time. I mean, all the time. We also have a newsletter that we've been running actually for I think it's going on about nine or ten years now. But um, but so we connect with people through that as well. But one of the main needs that we're feeling right now is just to generate more resources and I mean write more books, get uh, you know, reach out to other authors and start to get more content out there about the family economy because it is such a foreign concept for so many people, but it it's a very real possibility and people are doing it. You just mentioned Innkeeper. That is, I would say, probably one of the number one ways that families have been able to create a family-centered economy and actually make some pretty good money doing it is by opening up, you know, in the hospitality, short-term rentals kind of an area. And so there's certainly options out there. And what we have a heart to do is to try to connect with people on that level, just for one, to help people move forward if they feel like this is something God's calling them into, but secondly, to impact the culture, you know, to just start to get this idea out there. And in and so what you know, what I've been telling people is I want to write children's books, or I mean, I want to have children's books written. I want to tell stories about families working together and just begin to penetrate the culture with, hey, this is possible, you know. Yeah, I read about it. Or or or um, you know, other fiction books or other how-to books, um, maybe do some historical books, but just across genres, talk about the family economy in a way that's very accessible. And so we knew that this bigger vision was gonna require uh more than just putting out a book or two every couple of years, that we were gonna need to team up with other authors. Uh, we were gonna need to have a lot more um muscle behind it, so to speak. And so that's why uh we felt like this is the right time, it's the right season for us, and we're moving forward with starting a publishing house as part of the ministry with Gather and Grow.
Noah Sanders:That is super exciting. I know for our family.
Rory Groves:Which is fine, by the way, it's one of the trades in the book is publisher. So publishing, okay. It has changed quite. I mean, publishers out there are gonna laugh and say, you think that's the as a matter of fact, it is, but it takes on different forms, and there's all kinds of ways you can publish. I mean, you're publishing a podcast right now. There, there's unique ways that you can do it, and small publishers actually have a decent play going forward because so many of the traditional publishers are locked into old ways and they can't be quite as nimble. So there is, especially in this day and age, sorry, and again, but in this day and age where we feel like you know the truth is being censored, we can see that happening on all the platforms. Becca likes to say, we feel that starting a publishing house is a forward-looking solution to the writing on the wall. We want to be able to speak the truth in an uncompromising way and not have it kind of surrendered or edited by gatekeepers.
Noah Sanders:Exactly. Yeah, and it's and it's as we look as stewards at the day and age we live in, uh, we have access to technology that could destroy families and destroy lives, but at the same time could be used just like technologies like the printing press or Rhodes or anything else in history have been used by God to advance the gospel in unprecedented ways. We have to engage in that way to see how do we be faithful with that. And that kind of will bring up some discussions related to the book that we're gonna be talking about. So y'all are doing a Kickstarter for your first uh kind of book that I'm super excited about because it's one I've uh has been really impactful for our family. So please tell us about uh this first uh project that y'all have going and uh we want to get people excited about being a part of it.
Rory Groves:Cool. Well, thank you. Uh so the book is called Henry and the Great Society, uh, and it's an old book that's out of print. Um, and we came across it through um kind of a circuitous route, but when we read it, it was so powerful to us that we just felt like this needs to be, if we do go into publishing, and at that time we didn't know what we were going to be doing, but if we do, this is gonna be the first book that we publish. And so, fast forward a couple of years, we were able to get in touch with the copyright holder uh and tell them our story that we tell them about our ministry and what we're doing and ways that we're trying to help families come together. And um, they were very supportive of what we were doing, and they sold us the rights to pub to republish this book. And so, what makes this book so unique is that it tells a story of kind of like a mid-century, like a 1940s family, 1950s family that is kind of at the very end of that old way of life. In other words, they're they're in a community that is still functioning like a pre-industrial community. The people are still farming, they don't have electric lines yet, they don't have all of the modern conveniences. And it tells the story of the slow unraveling of that as modern conveniences come to town. And it circles around this one family in particular, uh, which is Henry Morgan. So that's where the term, the name of the book, Henry and the Great Society comes from. So Henry is a generational farmer. He had inherited the farm that his grandfather uh originally moved to, you know, back during the Civil War and uh raised his family there, and then he's the third generation taking on that farm. And slow and sure things begin to come into their community and change it, all in the name of progress. And so it's just a fascinating book. It's a quick read, it's a short novel. It was written by a man named H.L. or Herbert Rausch, and he was actually a minister. He actually used to travel around on horseback in the Appalachia and uh preach at different parishes and things like that. But anyway, he it was really kind of a summary of his story and what he had seen in his lifetime. So it's a very powerful story, and it's it's a true story in the sense that many, many family farms experience this. But the novel itself is is not biographical, it's it's a you know, it's a work of fiction. But so that was published in 1969. It's gone out of print. It was a very popular book in its day. Uh, and so what we're trying to do is bring it back into print as kind of the initial, this is what we want to do, these are the kinds of books that we want to put out there as a publishing house, and we're super excited about it.
Noah Sanders:I think the I don't remember when the first time I read uh Henry and the Great Society, but I know it was um over about probably a decade ago at least, and uh well, more than a decade. So it's probably right after we got married, which has been 15 years ago now. We read it just as a PDF online, and I remember my wife reading it to me um because I wanted her to experience it as well while we were while we were driving somewhere on some trip, you know. And you know, it's storytelling is so powerful, and that's what I love about this book is it can describe the beauty and of really a life that is centered around the things that God says are good and wholesome. You know, land, family, good work, community, uh simple, you know, um the joys and of rest and fun with family and all that kind of stuff that just paints us a really, you know, it's not it's not. Too idealistic, realistic, you know, uh honestly, it's pretty, you know, like you said, a pretty honest description of what used to be. And then when you when you see that slowly dismantled bit by bit, unintentional, like without there ever being this decision to move away from that, or ever this understanding of what was really happening. I remember my wife just stopping part way through and just weeping, like in the car with the computer in her lap, you know. And then a few years later we read it together as a family, and my kids like literally wept. My oldest son, he was just weeping. He was like, Wow, like just the the when you see the loss, I think that's what's so special about this book is we live kind of in that progress, you know, like post-progress where we don't really know what's been lost. And this book helps you to kind of have that homesickness for something that we most of us have not experienced in our lifetime that wasn't that uncommon, you know, throughout history, even for those people who, especially in the US and Europe, where it was, you know, we have this that we had the Protestant kind of work ethic Christian worldview applied even to those that weren't necessarily born again. They we we had a culture that was defined by those values. There was a lot of you know a beautiful fruit from that. And uh and I think the conviction of listening to this story is understanding how um much impact the uh how much was changed of Henry's and his family's life by these uh the these simple conveniences. Yeah. The good things in life is what it's like. It's not like they chose per se to adopt a different philosophy or a different way of life. They just said yes to certain things that uh helps, you know, challenge us of what am I saying yes? What are the effects of what I'm saying yes to? I think that's what the Amish have been, you know. They they kind of got to a certain point in, you know, if you w rewound a couple hundred years, the Amish wouldn't look much different than a lot of people, but they came to a certain point and said, ah, you know, beyond this point, we see uh a negative effects to adopting these things, even though they would make our life easier. There's a lot more valuable things than ease in life. So uh so that that to me is where we've shared this book with quite a few people because um it's powerful. One of my family members actually, we shared this book with them, and the next thing I know, we were looking on Facebook and they're like, free washer and dryer. We're giving away our washer and dryer, and we're like, whoa, whoa, that's pretty radical, you know. Um, because part of part of what they were thinking about of how they could make changes, which I don't necessarily recommend everybody get rid of their washer and dryer, but it's beautiful to see what uh well you know and and it's it's that you want something better than that. It's not that you're opposed to the washer and dryer, you're seeking to experience something that offers to be even better, you know.
Rory Groves:Yeah, and and you said uh earlier, and I think this is spot on, is that the book is a tool. It's a tool to begin a conversation to another way of life. Right. Ultimately, at the end of the day, um, it's it's not the specific conveniences themselves that are causing the breakdown. Uh it's we've we've kind of ceded our priorities to something that's worldly. And um uh it might involve getting rid of you know some things. Maybe smartphones aren't a good idea, you know, or maybe you just need to put more limitations around some of the things. And it but but in any event, it's a book, it's a book that makes such a deep impact on people. And we've seen the same thing too, is kind of as we've been going down this road of publishing, um, we've been connecting with people here and there. And and you know, the people that have heard of this book or have read it in in when it was previously available, uh they it they were very impacted by it. It that seems to be a very consistent response to it. It made them stop and think and take stock of their lives. And I've heard I've talked to some um uh Amish even that have said they read the book once a year, and they're already Amish. But just to try to to try to uh uh be you know reflect on where are we, what's actually what's truly important, and and that to us is really what this is all about. I mean, what the book is describing, everything you're talking about right here today, is what we're trying to do as a ministry. We're trying to reverse those trends, like we're trying to deal with those issues of modernity and how it's separated families. And so the book is perfect as a beginning conversation of what can we do and and bring it more, bring it back home. Ultimately, it's it was the end of the home. You know, I write about this in the other book, Family Economy, but the home used to be the principal factory of society. That's where all the production took place was at home with your family. And it's no longer the centerplace. Now we all leave home. Uh uh, one of the uh crisis of our age by Patiram Soroka, and he says the home has become an overnight parking place. You know, we we come in here, you know, you watch some television, you sleep overnight, and then you're everyone's out again the next day. And that's very different. That did not used to happen until very, very recently. I mean, we're talking 50, 60 years ago, then back for 5,000 years, it was the home. And so I think these are the things that really motivate Becca and I and what we're trying to do in wake up uh society, I should guess you could say, or just families one at a time, to these issues and to try to stake stock of what we can do to bring it back home and to grow stronger as a family in the process.
Noah Sanders:You know, when I wrote my book Born Again Dirt several years ago, uh my big motivation in doing that was to raise awareness for what I feel like is a spiritual battle for uh how we approach food production. And I think this book raises the same question because you had Henry and his family were kind of going down this road to enslavement that they didn't realize the risk. And so it's not that you can't, you know, have a washer and dryer or have a smartphone or have these kind of things, but sometimes uh we need to be challenged to be intentional and be prayerful about where we draw the line. Because I think all of us would agree, and what his challenge at the end of this book is not only a story, but it also has, you know, some summary kind of maybe you'd say sermonette uh kind of chapters at the end of uh what his conclusions are of how we should what we should learn from this story. And part of that is is just this idea of um, you know, he was like, there's this this beast system in a sense that he saw in his day and age of enslavement that I'm like, the 60s? You know what I mean? This is before the internet or any of these things that he still saw it like this shackles, like um that just and sort of like, man, what would he think about today? But again, we go back to that stewardship issue. We still have to live, you know, as stewards of what we've been given access to today. Absolutely. But just like the Amish would say, we draw the line right here, and we feel like for what how God defines success, this would hurt more than help what we value as a community. Um, we may not feel like in our family that that's where we draw the line per se, but we need to ask where do we draw the line? Because we're not just riding the train all the way to its uh destination along with the world. Um and I think that's a bit of what Henry and his family happened to do. They ended up getting on a train that was going a place that they never they didn't even know where it was going. That's exactly right. It wasn't that they couldn't have, you know, if they had been aware of the battle and and the the way in which they needed to be making decisions, they could have handled the progress that came to town without it necessarily destroying their family. But because it was kind of that blind side, not something that any generation had had to really deal with much in the past, they ended up falling into the trap that ended up destroying their family. And I think that's where this book is a very good tool to help us to start trying to answer that question for ourselves is where are we not being aware of the battle? And what are the questions, the discussions we need to have as a family about where we need to draw the line or haven't drawn the line that we need to, like you said, maybe you need to get rid of your washer and dryer just to evaluate where you are, and then like my family members, now they've got some back again, but they've it's allowed them to adjust or you know, get rid of your salt, your iPhone for a little bit. I've done that in the past, and then you have it back and you can be more intentional just to understand what are you enslaved to? You know, what owns you and what do you own? And how are we, are we living as slaves to Christ, or are we unintentionally being limited by our blind adoption of what's available to us around us?
Rory Groves:And I would add to that, where are you going as a family? Like, where are you ultimately going? Do you have a vision for your family in in it, you know, taking on some of these, you know, are are these technologies or are these conveniences moving you closer to where where you want to be as a family? Right. Uh some of the just even even being forward thinking and and looking towards the future generations, that's a biblical mentality. It is not a worldly mentality. The worldly mentality is to live for the weekend, you know, and and to rack, you know, to store up debt uh debt for your grandchildren. Uh but um a godly perspective would say we we want our grandchildren to be better equipped than we were. Uh, we're gonna sacrifice now so that they can enjoy uh uh the fruits later. But uh there's all kinds of things in that. And so I would say that that's a huge part of this, is sometimes you can get so wrapped up in your work and your job and the busyness and the schedules that you actually never get around to figuring out where you're going as a family. And I mean, when you know, when you're in the thick of things, you can lose years, can go by and and you haven't made movement towards your goals. So it it you know, that's that's modernity, that's the constant barrage of all the distractions, and that that's very takes a prominent role in the book is all the different distractions that are um keep coming up that just seem like they're just a couple here and there, but somehow they tend to sap all the strength out of the characters and and we can in a way that we can all relate to. So I mean, I and I think um, you know, just going back to something that you said earlier about those those closing chapters, one of the things that we're doing with the book that I'm really excited about is I'm taking those closing chapters and I'm interacting with them in a new afterword. So I won't the the whole um the whole goal is not to just leave people in a you know in a place of um discouragement, of course, but we want to give them the beginning steps of what to do about it. And and that's what our ministry is. And so we're we're like, we don't know where God's gonna take you, but we know where you can begin. Right. And so I'm really excited. So I'm gonna be able to kind of use those uh back portions that were the concluding chapters that Raush wrote about and interact with them and share, you know, our reflections of what we've seen that has been working for families and really what is underlying a lot of these things, more of the fundamental kind of um structural changes that fortunately you don't have to work wait for someone to come along and pass, you know, laws or elect certain Supreme Court judges. You can do these things in your family tonight. Uh it's not, it begins at home, and that's our main push is that it's that personal responsibility that you talked about. But the there are real answers out there, and there is grace for all of this, but it does take a conviction. And so I'm looking forward to doing that. Oh, and also I forgot in the way that the Kickstarter campaign works is uh we've set up different tiers. So you can get the book or you can get the book, uh, like a couple copies of the book and get a group discussion guide. So we're putting together a discussion guide if you want to do a small group or do it in your family or do it with some friends. Um, but when you talk about making decisions, don't leave out making decisions as a community, like in your church. You know, I it would be wonderful to have churches talking about these things of like, you know, what you know, instead of just leaving everyone up on their own to try to figure out it. I know it's a ball of um what would we say, like a can of worms once you start going down that path. But the reality is as churches, we need to be discussing these things and we need to be asking our questions. Like, is AI good for us? Well, what are the nuance? Let's bring in, let's get some thinkers on this, let's talk about this, but let's let's do some of these things together as a community because you can't just in isolation make decisions about this or that technology. You're going to be impacted. Your children are going to be impacted based on what your brothers and sisters in Christ do. So for all these reasons. So we we put together different tiers of things and um it's gonna be fun. I've even got uh Ivor and Elsie, they're working on some handicrafts that they're gonna include in as like certain levels of givers. Um, so we're we're having a good time with it. We're our whole family's going in on it on with like a lot of different things. Um, and um, yeah, I just would encourage everyone, if they're interested in this at all, to come and check that out. And we would love your support because all proceeds from this fundraiser will help us get up on our feet to begin publishing more books like it.
Noah Sanders:So when this podcast drops, the uh Kickstarter will be live. And what is the the like um when does it conclude? Like when do people need to get involved and uh to be able to help fund this? Because the way Kickstarter works, for those of you who are not familiar, you basically have like you know, you've got to raise you have a certain goal for what you want to raise to be able to complete the project, if you and then you have a short window. And if you get enough people to support uh and fund the project to that amount by the time, then uh it's a successful project and it's funded. If you don't reach that goal, then uh you know it it is not the the basically nobody's charged and and you don't actually do the project. So it's important that those of you who are interested, that we uh if you're interested in supporting seeing this project come to life, that you get over there to uh the Kickstarter page and uh support it within that window. So tell us what the the shutoff window is. I'm sure if people are listening to this after the fact, hopefully it will have been successful and they can go get the book. But uh for those that are listening when this drops, when do they need to have that?
Rory Groves:Go check that out by so I would just say if if you if you're getting this, uh uh so it it runs for 30 days, but please do it at the beginning of the campaign because the way that it works is that the more um the more that uh sign ups that we have early on in the campaign, the more pro like visibility it gets for the duration of the campaign. And if we don't raise enough support to to for the minimum, then that doesn't move forward at all. The whole thing is canceled. So it's an all or nothing is what they call that. So 30 days, it ends on November 6th is the last day. So hopefully folks are getting this before then. But don't wait until November 6. Come early and check it out. Um, and the different reward tiers have certain limits. We can only, you know, Ivor can only make so many tractor kits, so there's not going to be an unlimited number of uh rewards available, but um that would be it. And then the best way to do it is I think probably just go to kickstarter.com and search for Henry and the Great Society. You should see the book come up in the search bar. Um, we also have our website for our ministry is gatherandgrow.us, gatherandgrow.us, and we've got a link right there, and you could learn more about the ministry there as well.
Noah Sanders:Awesome. So you guys go to Kickstarter. I'm gonna go myself. Go to I've been waiting for it to uh to go live, so it would uh can't wait to get on there and do that. Um search Henry and the Great Society and uh support this project. You know, one of the challenges we have sometimes when we're facing when we're trying to talk to people about these issues or people are asking us about what our family is doing is you know, how do you broach the subject? How do you kind of wake people up to thinking differently than they normally do? And like in the disciple-making world, you'll talk about for there to be change in a community, you've got to see you have three different things that outweigh the in the inertia of the status quo, and that is discontent with the status quo plus knowledge of a better way, plus a practical pathway to make change from the status quo to the better way. And so this book does a great job of all three of those with your addition of the practical steps at the end. Before it was a good, you know, here's the dis knowledge of a better way, discontent with the status quo, but it left you with a bit of what do you do next? So your guys' ministry coming together to be able to now have practical examples and steps that families can take makes this an incredibly valuable resource for people to use not only with their own family, but to be able to hand other people and then have a conversation starter. So super excited about this. So I really I really appreciate you coming on, Rory, and sharing about this. Super excited about the updates from your family and what God's doing. Look forward to uh maybe be able to see you again uh sometime soon at a conference or something. And uh any closing final thoughts that you have for our uh listeners?
Rory Groves:I would just say, you know, it all matters. Everything that I I get the homesteading, it's it's harvest time right now, and it's tired, and you know, there's out we're at my my family's out there canon beats right now, and I get it, it's it's a slog, but I think you have to don't ever forget the purpose in it. And and the purpose is that we're doing something, that we're preserving something for future generations, even if it's hard and against the grain right now. There's a lot of us out there, and just be encouraged and keep moving forward one day at a time. It's all going to be worth it. Um, everything that you invest right now in your children and in your family is going to be um abundantly worthwhile down the road. So that would that would be my encouragement in this harvest time season.
Noah Sanders:That's great. Well, we would we always love to close with having our any of our guests just pray for, pray a blessing over our audience, and then I'll wrap up.
Rory Groves:Absolutely. Heavenly Father, Lord, we just thank you so much for the Sanders family and for the family that he connects with on a regular basis, Lord. Anyone who's listening to this, I pray your blessing to be upon them, and I pray, God, most of all, that your conviction would be upon them, that you would clarify to them the next step in their journey, wherever that is, whatever you put on their heart. Give them hope and a future, Lord, and give them the next step. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Noah Sanders:Amen. Well, thank you everybody for listening. This has uh been Noah Sanders with Rory Groves, and until next time, I encourage you to be humble, to be faithful, and to keep redeeming the dirt. God bless.