Roger Marsh: Well, welcome to Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh. Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday. Perhaps you and your family played a game of football or watched a movie on television, maybe even talked with someone you haven't seen in a while. Well, no matter how you spent your day, we're glad that you've joined us today.
It's this time of year that we can hopefully slow down a little bit and really treasure the blessings that God has placed in our lives. We have a wonderful program for you today with a very special guest speaker, pastor Jack Hibbs.
But before we get started, I want to take a brief moment to remind you that this coming Tuesday, November 28th, is Giving Tuesday. It's a cultural and social media campaign that's really grown throughout the years. It's held the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, and it's a global one-day generosity event.
Here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, we would love for you to consider making a financial contribution to support us. That's coming up next week on Tuesday, November 28th. Thanks for remembering that we are a listener supported broadcast outreach, and we would not exist if it were not for the gratitude of listeners just like you.
And this year, thanks to some very special friends of the ministry, we have a matching grant of $75,000 available to make your dollars go twice as far. That is double the impact. So for more information on how you can make your special giving Tuesday donation this coming Tuesday, November 28th, visit us at drjamesdobson.org. That's drjamesdobson.org.
And now for today's program, our special guest speaker is Pastor Jack Hibbs, who is senior and founding pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Southern California. He is a nationally syndicated TV and radio host, and the founder and president of Real Life Ministry. Pastor Hibbs and his wife Lisa, have been married for over 40 years.
What you're about to hear is a presentation Jack Hibbs gave at a recent event here in Colorado Springs. Without further ado, let's join Pastor Jack Hibbs right here, right now, on Family Talk.
Jack Hibbs: It's an honor to be here this morning, and I almost feel like the little kid, your little kid. Maybe it was you one day when you went up or you saw your parents and you said, after trying to ride your bike, remember, "Look, no hands. Look, mom, no hands." Well, I'm saying this morning, "Dr. Dobson, surely no hands," meaning I have no notes this morning. I tried. I tried. I usually always speak with notes and I tried. It's not working for this morning.
How can I put on paper what Lisa and I and so many of us have experienced over the course of our life when we were homeschooling our children. Really, Lisa was... In the early 1980s your ministry kept us not only encouraged, but informed. Lisa would often call your ministry to find out how to deal with this about our child, this about our daughter. And you guys constantly were there for us and homeschooling in California in the early eighties and Lisa's family coming from just a long line of intellects, we had to keep that under wraps. We thought that the SS officers were going to be at our door because we were homeschooling, and our daughters were homeschooled, and now our daughters homeschool our grandkids.
And all along the way, starting with our oldest, Rebecca, when we began to see certain things, we quickly got The Strong-Willed Child. And then our second daughter was born, and then we had to get Bringing Up Girls, and then our daughters had grandsons, and they wound up Bringing Up Boys. And the Dobson ministry has been the meat and potatoes of our family life. Now, god has been very good to us as a church. He has catapulted this ministry over the last 33 years and it's been amazing. But listen, the greatest strength that we can experience in the church today is having a strong family life among the pastors and those who serve the body of Christ.
We all know that Satan is out to take out the church, take out the pastor's wife, take out a board member or two, or take out the pastor. Without a strong family, the church goes down. Isn't it amazing that when Paul tells Timothy about those that are qualified to be leading the church, he stresses that it's the family, and this ministry has been such a bedrock for us. We were having lunch yesterday, and I happened to share to the group that everything that's going on. And look, I'm the outsider. Lisa and I were invited here. We've never been here before, so I just felt like, "I'm going to say something and then never be invited back." And I said, "Look, I don't know exactly know how all you guys play out in at this table, but as an end user, I want all of you to hear something."
See, you got to take Dr. Dobson's voice. You've got to protect it. You've got to package it. You've got to put a bow on it. You got to put a rocket engine on it. You got to get it back out there like never before. This ministry that he has laid down for us, that he and Shirley have given us is so effective that we don't need to reinvent something else.
You say, "Jack, how do you know?" Because I'm a pastor, I'm watching families come to our church, especially now. I don't mean to bum you out if you think I am out of touch or something. I'm not out of touch. I'm watching what's happening in California, and families are coming to church because they can't take it anymore. They can't take the home breaking up. They're going on their third or fourth marriage. They're not going to go on a fifth marriage. They've had enough. They want to know what's true. They want to know what's right. And they want to be able to lead their families and do the right thing.
And in our bookstore, our constant, constant direct is this, you go down the courtyard, you go to the left and you get these books by Dr. James Dobson. That voice continues on for all of you that are here. I'm that man on the outside speaking to you. Do whatever you've got to do to keep his voice going. Do what you must do. You've got to do this. Isn't it amazing how God in His greatness always places His people in the world at such stressful times? That's why you're a believer right now. "Oh, there's so much wrong." That's a really great thing. Honestly, think about it. "Well, there's wars, families falling apart." Listen, the good thing is this, we're here. You are here. Until the Lord calls us up.
You and I are to be so active about what God has given you and I to use. You and I must take that mantle of understanding that your ministry influence, your financial influence, your persuasion, the people that you are able to touch, God has ordained you to do that, to bring you to a place where you can minister to people in such a way that gets them into the kingdom of God, ultimately, that's the ultimate thing.
But how many kids today we're seeing at our church, thank God there's thousands of young adults who are saying, "What do I do to raise my family the way that my parents didn't raise me?" They're asking, but the young generation, there's huge hope. I don't know if you have any young people in your life, but if you don't, you need to go out and find one, adopt one. They are actually waking up. I'm excited. I got saved in the seventies during the Jesus Revolution at Cavalry Chapel Costa Mesa, and notice that when that time came, it came at a time in the '60s with all of the drug abuse, all of the free sex, all of the craziness, and people got so fed up with it all, they started searching for Jesus.
Friends, we've gone through all of those decades of basically churchianity, and now we've come to this place where it's starting to happen again. The kids have had enough of social media, they're sick and tired of what's happening, but they don't know how to be parents. They don't know how to be married. And this is where you all come in so powerfully. No one is doing what Dr. Dobson has already done. The greatest thing that we can do is just continue to give him platform, give him voice, so check this out. So coming from the People's Republic of California during COVID... I should back up even before COVID, we've always been an outspoken church.
God took the fact that I was born in a Marine Corps home in San Diego. I got saved in the seventies, and He put that together and I've never had a problem ever understanding the truth of the gospel, the entirety of Scripture, and having a worldview that functions in your day-to-day, politic of life. To me, it's absolutely normal. I don't understand pastors that say, "No, no, no, no. That's that. And this is for us and we preach the gospel." And so we've always gotten criticized. "Oh, I don't get involved in what you guys do, we just preach the gospel." I always find that slightly offensive at the beginning.
Listen, one thing about growing up in a Marine Corps home, you've heard it all, by the time you're eight years old, and so pastors would say, "Well, you guys at Chino Hills, you're political, and we don't do that. We just preach the gospel." And I used to take that. I used to just say, "Oh." But you know what? I bumped into a few guys along the way. David Barton, bumped into Bob McEwen, and all along the way, we've always had an impact on the culture, but I didn't have any backing. I didn't have anybody standing there to help us. But we knew what we were supposed to do and we didn't test the wind to see what was trending with opinion. I think that's a weakness, by the way.
And so we started out just making sure that at Christmas time in our little community, our town is small, that are you going to say, or this Target, Kohl's, these stores, Costco. Are you going to say Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas at Christmas time? We want to know. And we took a survey. This is how our political action committee started. We started taking surveys about how the community was going to deal with Christmas. Well, long story short, we wound up promoting to the congregation, "Don't shop at that store. Target is not going to say Merry Christmas. They're going to say Happy Holidays. Shop at this other store instead." Listen, friends, we just told that to our congregation. It's so affected the local community that next year around Target reached out to us and said, "We're going to be saying Merry Christmas at Christmas time." This is not a joke.
We discovered the Christians got a voice when they stand up and say it. We know what to say. We just need to say it. And we need pastors in their pulpits to let the people have the permission. I've got your back as a pastor. This is how you engage the culture. Watch this everybody. I'm not teaching you. I'm just reminding you. Jesus said, "Let your light still shine before men, that when they see your good works, they'll glorify your father wishes in heaven." Strange, awesome statement when Jesus said, "Let your light shine before men." It's generic. It means unbelieving mankind. You don't let your light shine at church on Sunday, everybody lights shine on Sunday.
It means shine the light in the dark place. Go where it's dark. When you go back home to the churches you attend. This is my opinion. If it doesn't go good, blame it on me. You should demand from the ministry that you attend and tithe to, "what are you doing to affect the culture for righteousness? I must know." Because listen, I'm going to give you a verse right now, and it's actually in the New Testament. It's 2 Corinthians 10:6. What does it say? It says, "By your obedience to Christ, punish all disobedience. By doing so, your obedience will be established."
When's the last time you heard a sermon on that? Well, what does that mean? When the church speaks up, things begin to happen. You see, it's not on us. It's not on our strength. It's on his strength. We are actually just to regurgitate the word of God and God takes it from there. We get to be the vessels He uses and as He uses us, things happen. Sonja Shaw, she came during Covid, she got saved. She gave her heart to Christ at our church. She found out during Covid what the school was teaching online this pornography education woke BLM craziness. And she ran for school board. But because she goes to our church, the church voted for her and she won overwhelmingly. Well, other members won as well. So we wound up saying, "This will not be taught in our school district." And it caused Gavin Newsom to get all upset.
And he sent his henchman down there to try to disrupt our gathering. And the guy was out of order. And so Sonya just said, "No, we're going to abide by the rules." And the county sheriff's department had to actually remove the state official from the office. And that wound up making national news and it's going to be going to court because Gavin Newsom just filed a lawsuit against us, against her, against the school board. But you know what? That's okay. We just wound up about seven, eight years ago, governor Jerry Brown, I don't you know this or not. Do you remember the Hobby Lobby case?
Well, that was awesome because it was that 501c3 cannot fund elective abortions based upon their religious convictions. You can't force them to do that. Do you know we got a letter from the governor's office of the State of California, "The Governor Jerry Brown and the State Attorney General has reviewed the outcome of the case in Washington, D.C. Listen, and we have concluded that the decision that the U.S. Supreme Court is unconstitutional." No, no, no, it's true. Listen, we took that letter. We got ahold of ADF. I think it was Jeremiah Galles was the attorney that was assigned to our case, fought it for seven years. And I'm happy to report to you that we won against the state of California. No, 501c3 in the state of California has to give money in their insurance policy to fund elective abortions because of ADF and their desire to fight, their heart to fight.
We've got four lawsuits right now with the state of California from co-ed showers to the education system. It's absolutely crazy. You say, Jack, why do you still live in California? Because that's where the fight is. You guys all remember that in California, they wound up passing this thing called ballot harvesting. And look, the Republican Party didn't handle it well. The Republican Party freaked out and said, "That's bad. We'll never do that." You got to understand something. I'm from a state that legalized it, which means enshrined the Democrats and their agenda in California will then win forevermore. So when Gina Gleason walked into my office, she heads up our real impact team. She said, "This is the new law. What are we going to do about this?" And I said, "Wait, read it to me."
"Well, it's ballot harvesting. You can go and you can get ballots from people and you can turn them into the county registrar's office or these boxes." And I said, "That's the law?" "Yeah, that's the law now." And I said, "Find out, let's do it. If that's the law, let's do it. In fact, let's do this. Let's make sure the church is the epicenter. Get a thousand churches that's on our network online. Let's get these guys, let's have a Skype meeting. Let's teach them how to do this. So let's get our homework. You rent boxes from Amazon. They're recognized by the state of California. They're locked." We had them on campus. We wound up having, first of all, 18,000 people registered to vote. Most of them in southern California, they were changing their party affiliation. We brought candidates up on the stage because Alan Sears, we've been trying to provoke a lawsuit with the IRS for decades now.
No, haven't we? We have. I would preach a politically incorrect sermon with a black robe on, and I don't usually wear a black robe. And so we're trying to get some action. We're trying to get somebody to sue us. They've never even attempted. We'd mail our sermons to the IRS. They never once came after us. We bring up candidates. We say, "Vote for this person." Listen, we've been so successful that we've got letters of hatred from Nancy Pelosi. Oh, we keep them. They're beautiful. Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, remember her? She's long gone, Nancy Pelosi. It's an honor when your church is known in the halls of Sacramento as being a troublemaker, for what? For giving parents their voice because the family needs to be protected. That our kids should not be taught pornography, but math and geometry.
To take a stand that we think it's wrong that teenage kids should shower in the same shower with the opposite sex. Call us crazy. We think it's wrong. Listen, who's going to speak up but the church? But the pastors have got to be the ones to speak up. So here's what's going on, in these last elections with these ballot harvesting, which we changed the name. We call it ballot collection because ballot harvesting, that sounds like they're trying to take an organ out of you or something. Liver, kidney, sounds nasty.
So we call it ballot collection. We wound up educating so many churches in California and our first big attempt was Mike Garcia. Ran for office in California's 25th district because the Democrat congresswoman had an affair with a high school student. And so there was a special election. So we went up there, we mobilized the churches in the area. We had the boxes deployed and we had cameras set up and we had people standing there monitoring the boxes.
People started bringing in the votes. Mike Garcia campaigned, but people had a place to bring their vote. They came and they brought their ballot. They watched it go into the box. We collected those and took them on camera with armed guards to the county board of registrar's office in Los Angeles. Guess what happened? That was a special election. Two years later, we come to a cycle of elections and we wind up doing the same thing in various districts up and down the state, and we win more congressional seats. We won more mayoral seats and this started growing.
Pastors started signing up. Might I remind you, this is the state of California, and I'm telling you right now that follow the math. In the last election when the Republicans took the house, remember it wasn't settled for a little while. There was some counting going on, and what transpired was this, was that California sent more conservative candidates to Washington, D.C. that caused Nancy, Nancy Pelosi to lose her job. Watch God had a plan. McCarthy was put in place for just a season, for a season for a reason because God had Mike Johnson in the wings.
He's a real man of God. California, keep your eye on it. If you sold property there, you should have hung onto it. Things are turning around. People are going to churches. Every church I know that stood during and ministered during Covid has exploded. Friends and family, listen, without the foundation given to Lisa and I by Dr. James Dobson and Shirley, we wouldn't have known how to raise our kids. Our kids are patriots. They love Jesus, our grandkids are patriots, they love Jesus. Our church loves the Lord. We're building a culture of biblical masculinity. It's incredible what's happening. 2,000 men on a Sunday evening come out to learn how to be a man of God. The women's ministry is exploding, teaching moms how to be moms and how elderly women can nurse up or raise up the young women who don't even know what to do with the baby.
It's happening, friends, and listen, I wouldn't change this moment in time for anything in the world. God is doing a great thing. All He wants us to do is stand. And I encourage you, if you would go back home and challenge your pastor, "You got to stand pastor. Pastor, you got to stand." If your pastor won't stand, there's a verse in the Bible. Jesus says, "Dust, dust off your feet and go to a place that is affecting the culture." I'm out of time. Dr. Dobson, Shirley, we love you guys. Your voice must continue more than ever before. I pray, we pray that there'll be those that have come behind you and pick up your ministry and catapulted into the future generations because we need you. God bless you so much.
Roger Marsh: It is truly remarkable what can be accomplished when we as Christians stand together to do the work for God's kingdom. And that was the conclusion of Pastor Jack Hibbs's presentation right here on this special edition of Family Talk. Now, as we've entered into the season of giving, I want to remind you once again that this Tuesday, November 28th is giving Tuesday. This is really a cultural phenomenon, happens the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. A lot of people are shopping this weekend with Black Friday and Local Saturday.
And then of course there's this one day generosity event that happens on Tuesday. This year it's November 28th. Here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, we would love for you to consider making a financial contribution to support our ministry next week on Tuesday, November 28th. And the reason why is because of very special friends of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute have put up a matching grant of $75,000 available to make your dollars go twice as far, one day only, Tuesday, November 28th.
That's double the impact. Just imagine what we can do when we can partner together on this special giving opportunity. For more information on how you can make a donation on Giving Tuesday, visit us at drjamesdobson.org. That's drjamesdobson.org. Or you can easily send us that gift from the palm of your hand using your smartphone and the JDFI/Family Talk app. So please remember the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute on Giving Tuesday, November 28th. I'm Roger Marsh. Hope you've had a wonderful week reconnecting with friends and family here during this holiday. And if you're out shopping today or spending some quality time doing something fun, I pray that you have safe travel for your journey. Thanks again for tuning into Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love. Have a great weekend and we'll see you again on Monday.
Announcer: This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
Roger Marsh: Hello everyone. Roger Marsh here for Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. The news comes in all shapes, sizes, and formats these days, but how do you cut through all the noise and get to the heart of the matters that affect your family? Well, come to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk and sign up for Dr. Dobson's monthly newsletter. You'll find clarity on tough issues, encouragement for daily life, and trusted principles to help you build strong, healthy, and connected families. Go to drjamesdobson.org and sign up today. That's drjamesdobson.org.