 Welcome to the 21 Report, I'm Frank Pesci and I'm sitting here with Pastor Brian Souvet. He's a speaker and he's been an amazing, he's had an amazing impact on this event and I just wanna say hello to you, sir. Hello, thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. So what do you think of the event so far? It has been quite interesting to me to meet all the different voices and personalities and what's really struck me the most so far is just how much it's changed from what I, I wasn't at the earlier stuff with a lot more kind of pickup stuff and gain sort of things. But now it's like, I just did back-to-back panels where four out of the five speakers were Christians and multiple pastors. So that was fascinating to me to see the way that it's kind of evolved. Yeah, there's definitely been an evolution in the space. Is this your first event? Yes. With 21 Summit? Yep. Interesting, okay. This is my third time at 21 Productions, we'll call it because it had evolved from 21 Convention, then they added the Patriarch Edition, which was for fathers, then they added a 22 Convention, which was for women and now we're unified together under the umbrella of 21 Summit, which is really exciting. There's been a tremendous evolution that's happened in the space and I've heard time and time again from other speakers and other attendees that the message has matured, the message has grown up. How do you see the message today? Yeah, I think that one of the things that happens over the years, when you start to identify, okay, we have cultural problems where men feel attacked, maleness is under attack itself, men are being told that they're toxic, that masculinity itself is a problem, that they need to basically become feminine, we need to androgynize. Inevitably that's going to result in pushback and some of that pushback, I think properly identified problems, but didn't necessarily give mature solutions to it. But what happens when you give a wrong solution and immature solution is that it ultimately will always let you down. Over time, it will prove to need revision. And so I think what the manosphere has found, at least in lots of corners is that it needed a soul, it needs ultimately, I believe the Christian faith, for talking about masculinity, talking about fatherhood, we're talking about something that requires a definition and a T loss and a target. We need to have an idea of what a man ought to be. And I think you realize very quickly that if your idea of maleness is just derived from evolutionary biology or materialism, then you end up not being able to say that there is any such thing as right or wrong, there's just biology, we're just animals. And so we can say, well, we might be more biologically inclined one way or the other testosterone might make men want to behave in certain ways versus different sex hormones, but you can't ever say that the pain-cared feminist is wrong. You can just say, I don't like it. And so I think a lot of manosphere influences have found that the answer, the deeper answer that they were looking for was in the fatherhood of God, was in the Christian faith, was in, they started looking at cultures and that produced traditional families, that produced masculine men and found that historically many of those cultures were, they were just boring Christian cultures over the, in the history of the West. And so my prayer for the manosphere and the reason I'm here is because I want to see the manosphere. I want to see men embrace their ontology, embrace their design, what they're made to be and to discover their purpose by grace through faith in Christ and to look to the father for the image and definition of fatherhood, the target to hit. And so yeah, that's why I'm here and it's been interesting to see all of the shifts and the speakers and how they've interacted with that message. As a pastor, particularly a pastor who's familiar with the work of the manosphere, you're on the front lines of a culture war, an active and violent culture war. And I don't mean violence necessarily like overt violence, but violence by other means. Idiology. Violence through narrative and ideology. Did I say it right? I did. Okay, good. That doesn't mean it's right, but that's how I'd say it. What is your experience been as a pastor in that context? Yeah, the culture war is ultimately inevitable. And when you understand even just where the word culture came from and what it means, you start to understand why. I mean, culture is a word that comes from the Latin word cultus, which is related to words like the cult religiosity as well as cultivation to cultivate culture, cultists. And what you find is that culture is, to quote Henry Vantel, it's religion externalized. That's what culture is. Culture is a manifestation in the social artifacts of a people of what it is that they worship, who it is that they self-identify. Where did you come from? What is the good? What is evil? What is beautiful? What is ugly? What is true? What is false? Where are you going? And how are you going to get there? And so once you understand that about culture, you realize that it's inevitable that you're going to have war over those things because people don't agree on who we are, where we're going, where we ought to be. People don't agree on what a man is, what a woman is. And what court adjudicates that question? Who gets to decide? And so my experience as a pastor is that I would submit that the culture war is a subset of applied theology at the end of the day. It's basically answering the question as a pastor, what kind of people would have biblical vision for manhood and womanhood create? Where, and how are we measuring against that? And how do we close the gap to get from where we are to where that vision would say that we ought to be? Do you feel like as a man you are walking in your purpose or assignment for your time here on Earth? I do, I do. I mean, not perfectly. And obviously at the foundation of the Christian faith is the gospel that I am a sinner. It's the, I mean, Christian faith begins with the confession. I am a sinner, fallen short of the glory of God. And it's only through Christ that I can be forgiven of my sin, reconciled to God, and then actually renovated in the image of the God man. Renovated, I like that word. To become true man. Yeah, I mean, 2nd Corinthians 318, we all with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed from one degree of glory to another into the same image. So Christianity is answering this question that the Greeks, the Romans were asking, what is the good life? Cicero's asking that question, what is a true man? And we answer, well, we say like Quintilian said, it's a good man speaking well. I think Cicero might have said that. We say it's the God man. He's the ideal man. We're being conformed to his image. So I'm not perfect, but I know that in my various vocations, what's freeing about Christian faith is that I don't have to wake up and invent myself. I simply actually say, father, what am I? And what am I to do? I'm a father, okay, I have duties there that God gave me to provide for my family, love my children, disciple them. I have a wife, okay, I have duties there. What am I to do? So I wake up every morning, I'm a pastor. I'm, you know, all these different things. And I know that I can look to my marching orders from my father and trust that fulfilling and pursuing those marching orders will be for my good, even when those feel like dying, which they sometimes do when you're actually doing what you're supposed to do. Excellent, well articulated. Thank you. To be honest to say, it was the follow-up question of that is, were you like eight years old, like, yeah, I'm gonna be the best pastor in the world one day? Or did you submit to it as a calling for your particular path? I wanted to be a fighter pilot. My dad was in the Air Force. And until I was about 15, 16. And then just kind of out of the blue, I felt a call to Christian ministry in the context of church life. And I didn't really know what that meant, but I still went back and forth a little bit. I ended up giving up a full tuition scholarship at the university I was attending to pursue an unaccredited theological education degree instead. And that was kind of like the moment of decision. It's like, I'm gonna stop pursuing an engineering degree in this path because I believe that God would have me, pastor, church, pursue ministry for life until I die. So I intend to do. Amazing. I heard this question asked in your speech that you gave earlier. How are you received as a pastor who is actively engaged in the culture war? And that's not to say you're walking on the street with a burning torch calling people out. I see that you operate with gentleness, spirit of gentleness about you, but at the same time, you're not gonna give up on your principles or the principles of the gospel. How are you received among other church leaders, church bodies as it were? People like to look at the church or a church and say, well, that represents the entire church. What has been some of your challenges or even encouragements in your line of work or I should say your line of calling within relations with the church? Sure. So anytime that you stand distinctly for something and communicate that, and especially in my vocation, it's words. Pasturing is I'm shepherding people with words. I'm counseling people with words. I'm preaching in words. I'm, you know, it's all, it's words. Even the music that I make is words. So when you are in that world, you're always saying, thus sayeth the Lord, this is truth, goodness and beauty and this is the ugliness, badness, falsity. And so that will always create two responses. On the one hand, it will create zeal and passion to say amen. So see that where, you know, people in the church are very much like, yes, let's be men and women of God. Let's fight against the perversions of masculinity and femininity in our culture and in the church. And then there's also very much hatred. Sometimes simple disagreement, theologically. People say, I don't follow that line of argumentation and that's a conversation I'm happy to have. Sometimes slander with, you know, for example, just being here as a pastor and being associated with something like 21 Summit where lots of the speakers are not Christians and I go here knowing, like I told my church, coming here as an act of Christian missions, saying they've, Anthony's invited me to come out and said, I can say whatever I want. And so I'm gonna come and I'm gonna say whatever, I think the Lord would have me say. But you'll have people on various corners of the internet saying, you agree with everything, you know? Quick question for you. Yeah. Sure. Did anybody in your church speak up against you coming here? No. Okay. And I only ask that question because it's interesting, how do you deal with descending or dissenting voices within the paradigm of your walk? Yeah, yeah. That can be difficult. One of the things we say at the church all the time is that our goal is not to become the biggest church possible as quick as possible in any vocation, if you try to, things that grow fast, weeds grow fast, right? Oak trees don't, oak trees grow slowly. So we say my aim is to preach people in and out of the church all the time. I want, as a result, I define success in my vocation, both as people coming closer in alignment with the truth and with people hearing that and saying, I hate that and I'm leaving. Because that means that I've successfully stated something clearly enough that it could be disagreed with instead of trying to manipulate as many people as possible to sort of play the middle, play the centrist, let's put out fires. Like, yeah, sometimes you need to put out fires, sometimes you actually need to burn things down. So you have to have both. And so we've found that that's actually the road to unity and health in the church. Fantastic. Do you think it's important for men and women at this point to attend the 21 summit? That's an interesting question. My first priority in triage would always be you need to be the kind of man and woman who's deeply involved in a healthy local church, be a Christian. I told pretty much every talk I gave here, I said, my goal is to make you all Christians. Not me, I mean, to see you submit to Christ, I can't save anybody. But to see you all become Christians, just like Paul before the courts, one of the judges, one of the rulers said, Paul, would you so quickly see, convert me to Christianity? And he said, yeah, I would have you be as I am yet without, except for these chains. So I don't necessarily, the place where I point people to solutions isn't the manosphere. It's actually Christ, biblical Christianity. And so then I think the manosphere is an interesting place where you can learn a lot. And I learn things every time I listen to guys here. I also disagree with a lot as well. So I think it's a complicated question. But mainly I would say, go to a church, be a Christian. Got you, got you. Okay, very good. Man, where can people find you? Almost everything I do is sort of in a hub at my website, which is just my name, bryansovay.com. Music, teaching, podcasts. I do a podcast with my wife called Brighthearth on the productive Christian household. I do a podcast with some other pastors called The King's Hall. So you can find me on both of those wherever podcasts are found. And those are very different, but both kind of outflows of the Christian message. And I do music, set Psalms to music, Apple iTunes Spotify, but all that's up on my website as well. Is it likely you'll be here with us again next year? We'll see, Lord willing. I mean, if Anthony invited me again, I would definitely consider it and see if he'd have me back. So yeah, it's been a pleasure. Awesome, all right. Well, with the 21 report, I'm Frank Pesci with pastor Brian Swabay. Brian, thank you. Thank you.