In our fifth episode, Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock sit down with Jake Menzel of Church of the King in Evansville to talk about the word Reformed men are afraid of: ambition.

Ambition they've been trained to distrust. Ambition that draws on the Father's pleasure instead of earning it. Ambition for a man's sons and grandsons, and the church he's been given. Jake, Stephen, and Aaron talk through why a man who won't believe his sanctification has not believed his justification, why Reformed devotion becomes a contest over who feels worst about himself, and why feeling bad is not the same as repenting. Or, as Jake puts it: before you die, let the world see the best you that you knew how to become.

00:00 — Meet Jake Menzel and the Frontier Shepherds conference
01:46 — Why Evansville is a hard place to plant a church
07:10 — Why plant here at all: "God was calling me home to my people"
09:24 — Coming back to the Lord at 17, then off to IU
12:04 — Trial by fire at a secular university; charisma that outruns character
14:55 — Three years at NGA and seven years of campus ministry
16:51 — Godly ambition and how young men have changed in twenty years
22:24 — Bloomington vs. Evansville; when a church never grows past campus ministry
28:46 — A hard demographic shift and the cost of defining who you are
32:46 — How do you fuel ambition without burning out?
34:32 — The baptism of Jesus: the Father pleased before the Son has done a thing
36:22 — Haddon and the center-field fence
39:39 — If you don't believe in sanctification, you don't believe in justification
42:03 — The feedback loop of self-loathing — and why it isn't the gospel
45:39 — Godly ambition rooted in the fatherhood of God
49:43 — The little-league coach who can't let his son fail
53:47 — Better or bitter
56:41 — The smallest, most fearless kid on the team
1:00:36 — Ambition for growth, not greatness