Here is the life story of Scott Brown. Born in Alaska, Scott Brown grew up in Southern California in a stable and loving home. But, during a time of revival in his teen years, his father’s wise decision to take the family out of a liberal church to a Bible-preaching church changed everything.

Welcome to the Church of Family Life podcast. Church of Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. It's a bit strange that I'm introducing the subject today. Why am I doing that? It's because we've been getting life stories from the men who've been preaching at Church of Family Life conferences, and today the subject of this is a frequent preacher at Church and Family Life conferences and that's Scott Brown.

And so I'm introducing you today instead of vice versa. Welcome Scott. Hey thanks, I'm glad. Thank you for welcoming me. It's always a blessing to hear how God broke into the lives of sinners and made trophies of His grace.

And so today is our opportunity to hear from you, just sort of the timeline of your life and how God entered into that to bring you to himself. Delighted, delighted. I was born in 1953 in Alaska. My parents had gone to Alaska in the first years of their marriage really to teach school in remote villages in Alaska. I mean, when I say remote, I mean remote.

My dad was floating around in skin boats, harpooning seals with Eskimos. And so during those years, I was born. I was born in Alaska before it was actually a state of the union. Wow. Yeah, isn't that something?

Yeah, Alaska is just a remarkable place. You know, fast forward here. I spent, we ended up in Southern California. I spent the first half of my life in Southern California. And then in 1988, we moved to North Carolina, and I've been here since then.

So but I was born in Alaska, and we ended up in Southern California. I lived on the same block into my early twenties, so we didn't we didn't move around that much. My parents were teachers in the California public school system. And they tell me, so they say that I was an easy child. I was one of those kids that didn't rebel.

And They tell me that I, and this is true, I didn't want to hang around with bad people, and I didn't want to do bad things. That was my childhood, and I had a very happy childhood. My parents were wonderful. They were happy parents. And my earliest recollections of the Church and of Christ happened in a liberal Methodist church that our family was going to.

My dad's dad was a Methodist pastor and so we ended up in a Methodist church there in Orange County, California. And this was during the time of the Vietnam War. It really was a liberal church. The pastors were telling men who were getting drafted either to become conscientious objectors or to go to Vietnam but make sure that they slept with as many women as they could. The pastors were telling the young men in our church to do that.

My early memories of Sunday school classes were listening to Bob Dylan songs and analyzing Bob Dylan songs. There wasn't too much of the Bible at that time. But then there were several things that happened in our family that changed everything. And the most powerful thing was my dad. He took us out of that Methodist church and he took us to a Bible preaching church where there was a faithful pastor, an expositor of Scripture.

And so he took us out of that Methodist church into a real church. And during that, really touched off what I can only describe as God just pulling me slowly. I don't know exactly when I was converted, sometime in my early teens, But there were different things that God brought into our life, into my life and our family's life, and God was definitely drawing me. But my dad taking us to this church, to Calvary Church in Placentia, Pastor John Tabay. He was an expositor, he was a careful thinker, and he was a disciple maker, and he took me on.

And I'm just so thankful. Wow, really thankful for that man. Another thing that was going on is that there was a revival going on in my high school, And there were Bible studies that were popping up everywhere, and God was really moving on my high school. And a big part of that were the workers that came, the high school ministry workers from Campus Crusade for Christ, and they were on our campus. And they caught up with me, and I was having Bible studies with them.

And it's interesting, Bill Bright writes about this revival that was going on in my high school in this book, Come Change the World. This is a 1970 publication that Bill Bright wrote. He says this, The use of drugs had become widespread at Troy High School in Orange County, California. That's your high school? That's my high school.

Okay. God did a miracle in the life of one of the members of the Troy High School basketball team. This boy had been involved with drugs. And then he says, immediately he began to share his faith with others and one month, more than 120 students, including most of the basketball team, had accepted Christ. Well, so that was what was happening.

And these kids were in my house. And Our house was packed with kids. Josh McDowell would come and even speak in our house because he was in that area at that time. But it was really a time of spiritual foment, just in my local life there. You know, my dad had taken us into a good church.

This was happening in my high school. At some point in my early high school years, I remember I was in the garage and I remember scrawling on the fiberboard of our garage wall, for God so loved Scott Brown, that he gave his only son. And that's what happened to me. And I don't know exactly when I was saved, but over time, it was almost like God was pulling in this rope. And then within a few weeks, my sisters wrote their names, for God so loved Carol and Joanne.

Wonder if it's still there. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. But those were just such marvelous times. And I was reading the Gospel of John.

I think I had to, I'm sure I was saved reading the Gospel of John. John 737, on the last day of the great feast, Jesus stood out and cried, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. I remember reading, I'm the bread of life. I'm the Good Shepherd. You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

And you'll be free." Wow. God won me over in the Gospel of John. And so there was another thing going on at the same time. There was also a massive revival in Orange County, particularly in different places across the country, but I kind of think it was concentrated in Orange County, particularly through the ministry of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa and Chuck Smith there, who preached through the Bible every five years for about 30 or 40 years. He was an expositor.

But if you go back and look at 1970, 1971, the Jesus movement was just raging in Southern California, and thousands and thousands of young people were saved. Churches were filling up with young people and it was just such a remarkable moment Yeah, I was in fact I was just recently reading an account of the things that happened and the people that were involved with and I was there I saw I saw it all you know you have you know you have Keith Green you had Big music festivals, and I remember one time in our high school, some of my friends, The school let us schedule a concert, we called it a rock concert, and it was this Christian group out of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. We didn't tell people it was a Christian group. So, But lots and lots of people came and lots and lots of people walked out as well. But that was what was happening.

It was such a remarkable season in the history of the church. I think it probably was the greatest revival in American history since the second great awakening. So anyway, that's what was happening. My father, there were campus workers of Campus Crusade for Christ. There was this massive revival going on You know in our region people used to say All you had to do is blow on someone and they would become a Christian mass baptisms at Corona del Mar at the beach just wild and Everywhere you'd go people would be arguing about Jesus.

I just haven't seen a time like that since. But our pastor would allow me to be involved in different ministries in our church, in various youth ministries. I was leading pretty early as a Christian. And so, you know, I was teaching college students and high school students while I was there. And then For some reason, I thought I should study history in college, so I majored in history in college, and that's what my dad did.

And then my pastor was encouraging me to go to seminary. So I did that, I went to Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California, and I loved those seminary years. It was such a banquet. I focused on Bible exposition, and That's what this seminary at that time wanted to pump out expositors with a pastor's heart. That's what they were intending to do.

And I loved those years in seminary. And then I was getting ready to graduate in 1980. And then somebody called my pastor and said, hey, we're looking for a pastor. Do you know anybody? And my pastor said, yes, you should talk to Scott Brown.

So in 1980, or, you know, right when I graduated from seminary, I went down and took a church in San Diego County. But it was really interesting because I'd packed up my VW to go down there. It was about two hours away, I think. And my car was all full. And my pastor called me on the phone.

He said, hey, can you come over and see me at my office before you go down there? So I did. I went by his office and he sent me down there and he said, have you ever had any heartthrobs for Debbie Albright? And you know, I didn't know what to say because, you know, I did kind of notice her like from when she was 13 because she she went to our church when she was in her younger years and then her family moved to San Diego so she hadn't been in our church for a few years but I but I definitely remembered her and She came to the camps and things like that, that I was leading in the intervening years. He said, I think you should go down there and marry her.

Whoa. I said, no, she's too young. Well, there's eight years, you know, difference. You know, I'm 26 now, of course, so she's 18. And I said, she's just too young.

So I went down there and, you know, I'd seen a couple of other girls in between, but then After about a year and a half, I realized, I gotta marry this girl. John was right. John, my pastor said, she's perfect for you. And then he told her, he told me several reasons she was perfect for me. And Slamophie wasn't right, I'm telling you.

I'm so glad he said that, and I'm so glad I went down there, and I'm so glad I married her. So for those of you out there, listen to your pastors. They often know what they're talking about. Sometimes they do, yeah. He called it, he totally called it.

He knew her really well, and her family really well as well. He knew me. And so, anyway, so we have had, we have four children, and right now we've got 24 of the best grandchildren on the planet and we're really having a great time. So anyway, we moved to North Carolina in 1988 and fairly Quickly we planted a church, started a company, an electronics company, and very involved in local church life. And then...

So, can I break in and ask, okay, so you're describing something, but I don't know whether the people who are listening sort of understand the magnitude of the transition? You're describing going from full-time ministry into manufacturing. Why did you do that? So yeah, I was pastoring in California. I loved it.

And I just kept having a sense that I'd always kind of been on this side of the pulpit, you know after I was saved and A thought kept going through my mind unless you walk in those men's shoes You'll never know how to equip men. I just I was just a dogged With that question and I thought it was right. I thought there was something to it. So I quit, came to North Carolina, and started working. And what I said was, Lord, seven years, drag me through the dirt.

Show me what it's like for a man to try to juggle his job, try to be married, you know, try to be a churchman. Because I felt like in our church in California, it was such a highly programmed church, I felt like these guys can't keep up with all these ideas that I have, you know? And of course, it was a time, it was a season in the church of, you know, I'm just going to call it radical programmatic ministry. And that was the environment that I knew, and that's what we were doing. But there was something wrong with it.

And I thought there was something wrong with me. I think it was there's both, right? There's something wrong with it and something wrong with me and So I wanted to take that time And I ended up starting a company an electronics company an electronic manufacturing company and And then I ended up after, I guess, eight years, I sold it. But this is in the 1990s. So in the 90s, something happened to me.

I read a book called God in the Wasteland by David Wells, where he was talking about the trivialization of Christianity in the modern moment. You know, the secret sensitive movement was raging. We were in the thick of that. We were in the thick together at the church that we started, you know, here. Because we moved here and then within about a year and a half we started a church Here in North Carolina.

I really never left the ministry for a second I was always involved in either planting a church or being an elder in a church all those years, but I wasn't paid for it. And so I, and then I, I started bumping into the Puritans and I thought, Oh no, what have I done? And so lots of things started changing and I bumped into the Baptist confession and so that started altering my thinking And I ended up thinking through that time that the sufficiency of Scripture had been lost in the church. And as a result, the preaching in many churches was just kind of a Shallow feel-good fix your life up kind of a deal whole counsel of God At least in my at least the people that I knew and the churches that I knew were like that and And I also ended up believing that the whole doctrine of the family had been lost in the 20th century. Yeah, the doctrine of the family was destroyed in the 20th century, and I ended up with that conviction.

And so you had to recover the doctrine of the family and you had to recover the preaching of the Word of God in the church. And so I sold that company and then ended up planting what people call a family integrated church you know here in Wake Forest. You were there, you were right there. It's true. Yeah we did that together and so you know I had you were asking about this electronics company.

So what's a what's a theology student running an electronics company? Yeah. So you were out of the ministry for seven or eight years. There's more than that. Yeah.

And then went back into full-time ministry with the planting of that family integrated church. So when did National Center for Family Integrated Churches come into the picture? Right then, 2001. Okay, so we're at 21 years now. 21 years, yeah.

Time flies. Yeah, yeah, we had our first conference in St. Louis in that year, and we're going to do it again next year in 2023. We're going to go back to that same conference center. Okay, yeah, fantastic.

Yeah, St. Louis, yeah. Okay, stay tuned for details. Yeah, yeah. The conference is going to be called Family Life.

We're talking about all kinds of giggly squiggly things about family life. Wonderful. Yeah. Two quick ones for you. Favorite living preacher, favorite dead author.

Martin Lloyd-Jones, Jonathan Edwards. Dead author. Lloyd-Jones isn't alive. He's not alive, oh! But it's in our lifetime.

Oh, I'm sorry. It's in our lifetime, but give us a live preacher. Oh, I'm sorry, live preacher. Yeah. Well, he sounds alive to me when I listen to it.

You can still get him on cassette. That's pretty close. Oh, man. You know, I love the preaching of lots of men. I really do.

We'll accept Lloyd-Jones as an answer. That's within our lifetime. That's within our lifetime. By the way, for those of you out there, you can get an app and you can hear his voice. So he died, I believe, in 1973, but he's recent enough that you can actually hear him and his preaching in his voice.

You can just get the Martin Lloyd-Jones app from the Apple Store or the Google Play Store and listen to him, and it's very profitable to do so because he's a very helpful preacher. Okay, here are my favorite preachers. Go to the Church and Family Life website. All the preachers that we have preaching at our conferences, those are my favorite preachers. That's a shameless promotion.

That's why I invite them. I learn so much from them. I really appreciate them. Yeah. So there you have it.

I guess that's the story of my life. Yeah. Anything particularly top of mind right now in church life? I know you're a church elder of an individual church, but more broadly than that, church life, like what's top of mind for you? Just trust that Scripture is true in everything.

Yeah, amen. It is... It's the best place to lay your head. So I've known you for 32 years now, I think it's the right count. You've never beat a different drum than that.

So when we start off the podcast, you know, Church and Family Life Exists, to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, it really is just the same old drum beat for as long as I've known you. I'm very, very grateful for that and grateful to hear the story of your life. Do you have any parting shots? I'm so thankful that God rescued me in the midst of a really crazy culture in Southern California. And I've never looked back for a second.

I've never regretted anything. I've never turned away from the Lord ever since those days. And he is so good. He is so kind. We give thanks for God's goodness to sinners.

And thank you so much for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. We look forward to seeing you again next time. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us.

Go to churchandfamilylife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.