In this episode, Nathan Spearing sits down with John Moody—author, homesteader, and mentor to men—to talk about why most of life’s problems for men come down to two things: muscle and money. Drawing from his own experience building businesses, leading a family, and navigating church life, John explains why provision, protection, and leadership require strength and resources. The conversation touches on entrepreneurship, failed opportunities, church resistance to strong men, and why young men today need practical discipleship in economics, fitness, and household management.

Links:

The post we talked about that sparked this episode

Follow John Moody on X and/or Facebook

Nathan's website

Nathan on X

Beregenerated Brotherhood

[00:00:00 ] Opening

• Shotgun intro.





• John Moody: “Most men’s problems are solved with more muscle and more money.”

[00:01:00 ] The Feminist Trap

• Nathan on husbands hoping wives’ side hustles will cover provision.





• John explains why many churches still cater to feminism.

[00:03:00 ] Young Men Want Practical Teaching

• Why men in churches are starving for real-world advice.





• Uri Brito quote: “Theology without application is not theology.”

[00:04:00 ] Early Marriage and Missed Business Opportunities

• John’s seminary days: starting businesses but told “it’s not ministry.”





• The lost potential of building skills earlier.

[00:06:00 ] First Business: Scholarship Consulting

• Helping students get scholarships on contingency.





• Lessons learned when clients didn’t want to pay.

[00:09:00 ] Second Business: Tutoring

• Grew fast, but limited by capacity.





• Why he wishes he’d scaled and sold it before family responsibilities multiplied.

[00:11:00 ] Plant Your Field Before Building Your House

• John’s advice to his younger self: provision first, then advanced degrees or ministry.

[00:14:00 ] Money, Muscle, and Biblical Duties

• Provision, protection, leadership require resources.





• Gnostic spirituality divorces wisdom from real-world strength and wealth.

[00:15:00 ] Competence Earns Authority

• Why the church often offers mediocrity, not excellence.





• Influence flows from demonstrated skill.

[00:16:00 ] Pushback in Church Leadership

• Story of being blocked from eldership for “making too big a wake.”





• Parallels to Michael Foster and fear of strong men.

[00:18:00 ] Men at the City Gates

• In the Old Testament, those with estates and strength sat in judgment.





• Wealth + physical ability qualified them to lead.

[00:19:00 ] Xenophon’s Oeconomicus and Paul’s Writings

• Historic parallels on managing households.





• The hero is orderly, strong, and economically fruitful.

[00:21:00 ] Closing

• Practical discipleship requires money, muscle, and order in the home.





• Nathan signs off to head to a project with his sons riding along.

Transcript:

[00:00:00 ] Click. Click.

John Moody: he goes, for the majority of men, most of their problems will be solved by more muscle and more money.

Nathan Spearing: Can say amen. Say

John Moody: ouch. And, and again, you know, are overly spiritualized, gnostic circles, chafe at that. But when you look at the Bible, and, and this is what confuses me, like, but what are men's basic duties?

Their provision, protection and leadership. So what do those duties practically need? Yeah. Well, you need muscle and you need money to do those duties. Like how do you, how can you tell people they have these duties but then kind of riffle your nose up? At the things that make the duties possible. Yeah. How, how do you separate these things?

Dramatic music household.

Nathan Spearing: [00:01:00 ] Yeah. What's your reflection? You just wrote one on, I actually didn't read the women one, but I know enough about your content to know exactly why it's making everybody mad. Because people are still, even in the church, are still slaves to feminism and, uh, husbands are still hiding out and secretly hoping their wives.

Have Instagram businesses so that they don't have to work so hard, but,

John Moody: oh goodness man. So thought, thoughts on those posts, you know, those, those posts are primarily, well, when I thought of that post, it was driven by a few things. Um, one is just our family's personal experience in churches for the past. Man, 20 years. Uh, and just realizing, uh, [00:02:00 ] how many churches,

uh, hold on a second. We might have to start this over. Or you can just delete this stuff out.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah, you do that.

John Moody: It's, uh, for me it is, what's that football analogy? It's, you know, fourth quarter

Nathan Spearing: the game is tied.

John Moody: Yeah. On the 50 yard line or something. Yeah. So just all kinds of, all kinds of stuff going on.

Yeah.

Nathan Spearing: I, uh, I, I did a post today on in inflation and the relationship between time and money a little bit. It's already taken off a little bit. It seems like our, uh, our young men in the church are starving [00:03:00 ] for practical stuff.

John Moody: Yes.

Nathan Spearing: And I just had Yuri on my podcast and he was like, theology if it's not applied is not theology.

That's my paraphrase of it. And uh, and also, you know, this, he was kind of going after guys about waiting till they have a cer they're ready to get married or whatever, but at the same time, like you need to be part of being ready to get married is being able to make, make money.

John Moody: Yeah. Yeah. You know, well, and that, and that's really, you know, at the heart of those posts is when the Lord first saved me.

And then Jessica and I first got married, uh, you know, I was part of Southern Seminary at the time, and Jessica, uh, there's a professor's wife who was doing [00:04:00 ] a, a woman's discipleship thing. For some of the younger, newly married, about to be moms ladies.

Nathan Spearing: Okay.

John Moody: And the only thing this lady wanted to do though was get together with them and do a bible study.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah.

John Moody: And you know, when I was in seminary, uh, I already had started two different businesses while I was in seminary and none of the older men. I was around firm that they're, you know, they wouldn't necessarily say like, having businesses is bad, but, but they're just like, it's not ministry. It's not preaching the gospel.

Yeah. It's, and so I never built those businesses, you know, a bunch of the skills I now have, I could have acquired those in the early two thousands and. [00:05:00 ] Had a totally different life, a totally different way to help people. Uh, but you know, just, just this, we have such a dearth of older women who can actually help younger women become good wives and mothers, and we have such a dearth of older men who can help younger men become good providers and protectors and leaders.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah, so, so what were the two businesses that you had?

John Moody: Uh, I had a scholarship business, so, you know, this was hilarious. I was a business finance major in college.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah.

John Moody: And my internship one year was working at my college's foundation. So the foundation at a college is what does a bunch of different things.

But one of the main things it does is oversee the pool of scholarship money. [00:06:00 ] Okay. And how, and it, it, you know, it oversees the assets that create the money for the scholarships, but then it also awards the scholarships and stuff. Usually, you know, sets a lot of the criteria. Other things, unless like the scholarships are earmarked to a particular department.

But a lot of the general scholarships the foundation works with, you know, who those scholarships are tied to. So I had all this experience with scholarships, uh, going when I went to seminary, um, and it's how I paid for seminary. I was able to go to seminary basically completely free almost. 'cause I hunted down all these scholarships to pay for school.

'cause I didn't have any money.

Nathan Spearing: Yeah.

John Moody: So I was like, and I'm not gonna go into debt. And so Southern had a financial aid office and I saw what they were doing and I'm like, this is an office. I think they [00:07:00 ] had four people, maybe five people working in their financial aid office. And me being a very young belie