The Make Heaven Crowded Tour
The Firestone Files: Letters to My Grandchildren — Dr. Chris L. Firestone
February 23, 2026 · Episode 28 · 34:19
https://drchrisfirestone.com/episode/the-make-heaven-crowded-tour/

Transcript is auto-generated from YouTube captions and lightly formatted; it may contain errors.

Hey everybody, welcome to the Firestone Files. I am Dr. Chris Firestone. Today I have for you a journey I took to Turning Point Faith's event called Make Heaven Crowded. This is apparently a series of some 30 events and we went to the one I guess number three or four in their series in Murphy'sboro, Tennessee. That's coming at you today on the Firestone Files.

All right, everybody. Well, welcome back to the Firestone File. So good to have you here. Uh, as I promised, I wanted to take you to some ongoing events kind of peppered throughout the year with Turning Point. This is the next one that came up on my list. It's uh Turning Point Faith and um it's Make Heaven Crowded series. Uh this is now Turning Point going out into the churches around the country to carry their message forward. cultural change, political change, um social change, and of course, gospel truth. And so those things are on the docket here at Turning Point Faith event.

Now, this one was held in Murphy'sboro, Tennessee at a place called the World Outreach Church, and you're going to get to know the venue and a few of the people uh here in this podcast. Well, briefly, just by way of introduction, I'm going to kind of give you a sense of why I'm here, like what's the trajectory, what's the arc that that brought me here. You guys will know that I was been working with Turning Point Education, used to be Turning Point Academy, uh, for a number of years. I helped to write and uh really took a sort of foundational role in writing the Prepier program that is still in its first year.

I was the director of that program in the fall semester and really had a just an incredible time with the students and super super proud of them the stepping forward late in the game to join that program and man what a what a great group. still interact with lots of those students here even in the spring semester. Going to have more on that topic in the weeks ahead. Um so that will probably be one of the things that we talk about down the road here. How's that going? What's that look like? And uh where's it going from here?

But anyway, that started around September 1st around Labor Day. And it was 10 days later that Charlie was assassinated. And of course that sent all of our emotions spiraling. Uh really took uh me and the students to depths of our dispositions that uh we hadn't explored. Maybe maybe they'd never explored and I haven't explored it in years. Um and so um we we ended up traveling to the memorial. I I think you guys will recall six of the students uh took it upon themselves to join me out there as well as the Turning Point Education staff. And what an experience that was. You can find that on an earlier episode of the Firestone Files at the end of the semester.

In fact, it was the last thing that we did as a prepar group uh was to attend America Fest 2025. And what an experience that was. There's another Firestone uh Files podcast on that event. I have been back here in Hot Springs, Arkansas since then in early January. Beth and I came back, brought all our stuff back with us. Uh was a sad time to leave, but uh you know, there's a time for everything under the sun. as it says in Ecclesiastes. And my time to teach and to guide that program in its infancy um ended and I came back here to Champion Christian College.

But the students followed me. We had a preset service project for a couple of days. Originally was more than a week and then it was cut down to a couple of days. Apparently they had other things to do in Fort Worth. But we did manage to get them here to Hot Springs. And what a great time that was. However brief, we managed to pack in a couple of uh cool service projects and tour uh Hot Springs and Champion and kind of get a feel for the ministry that's going on here. And um yeah, so they ended up leaving and here we are back in the original office here or the original uh set if you will of the Firestone Vio.

So good to be back. What a journey. Going to be taking you guys on more journeys in the days ahead. Um the fir one of the first ones here was something I applied for in January sometime. I saw the this uh make heaven crowded uh turning point faith uh events coming up. I saw the one in Nashville. I said uh where I guess it's Murphy'sboro just outside of Nashville and two of my sons are there.

So, I went ahead and applied for a press pass based upon my credentials as the uh spokesperson for the Firestone Files and uh I think it was two days before the event, they got back to me saying I'd been approved for a press pass and so um made it worthwhile. I knew it was going to be a faith event, so you know, can I even take pictures and so forth? But if you have a press pass, I guess you can under certain restrictions. So, they sent me those restrictions and uh we had to stand in the back and uh do our filming there. We could do interviews, but it had to be outside of the church, which makes total sense to me.

And uh that's that's kind of what we did. So, I've shooting video, taking photographs all along the way. A couple of things I want to show you right away is that one of the things I remembered after I got the press pass is that my two boys are there. I wanted to go see them, but I said, "Why don't I take them to the event with me?" So, I reached out to Turning Point and said, "Hey, can I get a couple press passes for Matthew and Andrew, my two sons? One's a producer, the other's one of my crew." And uh they kindly uh gave me two more press passes for the three of us to go there.

And so, that was super cool to be able to go out there and see them. So, um here, let me let me go ahead and show you one picture of me and the boys. I think it's there at the church. Um yeah, why don't you go ahead and put that one up there and you can see there they are. I don't know if you can tell by the look in their eye, but my um oldest son, Matthew, is I think he's on the left in the picture if I recall. He's super sick. He's got some kind of stomach virus. And then then my other son, Andrew, he's a little bit better, but still, you know, getting over something himself.

But there we are at the event together. That was one of the main reasons I chose the Nashville location among all the other locations that they have going on in this coming year. Uh the other picture I want to show you now because they were both not feeling well. I didn't want to stay with them. Um and so I reached out to Nathan Jacobs. If you can put the picture of me and Nathan there. I ended up staying the night after the event with him at his house. And uh we had a great time conversing and talking. I I'm sure I'll reference that in the Firestone Files down the road somewhere when we're talking about matters germaine to Nathan Jacobs.

Um and then we got up in the morning. We went over and had some breakfast and um I think that's where I got the picture actually was when we were at breakfast the next day. So that's that's Nathan and I. So that's how I made this happen. Um let's go ahead and roll the clip just portion of the clip of me journeying out there. I did some live Facebook streaming and uh anticipating the event.

And so, let's go ahead and roll uh some of that clip. Um journeying out to Nashville. I'm on Route 40 heading east towards Nashville, Tennessee. Um, like I said, I got that press pass and I just decided to get in the car and go. When I got that press pass, even though I'm technically now working at Turning Point Prep here, because I'm now back at Champion Christian College, I still feel like there is a journey here. There is something God's calling me to. that there's a movement in the west basically from the continent of Europe through England across to Canada down through the United States and it's really led by the latest philosophical systems.

One of my top fans, I want to call out one fan before I leave. Her name is Lori Hyle. she's always giving me a thumbs up or uh a word of encouragement or she's asking for me to do something on the files down the road. And um she uh she sent me a gift and I'm going to show you that gift right now. I think this is legal. Uh that gift was a book by Charlie Kirk. It's called Stop in the Name of God. And uh it's about I guess about the Sabbath and taking the Sabbath seriously.

All right. Well, that's that's me trying to be, you know, spontaneous, existential, as the philosophers put it. And um and making my way out there, anticipating what's going to come next. Um as you can see, a little excitement. Turning Point's got that kind of vibe about it. You know, what's what's going to be shared? How's it how are they going to approach topics? how's the church and turning point going to relate to one another? And so, uh, I really wanted to get a sense of that. So, one of the things they allowed us to do, as I mentioned earlier, was to have some interviews.

Now, they because it's a church, and I'm totally in agreement with this, they didn't want interviews taking place inside the church at a worship event. And so, they allowed us to be outside right on the grounds there to do some interviews. I didn't didn't have a ton of time to do these. So, I got several interviews. So, what I'd like to do is just give you a flavor of the types of people coming to this event and um ask my producer to put a collage of these interviews together so that you can get a sense of uh people walking into the event, where they from, what's inspiring them about uh being there, and what do they hope to get out of it. So, let's go ahead and roll that collage in the neighborhood.

Yes. Yes. Okay. Just south a little bit. Okay. So, uh have you have you heard of Turning Point before? Oh, yes. Yes. Many many times. Many times. Are you a member at the church? Yes. Oh, excellent. What are you hoping will you get out of it or you know take away tonight? I know Danny Goki's leading worship and then um Eric Mox should be speaking as well. Okay. Do you have anybody that you're hoping to see? No, it's just a spur of a moment. Okay. Spur of the moment. Oh, excellent. I love Turning Point. I really do. I love what they stand for and I'm excited for tonight.

I saw Turning Point. I was like, I'm there. She's going to be here, I think, and a few other I think it's going to be I think it's going to be great. Yeah, we're from Shelby deal. It's like south of here. We have a whole other We actually all got to um I think we all tried to start after school. What do you guys hope to get out of town? I'm just excited to be here. I want to be a politician. This is like my kind of You should definitely look up turning 20. We live about half an hour, 45 minutes. Shall we go? Yeah. I'm excited. There's like a revolution starting.

It's going to begin in the churches. Hopefully it's, you know, hopefully it's a spiritual revolution. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. All right. As you can see, we got people from Murphy'sboro. say are local there, churchgoers who regularly attend that church and then there's other people from the surrounding community. Not a lot of people like me, you know, if this were Amfest, you'd find people from all over the country, but it's not that. It's a kind of a local church event, but a lot of people showing up for it and uh got and I think it was Shelbyville and and other places nearby uh Nashville of course that uh people were uh coming from just to check this thing out.

And so, um, we had those events. Now, what I'd like my producer to do at this point is take us inside, maybe show a couple of clips of me uh, kicking off, you know, what's going on there, and then you're going to see a series of speakers. Uh there's there's um there's uh uh um Lucas Miles, there's uh Danny Gouki, there's Eric Metaxis. And so hopefully we can show you a few a few of those types of things, a panorama of the crowd, that kind of thing, just so you can get a sense of the vibe there. And why don't we go ahead and roll some of those clips so that people can get a sense of what's there. You know, not everybody can go to these things.

They're not everywhere in the country. So, one of the things we want to do on the Firestone Files is is track these things. So, uh let's go ahead and roll that clip. All right, everybody. We are here. The event is about to begin. Make heaven crowded. Um and we were just outside interviewing. What did I learn from the interviews? Well, first of all, I learned that a lot of the people are local. And then you've got people from the surrounding communities. From what I can tell, we grow harvest across this nation into this place tonight. We invite your presence. Give us understanding hearts, listening ears.

May we be willing to learn and to change, to humble ourselves that your purposes might break forth in this generation. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen. God bless you. Good evening. We come to worship the Lord tonight. Hallelujah. He is worthy of the praise. Good evening. How many of you love our great country? All right. We got Danny Gouki here. Danny Gouki. You know, there's a lot of prayers that have gone into this country from generations past leading worship. And it's our responsibility to pray for our country in these times. Amen. If you know the song, I want you to sing it with me. It's one of my favorites.

It's good to be here with you guys. If tomorrow all the things were gone I worked for all my life and I had I was wondering when he was going to get here. well-known worship director really changed your mood stands for free and they take that away still todayless I remember in the churches when I was growing They used to thank God for the countryless to live where they can worship freely from the lakes of Minnesota. We got to pray for these next reminds me of churches of the past. We're going to pray right thanking God for living in America where we don't have to hide the shadows.

Well, we can worship proudly and I won't forget the man who died who gave that right to me. I'll gladly next to you and if hurt still today cuz there ain't no doubt I love this place. God bless the USA and I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free and I won't forget the man who died who gave that right to me. I'll gladly stand up next to you and fame hurts still today cuz there ain't no doubt of this land kind of, but it's all because of Jesus. Right. So, I wrote this song in 2023 and um I'm just going to share it with you.

I hear them say, "Our country's far too gone. Even pain, our father's gone wrong. From sea to sh I'm always belie my America cuz this is the land I love but we got here always to the refuge. All right. Well, Lucas Miles has taken the stage. He's the head of Turning Point Faith in this nation at this moment in time is to go to pastors. I guess we'll listen to him here. Lucas Miles is one of the vice presidents at Turning Point running the Turning Point side of things. I want to share a little bit about how this tour came about um after memorial and it was it was the honor of my life.

I I worked with Charlie for just a little shy of 18 months. Uh I pastor a church up in northern Indiana called Influence Church. There's no I, just a capital N. And I had did not have it on my bingo card to ever work for Charlie Kirk. This event they kept having crowded. It really came out of the aftermath of Charlie's memorial. Um seeing the nation respond, really the world respond. I mean, there was there was vigils all across this planet. people responding to just this this inward drawing and and you know just I mean people just showing up to churches and just saying I just felt like I was supposed to come to church.

People getting online or going to bookstores and just do you have a Bible? I've never owned a Bible before and I feel like I'm just supposed to start reading the Bible. My church tripled in size in one week. So again, you know, talking with and working with and you've been an inspiration to so many. I I want to go back a little bit. I I I know probably many people in here are familiar at least somewhat with your story. Um you were on American Idol season 8. You auditioned there after a time of great tragedy in your life. I was a worship leader in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

And Oh, we got Paulie. Let's go. All right. Grew up there. And I also was a semi-truck driver. I know you don't want me to be a semi. God delivered me because I was not very good. Thank God for insurance and people were really good at dip and dodge. I mean that. Okay. Well, Eric America speaking without Well, actually, no. I I'm going to put it a different way. You can love America without realizing that we would never have America without Jesus. So, you know, it' be cool. He's talking about how he was indoctrinated at Yale.

Can I just like reject whatever that is? But of course, I didn't even know whatever that I didn't know any really interesting to look into the history of the Ivy League school. I want to be an English major. I was an English major. I want to be a writer. They still have a strong Christian presence, but it's not permeating the whole place.

and it's now filtered down into middle America that talking about the intellectual influence the meaning of life life has no meaning atheist and agnostic it's really really at these major institutions think about it that was like the foundation of education you could answer those questions the big questions right and and honestly if you can't answer those questions you know it's it's like it's no better than a trade school like what are we going to teach you a few things but we're not going to get into like you know heavy we teach you some skills maybe we're just not going to go there we're not going to go there so just think about it he's certainly taking it to Yale a really good job work really hard starting to speak my language you know on the weekends you know there's like alcohol pick it up a little later all right well that's a sense of what was going on inside got some video for you like I said they allowed us with this press pass to stand behind the congregation and we had a kind of a walkway up there that we were able to traverse and get some footage. And so hopefully you got a good sense of that.

What I'd like to roll next and really don't want to reiterate what's being said already on this uh this little video clip that I have for you is a portion of my return back. So I did more live streaming on Facebook and I think I sort of captured some of the moments reflecting on the previous evening. And so, let's go ahead and roll the next uh clip or set of clips with uh the return home in the car and some of my thoughts regarding um the Turning Point Faith event. Hey everybody, Dr. Chris Firestone here of the Firestone Files. Still got that tickle in my throat and I'm still on the road.

I'm actually heading back to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Champion Christian College. I'm always amazed when I travel this time to Nashville just how nice we have it in Arkansas. I mean, this place is crowded, very similar in terrain to Arkansas, but uh more built up, got more, you know, more bodies, more roads, more traffic. Um, so just a little observation. Another reason why I love my home state so much. Uh what an honor first of all to be associated with this movement as it continues to flourish. I think they're going to have 30 of these throughout the country at churches throughout the United States. The place was pretty full.

I mean, it's a big auditorium. I'd say it was 90% full, something like that. So it wasn't like Afest or the memorial in the sense that there was standing room only but it was a solid turnout. the pastor came out, invited everybody, and then Lucas Miles came out and um Danny Gouki I, you know, if there's a high point in the whole thing, I think it had to be him singing, you know, God Bless America and a variety of other praise and worship songs as well as some songs that he'd created over the years. And uh obviously a talented guy, believe it or not, I'd never well I don't know that I've ever heard of him.

I might have heard of him before. Um, but I've come to to know that he was an American Idol. I think he took third place in season 8 if I gathered that information correctly. But he was clearly a talented guy and really uh took um the emotions to the next level. So, highly recommend it. If he's showing up at one of these events and you get a chance to go, it's probably worth going for him alone. Eric Mataxis was there. Um he's a guy that's become a pretty much a mainstay or staple at Turning Point Events. Um overall, you know, the experience was great. People were great.

Uh the um the the the organization of the whole thing was was TP uh standards. You know, the speeches were things I've heard before. I thought they really got I mean Eric Mataxis got good when he started speaking from the hard and from his time at Yale. I think that was probably my highlight of the speaking portions. Um again I've been to so many of these things now, you know, gotten kind of used to them and so there was nothing there that inspired me beyond what I've been inspired in the past. But I did feel like uh he finally had a note there that was worth hearing about Ivy League schools and about how they're, you know, Christian origins and about how they're sort of systematically, you know, either bereft or anti um their own foundations. So that was pretty good.

That's it. I mean that's that's the event. That's my weekend in a nutshell. As you can see, you know, great event, um, an encouraging event, a opportunity for me to continue with the journey and see all the ways in which Turning Point is breathing new life, trying to be salt and light in the communities around the country. Um, I did uh toward the end of the event as we were leaving um take a take about five minutes to reflect on the experience. And so this is uh outdoor right outside the front that people are not yet streaming out. I thought they would be streaming out maybe even during this uh this summary of the event, but they didn't.

And um so I had the opportunity to reflect on um you know what was happening kind of on the spot and so I thought I would bring that to you. So let's go ahead and roll the outdoor um the outdoor summary or reflective moment uh as I try to sort of think through what I just experienced. But this is my first time I've gone to a Turning Point Faith event. As you can see, it's at World Outreach Church here in Murphy'sboro, Tennessee. Um, pretty full uh auditorium. Some good speakers, lots of good worship songs.

It kind of uh struck me just some thoughts here. Um it does raise the issue of you know church and state and you know whether or not those things should be blended. I grew up you know going to churches that had the American flag in the front of the auditorium. I watched over the course of my time in as a church leader and an elder of the flags leave the front of the room really never to return. They used to have the Christian flag up there as well. Uh that I don't see that one anymore. Um, so this is an attempt kind of a throwback a little bit it seems to me to thank God for the ability to be able to worship in freedom.

And you know, Christians have disagreements over which issues to prioritize and how to treat people in various walks of life. And um even the nature of sin is sometimes disagreed upon. But having traveled the world and here we are like I said at World Outreach Church, you know, having lived in Asia, having lived in Europe and just so acutely aware of how great we have it here. Freedom to worship, freedom to assemble. really if you don't have those things then your faith is under fire and under threat constantly. Maybe that is good for the church in some ways but it's not something we ought to choose.

I don't think that if we're given goods like a good country where we can worship in freedom and in truth then maybe we ought to celebrate that. And so that's something I think Turning Point's getting right and the partnership with these local churches here like this one in Murphy'sboro. There's going to be apparently 30 in total. I think they've already had a couple. This is like the third or fourth. And um well, God bless them, you know.

Um, even if you're coming from a church that is a little reticent about, you know, celebrating America or giving thanks to God for your country and that sort of thing and that you think of Christianity as something that's pure, that doesn't touch these other areas of life, even if that's the camp you're coming from. Um, I don't think that there should be anything to be concerned about here.

Um, I saw people worshiping and celebrating biblical truth, the person of Jesus Christ, the fact that we should stand united for the freedoms that we have and all of that. So, I guess that's my takeaway. Um, did I have any deep gulp moments as a philosopher? A few here and there. I didn't think that the guy who talked about abortion was very logical at times. He had some issues there. um using statistics pretty willy-nilly. Um Eric Metaxis, I thought when the gloves came off and he talked about the university, he was doing a lot better. I thought he was, you know, I think he was searching for a moment.

He found one there talking about his years at Yale. Um the God Bless America um song and you know, some of the worship sets, I thought those were excellent. So, and the people we met, they were all pretty cool. Uh, I thought they'd be streaming out by now, but maybe there was an extra an extra activity or something in there that I didn't know was coming, but I'm not feeling the greatest. I'll probably have more time to reflect on this in the days to come. I got to drive back to Hot Springs tomorrow. Maybe I'll have a few more ideas about it then.

But I wanted to see it for myself and they graced me with a press pass and so I couldn't resist but drive out here, see my boys. All right. Well, that is the Firestone file for today. I hope it gave you an insight into Turning Point USA's faith division, how it is reaching out to churches and what those events are like. So you can decide for yourself if you want to attend one, if one's nearby you, but at least you'll be able to know and have inside information on what these things are like. So you don't have to sort of take other people's opinion out. You were able to see it here on the Firestone File. So that's it for now.

Blessings to you. Look forward to bringing you more content in the days ahead. Thanks for stopping by to spend some time with me here on the Firestone Files. I hope today's reflections offered you some new insights and perspective on life. If you enjoyed the episode or found it valuable, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to like, subscribe, and share it with someone you care about. I'd also love to hear your thoughts. What resonated with you? What challenged you? Or what would you like to hear more about in future episodes? Drop a comment below or send in your suggestions to the email in the description. Your input helps shape where we go next. This has been Dr. Chris Firestone. Until next time, keep asking the big questions and remember, the kingdom journey is always best with your friends. Further up and further in. Bye for now.