About this site

Purposeful Paideia is a project launched by Brent Odell in January 2026. The concept of paideia has been a major focus of his since being introduced to James K. A. Smith's book, You Are What You Love, in 2019. After recently being asked to lead teacher and parent training at the classical Christian school where he teaches, Brent began by creating a Spotify playlist to aggregate the best podcast episodes he had come across on the subject of classical Christian education.

Being that paideia is a major part of classical Christian education, and paideia is a big, all-encompassing word that essentially means enculturation, the playlist grew in many different directions including topics such as family and the home. Unfortunately, the hosts of at least one podcast that he had found to be very beneficial in the past have since taken some drastic, inflammatory, and likely unbiblical stances. With a hesitancy to share podcasts by these individuals, but needing to fill the gap in calling Christians to see the implications of their faith in every aspect of their lives, Purposeful Paideia was born. (Disclaimer: I have still included episodes from those podcasts in the playlist above until I can record episodes of my own as an alternative.)

Ephesians 6:4 says "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." The Greek word for discipline there is paideia (παιδεία).

We see something similar in Deuteronomy 6 & Deuteronomy 11 have a similar concept in the Old Testament.

In the words of Douglas Wilson, we seek "all of Christ, for all of life", and in the words of Abraham Kuyper, "there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry ‘Mine'." (Matthew 28:18) Let's live like it. (1 Corinthians 10:31)

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