Trae (Trey) Stephens

My wife, Michelle, she has started this organization called Acts 17, which is the reference to the apostles speaking in Athens to the intellectuals, to the philosophers, and arguing with them

about apologetics for why the message that Jesus brought was the message.

It was the truth.

And it all started with my 40th birthday party.

So I don't really like parties very much, but my wife was adamant that we should gather together a group of friends.

And I thought, wow, the best way for me to avoid

having a huge group of people hang around for my birthday is to do it at our house in New Mexico because the gnome would come.

Like, obviously, if I just do it away from where anyone is.

But we planned this weekend where Friday we called the roast, Saturday was the toast, and Sunday was the Holy Ghost.

And the roast was my best friends coming together and roasting me, including a former guest of yours here on the show, Shyam Sankar.

He did a roast of me.

And then on Saturday, my favorite band, which is a 90s-era punk ska band called Goldfinger, they came and performed.

Turns out you can just hire 90s-era punk ska bands, which is pretty cool.

And then Sunday, my partner at Founders Sun, Peter Thiel, gave a sermon.

250 people ended up coming to this crazy birthday party, most of them not believers.

But the feedback that we got after Peter gave this sermon was incredible.

People were like, man, I've never heard a presentation of Christianity that challenged me intellectually in this way.

And so we just kind of ran with it.

And Act 17 has done incredible events with people like Peter, with Francis Collins, who was early in the genetics movement.

He was the director of the National Institutes of Health.