It’s very hard to have genuine friendship with people who view you as a celebrity.Ī lot of pressure? You don’t feel like you can express doubt or vulnerability because that could be devastating to the person you’re talking to, could threaten the church, the gospel movement. At no point was his identity not wrapped up in his position of influence. He went from being homeschooled and getting onto the conference speaking circuit, to writing this best-selling book at age 21, to becoming a pastor and the heir apparent for a megachurch, becoming the senior pastor at age 30-even though he’s never gone to college and didn’t have a seminary degree. Your brother Josh didn’t have that escape from celebrity and has deconstructed publicly. We were able to just be students, to learn, “Oh wow, I don’t know how to write an essay.” Being in a classroom setting for the first time in our lives was in retrospect exactly what we needed. Thankfully our parents and people in our lives recognized the fast-track hazards, so at the height of the popularity of Do Hard Things and the speaking invitations, we went to college. We thought if God can use Mom, Dad, and big brother Josh, he can use us, too. Most were not allowed to date because of our older brother. Because of our parents, virtually all the kids we knew were homeschooled. How did that affect you? The actual experience at the time was almost a sense of destiny.
We did school year-round, so Brett and I were pretty much done with our formal high-school education at 16, which allowed us to launch our website and ministry. We put on a lot of plays and skits and made home movies with elaborate costumes. How did your family homeschool? A lot of exploring the woods, climbing trees, doing things I can’t imagine letting my 9-year-old daughter do today. We’ve edited this interview for length and clarity. In 2008, at age 19, Alex and his twin Brett published Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations. His father, Gregg Harris, was an early homeschool pioneer, and brother Josh Harris is a former pastor and author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Attorney Alex Harris is a Patrick Henry College and Harvard Law School graduate.
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