EP107: Jate Earhart, Twitch, & Reaching a Different Type of Person

All right, hey, you got episode 107 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by Stadia Church Planting. Man, I love saying that—powered by Stadia Church Planting. It's been an awesome club wrapping up our first year here with the Church Digital. With me, Jeffrey, working at Stadia as their director of digital church planting.

And I love what I get to do. Where we're helping Stadia and myself, we are helping plant digital only expressions of church. We're working with the cohort for planters right now who are out there getting ready to plan, to launch, to start these digital communities to reach physical people. It's awesome. Love it.

So much is coming out of this. If you're interested in more about what digital planting looks like or how Stadia can help you plant your digital church, do me a favor: go to this website, thechurch.digital/planting. The church dot digital slash planting. On there, there's tons of blogs, podcasts, interviews, videos, resources, streams, even an ebook you can read that teaches you about what a digital church plant, a digital only expression of church could be and how you can plant it. Phenomenal, phenomenal stuff. Even though it gives you access to get connected with Stadia so that you can be part of the cohort and so that Stadia can help you launch this digital only expression of church.

So somebody out there, you're wrestling with this, take an opportunity and let Stadia come along and help you plant that digital only church. By the way, we're going to be talking a lot in this podcast about digital only church planting. As a matter of fact, we're bringing in Jade Earhart. Jade, probably one of my favorite guests that we've ever had here on the podcast. Super chill guy, really knows his stuff, has a church staff background, it's really a history as a video editor, but really has had this passion to utilize digital methods to connect with video gamers, right? And it's, it's, it's a whole—I mean, I hesitate to call it, but I'll go and say it—an unreached people group of video gamers in America. There's an opportunity to really tap in and to reach this generation, this group, this demographic of people that really have never set foot into a building nor will they ever set foot into a building.

And so Jade stepped up and launched a church, a digital only expression of church called Love Clan. Now you can actually go back through past episodes. We have pretty much documented from day one the launch of his church. I think the first podcast we ever did with him, he was debating whether or not to actually do this. Like he had not actually committed towards launching this church. We've just through three, four, five, six different podcast episodes probably really documented his growth process of how he went from not sure if he was going to launch a church to launching a church to creating disciples to now shifting and evolving that ministry as he's learned more about what a digital only church needs to be and maybe some of the overcoming some of the challenges that he was facing.

And so phenomenal conversation, super chill. At the beginning, the guy's like eating lunch and we're literally sitting down just talking, just so relaxed in this, and it's one of the reasons I love Jade and love the ministry that he's doing.

So hey, for this conversation, we are bringing in, like I said, Jade Earhart—I guess lead pastor, let's just call him the guy that's running Love Clan—and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting in a conversation that I'm simply calling "The Different Type of Person That You Reach Running a Digital Church."

Okay, everybody, here I'll go catch me up a little bit then here. Like, what's going on in life? What is ministry looking like? What's the story here behind Love Clan?

Well, yeah, like Love Clan is both going well, and a good portion of Love Clan is the Discord. And I think right now I'm in a trial period—or not even a trial period at this point—but I would say that that was the goal. When I moved, I was just going to try streaming and see what happened with that. And I set everything up. Like, I have a really nice setup now, but I kind of started to set this up. I set up the TV and some basic stuff, and then the day that I was going to go live on Mixer, which was my main live streaming platform, it like died. The day I set it up. And I said it was actually awkward because if I had found out that Mixer had died a day earlier, I wouldn't have set things up for live stream. I would have set up this whole room differently. And if it had been a day afterwards, I would have already been streaming on Mixer and I might have just been like, "What's the point?" Then just quit. But because I had already started all up and hadn't had the chance to like go through the process of setting up Mixer, I said, "Well, I'm going to use it. Like, I'm not going to just have that time be wasted." So I might as well go back to Twitch. And so I like tried Twitch, and it's been—I mean, it's been great since then. And that I didn't expect for it to be my like full-time thing at the time that I started doing it. But just found other people that I could connect with who were in the same mindset, and that's continued up from then.

And so Love Clan as a Discord is somewhat in a like self-sustaining mode. And if it was really declining without me, I think I would be more like, "I need to do a whole lot there." But as a community, it's still like what it is, and it's really been a community for a long time. So like, there's a lot of people in there that are able to help keep that going. But I've needed this time to really like explore a new avenue, which was streaming on Twitch, and that's where I'm seeing a lot of growth.

So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at with it.

So you—I mean, you had Love Clan previously. Was like, last time we talked, you were doing the disciple making. You were doing the four, you know, the four fields, the three thirds. You were doing that kind of E3 disciple making process, and you're doing that in digital space. Are you telling me—you know, even before we get to the streaming—are you telling me you got to the place where like that disciple making process digitally is now replicating itself to the point that you've let it go and it's kind of operating on its own?

I'd say for a while it was—I wish I could say that it was just like spiraling out of control and I don't even need to be there anymore, you know, so on and so forth. That'd be the dream. I can't say that's true in good faith. But it's more like this whole thing is very experimental as is. And so where it's at is I realized that it's actually not that hard to get gamers, Christian gamers, into a Christian Bible study. Christian gamers into a Christian gaming Bible study is not even that difficult. And like, if you message a couple of Christians and say like, "Hey, would you like to study the Bible together?" then like they might join. They might not keep going though, and it may not really be life transformational.

And I say that with as much grit as I can because it's like that was the thought: is like, how can I get as many Christian gamers into a Discord as possible so that we could have these like Bible studies and that would be really meaningful because we'll have these Bible studies and we can do them online and across borders? I still believe that. I still think that's important. And I think even more important was the discipleship factor of that, which was the idea that they would then start groups and that they would tell their friends and that they would grow and so on. We tried that for a while, and we had, I think, we had like four groups at one point in time. But once I started streaming, I just saw ways that we could start to reach people from the beginning.

I had the in the step cuts, which is something we talked about earlier, but like a long time ago. But the very first step in our step cuts—which are taking a next step for those—for the thing is like each step leads up to another step. And so if you can't tell what the next step somebody should take is, then they probably won't know what it is. And that first step was always live streaming. Like an atheist would watch my live stream and would be interested in that community, and so then they would get plugged into the Discord. That's like always been there, even before we did live streaming as a thing. It just was the natural process. Isn't that somebody would first join your Discord? They would first watch Twitch. That's just how it normally happens. And I would add a step in there before that now that somebody would—I would play a game with somebody and they liked the way I communicated or they liked the way I played or they'd like the way that I interacted with them in some way that led them that they were like, "Oh, I'd be willing to watch that guy's stream." And if your name is J Live on the game, then they assume you're a streamer and they go watch your live stream. And that person would then say, "Oh, like, I really like the community here. I like this atmosphere. I like the vibes that are going on." And then they might go to the Discord.

So it's kind of like there's still that progression. And we just—I think we needed a like a solid community in Discord first before that would make sense to be that ramp on. And so all that to say, where I'm at now with Twitch, I'm seeing the fruition of what we had discussed before of how we're doing the small groups, how we're even at the wording, how we're piecing these things together. A lot of that's turned into the same thing, but now let's live stream it and let's make sure that the focus on people that have never read the Bible before. And I can't say that that was the case with Discord. We had some people that were there that had never read the Bible before, but if you message somebody randomly on Discord and say, "Do you want to have a Bible study with me?" the answer will probably be no unless they're a Christian.

But for me, in the by—we don't even call it Bible study anymore. I call it Bible discussion. And I'm very clear that like this is a chance for you to study the Bible with somebody who—I shouldn't even say again. I'm having a hard time saying it. Not study, but discuss. Like discuss the Bible with somebody that you trust, that you know cares for you, and not at a church because chances are that you're not going to go to a church. You know, that's partially the reason that I ended up leaving the church that I was at is I just realized I was going to have such a hard time—not that it's impossible, but I was going to have a really hard time reaching the people that I needed to reach just being at my church. I needed to be where gamers were, and so that meant like I was going to quit my job and go stream full-time. And I didn't even think streaming full-time. I just thought I was going to be active like in the gaming community full-time. And now it's streaming.

And we have—we have crazy stories we should probably talk about. Some of them are just nuts. But I'm getting to have like really awesome conversations on a daily basis with non-Christians, and some of those conversations are about God. And especially on Saturdays when we do our Bible discussions, they're always about God. But just letting people know that you love them in a community where people don't usually feel loved. And if they do, it's because of their skill. And just to let them know regardless of your skill, I just—you know, you're a person and you deserve love.

Know I'm gonna love you and, uh, and that goes that goes a long ways for people. And then to be able to turn that around and say, "By the way, I don't res—I don't expect anything from you. I don't expect you to love me in return. Um, I get my love from God, and because of that overwhelming love, of course I'm going to love you in return." Uh, and that like it gives you an in for like why—why they should love God rather than it being like, "I'm—" we talked about this, I think last time too, is the why is so much more important than the what. And with streaming especially, if you don't have your why set on the right thing, uh, your what will just be determined by whatever metrics Twitch decides are important. And they'll say average view count is what's important, or because they like revenue, they like their ad revenue. And uh, if you're—I've disabled that, you know, I want to just, you know, we're skipping into a lot of different things. I, I get that, so I'm sorry that I'm kind of ping-ponging, but it's just a lot of thoughts like all at once of um, why—why are we streaming? And the reality is because in Discord we had a lot of people who were—we did a poll and it was 95 percent Christian at one point in time. And we we focused to get away from that. We didn't want to just be Christian because we we weren't reaching people at that point, and we might as well be the revolving door of churches at that. We're just another revolving door church where people come into our church because they didn't like their local church and they said gaming's bad, and so now they join our local, our Discord church. And it's like that's not the point, you know? We want to reach people.

So it sounds like, you know, I'm even just trying to reconcile this because, you know, I'm—you're at a different level when it comes to the digital, and I love, love what you're doing. Even Twitch to me, I is—I'm not as comfortable in that platform. I've loved watching you and some other friends that have now been been in the space. I don't know that I even totally understand what I'm watching, although my kids are enthralled by it. But when it sounds like is that you you had a community in context of Discord, and now it was it was a Christian strong community. You weren't getting a lot of outsiders, a lot of people who were cold to Christ really coming in. It's easy to do a a Christian Bible study for Christian gamers, but to include lost people, the evangelism, you were really missing the front door for the community to allow people who were called to Christ in. And so now you're utilizing Twitch really as that front door to bring people into the community. Is—and it sounds like that that's a—is that working? Like, are lost people coming in? What does that relationship look like? Because you got you got a community full of um, you know, 99s, a lot of people that that are you know Christian gamers, and now you're bringing in atheists and and lost people. And I was watching the other day and one of the people was like, "Satan loves me," or something like that, and it was like, okay, that's interesting. Now everything was was above board, healthy, but how is that community now looking now that you've attached like the Twitch front door to it, right?

Yeah, and that's—I've actually um, because you know, I think people—it's hard. I, I should, I should say that, and maybe the way that I do things is not always the best way to do things, but I realize that I'm in the experimental zone. And like as somebody who's trying new things, um, I'm to have to do it a little differently because I don't know what's going to be successful. And so I, I, I 100 percent am just trying things, and I'm willing to like switch on a dime if something doesn't work. So my um, maybe learn from my experience and don't do it exactly how I do it. Um, I think that's—I'm open to be that. And so my my thing with um, the Discord is that I didn't use it to promote the Twitch. And when I, I decided that whenever we whenever I started streaming on Twitch, I didn't name the name for our channel. Uh, Loveclan—it's J Live. It's a—it's a separate. In my mind, it's it's almost a separate. It should be. It is a separate entity now. That being said, I, I am, I'm doing it almost as if—how would I—the reason I did that originally is I have tried in the past in other organizations I was in doing it as the organization. But the problem is I think what you do outside of your channel is almost as important if not more important than what you do during your channel. So like, you're for sure in Twitch—Twitch is not discoverable. So your YouTube channel is going to be more important for finding people finding your channel, your TikTok more important, your Twitter more important. Like, what you do on those platforms lead people to your Twitch. So it—Twitch by itself, just there's a lot of people that think if I just live stream for seven hours then people find me, and I'll grind it out. And you're better off spending more time on these other platforms finding people and having them come to you. Or same thing with gaming, like gaming and then bringing people into the games, like saying, "Hey guys, I'm streaming. Like, if you want to find me, I'm on this channel," and then they'll find you that way. Um, a lot of this is kind of like above board Twitch stuff and maybe not as important for our the discussion about like using Twitch as a platform, but um, but that but that is true. And so I, I didn't want to pull people from just the Discord and just say, "Come on into my to my Twitch and like we'll make this thing happen," mostly because I didn't want it to just be a Christian hangout.

Yeah, um, and so is there intentionality there towards like—that's almost a good idea when it comes towards multiplication because now Susie wants to go do something on Twitch, Joe wants to go drive stuff from TikTok, so now you've got three, four, five, ten different front doors that are all feeding into your engagement pathway, discipleship, whatever community where you're you're doing disciple making. That that's that's actually smart, Jade.

Yeah, thanks. No, you know, you got it because what what we did in the last one is I did that same thing, but I used it as a as a multiplication. And in my mind, it was more multiplication because we'll just do—we'll call it the the—like, I won't name the name of the organization that I worked with when we did this, but like say I named it Loveclan and I, I let other people stream on Loveclan, okay? Well, now they're growing because they're streaming and our platform is growing and we're you know, that's not a bad way to go. And I know the organizations that currently do that. I actually think that can be effective. Um, but you do hit a a certain point where like not everybody can stream at the same time. Then you know, like you will hit a—you will hit a certain point where you're like, "Well, there's only so many hours in a day," and like this person can stream until this point as opposed to like, let's say you want a thousand people streaming, you know, um—sorry—like one channel is not going to cut it. And you have the to deal with, and this is important. You do have to deal with um, how do you distribute funds that come in through that? And I'll I'll even go further to say, how do you distribute when somebody really puts in the time and the effort to grow something and somebody else doesn't? And you have to like say, "Well, this person put in more time and effort, so blah blah blah," or is it just pure stream hours? Or what if this person puts in 200 to get a good camera, but that person doesn't? And and it just starts to be this like—that kind of a thing. The other side of that is let's say that that person, um—what if you want to go and you should do this—what if you want to go watch somebody else's stream and see what they're doing and encourage them? Now you're encouraging them, but you're encouraging them as like as a as a commute, as a—you'd have to make your own account to like be your persona so that you're not doing it as Loveclan, you know? And it just gets kind of—it just gets more messy than I think it needs to rather than just being like, "Hey, we will partner with you. We're gonna give you funds or whatever you need to like get your stream going." But you know, it's it's interesting. I just I just got a stat yesterday in the email. It's kind of parallel to this. Uh, Spotify is claiming that they broadcast that they're responsible—anc, the Anchor platform that's attached to Spotify—80 percent of podcasts. Eighty percent of the podcasts Spotify's claiming ownership of. And what's what's interesting is the podcasts they're not—they're not these giant podcasts. They're they're tiny. They're small. It's like it's like the the ten listeners, the twenty listeners. It. And so they they've—their Spotify's claiming this title not because of of creating like the the major broadcasts. It's the bunch of the smaller broadcast. By the way, the church digital grew 450 in 2020. Thank you for a lot of listeners out there. That aside, moving on. It's it's this phenomenal idea of in digital for me. When I look at digital churches and I think we've had this conversation, I don't envision like a a virtual giga-sized building where it's tens of thousands of people. For me, the win of a digital church is getting small people to reach their small circles and multiplying out that way. It's more of a multiplication approach as opposed to like a huge gathering of people digitally. How how have you seen—I know you believe that. I know you you feel that. How have you seen that like reconcile out through Loveclan, through the Twitch and the things that you're doing here recently?

Yeah, so that's um, I want to lead by example. Um, I've always, I've always done that. And so I'm like, I want to show that something is possible first, and maybe I go a little too far in a direction first before like rather than doing like, "Come with me and we'll do kind of a thing," but there are already that I can think of at least two, I think maybe three people from Loveclan who have started streaming like after I started streaming that I that are in the same mindset. One of those is already doing uh, the same way we're doing Bible discussions. So that's that's already happening. Um, that's why I say it's like a lot of that that was somebody that also did the um, was a part of our our Loveclan Discord when we did that and and ran a group there. And so now he's seeing how it how it's working in Twitch and like we're moving in that direction. And I'll I'll add the reason that we did it on Twitch is interesting. Like, the original reason that I even decided to do Twitch, actually, um, it or to do live streaming, I guess, is maybe a better way to put it. I, I had a friend. We went to Japan together um, with a group of nine—nine people we all went to Japan. And I've never met him in person. I met him on online, and we hung out, played games together all the time online. And then when I went to Japan, I was like, "You want to come?" and he came with us. That that relationship has been like—I've been working on that guy for a very long time. He's always on my heart. He's always on my mind, praying for him all the time. And um, and he's uh, he's an atheist. I mean, he's he's been an atheist for a long time. I think he grew up in the church, but then he like, he was like, "No, no," and um, I invited him. He he's actually a huge fan of Loveclan and a huge fan of what we're doing because he's like, "It's really cool that you're reaching gamers and you're actually thinking this way," and he likes the heart behind it. He just—it's just not—he's not there, you know? It's not his thing. And um, I invited him to our small group in Discord, and he said no. And the only reason he said no is because he said, "I can't dedicate that much time to something that I don't believe in." And like, that changed—that honestly changed my whole thinking because I was like, "It it kind of makes sense that's why they're not coming to church either, like why would you go to church if it'd be the same thinking that they're gonna come to—"

Church as being like, well, when was the last time that you stepped in a mosque? Like, and how would you feel if you went to a mosque? Like, it would be awkward. Like, we, we, it's we've just normalized it because we grew up in it. That it's just normal to go to church. But like, it's not. It's not normal, and especially if you've never grown up in it. And so for him, he's like, "I am awkward around people. I won't know the subject, and that would be difficult. And I don't want to spend that much time on something I don't believe in." So it's, which is just, I, we have that kind of relationship. It's been, you know, seven, nine years that we've known each other, and we decided we're going to just be very front up about everything. And, um, and so like, thank goodness he said that because then I was like, "That's a good point." So like, let me make something that is already established where I'm live streaming games. I'll just keep playing video games and we'll discuss the Bible. And if you want to, you can have that as another. It can be on your second monitor. It can be in the corner. You can minimize it. You can just hear what's going on. But it will give you a chance to hear what I believe in, um, in a place that you're already at anyway. He's a moderator in my channel. He watches all the time. You can just watch me play video games and talk about the Bible. And if you have questions, if something does come up that you're like, "I actually, I have heard that before, but I don't, I don't get what they're talking about," then you can type that in chat. But if you want, you can just be completely in the background, and that's okay. And I, I think I've said this every time that we've been on here: the best thing about online, and this has become more and more true, I think I said this first on the podcast and I didn't even know what I was saying. Like, I just said it, and then I, like, thought about it afterwards. But it's just become more true. The best and worst thing about online is anonymity. Anonymous, being anonymous, having people, anonymity, anonymity is the word. Yeah, there you go. Um, like, like, being the ability to just disappear is the best and worst thing because people will just be there for a year, you know them, they're active, whatever, and they just disappear, and you have no idea what happened to them. And the scariest thing is one that happens with people that constantly we are praying for about anxiety and depression, and that person just disappears, and you don't know where they went. I hate that. And like, that keeps me up at night. But the best thing about it is that there are non-Christians who are just like, "I don't know what's going on. I just, I want some information, and I'm not gonna go to a church to get it, and I'm not gonna talk to my friends about it because I don't want anybody to know that I'm even thinking about it. But just tell me up front what it is that you believe in, you know?" And like, let's talk about that, and we can do that in like an actual meaningful way.

All right, I want to back up. Yeah, we gotta skip a little, a little bit, because, but you're, man, I love talking with you because I, I, I think like you think, and so like, I'm totally keeping up with you. And some, some listener is probably like, "What?" Um, yeah, sorry if I, if I go. It's beautiful. We, we live in a, maybe this is up for debate, you know? Maybe, uh, different races treat this differently. I, I don't mean to like drop a mic here. We live in a post-Christian society, at least here in America. In America, Japanese culture, it is not. I'll just say that it's two percent Christianity, maybe one percent, and they, they are, they've never had Christianity. It's not like they had it, but it was like it just skipped right over. And it's so interesting talking about Jesus with, with them. There, anyway, so yes, in America, yeah, we, I have you made me just take a tangent. I'll come back to what I was gonna say. I might, my head exploded. You'll appreciate this comment. Um, I was doing a think tank with Send Institute. That's Ed Stetzer, Daniel Yang. I don't mean to drop names, but I'm in a think tank here. Um, yeah, there, there was, it was for young missiologists, and a confession. Um, the, the definition of young was at the age forty or below. I'm actually forty-three. So I'm not sure I really belonged in the room with a bunch of young missiologists. I guess I'm now an old missiologist. I'm bald with gray in my beard. But there's a guy, um, Sam George. My head exploded. Uh, and we're going to have him on the podcast. He was talking about this idea of the problem. He's Indian. Uh, I think he's done the majority of his ministry in India. I actually bought a couple books while he was talking, and we kind of debriefed afterwards. At some point, but he said this word. He says the problem with American Christianity is that it's incomplete. He went on to say, "You really want to understand the Book of Acts? Go live six months in India, then read the Book of Acts. Ghost, you'll spend a year in China, then read the Book of Acts." He's like, "The problem with the American church is that it's isolated itself from the rest of the world in Christianity standpoints, and instead of trying to influence the nations, maybe we need to listen to the nations and start to grow from there." And he went on and started talking about, um, and I'm gonna use terms that you know probably better than me, you know, the ecclesia being the gathered, scattered church as opposed to diaspora, which is more of the scattering of the gathered church. And that, and so he, and I'm immediately hearing like digital implications. It's phenomenal, right? And in a little bit, you know, later on in the think tank, somebody talks about me being digital church planting guy. And, and it's funny. Uh, Sam George messaged me, you know, through Zoom, "You do digital churches. I want to talk to you. I want to learn from you." And I'm like, "Are you kidding me? I want to learn from you. You just blew my mind like an hour ago. This is great." Yeah, so we're going to have that conversation just from a, from a international, global perspective. So much power there. But let me come back to really what I wanted to, to, to get to. I, I'm intrigued a little bit, and it's gonna all this is gonna fit together. It's gonna be awesome. I'm intrigued a little bit by your point of when you're talking about, you know, isolation, anonymity, you're dealing with people, you know, sometimes they disappear. You don't know what's going on. Let's be honest, that happens in the physical realm as well. And so, but you've got people, you know, that struggle with depression, you know, some of, some of those things that they just disappear. I, I want to pull on a thread here. So you're broadcasting. You're not breathing the same air molecules. You're dealing with people in text chat, maybe voice chat, maybe, maybe face to face via, you know, a webcam, something like that. But I imagine that's probably not the majority, right? You authentically know people well enough to know that they're struggling with, uh, depression like you are. That you're, that you're engaged with people in a digital, uh, space that, that you're, you know, that your soul is struggling when they're going through hard times like this. I listen, I, I've dealt with enough people that, that say that's a crock of bull, that you can't have that, that you can't have that level of relationship digitally. Now, look, you're, you're twenty something. You don't think you've ever told me your age, and I'm not going to hold a gun to you and make you do it. But you're, you're of that generation. Is that like, is that level of, of engagement, of relationship, is that common at that age? Do you see it younger? Do you see it older? Like, talk to me a little bit here about the authentic level relationships that you're getting out of Twitch, out of Discord, right?

Yeah, and it's, it's so, I'm, I'm a millennial, but I've noticed this even more with Gen Z. I think somebody said this to me. They said like Gen Z is the hardest to get, um, attention for like thirteen minutes. Like, it's so difficult to get their attention. But if you can, if you can get the attention of a Gen Z person, which is the generation before or after mine, if you can get their attention for like thirteen minutes, then you'll have them for longer than any other generation before that. Wow. Because, because like they trust you long enough for that short period of time that if you've lost them in that period, then you'll probably lose them in all of it. But if you keep them for that, then they assume that like, well, I'll just like, we'll go all in, then, you know? And, uh, what's, what I've noticed is it's, you know, it's funny because you say like, "Wow, you've known people long enough that they would be willing to be open about anxiety and depression," and I'm like, "That's usually the like first or second thing that people might say." I mean, it's, it's pretty quick. People are pretty, pretty okay with doing that. And the reason I think is because it's anonymous. Um, and, and I don't wanna, I don't want to downplay that, though, because there are people that I've known for now four years who one of our first conversation was, "I'm dealing with anxiety." But because of how I responded to that person dealing with anxiety, that person knew that they could trust our conversations. They knew that we could trust whatever, and that they could be open about a lot of other stuff, you know? The anxiety maybe wasn't even that. It's not like they're, they're not holding that, that close to their heart. They wear it on their sleeves. Yeah, I'm anxious. Everybody's anxious. I have anxiety. Yeah, I mean, like, just like everybody else online, we all have anxiety. And it's like, "Hey, I'm having a hard time sleeping. I actually need to go to sleep, but I just thought I'd pop in the chat, and I'm actually dealing with depression, and it, you know, I just, it just sucks. Could you pray for me?" You know, that happens like regularly. And if I pray for somebody like three times, that person will usually join a Bible discussion. That, that just tends to be the case. Like, I will pray for somebody three times before they join our Bible discussions, and, uh, they will say, "I have this thing that I'm, I'm dealing with." I have that as a thing in my channel, by the way. So like, you can spend points, and it's this whole, this whole deal. But I just make it very obvious that like, I want to pray for you, and that's my most important thing, um, as like, when I'm just streaming in a normal day on Saturdays, we have our, like, we're doing it about the Bible. But during the week, my goal is to pray for people. So, um, I at one point in time, this is kind of important because at one point in time when I talked about metrics, I, at the very beginning, somebody asked for me to pray for them, and I said, "Yes, let me, I will pray for you. Um, let me, let me, let me pause real quick, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause so that I can, I can get real serious, and I can pray about that because that's actually really important what you asked me to pray for." And it's about anxiety and a whole bunch of stuff. And I remember doing that, and I had it up where I could see the number of viewers, and I watched the number of viewers drop. I think it dropped to like five people, something like that. And I remember thinking, my first thought was, well, first it was like, "That sucks. These guys just left because they like, they didn't want to hear me pray for somebody." But then I was like, "Maybe I should word it differently next time." And when I had that thought, I had to take a sudden switch because I was, I realized that I was not basing what I was doing, or I was about to not base what I was doing, off of a metric that wasn't even a part of my success. Like, what I considered success. What I considered success? If I, if there was no viewers and I got to pray for somebody about something that was very important, and I made a connection with that person in a way that they hadn't made a connection before, that was a success.

Success for me, that was a successful stream. And if I had 100 viewers but I didn't get to do that, would that really even be a successful stream? Like, it's kind of my mindset. Just that's why I say it's really, really important that you have to say what's important. Because once I realized that, I removed it. I can't even see how many viewers are live whenever I'm streaming now because I don't want to change what I'm saying based off of the number of people that are watching. And I don't want to know if a bunch of people leave because of something I say.

I would much rather just be like, yeah, the chat is more important. I do look at those metrics after the fact. I'll look and say like, wow, that's interesting. Like, we had this many people, and maybe I need to play a different game. Or there are some things that you can do to mitigate some of that. But I specifically don't want to not pray for somebody because I'm afraid that it'll affect my numbers. Or I don't want to not say something that needs to be said, that's like, this is what the Bible says on what you just said, because I'm afraid it'll affect numbers. And when those discussions happen, that's usually where I would say the growth you're talking about, where I'm really getting to know somebody. Yeah, like that happens pretty regularly. People are ready for me to pray for them.

I've given people out, I would say with prayer, where I'll even say, hey, I pray for everybody at the end of every stream. But I'm saying during streams, I'll say, hey, you know, I see what you're dealing with. You know, you say you've been telling us like you're dealing with anxiety and all this. As a Christian, the way that I best know to love you is to pray for you. I believe in a loving God who loves you more than even I can, and that cares about you, that knows the things that you're not sharing, that knows the things that I can never know, and that maybe I shouldn't even know, but that you know and that God knows. And so I want to pray for you.

And if you don't believe in the power of prayer, that's fine. I would love to chat about that sometime, or on Saturdays we have a Bible discussion for people that have never studied the Bible, and you might be interested in joining that. But even if not, if you just read this as good vibes, that's totally fine with me. You know, the Bible tells me to love God and to love people, and I love you. And so I want to do whatever it is that you know is a loving thing for you. But know that I do believe in the power of prayer, so I'm going to pray for you.

And that just kind of, like, it just quickly tells people that like I'm not trying to convert you. I'm not trying to trick you into like saying some word that, like, you know, that Jesus, like, sneaks into your heart or something. I'm just telling you up front: here's what I believe, here's why I'm doing it. It's because I love you, and I'm gonna show that by I'm going to stop everything I'm doing during my stream and I'm going to take the time to just pray for you. And that speaks. I mean, it speaks volumes.

And I, that's that kind of, doing that for somebody will start a relationship pretty fast. And it's just possible online. Like, I don't know, maybe that hopped around your question. I would say you just have more. I'll brush stroke some of what you just said with like why online. I think the stuff we talked about before, but there's just more time. That's the biggest part of it. You know how, like, actually count the minutes if you want to. You can count the number of minutes of time the last time that you chatted with your best friend and like how long you actually hung out together, even if in person. And we have an easy out because it's COVID, but even, you know, after COVID, even when we're just hanging out with people, you just don't get a whole lot of time with people. And I get hours every day. I stream for like ten hours a day, and I see a lot of the same people. So even if it's just with text chat, I just have more communication with them than you do. You know, like, it's just natural. Of course I do.

Like, I'm here doing this, and it will, it does hit a certain point where there's so many people in chat that it's difficult for me to focus on one person. And I'm noticing that. And that's why I'm trying to get other streamers so that we can have, they can go and they're active too if I'm not being active and or engaging enough. We do game nights outside of maybe when I'm streaming. I go watch other streamers so that I'm like, I'm having that relationship that's more face to face. It's not face to face, but like I can chat with them here and they chat with me here, and it's like, okay, I can put a face with it. Yeah.

Yeah, I find a lot of that does happen in private messages, but also building the community so that they focus on each other is big. Like, one person in chat chatting with another person in chat and having that happen more than I'm just the medium. You guys need to chat with each other. And there's ways you can build that, but it's, you know, I've told a story a lot about somebody asked Seth Godin, one of the top marketing guys on the planet, probably right now, definitely America. But somebody asked him, how do I get my message heard around the world? The guy was trying to figure out what social media networks were valid to get a single message broadcasted around the planet.

Seth didn't answer that question. Instead, he said a billion people don't care about what you have to say. If you really want to be effective, tell the smallest number of people possible and then get them to multiply that message. Get them to tell somebody else, and they get them to tell somebody else. And so a million person, I don't know that the world, maybe the world will see them. I'm sure you know how to take it back. The world will see a million person church, you know, the Life Churches or that, like, that's gonna happen. I don't know that that's replicatable. But a hundred thousand churches of ten, that's that's on the verge of an explosion.

And so I, you know, I love this, you know, I even love the transparency, Jade, of you know what, sometimes the chat room gets too big and it's hard for us to really give individual attention. And so that's why we're multiplying out. That's why we're trying to get other people to stream so that we can just continually be keeping it at the level that we can handle in there and so we can give people, you know, adequate attention to that.

I even love your heart. One of my questions was going to be evangelism. You just, you know, went straight into that. We were, you know, what I heard was almost a boil the frog slowly approach. You know, you really can't do this quickly. Maybe it's not like the building, but the good news is online you got time. You're streaming at all hours and you can build that relationship slowly. And instead of doing an event-based evangelism where you've got X number of minutes to get somebody to raise their hand to accept Christ, you've got time because you're building that relationship and through that relationship funneling over stuff like that's beautiful.

Yeah, and I don't even know what we consider slow is the other thing because I'll tell this story. I think it's fine. I'm afraid to use like specific stories just because these are all things that are still happening. So yeah, I mean, you know, take this with a, don't, whatever, anyway. There are, well, she's told me this is fine. We've talked about this. There's a Satanist that comes to our Bible discussions.

I just met her by, we were chatting online, like you said. There's somebody that you mentioned her, like, Satan, whatever. She has lots of different accounts because they keep getting banned for having different things. But yeah, she's awesome. She has a, we had a big, like, two hour discussion kind of as I said, what can I call your name? And like, can I call you a different thing because like that's just kind of hard, weird for me to be like, hey, Satan, how's it going, you know? So we had that whole conversation, but it turned into like, yeah, why, why, why is that your name? Oh, I'm a Satanist. Oh, okay, well, I guess that makes sense then, doesn't it?

And through that, through the like, just I'm going in to like understand, seek first to understand and then to be understood. I was like, yeah, tell me, tell me about that. Like, what does that actually mean? Because I've heard that before. Like, do you worship Satan? Like, what is that? What does that mean? And for her, she said, well, you know, some people do, but for me, I don't actually believe Satan exists. Satan's actually just an image. It's a symbol, and it's a symbol for like anti-Judeo-Christianity. It's the idea of like, it's a symbol for anarchy. It's a symbol for being against society.

And I was like, oh, that's interesting. So then what would you actually believe then as your thing? Well, we believe in that your will and my will, we can have different wills, but as long as like we're all living our own truth then it's okay, and compassion for everything. It's like, what, like, yeah, yeah, that's that's a part of our thing. The guy that started it, you know, he said, you know, you don't want to just go into anarchy but then not love each other. And so we're gonna have two rules: one is that you do whatever you want, but also you have to have compassion for everybody. So compassion for everybody comes above even your own will. So if you want to hurt people, you can't do it unless because you need to have compassion for everybody.

And that just like blew my mind because I was just like, okay, that's not at all what I thought whenever I went down this hole of like, you're a Satanist. You just told me you're, I was like, so are you a vegetarian then because you don't want to hurt? Yeah, oh cool, well, I'm a vegetarian too, so you know, maybe for a different reason, but like, dang, like, that's actually kind of interesting. So you have compassion for everybody. And as we started to talk, I was able to relate and say, hey, you know, honestly, I kind of relate with that because my faith really boils down to all the laws and down to love God and love people. So we actually have probably, we both have the same law as like one of our main things is to love people. That's like a huge part of our faith. And the only thing is that I believe I also have loved God, and you don't. You don't believe that God exists, and that makes sense. That the path that you've taken is my will and your will, we all have our own will. If God doesn't exist, that actually makes sense to me. I just believe that God does exist, and so I'm gonna follow God's will.

And then we had that big long discussion where we were actually able to come to an agreement rather than saying you're a Satanist, I'm a Christian, therefore we have nothing in common. Into I just believe God exists and you don't, so like that's we have a ground that we can talk about in the future going forward. That's interesting. Then what, what then what? If God exists, what kind of God is he? You know, and okay, let's talk about the Bible. So now she's in our Bible discussion group, and we're going through Luke, and she didn't have the game that we were playing, so somebody in the channel bought her the game. And then she was in the voice chat, and so we were voice chatting while I'm reading through Luke 6 and talking about, you know, the law and like I was able to really relate some stuff. We have, we've had some interesting discussions during that. When we got to the part with in I think seven where there's the demon possessed man and he's like, you know, thrashing in the graveyards or whatever, and I was...

Kind of going into like, I know this kind of sounds crazy, and she's like, "No, like that actually makes a lot of sense. I feel like I've had family members that have gone through something similar." Like that part actually made sense. It's more the like, I don't necessarily believe that Jesus actually cast them out, you know? Like it's just a totally different like conversation. But these are things I could actually have conversations about because we're focusing on non-Christians, not just Christians. And so my conversations are going to be based off of, let's not go—I try not to. I don't want to even like read too far ahead into things. I would rather it just be, "Here's what it is. Do you have questions?" You know, I'm assuming you know, and you never mention the name. I don't want you to mention your name. I don't even know if that I got the handle right or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. Um, I'm assuming this person's probably not going to walk into a physical church building anytime soon?

No, no. She's told me. It's funny because she's actually one of the biggest—so she's one of the biggest people for saying that it's a church. Like, that's saying that our Twitch is a tour is a church because everybody in chat will be like, "Well, I don't go to church or whatever," and she says, "No, no, no." Like, she'll jump in and be like, "I—no, no, I don't go to church. You don't understand. Like, I'm not a churchgoer or anything, but like, this can be your church family because it's got community and it's got where you're—they're learning and they're loving and like it's actually caring." And so I want to go to a church, but like, this is actually a good place for you to be if you don't want to go to church. Like, this is a good church. So she calls it a church before I did. Like, I'm still like over here in Christian world like, "I don't know if this is a church," but she's convinced as a Satanist that it's a church and it's the only one that she's willing to go to.

So I'm not—I don't—I'm not conned like one way or the other, but just, you know, she thinks it's a church. Love, love clan. The digital church where, um, you know, Satanists are excited to attend in engagement in biblical conversations, biblical discussions.

Yeah, yeah. Um, man, that—listen, I think that's beautiful. I think you're—and whether the Holy Spirit leads her to a place of understanding or whether you're planting seeds for a future, I mean, God knows we don't, but the fact that you're engaging in digital community, that you're reaching a demographic, a type of person, an age that's not engaging in the physical buildings, I love what's happening here. Um, you know, and I know your heart from this. Where you're not—you know, you're a former staff guy at a physical church. You're not doing this to demean or downcast the idea of a physical church, but more towards you trying to reach a different person, which obviously from the story, my gosh, that person—shoot, if that person walked into a physical building, how quick is the guest services people going to walk them out of the building?

Sure.

So I just love, I love that story. Pulled the thread a little bit on something here. You know, and I know you've gone back and forth in this. Are you—do you consider yourself—I don't want to paint the picture of finality here because, right, fluid, and nobody knows—are you a digital church ecclesiologically? Do you feel like you're lining up to that? X number of months into this, is it more of a digital missionary? Like, what's your current vibe?

I would go with that. This feels as close as I've ever felt to Acts. Like, you were saying, "Wow, like go to another go to another country." Like, you know, I feel like I'm in a totally different culture. Like, they speak a different language. They the way that they say, talk about games and the way that they relate with people, and it's just a totally different place. And it just feels more like Acts because I'm actually engaging on a daily basis with people. That's the hardest part, I think, for church—for local church is, um, and you know, we've said it until our face is blue, but like, the one hour on Sunday. Not that like all churches do that, and it's they can do small groups and whatever, but I am just like so in these people's lives at this point. Like, I mean, you've seen how often I stream. I stream like all the time. I'm gonna—I'm literally going, you know, off the stream or off of this, and I'm gonna go stream, and I'll be streaming until until I can't, until I pass out, you know? And um, it's a podcast. I want to drill in a little bit here. Let's put numbers on this. It's okay. Three o'clock in the afternoon Eastern? Yeah, you're good. You're—I've seen you normally broadcast like around four or five?

Yeah, in the afternoon. Before my time, yeah. Four. And I feel like I've seen you, you know, because I don't sleep at night, two, three in the mornings. Not not that unusual to go that late?

Oh, no. I almost always go two, two, three. I set it as like ten as my end, but then I consider it after hours after that, and that's where we can just do whatever. And so the goal is like that way people have an out where they can go to sleep. I think what I'll probably start doing is—I mean, well, I don't know. We'll decide anyway. I need to decide when I'm going to pray for people because I don't—I have a hard time because I'll very regularly go four p.m. to eight a.m. Like, I won't—I won't go to sleep till eight a.m. so that I sleep long enough that then I wake up and that's time to stream again. So for the last six months, I would say I really—it hasn't been hard for me, especially because COVID's been happening. We're supposed to be quarantined anyway, but I've pretty much just like lived my life online of like, "Let's just livestream all the time," and whatever I'm doing. And um, like, it makes it—I know that's not possible for a lot of people because they have families. Like, and I've just been like, "Hey, you guys are my family. Like, we're gonna hang out. We're gonna chat." And um, I have a local family that I will sometimes say like, "Hey, stream, I'm gonna be late because I'm gonna go hang out with my local family or I'm gonna go get coffee with my sisters or whatever," you know? But for the most part, yeah, like, I see these guys so often that I—I mean, it's—I did I accidentally did a twenty-four-hour livestream one time because I didn't realize what the time was, and then I looked at it and was like, "I've been live for twenty hours. I might as well do twenty-four at this point just to like say that I did it," you know? Like, I'm live way, way a lot. But I mean, that's amazing. Just even the practicalness of it, let me call it call it eight hours a day. You're spending eight hours a day not working towards producing an event or a weekend service. You're eight hours a day you're engaging in conversations with people, broadcasting, building relationships with people, being involved in their lives in a community where they're wanting to be open and engaging in those conversations. And they're open to this idea of connecting to a digital church, even to the point that a Satanist is arguing and validating the fact that—just sounds weird—the Satanist is validating that you're a church. But at the end of the day, they're looking for something like that. The idea of being part of a digital church community, the people you're reaching, that's not a foreign concept. They want that. They're hungry for that. That's encouraging to me. Like, whether or not physical churches today, lead pastors, old missiologists will validate whether or not that's an expression of church or not, you know, it's funny. I'm caring less and less about trying to prove the existence as much as celebrating the stories of what you just told me of a Satanist who's reconciling and trying to figure out what she believes in, is wanting to get involved with a digital expression of church to seek to find some of those answers. Like, that's—you're the poster child, bro. That's incredible, right?

Well, it just reminds me of like when you say that, like, I'm trying less and less to validate or to whatever, you know, I think the same way with like, um, you know, with Jesus. They're like, "Yeah, it's like with the drunkards and like the tax collectors and stuff." And like, you know, I remember even like his apostles being like, "Yo, that's not the right way to do that. Like, if you do that, that's not going to be popular. And like, don't don't go, you know, pulling them aside. Hey, you shouldn't say it that way because if you say, you know," and it's like, "Get behind me, Satan." Like, that's not—you do not get what, you know, the goal is. And so I feel the same way with this kind of now where like, you're saying, "I, whatever, like, if somebody wants to call it a mission, that's fine. I would say let's stop worrying about the like words and say—because the words are what was to worry about—the why. And like, why do churches exist? Churches exist for the purpose of leading people for discipleship, for growing, for hearing from the word, for moving towards. And if you think about like why churches exist, um, then look at those and go like, "Am I being successful doing those things?" Because then I don't—you can call it whatever you want. You could call it a Denny's. I don't—I don't really care because if I'm doing it successfully, then you put whatever name you want on it. Like, um, and so that's like—there's the people, the people that I am trying to reach, um, don't want to go to church anyway. Was something that we talked about, I think, earlier is so it's actually funny. It might hurt me. You might think that you're being like snide and like, "It's not calling it a church and it's not a church because your church needs a blah blah blah," or whatever. I'm like, "You don't realize that most of the people that I'm trying to reach, if I called it a church, they wouldn't come." Like, you—the way that the way that all the rules that you put on what church is actually means they don't even want to be there. It's more like I'm just here to like reach people, and if you want to call that a church, that's fine, but if you don't want to call it a church, they probably didn't either, and that's also okay because I'm still reaching them. So it is it is a—um, yeah, it can get it can get hard because obviously, like, you mentioned, we've had a lot of people that have been kind of against in the past, um, some of the things that we were doing. Not even against it, I think they were just against like calling it a church. And I realized I didn't care. Like, I don't even need to call it a church. It doesn't matter to me anymore. So yeah, I don't—um, I'm fine calling it a church. I think it is a church in that I think it's very, very close to what Acts is describing of a group of people, koinonia, the idea of having people in close proximity who are engaging in all ways, giving as each other has need. Um, that I'm getting—I'm on the receiving end of that for the first time where like, normally I would give to others as they need. I'm now in need. Like, I live in a basement. I don't have funds. This is my only job. And um, there are people that are supporting me financially, and that's like amazing. It's the first time that that's happened. We've mentioned before that I don't have a donations tab. For the first time, I'm having donations because I don't have a job and I'm doing this full-time. And I finally, five years later, feel called to do that. And um, it's been cool to see people that are in the ministry, like people that are seeing what's happening, seeing how I'm praying for, being seeing that people are coming to our Bible study, who Bible discussion-ish, Bible discussion, who would, um, who never would have normally, and they're like, "I want to be a part of that." And so they, um, are helping me financially. Um, I so far I'd say Twitch is paying for my meals. It's—

Like enough to kind of pay for like food and stuff like that. And I still feel like I need to get another, um, like side hustle or something like that that can help if I want to ever move out of the basement that I'm living in. Uh, as cool as it is, you know, so um, that might be the case. But I'm, for now I'm, I just praise God that I'm able to do what I'm doing and we'll do it for as long as we can.

So awesome. Yes, so so much good here. By the way, in the show notes we'll put links to Jade's website and information. Think things like this, you know, I'll, it's maybe a weird plug. I don't know that I've ever done this on the podcast, but it's, it's into the year 2020. If somebody out there is listening, it's like, hey, I want to make an end of the year gift, we'll, we'll put links to it in the show now. Give money to Jade, man. Uh, he's, he's, he's living in his basement is, uh, you know, at the house and he's got a really nice setup. But uh, yeah, I mean, help, help a guy out. Maybe there's an option to do something there. So uh, hey, listen, this has been a great conversation. Every time I talk with, like, it's, I love having you. You're probably one of my favorite guests that we've had. Just, you're my favorite. Super relaxed. Oh, my gosh. Oh, you know, I just, I'm feeling the love, man. Just like deep down inside. Or maybe that's the COVID cough I have. I'm kidding. That was inappropriate. I'm sorry.

Hey, um, let's, let's, let's do this to wrap up, man. Like, this, this is just so golden. In the show notes we'll go back and we'll include all the, the links to the previous conversations. Like, this is just such a, a rich ongoing conversation. Seeing this digital expression of church, I mean, I, I think literally get born on and through these conversations, right? As you've, you know, I think we were having conversations before you're even getting started and different. That's along the way. So that's how I reached out to you originally is because I saw one of your blog posts. I Googled, I think online small groups. Oh, my Google's activating when I said that. Um, I Googled like online small groups and your thing popped up as like a, it wasn't a podcast. It was like a just a post of that you had done with somebody and somebody was trying it or something. This was before COVID for sure. And I was like, hey, I'm just curious, like, have, have they tried it again? Is it working? Is it, whatever? And then we, and then we started doing it and trying it. And yeah, it's been, it's been a long, long time going since that. So yeah, love, love seeing it grow. Love the fact that now you're multiplying and starting to challenge some others to, to step up and, and grow into it. And you've definitely have been a resource for others. Even as I'm working with current church planters that are getting started in this and having telling some of your stories and, and getting you connected, uh, with some of those, it's, it's the future is, is bright. Uh, and so we're, we're literally paving the path right now, uh, for this stuff. And so it's golden.

Hey, man, just as we're, we're landing the plane here, in any closing thoughts you have? Said it all. You are, you are, there's always there's always something else. But you leave everything on the table, bro. You're like, you're like on the field. You're done. You've given it at your all and you're ready to wrap. So I'm open. I'm open to questions if anybody has questions. We'll put his contact info in as well. And I'll, we'll find, uh, I tell you what, send me. I'm sure I can find it. But uh, if you've never watched the Twitch stream, um, watch him on Twitch. Like, we'll put the links in there. Honestly, like, I'm, once again, it's not my generation. I don't know that I really understand what's going on. Like, I see, I think I see the game. I see the chat. I really don't understand why there's like fifty different Pokémon running around at the bottom of the screen and one of them has my name on it. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Uh, but it's, it's, it's intriguing to me. And, and on top of that, just even the, the interface. But on, on top of that, it's intriguing. Like, this is how that generation or those generations connect, engage. That's how they have, like, to use that as a front door. As a forty-three-year-old dad of two, I, I'm not, like, there's no way I would, I would, as a person, connect with this. That being said, I can tell whenever my kids see it running, daddy, what's that? And they're enthralled with it. Like, they just, they're, they're watching it. They want to watch it with me and wanna, like, one of them was funny. My son was like, can I, can I chat with him? And I didn't have it hooked up on the Apple TV and I was like, no, you can't right now. But he's like, he wants to, to get back into it. So you know, my, my son may become your biggest, uh, biggest fan out there in, uh, in Twitch. So we'll include that information. But you know, super, super excited about the road that you're on, um, the lessons that you're learning, and, and the, uh, you know, your opportunities, uh, that God has in store for you. Love, love your heart. Love your passion for following the Spirit. And um, uh, honestly, I've been praying for you. We'll continue to pray for you. Specifically that God's got, uh, that God will keep driving you and directing you as you're figuring out how to have these paths and, and connect with Satanists and get them plugged into your, yeah, that's just so much.

Hey, so we're gonna wrap here, J man. Thanks for jumping on this. Love you, bro. Uh, for Jade, this is Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning. Thanks for joining us here for the pod. And uh, we'll see you next time on the show. You have a good day.