EP021: Danielle Hicks & Elevation’s Watch Parties

Welcome in everybody. Uh Comfy Hobbit coming in with the raid. And then those of you who were hanging out with the fish pond for a little bit.

Appreciate you hanging out there while I got this all set up. So, let me see who who has come in that I need to welcome.

Comfy Hobbit, thank you so much. So, welcome into the digital gaming podcast. We're hanging out with friends talking about digital ministry. Today we have it's Drewzy now with Lux Digital Church, but I've known you before you were part of Lux Digital Church hanging out in Twitch.

So come in. Welcome in everybody. Welcome Drewzy. Oh, sorry. You know what? I need to unmute you. I had you muted for so that if we were talking before we started.

Yeah, that's my bad funky stick man. That's all on me.

What's up, Cap? Yeah. No, it's good. Yeah, we knew each other a little bit before my uh time at Lux.

So, pretty dope, man. I I think the volume levels there are good. So, we'll just we'll go with it. If we if we need to adjust, let me know as we go.

Yeah, I get kind of loud and excited. So, uh

Oh, not me. I am so mellow and laid back.

Mellow and chill and laid back.

People this is why I have to have the fish channel because mine is not calming tones if you come to my stream. But if you need calming tones, you go over to the fish channel and just you know where you far man.

That's right. That's right, dude. I love it. Love it. What's up, chat, though? Good morning. Good morning.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm hyped for this this, too. I mean, it's it's I I get excited about both ends of this. Of the people I've known for three, four years as I've been in the space and others have been in the space, and then those I've just getting to know, like, oh my goodness, everything's so fresh and new.

Um, and you and I have been in circles, but we we haven't always had like, hey, we're doing the same thing, going the same way. We're all just like cross-pollinating with each other uh in things that we're doing. So,

uh

totally

Comfy, I see you had a a question regarding our our podcast, Hides Head. Go ahead and chat. Uh yeah, go ahead and ask. I I can answer. Yours should be either out last week, Thursday, I believe, is when it went went out. It should have been out last week if you didn't see it.

Um, but I can get you details if you're if you're looking to find it or if you need a copy of it for any reason. So, let me know what that is. Comfy Hobbit. Um, and and if you're if you're not if if you miss some of these live because live, they're just whenever.

Okay? The podcast gets announced next week. Here's when it's going to be or Monday, here's what it is this week when it's happening live on Twitch. But you can always go to YouTube on Thursday morning. That's when the previous ones, each one episode a week gets uh revealed there. So, Funky Stickman saying, "Can't hear Drewzy." Was that earlier or is that again?

I think that was earlier. Yeah, he should be able to hear me now.

Okay. Uh sometimes the chat bumps up and down and I get distracted and go, "Wait, did someone type that again?" So,

I got you, bro. I got you.

All right. Earlier.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Uh so, I'll just wait. If Comfy comes back with that question some point, that's fine. Um Dang, they just let anyone these days straps, dude. That's so funny.

Got a got a Luxer in here now. Oh, no. The show's gone. Podcast over.

What's up, dudes? Welcome in.

Oh, no. They want to know if we finish it. No, we we we got cut off.

Oh, so I missed that as a question earlier. Yeah, so you lost uh so Comfy Hobbit was on lost power and then was not able to get back on the stream. Uh what's interesting is the very next podcast which will be out on this Thursday. Uh I had One Reason and One Reason got dropped from the podcast but was able to get back on and I'm like oh my goodness am I going to be you know jinxing? Am I if I got a problem here?

Um

well the weather's good in Witchah so I think I think we're good. So

yeah. So we should be good.

Here's the hoping.

Oh you were scared to ask them. No no no. like I'll either answer or I won't depending on if I'm distracted or paying attention and and all of that, but also we're just getting started and so uh we actually were having the conversation beforehand. So, do we do we engage the chat? Do we ignore the chat? Do we like we do whatever we want that that this is my podcast and my guest and we do whatever we want.

So,

we do what we want.

If if we want to ignore you, you can't make us pay attention. And if we want to pay attention, we're gonna do that. So, yes, thunderstorm in three days straight here. Okay. So, so Bootstraps in three days. We're doing the podcast is what I hear your request in there. So, we can see if we can uh

love it.

Oh. Anyway, uh I don't Let's just start over because I don't know if I asked, we answered whatever. So, uh how did you first make your way to Twitch? Not for ministry, but just why why did you jump on Twitch? How did you make your way over there? And then when and how did you start to think that, hey, this is a platform I should be doing ministry on?

Love it. So, my name is Dalton Risca. Uh, you could call me Drewzy, uh, Pastor Drewzy, whatever you want, uh, online. But I have been in ministry actually for fifteen years now.

Um, I was a youth pastor, kids pastor, camp director, sports director, um, all the things. uh nextgen director kind of position uh you name it in the physical church and then the blip happened in 2020.

Um all those things uh all of us know that experience but as a youth pastor our church shut down and like a many youth pastors during that time was trying to figure out ways to connect uh with my students and during that time uh me as a gamer it was like shoot Twitch would be a great opportunity. So, I started streaming on Twitch, uh, building a League of Legends community with a friend that I actually met, uh, while watching Facebook streaming, which I never watch Facebook stream. I'm not sure anyone ever watch Facebook streaming, but uh, Zeke is a good friend of mine. And it was like that Jonathan David kind of situation where I was like, man, dude, I love this guy. Like, I connect with this guy. We got each other. We were in similar stages of life, early early thirties, and I was like, man, I would love to just get to know him.

So, as I got to know him, we both loved League of Legends. We both loved the community of Twitch, but we also wanted to use gaming for a little bit more.

Yeah.

So, we created uh League of Legends Midwest, which was a Discord uh server that grew and grew and grew and grew to the point where Riot started supporting us. Uh Riot's the company that makes League of Legends.

So, they would give us different things. I think over a matter of like three years, we raised like twenty-five thousand dollars or something for nonprofits um just through streaming League and things like that, which was super fun because we built a community that was really united and healthy in a very toxic place. Um League is known as the most toxic game uh online. It's actually the biggest game online as well, so uh that may play into that.

But I just fell in love with online things. I've always loved gaming. I've always loved ministry. I've loved people. Uh, community is my thing. That's actually my position now um at Lux Digital Church, but I I just loved connecting with people all over the world. And I and I just fell in love with that.

And as COVID, you know, didn't go away cuz I don't know if it'll ever go away, right? But like as as everything started going back to normal um after the blip, I still had this longing of like streaming and like I was like, man, what do I do with this? This is so fun and I love this and I've seen God use this in so many amazing ways. I'm connecting with people daily praying with them about their marriages, about their lives. Like what do I do with this? But then on the other side, I had youth ministry, which was my calling that I felt since middle school that I wanted to be in and love and serve kids and all these things.

So, I didn't know what to do. Um, so I ended up going back to the physical church. Not a bad thing. I loved it. It was good. But then I I put down this other side of me that like had come out during that time that I was like, man, this is so dope. Like I love this,

but I put it down. So then I went back to the physical church. But it was a couple years ago

that uh in that time I wasn't streaming on Twitch. I wasn't doing anything really digitally, still gaming a lot with my students. But it was a couple years ago that uh I felt convicted.

One day I was playing with my friend Josh uh who I've only ever known online. I've known him for ten plus years. I've been playing League of Legends. He's from Massachusetts. And I just felt a conviction from the Lord to speak the gospel into his life. He knew I was a pastor. He knew I was a Christian. He would describe himself as like a Taoist or something. I don't really think he knew what that meant,

but uh it's just what he ran with, right?

For those for those that don't know, and this is not the real answer. Let me say that up front. A Taoist is the person that's really good at doing all that towel art that you get. He's a Taoist. No, I'm just kidding. It's

That's right, dude. I love to talk to you, so interject me, man. Uh, but yeah, Josh and I just started talking and I just felt this great burden for Josh and it was like, you know, if if you take a spiritual gifts test, evangelism is like always in in my top. And I just felt a burden because it was like I had never really shared the gospel with him.

And and that's kind of crazy. Like I talked about Jesus, talked about faith, talked about all these things, but like never really clearly sat down and just said, "Hey man, here's here's the hope we have in Jesus." So, I felt convicted.

I I actually got offline that night, prayed about it, and said, "God, if if you'll give me an opportunity, I would love to be this in your hands. Like, love to be used in your hands in Josh's life. Like, clearly, you've already put me here for a reason. Just give me the opportunity." So, it was like two weeks later, we were playing a ranked game. Started talking to him. We actually stopped playing a rank game because the conversation switched and I could tell it's that Holy Spirit moment of like, "Hey, this is it." So I shared the gospel with him and Josh is a very talkative guy.

If you think I am right now, he's like eight times more than me and he got quiet. And if you've ever shared the the story of Jesus and the hope we have in the cross with somebody and they get quiet, it goes one or two ways, right? Like it's like, oh no, like that was a dumpster fire or clearly God's moving, right? So I said, hey Josh, are you okay? And I could hear tears from the other side of the call.

He's like, hey man, I need this. So, we ended up spending time talking about it that night. He gave his life to Christ. And then I was like, man, let's start walking and reading the Bible together.

So, we did that for a year, which was really awesome. But we got to the book of Acts, and the book of Acts challenged Josh, as it should all of us, to jump into community.

He was like, "Man, I think I need to be in church." I was like, "Yes, dude. Of course." Like, this is what the book of Acts should make you want to be.

Um, so it was super cool. We started looking for churches for him. Where he lives in the US, there's not a lot of churches. Um, so I was like, "Okay, Josh, let's start looking maybe online. Like, maybe there's somebody out there that doesn't just hit go on on live on Facebook and somebody that really cares about discipleship." So, I started praying about it.

Ended up finding Lux Digital Church on Twitch by by chance, basically. Not really by chance, but you know what I mean. But, uh, I I found it and I was like, you know, I'm going to check this out before I send him to it cuz I want to make sure, you know, it's not heresy or anything crazy. And dude, it was like that thing that had been dormant from all those years ago, several years ago, came alive in me again.

I I ended up meeting with Pastor Mark, if you know him, uh the lead pastor at Lux after service and just had a great conversation with him.

And what I found was a church for Josh, but also a ministry opportunity for me. Um, the next stage of of my life because I felt like youth ministry had been in it for so long, like my time was coming to an end.

But my wife and I had been praying like what's next for us? And it was right in that moment when we started asking what's next that Josh's story happened and then Lux happened.

And then I started praying with Mark about maybe starting my own digital church. Then eventually he asked me to come on and we both felt like that was the right the right move.

So I'm now the community and discipleship pastor at Lux Digital Church. Yeah. You you you took a a big forward there like speeding speeding through through a lot of of of that.

You could break it down all you want, but yeah, it's sped through. Oh yeah. But which which is good to get that like I I can just pick up from there.

We can keep going. But I I like details around things. I like to know because when when you just say it that way, it feels like it was so clear that this is where God was leading you.

It was so clear that this is what you were supposed to do. It's only clear looking back now. So, what were some of those um struggles that you had or difficulties you had to overcome with, okay, I'm going back to work in a physical church, but I feel like I'm abandoning what God just prepared me and put in front of me to do. So, how how did you wrestle through that with working at a physical church and then trying to do stuff online?

And what was that journey like of deciding, okay, um God, you have prepared me. I did you I'm not wrong in my sense of online is where you have for me in the next season of life.

I'm going to take a leap of faith and go in that direction. Can you share a little bit about all of that stuff? Yeah, man.

So, at that point when I was streaming, uh I was actually living in Indiana. I was at a small church, but man, God was doing great things.

Our youth ministry um was was just killing it in discipleship, man. And and from that, we started seeing growth in in multiple areas, not only in our students, but numbers and all those things.

And it was just really awesome to be a part of. And that was hard for me to see past that. Like my wife and I were very involved in the ministry.

Um but when I looked online, I'm like, how does my wife get involved with that? She's always been here with me. So that was one key stance of like I don't know how Emily gets involved in this.

Um and and to me I really have a strong belief that if you're married that that to some extent like we're in this together, right?

Like we're we're in this ministry together. Um and that was really put on to me as as a lot of my mentors like hey man I I I want to serve with her.

Um and and I didn't know how she fit into Twitch. Like I didn't know and now I see this and we could talk about that later but like that was a big thing for me.

I also had three kids, you know. Um, at that point I now have four. Um, but in the midst of that, you know, finances, like, you know, I have this job, like we live here, like we live in a parsonage, like, you know, I lose housing if I do this.

I lose, you know, funds if I do this, which is my Twitch channel has been built on donating my money to nonprofits. Like, that's not ever going to make it for me, you know?

Like, there was a lot of questions around it. And also, dude, I I really did I mean, I've felt this calling of being a youth pastor for a long time.

And the funny thing is like I still do a lot of that stuff on Twitch. It's just it's changed. But but back then I couldn't see that, right?

Like it was like youth ministry was this and it was nothing else. And there's nothing wrong with this cuz this was great, man. We had students in our house.

Like dude, they would come in and open our fridge cuz they knew that our home was a safe space for them. So it was we we were just so involved in youth ministry and so much in love with it that it was hard to see this new love and realize like this is not different. It's or like it's not different in a bad way. It's just different. So there there was some change there that it it took a mental shift for me that took years for me to get there.

I wasn't done with youth ministry yet. That was the hard part, right? There was this heart change that I told you like coming into Lux towards the end of my time in Georgia cuz I moved from Indiana to Georgia.

The end of my time in Georgia was very clear like okay this season is coming to an end and and I don't know what to do with that.

And it was funny right as I started feeling that way I was having conversations with Josh. I found Lux and then we went on a a drive from Athens Georgia where I live to Witchaw Kansas where my wife's family's from.

It's a 16 hour drive. Yes. Yes. So, I don't know about you, Cap, but my wife and I have had some of our best spiritually deep conversations on car rides.

Our kids all have their, you know, headphones on. We're all watching Bluey. For us, it would often be uh when we were doing the 18, 20 hour drives where we lived across country in the middle of the night because she would get out of work on Friday night at 5:00 p.m., get home, we'd get in the car, we'd eat, and we'd be on the road driving all night long to to get back to family. And so, yeah, somewhere along the way, you're just like, "The radio doesn't matter.

There's nothing on. You're not watching anything." So yeah, you would get into some some deep conversations when you when you have that quiet time together that's undisturbed.

Yeah, totally get that. Yeah, when all my kids have ODed on fruit snacks and they're all watching Bluey, right? Like they're all in the back passed out.

I My wife and I were up front and I was just pouring out my heart to her cuz my wife is my greatest sounding board.

Like if if I need somebody to tell me like, "Hey, go all in on this or you're an idiot." Like that's my wife, right?

Like I need that from her and she's amazing at that. Um so we just started talking about like here's what God's put on my heart and and she started praying with me.

She's like I don't know how I fit into that but like if God's calling you that I I believe it like I'm here for it.

We'll figure out how. And and we just started praying and 16 hours there 16 hours back. And she was like I think you need to pursue this.

So I quit my quit my job in youth ministry that was super successful. Like God was doing great things. My my brother-in-law was one of the other youth pastors on staff that I was over.

Like I have family here. I have investment here. Like we thought this place could be my forever place, so to say. But Lux, man, I just couldn't shake it out of my head.

And I started I said, "Okay, I'm going to start meeting with Mark just to talk with him on Wednesday mornings and just say, "What about digital ministry?" Right?

Like what about cuz I like now I know there's all these awesome people in this space but back then it was like Lux like that's that's who I knew like I knew I had do done something like it on Twitch I knew Lux was there and then I was like oh there's really no one else there is tons of people that are doing it and I love that like things like this and the church digital and others are connecting these things reach conference NCMS all these things are connecting the these Christian content creators and Christian pastors and ministry leaders and whatever just to to reach people online and I freaking love it. But back then I didn't see that, right? So like I started meeting with Mark and I was like, man, maybe God's called me to plant a church.

Like I never thought about that. Like that that's raising support, which is something that's scary to me because I always had kind of made fun of Yeah.

Right. Like I had ra I had made kind of made fun of missionaries uh in the past jokingly. Of course, all my buddies that were missionaries have been like, "You suck.

Like you have to raise support. I can't believe doing that." Like now I do that, right? Like, but there was a lot of cost to count there that I was like, man, this is scary, but if God wants me in this, I think this is why it's scary is because I'm having to take a step of faith. So, Oh. Oh, say that again. Yeah. Like it it felt scary for the first time in my ministry in a long time.

And in that moment, I was like, you know what? This is because God is asking me to do something that I need to step into.

God is trying to stretch me. at points in my ministry like you know how it is. Oh, I know. I know. Totally.

When you're comfortable when you're within the comfort zone and which kind of relates to what Bootstraps was saying of uh trying to decipher when God is having you move to the next step in life can be so hard not knowing whether he's calling you to another place or not.

Uh that's a struggle and it's so hard to discern sometimes the fear of not being obedient. Um totally. I I think on some level, yeah, there is there is a fear of not being obedient, but there's also I would say more my fear is not of not being obedient, but being selfish and not that would be the reason why I wouldn't be obedient. No, no, no. I don't want to give this up. No, no, no, I don't want to go do that.

Um, I do talk about this on my stream often about me arguing with the Holy Spirit, and I got no problem saying that publicly.

I argue with the Holy Spirit. I straight up go, "Man, you want me to do what? Why would I want to do that at all?" Um, but uh to just to just go back what you were saying resonated with me because at NCMS um were you at the the first one in uh so I wasn't at Megazord but me and you actually rode together at Marble Falls. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say we were together at Marble Falls.

I thought I thought I remembered that. Um Yep. So that that maybe maybe you were getting hit by it there too, but um Pastor Scar uh his talk was so profound and the phrase that he talked about he and his wife came up with are you willing to trust God again?

And it was like but I don't want to. I I I I want to stay within my comfort zone. You you said you know like I've done that.

I did that. I've moved this many times in my life. I have followed you to the next thing. I don't want to trust you again.

I want to just be comfortable from now on because I've done all of the hard work of trusting you and going to the next thing and and pursuing that whole thing.

Um, but there's a step in there and and see see if this resonates with you when you make the commitment to yes, I'm following you that there is a peace regardless of the of any more evidence.

Just the decision that I'm trusting you brings a level of peace of of of what's going on in your in your life and your ministry to just go, "Okay, I am pursuing you and I am trusting you and I have no idea what this is going to look like, but I'm ready for this ride." Totally, man. And that's Yeah, that's that's that step that I first had to take. That was the first step for me.

It was it was that like feeling that I just could not shake that like, okay, God is trying to stretch me here. Am I going to be obedient in this?

Yeah. So out of that, I took honestly one of the biggest steps I think I've ever taken in my faith. I stepped out of youth ministry and I took a graphic design job.

And the only reason I took this job, for one, I do a lot of graphic design stuff and my mom's an art teacher. I love creative things, but like I took a step out and in that step I took this eight to five job because I knew that it gave me time to spend time with Mark and Lux and get to know them and watch them because I didn't think that I was going to be at Lux. I thought I was going to, God was maybe leading me down the path of planning my own version, right? Like my own digital church.

Like we need more of them.

We do need more. One hundred percent we need more. So I was like, man, maybe God is calling me to this. But God just made it so clear up until NCS, which was, you know, from what September I quit my job to November of 2023. Um, and at NCS actually I had my first time I've ever felt this. I don't know if you've ever felt this, but I had my Gideon moment.

I felt like God was calling me to Lux.

Yep.

And I said, "God, I need you to put it on Mark's heart and I need Mark to bring it up."

I'm not going to bring it up to him. I'm going to put my, you know, sheepskin out.

Yeah.

And I'm going to say, "God, if you want me at Lux, I will gladly go to Lux, but I need Mark to bring it up. And if not, that's okay. I'm going to keep pursuing, keep walking with him, keep learning from him, plant my own thing. Obviously, your thing that you've called me to, but like if you want me at Lux, he's going to be the one."

So the whole time I'm actually at NCS praying this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, that's, I knew we were having some conversation. I didn't, we didn't get that depth at that time, but yeah, we were having conversations both of us about where are we at? What's God calling us to? What's the next thing? Um, my life is disrupted, God. Um, so where's this going to end up? But with the Gideon idea, this is one thing that I don't think I've heard very many people focus on or think about. So I'm just going to challenge anybody, can disagree with me on this. I think half of Gideon putting the fleece out is not for Gideon. It's so that he can tell the people following him that this is what God did. And he does it again, not because of so much doubt, but he wants verification because he in himself has no credibility to say God's called me to do this.

So that just totally resonates with you saying, "What credibility do you have, Drewzy, to go to Lux and say, 'Hey, God's called me to be here.'" But if Pastor Mark and your conversations, God puts it on Mark's heart and Mark comes to the congregation, all of the leadership, and says, "Hey, God's placed it on my heart to invite Drewzy in here," it is now credible.

So I think that sometimes the whole idea of a fleece is to have credibility that God actually did this. It wasn't just me, flight of fancy, hopeful wishing, like, "Oh yeah, I really want to be a partner on Twitch so that I can make lots of money. That's why God has me on Twitch."

Well, I hope, I mean, it'd be wonderful if I'm partner. I don't ever care if I am partner because it's not about that. If it's because God wants me in front of more people, he'll get me more viewers so I'll be in front of more people. If it's not, then it has to be about him. So yeah, just that, the fleece thing. I don't think a lot of people think about it's also a credibility thing for the other side of people to accept and follow and know that. So I, it's how I see it at least.

No, no, I love that take because I've not heard that on Gideon, but that makes a lot of sense. And for me, that's been true, right? So it came to the end of the week and Mark, uh, I was hanging out with him all week, volunteering at NCS, and he was introducing me as, "Hey man, this guy's been kind of interning with us. He's going to be planting his own church." But it was the last night that him and Andy, Chino Mage, our creative pastor, but also a member of the Church Digital staff, came to me and sat down with me and they're like, "Hey man, uh, we think we want you to be a part of Lux. Like, what do you think about that? I know you've been talking to us about doing your own thing, but like, you are a piece that we're missing." And that was just a really cool conversation, man. Like, you could see God in it, all of it. And God's been so faithful throughout the whole process, but man, it was just that mark of like, "God, yeah, yeah, I get it. Like, I'm already all in, but I'm so much more all in now. Like, you did not have to do this, but I'm grateful that you did."

Um, and it's allowed me to, like you said, speak into a lot of people's lives about these things. You know, there's a lot of times in my ministry where I moved to a different state, not because I felt this kind of moment, but because I just knew the gospel needed to be there and I knew that I could go there and preach it and get excited for the community, right?

Yeah. And in some times there are, God will put multiple choices in front of you and there's not a wrong choice. It's just a totally, take a step and God will use it wherever you end up going. Um, if God needs you somewhere else, I mean, like Philip, you know, he can just miraculously move you from the Ethiopian eunuch to the next place you need to be.

Uh, that's right.

Or like Paul, he can put barriers in the way. We wanted to go here, but we just kept being prevented by the Holy Spirit. So sometimes it's free and open and you have lots of options and choices, and other times it narrows down and it's like, "This is the one place God has, and I need to be obedient and do that." And um, not everyone understands when it's that narrow and it's that clear to you, but I think God does that sometimes, makes it so clear to you so that when nobody understands, you are in the trenches with your spouse moving forward on it and saying, "Yep, God, we need you. Lead the way."

Yeah, man. Yeah. It's, it became very clear and there was still a lot of asks in front of us, right? Like there was still a lot of counting the cost ahead of us. Um, you know, I started raising support in January after November. After that conversation, I had to talk to the board still at Lux. Like I still had to go through processes, right? So I started raising support. I started, you know, my wife and I had already counted the cost. I read all the books. I've talked to a lot of missionaries. I, you know, I met with Reliant and they had some great things to help me with, especially John Crawford. I love that guy.

Dude's awesome.

Um, but yeah, it was, man, God's been in it. And there's been tough seasons, man. I mean, when I started at Lux, like I started raising support in January, started in June. I was taking like half the salary that I was making at the church before. And my family had only gotten bigger. Like, we have four kids. Like, you know, my wife and I have been married for thirteen years, so we've been through a lot together. But at the same time, this was a new season for us. But it was never about the money. So like, we made it work, right? Like we're like, "Man, if God's called us to this, God's going to see us through." God's been so faithful in that, man. Like, I can't tell you how many blessings and gifts we've received on the way. But at the same time, there's been hard stuff, too. It's not all been rainbows and butterflies and Skittles, right? Like, there's been a lot of challenges in that. But every single time, it's just grown us more because instead of pushing away, we've both leaned in. And that's something our family, our kids are involved in, too, man. They pray for Lux. They pray for like all the things that God is doing and we've just leaned in and that's been a really, really cool thing.

It's stretched our kids a lot. You know, they didn't really understand completely. Now my son's a gamer. He's our oldest. He's twelve.

Um, so he's in esports and all these things. So he kind of understood like the need of reaching that community, but he also didn't understand completely like, "What does a church look like online?" And I think a lot of us, if we're honest, that's a hard question, right? Because we have a concept of what that looks like physically. But man, to see it digitally is awesome.

Yeah. One of the things that uh we talk about with the church digital, when you're doing digital things, you need new wine in new wineskins. If you're just trying to copy a digital or a physical church into a digital space, it's not going to connect the same way. If you go to a foreign country and you plant a North American style worship and approach to God, it doesn't translate entirely there. You need to make it indigenous to the people that are in the space. And so yeah, you need to, so I think Mark has done a wonderful job being led by God to craft a church within Twitch that is indigenous to Twitch and bring in some facets and always being ready to adjust and make changes to make it better for the community and the culture that it is within. It doesn't mean that everybody needs to do it the same way that Lux is doing it either.

Nope.

No. I mean, look at our friends XP Church, man. Like, we, Mark will very openly talk about Susie and be like, "Man, I learned so much from Pastor Susie and we copied a lot of things that were really good, but also we still had to be our own people, right? Like, God, Lux is different because Lux is reaching different people and XP is reaching different people. The kingdom needs both. The kingdom needs more, right? Like, we need more people jumping into this space that are passionate, that speak the language of the tribe. Like, we need people in this space. The hard part is there is that hurdle you have to jump and it's a faith hurdle, right? Like, you have to reach this point where you're so burdened by it that you're like, "Man, God, I'll do whatever." Like, it's that large ship. It's that large ship kind of thing, Cap, right? Like, I talk about this a lot with my partners or when I'm talking to potential partners. The big sea is that giant ship, right? And it's going through the rough waters of this world and we're on mission. We're going to the ends of the earth to make disciples, right? But as we're going, we're seeing these little islands of these tribes that God cares so deeply for. But the big ship can't turn to them, but he raises up people on the ship to jump. And the big sea can eventually maybe turn back and care for those people or send little boats to care for them. But like, there are people on this boat that need to see a tribe and jump and not wait for the big ship to finally turn around and dock. Like, me and you, man, we saw the need and we jumped. And that's not glory to us. That's glory to God, man. Like, God put that on our hearts and said, "Hey, I'll take care of you. Go ahead and jump." And that's this tribe, like that online, is not a little tribe. It's a big tribe. But the whole of online is a big tribe. Yeah. Those of us who have jumped and plunged in and saying, "God, God sent me here and I brought the life preserver, uh, who's on board," uh, we might know a lot of friends on mission together.

And I love building the friends on mission and you know, not a lot of people when they jumped in this space, that was the first thing they thought of, but me, that's the first thing I thought of. As soon as, because I had a physical, I don't know if you remember Pastor Brock VR.

Okay, yeah, yeah, the name sounds familiar.

Okay, so he actually lived across town from me. So he is the reason I ended up on Twitch. And so, so cool. So he was on there and then, you know, with the raid thing, I ended up with a couple other Christian streamers and I'm like, "Going, there's got to be more." So I just started. I mean, there was no hashtags, no nothing. I just started. I would go on at different times of day and I would do searches and I would put "pastor" in the name and I just started searching out anybody that had "pastor."

So Pastor Mark was one of the first ones. Pastor Susie was another one that I found. And then I just started like, "Okay, lost and lonely pastors who are out there." A lot, you know, some of the others that aren't around still anymore, who are active at that time, were youth pastors trying to make a go of this and their church not feeling like they should, but it was COVID. So they had let them go for a little while. COVID's over. You need to stop messing with that, playing around with that, and get back to real ministry. And it was like they needed comfort and support and connection and knowing they weren't alone and knowing God was doing something. And so that was one of the things I began, you know, doing, which ended up me getting connected with Church Digital, ended up me getting connected with Lux Digital, ended up connected with a bunch of other communities in the space. And yeah, there's, okay, it's almost too far. The boat is gone. I can't swim back to the boat anymore. I'm out here and whatever happens, this is where I'm supposed to stay.

I keep asking God, "Are you done with me with the physical church or not?" Um, I may have one more stint in me that I think God is prepping me for, like an eighteen-month thing with my denomination. And I think at that point it might be done. That might be the last thing with, I mean, and I mean from a "Hey, I'm going to go and this is what I'm passionate about."

Totally. Um, but after finding Twitch and being in the space, I don't think I've shared this on any other stream. Um, I knew that I couldn't go back to a new church and just be a senior pastor again and ride it out to retirement because I was doing more ministry Monday through Friday in a month's time than I was doing in six months as a senior pastor in my local congregation. I had more connection with people. I had more life on life. Um, that's like that would be like quitting to just go get a paycheck and deliver a sermon weekly. And I'm not picking on anyone who does that. This is not, I did it for years and it was blessed ministry, but God moved me into a new space and a new ministry. And for me to go back to that, can't do it. And God knows I can't, and he's not letting me either, because boy, that'd be easy to say, "Well, I'll do a nine-to-five pastor gig and I'll Twitch on the side." Um, God's like, "No, you can't do that. You can't do that."

Yeah, man, I feel that. Um, with at Lux, we have several different things we do, but my position is community and discipleship pastor. So I'm over all of our community things, over a lot of our discipleship things, like small groups and stuff like that. Obviously, Mark has a lot of input in that as our lead pastor, and we work really well together. He's my favorite lead pastor I've ever had. And I don't just say that for brownie points, but like I love Mark because Mark's watching the VOD right now to make sure you hyped him up. Let's get hyped in the chat for the Lux.

Yeah, I am very honored to work with the staff that I have. Like Chino and Mark are lights out. Greg, Sam, you name it. Our five-person staff is amazing. But man, I have seen God do so much through co-working streams and through all these different things that we do together. Like dude, we have at times up to twenty-some people just during the day working alongside each other, gaming, laughing, talking about life. We'll go from literally like, "What's the proper way to make a PB&J?" It feels so youth groupy, but the proper way to make a PB&J, which then spun into a Lux cookbook, by the way, it's awesome. Two deep conversations about somebody dealing with like a chronic illness. And we talk about like, "What does God have to do with all of this?" And man, the conversations are just so healthy.

Like at Lux, we talk a lot about this like "hero versus guide" mentality. And I've never felt less of a pressure to be a hero and just enjoyed my role as a guide more than in the digital space. Like I don't know about you, but say more about that. I know what I know what you're saying, but I don't know that everyone listening who's coming across this across the podcast is going to know exactly what you mean by that.

Yeah, so I don't know about you, but for me growing up, I grew up Southern Baptist and I grew up in a space where like pastors are really like supermen, right? Like we look at them that way. They're the holiest person in the room. And don't get me wrong, like I love my lead pastor. He's passed since a couple years ago. Oh, tune witnesses just followed.

Hey, hey, let's go. Thank you, second witnesses, for the follow. Let's go. Uh, my Southern Baptist side, two witnesses just came in. Oh no, the rapture. No. Uh, but I grew up at Southern Baptist. Man, I love my lead pastor. He's passed recently, Pastor Michael Cap from Sherwood Baptist Church. Freaking love that guy. He has made an imprint on my life in a way that not many people will. But man, I looked at him a lot of times as like somebody that's like, "Man, he's perfect and all this stuff." Now, he would never claim to be that, but that's how often we look at pastors. And I felt the pressure of that in the physical church a lot. Like I have to be perfect. I have to live a certain way and I have to, and I'm not saying it's an excuse now not to live that way. But man, it is freeing to be in the space that is newer to where all of us are saying the same thing. "Hey man, don't look at me. Look at Jesus. Like let me guide you in your faith. Let me walk with you in your faith. But like don't look to me as like I follow Paul. I follow Peter." Like follow Jesus. And that that's so exciting. Like I've never wanted anybody to follow Drewzy or Dalton. But at the same time, the reality is a lot of times people did. And I would hate it because I would leave a church and I would be like, "Man, our church is still doing well. I'm leaving because, you know, I'm going to this new place, but not because this place is bad, right?" But you would see people leave a church because I left. And that that hurts my heart, man, as a pastor. I don't know about you, but that hurts because I don't want people to leave somewhere because I left. Like, I want them to leave because God has really put it on their heart because the situation's not good or maybe they're leaving because they're going to a new season. But like, man, being a guide online has been one of the biggest blessings for me spiritually. I've grown so much and just healed so much from a lot of like my own church hurt, so to say. But man, that's been a really healthy thing. Like Mark really talks a lot about that into our staff and it's our culture and it's like very much what I want to be like. I want to lean into that. Like I'm here to guide, love, serve, you know, do those things. And that I think some level, the hero, the super pastor, whatever way you want to do that, has really come about over time. It wasn't just an overnight thing, but it's come about from having a consumer mentality about every single thing. And like you're wearing a shirt there, you know, advertising, and you got a champions logo behind you advertising. So who's wanting to jump on the bandwagon of the other team in the state? Nobody, right? Because you're the big name. So the big name, and I'm just picking on you because you got it on, the big dogs is where everybody's going to go and they're going to gather and they're going to be drawn to. And so then you want to be like the other. And so then you try to go get the best coach, the best player, the best whatever. And we do the same in the church. We need the bigger name pastor. I actually have a friend, pastor of mine, who was let go because he wasn't celebrity enough in the small community he was in. They needed a bigger name so that everyone in town knew the name of their pastor and would want to come. And it's like, this is completely the wrong way to go about things.

Um, and yeah, that whole pressure that's on you, it's not you putting it on yourself. You hear it, you see it, and it's also a thing that impacts your family. Um, it does, man. That's that I think is part of the for me was the bigger problem. I got thick skin and I was always, you know, the shortest kid in class, so I was always ready to fight at the drop of a hat. Usually mine if someone took it. And flack. But but that to say is like me alone. Oh yeah, I go through life differently. Me with a spouse, me with kids. Okay, now I have something bigger than myself. And not every unhealthy place is a place I'll stay and because I'll prove you wrong. Versus if it's just me, you can't outlast me if there's no one else being impacted because I am that stubborn about things. You're not getting rid of me. Uh, I do jokingly say that a little bit in my denomination is I'm here until they kick me out. I will not leave of my own. Um, but that's just because we've been in a bunch of turmoil and people have been leaving and it's like, no, I'm not taking sides. Um, God raised me up through the people that are here. I'm not abandoning what he's brought me to. Um, so I say it a little bit more arrogantly, but there's the honesty behind it is the, "Hey, I wouldn't be in ministry if it wasn't for the denomination that I am currently serving in," regardless of all of my heartbreak over people who are leaving and all of that stuff and the undecidedness of what the future holds. Hey, if I stay, I stay. If I go, I go wherever God has me. But um, yeah, those whole journey things of ups and downs and boy, if you and I actually had this at a church where they wanted me to be the hero and they pulled me, had a few people pull me aside about, "You can't talk about your struggles."

I've had that before. That was my last church in some ways.

Yeah, are you kidding me? How are people supposed to know that the Christian life is filled with struggles if I don't admit that I have struggles? Well, if you have struggles, you can't be up in the pulpit. Okay, so you're going to get Jesus because that's the only one without struggles. I'm thinking, oh wait, but he did ask God if this cup can pass from me. So is that a struggle? Was he, I'm not saying he had doubt, but he was struggling with obedience on some level. Not a failing kind of way, but boy, that had to be hard. Or how, what about the struggle of his best friends abandoning and betraying him? You tell me that wasn't a struggle. So if you can't talk about struggles, I don't know who you're getting to do your sermon on Sunday, but I'll be doing something else.

Yeah. There's a difference between talking about our struggles and glorifying sin, right? And and it, man, it is so important that that we lead by example.

Like I I love love love every time you see in scripture like it the qualifications for a pastor, for an elder, it's so much character and it's then it's teaching.

Like it's we think it's all these superhero powers, right? Like man, they got to have a huge following. They got to have this. They got to have that.

No, dude. The Bible's like character, man. Character. And that's that's where I feel convicted is like I know that God has given me gifts, right?

Like I know that. And I don't say that arrogantly. At times I have, but I don't say that arrogantly. My heart is more of like, God, mold me so that my character reflects you.

Like that's what this space needs is because to be honest, dude, all of us, man, the enemy is going to want to come after us.

I mean, in this space, the reality is that. And to be honest, I don't even just need the enemy. My own will will be off if I don't care about character.

Yeah. Hey, bearded bearwolf, welcome in. Yeah, the the the chat's just vibing with us talking about how messed up that mindset is of wanting a perfect person that I mean that's just a misguided mentality that leads to, you know, the the cancer of perfectionism, uh, is how I'm going to word that, you know, thinking that any person can be and we have to have that person. Or even Funky Stickman saying, "Yeah, uh, admitting you have struggles in the church leads you. We don't want that. We don't have a bad reputation." Maybe that's a little bit of why on some level when I was growing up, um, the church we were at, when my parents got divorced, my mom got kicked out.

You're divorced. Divorce is a sin. You can't come to church. You were in church. You got divorced. Maybe there was a little bit of that looks bad on us to have divorced people.

Uh, I hadn't thought about that fully, but um, yeah, except go look at who Jesus hung out with all the time, you know?

Yeah, man. Yeah, that's that's been online ministry, man. is has been so cool because I I've realized how much the least of these kind of person I am.

And then I've also looked around and said, "Man, like online is full of the least of these." And I love that. Like, and that's not like a man that look at all these doofuses online right now.

Oh, no. No. I I I totally know what you mean. It's like you found is filled with people that Jesus loves, man.

Like Jesus Jesus cares deeply about these people and I'm so grateful that I get to be a part of that. I'm so grateful you get to be a part of that and everybody in chat gets to be a part of that.

Like I man it does not it is not lost on me coming into this. I just kept going over and going over and going over Jesus's prayer in John 17.

It is not lost on me that that Jesus and this was before I stepped into Lux before NCMS as I started this journey. God put it on my heart Jesus's prayer in John 17 for us to be united.

Like the only time he prays about us as future believers is like, man, may them be may they be united. And that's what we need in this space.

That's why like I I so appreciate all the things you guys do. Like I don't I don't do a lot with the church digital.

Obviously, I hear a lot of it from Andy because he's on your staff. Um but I like I appreciate everybody in this space that's fighting for unity.

Now the thing the danger of that is are we actually really caring about that? Like are we just saying it? Are we caring? But but the cool thing is I've seen so many people in this space actually care about unity and we need that because if we're on this island together in the big seas cruising, God sent enough of us over here to start holding hands and praying for each other and caring for each other, right?

And I'm grateful for that. You know, God could have called us to alone, right? Like we could be here like Jonah by ourselves around Nineveh, right?

Like, but God, he wasn't alone. Obviously, he was with God, but like God could have called us to do this alone, but he called multiple of us to come do it.

And I love that. So, like, let's do this together. I love I love that you're you're um focus on the prayer for unity.

Uh I don't know if you and I have had a conversation. So, I like because I can't just wear one hat. So, I also um have been putting together for years and leading John 17:23 uh pastor groups.

So, so there are groups focused around the prayer that I and you and them and me so that the world may know um that that you sent me when they are one.

And so that's my paraphrase. So if I if someone's going that's not exactly the quote the cap translation chill paraphrase but it's it's like we too often think the disciples are monolithic.

They were all the same. They all followed Jesus. No, they they weren't. uh you have a zealot which wants to overthrow the government by force.

You you have uh the Pharisee region where he's from the you know the Galilee boys which Peter often is is is is res you know right there along with the Pharisees saying the same thing the Pharisees are.

Uh you have uh Herodian that would be those who are who are collaborating with Rome. So you have a tax collector who's a Herodian who's going to do whatever you know Rome is benefiting him for uh there uh some of the disciples were disciples of John and John has a whole bunch of a scene leanings whether he's a scene or not he's a scene adjacent and it's go out to the desert let's drop out of society because they've got it all wrong we've got it right we're going to be over here what four political groups are more diverse than those four in the church today

I'm sorry okay Yeah, Simon the zealot that wants to overthrow the government at some point, I don't know which if it was the first meal or the third meal or it was a year in, they sat next to each other and had nothing to talk about around the dinner table with Jesus.

Okay, the guy who is collecting taxes for Rome and the guy that wants to overthrow Rome are sitting next to each other at the dinner table around Jesus.

Oh, and Jesus was big enough for them to overcome any petty differences they had. And I'm saying petty because they weren't petty differences. any petty differences they have of, oh, we have to follow Jesus.

Like, what difference do I have that's that vast that I can't get over it and be in unity with someone else? I can't find it.

Yeah, dude. I love that. I Yeah, I love that so much. That's been that's been a blessing uh to see so many different people from different backgrounds, even on our staff, right?

Like, so Mark's Presbyterian background, uh Andy's Methodist background, I'm Southern Baptist background. Oh, wait. Andy's Methodist? I didn't know this. I'm sorry. I'm You're calling him out.

You just doxed Andy on here, man. No, come on, man. Uh he would tell you this, but uh he I think his church went non non denom way before that, but uh yeah, let's clear the air.

Uh no, I'm just kidding. Uh man, I I just think that's so beautiful. Like Boots comes from a Catholic background. Like we have so many people at Lux that come from different things that really it does feel like a little glimpse of heaven to me.

And it's crazy to me that I had to go online to see that. Like, is that it shouldn't be crazy, but like it is, man.

Like, I Yeah, I'm sorry in chat. I appreciate that. Uh, but like it's it's crazy to to just think about the people that I interact daily with that, you know, not everybody at Lux do I dis or agree with.

And and we preach from the convictions that we have, right? Like we did a whole series last year of the things church doesn't talk about and we talked about sex and we talked about our uh LGBTQ and we talked about all these different things that the church wrestles on.

And I think that Mark and Chino and myself, man, I think we came to it humbly and tried to honor God the best we could with his scriptures and all of that.

But man, you you got a lot of different like takes and views and things from Christians that we're all we're all followers of Christ, but man, we lean a little different ways.

And it's been so cool to be a part of that like that that John 17 man that that will never not be a part of this this side of my ministry life.

Yeah. Because it's just the reality like we have to if if you want to be in this space you have to fight for that.

It matters so much. Yeah. and and maybe um you know my upbringing bringing a bit of jumping well even as a kid we moved from town to town to town and so I always did not well the level I never fit in anyone group there was never the flat cap group when I moved to town and I was like I found my people uh so it would be in you know oh I'm a little bit athletic I fit in with the you know all the jocks but I'm not a superstar so I don't really fit in and I'm really good in math so I fit in with all the geeks and the nerds over here, but I don't care enough about it. So, so I don't really fit in.

Um, and then there's there's all of the the kids that are picked on and outcasts. I feel really comfortable there and I fit in over there.

And it was like, okay. So, I I don't fit anywhere, but I'm always with everybody and I always have an in to that. So, I've always been this person that um I call it cross-pollinating cuz oh, I'm over in that group and I know some people over there.

But let me tell you about the people over here. And a lot of people are just like I don't want to say stuck cuz I don't mean that in a bad way, but but they are just like they don't know anymore.

This is my group and these are where I am. And so I'm confined in this because that's all I've known and all I've experienced.

And th this this for me is has always been a joyous thing in life to move and start over again. Y it's not that for my kids have them having experienced it.

They they don't want to do that again. I'm at the point where I finally I'm like I don't know if I want to. However, online I get to do it constantly.

So, I don't have to actually physically move anymore to start over and to join new things. It's It's like I get the best. You and I are the same person cuz I grew up in nine states.

Well, eight states, 13 schools growing up. Like I traveled a lot. My stepdad was Secret Service. We could that's a whole different podcast. But, uh, we moved a lot.

So, I loved that. And I didn't become a Christian till 8th grade till like end of end of seventh grade coming into eighth grade.

So like I didn't follow Jesus until then. So like my early life was you know non-believers like my family very very like dark situation tough situation all that stuff.

But like something my mom put in me early on was like, "Hey, your your stepdad really wants you to play football and wrestle and all these things, but if you're going to do that, I don't want you to be uh a jock in the way that like in the '80s, you know, movie style." Wrestlers don't quite get the the accolades in most places. So, we we have big heads and and you know, we're blockheaded at times because I I wrestled.

I also coached wrestling, too. So, I I I know that I wrestlers is it wrestling is in the veins. It's in the blood.

All three I have two sons and a daughter. I did not talk them into wrestling. The the oldest boy decided he wanted to. His younger brother came along and by the time we got to high school, our daughter decided she was finally going to do wrestling and then she was mad we didn't force her to do it sooner. It's like, hey, it was always about your choice. Um, yeah. It was also, I'll say this, for for her, one of the greatest things she ever did because she was never going to be good at it and she was always good at everything she did.

And she joined the team because the school we had just moved to was going to have a full lineup for the first time in a decade if somebody was 113 pounds. She weighed 115. And so she came out for the team. I kept trying to tell my kids, "We recruit the hallways. We need a 113 pounder. Recruit the hallways." Finally, she said, "I think I could do it, Dad." Okay. And then she joined the team. And she found out what wrestling goes. She's like, "This sucks. This is awful. I'm never going to be good." And I go, "Why did you join? You joined for the team. You didn't join for you, right?"

So what if you lose every match? It's not a forfeit. You help the team, so it doesn't matter.

She almost won her last one. I, as a dad and as a coach, she was robbed by the referee who would not call stalling on the terrified little boy that she was harassing and wouldn't give her any points and give her any justice. She should have won hands down. The crowd knew it. I can play the videotape. I'm not biased, Dad. And I am not an outraged coach. I am just a fan.

This guy doesn't think about this daily at all. He's at dinner. He drops his fork. They robbed her. This is the funny thing about me. He's like, "I really don't care, but I know how to make the story sound vehemently like this is what I stay up at night." You know, my life is ruined over these things.

Which is just fun when like I don't plan any of those things on stream. So if you ever come to my regular stream, I'll just all of a sudden decide I'm ranting on this thing for no reason because I can tell a good story.

No, I love that, man. Yeah. So what I was saying, my mom said if—

What were you saying? I got—I'm sorry, I saw. No, no, no. You're good. I love the side track. My mom said though, if you're going to play football, you're going to wrestle. You're also going to do band. You're going to do drama. So like I grew up doing a bunch of different things and what I see now is God used that in for me to be a community guy, right? Like I love jumping groups and talking to different people like at Lux. That's something that like I think that God, over my time in ministry and my time as a Christian and maturing in my faith, like I realize now like that sucked when I was a kid up front because I was like, "Man, I'm always doing all these different things," but now it's allowed me to connect to so many different people. I could talk about anime here and then I could jump and talk about the Eagles and why they're a good football team over here and then I could jump over here and talk about music and why, you know, Metallica's "Enter Sandman" is my favorite song or like, you know what I mean? I could jump around and do all these things and that's just who God's made me to be and I appreciate that and I love that.

But that also allows me to draw people out of those groups.

Yeah.

And start to say, "Hey man, I think you would really connect with this guy. I know you don't think you have a lot in common, but like I think you might." And that's really, you know, small groups, that's where we start breaking out of those little cliques because cliques are going to happen. And that's actually a really good thing. I think a lot of times we look bad at cliques.

I also have a value in cliques because it means you have community and you're joined together.

Totally. Totally. And I like, we have cliques like that at Lux too, like wrapped around different games and stuff. We call them tables.

Yeah.

But that concept of like we have table setters that set a table, connect with people around a common thing is a very biblical thing, right? Like coming around together about something and rallying behind it allows us to then carry conversations that have faith conversations at the end of it.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you have four fishermen. I mean, how many times were they, you know, they're partners in fishing? They talk about fishing. I mean, that's what they're going to do. You even see it with Paul when he talks about fellow ministers in tent-making ministry. We use it as a metaphor. He meant it literally. No, they were actual tent makers. He was a tent maker. They worked side by side. You know how much time you can spend with someone when you're working side by side that you're connected over something.

Or like, like Bootstraps is arguing that fantasy football is simply D&D for jocks.

This is pretty accurate in a lot of ways. I love that. That's very Boots too to talk about D&D. But yeah, man. I mean, I don't know. It's been such a fun journey, dude. I know, you know, I stream on Twitch still through Lux. We have our own streams. Mine's "Dropping with Drewzy." I stream a lot of sweaty games because to be honest, I'm still a jock to some extent. So like I very much have a heart for Call of Duty players, League of Legends players, Fortnite guys, all those things. Like I love that stuff. However, the cool part of being a part of the body is that we have all kinds of people. Mark is not that guy. Mark is your card guy, your D&D guy, all that stuff. I love that stuff too. But also, like it's fun to lean into a little bit of that strength that we don't have at Lux, like the competitive gaming stuff, because that's just the people that I really feel led to reach and love and serve when it comes to a lot of what I do.

Yeah, that's—I love that mentality of leaning into the gifts and the areas that you really like. So if you do not like ballet, don't go trying to reach the ballet community. I mean, it just doesn't make sense to do that.

But if—

If you're a gamer, and good grief, that term is so big anymore. Gamer used to be—

It means so many—

You know, you play, you know—

Well, when I was younger, it would have been D&D, and then it would have been you play Atari, and then it would have been you play Nintendo.

Okay. Now you have to know what game it is that you're a gamer in.

Yeah.

So I'm an RPG player. I am not doing first person. I mean, you need someone to get killed and draw out the enemy because they're going to come and do whatever. Like, I could show up on your team and be the first kill that they get. I could do that. Aside from that, like—

Twenty things have happened and I don't even know where to aim my gun yet. I mean, like, no, this isn't like—

I hunt slow animals, you know, like you watch the deer approach and it's standing there and then you pull your gun out and then you sight it in and you're really methodical about this. I'm not bird hunting, okay? They're not flying up and I got to whip the gun out and shoot. Like no, no. I'm here like if—and if they do, it's like, "Oh, that's a nice—oh, I'm supposed to shoot it."

Um, so yeah, FPS never worked for me. Uh, Duck Hunt was the farthest I got in that direction, I guess.

Five losses said you're the bait.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I'm the bait. Yep.

Love it. Love it. Yeah, man. I mean, that's—you know, from a reaching people online standpoint, that's what I always tell people is like, "Hey man, if you're a variety person, lean into that. If you're a competitive gamer, lean into that." Like that's just from even a Twitch strategy, but that goes to everything, right?

Well, that goes beyond—

If you're not a gamer, don't come over to Twitch just to reach gamers if God hasn't called you to it.

Um, yeah.

But if someone has pointed you to watch this podcast because they want you to help see that there are people in digital spaces, then what's your niche in digital spaces? Where is your platform? Where are your people that you can be the guide alongside of and not the hero for that? Um, you know, to go back to the language from earlier.

Well, and a lot of times people look around and ask God like, "All right, God, who do you want me to reach?" and he's already planted you where he wants you to reach, right? Like I used to tell students this all the time. Are the teams, are the groups, are your classrooms, are your friend groups, do they taste different because you're there? Because God says you're the salt and the light, right? So like—

Where are you currently finding yourself in the people you're around? That's probably a good sign of people you're going to reach. I didn't get into this because I wasn't a gamer. I've been a gamer my whole life. I've played in tournaments. I've played on competitive teams. I've been on Twitch, not just as a streamer, but a watcher, an enjoyer, a content viewer. Like, this was a language I very much spoke.

Edgewax just followed.

Hey, thanks for the follow, Edgewax. Getting a few people I know from other places coming in and giving a follow. It's pretty cool today.

Um, yeah, Bootstrap saying, "Gamers are smart. Gamers are loyal. Don't betray that. Otherwise, they'll never listen to you." Well, and I think that being genuine gets sniffed out pretty quickly too, no matter what platform you're on or not. I mean, there's a difference between being able to create a persona and move that and then stay genuine to that. I'm not saying there's anything opposite, you know, absolutely wrong with trying to create a character that you play.

You could certainly do that.

But if you're trying to pretend to be something you're not, you will be sniffed out for that. You will be found out. So yeah. Um, I like that's one of those things where it's like, okay, I don't feel called to reach Gen Alpha. Um, because I feel like it would be not where I'm called. I've never been called to elementary age kids. So no matter how long that keeps getting pushed down, it's like that's not my calling. I like with most anything, it's like I need you to have a basic understanding and I can help you to excel at a greater understanding within it. Uh, but to start from zero and teach it to you, it's like that's not my forte. Uh, I'm not the best with start with nothing and make it into something.

And you were talking earlier too about the love for this. And you mentioned you were drama. I didn't know you were drama. I also have a drama background. That's how I met my wife in college. We were both in a play together.

Um, do—

Which was pretty cool. I can tell that story some other time. Uh, but when God was calling me back to be in ministry, it was through drama because I thought, "Oh my, what God called me to do, it's gone. I was supposed to be—I knew I was going to be a pastor when I was a kid. It was gone." And then it was this realization my church needed someone to do drama. And I'm like, "Wait a minute, God, you can use something I love for ministry." I never learned that growing up. Um, it was almost this mentality of the more that you dislike what you're doing, the more faithful you are to God.

Um.

Yeah, that's tough, man.

Yeah. Not God is going to take something you love and turn it into ministry. And so when he turned drama into ministry, it was like I was so free to be able to follow God and just love people through what I was doing and then a desire to want to get better. So it's the same with gaming. Like I used to D&D tons when I was a kid. Now I stopped at third edition. So we're at fifth edition. I'm like, I'm not skilled. My game is gone. Um, you know, I tried to go look at fifth edition I think a year ago when Lux was rolling out some stuff and I'm like going, "Oh man, I'm overwhelmed. I ain't got time to learn this. This learning curve is too big to start over again."

Um, it could be a lot. Yeah.

You know that concept that you just mentioned reminds me a lot of like Brother Lawrence. He was a monk in France in the 1600s, but he basically became a monk because he couldn't eat. And one of the things he writes in his book, his memoir, is that like all his job was was doing dishes and he hated it.

And I used to read his story and think, okay, like that's what Christianity is.

But then as you learn more about him and you learn more about what he does and what he talks about, he talks about how to him he learned that everything is spiritual. Like everything he does can glorify God and grow him and help others and serve others. And that same mindset like now I apply in what I do. I love what I do. But I also like gaming now is not just something that is for fun. It's also for ministry and to some extent that was the hard part was I had to, and Mark told me this, and I didn't quite understand it until I came into it. There's a lot of things now that I love that I've had to put on the altar and say God, you know, this isn't just for me anymore.

That's where it was hard. I think sometimes in this space is because gaming a lot of times was my escape from my busyness and my life, just to go hang out with my friends, just to go take off my pastor hat, so to say. But now there's a little bit more mix and nuance to that. But it's a really beautiful thing like I've come to love that and come to learn how to walk in that as I've been doing this now for about a year and a half.

Well, and I think too, I've felt a little bit like, well, when I got into doing drama, I felt a lot more freedom to experiment, to try things, because the church was just deciding that drama was something that could be in the church. And so it was on that level of pioneering and try. Oh, I tried some things, they bombed, they didn't work. We're not doing that again. I mean, halfway through what sounded like a great idea on paper to try something was like no, done. Don't ever do that one again. That was awful. Sorry everybody, my bad. I could see the ship going down as it started to go. It's like oh, where never again. But you learn from all of those things and I think the biggest thing I learned from the whole drama thing was I did not plan and raise up someone after me to take the ministry on when I left. It was me who was writing, me who was directing. I was also acting and then had all the other actors. So it was all reliant upon me. I didn't build it that way intentionally. It just evolved that way over time as I was doing it. So then when it was suddenly God calling me to go to seminary and I leave, it's like, oh wait, what do I do with this?

So for me, being connected with other streamers is more important than what I do on my own individual stream because as soon as I'm sick and I can't stream for three months, my community is gone on some level. Some people will be gone. They'll disappear. I can get some back, you know, those kinds of things, but it'll be on some level starting over again from nothing. I don't want anything I'm building to fall apart or be based on me. So it is for me watching Lux, watching others, the church digital, being connected with others so that whatever we are doing in ministry is raising up more people, building on what others are doing. So there isn't, hey, it's all dependent upon Drewzy and if Drewzy can't make it, well then you guys have no place to go and find other Christians.

And I don't know if the church in the physical space has fully come to that thought process because oh, we just get a new pastor if our pastor leaves. We just get a new youth person if our youth person leaves. We just get a new. Is that the way that it's approached? Things as opposed to realizing we need to have more things in the hands of everybody and we need to all be both a guide and someone being guided and that none of us are heroes in the journey.

Yeah, that's. Boots is talking about how being a solo missionary, he learned pretty quick he needs to have other people around him. And that's something I think that it was cool to see him realize that at the Nerd Culture Ministry Summit last year when we talked about that. But yeah, that's, you know, the beauty of my position is that I get to find a lot of people and encourage them to take a step of faith in their passion and use it for God every day. Like I get to find somebody at Lux. I'm talking to him and coworking like, dude, have you ever thought about setting a table and just bringing rallying people around you guys all love together?

Do you have a story or two that just like what you've seen God do and bless somebody in that you could share?

Oh yeah, man. So like our Destiny crew is something that has kind of, if when I first started at Lux, like there was some people that played, but it was something that like wasn't super in-depth or big or no one was really pouring into them. Not that Mark wasn't or anyone wasn't, but I'm just saying like that unique table, which is just the verbiage that I use, like wasn't getting a lot of time because there was nobody to lead it really well.

And a guy came to our church, Bick, who I've actually known since college. He's one of my best friends, but he started attending Lux because I told him how much God was doing in my life through Lux. And he had been looking for church. I was like, man, you're a gamer. Why don't you come hang out with us? And Bick was like, man, I love Destiny. Do you think I could like, you know, maybe start setting a table? And I was like, bro, I would love if you did that.

But it's been so cool, man. He has been able to pastor really in a lot of ways this table like as twenty-somethings come and hang out with him and do life with him weekly. They're raiding together. They're playing dungeons together, but they're talking about life. They're talking about all kinds of things. Sometimes it's just the game and that's great, but other times it's like, man, a guy loses his job. He's dealing with his chronic illness. He's dealing with this. He's dealing with that. Like it's just been really cool to see God utilize him in that table setting to do something that is really big kingdom work.

So that's been really dope. There's those cases. There's other cases like we have a streamer, ally of ours, that also attends our church, Anakah. And Anakah is a part of our worship team. She has a cake stream that she streams her baking cakes and stuff if you've ever seen her. Anakah's lights out. I love Anakah. But her heart is very much for people, especially on holidays, that don't have a lot of other family or places to go or things like that.

So she hosts a table. She has since I've been here without really any like, man, I need staff to be there. She's just like, hey staff, just so you know I have a heart for this and I want to do this. And we're like, yeah, go. Like you don't need us to tell you to go, but like yeah, we fully back you and support you. But she hosts like a Thanksgiving table and a Christmas table and she just spends hours with people on those days. Her and her husband both just said, yeah, this is important. Like we're going to spend time with people during the holidays when they don't have anyone else. We'll let them know their church cares. And I just love that kind of stuff, man. You see that, you see that in the physical church too. But that stuff's happening here in the digital church, man. Like it's been so cool.

Well, and I think there's a value in her owning, stepping into that, because then it doesn't become burdensome and it's not a, oh, it's my turn to volunteer. And there's nothing wrong on that level of, oh, it's my turn to volunteer because you'll get something out of it. Yeah, like, oh, you know, our church does a, you know, I've been at several churches, a Thanksgiving meal, you know, we pass out, we do whatever. Oh, I should sign up. I should participate. I'll enjoy it. It'll be good. But when you own it and it's like, this is what I'm called to do. This is what God blesses me in. It's so much more powerful of participating and blessing the person that you're actually there for.

And people aren't there for you to do ministry. They are people. And I think that when you have more of a this is what I'm called to do, it's less about what you're doing and it's absolutely about the people that are there.

So I haven't fully done that same kind of thing with oh, all the holidays, but I did start a couple of years ago on Thanksgiving and it's almost happened, I think, every year since. It was just like, uh, hey, I'm going to be doing Thanksgiving prep. And there's a bunch of people that don't live in the US that have no idea what Thanksgiving prep would look like. And there's a bunch of people in the US that may not have family. And it would be comforting to just kind of, so I started doing a Thanksgiving cooking stream which I don't remember was the first year or the last year.

Did you watch it?

Yeah, I totally watched it last year. Yeah.

I'm trying to remember which year it was where I got so busy chatting with stream I forgot to put the turkey in the oven and it should have been in the oven like an hour and a half before the turkey went in the oven and it was like, oops. Dinner's late everybody because I'm streaming. But I love that.

It's the I'm here and I'm meeting people where they are. I love that. If people don't get that, that's what the idea of setting the table is. It's here's the thing we're gathering around.

Yep.

I'm here and I'm available and I want to meet you where you are. So it's not, oh, um, hey, I'm just going to use an example. Um, I'm called to reach people that are, uh, addicts, drug, excuse me. I'm called to reach drug addicts. So once you get clean and sober, I can do ministry to you. So I'm going to set the table over here of clean and sober when the people who need it are over there. It's no, I go set the table and I meet you right where you are in the alleyway. Not helping you do drugs, but meeting you where you are and helping you through a bad trip or whatever it is. Helping you to get your next meal, helping you to get shoes because you don't have any. Helping you to whatever your need is. I minister in the need while you figure out and you come to an ability to get yourself sober.

No, totally. And that's something we've seen at Lux. Obviously, I'm speaking a lot about my context today, but that's why I'm here, I guess. So I'm just going to keep doing it. Uh, but like we've seen that Mark, you know, Mark has led addiction groups for a bunch of guys that needed that at that time in this season at our church. My wife and I, uh, talking about how my wife serves at Lux. Um, my wife.

Oh yeah, let's shift. Let's shift to that because you were talking about where does she fit? Does she fit in Twitch? Does she not fit? Because there's several of us who we are gamers. Now, my wife loved watching her dad and her brothers play video games and she would play, but she always loved watching more. But I can't get her to watch Twitch. I was like, you like watching? Why won't you watch Twitch? But it's like, that just doesn't work. Um, and she loved when she was in the office next door to me and she could listen to me through the wall and crack up laughing when I say whatever I do because it's like online.

I am much more unhinged than I am in the pulpit because the pulpit has some sacredness to it that I bring honor to it and I won't, I won't go full off on on things that I will with just hanging out with friends.

So she'd be in the next room texting me laughing all of this stuff and then I move downstairs and she's like, "I miss that. I don't get to hear that." You go, well, I could set a screen up right here next to you. No, no, no. I'm working.

Like, what? How? So it is what it is.

It is what it is. So anyway, if there's any way to help figure out how to get her into that, I would love to.

Yeah. So Emily, um it's funny. Every time I left a church previously, uh the physical church, they always were like, "Man, we're sorry to see you go, but we're going to have to keep your wife." Um because Emily is just lights out, man. Like every place I've ever been, she's just been pivotal to not just me, but other ministries. Um, just because my wife, I mean, we met in Bible college. Her heart is ministry, serving the Lord, and telling people about Jesus. And I love that about her. It's one of the things that attracted me to her.

But in the digital space, that was a little hard because she's not a Twitch person. She understands Discord. She knows what it is. She watched me stream. She would jump in and chat on my former streams before Lux, but she's very involved at Lux in the ways that she's involved.

So she helps me lead a marriage group on Sundays, which has been great. One of my two goals that I had coming into Lux was get, start pouring into our marriages and then figure out kids ministry. Um we could talk a little bit about that in a second, but like those two things were like, okay, I love that we're reaching individuals and that's awesome. Like I love that. Like the digital space has tons of those. But what about the ones that have kids at home? Like are we just pouring into the parents and just saying, "Hey, you walk and follow Jesus, but what about their kids?" Like that Jesus cares about them and like I want to teach them how to teach their kids. But also then like marriages, man, like a lot of people online that I'm meeting are early on in their marriage and they're struggling. Like I want to help them in that. Like I want to I want to show them like and you're going to go through ups and downs in your marriage, but God's here in this like man like let's focus on the right things. Let's not focus on the wrong things. So that's been an area that she's really been helpful in serving in. But she's also met people. She's a gamer. She wouldn't, I don't know if she would describe herself that, but she got Golden League like which is above average. Like she's a gamer, man. Like hours of Stardew Valley like all these things. She's a gamer. Uh she will whoop anybody in Diddy Kong Racing.

Okay.

Anyone in Diddy Kong Racing on the N64. So like Emily is a gamer, but uh she's found her way to connect with people. Uh different women, different guys, that kind of thing. She'll jump on and play games with us every now and then post service or whatever. She'll reach out to people, that kind of thing. So she's found her way. Um but a lot of that was just a question because maybe it's different as being a youth pastor's wife than being a pastor's wife. The difficulty of being in the space and being a oh I'm a pastor's wife has always been a struggle because it brings all of these expectations that are unfounded and the oh well you're going to do this job over here where are you getting involved and it's like she always gets labeled as a pastor's wife and not treated as a genuine person like someone else in the community has your wife had that same experience I don't mean at Lux I mean just throughout ministry.

No throughout ministry she was Dalton's wife, Pastor Dalton's wife, and that was hard for her uh at certain points. Uh eventually she said she came to love that and that she came to like really own that. But yeah, I mean that's been a hard part for sure. I think that's any spouse, you know, any spouse, a husband or a wife, if they're if their significant other is in a ministry role, no matter your beliefs on that, but like if they're in a ministry role, that could be a difficult thing and a hard thing for sure.

Yeah. So but yeah, no, Emily's been super involved. So that's been a big blessing in my ministry for sure. Here at Lux, too.

Yeah. And I would I would say too that, you know, has caused difficulties of her wanting to jump in because she doesn't want to be over here and be Flat Cap's wife. So I've watched lovingly other streamers will have a name and then and then they will have some name for their spouse lady whatever matches theirs or or whatever that is or you know like Woofler has Wler which I think is hilarious but um it's like so there are some that fit in the space but it's like boy if I put Black Cap or Dapper on her everyone's going to know and she's not going to be her own unique person and so that would keep her from being welcomed in the face and then there's the you know you know well then if you go something totally different and then all of a sudden we're saying things that are a little bit too friendly then we have to explain that we're husband and wife so that also would call her out so it's like how do you navigate that was kind of like the thinking.

Yeah so Drewzy is what a lot of people call me as it's been a childhood nickname my name is Dalton Risca I don't care if you look me up all those things but that's Dalton Risca so Drewzy has been a kid nickname forever. Um so out of that, Emily has her name is Em Ruseie, but that's just because her name is Emily Rosisca. So like all of our family has taken that as our gamer tags is like the first part of our name, the last part of our or the first part of our last name. So it's been kind of fun like that. That's been a thing. Like my son is the same thing. My daughters are the same thing. So that's been kind of cool.

Yeah, that's cool. My my father-in-law's name is Gourd and so he always would spell it backwards. Drog, but then he would have extra G's on the end of it. So he's always been Drog forever. D like orc kind of name.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It has that it has that feel and vibe to it. So a couple of my kids have tried to do that with their names backwards and some work and some don't. And uh but um it's more fun I think sometimes when you get a moniker that is just like it's you. Nobody else is ever going to be like Bootstraps Boots. Who else is going to be that?

I love it.

Yeah, man. So we've been really good about involving her and she's loved jumping in. I mean, the biggest thing she's uh how to name a Barbarian.

How to name a Barbarian. Uh the biggest thing she's been involved with lately though is Lux Kids, our new kids ministry at our church. And that's been she's helping us write curriculum, helping us do a lot of like the activities and things like that. So that's ahead. Go ahead and tell us because I know I've had lots of conversations with people who are maybe physical churches doing digital, but one of the things that they struggle with is the idea to fully be digital is doing kids ministry. Any precautions around kids ministry and those kinds of things. Um, which just to say from one standpoint, one of the easiest things around that is each platform has its rules around age to be on the platform. Honor those, follow those, use terms of service to help you in that way. Um, but then well then what do you do for the kids that might be watching with mom and dad? How do you reach them? So I just wanted to set that up a little bit for anybody thinking the big picture.

I stinking love that. So yeah, TOS is a big thing. If we at Lux find out you're below TOS, we remove you. Like just flat out what it is. Like we love you, care for you, come back in two years. Like like watch us online, but like Discord is a place not for you. Uh like we we that's where our church meets. We talk through everything. Like it's not a place for you. And we love you all care about that. Join up with mom or dad. Um, but the reality is we have to be in those spaces carefully. And and to be honest, as a former kids pastor, I don't want to meet with kids as a thirty-five-year-old man online. Like that's just not for my safety, for theirs, for all the weirdness of online. I don't want to deal with any of that, right?

So we really started praying about it, Mark and I, when I came onto staff about like, how does this work? How do we pour into families? And dude, when you look at the Bible, man, like it wasn't hard. Like kids ministry, youth ministry, and I say this as a former like still a big champion of youth ministry, they're all extra biblical, right? Like nothing's wrong with them, but you cannot find those in the scriptures. You find, hey parents, raise up your kids in the way they should go. Like all of these things.

Yeah, part of the need for kids ministry came because of industrialization, because we were no longer living in community and you went away to work. And then there were homeless kids who were wandering the streets doing things. So Sunday school ministry started. But without industrialization, we wouldn't need to make an adaptation and things. So there's nothing wrong with having those things. It's an adaptation to what's happened in society that the need arose. So.

So even in my last couple years of youth ministry though, I had made a shift to where my job was more about parents than it was students.

Yeah.

And that's something that transitioned into Lux really well because it wasn't so much about me being the one that's raising your kids. It was about me supporting you and raising your kids. So at Lux, that's how we've transitioned this is that you have a calling on your life to be an ambassador of Christ to your kids, right? That it's that uh what Colossians 2 or 2 Corinthians, my mind's blanking uh right now, of course, 2 Corinthians 5:20. Uh it's that moment of like you are called as a parent to speak Jesus into your kids' lives and to raise them in the way they should go. So we as a church we're like man we could do this like we could figure out ways to help our parents. One of the ways we thought about it was creating like a subscription style box of curriculum that gets shipped to your home that we produce, we care for, we pray over, we do all the things to help it make it really easy for you in your busy schedule to walk with your kids in their faith.

Um, if you don't mind me showing it on stream, I have one right here. So this is like our example box. So you get a Lux Kids box every month, which I think is pretty cool. And it's got all kinds of stuff.

I love that that's branded.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, dude. I designed it all.

Did you? Really? That's super cool.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I'm just thinking of it as as a kid, regardless of age, I see that Lux Kids box, I know it's for me.

For you. Yeah. Yeah.

And then any kid that comes over to my house is going to be asking, "What's up with that?" It also has a bit of Schoolhouse Rock there. I don't know if that's intentional. I'm getting Schoolhouse Rock.

There's a lot of intent. So but yeah, when you open it, you know, immediately it says, "Hey, whatever your name's, your family name, fam, and then you get a bunch of different things in it." So the cool thing is it's designed.

For discipleship. So if you're looking to get this box and it to be a bunch of toys and excitement, there are things like that in here, but it's designed to help parents walk with their kids in the faith weekly and holistically alongside our church.

So like there's things like a controller that when you flip it, it's got a QR code that leads to Right Now Media so you could watch all the videos we've produced and done and things like this.

There's other things like activities. Like the fourth week of our August box was you got a little car and we gave you cocoa powder in it and you drove your car around in it because we're studying the book of Ephesians and we talked about how Jesus washes away our sins and how no matter how messy we are, God washes away the sins because the box is designed for elementary age. This was a really good, healthy metaphor for them.

So we have all kinds of stuff. Like the first week, the whole box for August is about God's plan, how God makes good plans because the book of Ephesians is a lot about God's plans. So in it the first week we challenged families to make plans with their kids. So we included movie tickets in there that they could print off and hand to their kids and we gave them popcorn and things like that.

So the box is just like a really cool thing that essentially every single month now our families, if they don't want to buy the box, they could get it digitally by being a parent role in our Discord. Because we didn't want this to be a money thing. We're making no money off of this. Like it pays for itself for the boxes and the shipping and the materials, but that's it. Like we wanted this to be a resource to our families. They could get it digitally, print it off themselves, or they could get a box and get it in the mail with maybe a couple little extra things.

So it's been pretty cool.

How many months have you been doing that now?

So we've only done one. So we're three months into creating boxes. So we just finished October's, but we only have put out August. Obviously September boxes coming out soon.

So if you want to learn more about that, you could go to our website, luxdigitalchurch.com/luxkids.

Yeah, I had been privy to some conversations about the planning for this and the effort to go towards it and then the culminating of ideas around it. And so I will be very excited to check back in six months and see how it's grown and how well. Actually the part I'm going to be more excited about, so make sure you give a way to do this if you haven't thought about it. I'm just telling you, have a way for parents to record a message or have their kids record a message and keep testimonies of stories that happened because of something in the box.

Yep.

Not just "I was excited to get it and we made some cocoa and I made a mess." Those are fun, but "Oh, I learned this" or "I watched my kid discover this." Like those personal heart stories, you need to capture some of those, man.

So in our server, we've now added a parent role that unlocks a section of the server for you that has parent chat where you could ask questions about the curriculum and all that stuff, but also share just what's going on in your life and all these things. And then we've also got a podcast. Everyone's got a podcast, but we've got a podcast designed for our church family, specifically for our parents, where we're working through the book "14 Gospel Principles of Parenting" by Paul David Tripp. He was one of my professors and I just love that book on parenting because it's very gospel-minded from birth all the way up of like, "Man, raise your kid in Jesus, give him grace." Like talks about that, forgiveness, you know, all these things. The law, like what do we do as parents with the law? Like the law is it good, is it bad? Like how do we deal with that in parenting, discipline, all those things. So it's really cool. Like we're really working through this. But yeah, we're capturing moments and seeing, you know, God already do some amazing things with families that are buying. Man, we've also got some unboxing videos. Like AI and fam opened a box on stream which was super fun.

Oh, that's super fun.

Things like that. Just seeing his son just light up and just be like, "This is for me." Like that made my heart. All the six months of planning with our team, because we've only got six individuals on our team doing this and they're all doing other jobs. They're all just volunteered all in on this just like you do in the church, right? So it's been a huge blessing to see. You know, cool story out of this so far is we had a dad that would say he's not a Christian, came to Twitch, watched our Lux service, kept coming for several months. Then started talking about his family and started asking for Bible suggestions for his kids, which I thought was super cool. Then he joined Lux Kids. And now it's so cool to hear all the things that God is doing through Lux Kids ministry stuff in his family's life. So it's just cool to see, man. Like there's, you never know what God's going to bring you to do online.

Oh my goodness, yeah. The things that he's going to do, well, in the things that we haven't even figured out how to do yet.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Like what are the things that we're going to be talking about a year from now that nobody was thinking about doing? Well, I certainly a year ago wasn't thinking about doing a podcast at all. I wasn't thinking about being a gaming outpost person. I mean, I'm hanging out and gaming and I'm like trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing and the church digital, we're trying to move in directions and help people where they are. And we keep talking all the time about platform is place. So you know, where are you called to? And it's like, well, I'm over here in gaming all the time and we're talking about outposts. Okay, I guess that's me. I'm over here. I'm the one connecting. I'm the one building all the connections and bringing people in and all of that stuff. Yeah, digital ministry for breakfast. Love it. Hey, always welcome in. He does mean that. He's west coast, so he's getting up maybe a little bit late today. Good to see you, friend. But that's just another example of that, is the connecting people. I mean, I could name off a whole bunch more groups and we've had them on the stream. So Digital Creators for Christ. We've had Taco on here. Reach Conference is another one. North Hill Live. I'm going to miss if I just try to rattle off more. So I'm going to just stop there before I forget somebody. But I'm just trying to think of those organizations that are thinking organizationally like Lux Digital Church is of expanding, of growing in the kingdom, and like the camaraderie that I see with others. So I think as others are going to hear about what you're doing for kids, they're going to be excited. Not because they want to copy it, but because they don't know what to do, and you doing it are going to inspire them to do something that you didn't think about too.

Yeah, that's, you know, this year, I guess this is a self-plug, but I'm going to be teaching at Expo, Exponential West out in San Francisco about this topic. And my prayer for that is that like, man, I don't have this down, dude. I'm still learning. Like our church is still learning. I'm leading an awesome, amazing team that is so gifted and loving and caring for this. And it's their heart. Like I love it. It's literally one of my favorite things at Lux right now, a part of my job. But I just want to inspire others to do the same. Like take a step, man. Like I don't know what it is. You may be a box. You may be a rocket ship. I don't know what God is calling you to, but think about the family at home.

Yeah, digital ministry is so much more than just like the one individual. It's the families, it's the grandparents, it's the cousins, it's the, you know, it's all these people.

Well, let me just throw another thing out there that's digital that has nothing to do with digital ministry. I was just at an event over the weekend and one of the people there was sharing a story about something. So he was talking about his faith and talking about how, you know, he's pretty well-known. So I don't want to drop names or anything. He's pretty well-known person. And he's been over the decades able to meet lots of really more famous people than him. Celebrities, football players, you name it, whatever else, comedians. Like he has had that exposure. And it's like, do I just post selfies on social media to brag about me doing this or not? And he was like convicted to go, "No, I'm not that person and I'm not going to do that." So it was like, "God, why are you connecting me to all of these people? Why have you connected me to these people?" And then he had someone who was sharing with him a story about their daughter because his daughter had passed away. And so he was trying to ask like, "Hey man, how do you go through this? How do you struggle? She's got, you know, this disease, which is normally not a life-saver or life-threatening thing, but she's got some really bad complications, and right now it is life or death."

And he's like, "Man, she just needs some encouragement or whatever." So he put out a call to like seventy-some people that he knew that, you know, you would know who they are. I'll just say Carrot Top was one of them. And so video after video after video came in to encourage this little girl that hang in there, you're doing good. Hey, by the way, when you get better, I've got front row seats for you to my show.

Super cool.

And he like, he put these out and like within minutes he's getting the videos back and he's like, "Okay, so do I do these all at once or not or however?" So he just started sending one every hour on the hour to her to encourage her, to lift her up, to be a blessing to her and that family.

And so it's just kind of like this cool thing like, oh, like who's ever thought of doing that? Well, you had to have all of these things previously culminate to be able to have the one instance that now your brain goes, "Here's what I can do with that," and maybe knowing a story of someone else doing it. So yeah, you sharing, "Hey, it's a box," doesn't mean that's what we do. It just means we have license and permission to now go out and try to solve what our community needs. And maybe it's a box, but we do it differently. Maybe it's a box, but we have a different rhythm. Maybe it's one month it's a box and the next month it's digital, like whatever it is to be inspired to live out and to help families being able to live out their faith. I just love, man. I love that, man. That's so cool.

Yeah, man. I mean, that's the thing we've always said at Lux too, is like, man, if we've learned how to do something, like we want to help teach. Like if it's something, I mean, we didn't get where we're at because we didn't learn from other people. Like that's the beauty of the kingdom is it's all, we're all in this together. It's not about the brand that I have on my shirt. It's about us both reaching people together. So if we've learned something and we've got a tool, like I want to partner with somebody else and teach them how to use that tool and then maybe they figure out a different or better way to do that. You know, that's great. Teach me too, please. Like let's learn together.

So I'm excited about what God is doing in our church in the kids area of the world.

And we have other ideas and other thoughts and all these things, but like we tried to start with what we felt like God called us to and it wasn't budgeted. It wasn't on our plan for the year. It was something that kind of came in out of nowhere and we brought it to our board after we had already started working on it. We're like, "Hey, uh, just so you know," and they're like, "Dude, we're all about this." And we're like, "Sweet." Yes. Uh, but yeah, it's it's it's always cool to see how God kind of does stuff in us and then, you know, what comes of it.

So yeah, it's I don't know. I tell my wife this all the time is I've not been as excited about ministry as I was since I was in seminary. Um, you know, like the just trials of life, the just constantly facing things, the going through the rhythm that you get into with ministry just becomes drudgery. Not from the standpoint of you don't enjoy it, but the standpoint of it's monotonous. You don't see the world changing. You keep fighting the same struggle though with another person. Um it's over and over again. And digital is just in a fantastic spot right now that I think God has been placing and and we the church digital if you're not doing this you can join us for this. We pray at 10:02 because Luke 10:2 um the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few. Uh we were talking about this a little bit earlier like four years ago. It was not the easiest thing to find out if there was another Christian online to find out if there was a church online in Twitch. Where are they at? They're hiding in there. A few of them had been around for years like XP Church and and Pastor Susie and one of the pioneers uh being called in that space, but there weren't a lot of people following in the footsteps of and saying, "Hey, uh we need to be doing it." We are right at the cusp of God starting to unleash that. That Oh my goodness. I mean, just pause for a second. Think about how many digital churches on Twitch might there be in 10 years. Like there there might be I hope tons. Yeah. Yeah. I hope tons. But I'm just going to say like if if God did three new ones next year. Yeah. And then the following year we we tripled it and we added another one. That'd be 10. And then what if we tripled that and added 10 the next year? Like oh my goodness. You can start to see multiplication happen. But in order for all of those places to be able to be there and reaching, we need to multiply the individual people that are in the space that are Christians who are missionaries uh just committed to being in the space being open about what they are. They do not have to be full-time. They can be part-time. I mean, you and I know the evidence of the number of people reaching Yep. Massive amounts of people with the gospel that stream two days a week and that's it. Yep. Like I said, I mean, when I did it during COVID, I was I was had a full-time job and I I did it part-time. Now, obviously, I'm blessed to do it full-time as a missionary, but like I I've done it both sides and God's God's been faithful and done amazing things in both sides as I've been obedient in in that. So, doesn't matter doesn't matter how it looks, but God God wants people to be in this space. Um, hey, let's just stick on that for a second. So I I know that you are raised support for your position. So that for those that don't know that means you're raising your money for you to work for Lux Digital Church. Lux is not raising the money and paying you. So it is it is on you to do that diligence and that work. How has that journey been for you? What have been some struggles in that? What are some insights you might share with other people that might be thinking about raise support to be a digital missionary?

Yeah. So I I I could speak to a context of I'm in a church. So So let me let me start that conversation off, right? Because I'm not A lot of times like when you think missionary, you think of yourself, but a lot of times you're a part of a missionary organization or whatever. I've learned all this since becoming one. Uh I guess I never really thought about it before. But um being a part of Lux, I I when I got hired, I went to the board. We talked about a salary that we thought would be a good one for my time in ministry slash just the reality of being online and all that stuff, but that doesn't mean that I got that salary. That means that that allowed me to have a healthy cap of what I could raise to. Um, so I started raising funds. Um, most of the time people raise their their first year before they start. Um, my situation was not that way. A lot of that was because of the rising prices of where we lived in Georgia. Our rent doubled uh basically and it was just going to be way too much like way too much money. So my wife and I were at a standstill of like okay we can move wherever we want for the first time in our life because I worked digitally like so where do we want to live in plant roots? So she has family in Kansas. We had lived in Wichita before. The first church I served at is in Wichita. So we're like, you know, we're moving away some of our friends, but the cost of living slash we know people is still better in Wichita. So we moved there. So by moving, that was just a good opportunity for me to start. Um, so I started without being fully funded. I don't know if I would suggest that going back, but God's blessed it. We've It's been awesome. It It worked out, right? I don't think that doesn't make much sense, probably. Well, it depends on what your ministry is and you're that you're doing and your ex previous experience. Totally. So, you are already in digital space already doing ministry. So, you are now shifting to fundraise for the work you're already participating in. To put all of the work you're currently doing aside to do all of the fundraising would diminish the ministry that you're doing. I I have the same thing that I that I'm going through. So, um, but you do have to have realistic benchmarks that you're striving for and and those kinds of things to keep you on track so that you're not neglecting to do the fundraising part you need to do so you can keep doing the ministry you're doing. And it and it's helped, man. I I'm not fully funded yet. I'm still raising support, still praying about it. Lux does pay me uh some money every month uh just to help compensate what Mark felt and the board felt um would help offset so I'm not living off of very little with with my family of six. Um but which I greatly appreciate that. But like Lux as a whole is at a place as a church where we are we do take tithes, we do take giving all of that stuff just like any other church. And that helps fund you know Mark and Chino. They both raise a little bit of support, but they're more supported by the church, like a traditional physical church pastor uh than I am, but I'm also the newest on staff, right? So, like all of all of us have gone through this journey and as we've seen God grow lux, then we've switched more to the traditional model of like uh through giving and tithing that our our church staff has supported. But me being one of the newer ones, I'm still like sort of that, but also missionary. So, so I'm still very much in that stage. Uh that's why I've been meeting with John Crawford still uh from Reliant. Um he's helping kind of coach me, encourage me, all that kind of stuff, which has been great. But uh I'll be honest, like my my most of my raising support, I felt really tough. Like it was really tough for me because I was sharing Mark's story versus my story, if that makes sense. Yeah, I totally get in the ministry, dude. as I've been in in the ministry now, now I have what God in in my story, right? So, I actually find it's been way easier to to raise support now knowing the space and knowing names and knowing people and like seeing life change. Like that's so much easier for me to communicate rather than just something I saw and believed in and tried to share that with others. Yeah. Like I now know the story myself so it's way easier for me to share that. Oh, that totally totally makes sense. And the other thing I'll say, anybody that's thinking about raise support ministry, this is not begging. Um, it is it is simply sharing the ministry God has called you to and inviting people or giving people an opportunity to participate in the kingdom. So, they can participate with praying for you. They can participate by sharing your ministry with other people, and they can participate by funding you. And people will participate at different levels of all of those different things. Uh so it's not up to you to decide if someone is going to or not. Tomodachi kid just followed. Hey, thank you for the follow. Tomodachi kid. Um so there there's that whole level like it does feel like, oh, I'm asking for it. So, if you're going to go do a traditional internship or you're going to go traditionally go overseas, you need to have all that funding available ahead of time because once you leave and go overseas, it's started. You're not raising any more support until you come home on leave. Uh if you're doing an internship, there's a start date and so once you start, you've raised the money that you're going to do for those internships, those kinds of things. So, yeah, you and I are in a little bit different position. We're we're doing the ministry and then God is saying okay we're moving you from physical to fully online go and it's like but do this does the money come first or does the ministry come first and which way and I can't stop doing the ministry to raise funds but if I have to I guess I will but yeah yeah you have to learn a balance uh you know last year at uh I keep plugging it just because I believe in it but nerd culture ministry summit is is the thing that I not only met you at, but it's also uh last year was our second year in Colorado. Um, and there, man, there was this Jamie Harris from Satellite Gaming. Um, he's the lead for Satellite Gaming Ministry out in Seattle. He gave a a topic in a speech that was so impactful to me as somebody who raises funds in my in my ministry. And he basically talked about how it's not begging for money. You're basically, if we think about it as war, right? Like as medieval war, which I love kind of being the fantasy lover, right? Like it's that it calls that Lord of the Rings vibes. He said, "You're asking people to be your blacksmiths, right? Like you're asking people to help be and partner with you in this giant battle, right? Like you're asking them to help equip you and to support you and you're coming back and you're sharing your your excitement about what God is doing on the battlefield with them. And they're getting excited and they're wanting to support and and love and partner with you. They're not fighters and that's okay. Like I have so many partners, it's so funny. I have so many partners that literally don't understand the online space, right? But they hear the need and they say, "I can never go there, but I know God wants to go there and I know God wants to send somebody there and I'm so grateful you not only told me about it, but that like I now get to be a part of it, right?" Like I have a lot of baby boomers as supporters and they know nothing. But the cool part for me is I've been able to figure out ways to share that with them. Like I talked to a lot of them about like, "Hey, you remember when Charles Stanley did that thing that no one liked and he started, you know, streaming his services on TV and everyone's like, "Oh, is this heresy?" And and then God blessed it and so many people came to know the Lord through Charles going live on TV.

I said, "That's all I'm doing on Twitch." Like, I'm going live online. Like, it's that same idea. And that clicks with them and they get it and they understand it.

But that's the beauty of like being able to share this with other people is that they get to see something that they normally wouldn't get to see and they get to be a part of it and say, "Man, God, I I I want to be in this." Like, and I've had college students that give like $25 once and they're like, "Man, this is all I could give." I was like, "Bro, this is so much more than you understand." So, like, I keep up with them and let them know about all the things going on.

Like, it's not about the money, man. It's about you partnering in what God is doing. Not necessarily even what I'm doing.

Oh, yeah. That's so good. Although, I'm I'm I'm just wondering how many people who are not boomers are going to know who Charles Stanley is.

Well, fair enough. I I grew up in the South in Georgia, so I know who Charles Stanley.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, and and people are going to know Andy Stanley.

Yeah. Yeah. They'll know Andy, but Charles is a little bit harder one.

So, Charles is my favorite Stanley. So, we'll leave it at that.

Well, I was going to say Stan Lee is my favorite. Stanley is Stanley. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. Completely fair.

No, I I love idea though. Jamie Harris made a huge impact on my life. I changed a lot of what I do now. Even sharing my story and stuff with my missionary partners differently now because of what I heard Jamie Harris talk about.

Oh, that's cool. I'm glad that yeah, I really enjoyed uh his talk as well, although I wasn't at the stage yet of saying, "Hey, I'm going to be moving in and doing digital ministry um and going to go in the direction of RA support." So, that happened after those conversations.

So, it might have impacted me more um than you realize maybe.

Yeah. Well, I say it might have impacted me more if I had already made the decision. I I would have been I would have had more places to put all the stuff he was he was saying, but um I don't I don't know if if you know this, so John Crawford um was at um Exponential Conference, I want to say four years ago, and I I'm just one of these weird people that likes to spend time talking to all of the people that have booths. So, I just kept having conversations with John Crawford um like four years ago at the booth and then I'd see him at NCMS and we'd have conversations and then I'd see him at Expo and we'd have conversations. So, uh, when he was at NCMS last year, I was picking his brain like crazy, uh, around all of the stuff that he's doing and all that cuz I was just like trying to figure out is God calling me into, uh, going in the direction of that if I'm supposed to continue to do uh, physical ministry, which I could not actually do for a year because I started a prayer booth that required me to be there on Sunday.

And it's a really hard job to get that you can be a pastor of a church and not show up on Sunday. So I couldn't find that gig.

Um so it was like okay I had to trust God going into it. So you know NCMS the one year was the trusting God to step into that. The next year was okay I still am not in a position of doing it. Am I supposed to go back to physical ministry or am I supposed to go to raise support was the conversation a year later at NCMS.

So, yep.

Um, I have I have switched what I used to do at conferences. Well, and this always happened for me when I don't know if this is true to anybody else. I would go in a conference. I would take immense amount of notes. I would come back from the conference and my wife would say, "Hey, what was the conference? You know, what was the speaker? What did you get about the speaker?" I have no idea what the speaker was talking about. The speaker said this one phrase. It made my mind go to this other thing and I spent a half an hour writing and talking and arguing through other processes that had absolutely nothing to do with what the speaker was.

So it was like I I was never going to gain new knowledge from speakers or motivation. I had those pieces. I was always going from a something is going to speak to me and I'm going to process through a whole bunch of stuff.

And what I figured out over the years is I'm better verbal processor. I don't even need to go into uh so I I guess say I've been to three um and maybe maybe next spring will be four years of going to exponential conference. I've never made it to a main speaker.

Well, I've only been two years and I've never made it. So, it has been more about the relational conversation on the outside listening to somebody.

Yeah. It's like oh they'll be on video. not knocking them, just not they're great speakers. This is nothing about them. It's about what do I need in my life? I need relationships and fostering those and building those up and connecting with people.

So, when Andy and I uh were and and the Church Digital, we were talking about, okay, we can't fully fund raise support, but we need to help support these people that are missionaries on on mission. What do we do? And we both said, we have Reliant do it. We we partner with Reliant. We bring Reliant in to to be our partner.

Um we have coming up um and you're going to be there. So I'm going to just hype you here a minute. Yeah. The uh the gaming the digital missionary gaming summit October 8. Drewzy is going to be one of our speakers. So when Andy and I were planning out what do we want it to be? And so just to give you a quick synopsis of what we're thinking is if you think you're called to be a digital missionary in gaming, we want you to know who the one is you're called to. How do you know that you're called to them? How do you evaluate that? And then Drewzy's coming in and talking about how do you set the table?

So we've been talking about setting the table today. How do you set that up? How do you invite them in? How do you create the space? Whether that is in your stream, it's in Discord, it's other places. We're talk about the big picture of all of that. So um yeah, so when we were we were planning all of that out and oh by the way, Reliance going to be one of the sponsors of the conference too.

So you if you're interested in that, they love gaming. If you're at NerdCulture Ministry Summit, do I have them hit? I do. I do. Hang on a second. I haven't shown these on stream.

No, you're good. I'm gonna I'm gonna speak while he's doing this. Yeah, if if if you really haven't I I'm just speaking real quick. What's up, sunshine? Welcome to the stream. Look at those dice. Oh, those are sick. Are those reliant dice?

These are reliant dice.

That is so sick. Yeah, look at the gold fleck in there. That's so amazing.

If you're wanting to be a missionary and you're wanting to look to get into this, um there are so many paths, so many ways. You could do it just by talking to individuals that you know. You could talk about it to your local church. You could talk about different organizations. All of those ways are great. Um, I've just found finding a ministry like Reliant that really gets the space and understands and has a heart for it has been so helpful.

And I don't know of any really missionary companies um that help launch missionaries and support them and encourage them like Reliant that gets digital ministry. And John Crawford uniquely is, I think, a big reason why. There's so many other guys there, too. Like Will is is freaking great. Like there's so many so many awesome amazing people at Reliant.

Um but they're just they're just awesome and they love the space and they keep pouring into it. So definitely worth looking at.

Yeah. And and I have had conversations with others in Reliant as well and they are really excited about digital ministry and learning from those of us in digital ministry. those in gaming and digital, but digital all over the place. But one of the the uh and you might know this Drewzy, I don't know if you do, but the origin stories behind uh Reliant is coming out of the Jesus movement.

And when there was a bunch of Christians feeling called to go to hippies and the church said they you need to bring them into the church.

Yep.

Uh they said we're called to go to college campuses. We're called to go to where they are. We're going to go do it. if you won't do it, we'll find someone who will partner and help us do it. And Reliant is that partner. So, it is no surprise to me that those of us, and I'm not the pioneer, I'm just an early adopter. Okay? So, those of us like Mark and and Susie live uh and Jive who are pioneers of doing ministry in Twitch and intentionally doing ministry in Twitch, not just being a Christian who hangs out and if someone asks me about my faith, I'll share. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I'm saying their mindset was I'm in here to reach people with the gospel far away. They've been doing it for years.

Um it's no surprise to me.

Yeah. No, you're good. Can I answer a question real quick?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So, as always, men asked uh he said, "We love hearing stories that God gives uh the increase, but what was what has going into digital ministry cost you?" And I just want to be real honest with this. We talked a little bit about this. Maybe you missed it, but for one, there's the financial uh you know side of it. Like I went from a very stable physical job to raising support. So that meant my salary got cut in half. So uh raising four kids and having a wife like that was a lot. That was a big change. you know, God provided through all of that, but there there was some some not struggle because we were in it from a faith mindset and hearts set, but there was some real real like realization that our life has to change in that like I've got a truck still that's broken outside that's my my favorite thing, but I I just don't have the money right now to repair that truck, right? Like that's the reality of these things is that there are some things that I would like to be able to fix or do with my family that are harder to do now. uh being in the digital space, does that change a lot? No, I still am glad I'm here. My family is too. There's also a realization that man, online ministry takes time, right?

And and I actually think it probably takes way more time than the physical church. I was so wrapped up in meetings and events and all these things in in offline spaces in physical church. Online church is so much about this. It's this one-on-one conversations with people. physical church really should be too. Yeah.

Um, and that's a whole different podcast, but like a lot of my time spent is online. So, what that means is I I don't have as many offline friends and that's actually been harder on my spouse and my kids than anyone else.

So, the counting the cost has been my family has taken a toll because we had to move from one area to another to to afford to be able to live. Uh, because Athens, Georgia, where we lived before, is very expensive. It's one of the most expensive areas in the south right now to an area in Witchah where yes, we have family but they're not Christians and we have no friends here.

So, we're having to kind of relearn friends and relearn what that means. And like we have tons of friends online and we connect with them. But just by being digital pastors and and church doesn't mean that we don't think that physical relationships matter. They do. So that's that's something where we're trying to even pray about or not trying we are actively praying about right now like God man bring bring somebody in our life that we could have

Locally that our kids could you know play with and hang out with and all those things cuz that is that is a really important thing but that that's been the biggest cost to my family is is the friend local side of things like having somebody that you could drop your kids off if you're going on a date those kind of things. Simple things that you tend to overthink but or you overlook but those have been count the cost moments for us.

Yeah, I can say there and there's lots of ways and reasons that that can happen but it's also happening as a whole in society too that there people are having less and less key friendships and relationships in person. Difficulty for for myself and my wife is well actually uh next month I will have lived here nine years. We're talking about moving around. I'll have lived here nine years next month.