EP260 - Aki & Family Streaming

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than that, we'll protect itself. We'll address deeper questions. Is disciple making possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? And where does the metaverse fit into all this? Whether you're a big or small church, an established church or a startup church plant, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. Our heart is that churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on disciple making that will revolutionize your church. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right, hey everybody. Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast, broadcasting live on Twitch. My name is Jeffrey, founder of the Church Digital Digital Church Network, and it's awesome to hang out with you here on Digital Church Network's Twitch channel. So we are doing this broadcast live. If you're in the Twitch audience, you can hear me in real time. It's Thursday afternoon and it's great to hang out with you. I'm excited about today's guest. We also are doing this as a podcast recording on Monday, and so if you're listening to it on the podcast, what's wrong with you? Come hang out with us on Twitch. We broadcast this every Thursday afternoon.

Here in season four of the Church Digital Podcast, we're hanging out talking about gamers, Jesus, and church. So through this season we've been highlighting different things within gaming culture, within nerd culture, as to things that would be incredibly inappropriate, and the Twitch filters are probably going off somewhere with nerd culture. As to, I'm sure somebody out there is laughing right now. And then also getting into esports, digital missionaries, Twitch, Discord, everything that's centered around this gaming culture. And so I'm excited. Literally, I'm excited about today's guest because I have been trying to have an interview, a podcast interview, really a conversation with this guy for well, shoot, at least a year. At least, if not multiple. And I'll be honest, very few people have ever said no to me, but this is the one guy who he didn't say no. He said let's reschedule. And then like it was a year, and then hey, we finally can get back around to it. Including him, and no, I'm kidding. I love Aki. So hey, let's bring Aki into the conversation and I'm looking forward to digging into this conversation. I don't know what will hit actually. I probably want to ask him what are we going to hit, but let's do this. Aki. But before we get into this, a little bit, you know, I love your two. I'm sure we'll get into Destiny 2 in the conversation. Um, what is that like? You're on your like birth certificate. So what are we doing here, Aki? Aki, what does that mean?

That's right. Aki is actually short for a character name, short for Akiko Sonata, which is from a Japanese RPG called Persona 3. Um, and I love the Persona series very much, and it was just kind of a name that I took on and I shortened it because it's not as much of a mouthful and it's kind of long. And it wasn't completely representative of who I wanted to be on Twitch. And so who I am personally is um, part of Aki and Fam. And uh, that is you could actually see that right over there. Um, but I stream with my family. Um, I'm the father of a household, father of two amazing kids, uh, husband to an awesome wife named Mama Peach. And we stream with our whole family. Um, we game with all my kids and the dogs that go running by occasionally when packages come to the front door. And uh, I was absolutely laughing at you behind the scenes as you uh, made your verbal missteps and other things there, but it was a good time. Actually, it was funny. We delayed this so long we had a chance to meet IRL back in October, which was awesome, and had a lot of good times there at Megazord. And so grateful for uh, the conversations we've had since then. I'm really excited about today. So yeah, I stream on Twitch. Uh, I set about, we just celebrated our uh, third year stream-versary, so we just started our third year on Twitch. And uh, I decided I wanted to create a space that could feel like home for either those that didn't have one or maybe had a toxic relationship with theirs. And so yeah, that's what we've set about to do. I feel like we've been awesome. Really looking forward, yeah, I'm really looking forward to getting into like this family streaming and learning more about this. I've watched some of your streams uh, and just uh, the family environment is um, admit it, just it just gives me the warmth. Like it just, it's like man, this is nice. This is home. And the idea that you've created that environment for the people that have not been able to receive that uh, is just so telling.

I was, you know, I was actually, I mean, people are like, yeah, that's not real. Like this is actually, I read this article. Um, I'm gonna show my nerd culture here for a minute and just open, honest conversation. We're gonna dig into this. I was reading an article where Jamie Foxx uh, was talking with um, Peter. I believe his name's Peter Cullen. Does that name sound familiar?

Uh, it does sound familiar.

Yeah, it's though he's the voice actor for Optimus Prime. Like the guy who has been Optimus Prime, Peter Cullen, since like the cartoon in the eighties. He did the cartoon, the cartoons, the movies in the eighties. He did uh, was it the Michael Bay stuff or the Brookheimer, whichever one of those?

Yeah, yeah, it was Michael Bay movies.

Yeah. And like Peter Cullen died just maybe, um, yeah, yeah. Like and it's funny. They were in the middle of like a Netflix Transformer shoot and they had to find another voice actor. And I'm sorry, whoever that guy is, he's nothing compared to Peter Cullen. And so there was this interview where Jamie Foxx was talking about his relationship with Peter Cullen, and what Jamie Foxx said was Peter Cullen was the only stable male father figure that was in my house growing up. He was that person, not because he showed up in the house, but because he was on a cartoon. And it's incredible to think of the power and potential that that even we can have utilizing this technology to engage with people. And so the fact that you're wanting to do this right up at the top, hey, I want to create a family environment for online for people that don't have that, like dude, that's incredible. Uh, let me just ask Aki, as we're opening up this conversation, where did that vision come from?

Uh, so I think for me personally, it just kind of came from the fact that, you know, growing up, um, I was just gonna be really vulnerable here. I didn't always have the best relationship with my parents. Um, there was a lot of uh, we weren't necessarily always encouraged to talk openly about our feelings and emotions and the things that we were struggling with and going through. Um, and it's not, I don't think that my parents intentionally did anything wrong. I think it's just they were doing their best based on how they were raised. Um, but as I've gotten older and as I've had kids of my own, I've realized that it's important for us to be open and honest and vulnerable about the things that we struggle with because so often you'll find that other people are struggling with similar things. And when we bear one another's burdens in a way that can really honor Christ, I think it's so important because authenticity brings vulnerability. And when we are authentic about the things that we're going through and struggling with, about how life is not always, you know, sunshine and rainbows and roses, and parenting's hard, uh, you know, kids go through things, we go through stuff, life throws things at us constantly that uh, you're surprised about what you learn about how not isolated we are and how community can really happen online and you can really feel, I think, Christ's love in a healthy environment even just here on Twitch.

Yeah, you know, authenticity breeds vulnerability. They don't teach you that in seminary, or maybe they do at this point, but you know, that has been something culturally that we've seen change night and day. And it's so hard for some of the, forgive the term, the old dogs, some of the old school, uh, to adapt and to understand um, that in weakness and showing weakness there's strength because you're able to connect with people at a far greater level at your weakness than by pushing and posing with your strengths.

Yeah, absolutely. So so talk to me a little bit because you're creating a family environment. We'll put links in the show notes and allow others maybe to get a feel for that. But describe for me a little bit because I've seen, you know, there's already a joke in chat where Chino Beach is like, are you playing D2 right now? Because evidently you're addicted to that game. That's all I ever see you play. He's talking about the wizard behind the curtain. That's who he's talking about.

Oh, okay. All right, so I missed right into that. The wizard behind the curtain, Mark Lutz was saying right there because I'm keeping up with chat while we're having a separate conversation, right? So there is, yeah, I was actually, well, I'm formally diagnosed with ADHD, and I always talk about how it's a superpower, but it's a blessing and a curse, right? So it enables me to keep up with chat while engaging in the conversation. Um, and that is definitely something that is detrimental to gameplay. So I will say that our Twitch stream is we're not all about like professional gameplay, but we are all about uh, entertaining people, making them feel loved and valued uh, how Christ does at the end of the day. And so I open up every stream uh, usually my wife is with me or my kids, and we spend some time in devotions and prayer just trying to set the tone for the stream. But you know, usually baby Aki, my son, is sitting on my lap or A Peach, my daughter, is sitting beside me, and we hang out and we game together. And uh, one of the rules that I created actually when I really wanted to be intentional about, I always want our stream to be safe and fun for the whole family, no matter who's there, no matter who's tuning in, no matter what we're doing. And so one of the rules I set really early on, and this is not popular on Twitch as I said, we would never play an M-rated game on stream. Um, and that's a hard and fast line because you think about some of the biggest titles in gaming, including Halo, Call of Duty, are technically M-rated. So over time we ended up making some caveats to that rule. It was if the M-rated elements can be toned down or turned off, like in Call of Duty you can turn off all voice lines, which is where you know your heavy language comes in. Um, in Halo um, you can be selective about who you play multiplayer with because that's really where the M-rated elements come into play. There are games with open mics. Even Fortnite, you have to be cautious about because if you hop into an open voice chat in a public match, you match make with somebody you never know what you're going to hear coming across that mic. So we're always really protective and defensive about uh, how things come through the stream to make sure that we keep that filtered and safe for the whole family. Um, and for my kids too, because my kids are always present. And uh, the wonderful thing about when you have your kids on stream with you is it generally lets chat know, hey, by the way, there's kids present. Let's keep things, you know, toned down, kind of be mindful about the things that we're saying.

discussing and the conversations that we're having, but that doesn't prevent us from grappling with some of the tougher issues. So yeah, love that. Now you're, I mean, openly ADHD. Hey, like I'm not that, not that good at gaming yet. You're doing a ministry where all you do is play, play games. Forgive me, you're using games to connect with people to minister to them. Like they're, I don't, I don't want to be this dismissive with that. Sure, um, but you're not, you're not good at games or you're not the best, like, you know, I feel tension, you know, I've thought about maybe I should stream and I joke that, you know, I'm not relevant going all the way back to like GoldenEye on N64. So relevant they just released a remake. Did you know that they just, yeah, well my wife still kicks my butt. My wife gets the sniper rifle and like hides out in rooms where the one spot where you can't see her but you can get the perfect shot. Back in the day, Mario Kart 64. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh no, no, no, I'm still the best at Mario Kart. Like, and even to the fact that like I scold my kids and, uh, that that's right. I will say this, if this is for the parents in the house, I've never let my kids beat me at a video game because a lot of times you let your kids win. I've never let my kids win because I'm like, if you beat me, I want it to feel authentic and earned, and that's just that. I think that's an important lesson. And my daughter has gotten to the point where she can legitimately beat me in Mario Kart and she celebrates that, rubs it in my face, which is exactly what she should do. So do you feel tension like, hey, like I can't keep up with the big kids? Even stuff like, um, you know, you're not playing some of these games that are very popular. It seems like you're sticking with Destiny 2, uh, which is a great game, but it's a game that's been around a minute. Like, do you, how do you balance that, man?

I'm not, I'm not the cool edgy guy. Uh, I'm the family guy. So and I think something that's important about that is, so D2, a community member of ours, put it in a really good way. D2 is what we call our anchor game, but we still are kind of variety streamers. The very first game we ever played on stream was the original Final Fantasy for the NES, which was the game released all the way back in 1985.

Um, but with my son I'm playing through Horizon Zero Dawn, for example, that's on Monday evenings. And then with my daughter we play a lot of Destiny 2. Generally speaking, that's Tuesdays and Thursdays, but a new expansion just released, so we're playing a lot of Destiny right now. Um, and then Friday nights are kind of community nights and Sunday nights we're playing Final Fantasy 14. So we actually, we do play a variety of games, but Destiny is definitely our anchor game. And I will say that when it comes to Twitch and strategies and things for growth, variety is really, really difficult to really build a large community on because generally speaking, when people come to Twitch, they're coming to watch a specific game. They're wanting to, they're wanting to consume a certain kind of content. But for the first two years of our stream, Destiny was always kind of around, but it wasn't really a focus. Um, we actually made Twitch partner doing mostly variety, playing a lot of different things, making a lot of different friends and people and folks who would come into stream and be like, I like this, I want to be a part of it. And so yeah, and for those of you who are watching the podcast, to get Twitch partner you have to average at least 75 or more people for a 30-day time period. For us, we had to carry it for almost three months because we had to apply twice. So interesting. What, what are the benefits like? I've heard Twitch partner before, but do you get like a free t-shirt? Do you get priority and the algorithms? Like what does that mean?

So no real priority. There aren't a ton of tangible benefits. The number one thing you get over someone who is an affiliate or just a non-connected with Twitch is you get what's called encoding. Every single stream that I have, I get encoding. What that means is people can watch at the high quality 1080p stream, or they can go scale all the way down to 160p, which is really low quality, easy for like mobile cell phone kind of consumption. That was actually the reason why I wanted to go for Twitch partner because we have a wide variety of people and situations and internet connections, stability, that can watch and consume our content. And so having that flexibility, that anybody can tune in and plug in and be connected, was really important.

So you're a family streamer, uh, you and you intentionally wanted a wide variety because you've got, um, you know, high-end, you've got some minimal devices that I'm sure that are streaming, although one, one, whatever, 160p, that's that's pretty, that's pretty low, pretty low. Um, though, talk to me about your audience. Like, who are you engaging with? What, what's your, is there a target? Like, who are you seeing? Uh, what types of people like, who's who's engaging with you on Twitch?

Sure, and I'll, uh, I'll say that the Megazord conference really helped me kind of hone in on my content. Um, I really kind of, that was when I decided that I really wanted to minister and reach to the Destiny 2 community. Um, and that's when I really decided to make it kind of our focus, our anchor game. Um, so I really want to reach people who are playing Destiny 2, maybe they play a few other things, um, but generally speaking, I'm looking for uh, young adults, for the most part, uh, people who maybe have struggled with addictions in the past. Um, because for myself, uh, how transparent do you get on this podcast? On my streams, like, I'm a former porn addict. Um, I've broken free of that. Um, I am a suicide attempt survivor. I'm pretty open and honest about that on stream when we talk a lot about depression and anxiety and mental health. And so all of those things are things that we talk about openly on stream, and we let people know that they're not struggling and suffering alone in the dark, and that there is hope and there are solutions and ways to move forward, whether that's, you know, in Christ and church, there are so many options and ways to plug in and do community here on Twitch and in IRL too. So yeah, those are those are kind of some of the things that we really dove into and wanted to minister to those people, especially neurodivergent. You know, first thing I talked about was ADHD, and obviously, you know, as my wife as well, also a suicide attempt survivor. So you know, we've been really open and honest about our struggles and things that we've dealt with, and that we have some amazing stories about people who have come into our community. Many of them struggle with anxiety. A lot of people are neurodivergent in some ways. I remember one specific story we had a young girl from Canada who came into our stream and she told us that she was there ready to end her life. And uh, you know, we stopped everything that we were doing. Uh, we took a beat to pray over her, and she didn't know the Lord at the time. Um, she still doesn't know the Lord, but she is open to the conversations and is receiving the things that were pouring into her life, and still, two years later, after that night, and still plugged in and still listening to the things that we're saying, and is open to receiving prayer. And so we've been taking steps with her over time and building that relational equity um with the people who are in our community. So yeah, that may be the greatest two minutes of recording and broadcasting we've ever done here with the Church Digital podcast. Like there, um, the courage it took to say that publicly, uh, and but the number of points that you hit on, I mean, we're talking about operating out of your weakness and making your weakness your strength. Like that was that was a beautiful moment, and there's maybe a dozen questions that I have off of that. Um, let's start with this. I want to get into what it is to be transparent in that space. But you're a family show, and so you've got your kid on your lap, and you're doing ministry where you're talking about, you know, your porn addiction in the past, or your and your wife's suicide and your neurodivergent issues. Like, these are a lot of very poignant, very hard conversations to have, and you're doing them while playing video games while you got your kid on your lap. Like, um, how do you manage that tension with yourself, with being serious while playing a video game? Like, give me some insight here.

So the interesting thing, for a lot of the heavier conversations, they generally happen later in the evening when the young kid is off to bed or off, you know, getting ready for bed and things like that. But my older daughter, it's like after show, yeah, is what we call it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aki After Dark. So when the sun goes down, you know, things get a little heavier, a little bit more intense conversations. But you know, my daughter is openly struggling with anxiety right now, and we don't, we don't hide that. We don't, you know, shy away from that, and we openly wrestle with these things on stream. You'll often see me parenting live in action on stream, having conversations with my daughter about different heavy things in life, and you know, just kind of going through those and encouraging her to be honest about how she's feeling about, you know, what she's wanting to do. And uh, she obviously listens to me talk about some of those heavier things, and so far it's gone really well. There definitely is some tension to manage there, and we have some off-stream conversations with her about things that we go through. But we also, I don't know, we don't try to sugarcoat or hide the harder things in life with her as they come. We want her to go into life with eyes wide open. So yeah.

So you're, you're, I mean, you're literally actively parenting your kid on in front of people, talking about tough subjects, uh, being very transparent about yourself and your wife in the season with Aki After Dark. Um, is how is the audience receive this? Like, do they engage? Do they comment? Do they laugh? Are they, wow, that's a great point. I wish somebody had told me that. Like, what, how are they literally responding when they're seeing some of this stuff?

You know, it's funny too. I think about so last night we were playing the new Destiny 2 campaign that came out, and uh, you know, I'm playing with my daughter who just turned 12, so she's very young. And uh, legendary is something that even like grown-up gamers struggle with. It's, it's hard. It's not an easy difficulty. And we're working through this campaign and it's so often easy to get frustrated and get upset. And we fought for, I think it was about six hours on this one boss. We went again and again and again and again, and we finally beat this boss. And as we beat the boss, her PC blue screened. For those of you who are in computers, you know that that means it's locked up and it's rebooting. And so I go through and I watch the final cutscene. She watches the final cutscene with me, and then she gets back into the game and finds out that everything we had just done, every all those hours we just fought for, none of it counted. We have to do it again. And instead of being upset or frustrated, she's excited. She's positive. She's like, I just want to play more with my dad. I want it, I want to do this more. And like, chat, it just freaks out like, I could learn from Peach. Like, I would be so angry in this moment. I would be so upset. And so I think, I think those authentic moments, and when we're doing the parenting on stream, I think it all just kind of builds towards that, hey, this is effective. Or we're doing, you're seeing it, you're seeing it play out in a way that is positive.

And encouraging, and really, I—my hope, I'm like getting emotional thinking about it because I was so proud of her last night. It was just crazy seeing how she reacted to that. But yeah, my hope is that again, that authenticity breeds vulnerability. I want people to understand that you're not alone in your struggles, that life can be frustrating sometimes, but there are ways to exhibit that in positive and encouraging ways rather than just getting angry or toxic, because so many online communities are very toxic and we never want to be that way.

So off earlier, um, like it was a Sunday night, a Tuesday night, Thursday—like you just routed off your schedule very quickly. Um, how many hours a week are you spending into this? So Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday we start at six times every day. Yeah, five days a week. Okay, so about four to four and a half hours depending on the stream. Sometimes we go up to five to six. Um, totally depends on what's going on, what we're doing. Um, so yeah, I would say it's another part-time to full-time job depending on the week. That's not counting the hours I spend off-stream working on short-form content, ministering to people in our Discord, having other offline conversations with folks. Um, yeah, async. We're going to get into Discord in a minute. So, but you're 25 to 30 hours minimum. So talk to me about that tension because you've—what's your nine to five? What do you do nine to five?

I'm a network engineer for a medium-sized cable ISP. I'm on my lunch break technically right now. So yeah.

Oh, awesome. Well, thanks for giving us the time here. So, but you're absolutely—so you're a—you're an IT guy, sounds like.

Yep, nine to five, and then you do—I work from home, which is a family streaming guy. Yeah. Um, how do you manage the relational tension? How do you manage some of the financial strains? Like, because that's—I mean, you're putting in 40 plus 25 to 30. That's 65 to 70 hours between ministry and work. So how do you keep a husband? To—we're plugged into a local church here that we serve at too. My wife does cleaning of the church and children's ministry, and I run the sound and tech at church. Um, so yeah, we do a lot. And I think the thing about it is the whole family is plugged into everything that we do. We don't go separate directions. The whole family's plugged into the stream. I'm here. My daughter is homeschooled. My son is in pre-K right now, but he'll be full-time kindergarten next year. Um, but we're all plugged in together. We're all doing life together. We're all running in the same direction. We're not going different places doing different things.

So like, even sometimes I'll go clean the church for my wife. Um, we make time on Saturdays that's intentionally like a family day where we go and we do an activity together. Um, the work-from-home flexibility is huge—being able to be here and be plugged in. If I had to go into an office, I don't think I'd be able to put as many hours into the streaming as I do.

So, okay, I know um, we had Jade on last week who was, uh, you know, obviously you know Jade digitally. Actually, so last full-time after everything crashed, Jade actually hopped in with us and we finished—we did the redo because we had done it by ourselves. We're like, okay, Jade, come on in and we'll finish it all together because he hadn't finished yet. That's awesome. But he just had a system crash too, didn't he recently? Is that what I saw on this whole PC?

Yeah, yeah. God bless him. But you know, I know he was talking—you know, he's wanting to do his full-time. I don't know, he's streaming like 50, 60, 70—like I wake up at 2 AM and he's going. I feel like in the middle of the day I see him on. Like, the guy's just really, you know, heavy into this stuff. That we talked about some of the financial struggles of being full-time in this and living literally off of streaming tips and things like this, where you know, I think he's got an account that basically is like "Keep Jade Alive.com" with something set up. Like, it's just—it's a hard life.

Um, how is it bivocationally where you're working IT, you're receiving a check from the IT, you're doing ministry on the side with your family involved, you're all rowing in the same direction? Like, is that rewarding? Is that healthy? Are there challenges? Are there obstacles that you're facing? I'd love some insight—financially, maybe even otherwise, relationally. I feel like, you know, there's the old adage, right? God doesn't call the equip—the equips the called. And, uh, you know, when we first started, we started in a very bare, empty room. All I had was a little Blue Yeti mic, and that was basically it. And my daughter and I sat down in this room, we started streaming together, and we very gratefully had folks come alongside of us. There's subscriptions on Twitch, which is cool. Um, but 50 percent of that goes back to the platform. There's also a way to donate directly. Um, if you go to any Twitch page, most streamers, if you scroll down, you'll see a link to donate. And fortunately, we had some very generous people early on that helped us—for example, have a Shure SM7B. I have a decent XLR interface. I have a decent camera. All of this was funded by the community that we built really early on. And we have kept the streaming funds separate from the personal funds and the personal funds separate from the streaming funds. But we did obviously invest a significant amount of our own money early on because, no, when I first went to my wife almost four years ago and said, "Hey, I think this could be a thing. I think I feel this is what the Lord wants me to do next," um, she didn't initially catch the vision. But once I started walking it out and she saw the people coming in the chat and she saw the stories that were being shared and the vulnerability and the authenticity that was growing this community, she really bought in. And it's been wonderful to see what—I again stress this. I feel the Lord has called me to do this. Without that, if I wasn't walking in obedience, I think there would be a lot more struggle. But I feel like because this is something I feel the Lord has called me to do and I'm walking in obedience to that with my family, that makes everything—you know, when you're walking in the Lord's will, life flows a lot easier than if you're doing something in rebellion or fighting against that. And so I think that's the key there.

Um, because yeah, there's a lot of struggle because I have a lot of work responsibilities, we have kids, we have the whole family dynamic thing. But because we're all working together, we're trying to honor the Lord, we're trying to be obedient to the things that he's calling us to do, it does make that easier in a sense. It's stressful, absolutely. And, uh, but we love each other. We have really hard conversations on the regular about how things are going and how we're doing. And we make sure that, hey, we—I will postpone or cancel streams if we have to. If we have to deal with family stuff, because at the end of the day, for a family stream, if the family isn't first, yeah, it's not good for anybody.

Is um, how about your daughter? She's 12?

Well, uh, the beginning—she just turned 12.

So what is that? Sixth grade? Fifth grade? Somewhere in there?

Sixth grade.

Um, is she comfortable like being on camera? Like, you know, is that native to her where she's an extrovert? Is she—yeah?

No, she's 100 percent extroverted. My wife is very introverted. She very rarely gets on camera. So I was about to say, I don't think I've seen your wife on.

No, um, I've seen both kids interact at some level at the microphone, but yeah, she doesn't. It's funny because I'm pretty sure both my kids are extroverts, which takes after me. I'm an extrovert. But my wife is very introverted.

Yeah, so like your daughter, you know, you introduce her to video games and she clung and ran with it. Um, like, what was—was that when you talk about the—let's do this instead of the minutes—let's talk about the ministry potential. Um, how old was she when she understood the ministry impact of what the streaming was?

I'm not 100 percent positive she understands ministry impact fully yet. I think she's beginning to understand, especially over these past three to four months. You're starting to see her really understand, hey, there's a chat here. People are talking. They're talking about me. They're talking about the things that we're doing. And that's really starting to become something that she is cognizant of. Or also, I'm also having conversations with her about that on the side because it's easy to be influenced by chat. And I'm like, we have to be authentic to ourselves and not necessarily always be concerned about making everybody else happy because that's, you know, obviously an important distinction there.

Yeah, that's so good. I was—the reason I asked, and I'll just be transparent here—my daughter's 14. And, um, and so even as because of what I do with through the church digital and the conversations and the streams—not in Twitch, but in other environments and in platforms—like, you know, she's hearing at least one half of the conversation because the other half's in my head. And so, you know, even her starting to engage with that in dialogue—I wrote a book on churches and virtual reality, and she grabbed it, she started reading it. It was funny like one day she wanted me to pick her up from school, and so she logged on to my website, went to my schedule page, and actually scheduled time with me so that I could pick her up early from school and take her out to lunch. And so like, I didn't realize it until the day before and looked on my calendar. I'm like, "What's this Caitlyn meeting?" And she's like, "Oh, you're picking me up from school." It's like, "Oh, okay." But it's been so much fun. Like, we're not doing to the full streaming level, but having like my daughter seen that and starting to converse with her—it's so funny. I actually had this conversation with her. We were helping um plant a physical church. I was running—you're a physical church tech guy—that I was doing that maybe five or six years ago, and we were going to help plant a physical multi-site campus. We were talking about planting churches, and um, I said to my daughter, who is probably 12, maybe—maybe he was 10 at the time—"Hey, so how do you think you would plant a physical church?" And she just starts rattling through like her mental process of what planting a church was. Um, and the funny thing was she—I was expecting her to do like the "if you build it, they will come"—um, but what she actually started to do was build the team, recruit volunteers, just literally just like disciple them and then release. Yeah, start with the fountain. And I'm like, my daughter's 10 and she just knows more than like, you know—and I'm not gonna finish that sentence, but it was incredible, you know, some of what was coming out of her on that.

So oh man, this is so good. Let's talk a little bit. I want to dance around because you know, you're your Discord as well. Um, you know, when I've asked—I have asked people in the know because I do not know—but I've asked people to know, "Hey, who's really good at Discord?" Your name comes up more often than not. And so you're an interesting balance between Twitch and Discord. I don't know how common that is.

But typically I see people who are really strong on one side than the other and you're like, "This, this, um, I don't know, purple dinosaur that that equal pink, uh, unicorn." I guess makes more sense. Let me say nude again because this thing's just going crazy here. This question. There you go, all the way up through off the rails. We're done.

What's the role of Discord? How do you balance it into what you're doing? Uh, you know, I I kind of see it as you talked about discipleship just kind of briefly, but I feel like it's just that that part of community building. You know, you can only learn so much about somebody in a Twitch chat. Um, learn a lot more when you have a chance to watch them conversate on Discord or hang out in a voice chat with them. And so we're kind of intentional about events in our Discord, uh, whether that's movie or game nights and hanging out and and watching things and kind of doing life together and talking about things. Because I always, I'll, I'll actually sit in there usually after whatever event we're doing is over and just hang out and chat with people and ask about their day and just, you know, you you find out so much more about people when you get a chance to sit and and chat with them. So yeah, but I think I think it's just how intentional about those relationships.

So you're like, you're forty hours nine to five, you're twenty-five to thirty on on Twitch. How much time are you putting in the Discord? Um, I get a notification every time there's a message sent on my Discord on my phone, so probably a lot of passive time staring at this. Um, you know, chat with people, interacting with folks. And yeah, do you, you know, it's it's funny. There used to be like the saying for what happens in Facebook stays in Facebook, where you know it just like that was like separate. Do you talk about Discord in those conversations on Twitch? Do you reference Twitch and Discord like where it's absolutely unified? They're very, they're very intermingled, absolutely. Yeah, and there's there's some folks that are in our Discord that actually don't watch our streams. Um, there's some folks in our streams that aren't in our Discord. Um, but we still reference each other and kind of mesh together. And I regularly when I'm when I'm playing with the community, if we're doing raids or whatever in Destiny or games in Fortnite and so on and so forth, um, we'll hop into Discord with people and uh be in voice chat and hang out and game together. So yeah.

I want to ask a a follow-up on the discipleship piece. Um, because it's it's funny. You line up ten pastors and you ask him what discipleship means, you get fifteen different answers because a couple, everybody thinks something different and a couple of them think multiple things they don't realize it. Um, what does in the idea of digital discipleship, discipling in digital space, like through the podcast we're friends of that, but even within the podcast in the audience there's different ideas of what discipleship or disciple making or whatever it is with your church, with your stream, whatever. You know, that would actually be the probably an intro first question. What are you, what do you consider yourself? And then what is your role in discipleship? What are, what's the goal, the expectation, the hope, the prayer for discipleship within your your org?

Yeah, I think for me, the I consider myself a digital missionary. Uh, that's that's what we attempt to do. We're big on evangelizing. We talk a lot about how you don't have to believe the same ways we do to belong in our community, but I love Jesus and the colors everything I do, all the conversations that we have. We're very open and transparent about that. Um, but really open and honest in in Twitch chat about um, maybe, maybe, maybe keeping some of those difficult like nuanced theological conversations to like, I I will, I've had some difficult nuanced theological conversations and voice chat over Discord because so often stuff gets misconstrued over text and those those conversations are more difficult to have. It's a lot easier when you can hear the vocal timbre of what someone is saying when you're when you're speaking uh in a Discord in a voice call or even if you're on camera. A lot of times I'll be in Discord, I'll have my camera on so people can see, you know, my posture and the way that I'm communicating and the way that I'm trying to be empathetic and understand and listen to the things that they're trying to say. Um, but it it totally depends. I mean, obviously I've had gospel conversations with folks. We've had, I've prayed with a few folks. Um, but I've also encouraged them to either get plugged into a local church or uh, there's wonderful online church resources such as Lux Digital Church or God Squad Church that we we generally point them towards uh if they're looking for more in-depth intentional discipleship in small groups because us, I'm one person, my wife is one person, and when it comes to being able to really grow a community outside of what we're attempting to do when it comes to the family and being more intentional about deeper faith and theological discussions, you know, Lux and God Squad Church, I would say we really align when it comes to the principles of the gospel and doing that intentional discipleship building that really solid foundational relationship with Christ.

I love how much the the gaming community churches, the Twitch churches, the the digital missionaries, the discipleship groups, the like, I love how much unity, how much they're working together. Um, and so the fact that you just listed God Squad and uh and and Lux is is incredible. Um, is there a, do you like, I'm gonna say the question this way. I know it's not that rough, but at what point do you kick them out of the nest? Like, is there, is there a characteristic or a trait that you're looking for that's being developed? Is it case by case basis? Do you let them self-identify when it's time to to head to the next step, whatever that is? Like, what is, what is the maturity combination and what's next combination of your last two points?

Case by case and kind of letting them decide when, hey, when when do you really want more? You know, because obviously we all know as we build a relationship with Christ, we become more hungry and thirsty for more of of him. And so as as that naturally develops, again, we we we continually point and encourage people to look into those deeper resources where they can find that discipleship. Um, and it's not just limited to GSC and Lux because I love both of those ministries and I think it's so important. And there's going to be so many people who are on Twitch who will never walk into a physical church, but for those that are capable and willing, I do encourage them to to find a local church if they can. So there's definitely we kind of take that hybrid approach.

Interesting. So I see in chat somebody said something about a movie events, movie events that you do on your off night. What's a movie event? Um, well, we all, we all get together in Discord and we watch a movie together. Um, in January we did Jones January. We watched through the Indiana Jones movies. Uh, this past month we did Pirates of the Caribbean. Um, so we do different kind of movie series and sagas. And uh, last year we had a big event where we watched a lot of Lord of the Rings movies together. That was a, those were marathons, those were longs. Um, but I fortunately I do have some community members who are generally uh willing to run those events for me. I occasion the one that I dedicate to doing every week is on Wednesday nights later in the evenings. We we watch anime together. So we're an intersection of a lot of different nerd cultures. We don't just do gaming. We do anime. We do Star Wars. We do, we do all of the things really. And actually, it's funny because my daughter who's twelve has never seen Star Wars, and we're probably going to do that pretty soon. So it's interesting because totally you just listed off like three or four of the the movie series, the the trilogies that that I've I've watched in the past two months in in twenty-three, like I've watched all the Indiana Jones, I've watched um, I'm watching Star Wars all the time, uh, uh, Pirates of the Caribbean, I just kicked off the other day, um, like, and it's so that's fascinating. So but let me let me let me get granular. Someone is is streaming that into Discord onto your server and then people are coming in and they're doing text chat, voice chat while they're watching. Like, what what is, yeah, so voice recordings. Thankfully, before Discord integrated this, we actually had a voice for the Mike list um chat, which is for people who come in who don't have mics, can can type in text chat. But now like an individual voice channels, there's a separate text chat thread. And so we'll we'll have the movie up and everybody will be, you know, there'll be a running commentary going as we're watching the movie. And we'll sit there and that's just a wonderful way. It's not gonna say like a Mystery Science Theater effect, but you know, you get to sit there and you have conversations about the movie while you're watching the movie together. So that's it's incredible.

Now, I mean, in my mind I'm like, is is is that licensing? It's like having a bunch of, it's like having a bunch of friends over sitting on the couch and watching a movie, you know? Yeah, it's it's like the you know the watch party feature except you're using voice where most of that is is text. Like that's and so you're getting a lot of engagement. People are watching this stuff together and they're they're laughing, they're having fun with it.

Absolutely. Cool. Well, I mean, what another way to just build community and allow people to build community with each other uh through watching uh that that's that's really interesting. Uh, flat cap says his go-to movie would be Monty Python. I'm assuming of course that would be the Holy Grail. And I'm of course flashing to, "I'm not dead yet."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

So thank you, flat cap, for you know, letting me enjoy that moment with you. Just a flesh wound. That's right. Oh my gosh, I have not watched that. My degree in college, I have radio, TV, film. I have it among us. Are you sure that is is yes, is like that scene and it says it's just a flesh wound, but it's after the imposter has obviously decapitated another crewmate. So it's funny. So good.

Um, the man, I don't even know like where to go. This has been solid. I've just been been drilling you with questions and you've been uh, you've been flowing here, man. This is this is solid. Um, where do you want to go? Like, where, what does your ministry look like in in twenty twenty-five and twenty-seven?

I think uh, it's as uh, it's fun because I get to sit here and think about well, as my as my kids grow up, we're obviously gonna have different phases of the stream, right? Peach has become a real gamer. Like she's she's really coming into her own as a gamer. And I actually, I see skills in her that could present as possibly uh becoming an esports competitor. Who knows who knows what the future holds for her. It's hard to say. Um, baby Aki, the wonderful thing about him is as he grows older, we recently just this past summer played through my favorite game of all time, which was Chrono Trigger. Um, so I'll be able to share some of those epic amazing uh games that I really really love with her, with them on stream and age-appropriate as they as they get older. And uh, yeah, I think I think that the the five to ten year plan as it were is just work through those different phases of life together. And the interesting thing about our communities, you literally get to watch our kids grow up as the stream goes on. So yeah, a lot of fun.

How do you, because I and I know like we've had conversations on the side and and one of the things that I love uh with the the Megazord, the meetings that that we had in April and and there's a documentary out about that we just published the blog. Mark uh, the tech, a guy, the digital pastor for Lux Digital Church, the tech person who

Almost accidentally just hung up on us and closed the stream. Thank you for not doing that. Maybe I need to really find the new tech guy next week. Um, but he, you know, he brought—he and some others brought this group together and there's this huge emphasis and push now within on a multiplication. How do we train the next level? How do we? How do we multiply our ideas, our vision, who we are into others?

You've shared some really intimate things and, you know, suicide, depression, um, pornography addiction, and those—those are those are legitimate. Those are heartfelt. Those are major issues that that connect that peel to the inner—the innermost. The man looks on the outward appearance. Lord looks at the heart. And so you sharing that's allowing many others to connect with you. How does that multiply? How do you get others to be as open and transparent?

I think again that authenticity breeds vulnerability. And when people, when people are able to share those things and see those things be shared in a judgment-free environment and those things have weight, they have consequences. I talk about the consequences. I talk about how my marriage almost ended. And it's as I talk about the things that we went through and the struggles and all of all of those real things, but seeing the hope on the other side of it, I think encourages people to be vulnerable and to be authentic and to really to dive into those things. And as those people continue to share about their struggles and talk with others about the things that are going, that's just a natural multiplication effect.

So do you have to coach courage? Like, I mean, it's one thing to recognize and to be vulnerable, you know, one-on-one, uh, but to say that in front of a microphone with the camera on—with you said you were an audience of 75 at the partner in front of 75 people. I mean, that's that's a legitimate thing. Does that grow naturally? Like, what does that look like?

I think, um, again, when you are called to someone, called to something, I I do believe that the Lord provides you with the strength necessary to complete the task. And so for me, I don't know, like there's there's no shame in the truth. There's no shame in Christ. And knowing that I am forgiven and the Lord loves me, um, in spite of my many failings and that I am a child of God, and knowing that that's where my identity lies, it's a lot easier to be courageous and open about those things.

Hmm. What, um, do you find like would you find those people within the crowd? Are you, would you normally speaking like—yeah, okay, yeah. How have those, have you had any of those conversations yet? Um, and I don't want to like push too hard here, but I'm just just curious because I I love what you're doing and and I think you can totally multiply because it's out. You're not getting a paycheck or much of a paycheck from it. You're influencing people that are at a huge need. You're creating a family environment for people that don't necessarily have one. Like, this there's a lot of opportunities in this space. Um, and I could see a lot of people being interested in doing something like this, whether connected to a church or not. So, um, like, have you had any conversations like that? Are people open to the idea or what does some of that look like?

Um, I haven't necessarily had any of those specific conversations yet. I mean, I've had a lot of one-on-one people coming to me and and wanting to do things and wanting to get into this, and I've, you know, provided advice and encouragement and, uh, I've I've seen some growth. Um, I think it's still kind of the early stages for a lot of that, so we'll see, we'll see kind of where the Lord takes it.

That's that's exciting. Yeah, just the potential. And when I look at gaming churches, when I look at digital missionaries, when I look at, at, you know, God, we have so many conversations along this path between, uh, between Mark and Bubba and, uh, and Jade and Jono with the esports, Jaywood, digital missionary, and now you. There's it's there's this huge potential. There's this huge opportunity to reach a different type of person. There's three point something billion gamers on the planet, and and it's not hey, let's create a church for a billion people or even a church for a million people. Let's create, you know, a million expressions of churches that can reach 30 or 50 or 100, whatever the math is. There, I know that math is playoffs. Absolutely. You really see where I'm going. And so reproducing, um, some of the ideas here is totally a win. And so taking, creating a home environment for for the people that you are is great and to reach 75, 100.

Let me ask you the question: when do you lose—maybe lose control is the wrong word—but when does the thing get too big for you, uh, in your, uh, you know, ADHD mind, uh, to keep up with? Like, where is it? I can't do this.

I think I think the biggest thing is that the stream, keeping up with the stream chat. Where we're at right now, I'm not at my capacity yet. It totally depends on how many people are talking at the same time. So often on Twitch, people aren't even necessarily chatting, but they are listening to what you have to say. Um, and so I think that there is definitely scalability there. I think a lot of it depends on how many people. Because we we have some really good mods. We have some really good people that are running events. We have some really good help right now that is going to have to grow as we grow. We're going to need people that are willing to run events. We're going to need people that are willing to, uh, continue to minister to people in the Discord. We're going to be people that are willing to moderate the Twitch chat. We're going to need people that are willing to—I have I have a guy, thankfully, that's in our community right now that has volunteered to do some YouTube editing for me, uh, on a pro bono basis right now because, again, like you said, not a lot of money. Um, but media editing is huge. Doing thumbnails, doing shorts, all of those things, there's there's so much that goes into this. And I'm fortunate to have people that are helping right now. That's going to have to grow as this grows. And you know, people spin off and continue to do their own ministries. They're going to need people to do that too. So all of that goes into that.

So as as a digital missionary, you know, you're not you're not alone in this. Like, I feel like with Jade, I mean, he's got people that are involved, but Jake's not talking about recruiting teams in some of this. But what I hear from you is like recruiting and developing and and like you're almost, uh, like an org chart type of thing between the mods and event leaders and things like that. How many people are active with what you're doing now?

I would say we probably, between moderators and other people that are contributing in different ways, let's say we have about a dozen right now.

Yeah, and they're all, all volunteers?

All volunteers.

Beautiful. So you're just, yeah, sharing vision with them, getting them excited and and encouraging them and celebrating what's happening in the part that they played.

Absolutely. So absolutely.

Hey, let's let's pivot real quick. Last question. Um, physical church. How do they get into this? Like, opinions, thoughts. What do you think?

So what's really cool about our—so I'll share the story of our physical church. What's really cool about what our physical church has done is my—I actually shared with my pastor. I said, "Hey, I feel called to do this thing on Twitch, so I'm gonna do this thing on Twitch and I'll let you guys know how it goes. If you could be praying for me," and that's what they've done. He actually has come into a few of our Twitch streams, and, uh, they actually on Sunday mornings, they they have a slide in the announcements, uh, that that talks about our Twitch stream. And it's just letting nerds know we have a few people that go to our church that are nerds, um, Destiny gamers, other people that that come into our Twitch stream and come by and hang out and game with us. And so I think that that for the physical church, it's a pretty easy ask, you know. You could even just, I don't know, like, whether it's through small groups or even just an announcement on a Sunday morning and say, "Hey, we're curious about Twitch. Do any of you stream?" And have conversations with the people in your congregation that are streamers because I guarantee you, most churches, there's probably one person that either knows what Twitch is or maybe does a little bit of streaming. And ask them about it. If they take it from a ministry perspective, is it just a hobby? Is it for fun? Are they being intentional? Like, there are definitely ways to pour into those folks, but you have to have the conversation first. There's a little bit of discovery that has to happen there. And for the physical church, if you want to treat Twitch as a mission field, which I absolutely believe it is, there's a lot of opportunity to get plugged in. And you don't have to stream yourself, but I'm telling you that the people who are streaming should definitely use your help in your support.

So yeah, how hard is it to get started? Like, if you could give coaching or advice to somebody who's wanting to get started, what would you tell them to do?

I would tell them to get a decent microphone and hit the go live button. But a microphone is huge because, like I said, most times people are listening to you more than they're actually watching what you're doing. And is like, is it important to play the video game? Is it, is it just chatting? Like, what what part does the content play in streaming?

Totally depends on what you feel called to do. I'm a nerd. I'm a gamer. I've been a gamer most of my life, um, so that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to use games to reach people. But I know people that do leather working on stream. I know people that do 3D printing. I know all sorts of people that do different things. There's lots of different ways to get involved and plugged in. But the most important thing is just to start.

Yeah. Um, okay, so Chino Mage is like, "Oh yeah, I'm I'm straight up stealing from Aki for our streams." That that's kind of funny. Uh, Zach is saying, "I see God moving across the spectrum through movies, music, streaming, art. I believe revival is coming." Um, uh, thank you in your interview is Trailblazers. I wasn't looking for Fraser, but thank you. I I appreciate that. Um, man, Aki, I just I just I like, hey, I want to like come over there and give you a hug because I love you. But on top of that, man, you're just so, um, transparent, vulnerable, authentic, real, um, genuine. You know, it's interesting. I being digital, like a lot of the words that I just said, the average church does not think can happen in digital space. Um, I think we hung out, and even from a distance, we didn't hang out as much as I would have liked to, just because we were—even when we were there, I felt like we were scattered in different directions and leading in different ways. And so I didn't get much hockey time. But even in this, man, like your heart for what you're doing, uh, the genuineness of who you're reaching and how you're doing it, uh, and and recognizing, hey, the role that I'm playing is a digital missionary. I can fill this role well, but I'm not able to to do the full picture. And I'm okay recognizing that. So let me hand it off to somebody who can do this—the deep discipleship at the church level. Like, the fact that you're even okay with that and partnering and working with others is is so good. Uh, and so, man, I want to thank you. I want to say, anyway, listen, the thing that I was not expecting to come out of this was was the movie thing where it's like, yeah, we could we create community playing movies on on Discord. And like, Discord doesn't shut that crap down. I'm like, there's got to be some legal issue that won't work. But evidently, Aki's doing it, so we're gonna we're gonna say that's that's legal. And just any hate or any lawsuit, send it Aki's way.

Yeah, that's right.

Um, yeah. Um, so it's it's so good. And and understanding what you want to do, who you are.

You want to reach, you know, St. Baird did just throw some comment and chat about that. I know that was that was a source, a topic, a target audience and personas, and yeah, and I talked a little bit about that, right? Legazord, that's where I honed in on my one figure out what you're wanting to do, find your niche, going in on year one. That is definitely important. Yeah, and so Melloroos, I can't even read Melanius. I have no idea if I said that correct. Mel, like at least I can read that much because I'm blind. Do you find out legal, uh, on that, feel free to let me know, dear veg on social and Discord. But hey guys, we're gonna we're gonna wrap the plane. We're gonna wrap the plane. Let me say nude again because like, I, my words have not been coming out of my mouth well today, but we're gonna we're gonna land the plane here. Uh, so for Aki who's engaging in chat, this has been a lot of fun, but this is Jeff with the Church Digital, Digital Church Network. Thanks for jumping on the live stream here. Thanks for watching the podcast. Thanks for being part of the show. All right, you all have a good day. Bye.