EP 14 - Can Online Worship Be Intimate & Communal?

Welcome, welcome, welcome, uh, Raiders. Good to have everybody in here. So, hope you had fun hanging out with the fish for a little bit, checking sound, make sure we're good.

I think we're good. How's everyone doing today? You having a good day? Uh, if you've not been here before to the church digital, this is where I hang out, do podcasts, do a little bit of gaming and just want to be an encouragement to those who are in digital spaces, who are doing ministry, who are missionaries. So, Roadrunner GDC, welcome in. Luces, good to see you. Pastor G here early. Pastor G, I hope you are doing well, friend.

I need to get you on the podcast sometime. Gaffina, welcome in. Papio with the raid train coming in. Okay. Don't know who else is coming over, but let me bring in ukulele for worship and make sure we got sound there and then we'll get uh running into this.

Welcome in ukulele. Hello. Hello. Hi. Ah, all right. I think we're sound good on on everything. So, anyone in the chat, let me know if it goes haywire and we will we will diagnose it as we need to.

So, this is this is running through different mic settings than I normally run them through, which is bizarre, but this is what's working for today.

So, I might just ditch this software uh because it's causing problems of OBS for some reason. Uh doesn't like to play nice. So, uh Ukulele, uh it's it is so good to have you on the podcast.

Uh you were definitely one of the first people I wanted to get on the podcast. It hasn't worked. I know you have a different schedule than a lot of people do because you have a full-time job and you stream before work.

Most people stream after work uh or they stream on on weekends who have full-time jobs. So, I think to start with, I really like to ask, how did you get started on Twitch?

And I don't mean streaming. I mean, what brought you over to Twitch as a platform to start with and then uh go into your story of why and how did you start uh streaming on Twitch?

And I know a bit of all of that, but not everyone who's going to be listening is going to know all of that. So, if you could start with that.

Yeah. And first of all, hi to my friends in chat because I'm still saying hi to like every single person and I can't do that because you can you can do that.

You could No, we can do whatever we want. We can stop. We can we we do that with depends on the podcast. Some of them we get enthralled in our conversation and we ignore chat and some we stop every five minutes and do chat.

Whatever is good for you. Yeah. Say hi to people. uh interrupt yourself when they're doing that just like you would on your own stream.

Uh that's all good. That's Twitch culture. Don't abandon the culture for the podcast. Okay. Awesome. Awesome. Well, hi guys. Um so how how did I get on Twitch?

Um I've always been a techie kind of person. Um I work in it and well I'm not I don't call myself a gamer. My husband and sons are definitely gamers.

Um my husband's been on like a mech warrior squad that played comp competitively a little bit online for a while and stuff like that.

And um as I work from home, I'm able to watch things while I work in my office and you know, you kind of look for some variety.

And so my my husband and sons were watching people game on Twitch and just happened to mention to me at one point, there's there's things other than gamers on Twitch.

And I'm like, "Oh, okay." Um, so I started checking it out. I saw a podcast somewhere where somebody was talking about doing music on Twitch.

That interested me. I started following some musicians and listening to some live music while I was on Twitch. And um, just searching for Christians, of course, because that's my heart and my ministry.

And I was leading worship at the time. And uh it at that point we didn't have the Christian tag on Twitch. So it was super hard to find anybody unless they legitimately put pastor in their name or Christian or worship or something like that in their titles.

If you didn't have that there, there was no way to find you. Oh yeah. I watch you people coming in a little late with the raid.

Yeah. Yeah. That's all it's all good. You were you were busy doing something else. That's one of the fun things too is you can be a lurker listener.

Uh I think one of the things that I love to think about Twitch in regards to the same way you would radio, you need a set schedule that you are on.

People know where you are, where to find you. Uh you don't want any dead air that's going on. And there are there are certainly shows that you have call-in shows and people are interactive or there's people who might even have email messages that they read on air, those kinds of things.

But the bulk of people are just listeners and and so depending on what you're doing and and you do worship, uh that's going to be dependent upon the what people engage with and how they engage.

Yeah. So, that's how I ended up finding Twitch just as a platform. And it's great when you're working because you can just leave it kind of play um and sit in some channel for an hour or two hours and passively listen or you can engage depending on what's going on and how you

you know how you're available. Um whereas with YouTube or podcasts, you have to kind of queue up a whole playlist which takes some time.

Yeah. and Twitch, you pick one thing that you like and they're going to rate into somebody else and you could just not even touch the keyboard all day and be entertained.

Oh, yeah. So, it's even vastly superior to TV in that way. And you have the chance to interact if you want. Yeah, it's it's it's fun in that way.

Yeah. Brain battery at 63%. She's going up as the day goes. She was 61% this morning. All right. All right. Well, then when and how did you make that start that say I'm going to go live?

Why did you decide to go live? And then talk a little bit about what you do because I love what you do. I love the uniqueness in in what you do because I'm one of those people too that like, hey, this is primarily 90% people playing video games, but there's that 10% that

aren't. And then there's that niche who are doing unique stuff of even of their own. I and this is going to sound kind of hokey, but I didn't make the decision to go live.

God made a decision. And um I I know that might sound like something Christianies that somebody might just say, but as a let's just say middle-aged woman of a certain size, um being on camera was not something that I naturally gravitated to.

Um, but I'm watching these streams and when, as a lot of people went live around COVID time, right? COVID happened, I was leading worship at a tiny tiny church and um, we couldn't use our facility that we were renting out.

We couldn't use that for a time. We didn't know how long that was going to be. It turned out it was only like three months.

Um, but we couldn't use that facility. So, they wanted me to record some worship live from my home and put it on YouTube for them to then use in the live stream that they were doing for the church because we couldn't be together either.

So, um I had to record myself doing worship live in my home for them to use. And I did play around with like editing some of it, like a YouTuber editing and adding layers and stuff.

And that was just so complicated for me and it just felt more like work than worship, right? And so I settled on I'm just going to play through the songs live.

And as I did that for my church, I realized that's basically what people who are streaming do. We go back to church regular and I'm sitting there one morning watching Twitch, realizing none of the musicians I'm watching are doing Christian music.

They may throw in a hymn or a folk song that has Christian themes in it every once in a while, but I couldn't find anybody regularly doing Christian music.

And when that realization hit my brain, I heard the voice of God saying, "You could just turn on the camera." Because every morning I'm practicing the songs that I'm getting ready for church at that time.

Um, so my first few stems were super sketchy. Aren't everyone's first couple of streams super sketchy? I made the commitment that I was going to do it, but I didn't really have the greatest software.

I didn't have a good camera. Um, I made the commitment that I was going to do it at the same time every day because it was the only time that I had, which was before work when I was rehearsing.

And um, so sometimes I didn't even have my hairbrush. I didn't have makeup on. I was just like, I'm gonna do this. And I also at the time felt like I had to have my physical Bible in front of me for some reason.

Like people need to see that people could touch a Bible and it's normal. Um so yeah, I would like say this is what I read in my Bible today.

Now we're going to practice and I would practice and yeah, it took a while for it to be something that anybody else wanted to be part of for me to get my footing.

Um a lot of people are like, "Oh, I went affiliate in two weeks." I didn't. and I knew music streamers, but it took me a while to even tell them that I was streaming because I knew it wasn't up to par yet.

And I think that was good, though. I think it was good. Uh, and I think it's good for creators to do that, to have that time where you're figuring yourself out and learning the ropes before you invite a bunch of people in who are going to judge what you're doing.

Oh, that's that's really insightful of trying to learn what it is that you do and how you're going to do it before you have lots of people being able to critique what you're doing.

Uh we talk about the church digital a lot of about experimenting and trying new things and those things. So, you were definitely doing that.

You were experimenting, you were trying, you were moving into the space in in a way that you weren't seeing others do. Uh, I knew that you had seen the Hey, uh, there's no one doing worship music.

I could bring that to the space, but I did not know you were doing the recordings for your church beforehand. So, did you have all of the tech stuff then for doing those recordings before COVID or did you get them because of CO?

I got them because of CO. Okay. So, yeah, because I didn't have a way to get audio onto my computer other than just through the camera.

And the first week that I did that, I realized that audio is junk. Yes. Especially for music, that audio is junk. So, I immediately was trying to figure out how can I make this better?

And because I work a full-time job in it, um I'm blessed to have some discretionary funds, shall we say, that I can go buy a better camera.

I can go buy a USB audio device to connect my um audio equipment to my computer. And at that point, my thought was I want to take exactly what I'm doing Sunday morning and put that through the audio.

So, I still do that. I still use the actual amp that if I was traveling, I would take this amp with me, right? And I take the audio out of that.

Um because I want when I go somewhere in person for it to be the exact same setup. It's better for my brain and it's also going to sound the same to whoever I'm playing for.

Okay, cool. Uh we did I don't know if you saw that uh Lennena like in Jenna came in and she wanted to share an update on Sam.

So uh Lennena, it's good to see you. I saw you earlier today and I knew you were going to go check on Sam. Uh Sam had a minor seizure uh and her health has dropped again and she is te was tacocartic.

Dr. Singship thinks this might be due to the stint misfiring and are checking to see if there is something to be done to fix it and you're hoping things will go as planned and she's getting better.

Uh Jenna, yeah, sorry, Jenna. Lennena, I'm Lennena like and Jenna, my brain's going to say Jenna. Lena, uh, thank you for sharing that, uh, and being a dear friend to both us and Sam, uh, which interesting.

If you're following along in the podcast, this is probably episode three of Sam being mentioned or episode four. So we're going to keep doing that if as we get updates just to keep you informed.

This is what we do in community. So if you are not familiar, you're just listening to this as a podcast, you're not watching it on Twitch, you're watching it as a video later, you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, and you're like, I don't know what this is.

Just want to explain this is part of the culture that we have here of caring for one another and creating community that Sam is a part of my own channel, Flat Cap Dapper Pastor, Ukulele for Worship's channel, several other Christian content creators. She is part of our community. We share this community together and we care for one another. So I'm just going to pause and pray for Sam.

And if you want to add anything, ukulele, you can jump on the end of it. God, we're just lifting up our dear friend Sam and the new situation of what's happened having a seizure. We are just praying for continued healing. We've prayed on this podcast before for her and we've seen her make progress. And so God, we're praying again and we're lifting her up, asking you to help the doctors to know exactly what the cause of this new situation was. If it's the stent misfiring, if it's something else, if it's her body not responding to medication, give them wisdom and insight. And give them the grace and the mercy to take the time that they need to care for her, to provide for her, and for you to just help her body heal. And thank you so much for Lena, dear friend and now a go-between to help communicate with us. We just appreciate that so much and thank you for this friendship and relationship and may you continue to bless it in Jesus name.

Yes. Amen. Exactly. Yeah. I just, I get excited. It sounds weird. I get excited when I'm seeing this because I know that God took Samarella on a journey to end up in Christian dreams when she was not a professing Christian herself.

Yes. And now he's using that to bring Lena into the community as well. And God just does some really crazy things sometimes like that. And I just love it. And I hope that Lena, I hope that you'll stick around and we'll get to know you as a friend as well. And I look forward to seeing what God does with all of this because I've heard some stories, you know, through my life and through other people's lives and I want to see what God's doing with this story.

Oh yeah, it's such a good point of the interconnectedness and that's why I love to always start with how did you get on Twitch, not when did you go live and I want to know the backstory because how did you get here is just as important as how did you, you know, moving forward. You're not able to hang around longer but thank you for checking in with us. Appreciate that so much Lena.

Yeah and thank you for the updates. We really appreciate those. Yeah. So I, you know, I think I've told you my story and you know it, but not everyone does. Pastor Brock VR is the reason that I went on Twitch. I knew about Twitch for a long time. My sons were on Twitch watching people and I'd walk through the room and they were sitting there not playing a video game. They were watching a video game and my, I like I rolled my eyes at them like, "Why would you watch somebody play? I don't understand this. I'm an old dad and I don't understand you young whippersnappers." I've got one still living at home. Yeah. And he last night I walked past his room. He's rearranged and I can see his screens from the doorway and he was playing Minecraft on one screen and watching somebody play some other completely different game on the other screen.

Yes. Totally normal. Totally normal for, you know, sons living in your basement to be doing. So no issues with that. But I knew Pastor Brock in real life in person. We were in a pastor group and he would talk about when we'd get together. Oh, I put the VR headset on and I went into VR and I'm on Twitch and I'm having conversations with people. So it was a year after COVID. Some exactly. I'm literally playing Minecraft while listening to this Twitch. It's awesome. See, proof, proof, proof right there, Zach. Proof right there. Well, I was actually in a video cohort and I can't, I can't laugh at that too much because like I said, I started out working while watching right on Twitch.

Yeah. Well, I was going to say what was funny. Last night I was on a video cohort and the youngest person in the group is also watching other things while engaging in the conversation. Like he's on the screen with his phone that you can actually see just off screen. He's looking at his camera, you know, it's like for him this is nothing new. And I'm just going I wonder what everyone else in this conversation is thinking about this. But he's from the Twitch culture so to him it wasn't odd. For everyone else that might be, I lost track of where I was going with that conversation. Pastor Brock. Oh yeah, Pastor Brock. Thank you. Thank you. There's always what's great about chat. They can bring you back to that. I do that every once in a while when I'm preaching too when I lose my train of thought. Where was I? Oh, that's where I was and I can jump back in which, you know, maybe I need to get rabbit trails on this channel too that we can count all of those.

But so Pastor Brock would talk about this all the time. And then when I stepped away from the church I was working at after COVID, I'm like I'm going to go check it out. I've got nothing else to do. So I started watching him and I think he rated you. I don't know if he rated you or you rated him one way or the other. So you, so I learned about, usually it was me rating him and then I was also modding for him. He was one of the first pastors that I found on Twitch. I said, you know, I was looking for Christians and sometimes that's the only way you could find him was to find a pastor. So he was one of the first pastors that I found on Twitch. And he usually would come on early in the day. So I'm streaming before I start work. He's streaming about the time I'm getting on to work. And so I was modding for him a lot. And I probably rated him at some point if schedules allow, but I definitely was in his stream a lot. And I remember him introducing you. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it took a while before I let him know it was me in there, but yeah. Early on, oh.

Oh, what do we got going on? We hit a follower goal. All right. Yay. Yay. 260. Thank you everyone who's a follower. Appreciate you all. 260. I don't know why that's a milestone. 250 would make more sense in my head. But you didn't set that goal on purpose. I don't set any goals. No, Twitch must do that. I'm just, I'm just on and doing stuff and goals will take care of themselves. But yeah, just like I didn't know I was going to be here until Pastor Brock started doing it and then he started telling everybody, "Hey, go follow him because he's going to stream." And I kept going, "No way. Why would I do this? I have no interest in streaming. I'm not going to be a streamer." Yeah. Who sets goals exactly? Exactly. But all of a sudden I was working at a church again and people kept asking me. So I'm like fine, I'm going to go live and I'm going to do it on Fridays and I'm going to do sermon prep for the whatever I'm preaching on Sunday. So I'll have most of my prep done. I'll go through my scripture passage. I'll talk through the process of it and I'll do that. And I think I let you know that and you rated me my first stream. So I remember that I told you if you will start at like fifteen minutes before eight. Yeah. I will raid you. Right. Right. That's how I remember it. Okay. Okay. That could be like let's do this. Okay. Okay. That probably is part of that too.

Yes. That's probably it's a six months of fuzziness back, you know, four years ago, which was really good on one level because you talked, we talked about exploring before starting. I think that's a really beneficial approach to things. If you're a missionary going to go to a new country, you would not necessarily show up on day one and say church service is starting and hope people showed up. You would go around the community and you would build relationships with people and then you would share with people that you're going to be starting something and then you would tell them, right? You would learn the culture and then when you were ready, you would say, "Hey, I'm going to start something now. I'm ready to start it. Here's the launch date." And I, I that I did not know I was doing that, but that's the pattern that I followed. I got to, I did the same thing you did. I started searching for, with no tags yet, anyone that put Christian in their title, anyone that had Christian in their name, anyone that had pastor in their name. I went out finding as many of those as I could and trying to connect with all of them, hang out in their communities. I think, I think also church, but there were two churches I think were the only ones I could find at the time was two. Not to mention there could have been more that might have just live streamed on Sunday their service which would have one or two people. They really weren't doing Twitch. They were just broadcasting to every platform. So and there's still quite a few channels in the Christian tag that they're just broadcasting something. They don't really understand the Twitch culture. Somebody just told them also go live on Twitch. Yeah. Yeah. Someone in their church said, "Put it there. Young people are there and they'll watch." And they won't. No, they aren't on Twitch to watch. They're on Twitch to engage. Right. Right. Unless you're an excellent, excellent gamer and they're watching you because you're the best in the world, which is not the not where I'm at. So they won't be coming to watch me anytime soon. Me either. So then going back to your channel, describe what you do on a typical stream and kind of what your mission, your mission statement for your stream is.

Sure. We'll start with the mission statement. Ukulele for Worship. We have Christian music encouragement because I'm a big encourager. I think that's one of my spiritual gifts. A short devotional because I think it's important to spend a little bit of time with God's word each day. And as a person who works full-time and I spent a lot of years commuting, I know it's hard to squeeze that time into your day. So I want to be that for people who that's, you know, the only time they may have to devote to that. And then song requests from a song list that's it's now all worship songs. When I started out, I had both secular and Christian, but I found that certain people who I loved, that were great friends, would choose the same secular songs all the time and fill up the entire morning with secular songs. And it came to a point where God was like, you know, that's not what I want. And I was like, yeah, it's not what I want either. So at some point along the way, I started weeding them out. And I even had a couple people who were like, you know, this song has this in it. And for me, that's a problem I struggle with. And I said, I will take that song off. It doesn't have to be there. There's no need for it. And it just got to a point where I was like, there's no need for any of it. If people want to hear secular songs, there's plenty of music streamers who are singing those. And I love those songs too, but I don't need to stream them. What I need to stream is Christian music. So that's what we do.

We have a song list for Christian music and you can in chat you can request songs. Uh you can also request prayer and we'll pray for you right on stream and then we have a discord where we pray for you afterward as well.

Um and yeah, that's so that's the thing. I go live at 6:30 in the morning and I'm done before 8:00 because I start work at 8.

I just have to clock in on the other computer over there. Um so from 6:30 to almost quarter till 8. Um, we're together doing Christian music, praying, a little bit of time in devotional.

Um, sometimes we're just chatting about people's lives or what we talked about in the devotional or some other subject that people ask. Um, they may ask questions about faith.

I don't go super deep. I don't have a seminary degree. I'm not a person who deals well with apologetics because it gets me frazzled.

Um, so I will refer some of the questions to pastors like yourself or somebody else that I know will answer faithfully or to uh a resource like gotquestions.org or something like that if it if they need to go deeper.

Also, I don't want to take over the whole stream with that when people have come to spend a little bit of time with worship.

So, and that's hard as a streamer, too. You have to kind of guide where you want to be, right? And not let people take you off track.

Yeah. And it really is what's true to your stream and your audience. And there are times you let it go from that because a person has a need uh that you need to address.

But when it's not a person with a need and it's a person with an agenda. Uh yeah, that's a there's a difference in that and you get to learn those things as you're doing it.

You you you neglected to mention um you you also have puppies, right? Yeah. They're not at the office with me right now. with my husband.

Um, but I have two cattle dogs who are on stream and one of the channel point redemptions on stream is treat the dogs. Yeah.

Um, and that that again is just it was born out of necessity. If I was going to stream in the morning and not have them barking at every little thing outside, they had to be in the office with me with the door shut.

So, they just became part of the stream. Yeah. which I know a lot of people enjoy, which is funny because I don't think I I've told you this before because you would go over to the dogs and you had a dog cam that was act so people have accused me of copying Pastor Duen with the fish. It was actually you having dogs was what? I got a fish tank. I'm going to get a camera like it was in the background.

And I'm like, I'm going to get a separate camera just for the fish so that I can I don't know if you remember my original setup that was just one one uh one uh it's it's in my uh opening that I'm just walking past one one piece of artwork on the wall.

I made this really jank janky hat rack to display my hats and I put that above a fish tank and that was my background.

Uh was was that and then I got the camera to be able to zoom in on the fish tank. It was like, "Oh, I can have something that I love and enjoy." Here, look at my fish.

At the time, it was hey, my first background, I took literally the uh the Chinese food plastic white bowls and I got pop lights from the dollar store and I hung the pop lights with the bowls over them and I put faith, love, and hope on on those three things.

And that was stuck on my wall behind me. Not this wall. the I was facing the other direction, just stuck on my wall behind me.

Faith, love. Um, it was super janky. Every morning before I started streaming, I had to go pop each of those lights on and when I finished, I had to pop each of the lights off.

Oh. Oh, but I felt like it was important to have something like that in the background. So, yeah. Yeah. And I think it evolved as I went.

So, yeah, I love I love the evolution of things and the trial of exploring new ways of doing things. Uh yeah, one other thing I did want to touch on that you do and I think you do a really good job of it is within your here's my stream.

I have certain things that are set at a particular time. So if you're coming for that, you know when it's going to be. So for instance, when I turn on the news, all I want is the weather.

Usually I know when weather is going to be is either the first thing they mention if there's weather problems or it's going to be at a quarter after.

That's when I'm going to turn it on. I don't need all the other stuff. I just want to check what's the radar, what's ever. I mean, I know I can pull it up on my phone, but I trust the person uh sharing it with me and I want to hear the explanation.

So, I love that you do that that hey, here's when devotions happen. It's at this time. Uh so, if I'm coming for that, I need to make it on time to be able to catch that part of it.

The yeah. And part part of that is for me, for my brain, because if I don't have it scheduled out, then I might forget to do it.

So, if I look and I see, oh, it's it's 7:35. I know we do announcements at 7:30 and I'm late. I need to get the announcements in.

Um, that reminds me to do them. Otherwise, I would if I didn't have a schedule to do them, I would forget. And there have been days I've forgotten.

We all have that. We all have that. But I I just think that's that was a kind of a cool way to do it to put structure within the system that if if you went to a worship service, we would call that the the liturgy of what you're doing.

So it it's part of the process. So it's it's kind of a and I know this is getting into worship style stuff, but there's a liturgy to your morning stream.

Here's what we do at this time. Here's what we do next. We flow into these things. You also have fun Fridays if you want to add anything about what what you do on fun Fridays.

We do a variety of things. Um right now we're we're rolling a dice. I have a little whiteboard dice. We're rolling a dice to see if we're going to review some lyrics or live learn some songs or play the guitar or something like that.

Um, for a while there, uh, we were just doing different kinds of songs. We might do fun Sunday school songs, goofy songs. I change it up a bit.

U, I still do some time for worship and some time for devo, but then we have a little bit of fun on Friday as well.

Yeah. So, and my lingo for all this, you know, you were talking about liturgy. My lingo for it is segments. When I when I talk to other content creators, I'm like, you got to have your segments so that you have the time to do the things that you want to do.

Yeah. And and if I wasn't if you weren't doing you weren't doing music and worship, I probably wouldn't think of it as liturgy, but it it does it does it does make that transition over.

And I'm and I'm thinking of anyone who's listening who might be thinking about uh you are in worship because I think you're the first person I've had on that's doing music.

So I just want to talk in that language and think through some of that from that standpoint. The other thing I really love about what you're doing, so if I were going to be starting a digital church, one of the things that was really I want to say fell flat I felt in COVID was worship because I'm just watching. I'm not going to sing at home. I mean, I was usually, you know, in the church anyway, but I'm just thinking like me personally, if I'm at home watching, like I got the whole video.

If it's not live, I'm skipping over all the music and I'm going to the sermon. Even if you post the whole thing, I'm going to skip that because I'm not going to sing when it's live.

But what you do that I would do, I would have a request half hour of worship before I would go to the next segment.

I would have the here put your request in. I might do it several different ways. I could do it like you with put your request in.

I could set it at certain points that you're in the community to do that. I could do it as a poll to be able to do it.

But I would have it interactive because the interactiveness of that and putting the chats and emoji or the emojis in chat to me makes it worship and participatory that just sitting there with one person singing one song or two songs or three songs that I don't know the songs or I didn't pick the songs or I'm not engaged with the songs just felt like can we skip ahead even though I love music and I love to listen to music it it wasn't translating to a worshipful piece.

But, you know, I I do mod for you, so I'm there all the time. I'm not always active as a mod. I should be more active sometimes, I think.

Uh and I'll miss something because you're good. I know. I'm I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to listeners. Uh I know we're good with each other on how we do that.

But there there's even when I'm just lurking, I feel worshipful in a way because I know somebody picked that song and your mic cut out for me.

Oh, there it's back. Okay. Yeah, I don't know what that problem is. Uh there's something in my system. I know it'll just do that.

I'm just explaining. I don't know why that is. It'll it'll just do that every once in a while. Just it the mic disconnects and reconnects.

But I was I was saying there's something about the interactiveness of a person selecting a song and you singing it for them. But you're not just singing it for them.

You're singing for all of us that feels like community in worship that I have still yet to see anything feel like community worship together.

Uh when it's just a set list and someone performing and I don't mean that in a negative way. I mean it I don't feel participating when you come with three songs and tell me what they are and then we move to the next part of a worship service online.

So I just think you do a really great job. I love that that's coming through for you. I love that. That and I have to give credit to the other musicians on Twitch, you know, for for getting all those systems set up with the song list and and having that and teaching me a little bit about how to interact with your community in music in Twitch, you know, um having emotes that go with certain songs or or certain things that allow people to say or do during certain songs um to engage.

There were some awesome streamers, and I'm not going to name names because some of them aren't even streaming anymore, but there were some awesome streamers that I learned that from brought it into the worship space.

But yeah, um to your point of skipping over your church's worship, I mean, you can go on YouTube and find a dozen groups that do worship better than your own church's worship group does if you want to just listen to a song um and do your own worship.

So, it has to be different. It has to be a corporate worship in the Twitch space, right? And I think a lot of churches miss the corporate nature when they just go live with what they do at church.

Um, how do you bring people who are remote into the experience? You have to give them instructions of what they're supposed to be doing.

How are they supposed to be thinking? What should their posture be in their heart, in their mind? Um sometimes I will give uh physical body instructions even can you can you bow your head can you lift your hands what can you do um not all the people are able to do all the physical things right uh we mentioned lurkers earlier we have lurkers in chat and I had a good friend who lurks who reminded me recently like when you're saying something to be done in chat remember that some of us are lurking and we can't put things in chat so find ways to include us please Um, so I've been more mindful that some people are listening, but they aren't sitting at their keyboard. They're listening while they're driving or they're listening while they're getting their kids ready for school.

I'll have I'll have my phone I'll have my phone sitting on the counter with my earbuds in while I'm walking around getting ready in the morning.

I'm getting my tea over here. I'm going back over here. The phone is sitting. Oh, I got to go grab it to do stuff at times.

But yeah, you did mention too, which you know what, I don't know if anyone really who's listening elsewhere, but if you're on Twitch, you understand this of creating emojis that are for the community because of the community.

And yeah, absolutely. An emoji for a song is such a brilliant idea. You have that. I mean going back, you have the praise hands, which is great, but then you've created some. I can't remember what song it is, but like a roaring lion is so you've got gratitude.

Oh, that's what it is. It's gratitude. You've got you've got an awesome little lion that roars tremendously. It's really, really cool. So those kind of interact, but that's what I'm getting at and that's why I'm want to. That's why I'm taking an extended time talking about this because anybody that's listening to this podcast that has a physical. There we go. Goofina putting it in the chat. Line in chat. Yeah, which nobody watching is going to see it.

I don't put the chat on screen here. So sorry. I also try to think like, you know, because on Twitch you can use your emotes in other places.

So I always try to think like how can this emote be used elsewhere as well. So I think the roaring lion, you know, it's going to work in a lot of Christian's dreams and for other songs besides Gratitude from Brandon Lake, which has, you know, you've got a lion inside of your soul. Um, but yeah, um, going back, it's just like I said. I try to find ways for people who are watching and participating through chat to feel like they are part of the experience.

Yes. Um, to translate the corporate nature of being in a room with other people who are worshiping into the digital space. And it's hard because when you're sitting in church, I don't know if you do this, but I look around at the people around me.

I know some of their struggles and some of their lives and I see them worshiping and I'm encouraged to worship. Um, or I see them struggling to engage and I'm praying for them as I'm singing.

Um, and that's the corporate nature in the church environment. So we had to figure out, you know, how to kind of represent that. Yeah.

In chat. Yeah. And that's and like I was saying, I wanted to spend time on that because anybody who might be in worship or in their church and they have that same experience of feeling like it's not participatory.

I'm not engaged in it when I watch my church online. I wanted to spend some time fleshing that out because there's small little changes.

There's intentionality about things. There's interactive pieces that can change it from I am a content consumer to I am in community as we're worshiping.

Mike went again worship. Hey Borne Wayne, thank you for the follow. Appreciate it. Oh, my mic went out again. Sorry. Yeah, I I think the key word that you said there was intentionality.

Yes. Like come to it with the intention. Try different things. What works for me might not work for everyone. Um, but but come to it with the intentionality.

Um, like I, we were talking before about learn the culture, all that kind of stuff. You know, just be aware. Don't just try to do what you're doing somewhere else with a camera in front of you.

That's never going to work. I had a pastor recently who was talking to me about the growth of his digital church um and the YouTube channel.

He's like, "It's the same 20 people every time." And I said, "Two things." I said, "First of all, anybody can watch a church on YouTube.

And if they're going to choose a church to watch, it's probably not going to be yours. It's going to be one of the big ones that everybody else knows, right?

And second of all, if what you're doing for those 20 people is bringing them closer to God, then it's worth it. Yes. Totally. So keep doing it for those 20 people.

Yeah. Uh Pastor G was saying, repeat that. So I, what I was implying there was we need to think about how do we do it for those 20 people so that they're not just consuming content but that what we're doing is creating community with one another.

So it doesn't matter what platform you're on. You're going to have to adapt to the platform you're on to be able to do that.

By the way, if you're watching this on YouTube later, YouTube now has community and we're going to start experimenting with community. I don't know what that's going to look like, but it's going to be interactive back and forth videos and posts and stuff like that.

So you could, but if you don't have that, and we haven't had that, you'd have to do it in the chat or you have to go somewhere else for community.

Uh, you know, just speaking of another uh church out there, they do worship service in a game that doesn't let you talk in the game.

So what do they do? They have Discord up so that you can have conversations with the people who are attending because there's no other way to engage.

So you have engagement on one platform while the service is performed or together however you want to describe it in another. So you're physically present in the service uh with your avatar but you are listening and another platform and engaged another platform.

So be creative with what you have. Fill in the gaps of what you don't have. Uh, if you're a church that's doing Zoom and gathering.

I still have done a couple of Zoom ones that had worship and I didn't feel engaged and I wanted to turn my camera off and my mic off to make sure, cuz I wasn't joining in the singing even if I was going to participate.

It it felt intrusive to me. So like it was like inviting me to be up on stage when I shouldn't be up on stage is what that felt like for me.

Um, so I think it's all of those things that you bring of thinking through the process of what the experience is like on the other side and how can you pull people in at whatever level they're comfortable of being able to participate.

I know one thing that bothers me a lot is the pastor or whoever's up front berating people for sitting in the back. Like why don't you move up front?

We need to, we have seats up front today. I like, I go to so like I visit so many churches and I hear this as a constant thing like this would be like telling people that are lurkers on Twitch, you better post something in the chat.

Why aren't you active in, like people are where they're at? Or if you do, the people are there, right? Right. Or or another thing that bothers me that is is the uh hello and the response is hello.

We better try that again cuz that wasn't a good hello. How about they just told you where they are today? They just identified they're not doing well.

So how about meet them where they are instead of I need a performance out of you to show that you're you're here to worship God.

No, I might need to change my song list uh and give to you more than I'm trying to get you to give to to everyone else.

But anyway, pet peeves aside there of of things that happen in church. Uh those do carry on in streaming too and people have to be aware of that like you know even on my channel this morning we didn't have very many songs in the queue.

Um and it's I try to give options like you're going to pick songs or I'm going to experiment with a new song I'm learning or if you need prayer be sure to ask for prayer and then chat can kind of tell me where they're at with that.

Um, if I don't hear anything then I know I'm kind of on my own. I might as well pick a song that I want to do.

Um, but if they're responding, here's a prayer request, then, you know, that's why they're quiet because they're struggling and they need some prayer. If they respond with another song that they they just, you know, weren't weren't paying attention and didn't add a song yet, you know.

So yeah. And there are people who never sensitive and giving options. Yeah. And there are people who will never request a song. And there there are people that don't know how to do it yet if they're new.

Uh, and then there's people that request the same song every time. And those are all good. Or I have to wait until Christmas and then I get to request the same song every time.

I have an aunt who watches the VODs. Yes. Like seriously, if I miss a day, um she will text me, "Where is your video from today?

Are you okay?" That's how we keep in touch in between. Um and so I'm also sensitive to the fact that like whatever I'm doing, it's going to be recorded if she's going to see it.

Um and there are other people who watch too. Sometimes people who miss a stream might watch a VOD because that's their devotional time for the day.

Um, so I try to keep it moving. I try to keep it on target, you know, that kind of thing. Um, but whatever you're doing online, even if you don't save your vibes, there are ways for people to record it.

Yes. So be sure that you're being faithful. Yeah. Yeah. Well, just let's just back up further than before Twitch. How did you get into music and and then into doing worship music and then why the ukulele?

Um, music and worship music have always been a part of my life. Both my parents were in ministry as I was growing up. My mom uh was teaching Sunday school.

She was a first grade teacher. Um, and as I grew, she grew and she did our youth group and we did vacation Bible schools together.

And I was always, you know, the basically a pastor's kid, even though neither of my parents were pastors. U my dad was always in the music ministry and still is.

And when I was leading worship, he was on my team. That was one of our prerequisites was um I was leaving uh we I moved back down to Florida where I'm from, where my dad is, and my mom had passed away.

And I went to the church that I grew up in, but he was in a worship team at a different church. And I felt God leading me out of that church and I said, uh, if he's going to lead me to a different church, I want my dad to come with me, right?

So we had to find a church that we both could serve at. Um, so like I said, I've just always been in it. But as I had as I got married and had kids, I wasn't really pursuing it um in any meaningful way.

We were bouncing around from church to church as we moved. And I didn't connect with any church in the way that I had the church that I grew up in.

And I felt like um that was what I was looking for and I didn't find it again until recently. Um when I was at the church that I grew up in and I was serving just as a singer on the worship team.

I love the leadership there. They're awesome. And it was that time when um American Idol had a certain young lady who was playing a ukulele and I happened to have one that I had bought on vacation hanging on the wall.

My husband's birthday comes up and he's like for my birthday. I want you to learn how to play the ukulele like this girl who's on American Idol.

And I was like really? Um, well, I do have it hanging there and I know how to sing and I know how to read music because I taken music lessons as a kid because my parents were involved in ministry and everything like that and um, okay, I'll try.

Well, I'm practicing the songs to sing for church that Sunday and it was in the key, which is great for the ukulele. So I finished practicing the songs to sing.

I pulled down the ukulele. It had a little book with it on how to play chords. I practiced the first chords that they give you and I looked at my sheet music for Sunday and they were the same chords and I was like, "So now that I know these chords, I can play this song." And I did. And it was like God flipped the switch. You can now do this. You can now accompany yourself while singing.

And I tell people all the time, I think God did not flip that switch when I was a young person, right? Because I would have used it for all the wrong things.

It would have been selfish. And when he turned it on this time, I was like, I have a new way to serve you. And the first thing that I did was tell my worship leader at the church that I was at, I want to do a special.

I'm getting choked up. Yeah. Yeah. I want to do a special. I want to play the ukulele and sing. And she was like, yes.

Immediately, yes. I think she had probably been praying for that for me, too, for God to give it because she had me playing second keyboard.

I don't really play a keyboard that well. Yeah, that's a joke in my channel. Um, I know how to read music. I know how to play keyboard and I know how to sing.

I can't do all three at the same time. Right. Right. Um, so yeah, I think she was excited to hear that. And um, the way that happened was a whole funny story that had to do with the hurricane and everything too because um, I uh, I ended up leading worship with the ukulele. I think the next time I did a the second time I did a special um, because the hurricane had taken out power and people weren't there and things weren't working right.

And so I ended up leading worship that Sunday with the ukulele because it was the only thing that was working. Yeah. I God was like, "Not only are you doing it, but here you go." Yeah.

Yeah. I I love those those moments of realization of God brings you to a place that if it would have been sooner, it would have been in selfishness that it would have been that way.

And I think Joseph is a little bit in that story that he gets the visions or the dreams that he has about what's going to happen.

And I think he's a little bit of a braggadoc. I I take Joseph as kind of arrogant when he's young and flippant about God's going to use me and he doesn't yet have grace and mercy.

Uh, so God has to take him through this journey before he puts him in the place where he's going to now uh, love on everyone else and serve everyone else uh, in a different way.

And then Pastor G says, "I used to play guitar but couldn't sing." So maybe God will flip that switch. Maybe God will flip that plays guitar too.

You guys, if I could play guitar, I would. But I got short stubby fingers and I can't I can't fret all those cords. Yeah, I just can't.

But but that's just so cool how God will do that at times. Not allow or open a door for you because he's protecting you from yourself and what you would do with that giftedness and and doing all those things.

Like I like when I was coming out of seminary, I really I mean in the back of my mind, I had this thought. I wasn't like praying for it, but I go, "God, if you know, you you make me a TV personality and I'm preaching on TV, I wouldn't be opposed to that.

That'd be great. I'm on Twitch, okay? There's not thousands and hundreds of people ever going to see me." So, he's he's given me the platform to be in front of the camera without the audience that I would have, you know, let go to my head if it happened 20 years ago.

Yeah. So, I don't I would have used it the wrong way. It would have gone to my head. I would have fallen like so many fall and I would not have been grateful and appreciated it.

And right now, like there are moments in my stream, I don't know if you can see that in my face, but there are moments in my stream where I'm like, I can't believe I'm doing this.

This is so much fun. Yes. Yes. Like I am just so blessed to be able to every morning do this, you know? Right. Right.

I don't know anything else in life that feels that way other than perhaps when you have a new new marriage or a new child.

Um but yeah, yeah, when you were when you were in the zone of using your giftedness by God, it it doesn't matter what it is.

Yeah, that's that's just awesome. I don't know if you saw we had a a prayer request from Soaring Eagle. Uh what you got going?

So Soaring Eagle uh mom needs prayer. She's now looking into getting help for co-pays on the dialysis treatment. The process of talking to her about it uh just needs help.

This is a life-saving treatment. That's a huge need. So, yeah, it's hard to ask for help, especially when you're asking, you know, doctors and stuff.

They sometimes you have to know how to ask and what to ask. Like, you guys can't give me a payment plan, but are there charities?

Are there these things? Are there bad things? You got to just keep poking and poking and be your own advocate. And that's hard. Yeah.

She needs prayer to shore her up and strengthen her in that. The other thing you can do, uh, I think the number is 211.

If you call the number 211, wherever your mom lives, it will give you charities that are in your area that will help with certain things.

So, I don't know that there's one that will help with dialysis. It. I mean, I know some people will like the Red Cross will will drive back and forth.

You can get chauffers. You can get someone to stay with you. You can get help with medical bills. Uh in a community that I lived before, we had a $100 uh that wasn't earmarked for anything.

You could come and request $100 because you were struggling. Uh and we would we would give you a $100. So, if it was medical, we well, we'll pay directly to the medical and here's a hundred for you.

It helps a little bit. So, uh, yeah, you told her to ask the doctor and call insurance company. She said she is talking with whomever now.

Good. So, we'll pray for that. But just giving you a couple other suggestions to anyone else listening. If you're in a community and you don't know what help there is in the United States, you can usually do 211 uh just like 911, but it will tell you the different charities and things that are available. Uh, yeah, it's even available in the in your area. Yeah. Jo Goofina. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Let's say a prayer for her.

Yep. Do you want to go ahead and pray for her? Sure. Absolutely. I love Soaring Eagle. She's a She's awesome. Yeah. Um Lord, we just um we lift up Soaring Eagle's mom to you.

It's hard to ask for help. Sometimes it's hard to just spend all that time on the phone trying to find the right resources. Um but this is important.

It's a lifesaving medical need, God. So, we just ask you to send tons of strength. Yes. We ask you to send people who have a heart to be willing to help and to find answers um and just wisdom to know which direction to go and who to call um and people to say yes and to serve you. Amen. Amen. Amen. Yes. God, we're just praying for all those resources that are needed and for her to get the treatment that she needs in Jesus name.

Amen. Uh so why don't we go ahead and earlier today she was almost unwilling to do the dialysis because of the bills. Um it's a movement already that she's trying to make those calls.

Oh well thank you for that update. I did not hear that part of it. Uh I had your stream in one ear but then I was helping my mom.

My mom's at my house. I was helping her with some stuff and like I don't know what happened on stream today. I missed it.

But uh that soaring eagle is is in your stream uh every day. Uh if she's not there then then we're asking the question of what's going on uh and praying for her.

So yes and also uh yeah hugs too mom. Yes. Uh there are a lot in the channel who refer to her as mom. So and yes d exactly dialysis is not fun.

You were on it for three years. The depression that comes with it is real. Yeah. Uh my my wife uh I know you know this story.

My wife donated a kidney to her aunt. I want to say going on three years maybe even yeah three years uh just passed in March I think it was so the dialysis journey is a struggle today was just talking to her doctor she's going to for blood work and now Tuesday is surgery for the port okay yeah do it God will provide yes absolutely and if you share that GoFundMe you share with churches you share with other charities.

God God will open up doors for that. So yeah, I think, you know, just going back to the helping uh others that we can do in community.

A church will do that in a physical space. You know, if you're a member of a church, they'll do that. Not they're not going to always pay for everything, but sometimes fundraisers will happen for people.

Sometimes they'll just give a gift that they're able to do. I started doing that with pass the cap and and the first one I did was someone who needed medical needs and uh I think we ended up collecting $600 or $800 towards it.

It wasn't the full amount but they had to prepay for their surgery for their son uh beforehand. So it helped them get there. So sharing it soaring eagle wherever you can on your mom's behalf uh I just think that's a wonderful thing that you're doing for her.

Yeah. And being there to encourage her too. We've had um you've had a structured pass the cap. Yeah. We've just had the opportunity to be there for people in different ways.

Sometimes it's financial, sometimes it's other ways. And one story of community that we've had was um we had somebody who was in our community who contacted me on Discord like an hour before stream and was asking for prayer and said, "I'm actually sitting in the emergency room waiting room." And I said, "Are you there by yourself?" And he said, "Yes." And I said, "Can I ask somebody to call you and be with you or be with you on Discord so that you're not by yourself?"

And he said yes. So I asked another member of our community, I said, "Instead of coming to my stream, will you um DM so and so and be with him while he's in the ER?"

And they said yes. And just because we have that community that we talk to one another even when we're not streaming we're in Discord talking to one another.

Um somebody was in the ER not by himself. And there's so many especially because it's a gaming platform. There's so many young men on Twitch who are living alone.

They're out on their own for the first time. They're maybe far away from their parents and they don't have people to connect to and this is their connection.

So being there for people um and also you know people who are later in their life and their kids have left home and they have nothing better to do with their time and you know because it's not just kids that play games y'all.

Games have been around for a long time. We were playing Mario Brothers back in the day. So um gamers that are older in life and maybe are alone don't have a good faith community.

Don't u maybe they have medical challenges or physical challenges or they're again they've moved far away from the people that they know for job reasons or whatever.

Um we can be community in a digital space in very real ways even if we're not physically there. Yeah, absolutely. Uh we'll just stick on that topic because I love asking that question.

When have you had the opportunity to be receive a unexpected blessing? So, you shared one where you were able to reach out and help bless someone else through what you're doing online.

When is it that you've been able to receive an unexpected blessing by being a in the streaming community? Um, little things, physical things. Um, so just with subathons and streaming groceries and stuff, sometimes people will send things.

Um, Alice in the Palace sent me McDonald's while I was streaming once, which was a total shock. She's like, "Somebody's at your door." I'm like, "What are you talking about?" She's somebody's at your door.

Go check your door. So that was that was hilarious and fun. Um but also um just I think sometimes people will contact me and they'll say, "You didn't know this, but when you sang this song the other day, or when you talked about this the other day, it encouraged me in this this this way." Um or through helped me through this time. Or I have one person who started volunteering for something because of what I was saying and doing.

Right. Right. And has actually taken it farther than even what I do. And yeah, we'll get back to that story later. I know who you're talking about.

We'll get back to that story later. But story. Um so I know that doesn't sound like things I've received, but that's what I received though because it's a confirmation that like God is like, "Yes, what you're doing matters." Yeah.

Absolutely. And that's that's all I need to receive out of it. Ah, that's awesome. Um, and if if another story pops in your head as we're going along that you're like, "Oh, I just need to tell this one about someone else." Go ahead and do that.

Just interrupt. We'll we'll go in that direction. But I want to not neglect talking about Taco. Uh, so let's just transition over to Taco.

Uh, because it's Thursday, so it's Taco Thursday, right? No, I mean, not not those kinds of tacos. Uh, what is Taco? How did it come about?

How did that form? What what and then what is it? So, just however you want to describe, wherever you want to go, and I'll have I'll ask follow-up questions with that.

So, Taco stands for the Alliance for Creative Outreach, and it's a group of streamers who've come together to reach out to other content creators and help them get on the right path using their content creation faithfully for God uh with training and resources and community.

That's what we provide. And h how that started was we were talking earlier about being on Twitch and just finding people because they were pastors or other Christians that are on Twitch.

And one of my people in my community suggested a raid target because when you finish your stream on Twitch, part of the culture is that you raid into somebody else's stream.

You take everybody with you. It's part of the platform. Um you take everybody with you to somebody else's stream so they can keep going.

Um and somebody suggested to me this guy, Christian Ninja. I had never seen him before. So, we raid over to the stream and he's talking about contention.

He's talking about his struggle in life with content creation. And we were like, I was immediately like, "Yes, me too. Yes, me too. Yes, I've seen that with other people.

I know people, you know, we started content creation on Twitch. We started streaming as Christians and it's a struggle and we don't know how to do it and we, you know, we're trying to find an audience.

We're trying to figure out what we're saying. We're trying to conduct ourselves well. All these struggles that that he was having, I was having, other content creators were having all in the same way.

So, we had that conversation, I think, across a few different streams. And then he had the idea of like, well, well, what if we met and talked about this?

Like, what if we like had a little group? And we weren't thinking a nonprofit at that time. We were just thinking of like have like basically Sunday school class for content creators or something like that.

And when we talked about it more Discord, we had a little group that started forming around let's do this thing. And he said, "Well, I I've taught John Maxwell's leadership class before we could kind of use that but tweak it for streaming." So we did that.

Our first group of like eight or ten people was a core of people who were like, "How can we faithfully serve God in the digital space?" And we used John Maxwell's leadership course, the first book of it, I think it was, um, to to kind of walk through what that would look like.

And from that came um, asking Christian Ninja to actually turn that into a book about content creation. He went and got their permission to use excerpts and the format of their book uh, for the book that he wrote and the class that we continue to teach now.

And as part of that also we said you know this needs to be because we couldn't request money for it. Right. Right. Um we said we need to set this up as a nonprofit so that we can fund more things that we want to do.

We want to create resources. We want to be able to support streamers and content creators of all kinds in other ways. There's a lot more that we want to do.

Um, so we figured that out all on our own. Um, how to form a nonprofit. Some everybody using their different gifts in different ways.

Um, and we've been a nonprofit for about a year. In fact, I think I just saw Christian Ninja say in Discord tomorrow is officially our first full year.

Oh. So, wow. Cool. Very cool. As a nonprofit, we existed as a group. Right. Right. I knew I knew you existed. Yeah. I knew you existed uh prior to that.

I did not know when your official uh nonprofit status because you apply for it and you wait after you do all the work of everything that goes into that.

But I do I do remember some of those conversations that were going on and Christian Ninja and I were having those. I think you and I had a couple of those and I really was wanting to encourage all of you like yeah I did see did see that need and I did see

the space uh for that and wanted uh all of you to be able to to move into that and succeed. Uh I don't know if you are having uh some issues ukulele I'm I'm seeing fully blurry screen now for you.

I don't know if it's showing up on your side. Let me see if I can change the h maybe it's sending sending too high of a resolution.

Not sure I know how to change that. Okay. If if it's not uh like on my end, I'm not showing that I'm having drop rate.

So, it's you coming in. Let me just check if there's anything else going on that I can that I have open that I can shut to make sure I'm not having a problem loading you.

The the fun here of on the-ly technology tech solving problems. No, I have nothing else uh artificial running in the background. Okay. There's nothing I can change on mine.

I've been having a few network issues myself. So maybe it's on my side and it's just uploading you while I'm uploading everything else. Yeah.

In the stream together window, which I know yours says you can't watch while you're streaming. Um it's clear, but on the stream itself, it's blurry.

So it's it's clear on your end. Let me Yeah. So that tells me what I'm sending is fine. It's just the getting it over there part.

Okay. It's somewhere between you and me then. Okay. Can you I'm going to turn on your side change the resolution. It's sending my um slot.

It doesn't let you ch or doesn't let me under Twitch change the resolution or OBS while you're running it. Okay. I can do it if I stop streaming.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to turn the fish cam off or the the pond stream and see if that frees up my network.

Oh, I just found a performance setting. Let me bump myself down to 720p and we'll see. Give it a minute. See if that clears it up.

Well, we did a couple things. It's looking better already. So, let me look here under the Nimbus licked the camera. Nimbus is not Nimbus is my son's cat.

Not here. He would do that kind of thing. You know what? I can turn I found that under the uh the streaming together settings.

I bumped mine down to 720 as well. There we go. That'll help. Yeah. Well, it's still still a little blurry. Let me see. Is there another setting here?

No. I click on that. It says whisper guest, pin guest, move the slot. I don't need to do any of those things. So that's not what we need.

Okay. Well, like yeah, you were saying as maybe I could turn the Well, let me I check what the stream Sorry everybody, we're just kind of problem solving here so it doesn't keep going on.

Stream health. That's what I want. Uh, it says excellent on my end and I'm at 5,000 kilobytes a second with no drops. So, it's got to be the me uploading you is the problem.

But, it looks good now. So, yeah, we did what we could. Why is it really still? Well, it it it pixelated or it went choppy for a bit and then it just went blurry.

So, um Okay. So, we were talking about taco. back to that conversation. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things we don't do at Taco is we don't teach tech because people can go out on YouTube and find a million different streamers who are going to tell them how to set up their tech,

right? And it's going to change from month to month. New OBS changes came out. This new platform came out. This new product came out.

So, we don't teach people about the tech. We don't teach people about the algorithm. We're specifically focused on how can you faithfully serve through your content creation.

Um some of that is on um obviously knowing God well, right? Um following your own faith journey, being true to your faith journey. Some of it also is how can I be faithful in the work of the thing, right?

So planning ahead, right? Um using the tech well, being faithful to your community as well, how you respond to people, how you meet people where they are.

One thing we've all learned on Twitch is that that people sometimes have very interesting ways to enter stream. No. And they say things that don't seem right and don't seem appropriate.

And a lot of people's first gut reaction is, I just want to ban this person. Yeah. Which you can do. You can say they're not allowed here.

Um but if we did that every time, we wouldn't have people like Alice. Some of you guys know Alice. That's right. Um there are so many people who wouldn't be in our community if we banned everybody the first time they pushed.

Right. And and sometimes those people are trying to see, oh, you're a Christian. How will you treat me? And and they've gone to other Christian streams and they've got instant ban and they're like, see, this is how Christians are and Christians just reject me, right?

Christians just reject me. So then I don't have to listen to their message because they reject me. So, yep. I I love the the process that you guys have for thinking through uh how do you reach people?

How do you intentionally do things? How do you do constant improvement? Uh how do you be creative in the ways that you are? You do you do a great job with the the training that you have and thinking through those things.

I don't necessarily think I know everyone that is in Taco or watch them regularly. I think I know most of them, but everyone is unique and different and brings totally different uh vibe to what they're doing, which is awesome.

Hey, Gamer Knight, welcome in. The the myself, Christian Ninja, and the quiz king were from our original class. We had some others who have come and gone or maybe who didn't stream but were part of that class because they wanted to learn um and they support the community in other ways.

Um, and then as we've gone through, we've done seven training classes. We're right now in the process of scheduling class number eight for the fall.

Um, as we've gone through, we've gained some team members and also some volunteers within the community. And even if people don't join our team or volunteer within our community, we know that what we've taught them serves them well wherever they end up serving God.

Um, but we've added Samus 419 and Donnie Dreams to our team as well. So, we currently have those five. Okay. So, there wasn't anyone I didn't know.

We have some recent trainees who are applying and hopefully going through the onboarding process right now. So, I'm super excited about them joining. And I'm not going to name names in case, you know, doesn't always work out.

It doesn't always sometimes people come in with an agenda and we're like, that's not our agenda. You if you're coming in to be a team member for Taco, right?

you can take the training and use that in your content creation wherever you're going. It's valuable. Um, but to join our team, you have to have your thing that you're doing, but then also be doing taco stuff on top of it.

And it's a lot to ask. Yeah. It's not just playing. It's not a team like we all play Fortnite together. There's a lot more behind the scenes, right?

So, so how many times have you run the courses, the classes that you have? We just finished the seventh. The seventh one. Okay. So, that's fantastic.

And it's an eight-week class the way we're running it right now. We're looking at ways to change that up. It started out being every whatever schedule we set like Saturday morning, but it wasn't originally Saturday mornings, but it started out being every session, uh, once a week live with Christian Ninja in Discord. And then, uh, after a few runs of that, we said, "How can we expand this to better serve people?" because some people can't be there at that schedule.

We have people who are in different time zones even. So we said, well, let's record each of the sessions and make a virtual class.

So we've been running the virtual class. I think this was the third or fourth time I've run it as a virtual class where we set out the assignment Saturday morning, and you have all week to watch the video, read the chapter, and respond in the Discord chat, and that's how we run the class so that you don't have to be there at a certain time if that schedule doesn't work for you.

Um, and that's working well. We're also looking at a way to maybe do it as a boot camp where we would run all eight sessions over two days.

Okay, we're that for the fall. Um, we're trying to figure out if we can make that work and also if it would serve people well because it's one thing to say, well, we got through the material. It's another thing if they can actually take that and apply it. Right. Right. Yeah. Which doing different iterations. I don't know if you called your first class, you know, beta or alpha or any of those things, you know, we talk about beta test.

It was a class at the time meeting together to talk. Right. Right. So it was, yeah, it wasn't it wasn't even alpha yet. You know, it was it was proto-alpha before you could even beta test it.

But the iterations of finding out and discovering when you get beyond time zone and you start to become connected with people around the, you know, the globe and they want to be a part of what you're doing and you want to help them, you do need to figure out a little bit more of being asynchronous, of not on a schedule, but you still need to be there to guide them in because it's not about content consumption because you can go get that anywhere.

It's about the engagement with people back and forth of how are you understanding this? How are you thinking about applying it? How can we help you?

Uh, yeah, that I love that approach. We do the same thing with the Church Digital and we're trying to always modify that and move it in a new direction.

And so we did our Equipping Digital Missionaries beta was thirteen weeks and the, uh, uh, I say the different generations, I'm not going to pick on any generations, but one generation was like thirteen weeks, this is all there is, why can't we go another thirteen weeks on top of this? And the next one was like thirteen weeks, like, like, can we do it in like a month? Why can't we get this over with? Like, I mean, it's good stuff, but I don't have that attention span.

And so we're at a five-week with an intro meeting the first week and then five weeks that follow. So it's technically six weeks.

And that's have that has a good feel to it. It's not too long and you actually get to know people. That's one of the things that a three-week course doesn't let you really do is get to know people on a personal level.

So yeah, there's that balance. Some of the some of the same struggles and some of the same, uh, focus. The Church Digital and Taco I think dovetail very well together because the Church Digital you're taking traditional church and teaching them how to work in the digital realm.

Yeah. Ministry made digital and we're taking digital natives and teaching them how to do ministry. Right. Right. There's definitely those, not just not just stream whatever you want to stream and be a Christian, but how to minister to people through what you're doing.

Yeah. Uh, so complimentary. Oh, the, yeah, I definitely want to do complimentary ministry. Uh, there's going to be overlap because it's ministry, but where it doesn't overlap we like, hey, if there's people coming to me I want to say have you considered Taco?

I definitely make recommendations or at least go watch the Taco creators and learn from them. Even if you don't take the Taco course, there's more people to learn from, uh, and to get connected with.

What is the future plans for Taco and how do people get connected with Taco? Okay, so future plans, like I said, we're focused on training, resources, and community for Christian content creators.

Um, anybody's welcome in our community, um, in our Discord. Um, but we, our focus is on supporting Christian content creators. So that's where we're we're always going to put all our effort and finances and all of that kind of stuff.

So, hold on, Jen. Lena just posted something. Oh, I want to not miss that. Okay. The problem here is the stent has displaced. Okay. Causing her heart to stop. So there the stent that was placed moved. Okay. Uh, not working properly and it, and if it's fixed everything will be okay.

They're going to do that in an hour from now and everything is going to be fine after that. All I can ask for you is to keep her in your prayers.

Yeah. As it is one thing I see working so much well, um, and everything. Yes. Yeah. Let's just let's just do that. Thanks. Thanks, Lena.

Uh, yeah, God, I am so grateful that you answered our prayers, uh, from earlier and they have discovered the problem and now they're going to take action to help, uh, Samarella.

And so we're just praying that you guide the hands, uh, that you guide all of those who are going to be caring for her, that, uh, you will be in her body to respond and that they are able to move the stent where it needs to be or replace it with a new one. I don't know what they're actually going to fully do, but just guide their hands, guide them with wisdom, uh, allow her body to respond.

Uh, just watch over her, uh, with your your angels to bring healing, uh, and to work in and through her body and and the and the physicians.

Just watch over her. Uh, be with Lena, be with anyone else who's there. Just bring them comfort and peace. Uh, as we lift we lift Samarella into your hands knowing that you are the great physician who brings all healing.

We just continue to pray this and pray for her in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Hey, thanks for the follow gamer night. Good to have you here.

Yeah, Lena is Samarella's friend who's who's giving us updates as Samarella's in the hospital. Um, but Lena, it is it is your situation, too.

And it's so beautiful that you are being that kind of a friend to her that you're, uh, reaching out to us and letting us pray for her when she can't ask it ourselves because you saw that she had a relationship with us.

And I hope that we can continue, uh, to build a relationship with you as well, be there for you, whatever your situation may be.

And one of those things right now is just we're praying for peace for you, um, and strength for you as you walk through this with Samarella.

So yeah. All right. So back to Taco because I I saw Deer say, um, we need to figure out how to work closer with Taco.

Love what you're doing. So yeah, um, taconetwork.org is our website. Um, we do have a Discord channel as well, a Discord server as well.

Um, you can watch any of our streamers, Christian Ninja, myself, Ukulele for Worship, uh, The Quiz King, Samus419, or Donnie Dreams. Watch any of those channels, ask more about Taco, you can learn about them there as well.

Um, and our goals for the future really still revolve around providing more resources for Christian content creators. Uh, we need volunteers to help build those resources.

So if God has put on your heart that you want to help Christian content creators, um, I want to talk to you and figure out, you know, where God, uh, wants to use you and how he wants to use you.

Um, we can have all the plans and dreams that we want to have, but it's really up to God to make the movement happen.

So I don't like to say we're going to do X, Y, and Z until God puts those things in motion, right? Because I don't want it to be coming out of my brain trying to figure out how to solve a problem when God already has a plan.

Um, but we have some awesome volunteers who are already working on some things. And one of the ways that we do that is by symbiotic relationships like what we have with the Church Digital.

We also have a relationship like that with Nerd Culture Ministry Summit. Last year we provided, um, all the swag bags for their conference event.

Um, and we are planning on sending somebody to their conference next year as well. Um, and we are working with Reach at their conference event.

We're providing the AFK room, uh, which is going to be a place where people who are maybe overstimulated from the conference can come to quiet down.

Um, we'll have some appropriate activities and things there to help them, uh, de-stimulate, relax. Um, maybe if they need a little first aid, we might even have somebody there to do that.

Just depends on who we can get on staff. But, uh, the whole Taco team is planning on being at the Reach conference to participate, but also to facilitate and help Christian content creators there.

And that's really our goal. If it's just through, um, whether it's through these symbiotic relationships with other organizations or individual, uh, training support, u, we're there in all those ways.

Yeah. Uh, so you you mentioned something that people listening may not know. So you're having an AFK room. Uh, what does AFK stand for?

Away from keyboard. Away from keyboard. Okay. Away from keyboard. Away from keyboard. Okay. So we've we've kind of teased about calling it a tran, Taco tranquility zone because Christians like, you know, alliteration.

Um, so Taco tranquility zone. Um, but we're seeing other conferences have had this room and they they consistently call it the AFK room. So we're still playing around with exactly what it's going to be called, but it's going to be, uh, because we were offered this space to try to teach our class.

Yeah, and we prayed about that and thought about that and and if we did that we'd be taking people out of the other conference activities to our class.

Um, and we don't want to take away from what Reach is doing. We want to support and add to what Reach is doing. So we asked, you know, what what could we do to possibly do that?

We looked at all the things they had done at the conference last year and what they were planning and this was the gap that we saw.

Um, so we said we can fill that gap. And what that also does is that means two of our team can be in the room and the rest of our team can be involved in the conference and we can schedule it out so that we can all still be involved and and, uh, support people everywhere and connect with people. Yeah. And and we also could have just had a vendor table and just, you know, set up a video and and, you know, tried to sell the book and sell our classes which are free.

Um, we don't have a way to make money yet. Um, we just exist on our own pockets and generous donations. But, um, we we could have taken a vendor table and tried to do that, but we want to support other Christian content creators and that is our first priority.

Yeah. So yeah, Mel Mel is saying that at anime cons they often will have a sensory room is another sensory room. Yeah, that's another word for it.

So we're trying to figure out the best way to, um, uh, to name it and to message it so that people know that it's there and know what it's for.

Um, yeah. Yeah. I I love the idea, uh, of that. I had so much FOMO of fear of missing out, uh, at the conference like there were there were like three things simultaneously happening like I'm missing something, uh, that's going on and it's just like just be present where you are and if

You need a break, you take care of yourself. Uh, are the things that I would just say. Anybody that's talking about, thinking about uh getting together, I get the question like, "Oh, and then what?" Recently as well, like, "Don't you want to get together in person with people?"

Well, yes, but that may not ever happen for some of us. Uh, there are people that I'm talking with who are like, "I live in another country. I'm not going to be able to fly to Orlando to go to a conference." I understand that. It's hard. It's hard for me to even schedule a phone call with people. I have somebody almost every week who would love to have a phone call with me, and I'm like, "Look, I stream for two hours. I work for eight hours. My husband would like some time with me. My husband has some physical disabilities that he needs my help with certain things. And you know, I have a house and pets and a yard and stuff that need taken care of, too." Um, it's super hard for me to schedule a phone call. So um, it's a big deal when it happens and it needs to happen for a good reason. So that's hard enough, and then to try to get time to go travel somewhere and be involved in something again, it has to be important. And for Taco, one of the things we always think through is, "Is this something that's really part of our mission, right?" So we would love to go to some of our team members anyway, would love to go to every anime conference ever, but we don't have a reason to because those are not the Christian content creators that we support.

Right. Right. Well, you also do other ministry as well, so why don't we transition to talking about that? And you're going to be doing that later today, so we can promo that. So anybody that doesn't know, that who's here from the Church Digital uh or from my community probably know you, but anyone from the Church Digital that doesn't know, you can share about that and they can come back and watch you later today.

Yeah. So I support Operation Christmas Child. Um, my family's been doing that for years and years and years and years um before I was ever in digital ministry. And so it just seemed natural to bring it onto my stream when I was streaming. And Operation Christmas Child is a project of Samaritan's Purse, which is an international relief organization founded by the Graham family. And um, they, what it is, is you pack a shoe box—doesn't have to be one of theirs. It can be any shoe box—with toys, hygiene items, and school supplies. And you turn them into somebody who's collecting them in November in the US. Um, and other countries do this as well. So you can go on samaritanspurse.org, click on Operation Christmas Child and see where there is a facility near you that's going to be collecting them. Look, in the beginning of November is when they announce who's collecting them that year. Um, but you fill up a shoe box and it goes to a child somewhere who is in need. So they could be in need because of war or poverty, disease, natural disaster. We even saw these shoe boxes going to um, when the war with Ukraine happened, shoe boxes just happened to be arriving to the places that they were displaced to. Um, so kids in the Ukraine who had left their home and all their belongings now had a shoe box that had toys and school supplies, crayons and stuff like that for them. Um, we've even seen them in the US. They've been on all the continents of the world. Um, and what I love about shoe boxes is that anybody can do it. My kids were doing it when they were toddlers. Anybody can open a box, pick up a few things from the dollar store and put them in there um and then turn that in at their church. And so they also give you the ability to pack them online now. So my stream that I do the third Thursday of every month in the evening, uh, we do a variety stream. So we're just goofing around. We're not doing worship. Um, anything that comes into my stream as a bit or a sub or any kind of gift, I donate live on the stream. So you can see the donation happen online um at the end of the stream. And so we're just going to have fun tonight. I have a special guest. She's not a streamer. She's not, you know, um, a Christian content creator of any kind. She's just a friend from the area who's coming with her daughter and we're going to taste test some sodas that are weird flavors.

Um, let's see. Can I give you a sneak peek I did not give on my stream? Well, I was going to ask, do you have Beverly?

No. Okay. Beverly. These are weird sodas. So is Beverly. Bacon with chocolate. I'll give you one. Bacon with chocolate. Bacon with chocolate soda. Okay. Beverly is in Italy and it's made by Coca-Cola. So when I went to the Coke factory and you go through and they have the international ones you can try, I tried Beverly. I about spit it out. It was so bitter. It was awful. Uh, I think I tried that at World of Coke when I visited there.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I thought. Oh, maybe it was. Yeah. Drink Beverly, lol. It's awful. These are from a store here called Rocket Fizz. Okay. It's in Daytona Beach down by Beachside. Um, they have all kinds of retro back-in-the-day candies and all kinds of weird stuff and we just went there and picked out a bunch of weird soda. So we're gonna try them.

Sounds fun. But people are gonna have to give to Operation Christmas Child for us to try all of them. So that's going to be, you know, a little challenge.

Yeah. So put the most awful flavors at the end so people will keep giving.

Exactly. Bacon with chocolate is in the middle. It is not the weirdest. Oh, no. It's definitely not. Um, but yeah, we're going to be having fun with that tonight and raising funds for Operation Christmas Child. And then November on my stream all month I talk about Operation Christmas Child and we instead of having a regular devotional, we play videos from Operation Christmas Child as our devotional and talk about um God's call on us to be missional um and God's call on us to give to help our neighbor, all that kind of stuff. And I physically pack the shoe boxes that my family is giving that year on stream so people can see how it's done and see how accessible it really is to do.

So yeah.

Yeah. You want to—I, there's a question in the chat from uh Lena about sharing what you were asking earlier. Did you see that? If you want to address it. Lena says, "Earlier today, Ukulele for Worship asked if I'm into the Christian thing and stuff and if I'm not getting it wrong and I'd like to give my answer to that." Okay, I don't want anyone to get this wrong, but I'm not much into Christianity or scriptures or anything. I'm not really sure if I can fully be into it and say, "I'm a Christian. Sorry about that."

You don't have to be sorry, Lena. I think it's beautiful that you feel um like, do you want to tell us where you're at and you feel like we're safe people that you can tell that to? And I want everybody to be open and honest. Look, none of us have this completely figured out. Any Christian who thinks they have it all completely figured out is serving a different God than I'm serving because God is so big. If he created the universe and everything in it, you know, think about how big the universe is, right? Galaxies and galaxies that we can't even see. If God created all of that, we have no ability to understand all of him. So we're all somewhere along the line of not quite getting there. And whether you believe a little bit, whether you're just open to thinking about it and hearing about it, or whether you've been believing it all your life and pursuing it and learning about it all your life, you're still not all the way there.

So Lena says, "I'm not into knowing about God. I'm into knowing people and just respect them for who they are, if that makes sense."

It's a great place to start.

Yep. Yeah. And God asks us to do that. As Christians, we're asked to do that. We are asked to care about people. So that you care about people and I care about people is where we can connect and that's beautiful.

Yeah. And there was a whole bunch of people in the chat, you know, saying very similar things to what you were saying—is it's not a requirement to be here. We love you. We love that you're here. We're not going to chase you away if you don't believe exactly the same thing that we believe. If I did that to everybody, I would be streaming to nobody because nobody believes exactly everything the way that I believe it. That just, it's just not the way it happened.

So uh, also I'll reiterate what you said, Ukulele. I love that you feel safe enough to share that with us, cuz not every place is safe enough to share that with. And so I thank you that you, we have earned your trust for you to be able to share those things with us where you are. Uh, we want you to be in relationship. We love having you hang out. If you stay right where you are, we're going to love you. If you change and grow in whatever way—I mean, like if all of a sudden you started, you know, learning the ukulele, you know, nothing to do with God, you just were influenced by that—we would love that and celebrate you with that. So thanks for thanks for uh for being here, uh Lena, we just love that.

So yeah, I'm glad you've hung around and I can't wait to get to know you more, you know, and like you said, if you learn to play the ukulele or if you decide to pack a shoe box, you don't have to be a Christian to do that, you know. Um, if you just want to be part of the community and hang around, um, I'm gonna, I'm hopeful and trusting that my God is gonna reach your heart, but I'm not putting that on you.

Exactly. I'm not putting that on you. Yeah. And it's not a requirement to be here either. So uh, so thinking about that, just transition to—we had mentioned earlier that someone was watching what you were doing with OC and then they kept watching it and God worked on them and then they decided, "Hey, I'm going to get involved in some way with what you're doing," and then they've taken it to a whole another level. You want to share that story?

Um, yeah, and I think I can mention his name. I don't—oh go ahead. Go ahead. He won't mind, I'm sure. Um, so some of you guys know Subdue the Day is his name on Twitch. And uh, he has a whole long story that's his story to tell, but my side of the story is just what I already said earlier. I was packing shoe boxes on stream and I was telling people, "Look, this is something you can do." And he said, "I remember doing that as a kid and I have kids now, so we should do that with them as a family." And they did. The first year they packed shoe boxes as a family. And then God worked on his heart and said, "You need to be serving me more than you're serving me now," because they were just going to church, right? Just regular Christian people going to church on Sunday and being themselves the rest of the week. And God worked on his heart and he said, "Well, you know what? What else could I do with these shoe boxes?" And God put shoe box leaders in his life who spoke to him and said, "You should come help." And he started helping out. And uh, it progressed and progressed and now he is—I forget what his official title is—but he's like for his area the communications director for Operation Christmas Child, uh, I think is his title. So um, because he's worked in like TV, radio areas before, he has those skills and he brings that to them, makes videos for their local area for Operation Christmas Child. And uh, we stay in touch. He's sometimes in my streams. Um, sometimes commuting to work. He works in another area. Doesn't work for Operation Christmas Child. That's a volunteer. Um, but I'm just blessed, like I said earlier. What do I get out of this? Knowing that what I'm doing to serve God is bigger than myself.

Um, and that's one super concrete obvious example that I can give that I know that this person is serving God because I was faithfully serving God in ways that I can't even do that are I think bigger than what I'm doing.