Geeks need Jesus too | here's how to reach them

Welcome in. We'll start this once over again. The fun, the absolute joy of doing tech stuff while you—I don't want to say I'm the talent, but you have the talent with you who's on screen and you're having to be tech and you're doing producer. Isn't this fun, everybody at home?

Um, we're we're kind of showing you good. Apparently I forgot I forgot to mute myself on my own stream, so my stream heard my phone conversation. Well, hey, thankfully it wasn't much. Hey, like I said, we're we're just showing the curtain is pulled back. There is nothing being hidden on the stream tonight.

So, are you going to end up being solo or you going to be joined here soon? He is on his way. He is leaving the event. For those of us, those of you who know Dallas, and I—Dallas had a church event he had to be at and he will be here shortly. So he will be here and in his lovely loudness. He's much louder than I am.

Hey, Starfox. Starfox says hello to Flatcap. Is it sharing the stream? Like, can you see the—no, I cannot see the. Can you see? Let me click again. I've got it now. Now it says "shared chat," so now I should be able to. I clicked it earlier, but when we redid it I must have forgot. I'm just looking and switching. Gotcha. A couple of settings here. He Devotion says he is on his way. Fantastic.

All right, so he's the handsome one out of the two of us. I'm just noticing one. When I shrunk everything, I ended up cutting off title, so let me—oh, that's not how to do it. There we go. We've got titles on there. That works. This is the fun. No, that's not going to work either. You know, we have all these tech things and now I'm being picky about how it looks.

Hey, Miss Jelly Beans, how are you today, dear? Hey, welcome, Miss Jelly Beans. So yeah, Miss Jelly Beans. Uh, how well do you know Miss Jelly Beans? I don't. Oh, you don't. Oh, okay. Okay, you were just being polite and saying hello. She was in the chat. I was. I have it in my head that the um, that when I'm streaming I need to be constantly talking to the chat, so if someone hops in the chat I just say hi.

Ah, okay. Okay. And in response to Dallas saying to turn off the clear background, I can't figure out how. So you can do that when you get home, Dallas. Oh, 'cause I don't know. That's okay. We're we're going to just go with what we've got and we'll adjust as we go along and it'll just be extra editing in post-production. That's that's what we'll have. Yay, we love editing and post. Oh, well, who doesn't?

Ah, there we go. I see you coming through. Testing, you're coming through okay. Well, anyway, part of what um my hope is for this is to have people that I know, whether I know them really well or I just know of you in digital spaces. Is that whether you put a title on yourself of a missionary or you don't, what I see you doing is being the body of Christ in a dark place, in a place that much of the church has just said it's not worth our time being over there, or you can't be over there, or you shouldn't be over there. We need to be getting those people in a church building and until they come here we don't need to do anything for them.

So I'm collecting friends together and just chatting about what it is that God is calling you to do. How did you get into that space? What are you celebrating? What's exciting for you? And so we can we can revisit some of those when uh when Dallas uh gets on. But otherwise, those are those are kind of my questions.

So what drew you? Let's just start with that. What drew you into being on Twitch and being in digital spaces to reach people?

Well, it kind of goes back to the start of Geek Devotions. Um, Geek Devotion started as a YouTube channel. Once a week we would post a geeky devotional based off of geeky pop culture items and using that to let people know that they are loved. And part of the way through, we realized that Twitch was a thing and realized that we could also do this. We actually, it started with a class project that I needed to do. Um, I needed to do something that didn't involve Dallas, but that also like I was allowed to use Geek Devotions as the platform rather than starting something new. And so I went, well, can I stream? And so we started doing weekly Bible studies. And from there it just grew to where now we do a weekly Bible study and we call it our Pray and Play because we we do the Bible study, we talk about God, we talk about scriptures, and then we play games. And at any point during the game if somebody needs prayer, we will stop and pray for them because we tell people that they are more important than our games.

Um, and it's it's become a a staple. It's how we've built great relationships with people. We have a great community of people. Um, we had a community of people over on YouTube before we started streaming and we had started building that a little bit in in Facebook and social media and that type of thing, but it really helped jump start it. And it honestly has helped people feel like they know us because we do our best to be authentic. And so when we're on stream we are just ourselves. Like, we—this isn't a show. I might be talking more than I would in person when there's a camera, but everything that comes out of my mouth is not scripted. It's just me. Sometimes I'm sure Dallas wishes it was scripted. Um, but we still do the weekly devotion over on YouTube. We are also streaming on YouTube currently. Um, hello, YouTube. And so it uh it's just become a thing. We keep, we tell people that we're not going to stop until God tells us to stop. And we've been doing this almost ten years. We'll start season ten this year.

Season ten on YouTube? Yes, uh, for the ministry as a whole, yeah. Okay, I'll wait. I'll wait for for Dallas to get here to back up and talk about the origins of Geek Devotions. But but I want to I want to go back to—go ahead. Well, that's fine. I I want to go back to. So I was telling you, I want to answer that question, but I'm going to put a pin in it and wait. Yeah.

What class were you in that you're like, oh, I need to do something?

So I am currently in courses to become a licensed pastor with the Assemblies of God. Dallas is uh credentialed with them. And so at the time that's not what it was, it was a Ministry class that my church was doing. And we had to do a big final project for a certain amount of time and it had to be very evangelistic. And this is the space where I am the most comfortable evangelizing. Um, I'm never terribly comfortable, but that was the the push. I had a friend who he went through Genesis on his Facebook. It I mean, and different people did different things. Some people did things in real life. It just, you were allowed some creativity with it because we were all different. So it was a great class. Um, it was just for GRS, but it it was still a lot of fun. Um, I got some of my my really good friends out of that class. So oh cool. Are are good stuff. Any of those people that uh came in in that class uh are they doing things in digital spaces or are they all just doing physical ministry?

Um, well, I think everybody does physical ministry in general. Just to—sorry, that's a again not scripted, it just comes out of my mouth. Um, so but I think most of them are just doing general like I'm a Christian in the workspace ministry. One of them is on staff at our church. Um, more than one of them, I think. I have to think now of who all was in that class. I mean, we have people from that class that they're ministering by being a good boss at Verizon. Um, so it's it's a gambit of different things.

Yeah, yeah, I I just was curious. Uh, if 'cause you said you had kept some friends from from that class whether or not they had some of the same draws into ministry that you did or in the same spaces.

Um, no, not really. So it's it was one of those things of we were doing it to the class to to learn more about God and learn more about our responsibility as Christians to do ministry, not our responsibility as Christians to be ministers. If that makes sense, the differentiation between that. The we we have the the responsibility to share the gospel because we are Christians, but not everybody went on to be a minister. Um, again, some of them—it's some of the people—it's one of the ladies I'm really good friends with. Um, two of the ladies actually. One is a children's pastor. Um, and the other one goes to my church and she's an amazing grandma and she serves on our media team and she works in the uh the parish uh sheriff's office. So she she ministers daily through that.

Oh, so the purpose of it wasn't necessarily to to to train people for ministering in the traditional sense or the non-traditional sense, right?

Um, but at the time, at the time we had just started this, so there was a lot that we hadn't hadn't done 'cause I was I was in that class in 2016 when we started this, and by the time I did that project we've been going for maybe a year.

Okay, okay. So things have evolved. I I love how things evolve and you end up places that you don't plan and you don't know all the steps. How did I end up here without spending time thinking through and reflecting? Uh, so you take that course not planning on going into full-time ministry—whether full-time or not, I mean ordained—going and pursuing that. Where along the way did that shift happen of, oh, I want to I want a degree myself or credentials? Sorry.

Oh, no, that was always. That was the credentials was always a goal for me. Yes, I have I have wanted credentials as a minister since I was twelve.

Oh cool. It's just been a a long road doing things according to how God wants me to do them and not how I want to do them. If that makes sense. So there were some things that needed to happen. I really felt like I needed to get my student loan debt out of the way. Um, and I happened to find a husband in the midst of all of that. And so we we paid off my student loans and we run this ministry. We're the student pastors at our church. Del is the media pastor as well. Um, and so we we are just running and gunning a lot.

So what was it at twelve years old that that uh caused you to say pastor? That's that's what God has for me?

Um, I don't know how. Uh, trying to figure out how to phrase this in the most non-denominational way. Can't you can phrase it in whatever denomination way you want it. It won't offend me.

Okay. I when I was twelve years old, I really felt like I had been living the Christian life but not actually having a relationship with God. And so I said I was saved, but I really wasn't. I did not have the the true understanding of God in that moment. And so when I was twelve, I went to the altar at the church that we went to and I prayed the prayer of salvation with a true and repentant heart 'cause I had prayed the prayer before. Um, but I was young and it was a—well, I want to go where Jesus is—not a actual understanding of what was happening. And so in that moment of surrendering, that's when I felt like God was telling me that I was going to be a pastor. And I definitely have some giftings that lend itself to that. Um, but my mindset on getting credentialed and officially doing it is that if I do that, then every young lady who comes after me will have that much easier of a time. So not that in you know 2024 it's terribly hard, but there is some resistance. And I want my future children and I want the students that I lead and I want the young ladies that I come into contact with to go, oh, well, that's possible. That's normal. If this is what God's telling me to do, this is what I can do. If God's telling me to do something even crazier than that, then okay, we can do that. So it it's it's kind of a a whole thing.

Oh yeah, I'm I'm yeah, I say my denomination uh Reformed Church in America. We we ordain women and and have for some time. Um, okay. And and I never want to offend somebody, right?

Right. And it and so I'm I'm very ecumenical. I I am not trying to tell people how they are to interpret scripture, but I love having

Conversations about how do you, uh, and I think we do it best when we are engaging one another instead of yelling at one another. Exactly. And that's, we hold that stance with Geek Devotions. We have a team. Um, Dallas and I are part of the Assemblies of God, but we have a team of people who help us with podcasting and writing articles for the website and all kinds of things. Sometimes it's just generally going, "Hey, y'all need to slow down." That happens sometimes. But we have people who are from Baptist backgrounds. We have Protestants who are involved. I want to say one of our friends is Anglican. I'm not entirely sure if he's still going to an Anglican church, but I know he was at one point. Um, and so we try to be very cross-denominational. Um, but females in pastoral roles is one of those things that is a touching point. So I never want to offend somebody and cause them to have an issue with themselves or with me because that's not biblical.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I also think that there are enough people out there that already are, you know, looking and thinking it is their role and responsibility to say something to you if you are a woman in ministry if they disagree. Rather than, right, rather than, okay, I can work with anyone. Jesus worked with everyone who was willing and came along. So, uh, I think that's more of the biblical approach to doing things. Whether you agree or disagree, if someone in the body has identified you as having spiritual gifts to fill a role, I don't take issue with that.

Exactly. And that is one of the things we, you're talking about having open conversation, right? We're very open about our theological differences with our team, but we just have a rule of, "Hey, hey, don't get rude." Now, we may not, we try our best on our Geek Devotion stuff to not get into theological differences, um, just because we don't want to be divisive. So that being said, Dallas is here, so I'm going to switch out with him so he can get into his seat because his headphones are hurting my ear.

Yeah, what was the question? Uh, we have a question in chat, Puzzle, that someone has jumped in and asked if this was a Christian stream and then asked if they could ask a question. And so, uh, I took the liberty of saying yes, Dapper Pastor. I hope you're okay with that.

Oh, I'm all good with that. Their question is, if the 400,000 amount of people who are going to be saved from the tribulation, doesn't that totally negate the notion of free will? And I, I think personally that you're confusing some things with that. Like, I feel like you're mixing two things up, um, it is in the chat in case I didn't read it correctly.

Yeah, the amount of the 400,000 people, uh, I know there's 144,000. That's, that's of every tribe, tongue, and nation. There's another number, but those aren't the total numbers. Those are just some numbers that are gathered at certain points along the way. Uh, not everyone, um, understands, uh, Revelation in the same way, and not everyone believes in free will. So we've got a whole bunch of assumptions there, braxis, all altogether, uh, in there. And well, this is Christian, but we are interdenominationally, and so I'm not going to try and break down all of that or tell you that your church is wrong if there's part of what is going on in your understanding of those things. And then I think there was a followup. In order for the Bible to be true, there's a set amount of people who will have to be saved during the tribulation no matter what, uh, yeah, that's it. That is, yeah. Uh, what are your assumptions? That's literally what the Bible says.

Yeah, I'm not really sure what the 100, where the 400,000 either is. Like I, like I said there, I know there's 144,000, or, or 144,000. Um, again, that's talking about a very specific situation. Um, can you give us the reference, Braxis? Like, where, where you find that? Your number might be off. So the 144,000 is in the middle of the tribulation, and like, like Dapper Poer was saying, it's not necessarily, to our understanding, it's not necessarily a combined total number. It's just multiple numbers are given as an example of, and, but it's not the totality of it.

Yeah, yeah, cool. So, um, yeah, there's a whole bunch of stuff we're like, we're not studying Revelation. So, uh, I, I do on my morning stream on my other channel read through the Bible, and that's, you know, one of the things that we could would dive into and maybe go look at at different times. That's not the focus of why we're getting together. So, um, and then it depends on if you are understanding that apocalyptic literature is meant to have a hidden meaning and hidden understanding or whether you're trying to understand it literally. Then there's also, is this three glimpses of the same thing from three different viewpoints and vantage points, or is it a linear unfolding of things? There are so many things that would take a long time to unpack with all that stuff that you're talking about there.

Yeah, so the answer to your question is I would encourage you to check out, uh, a brother here, Morning's Channel, and he goes into that a little bit deeper.

Yeah, I can say we just finished Bible in a Year last year, so there's going to be conversations, uh, running from December into January. We would have talked about some of those things on there, and there's plenty of other people as well. So dig. So no, you're welcome to have questions, Braxis. We're just giving you the answers that we have for right now. Again, there was a purpose for the stream, right?

Yeah. Oh, the underscore Rushmore underscore show just followed. All right, I know which side that was. I got to figure out my alerts. Why they are, you know what, let me do that. Put that on top. Will that help? I thought it was on top, but I must have moved it. Thank you for the follow. I've got another alert on the bottom. They might be why I don't see them. Thank you for being patient with us, man. Get in here with you.

Hey, it's all good. I, I have, I'm trying, uh, well, I'm on the Church Digitals, um, site, and it was used, I want to say a year ago, year and a half ago, no, was a year ago. We did a whole podcast series that we were talking with gamers and had them on and did interviews, uh, for our bigger podcast, and that was just getting exposure to it. And I was over in, uh, the gaming area, and then now as we have shifted from being more discipleship focused to being missionary and helping people be digital missionary focused, I've come back and picked up the Church Digitals podcast or, uh, Twitch stream. And I'm like, I just want to do podcast and invite people in who are my label, not yours, uh, being a digital missionary, just someone who is on task following Jesus, sharing the gospel, uh, while they are doing that. Whatever label you put on yourself, if you're a pastor or not, like I have credentials, so I have that label, but just want to be in the space talking to people in the space, finding out why did you get started here? What is the things that you struggle with? What are some of the joys you found along the way? Uh, and that's kind of where, and then, you know, we've got a little time at the end. We, you'll introduce me to a game that I have no idea about, and I'll be embarrassed and awful at it. Uh, and well, I probably will. Don't have your hopes too high. I'm setting the bar really low here so that's fair.

But that's, uh, that's where we're going with this. Good luck with the very ambiguous purpose of the in this stream.

Okay, I think you just missed the front end of things. Um, well, I'm just, yeah, you're fine with the question. It's I, I, I don't have more time to devote to that, uh, this evening of Braxis, but, uh, totally would love to do that some other time. So, uh, with starting the, uh, the YouTube channel of doing Geek Devotions, what is what was the initial thrust or calling by God or just decision to try something and do Geek Devotions? How did that all come about?

Um, you want to answer, Celeste, or you want me to do it, babe? I've talked a lot. You go ahead. All right. So the launch of Geek Devotions really takes back, uh, before Celeste, I got married. Um, I was a student pastor at the time, and Celeste and I were engaged, and we had this con taking place here in Shreveport, and it was a kind of a one of a kind, first of his kind type of thing here in our area. And so we went to it, and we're in line doing con life like you do, talking to people and all that good stuff, and uh, just developing relationship with folks. And, um, folks showed up to protest the con, and we're holding up signs saying, "You're going to hell, you're going to burn," uh, yelling at people saying that, you know, they're worshiping idols and all other stuff, and just not, not real groovy. And people were like, literally, they were like, "You're going to hell," and people in the crowd were like, "We know," because they just didn't care. And, uh, some people looked at Celeste like, "Well, uh, because they found out I was a pastor, like, are you going to yell at us?" I was like, "Is it going to help? Like, if it helps, I'll yell at you, but, uh, how about we just love you where you're at and do life?" And so Celeste and I, we literally walked on the con floor, and it was a really amazing moment, um, as we're in this space because we're finally, we're in a place where people get it. Uh, we're in a field of other people who are just geeky. You had people running around in cosplay ranging from movies to anime, superheroes, and video games. You have people going to all these places, and there was this moment where people just, there was peace because they were surrounded by people who just got it. But at the same time, Celeste and I saw people who were just hurting, people who didn't know the truth of God, who didn't know the hope and love of Jesus, and it burdened our hearts. And we're like, "Well, who's going to do it? Because the cats outside aren't doing it. Um, they won't even set foot in this place, and if they did, I'm not so sure it would be healthy." And so the conversation began to happen between her and I about what can we do because we speak the language. We're here, and we understand what's taking place. Uh, so our first priority was getting married, uh, because that had, that took up a lot. Uh, we got married, and then we spent about six months praying and planning and studying what's out there to do this, to reach the geek culture. And after about six months, in August of 2016, uh, we launched Geek Devotions with our very first episode, Geek Devotions. Uh, the episode, I think, was called, uh, "Batman's Crazy and So Am I," and, uh, and just haven't stopped since.

Yeah, that's really cool. That I, I knew you'd been doing this for a while. I've run into you on socials and in Twitch, uh, but I love hearing the interaction of a story because, well, you know, if you're talking about Batman, Batman has an origin story, and Geek Devotions has an origin story, uh, that's just an unfortunate, uh, on some level story, but really solidifying the reason for the need, uh, to be in that space and to be moving into it.

Yeah, definitely. Have you, um, I know you've been doing this, you've got, uh, videos and you've got blogs. Uh, have you written any like publications, like a book or booklet of devotions that someone could get that would be a monthly or an annual? I'm just, I'm just throwing ideas out there. I don't know what you have.

It's been a dream of ours, and we've tried. We've attempted some things. Um, last, was it last year? Yeah, last year we did. Last year we self-published on our website a, uh, it's free. Uh, we're giving away a six-week curriculum, and it's a six-week curriculum. Uh, let me pull up so I can make sure I say it correctly, but it's using, uh, Mario Kart basically as the, oh, okay, foundation of it. And the idea is, is, uh, is for churches to take. They can do a six-week, uh, tournament of Mario Kart with a small group of people, be it students or adults, because a lot of adults get.

Really crazy about it. But every week there's an aspect of the tournament that takes place that corresponds with a lesson at the same time. The whole thing, and we call it the focus track, and it's about how to focus on God, how to get our focus on who he is and what he has for us. And it's a six-week track that goes through how to prepare for the race, and that's the whole aspect of preparation, being present, being in a community, understanding our identity in Christ, equipping ourselves for what God has for us, navigating spiritual road hazards, being consistent in our faith, and then finally being intentional in our faith. And at the moment that's the only thing we have out there. Again, we want to do more. We just haven't had the chance. We again sit down, start, and we're like, "Oh," and we kind of just flare. But maybe by season ten we'll have a book. I don't know. That is the goal.

Well, I'm going to throw an idea out there. With AI out there now, you can take and upload all of your content in there, and you could, you know, it's not quite there fully yet, but I know they're working on this. You could put all your content in there and it could create the book based on what you've already created.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there was some thought to that, that possibly found to make that happen. Again, it's, I've forgotten I've lost track of the math again. It's literally fifty-two times n by now, so several hundred devotions to pump through. That'd be interesting to see take place.

Yeah, yeah, it would. It would. So we do have our website. We do put a shortened version of the devotion on the website so that is accessible to you. It's just, you have to be online to get to it.

Yeah, yeah. Putting it in other places gets, well, you put it here, you put it there, you put it, how many places? You can't saturate every place. And the more you put out, sometimes it feels like the less people find you.

So sometimes, yeah, sometimes. So as you've been on YouTube and then you are on Twitch and then you've got other places in socials, what have been some of the difficulties that you have faced of being in digital space? Maybe two or three stories about, you know, maybe one that was something that you struggled with as a couple, did working through difficulties you had with people in the space or supporting you outside of the space? You know, some things along those kind of ideas.

Let me ponder that for a second, because there's been some stuff. Baby, love, you got something you want to point out?

Well, we did have an occurrence when we first started the Bible studies where there was a group of people who their whole goal in getting together is to troll streamers. And that was before you had the ability to ban people while you were streaming. Oh, and also I've gotten a lot more tech-savvy in the last ten years, and I was the one streaming, and I was not tech-savvy yet. And so they came in just to try to take over the chat and talk about cars, because that's their thing. Yeah, and they realized I was a Christian streamer, and they quickly got quite vile with it. So that was interesting.

Yeah, yeah. I remember. So the solution to that was a friend of ours who was in the stream texted Dallas and was like, "Are you home? Because you need to handle some things." I remember that was like from the front of things. Also, like there was like the timeframe where I wasn't allowed to be part of the project, the Bible project. It had to be all her for her class that she was doing. And yeah, sure enough, it's actually our friend, Retro Rewind Podcast, Francisco Ruiz. He was the one that was messaging me. I'm in Walmart actually when it's all happening. I'm like, "What?" So I'll never forget the best thing that he said, because he realized that this was quickly getting out of control. He put in the chat, he goes, "Well, guess we'll stop reading the comments." Because I had just been continually reading them, and it was taking away from the Bible study. And so I was like, "He's right." And so I ignored the comments. We finished talking about, I think it was Matthew, because we were talking about the birth of Christ, and we moved on from there.

Yeah, that's definitely one of. And then Dallas came home and banned everybody. That's definitely one of the benefits that we've developed over the timeframe is we developed relationships with different people, different streamers, and different just people in the community that have been able to help us and support us, not just in the financial side of things. Some people do, but support us just tech support, do some stuff. We make the joke that Francisco, everything we do, we've copied from Francisco. So we just, you know, one of the, he's inspiration to us, but he's also a good friend. He's a buddy. He's a brother in Christ that we really care about, and he's been helpful. And then we have other cats who have come into our lives who have just been there. And so when I'm gone, they're taking care of Celeste in the stream, taking care of things. When I, because again, she's not the technical side of things. I do most of that. At the same time, we're in each other's streams where we're helping each other do different stuff. And so that's definitely one of the benefits of what we're doing is we developed a whole community that just supports each other, because we need it. And one of the things talking about difficulties is just finding the margins and space to be for us to be us. And so one of the things that we've tried to do, we don't do a great job all the time, is we try to make room where by having other people be part of the stream, we never want it to be just about Celeste and I all the time. We try to give voices to people and other ministries. So I know that on the Church Digital, you guys actually had a friend of ours, Matt Souza, also known as Pastor Susie, on there.

Well, love Susie to death. We had him on the show when he did an episode for us. We had another guy named Pastor Duon, who is another Twitch streamer, amazing gentleman, used to have an amazing beard. He cut it off. His wife was angry at him, but it went for missions. So, but he's been on the show. Different different cats, Francisco. But them doing that, it's not just a matter of them putting out there, but they also gave us a moment to breathe. And having a team that has come together, besides these guys, we have riders who have helped us. They've helped us to accomplish the mission we have and reach out. But that struggle, it really was a struggle. We got about two years in, and we realized we need help with some stuff, because yeah, we're married, and you know, we want to be together. We got to be healthy. She was working a full-time job as a FLOTUS. I'm a pastor on staff at a church. We needed people, and that's really been a struggle over the years, different seasons where it's like, "Man, we're tight on time." You know, like tonight I'm on the other side of town serving mashed potatoes and gravy and just slinging it everywhere, serving people. Or you know, we got stuff happening at work, or we're taking kids to camp or something like that. And so that's definitely been one struggle we've had.

So trying to think if there's anything, because you ask for three. Well, I'm just thinking, you've been on here for a while, so there are struggles that come up. There are different nuances of the journey. I'm going to say Pastor Susie and Pastor Duon are some of the streamers that I've known the longest as well. So, yeah, I just, February, three-year affiliate anniversary on my personal channel. And so let's go, dude. I knew them probably going on four years now, two of those guys. So, but you were talking about a little bit of the early days before you could ban people. I didn't even know you couldn't ban people live. Like, oh my goodness, that would have been chaos. Have a lot of them come in. And I do like to read the chat all the way through when it's happening in my stream, and I'm reading the Bible, and I'm back and forth between chat and reading the Bible. My mods will tell me, "You don't have to read every." I want to. I want to know. And I can't just read it silently, that I'm filling dead air. That doesn't work. So, right.

Yeah, that's one of those things that we've definitely a technique we've had to learn, like reading it and understanding what's going on. And we had somebody in the chat a couple nights ago, and they didn't say anything belligerent, but it was going that direction. I was like, "We'll hold off on that." You know, and like somebody goes, "Hey, do you know such and such?" I won't say names out loud. My brain tree process, okay, how could this sound if I said this out loud? Because you know, you change stuff up, syllables and junk like that. So it's a technique you kind of learn and grow with the more you do it.

Yeah, and there's definitely, oh, there's definitely different things that we've gotten better at. Our early devotions were rough. Our early podcasts were rough, man. Those early podcasts. So it's one of those things of you always learn, you always grow, you always put in the effort to be as excellent as you can, because that's what we've been called to do.

Yeah, and that's the thing is like what she said. Like, we try to be excellent, and there's a difference between excellence and perfection. A lot of guys and ladies, when they get out there, start to do anything, not just streaming, not just, you know, whatever, but anything they get into, they go, "I've got to be, it's got to be perfect. It's got to be this." And then really, that's not what God's called us to do. He's called us to be excellent, and we'll grow. So as long as you're giving your best to something that's honoring to the Lord, and God sees that, and he goes, "Man, bless you," and you grow. When we first started off, like she alluded to it, our first, gosh, it was rough. Our first devotions were shot on a Sony Handycam, which was like this big. I called it the Noisy Cricket, because it's tiny but mighty. Tiny but mighty, baby. And so, and then we had a Bluetooth microphone that sounded atrocious. And then we graduated to a, no, it wasn't Bluetooth. Yeah, it was a Bluetooth. It plugged into the headphone speaker of your phone. That was the later one that we did. So, because we used, well, first off, you're right. We had the lapel one, and then we spent a day recording, and we realize we didn't record any of it correctly. So to bypass it, we spent a whole day recording four episodes and lost all the audio. So we grabbed the Bluetooth microphone that connected straight to the camera, and we went for there for several episodes. And we figured out what was wrong, went to the lapel mic, and we've just adjusted and changed over the years to the point we are at now. But it's been a slow progress, and it's been a constant aspect of going, "How can I do better?" Not in a, just slam your head against the wall of going, "Oh, this is all terrible," but going, "I want to be better for the Lord. I want to be better at reaching people."

Yeah, and so just improving skills, improving what we do. I was an atrocious audio editor back in the day. I'm probably not the greatest, but I know a lot more than I used to know. I'm a decent video editor, and it's just a matter of just learning new things as we grow and do things. I think that's one of the most exciting things I see in digital space is the freedom to experiment, to try things, to learn and to grow, to acknowledge something worked or didn't work, and then learn and grow and keep moving. Where I had that in...

churches as I, you know, was getting started in ministry where they did have it's okay to fail, it's okay to experiment. And then later I went to churches where no, you have to be perfect to get up on stage and don't start talking about how you're not perfect because then people who aren't perfect will want to get up on stage. Even to the point where if the kids program wasn't excellent, then we don't know if we should do a kids program. And I'm like, wow, how many times did Peter put his foot in his mouth and Jesus was still cool with Peter? Okay, you're not getting it today, Peter. You know, check mark for effort, but everything else is a fail.

You know, yeah, that's—oh man, that's a—I was teaching our students the other day, and I, the student ministry at our church, that the church should be the safest place to fail, yes, as a community. And we're helping our kids grow. We're teaching them how to do stuff. We're teaching them how to read the word. We're teaching them how to pray. I'm teaching them how to preach. And I told them it's okay for you to fail. I told them, like, I'm here with you every step of the way. I tell our students, I will push you, I really will, but I'll never make you do something you just won't do. But if I push you, I'm going to be with you the entire time. I'm not going to abandon you to it. Yeah, and I will never ask you to do something that I'm not willing to do.

And at our church, we have a mindset that we're one serve team. Everyone serves in some fashion or another, and every spot. And like, we've told people, like, if you're not willing to help lead worship in the kids church, we don't want you on the platform. I've come to church and I found my pastor in the parking lot doing yard work, real quick, because we're one serve team. We're here to help each other out. And nobody's perfect. Now, do we set people up for a fail? No, not at all. We do our best to prepare them, make sure they're good to go. But if they do fall, we don't betray them and call them all these things. We get in and we go, man, so-and-so, they gave their best, man. This was a great aspect here. We kind of redirect it, help them out, and then we walk them through how to grow from that next step.

And that mindset of it's got to be perfect, that kills things. Not just digital spaces, but like you were alluding to, man, the face-to-face real-life moments with people that just puts people in a place of going, I'm never going to be good enough to do anything for the Lord, so I might as well not. And that's how we develop a church culture that is just shot in the face.

I know you guys, you guys just did an episode in your podcast about the unchurched and the people who have, like, they grew up in church but they left. That's some of what it is is they saw a level of perfectionism that, um, and they were told if you're not here, you're not worthy. You're not worth it to us to be part of what's going on.

Yeah, I think along with what we do in the church, the people who aren't here have to be perfect before they can come here too. So I can't invite my friends and my friends don't belong. And so, man, yeah, yeah, kind of like you were experiencing with the going to a con and then everybody's yelling at you. Like, really, right? That's yeah, that was rough, man.

Yeah, well, let's shift gears and not talk about the difficulties because they're there and I want to acknowledge them, but yeah, let's also talk about some things that have been blessings along the way. Something that was a surprise that you didn't expect, something that was great that you worked towards or that happened within community as you were doing things. And then anything else you might want to add.

There's a lot of great things that have happened. Well, just start, can I call dibs on? Okay, so we have this girl who is a part of our stuff, and she's been with us for a long time. She was a teenager and she became a Christian. She found us through another Bible study we were doing with our friends over at Geeks Under Grace. We were doing it live, and she popped in the chat. And Dallas is going to cry. He's going to try not to. And for a long time, we were her only church because her parents were like, you can believe what you want to believe, but we don't want you going to church. And so from probably about sixteen to eighteen, Geek Devotions and Geeks Under Grace and other content creators that we pointed her to, that was her church.

And it's been amazing because we've literally gone with her from questions of, do you know how to do algebra? Which the answer was no, I'm sorry. To, I don't know if it's been a year yet, but months ago she hopped in the chat and she goes, hey, I could use prayer. I'm in labor. Oh, and we're like, you're what? And she goes, yeah, in between contractions, chatting. And I'm like, baby, you need to get off and go have this baby because she's married and has a baby now. And she is doing amazing things for God. She's raising her little girl for God, and she has a godly marriage. And it's, we were there for her, and it's amazing to see the longevity because a lot of times with ministries like this, we have people who drop in, they ask for prayer, and then they're gone. And that's fine. We're not here to boost ourselves up, but to be able to have a relationship with where she messaged me today personally just to chat about things. We can see our impact. We can see how God has used us in her life.

Yeah, that's that's a win.

Yeah, it is. Oh, definitely. Definitely. Just thinking out loud in regards to that, have you reached out to her and asked her if she might do a testimony for you about the impact you've done? That?

Okay, she did one years ago for us, early on. It's on our, we have a testimonial page on our website. Some people have added to it, and she's one of those there. Haven't done an updated one in a long time. But we just had like, we had another one just now, actually, on our chat here on Twitch. And it gets, it's not just us, but it's the community as a whole that we're part of. Says it's from a guy named Nico Ma on Twitch. He's a really good guy. He's stuff. He goes, Dallas and Celeste, Francisco and Paul, Nathan March and Drew and Jacob, which and the Rushmore, which are all different shows. They're all part of different YouTube shows. They're part of a network that we're part of also. Says, um, everyone here helped me with community. I don't really get out much. Everyone's, uh, everyone. So the whole community, all of them. It's a blessing, and I thank God and I'm so blessed to have any of this. Um, and so, um, yeah, so we've got a few that, again, that one just came in now. It was really sweet from Nico. I appreciate that, brother. So that's really cool.

Yeah, so but what I love about his testimony specifically, it's not just us. Like, again, we have a personal relationship with Caston, and that's happened. That's grown, and it's been beautiful. But it wasn't just us. There was our friends over at Geeks Under Grace, and there were other groups that she bounced around that helped her spiritual development. And, um, and that's again, that's one of the things I love about the way we do social media stuff here is just that it's not just us. You know, uh, there may be people on our stream right now that on our side that, man, they're going to connect with you, and man, you're going to be able to speak to them in a way that we will never happen because the Lord's going to use you in a way that because you see things, things you know things differently than we do, and they need your voice. They don't need my voice. They don't need Celeste, but they need you because your hat's just so fly. And have you seen all of them? Oh man, yeah, there's quite a few. That is lit. That the hatman right there. So, um, man, I recovered. I'm good to go. Okay, I get teary when talking about teenagers, so I apologize.

Um, another win for us was actually our first con as vendors, if you will. Oh, a dream. We'd gone several years in a row. We were trying to get press passes, but we never could. And, uh, finally, we, uh, there was opportunity and we're like, we need to go. So we raised the money and our community helped us out. They're like, we believe in Geek Devotions. And we got there, and, uh, we have we've had a booth to this point almost every con since then at GeeKon. And we've been able to be there. What's cool about it is the community, people know us and we know them. Not just the people come to the con, but some of the vendors. But, uh, a really neat win for me was the fact that there was one guy that we met at the con, and at the very first con where people were yelling at us, really, do cool dude. We got to talk with him, love on him, and every year since then, we see him at the con and we go, hey, what's up, man? It's like a reunion. And a couple years ago, I can't, it was either the con year or the year after the con, um, it was the year after the, yeah, he comes up to our booth and goes, hey, I want to tell you guys something. Um, I've been following you guys for several years, obviously. I watch your stuff. I watch your stuff on Facebook and YouTube, and it's really encouraged me. And, uh, he goes, I know I wasn't really close to the Lord, and I mean, I was raised in church, but I kind of went away. And he goes, but combination of y'all's stuff and other things, he said that was on TV that day, and there's a Billy Graham show that came on. He goes, I gave my life to the Lord right there in my living room. And it was a real moment. I want to thank you guys for being part of that for us, for me. And, uh, he, uh, he goes, I'm not perfect yet because I've been working towards it. He was actually, he was making some pretty serious life-changing moves, uh, decisions right there on the con floor while walking through that. And so I think that's another one of those wins is a part of the longevity, but also the investment in community with people.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point is the longevity of building relationships. And it seems like when a lot of people in the church view things going on digitally, they're thinking that it's a swipe, that that's all it is. It's a quick thirty-second thing. It's a sixty-second thing, and you're on to the next thing. And it's like, okay, that might be content, but it's not connection yet. And what you want is to build connection and invite people into community. And that long-term community relationship with people is really where you start to have engagement so that you can bring them, you know, in, and they're going, well, I've never had this, or I want to have more of this, or how do I? And then you're sharing, you know, the deepness of Christ with them.

I love how you're, I never even heard of GeeKon. What, I'm sorry, I where did I miss this? Where is GeeKon at? What is GeeKon?

Yeah, uh, GeeKon is a con we have here in Shreveport. They're doing their tenth year this year, actually.

Okay, and, uh, it's, uh, it's a really great con. Greg Adams is the guy who runs it, and, um, every year he changes things. He's trying to fix things every year, try to make it better and shape it into what it needs to be. And I really appreciate the growth that he's put into it. And, um, it has, uh, it's kind of a general geekery con. It's not just an anime con. It's not just a this or that, but it's across the board. So we've had voice actors. We have artists. We've had, uh, we had, um, oh gosh, what's his name? Sam, oh, what's his name? He played Flash Gordon back in the day. Um, oh my gosh, Lyle, what's his name? We interviewed him. Ah, hang on. So we had him, uh, uh, uh, Alice, um, Cooper was there one year. Um, we've had, uh, Sam.

John Jones, thank you baby. Love a plethora of just different genres of people. Alvro was there one year and she was nice, was she? She was a lovely lady. But just a general geek con, which is one of the things I loved about it because it was one of those things where even though we were all in these different spaces of geekdom, we all get it. Yeah, we all understood. And you show up there, you'll find somebody within the realm that you're into. If you're just a weeb and maybe you're a hardcore gamer, or maybe you're like hardcore gamers, we had Master Chief there actually last year. Or maybe you're into music, or we had some wrestling cats there for a while. You'll find somebody there to connect with.

Oh, that's really cool. It might need to get on my list of to-dos, but I've got several cons already on my list of to-dos this year, so I don't know if that'll fit unless suddenly I've got income from all the things I'm doing. But oh bro, I'll fill you. So a friend of ours, Rushmore Show. Yeah, they just posted up in the chat. Finding Geek Devotion is a huge testimony for him. He's actually a pastor from South Louisiana. Him and another guy, and Kirk is his name. He found our show and he was like, "You can do this." And so they started their show, the Rushmore Show, where they kind of rate like their top four. Whatever, pick a topic and they will do a top four of it. And they have blown up. They're hitting like five and six cons a year. Their YouTube channel's blowing up. They're doing some amazing things. I'm really proud of them.

That's cool. I'm going to definitely have to put a follow over there. Let me do that real quick.

Yes, and they're in, they're mostly on YouTube legitimately. They're mostly on YouTube, but legitimately their stuff is so funny. Like, they are funny people.

Well, my wife teases me, or I should say I tease my wife when she watches the same show over and over again, and I'm like, "I already know how this drama ends. I already know all of it. Why are you watching it again?" Because the only thing I can legitimately watch more than once is either a holiday show that I fell in love with as a kid and can watch, you know, like It's a Wonderful Life, or it's got to be a comedy so I can watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail a thousand times. I know the Empire wins. I'm sorry, or sorry, the Rebellion wins, not the Empire. Sorry, the Rebellion. The Rebellion wins. Okay, I already know that happens. I don't need to watch it fifty times. I'm sorry. I don't. I mean, I know a lot of you probably have. Comedy is the only thing because the joke is funny every time that you missed and you didn't shoot him, or you were able to slam dunk, you know, and blow up the Death Star on a million-to-one chance, but you did it every time. I don't. It's not my area. So like, when you're talking about geek con where you find your niche where you fit, oh, that just sounds awesome.

Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. So, uh, oh, were you going to say something?

Ly, no, I was going to comment on the chat.

Oh, okay, go ahead. Go ahead, comment on the chat. It's been several different contributions of just how helpful you guys have been, which I think is just fantastic.

Yep. I was actually gonna comment on Retro going boo to Monty Python and the Holy Grail because that's his favorite movie, favorite movie of all time. He loves it so much. He, we said sarcastically. Yes, yes. Yeah, that. Sorry, sorry, my brain is just on podcast for some of our favorite. I'm just going to the Judean People's Front. No, we're the People's Front of Judea. And if you don't watch it, you're going to have no idea of why that is hilarious.

Oh, actually, that's Life of Brian. Sorry, not Holy Grail. I'm quoting the wrong one.

Yeah, that's a whole different. That's a whole another movie. That's a whole another one. Any anyway, when I was in college, I was in the theater department, and when you would see someone on campus, you quoted a line and the proper response was the next line of the movie.

So that's fair. So every theater season, the first thing we did at the first cast party was watch Holy Grail.

Nice, nice. So, oh man, I love that movie. I yes, I do too. I'm going to a conference in November, and we're talking about cosplay, which I've never done, and I'm trying to figure out who from Holy Grail I want to be for cosplay. And I'm thinking Tim the Enchanter might be what I go with.

I was about to say you should do Tim. I was about to say that you should be. Nobody does Tim. Nobody does Tim. Although if you wanted to go an easy route, you could just get a pair of coconuts and oh yes. Paxi was my first thought actually was Paxi. When my kids were young, we went on a trip to Washington DC, and they said, because they knew the movie, they wanted to bring coconuts with us when we went to DC so that they could travel around doing coconuts, and nobody would know why it was funny. And so I got coconuts, and I had to go through several coconuts in order to get them sliced in half properly so that they could have coconuts to bang together. And after half a day, they gave up, and I'm like, "I'm filming this. We're going to have this monumental movie at the end of it, our trip through DC with coconuts." And they gave up on me, but I did get some really good shots of them like going crosswalks and other places and in front of monuments before they gave up. So ironically, having them put the coconuts to walk away works really well with the theme of the movie.

It does. It does. Just have the cops take confiscate all the coconuts.

Oh, we're way off a rabbit trail, which my stream will appreciate because that is how my brain operates and goes off on a trail over here and then we'll come right back to what we live in the world of ADHD squirrel.

Oh, so you've started on YouTube, and I know that you're on other socials. You're on Twitch. Where do you find the best place is for you to be able to have community gathered together?

Twitch. Twitch, yeah. Yeah, we, uh, yeah, it's one of those things where we started splitting our stream to YouTube and Twitch, and just not a lot of people on YouTube. A lot of our people are on Twitch. And some of that's ease of use, some of it's just some of the aspects of it. But we are starting to get a little bit more people on YouTube. The problem is just the conversation's not there. And we tried a couple streams where we just killed where it was only on one platform, and it didn't do well. And so for us, we're in this weird space where we're just going to keep going to both right now.

Yeah, we have some communication on Facebook. We do. We do a weekly live stream on Monday mornings on Facebook. We call it the Morning Geek Commute, where basically Celeste holds the phone and we safely drop while live streaming. We just kind of update on life, we update on Geek Devotions, things are coming out the pipeline, and whatnot. And depending on the season of life, wherever Celeste works, it's either a long or a short commute. And we get some really, it's a different kind of communication really. Most people come in the comment later on it, but it's again that people seem to like this the ground earth stuff. And you know, we'll have people comment on our nice clean polished YouTube videos, but when it's just us doing life as normal people, there seems to be a lot more engagement because again, as Celeste said earlier in your conversation, there's an authenticity of what's going on, and people like that. They are attracted to authenticity. They want to know that people are just normal people.

I was recently talking with a friend of mine who started going to our church, and our pastor is pretty out and open about who he is, the struggles he's had, the things he's going through. And he goes, "I've never had a pastor like that." And it's the authenticity of that moment that has made him go, "I want to be here in this space. I want this to be my pastor because he seems like a real person." We're less afraid of the facade we've had over the last gosh decades now of these celebrity pastors who just fall from grace. And then you have people who aren't necessarily celebrity pastors, but because of culture that we've set up, church culture, we see a failure and everything just crumbles and people's lives are destroyed. But when we start to see people as people and authentic people, there's a lot. We start to see people with grace.

You know, if we treated pastors the way, or we treated David the way we treat pastors who mess up, we would not have a man after God's own heart in the Bible anymore. That would be erased completely. And not that there doesn't need to be correction, not that there doesn't need to be things to take place. I think the problem is when people have seen it take place, there's this rush to restore people to ministry rather than to restore people to relationship with Christ. And I think that if people saw that it was more about returning people to relationship with Christ and then to ministry, Lord willing, we'd have a different view on things nowadays.

Yeah, I love, I love you bringing up the example of David because it took an outside person to confront him with his sin. But then also the consequences of his sin go forward. And also, I don't think we think about this. David doesn't, can't step away from being king while he's dealing with the consequences, and everyone finding out what he did. But he's in relationship and community with all of those people, which allows him to keep moving forward. Now, I think after that he's, you know, does some other things, you know, that are long-term consequences of those decisions and things that let them down that path. But yeah, we either have two minds of things, it seems like.

Yeah, yeah, I said quick, get a confession and put you back in place and restore you, yeah, or full removal of you. And then how do we love you?

Yeah, yeah. I think that on the New Testament side of things, you look at Peter, who, you know, lot of dudes here off, and Jesus like, "It's all right, chill." You know, super glue it back to the dude's head, kept moving. And then later, literally cursed out a little girl and said, "I don't know who Jesus is," and ran off. And you know, again, modern church culture, we would have erased him from our websites. We would pretend like he was never part of the history of the church. It would all have been erased. But instead, we see Jesus on a beach going, "Do you love me? Feed my sheep."

Yeah, yeah, well, even there, yeah, I don't know if you've studied the Greek in that passage. I love going to the Greek and Hebrew when I'm doing the Bible.

Sure. Jesus asked him, "Do you agape love me?" Self-sacrifice love. And Peter's answer is, "I fileo love you. I brotherly love you." And then he asked him again, "Do you agape love me?" And Peter goes, "Yeah man, I fileo love you. You know, I fileo love you." So then Jesus turns around and says, "Do you fileo love me?" Jesus just lowered the bar because Peter couldn't get over the bar. And we go, "Oh, it says he was upset because Jesus asked him the third time, 'Do you love me?'" No, he asked him the third time, "Do you brotherly love me?" Because you're telling me you can't agape love me, so can you fileo love me? And it's like, "Right, whoa." Jesus met him right where he was. Okay, you can't quite get there. Now you're at least honest. Before you were a braggadocious man, and now you have been humbled. You are honest, and you're saying, "I won't promise you what I can't promise you, Jesus. I'll give you what I got." Right? And to me, that's so much more of a restoration than than we usually make out of that story.

Definitely, definitely, that's good. Yeah, I geek out on doing Hebrew and Greek studies and oh man, I love it, nuances of that. So yeah, I do, I do that all the time. I even have in my a counter for how many times, how many words have I looked up, which is nowhere near accurate. It's nowhere near accurate, but it'll give you an idea. There you go. That's awesome.

Yeah, I was just going to comment on because I was asking you where you find community and I think some of it is also the culture on the platform because YouTube doesn't have a culture of live. YouTube has a culture of highly quality production and that's what they're looking for. So we want you to go spend twenty hours per every hour you put in front of us and then we're going to watch that at double speed, at least I'm going to. And then on Twitch though, it's about being here live with you. Like, oh, I can polish the VOD and put it on YouTube, but if I just put it straight to YouTube, nobody watches it. And if I leave it over here, there's some people that will watch, you know, depending on what you're doing and they're in your community. But people aren't just searching Twitch to find, you know, videos. They're here to be engaged in the community of what's going on, of interaction.

It was interesting to me to find that because my view of Twitch before I got on here was not that at all. It's just a bunch of people that want to play video games and my kids would watch it and I'm like, why you want to watch somebody play a video game? Because I didn't understand. It wasn't just about watching a person. It was engagement with the person. It was community of people who were engaged in watching together.

So like you were saying, you don't know where God's leading or what you're doing and all of those things, on some level of well, I don't know what the end goal is or the long term, I've kind of got the Twitch is my retirement plan and I'm a long way away from retirement. But I don't ever have to quit streaming on unless and ever it, it's God brought me here and said you're doing this and I'm and I'm like, why? I'm not the guy to do this and it's not about how big I am. It's just about there's a community of people that if I'm not here, where are they going to be?

Well, that's the thing is the words that you had it on there is God told you to be here, so you're going to be there. There's this great example of God's of David's mighty men and there's a man named Shammah and in the Bible you have a paragraph where it says that there was basically a bean field and Shammah defended that bean field. He wasn't going anywhere and it's just a bean field. Most people like, okay, cool man, it's just beans. But he's like, no, this is the land that my king told me to guard. This is the land my king told me to stand and be ready to defend and to be present. And wherever we're at, wherever God's called us to go, wherever God's called us to be, that's where your king has told you to be. And we need to guard it. We may look at it, it's just a bean field, Lord, but it's important to the king. And so if the Lord said to you, hey, I want you to be on Twitch, man, be on Twitch. The Lord tells you to be on YouTube, be on YouTube and do your like we talked about, give excellence there on YouTube. God told you to be in a little bitty storefront in the middle of nowhere next to Dollar General, being in a little storefront right there in the middle of nowhere in Dollar General and be excellent in what the Lord's given you.

Oh yeah, the number of things in the last year that I'm like, well, I don't, I don't know how you talk about hearing from God and hearing from the Holy Spirit, but I usually describe it as the Holy Spirit sounds like my voice but he's telling me things I don't want to do. So I'm usually arguing with the Holy Spirit or I will be kind of boning something and then the Holy Spirit would just say something in my head. So a couple years ago when I did get on Twitch and I saw Pastor Du, I saw Pastor Susie and I started noticing a bunch of pastors who were online and then people who were intentionally being missionaries and their churches didn't understand what they were doing, their denominations didn't understand what they were doing. They had no support. And I'd been doing pastor groups for a long time in person and at the end of COVID, the one group it was just time for that group to end. One pastor moved away, another one was working towards retirement and busy and couldn't make meetings and my other pastor friend who we're still good buddies, he goes, yeah, you and I can get together for a beer whenever, but if it's just the two of us getting together to just meet, I don't need that. Let's just go to the bar instead of just doing a pastor group. And it was like, okay, that ended.

And so I'm driving back and forth and for a while I had a temporary position that was an hour away, so it was like halfway, like a half an hour down the road, this exit, like from both directions. The Holy Spirit was like speaking to me over that year that I was working there and I'm driving past that exit and I'm going, man, I really going to miss that group. I'm going to miss doing that. I'm not going to be able to set one up where I'm at. And I heard the Holy Spirit say, well, you know that thing you've been doing in person, how about you do that digitally? And I'm like, oh, you, what? No, I can't do that. What? But I was like, okay, I'll do this.

So I actually work with organization John 17:23 Ministries. They set up based on John 17, Jesus' high priestly prayer, that the world will know that we are one because of our love for one another as you and I are one, they and me. And anyway, so it's really focused around pastoral unity is what's going to bring church unity together. So word trial, I talked to the guy who is in my neighborhood who set me up, who oversees those groups and I said, hey, I'm thinking about doing this and he goes, well, you're going to need to talk to the upper level guy. Great, set me up with him. So I go into that meeting and sometimes I just feel like I'm going to just lay it all out there. I go, so the, so I'm doing this thing. I'm going to take these groups online. Can I use your name or not use your name? Because I'm like at this point I've been like arguing and the Holy Spirit is bugging me like crazy and it's like, okay, I got to start this thing. And so it's not really you giving me permission. It's can I use your name? Because otherwise I'm just going to, I'm just going to do this.

And so that was like four years ago and I've got a couple of groups and I keep trying to get those going, but it's just that you see people that are there in the space that are hurting and you're trying to reach out, you're trying to connect them rather than feel like you're isolated and alone as someone serving, drawing people together around those things.

So oh, I was going to say one other one of those crazy things that and I got a whole bunch of these stories. A crazy one was so I'm doing digital stuff now and I'm trying to figure out what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to keep doing transition ministry or not? And I'm sitting at, what was it, trying to think of the name of it, anyway, doing ministry outside the box is fresh expressions kind of stuff. So I'm sitting there and they're talking about going in and praying at the local prison and I'm like, yeah, God, I interviewed at the local prison and they didn't give me a job. In fact, it was the worst interview I had in my life. I'm not doing that. And the Holy Spirit goes, I didn't tell you to pray in prison. I just said you could go pray. Like, oh. And then, and then he goes, yeah, you know your sons, you know down to the local artisan market where they were selling soap? How about you go down there and start a prayer booth down there? I was like, why? Why would I want to? You brought me online and now you're telling me to go start a prayer booth? Like, really? Is that so?

I started a prayer booth last year. I love it. So yeah, it's like the journey is, you know, being faithful and pursuing whatever God puts in front of you and experimenting and learning. So I did that and I learned a whole lot and what I need to do now is write it all up so somebody else can duplicate what I did and not have to make any mistakes that I made and learn from what I learned and build on it and make it better than I did.

Word. Well, how about look to the future? What has you most excited about the rest of this year or even two, three years down the road of things that God has given you a vision for or things that are already working and you're working on to make happen?

I think season ten has us excited. We don't necessarily have specifics lined out, but the fact of being in digital ministry, being in the spaces for a decade, yeah, is a big deal. Yeah, definitely. And you know, we, our hope, our plan is to do more cons and do more stuff. Again, we love being digital, but there's a level of being in face to face with people and it makes a difference. And you know, we got GeekCon this year. We've for the first time ever we've applied to do a second con later this year. It's a smaller con over in Monroe and we're wanting to grow and do stuff like that. You know, we love to travel or we would love to travel and speak and minister to places and encourage folks. And I think that's some of our stuff that we're looking forward to seeing happening. We want that. We know will happen eventually. It's just no matter what it looks like and how it happens, but that's really the big stuff is just we're more excited about meeting people, yeah, and just being present with folks and seeing our friends succeed in amazing ways.

Yeah, we have a goal of getting a 501c3. It's kind of been put on the back burner for now just because it's costly and at the moment Geek Devotions is run by our patrons and our budget. We have a savings set up. We've started the fundraiser for it last year and we've taken the money, we put it aside until we can hit the goal we need to, two years ago, so we can hit the goal where we can actually afford it fully because we're going through a program that it costs quite a bit because they provide you with the whole package of telling you how to maintain it and function well with it also. So but that's another thing we wanted to make happen, preci before the end of season ten, which is the full-on nonprofit status.

Yeah, that would be amazing. Yeah, I will agree with the cost aspect of that since I have helped with nonprofit boards and whatnot before. I didn't have to go through the whole 501c3 part, so I knew a lot of all the writing of the stuff and putting all of that together, but it was like, ah, like last year just felt daunting. So I did work with an organization called Start Church to have them go through the whole process for me.

That's who we're looking at using. Are you really? Great folks. Yes, yep. Yes, they're fantastic. Yeah, we're looking at doing that. One of the, it wasn't a package. They don't have packages, but we want to get all the use all the resources they can give us to help us maintain the 501c3 to help it grow because I've heard horror stories of people starting it and like they miss something and then everything's crashed upon them and I wanted to be, I wanted to again back to that conversation of excellence, I wanted to be excellent.

Yeah, yeah, and we don't want to start something and A, it not be God and B, it fail because of user error.

So we want to make sure that we do everything we can on our end of things to make sure that things are done with excellence and with accountability. Yeah, yeah. And getting your board, getting your bylaws, getting all of those things together. And StartChurch has a great system to take you from beginning to end through that. Oh, I felt so good walking through that. The Church Digital, we also partnered with StartChurch. I've got a lot of friends in ministry that have, and then those that did it on their own and ran into some issues. I went, "Here, let me show you what we did over here so you can amend the things you discovered that we were not the best." What I don't feel that StartChurch has a strength in is, which is also a thing I need, is how do I raise support for the thing that I'm doing? And if you, I don't know if it's out yet or it was in the last week, The Church Digital, we just had an interview and also will be one of the breakout sessions at the Digital Missionary Conference is Reliant Ministry. So Reliant is like your HR department. So you can come along with any nonprofit and help individuals. So they've done this for years. You want an intern, but you don't know how to raise an intern salary for your church or your ministry? They do all the HR. That person raises their funds to be able to do that temporary part-time internship, and then they do all of the soliciting and all of that stuff. So I'm actually done their training. I've partnered with them so that what I'm doing here on this stream is going to be funded by me doing that and then being able to expand this and maybe upgrade some tech if I can get some funding stuff like that. So yeah, so you sound beautiful, man.

Oh, thanks, thanks. It's this is a hand-me-down, and as long as I sound okay, I'm good. But I would still like to upgrade it because every once in a while people like, "I can't hear you. The volume's too low." So right, I totally get it, man. Breach, breach, breach showed up in your recommendations on the left before I logged in. No idea what algorithm this section uses, but you've never encountered this channel before. So GG on that. Welcome to the party, my friend.

Yeah, yeah. I believe you. You might see me over on Flat Cap Dapper Pastor. I'm now over here on a second channel streaming for The Church Digital. So good to see you, Breach. Word. Yeah, that's just fun to know the algorithm's doing something right for a change. Love it. Well, that's cool. I'm excited about where you've come, what you've been doing. And boy, I just love getting to know people more and how they got into ministry and what caused them to be there. So yeah.

Oh, so this is actually my third channel. You better slow down. You're busier than we are. Well, last Monday I podcast. This is the podcast channel, and we'll do some games here in a minute. I have a fish channel. So I've got fish. They have their own channel. So that's awesome. So I do, it's either just up watching the fish or I do co-working streams over there. So it'll be up and I'll just chat. And I actually, I'm pretty excited about this. I had a, you talk about people just helping you out. So I've got songs in my stream because somebody created songs for my stream so that I have an intro song and a raid song and a fish pond song. And then I got another channel, and then someone just took my logo and turned it into an avatar for me so that I can have an avatar over there that is my koi pond.

Oh, that's cool. I can have an avatar over there that is my koi pond. Hey, Skirt Savage, yeah, throwing the fish in there. Appreciate it. That's awesome. Let me think, was there anything else I wanted to ask you guys?

Oh, um, you had mentioned you had different partnerships and stuff. Are there any of those things that would be, or is that all going to be found if we go to your website?

No, uh, now that you say that, I probably need to make a page for our partnerships. We have, we are part of a network called CultureBox, which is a network of different podcasts and creators. They're combining geek storytelling and pop culture and basically doing what we're doing, letting people know loved and pointing them back to our Savior in some fashion. Some of them are more overtly Christian, some of them are more casual about it. So you have, we've mentioned a lot of them tonight. Retro Rewind is part of that. He's a, it's Francisco and Paul, FRJ Powers, and they do a podcast where they review movies and video games that are fifteen years old or older. Then you have The Rush Show, where I told you they do the top four. No more. You have our friend and Jacob from the CellCast, where they review animated movies and shows. They're all great guys. They're hysterical. They're fun. Um, you got another show called The Monster Island Film Vault where they review monster movies. And then, but that's all part of the CultureBox within Geek Devotions. We have Devoted Geek, Devoted Geek Network, that we've created. And they're all people that are part of Geek Devotions. And basically what I've done with them is like, "Look, Geek Devotions is the strip shopping. You guys are your own individual places. This is your stuff." And I tell this to my writers and I tell this to my podcasters, "Whatever you create is yours, period. And we appreciate you helping us to be a voice to reach people in other ways." And but if like you come to me like Dallas, "I appreciate Geek Devotions, but I want to take my podcast and do my own thing," be blessed. This is yours, my brother. So we have several podcasts. We have one called Spider Fan Podcast, which is a podcast where our friend Branson is basically just going through the history of Spider-Man issue by issue.

Oh wow.

Um, Celeste one does one called We Read Allegedly, where her and a group of friends, it's kind of like a book podcast, but it's not like people because people reach in like, "Hey, I want you to do my book." It's not that. It's like books they're actually interested in. They're reading. Well, at least one of us is interested at the time. And then, uh, sorry, you're just that title that sounds like a great podcast I could have done in high school where I didn't read the book but I would write the book report anyway.

That we've definitely had those conversations as well. Allegedly, they all read the same book.

Oh my goodness, that would be so much fun. Just like give me a title of the book and I'm going to tell you what it's about without having any knowledge. That would, oh my goodness, that'd be so much fun. I might, you know, I'm going to have to do that for some shorts just for fun.

Oh my gosh, that's hysterical. Um, Mike, computer is dying. Okay, oh, and I left my cord in your office. Did I? So I'm going to exit out of this and I'm going to come hook this mic up to the board so I can continue with the conversation. You just won't be able to see me.

All right, sounds good, babe.

So but we have that. We also have another podcast called The Gundam Watch, where we were reviewing the Mobile Suit, uh, Gundam, which is a franchise that's been around for forty-five years or so. Um, then we have another one called The Loft, which is a segment within our main podcast, ComTalk, where our friend John Haru talks about music. And uh, I feel like I'm missing something, but I'm not sure what, and I feel terrible about it.

Um, oh, The Bottom Shelf. There, Dallas. The Bottom Shelf is a podcast where we review terrible movies. Like, we purposely are watching the worst movies in history, and um, we rate them as top shelf, middle shelf, bottom shelf, and then that they're just really terrible dumpster fire where they should be burned out of existence. To our knowledge, there's never been a movie that's been in that shelf ever. Um, certainly no Avatar movies have ever been in the bottom shelf.

I'm sure.

Uh, give me a title and challenge to make up the plot.

Yes, that's what I'm thinking. Yes, just give me a title. That'd be amazing. You know what, I do this every once in a while on this sounds like a stream adversary idea here that I'm just going to have you give me book titles and I'll tell you what the book is about with no knowledge of the book.

That right? That sounds like fun. That'd be great. I love that idea so much. I really do.

Oh man, she getting everything on go in there or yeah, she's trying to. She dropped her microphone. It's all good to drop. She normally drops the mic on stream. It's all good.

Oh okay. Oh man, so it's a good mic. It's the reason I bought it. It was durable.

Ah, well, that's just a hand-me-down because, you know, I was mentioning that my kids, you know, watched Twitch. Well, during COVID, they graduated from college, essentially were unemployed, living in my basement, and watching Twitch. And they started a business and thought, "Oh, we could also stream on Twitch," and got microphones and stuff. And then went, "Yeah, I'm not doing that. You want it?" So what kind of microphone is it?

Uh, JLab.

Okay, cool, man. Dig it, dig it. So we, uh, do you have an interface? Which is it an XLR or is it a, uh, our is HDMI? I mean, uh, USB?

It's USB.

Okay, so our secondary microphone that Celeste has been using is a Road, uh, Road PodMic. They're like a hundred bucks, but you have to have an interface to it. But they're durable. But Road just put out a new microphone that's USB and XLR, and it's nice, my friend.

Yeah, I've been looking at Road and Elgato.

Um, yeah, I love the Elgato stuff too.

Yeah, I do have, um, shoot, and I can't remember what the name of it. I do have a capacity to be able to do XLR. I have some of those, which I don't use because they're just cheap church microphones. So they're not even good quality ones. They're just, "Hey, I got to borrow them and use them because I was trying to do something in person," and then they just stayed there. So our first microphone that we used that was not USB and was not plugged into my phone was a Shure SM58, I think is what it was called. I can't remember, but it's like the standard. It's a hundred bucks. Somebody gave it to me, and uh, that sucker was a workhorse. I love it. We actually, um, passed it off to our, um, our Branson, who does the Spider-Man podcast.

Okay.

So is your battery dying, man?

Huh? This says The Church Digital battery going to die?

No, he was asking if her mic was having problems, and she said she didn't have the cord.

Oh, I see. G, a God Wave Three mic. Oh, yeah, that sounds like. Can you hear me?

Yes, I can hear you. All right. Oh good. Can you, Dallas, can you turn up the audio in my ears? Which one? You're on?

Yeah, that's a great question. Check one, check two. Can you hear me now? Is check one, check two. Can you hear me now? Is. How about now? Little bit more. How about now? Where did you plug it into? Where I found the where you found the spot. Like, I can hear him, but it's real quiet. It's funny because you actually plugged it into left channel out.

Oh, well, that explains why I couldn't hear it. I can hear much better now. I can hope so. All right, there we go. All right, there we go. And we're back. We're back. Take two, take three. I don't know what count we're on. I am so sorry about all the, man. If you need help?

No, no need to apologize. Uh, I found that, you know, going back and forth with several different people in doing this, you end up with one person having problems on theirs because you're not doing well, and then like I said, I got three different channels, so I've got a different setup for each one, and then readjust things.

Oh yeah, and then bring someone in to do the podcast, you know, just adds another layer of excitement. Um, I got you, man. I have thought about doing other stuff, but like, I don't need anything for right now. I want to get going. This is what I can do for now, and we'll get better as we go along. So yeah, that's it. Uh, so we've been talking quite a bit about doing digital ministry. Anything else that you that I haven't asked you that you just think?

I think a lot of it is we, so Celeste alluded to it about the class that she was taking part in. It was a school ministry our church had. Um, after she was done with the class, there were a couple years there the school went on for a few more years and we actually taught a class. And basically what it was is the assignment for the class was they would take over geek devotions for a month and they are responsible for creating devotions for a whole month and a thing called Extra Tuesday, which is a segment we do every so often. This adds extra to the YouTube algorithm because they like that. Within our world, huh? I said yeah, they do. Yeah. So we would do that and it was always interesting because most of the people in the class are not nerdy and geeky people at all. Most of them were not tech-savvy at all and we had to explain to them like, look, the goal of this class is not to make you a geek or a nerd. It's not to make you like sci-fi, to like Batman, or to like anime. The goal is to help you think outside the box and to recognize the fact that there are different people that need you to speak differently to them.

Interest-specific ministries you have FCA, Fellowship of Christian Athletes. You have the Christian Motorcycle Association. You have the Cowboy Church. And these are all groups that were started under the basis of I speak a language. Let me reach a people group that speaks the language. And for us, geek devotions, we speak geek and so we love on people in the geeky spaces. And everyone can do that. I looked at the class one day. I was like, look, you're a carpenter. You know what it's like to be a carpenter. You know the life of a carpenter. You can tell people who are carpenters more about Jesus than I can. And like another person, like you're a homemaker and you live this life passionately. You can do this in a way that I will never be able to do it because you're there and you're present.

Now we stretch them a little bit. Again, like I told you, I do it with my teenagers. I do it with everybody else. I will push you. I'll make you feel uncomfortable, but I won't just leave you there. And so they stretched and grew a little bit. One year they did a whole thing on Star Wars. One year they did a whole thing on Batman. One year was on anime, which was really awesome because I had to break some stereotypes for them. But we just did. But the whole point is everyone has a voice and every person's voice is valuable and it's just a matter of finding where your voice belongs.

At the same time, it's us being the church as a whole understanding every person's voice is valuable and it belongs and you need to take a moment to pause and listen because just because I don't necessarily understand something doesn't mean you don't have something to impart to me, right? I sit down with people regularly who are really into hunting and fishing and I don't. Um, the most hun thing I do is organ. So no, you play, you play the Samurai game. Oh true, I do play some Samurai games. So but anyways, but they still can impart to me something special. And so just because somebody's coming to you with a language and vocabulary that's maybe a little bit different doesn't mean they don't have something to impart to you as a whole.

Yeah, that's very good. Breaches preach is just an agreement with there. I become all things to all men that I might save some. Word. Yeah, yeah, preach it. Absolutely. You know, well, I want to, if you haven't seen, the Lucan Congress just had a podcast out. I can't remember who was on it. It's a video game company that's got a game that is for your phone, which is something Benjamin, but I can't remember what it is. But it's a war game that you can play on your phone and it's teaching skills around it. So it is a Biblical setting, but they were just talking about Gen Z. Ninety-four percent of Gen Z identifies as a gamer. Yeah, I'm like, man, that's a large, large number.

I got more stats because, you know, I was telling you about like, hey, I'm fundraising. I got to talk to people. I got to help them see the mission field. You know, word, the gaming industry is bigger than the NFL and we think the NFL is big. I mean, but globally, arenas are filled with people watching video games. And if people have a phone in their hand and a computer at home and they're like, find one person that's not playing something on their phone and they have a flip phone. That's the people who don't play anything on their phone. Exactly.

So speaking of that, I understand there's a game I'm supposed to be learning here and trying to play. And so yes, I'm hyped about this. So okay, so sell me on this game while I get my screen and everything shifted around so that everybody can see what we're going to be doing here. This is a game that is a great community game and I mean it is a gold community game. It's called Quiplash and our community loves it to death. And a lot of people do to the point where we play it once a month. We do. We play it once a month. It's our community game night that we do. And what's great about it is that everyone can play. Um, did he disappear? Uh, I should still be there. He's gone. Oh no, did he kill the stream? I don't think so because we're still streaming out to our crew out here on Geek Devotion side. Oh, there you are. Is I just hit share screen and uh, oh okay. So you might have toized everything. I don't see your screen yet. Oh, you didn't see it when I, so but anyways, I hope no sir, it went just went blank. Oh, interesting. I'm still here if you can hear me. Yeah, it's still gone blank on us. I'm wondering if you got to share the, if you got to, uh, share source maybe. Oh wait, idea. Click on the screen itself. Click on the screen itself. See that changes anything. It may not. That's how it normally works for us with different things. But uh, I'm assuming people can still hear us, but the game itself, it's a really simple game that everyone can play. I mean, literally anybody. You can do it on a cell phone. You can do it on your computer as long as somebody's running the game itself from a spot. Yeah, everyone can play and basically what it is is you're given a prompt and everyone is able to answer and give stuff. There's eight players you can play, but on the back end of it, um, if you don't jump in one of those eight, this is a great thing also. Is maybe you're like, hey, I don't want to naturally play, but I want to vote. You can upvote on the answers.

Breach says I'm old school. I'm into Pod Project 86 and Red. That's amazing recommendations, my friend. I don't know why we're talking about Pod because we were talking about metal. Yeah, uh, Christian metal churches and then Christian metal music. And so uh, let's see. I don't know how to say their name, but it looks like it says Savage says that their favorite heavy metal band is Holy Name and I'm pretty sure that that's a band that John has recommended to me. Maybe, maybe. Hey, um, Savage, if you're really into metal, depending on how hardcore, check out Mangled Carpenter. You might like them. Yeah, they're fun. I was going to put them in the chat. Yep. Her name anyway. But the thing about Quiplash is that it is about improv. Yeah, and knowing the audience, we have answers to things that we have done that are they don't make sense, right? Like no one in their right mind understands it, but because ooh, Wolves at the Gate is very good. Um, but because it makes sense to the group, right? Makes sense to the people who are playing. Yep. Cast goes the Wearer of the Soggy Pop-Tarts, also known as Juicy Crackers. That is an inside joke with our community. It is. And you can put Juicy Crackers on pretty much anything and we will probably pick it as an, it looks like we're not seeing anything on our side anymore. It's only on your side. Um, I shared, we can't see you or the screen, but if I look on your Twitch channel, I see you. Oh, you're back from outer space. Yep, and he's back on our side of the Twitch channel. Yes, he is. So fascinating. And when I'm not sharing it, the game disappears from me. Uh, let me check source on this. Yeah, that's fun. So Savage says there is a Bible word puzzle for mobile. Interesting. So oh, I know why that. I think I know why. Let me try that again. I believe in you. Yeah, on our side it all just disappears. That's weird. That it disappears as far as I, no audio. Yeah. Um, why am I not getting it? So cast goes it drops Dallas's video from Geek Devotion side of the stream when you all do that for some reason. That's interesting. Mhm. Well, probably because our video is going through the shared Twitch stuff. Yes. I do like your setup though, man. It's really clean looking. Oh, thanks. Um, why is it not letting me capture? All right, I guess we're not going to have it on screen. Oh man. Well, unless I share and then you don't get to see it. That's, I'm not, that's that's fine. What we could do is you could share it and then well, then our crew won't be able to see anything either. Interesting. Doing so weird. Let me hit share screen on my side and see if that changes anything. I'm going to share. So when you hit it, are you doing window or entire screen? Window. Try entire screen. Well, I don't have it on a full screen, but I can try that. Just make sure all your personal data is not shown. Yeah, oh yeah, it's there's nothing personal showing, but yes, the Flat Cap Dapper Pastor's bank account number is 86 letting me choose 309. What screen? When I go to capture full screen, it's like it's not letting me choose is what to share. Really? See, I'm showing I'm able to look at two screens. Do you have two screens? I have a thirty-seven inch long uh screen, so I've got stuff set up side by side and then I got my laptop monitor down below, right? So if I do this, what what happens? Then I mean we could run the game over here. Yeah, sure enough. If I do that, it disappears on our side of things. That's so weird. You disappear on my side too now. That's so weird. And now it's not giving me the choice to capture a full screen. Let me try this again. So cast goes, can you not add the source on OBS with this? Um, I don't know. I'm trying. I'm trying to add on OBS. That's what I'm trying to do. Oh, and it will not capture the, that's what I'm just trying to do because it wasn't working the other way. So I'm just trying to capture the screen or capture the game and it's not letting me capture it. It says it's capturing it. Let me exit back. Escape here. Back up. I broke your stream, man. I'm so sorry. Well, maybe it's because it's open in a collab thing and it's trying to just share it that way. Maybe because like when you shared it when before Dallas got here, I could see it. Yeah, oh, could you? Yeah, and that was when we had both things. The only problem then was we were hearing E. Well, now the game's just not responding. So oh no. Well, hm. I wonder. Hold on a second. Let me see. Um, of course on Geek thing at all, but um, let me do this. Let me let me start it over again. All right. Yeah, on the Geek Devotion side, I'm all I'm seeing, not seeing you and I at all. Definitely still live though because I can see you moving things. Yeah, I think it's a, I don't know. Let's see what I'm going to do. This I'm going to hang up and come back again and see if that and then you do your side of things. So let me do this. Leave. This. See that reloads all right. That reloaded you. So we can see your beautiful face on Geek Devotion side. Yep, yep. All right. I can see you on my screen, but not in the sharing. You know what? If I do that, let me see if I stop sharing my camera, he's gone. See it? Oh, I see it. We see things. Okay. Huz, and I can see it on the stream. All right, right. So I'm going to change what I'm showing here a second.

It still wasn't letting me capture, but I think I got a workaround there. Su goes, "Huzzah!" He also says that you're adorable. Gig devotion. Okay, that did not... there we go.

So the thing about this game, people can go to jackbox.tv. When you start the game, on the screen will be a code for them to join in to the game. Now, again, I mentioned this: make sure you have it set to family-friendly and set to longer gameplay. And then, as long as you join first, you're in full control when we start. When we don't... and what happens is it's going to give us a prompt, and everyone who's part of the game, once the game starts, can add their prompts. And then after a time frame, we all go through the prompts and look at everybody's answers and we vote on who had the best ones.

The great thing is, and this is why I love it for communities, is even if it's like maybe it's just four of us who are playing, people can join in after we started the game and they can be part of the audience and they can add their votes to the voting. And so, again, you can do this with a cell phone, you can do this with a tablet, computer, whatever. As long as somebody's doing it, the setting for longer answer, I didn't find that. So click on Quiplash itself. Yeah, it's just loading. So okay, so should be in the settings for Quiplash, I think. Yeah, because the other ones I don't think are time. There we go. Settings. Yeah. And then gameplay, content control, gameplay, audience, allow room code hiding, start game from control only. Our Twitch password? Well, I want for some reason yours doesn't have it. Oh, you know what? We normally play Quiplash One. Oh, we do, don't we? That may not be a feature in Quiplash 3. Click on accessibility for me. Subtitles, motion sensitivity, nope. There it is. There we go. Huzzah! Because those timers are quick. They are. Even with extended time, they're quick.

Okay, so think on your feet. All right. My earbuds are going to die here a second, so I'm going to, before we get going here, try switching. Oh yeah, you would. To hear this, man. Now I don't hear any of the sound at all. I don't know if that's the thing with screen capture. Okay, let's see here. Breaches like things. I, my one earbud died. I don't know if the other one's going to let me. See if I can switch this a second to corded. And then... it's so good. Half our streams are tech support. That's fair.

Another thing we got from Retel Rewind Podcast. Uh, Breech, I don't know what "make your own" is. I've not done it. Maybe you can make your own prompts? I think that's what that is. So that might be interesting. I hear myself. That might be interesting for when we play this. The student, some reason, that's another thing. Is we play this with our students. Headphones are not working. No, well, I can hear you. May need to go in and tell it where your speaker is. Yeah, I did, and it doesn't show up. Headphones. I have to go into the computer and say it's the real tech audio, but it's not switching to the headphone jack.

All right, I can hear you. As long as we don't get a back loop, we'll be fine. So even on the website, it's not... you do it. You're not hearing yourself back through, are you? Okay, we are not. Now I don't think I can hear you. All right, I'm going to try a different set. Family-friendly. Oh, you can't hear us? Oh no. Check one, check two. Well, I all I hear is ourselves. Yeah, I'm trying to. Why do I sound so weird? Because that's your voice when you're doing a mic check. No, no, you sound... oh yeah, no, I'm not normally that deep.

All right, let's see if that's working now. Mic check one, two, one, two. There we go. There we go. Can you hear me? A bit of a delay, but we're good. Hey, okay, sweet. Uh, but like Reach was asking about inappropriate prompts. Uh, there is a family-friendly filter on here, and it works pretty well. And it's one of those things where you just got to know your community and handle things appropriately. Yeah, okay, so we ready to hit play? Let's go do it. Let's see what happens here. Connecting to Jackbox game. Boom!

All right, so what you need to do at jackbox.tv, and we're try, we'll wait for you to go first, is type in that code. So, and like I said, we don't necessarily hear anything on our side. Hopefully the stream does. I didn't realize I needed to have a phone and a browser open too. Oh yeah, you need a browser of some sort. You can do it on your phone, a tablet. It's probably going to be better on the phone right now. Everything else is eating up... I got you. I can understand that, Breach. So that's one of those things where we, like when we play with our teenagers, there's house rules, and our students know to behave. Yeah, because if they don't, we will stop the game.

All right, okay, I am in. We've got people in. Anyone else? Socast is joining. Okay, and I've lost anything on chat, so if anybody was saying anything, you'll have to repeat that. We keep the chat updated. Yeah. Re says, like I said, making up one's own prompts would eliminate that. I totally get that. Totally get that. Rushb in the chat is in the house. What's up, dude?

Right, so this is the point where you kind of play it by ear and you go, okay, if you're ready to go, you hit start. And, uh, and like said, just for the, I don't know, chat, if you're listening, let us know if you can hear the sounds, because there should be some music happening right now. If not, then I recommend, because this just adds to the fun, is when you read out loud everything.

Rushmore says they do hear it. Cool! So it's just on our end, which is pretty common. Okay, I had stuff turned way down. Yeah, okay, let's go ahead and go. Let's rock and roll. Awkward. And those in the chat, you guys can join right now and be part of the audience and help with the Quiplash 3 season of the Quip. I do appreciate the... I'm Smitty, you know, like from your dreams. Oh, and if you're not in the game, you can still kind of be in the game. Just punch in the room code and join the audience. And again, it's great because it gives you all the instructions.

Ready for round one? You'll answer two prompts on your device in any way you want. And then each of your responses will square off against someone else's. The remaining players vote on their favorite. Easy, right? Oh yes. Points you score points based on the percentage of voters who like your answer. Clear enough? Sure, hope so. Let's go.

All right, this is where your prompts may not be the same as somebody else's, so this is where you got to play it by ear. Try not to read that out loud. Unlike me, I accidentally blurted them out.

Okay, okay, so we got plenty of time. I wasn't sure there. So we got... yeah, it definitely doesn't always give you that much time, and so some people take longer. That's it. I think I've seen someone else play this where... what do you say? Put against people? Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. We actually use my Switch. Who knew police gave tickets for blank? Who knew police gave tickets for ugly hats or ping pong bubbles? Oh my gosh.

Um, we're going to do this one. Let's see how this goes. Who's going to...

All right, blowing bubbles. I was with you, black cap. I really was. All right, clearly you've never gotten a ticket for that, right? No. Book adaptations have gone too far. Book adaptations that have gone too far. Now they're making Blade 1984. Oh, nice. Oh God. Now pick your favorite.

Oh, none of these are good. Oh my gosh. Dang, Su, one M was funnier than yours. Appreciated. 1984. Let's see the next one. Thank you. What's your reflection? Tech, it was already on ice. Uh, also fair. What's your reflection doing when you turn your back? Eating soy crackers. I think I know who's winning this one.

Oh, have you ever played Apples to Apples? Oh yes. This is basically Apples to Apples, but you make it up yourself. Yeah, well, we had one that was falling down. This is at a youth group at three in the morning. Falling down. Oh no. And the winner was, "You're so selfish." So falling down was being selfish? Oh goodness gracious.

And next is... oh man, that's a split time. Most useless feature of luxury coffins. Refunds, foot warmers. Okay, everybody pick your favorite quip.

Well, well, I feel like that you might need a refund though if you end up not wanting the luxury. Well, I mean, I'm sure folks wanted a refund after Jesus got up from the grave. That's fair.

I got... so when you get all the audience vote, you get a... or if you get majority, get... or 75%, get a... but you get super minute. What do you chat about? All right, your chat can talk for one minute. What do you talk about? How filling? Best you think cats care enough to talk back?

There is a clear winner here. Oh my God. I mean, it depends on how big it is. So okay, you got this one, brother. Yeah, you won that one. Oh my gosh. So your car... and yet so accurate. Oh my gosh.

So that was round one. Let us never see it again. But hey, let's see those scores. All right, round one. We can actually see. Right, survey says Cellcast is winning. Let's go, Cellcast. I'm on your tail, Cellcast.

See round two in your future where points will be doubled and stakes will be higher. Says my cat loves to talk to me. She found her voice because I kept talking to her all the time. She's like, "I got to talk back."

All right, uh, that's fair. So sometimes they include... I won't say that because I don't want to ruin things. Take a little more time to... I think. Oh, all right, we have time. I got to think. Trying to think what's going to work for this. Mm-hmm. That's the thing that makes it so funny.

Now she asks for food and pets. That's funny. Come in. Reach, your cat is... you're just doing the meowy thing there. Up the P. Time's running out. Wrap it up or use a safety quip if you have to.

All right, I got my answers in. It's quip time. Apologize for holding us behind. We're waiting on you. How about we start with this player's trophy? Trophy full of blank. Dead president busts or rocks. Pretty sure it's dead president busts, and they rename them every time they do a rush more head can. Is accepted. These guys are hysterical too, man. What's up, DJ? We're doing well, my friend.

Flat cap, you got that one, brother. Wonder, you got the super quiplash. I, dude. And next, I'm officially in trouble now. Happens to that uneaten half of a... actually, happens to the uneaten half of the donuts in the office break room. Grab. You assume there's some uneaten. Choose your favorite. Uh, it gets eaten by a soggy cat.

What? Um, uh, Edge W says audience vote unlocked. Come on, my friend, come vote. Take your teaching me a new game. So we did the podcast, and now they're teaching to hang out. So you're welcome to join.

USB says, "Aah!" This is a great community game. And this silent everything like that. And you start to get jokes with community family game night. Time to pick one you like. Grandma. Who put that there?

Let's see how they handle a college degree that will be surprisingly useful in 20 years. I needed more than that. A college degree that will offer... will be surprisingly useful in 20 years. Digital church game physics, my dude. I feel like there are some people in the same space here. Yeah, survey says got... come on, man, that's it. Rush knows where it's at.

And here we have a brilliant way to came up. Facial recognition technology. It's the only thing I could think of. A brant waited a full facial recognition. Cellcast, choose your smear your face with donut glaze because if you make your face too shiny, the cameras can't see you. What is happening? I feel uncomfortable with that answer. I actually want to go get some donuts though. I mean, didn't there's a lot of donuts being mentioned? I know, right? It's a theme for tonight apparently. Oh wow, the irony.

Of that, the okay, only one round remains. Let's see how it's shaping up to this point. Anybody's game. Cap is coming up. All right, he took one round. He did. He's like, "I got this. I figured out how this place. I've never played this game before. I'm just good at it."

Each receive a that requires three separate responses. The three things that will demonstrate. See how we have an odd number game? All right, so this is where everything goes into little old me. Okay, it didn't let me do anything. Oh, okay, doing it. Okay, they took the prompt away. Why was the prompt? Oh, it should be the, it should be on your screen.

Yeah, I was thinking we needed to answer according to those things. I didn't remember what those three things were. All right, answer's locked in. Let's go. Uh, Breach says I can't hear Flat Cap nearly as well as before. Oh no, oh no, sorry about that. I'm probably not looking enough into the microphone.

Goes, how about a Batman? Is it in here? Is it in room? Liv roomed got dancing dinosaur AR? They cute? That's how I figured out that we I could make a. Let's get it. I don't think I did good. That's okay. Three things that when you see them you can't. Things that when you see them you can't unsee them. Ugly hats, juicy crackers, Titanic on Ice, soggy footage, a car wreck, your surgery. Sorry. Oh, this is different. Yeah, yeah. Things you can unsee when you see them.

Oh my gosh. All right, apparently we're half fall. Well, dang it. The three lessons we learned to three lessons we learned today. Ministry rules, Quip Flash is better the uh is better the tech. Monty Python is Roy's favorite. Fate donuts are utilitarian. 1984 I is a must-see. Indie digital church ministry is lit. Oh boy, those are some good answers.

Follow these three survival tips if you're lost. Lost in the wild. Follow these three survival tips if you're lost in the wild. Don't eat juicy crackers, don't listen to talking cats, and don't eat yellow snow. And now pick your curl in the fetal position, climb up a tree and start fire the cave. Oh my, I feel like that the one about don't eat the yellow snow is just everybody knows that. There's a reason why it's because somebody didn't. Oh, that's fair, that's fair.

All right, boom. So cast took it. Oh man, Flat Cap, you might have lost your lead there. Happened mostly because you put hide in a cave after start of fire and I was like, that's a bad idea. Says Cellcast killed it. Good job. Let's go, Cellcast. There we go. Does this work? I don't know if that works for not.

Oh man, it's running through all the top answers and everything like that. It's pretty fun. The version you got of Jackbox, it came with another game called TKO that you can play if you want to later. But it's a where you draw pictures out and what's cool about that one, you can actually order the prints of those pictures that people draw out on t-shirts. Yeah, that's kind of I did see that in there.

The cast gaming just followed. I've never played. Hey, nice to meet you too. Word, take it easy, my friend. So all right, there you go. I don't think we need to keep sharing that anymore. All right, just hit the exit button. You're good to go, man. Boom, there we go. I've noticed when I throw mine through here and then back it gets fuzzy on my screen. So I, oh yeah, I will have to switch back, but that's all right. We're going to just wrap things up for the evening.

Sounds good, man. Uh, this has been fun getting to know you a little bit better. I knew of you. Uh, oh, we didn't talk about. I think we're both also in Safe Streamers. Yeah, over there we're talking about different. Um, yeah, Breach. Yeah, I'll see you over at Lux. Exactly, exactly. And elsewhere, that's for sure, Breach, Breach, Breach. But yeah, there's a number of groups that are out there of different places to find Christians who are on.

Yeah, my cam's blurry. I know that's because it's going through and coming back. I just, man, figured I'm not going to be on long enough to worry about it here at the end. Um, but when I was trying to put it in several scenes, I was just getting double up on the noise, which was weird. Oh man, so but yeah, so there's Safe Streamers. Uh, we were talking about different places where people might be able to find you, connect with you. Uh, so that's another one of those places. Uh, I do on my other stream have a their little logo that I put up there along with all my other logos. I have lots of logos that I share with everything that I'm doing, which is yeah, we actually have the we have the Safe Streamer on our logo too. I forgot to mention them. I just realized the blue logo blurs into my blue background, so I can see it.

Ah, yeah, I didn't notice it, so that's okay. Um, I still like to raid out. Do you have someone that we could we could raid over to, or are you going to stay on for a while and stream? I could raid over to you. Yeah, no, we could raid out. I have to go eat food. I haven't actually eaten dinner yet. So uh, our buddy Retro Rewind, he's streaming right now and it looks like he is streaming. Um, I don't know what he's. It's a video game of some sort.

Oh, is he doing his Mega Man stream? No, he's playing Altered Beast, which is an old school RPG or RPG arts old school game. Um, he does again his whole thing is playing retro gaming or talking about retro movies. And so um, so yeah, we could do Retro Rewind Pod is the name is his thing. Got drop in the chat for you to see it.

Yep, I found it. Retro Rewind Pod. So that's it, man. Hey, I really want to say thank you by the way for the opportunity to do this and uh, as a blessing to come chat with your community and I really appreciate what you're doing, man, with this whole church digital stuff. Again, I sat down, looked at some of your YouTube videos and you guys are doing some amazing stuff and I appreciate you guys helping to expand the kingdom of God. You guys are very kingdom-minded and I really, more people that are like that, the better. I appreciate you all.

Yeah, we are, you know, expanding in different places, doing different things. We really went global last year on a new scale, and that was helped by going to the LAN conference. And we also made the shift from being, you know, church planting and discipleship making to be digital missionary-minded, and it just like has really launched us into where we feel God wants us to be. And then we got a conference coming up April 2nd. Come on, so if and I need to get some commands, but if anyone is interested, it's missionary.digital. You can sign up for free. It's April 2nd. If you can't make it, sign up anyway. We're trying to show our sponsors who are paying for it that there are a thousand people that want this to come and hang out. So um, yeah, missionary.digital. Thanks for putting that in there.

Um, sure, we go. I like to bless people as we go. So uh, I'm just going to end with a benediction blessing over everybody. So may God's seeking comfort find you. May his loving arms bind you. May his might protect you. May his wisdom direct you. May the joyous love of Jesus Christ be with you and all those you know, both now and forever more. Amen.

Well, thank you, thank you, thank you for the time together. Let's get uh, the raid started and let's go bless other people. Let's go, and hopefully, well, I'm going to be gone to Orlando in a week, so hopefully by the end of the month maybe I'll have time to figure out getting some commands set up around here, but I got emotes and I felt really good about getting emotes, so we'll just blast with a bunch of emotes.

Do it. Will the raid take our chat as well? I don't know. We're gonna find out. That's interesting. No, you'll have to raid separately. Okay, we can do that. Yeah, that's where it's like usually. Yeah, I'll raid whoever. We'll raid each other or we'll go pick the same person and raid together. Dig it. All right, stream manager. All right, uh, raid uh, following Retro Rewind Podcast. All right, I'm going to hit start raid in three, two, one. Starting raid. So get hit with two raids here. Once mine goes, I got about I don't know ten seconds and I'm going to be out, so I got three, two, one. Mine's going now.

All right, boom. All right, raiding out on him. Raid, there it is. Love it. Oh man, oh my gosh, that's good stuff. Can you hear him? Uh, I have to join in order to. Oh, he's asking what your actual, your actual thing is, your personal one is. Oh, uh, I'm using the wrong browser here. That is uh, well, okay, I have one browser that like if you have Twitch up it mutes every Twitch. You can't just unmute a tab and it so right. Yeah, I got I can't hear him at all. I'll open it up on my phone. It'll be easier.

For real, man, we really do appreciate the opportunity, man. This was cool. Yeah, so I know you said you're going to do some edits. When do you foresee this going out and where does it go out to?

Okay, uh, at this point I've only, this is like the third, fourth one, so I'm not yet figured out where all of those are going to go. I think on some level because video is not going to be the greatest here to begin with, but once I get some of these down the road, I do want to put them out on uh, Spotify. Uh, cool. But until I get like ten, I'm not going to go through all of that and set it up and put those out there. And I've got to make decisions around if it's going to be under my own personal one um, and it's going to be, you know, the Gaming Outpost uh, is what I'm doing with the church digital, so it won't be under theirs because it's gaming specific. So I'm going to tie it to mine, or am I going to use one of my other accounts that I have nothing on to start from zero? So right, uh, I haven't made those decisions yet, but right now I'm just downloading and storing uh, the episodes until I get ready to edit and push them out.

So totally a great way of doing that also. So cool beans, man. All right, my brother, I have to go eat food. Absolutely, this has been a pleasure. Um, love to see you hanging around TCD. Hit me up anytime. Uh, the one of the other things my role at TCD is is tangible resources. Okay, so for instance, one of the things I'm doing there with VRMMO Church is they need pulpit supply. So I'm trying to work on this year trying to figure out digital pulpit supply for churches who are digital but don't have a connection to a physical church who's available to be able to preach at those churches. I'm not going to do the theological part for you. You have to vet that piece yourself, but I'm trying to get figured out the tech side of it. I'm good in Zoom. I'm okay on Twitch. I can do VR. I'm going to try to answer those questions uh, and then say what, what's my experience level? Those kinds of things and then uh, and then go from there.

So sounds cool, man. Love it. Well, you take it easy. All right, take care. Peace.