Hands-On Ministry | Why Your Care Might Save a Life

Oh my goodness. Okay, that's just annoying that that's what my problem was. I can't believe that. Uh, amateur hour here.

Hey, I'm good on my side. It's all you.

I'm just messing with you.

Oh, no, no, no. It's all good. Okay, so now let's make sure I don't have an echo. That's what it was. I pulled you up so that I could see that you were live and do that. And I usually, uh, on Chrome always have it muted, but then I'm using Chrome to stream together. So when I pulled you up, it's not muted for. I, this is aggravating to me about Chrome. You can't mute a tab. You mute a site.

Yeah.

So it's like you can't use that site if that's a problem. So I, that sounds a whole lot better. Uh, I wasn't expecting to go through and come back to begin with. That's the thing that threw me off. So all right. Uh, you know what? I do not have you on screen yet. Um, because I have the wrong setup here. Uh, there we go. Now I can have you on screen with me. This has been a while since I've had this many little issues getting the stream started. Uh, but that's okay. It just, it's just humbling when you think you've got it all figured out and you can go easy and do several in a row. It's a reminder that, hey, um, you know, there's always a learning curve. There's always mistakes. It's, you know, it's all good stuff.

So I used to work for Apple. Uh, I worked for Apple for ten years. I was like a senior adviser. I did like team management stuff. I did tech support. All of it. Uh, I even did like some engineering type stuff at some point. Anyway, um, but after I left Apple, I had an issue with an Apple device and I had to call in and it was super humbling. It was like, "Oh, dude." Like, "I can't fix this one." And it turned out to be something stupid. And I felt really, really like I was like, "Okay, I must just be out of the loop. I haven't been in it for a while. It was just a little checkbox that I forgot to click." And so, yeah, I understand that. Um, I'm getting like a distortion on your mic now, like you're talking underwater kind of a thing.

Okay. Is anyone else hearing that or is it just me?

Yeah. Groggy, slightly choppy.

My voice sounds a little. His voice sounds groggy and slightly choppy. Well, groggy might just be because I haven't finished. I guess I did finish my coffee. Um, here. Let's see here. And you're hearing that everywhere. Yeah. Is noise gate too high on your side. Here. Is that any better?

Uh, talk a little bit longer than that.

Yeah. Was really going to slide the toes. Did Guy Gimble in the wave? Oh, Mimsy were the board. It's still doing uh a little bit of that. Like I said, it's sounds muffled like all of the sound isn't coming through.

Okay, let me just turn my mic off. I'll turn it back on. And anything better? Muffled still.

They're telling me that I sound muffled. I'm hearing you muffled, but they're saying I'm muffled. That's weird. I'm hearing you muffled, but they're hearing me muffled.

Okay.

Super weird.

Everything sounds great on my side. I'm just going to tell you that now.

Yeah, it must be just me over here. Um.

Okay. So Comfy says, "I'm uh, you're, I'm muffled on your side and on his, on my channel, everything's clear." Sassy says, "I can hear you both fine now." Okay. Mel is saying she can hear us both. Okay. All right. It must just be me that's just hearing a little bit of muffle then. So all right. We'll just we'll just.

We'll just go and if it gets worse, we'll deal with it. If not, we're good to go.

Well, hopefully it'll get better. Maybe it'll keep getting better.

Yeah, maybe. The fun of uh, you know, collabing over long distances through, you know, fiber optics and Wi-Fi and whatever else is getting our signals back and forth to each other. Uh, Papsio saying, "Yeah, it's definitely on this side." So Papsio's hearing it. Um, yeah, that's not going to change that. Just looking if there's any settings I could do with you coming through to change, but don't have much options. Uh, I, you know, I can turn the gain up or down, but that's not going to be a noise gate for you. Filter set. Yeah, it must be on my side. So if they're, if it's hearing, if everyone on your side is hearing it well, then it shouldn't be an issue.

Yeah, even you're coming through clear. So it's something in your OBS settings more than likely. Like, your audio is coming through nice and clear.

Which means your mic's working just fine.

Well, that's good. Yeah, I don't know what to change on that to make that sound different. All right. Well, we'll just go. Maybe I can figure it out as we go. I'm not going to spend. I'll just keep playing and see if I can figure something out.

But yeah, not a problem. By the way, I see all the hats there. And then uh, what's on the top shelf? I'm just curious.

Yeah, top shelf up here.

Yeah. Uh, there's a lot of comic books up there. Okay. Oh, and maybe not the top top shelf. Okay, I see.

Oh, the top top shelf. There's more. No, there's comic books. They're just laying on their side. So.

Okay.

Uh, and then and then different uh bookends that I have.

So.

Oh, okay. Those are bookends. Okay.

Yeah.

Just curious.

No, I, yeah, I understand that. I'm always looking at what's behind people as well. So that makes sense to me. Uh, yeah. So I'm glad to have you on here. Um, what I, those that don't know, Kit Beardstone, uh, streamer extraordinaire. I don't know. I was just going to say that uh, because everybody is. If you're doing it and you're doing it for the Lord, then uh, that makes sense to me to call you that. But uh, I think we've known each other. We've been in each other's channels a few times hanging around and I just want to get to know, how did you get started on Twitch? What was the connection to, you know, start watching, then start streaming, and then was your plan to be intentionally Christian in the space or how did all that come about?

Uh, well, um, I kind of started by accident on Twitch, uh, to be honest with you. Um, I was playing games with friends and I was like, hey, you know, I could, I've always been drawn to new tech and new things. Um, and I think I fell in love with different ways of communicating more than anything. And uh, just the playing with the graphics and trying to get it out there, just that technical knowhow. I was always kind of drawn to that. Uh, so I started doing it and like at first it was just like, I think my first stream was actually from my Xbox. I figured out how to stream just from my Xbox straight to Twitch. There was no graphics, no overlays, no chat. It was just simply one-sided communication going out.

Hold on. I just accidentally did something incorrect. So I just totally got rid of your microphone.

Oh, okay. Um, I was trying to play with settings and I just deleted your microphone. So give me a second to add this. I don't know what I got to do. Uh, it's been a while. There we go.

Okay, I think you should be back now.

Am I good now?

Yeah, you're good now.

I was trying to things and I was trying to click out of, yeah, I'm done looking at it and instead I just deleted the microphone entirely. So I had to reestablish. So you're good. Okay, I thought I heard echo there. I think we're good now. Uh, so what I was saying is I, uh, basically started Twitch by accident. I opened up my Xbox and I was like, "Hey, I have this option to stream to Twitch and set a source." I was like, "Hey, let's do it." It was all one-sided. I didn't even talk to anybody. It was just simply, "Hey, I can throw my game up there. Other people can see the game and I can review it later." That was all there was to it. Um, and I was basically, it was, I was working the night shift and I would get a call maybe every two hours and I thought, you know what, I could play a game in the meantime uh and goof off with that. Um, and suddenly like my coworkers would pop in and say, "Hey, you know, what's going on?" And it would just be a uh ongoing, it became a kind of a community thing. Even at work, even if I was taking calls, I could just stop the game since I didn't have a mic or anything like that. And uh, after that, um, I thought, you know, let's make a go with this. Let's actually do something with it. And a few years ago, I started doing like regular streams. And uh, started meeting people and seeing that there was some like-minded community out there. And at first I didn't even know there was like this whole Christian side of Twitch, you know, where there's people in that were actually having real community on Twitch. And I just was like, "Okay, this is new." Uh, my background was a pastor before I worked in tech. Um, and that's actually my degree is biblical theology with emphasis in youth ministry. And I thought this is really neat, you know, like now I have people in my chat. You know, it was only one or two people at first. You know, some days it's still only one or two people. Uh, but uh, it's really um, it's just turned into, you know, I see names and now I know that the kind of stories behind the names and uh, and that's where community starts is just simply having that connection. You know, I think uh, I think it's uh, Lewis who says, you know, friendship starts when one friend says to another, "What you two?" Uh, or one guy says to another, "What you two?" And uh, so that that's really what it came down to.

Yeah. I say it's interesting and I love, so you started with Xbox. Well, I can go live there and just be able to put it there.

Um.

I have not done uh, streaming from Xbox. Does it have the chat on the side there that you're able to see? And then if you're playing a game, how do you do chat on it? That's what I've wondered.

If it did, I didn't know. It was simply, I didn't like, my first live streams was one or two and it was simply there was no chat. It was one-sided. I didn't have a mic set up. I just simply streamed one-sided and didn't even give any thought to it. But only when I went in afterwards and started looking at, hey, there was there's somebody actually chatted. I didn't even know they were there. Welcome, I guess. Um, and then I started getting into it a little bit more, trying to figure it out. And uh, I'll be honest, Twitch when I first got into it, uh, was a little confusing, uh, trying to figure out like who are these people? How do people follow you? I remember um, I guess the first person I followed, um, they, it was because I was trying to figure out like they were doing something and all of their vids that they had linked to in the past were follower only and I wanted to see some of those videos of something they had done, almost like YouTube, you know, like how did they do this, and it was just a how-to video is all it was, uh, and I think it was linked from a um, a YouTube link or something from Twitch from YouTube over to Twitch and I went and I followed them and I was like, "Oh, I get to see their videos now." And that was kind of my first of trying to figure out the mechanics of Twitch. Um, and after that, I kind of got hooked in trying to figure it all out. If I don't understand something, I usually just kind of gnaw at it till I do.

Yeah. Well, one of the nice things in I find in gaming community, uh, you know, you're playing a game and people know the game, they're willing to help you figure it out. They want you to enjoy the game that they enjoy. And I think it's the same with Twitch streamers as well. When they know something, they're more than happy to share with you how to do things that they know how to do.

I've had plenty of people helping me figure out how to do things on Twitch. What do I need to do? Uh, what do I need to do with my settings? All of those kinds of things. How to set things up better, how to do lighting, how to do whatever kind of things.

And there's so many people the further along the road that I am that's like, "Oh, I still need to learn this from them because they do this well." I haven't had the time to, like, for instance, I've got lights over here that I play with and they're just on a little thing. But I would love to be able to turn that control over to my chat and let them change my lights. I haven't got over to Lumia yet. I haven't figured that one out yet. Uh, so there's, yeah, there's that constant growing and learning.

And updates throw everything out of whack and you have to relearn everything, just, you know.

Yes. Yeah. Lucas is my one of my mods is teasing me about how to fix sound. Yes, it's the constant. It is.

And why one OBS profile to the next with the same settings won't work, I don't understand. But it doesn't. So that's weird. Um, so you were a pastor and then you moved into the tech field. So when you were going into gaming, you were just thinking, "Hey, I'm enjoying doing this and let me explore it more." What was the point along the way that you said, "Hey, wait, wait a minute. This might be able to be ministry that I could do in this space."

Yeah. Um, there was actually a group uh that I found um through it. Uh, I'm trying to remember the name here. Um, that Discord I think is long dead. Um, it was before Love Thy Nerd. It was before um, it was uh, I forget the name of the Discord now. Oh my goodness. Um, I'm Mot um, actually was the one who invited me to it. Um, Mr. Potato, if you've heard of him or know of him. Um, him and then uh, JFR0989 is uh, I streamed with him yesterday. Uh, both those guys kind of connected with me and you know, got me involved in that community and then I realized hey, there's other people that kind of in this faith-based community that actually do stream together. They do collabs together and they do support each other. And I then I realized that there's this whole community behind it. And it was more than just um, you know, a one-way communication. It was more than just um, being out in the uh, in a sense being on Twitch is a little bit like being out in a wilderness.

And hold on, I got an incoming ad break. I'm going to snooze that. Turn that off right now. Um, a little bit of a um, and until you find other people, you're just kind of going at it alone. And I think a lot of people have that where they're just kind of going at it alone. They're just hitting that go live button and they're seeing who pops up. And uh, when you actually want to succeed at streaming, um, you actually start figuring out the community. And that to me I was blind to at first. And thankfully I had a few folks came along and said, "Hey, this is how you do it. This is how you'd like interact with that community and hey, there actually is a community and uh, and basically like you know uh, uh, pointing people to the path you know, the yellow brick road in the middle of the uh, uh, wonderful land of Oz uh, and uh, saying hey, this is here."

Yeah, that is uh, interesting because I, I my experience was a different direction. I came in to watch when I first came in because I had a friend uh, pastor down the road who was always telling me about what he was doing in VR space and streaming on Twitch. And so I decided to go watch him and then I spent time watching and observing lots of streams long before I ever went live myself. So the yeah, the different direction of starting as a solo and waiting for people to come and find you or going and finding lots of other people and then letting them know you're going live and how that interacts and change. But yeah, some of the people that have been on this space long before me and I've been on about five years, the uh, the people talk about like yeah, the tags weren't there. It was hard to find people. Uh, you know, but the community like that, I think one of the things that people don't necessarily get when they go to other platforms and they just throw Twitch in with social media.

Yeah.

People aren't going on Twitch to scroll. They're going on Twitch to find a community to hang out with for a length of time that the streamer is live. And depending on what you're streaming, they might stay and be drawn because of what you're streaming. They might be drawn because of you as the streamer. They might be drawn because other people in the community are there that they can chat with. There's lots of things to draw them. But it is the being live with other people that draws them in to hang out, not just content that you just scroll and scroll and scroll and consume. It's more relational in that way.

Yeah. And I honestly, I was watching a YouTube video yesterday, you know, just talking about that endless scroll is kind of that brain rot chemistry, you know, just kind of constantly scrolling and I get caught in it, too. Um, and Twitch has been a bit of a safe space for that for me. Uh, because I can come and I can simply lurk in somebody's channel, but I'm not simply there sitting there scrolling, you know, and uh, interact with people as much as I have the ability to do so at that particular moment. So it does give me a little bit of a um, a reprieve from that as well. And uh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. There's definitely the uh, reprieve from uh, just all kinds of things you have to consume. It it is it is a whole different uh, layer of how do you interact with people. I was not expecting the community uh, aspects of it when I got on. Um, but that's definitely one of the things why uh, I've spent lots of time on here and I plan to spend more time on here and there's people you watch and you're like, "Oh, well now life changes happened for them. They're on at a different time than I am or life change happened for me and I can't watch them anymore." And you lose some of those. But we do have community that exists outside of live streaming too within Discord and other communities. We were you were mentioning that earlier. When did you uh, decide that you needed to establish a community for people who were coming to watch you? That you needed to find a way to stay connected with them?

I think that that shift actually kind of happened um, as soon as I actually started like honestly, as soon as I bought my computer and I started setting it all up, you know, and actually streaming from something other than my Xbox. Uh, I started doing that um, like building that community at that point because then I started seeing the same people coming in. I was like, "Oh, wait a second. If I want to connect with those people and continually have that relationship, then I need to oh, thank you, by the way. Uh, Hobo Bob. Uh, I need to uh, actually, uh, have something more there for them, more than just me, you know." And I think like that's the thing I think a lot of people don't get is that um, in terms of streaming there is that um, that initial you, you, unless you click the go live button, nobody's going to see you. Unless you click the go live button, you don't exist. And after that, I was like, "Well, I need a way to connect." And if I go into other people's streams, then I'm connecting and they see my name and they're like, "Oh, yeah. I remember that person." Um, so there is, you know, and I'm I'm really bad about because I have three kids. I run a business. I, you know, like from home and uh, I do ren fairs on the weekends. So my whole like being is like, do when do I have time? When do I have time to go in and just chill out and hang out in other people's streams? And uh, that is that is a big balancing act that I'm still trying to figure out. Um, and like a thank you, Sassy. Uh, anyway, so that is that for me. But here's the thing. I am not new to the online space. I am kind of a veteran, if you will. The beard makes me look older than I am. I'll be honest. Um, but um, I used.

That's why I don't have one usually. My wife doesn't because it does make you look older.

My wife won't let me shave mine. So it's the other way around.

That's how it usually goes. It's one way or the other. I don't know you without the beard or I don't like the beard. The beard is weird. So.

Yeah. Yeah. My wife, I tell her she doesn't like my face so she makes me grow a beard. Uh, the real reason is it's become a bit of a brand and it's become because I do ren fairs. It became kind of part of my ongoing garb, you know, I got the long hair, too. I mean, it's it's all there. I basically look like a lion in the mornings uh, until I comb it all out. Uh, but where how do we get on that subject? Anyway, um, so I'm not new to the online space. I actually used to be a channel editor and a professional blogger at one point uh, with a big blogging network called B5 Media way back in the day. Um, and uh, I managed other writers and we would write um, like and I basically I'd go in and I make sure everybody was writing. Um, if you ever heard of Darren Rouse and problogger.net or Digital Photography School, they like Digital Photography School was actually in my channels. That was one of the blogs I wrote. Uh, I wrote uh, I managed rather and he was one of the owners of the company. So um, definitely not new to online uh, like uh, social interaction like that. Um, I think we were like on the beta list for uh, Twitter when it came out and we like so.

Give you a little bit of background there.

Yeah. Oh, I don't know. Did I answer your question?

Well, it's it.

I forget what the question was. Yeah, I say I'm always curious and just asking asking more followup there, but yeah, like the yeah, I think you did of the engagement with community and realizing it's there and joining into it and finding ways to connect and then you know, you're talking a little bit about your online persona of how that developed and then some background that you had before coming to Twitch. I think that's one of the cool things on some level is those of us who are in the older camp who've done more things in life before jumping on and doing streaming is we bring a whole wealth of our life experience into that. So you're bringing blogging, you're bringing other digital things into streaming. Uh, what is your primary uh, channels that you're streaming on? What is it you primarily stream when you go live?

Honestly, um, I I I I get drawn to like aesthetically pleasing games, if you will, like ones that are full of immersion, you know, where all the stuff that like all the um, uh, hit markers and stuff like that kind of get out of the way and allow you to just kind of totally immerse yourself in it. Um, so I do a lot of Sea of Thieves, uh, Hunter Call of the Wild. In fact, I was streaming that a little earlier uh, today. Um, and uh, I used to do a little bit of Minecraft, a little bit of, you know, different different things. Um, funny enough, I actually just was start am in the middle of starting a podcast. Um, that I only just told folks about it yesterday. Um, which is kind of a more of a drama uh, based uh, podcast. Um, and then my wife uh, let's see. So that that's where what I normally stream right there. Yeah. And that's uh, not a area that I spend a lot of time in over there, but I mean I I love that there's so much variety in so many categories because there's, you know, probably right now a million people on Twitch watching. We we only have a sliver of that watching us combined between our channels. And we're we're going to not reach everybody because they're not looking for podcasts.

They're not looking for Christian content. They're looking for other content. But going into those spaces and being present, what is what has been some of the best ways that you found of engaging people as you're online in a digital space that it's not created to be a place for missionaries to go. It's just a place for people to come and hang out and have friends.

Um, ask that one more time.

I'm kind of asking like what is your approach to building relationships in the space?

Uh, for me is more that, um, that's a weird question, uh, for me because I don't know if I really have an approach as much as is just being authentic. Um, you know, for me it's like if I go live and I'm playing a game and somebody pops in, I don't know where they're at in their life. I don't know what they're experiencing or what they're doing, but they came for the game and they came just to be seen.

And I think to some degree, everybody has that one little element of their life that says, you know, hey, I mean, look at the cemeteries. People put up these monuments, you know, like I was here, you know, they scroll it on the walls. I was here. And I think people just want to be recognized more than anything, that they exist, that they are valued.

And uh, for me, you know, I'm very much invested in my chat. Like I'm sitting here reading everybody's chat as they come up here. Um, and I get distracted by that very easily. Um, but anyway, being able to interact with people, say, "Hey, you know, like, you're loved. I care about you." Um, to me, that's invaluable. Uh, and just that connection alone when somebody's name pops up there and says, "Hey, how's it going?" You know, being able to say, "Hey, what's up, Comfy Hobbit?" Uh, oh, you're getting a raid.

I'm getting a raid. I'm getting a raid right now. So go ahead and welcome everybody.

Yeah, let me welcome everybody coming in. So welcome in One Reason. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming over here. Uh, Shelley Thunder, T Cooper, uh, Jazzy Mimi, welcome, welcome, welcome. Uh, who else we got? Um, Mickey Escape or is that Mikey Escape? I'm not, I'm never good with the letters and how to pronounce them all. So, welcome in Jordan Williams Gaming. Good to see you. And anyone else coming in?

I'm Fatbeard. Just followed.

Oh, I'm Fatbeard. Thank you for the follow, friend. I know you might, some of you might be following me on my other channel, Flat Cap Dapper Pastor, but uh, this is where I do podcasts over here. One Reason has been here before. Loved having you on. Thank you, friend, for bringing over your community. Uh, T. Crosby, welcome in. Uh, sit back, relax, enjoy the conversation. If you're just here to join us and share the love and you've got other places to be, no, I understand that joining us, thank you.

Escape, maybe I'll just call you Escape because I can pronounce that part and get it right. Escape 9, welcome in and thank you for the follow everybody.

So now I'm going to loot. See, like you're talking about getting distracted by chat. I do the same thing. So, if you want to address chat as we're going, that is totally all good with me. Uh, sometimes like I've had the conversation get so intense on chat that I totally lose my track of what we're going with the conversation and other times the chat is just like boom, right spot on, encouraging and adding to what we're doing.

So, yeah, that interaction and engagement like I was talking earlier is not on other platforms in the same way. Even when you're going live, it's not the same culture. People don't have the expectations of being able to participate. And when they do, sometimes the streamer doesn't know that. They're not, they don't have that skill level to do that. They don't know the expectation of it. Or if you're doing podcast, I know sometimes people like, "Well, we're doing the podcast. You just chat among yourselves and we're over here." Uh, but I am, I am a whatever we decide today. If we're going to enjoy chat, we're going to engage or know our conversation's too intense. We just do whatever we feel like. There's no rules here. It's all good.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I saw Fatbeard popped up in chat, I think. Um, I was playing Sea of Thieves and he popped in uh, and I think he, I think when he popped in, he actually, you know, started streaming Sea of Thieves on Twitch. Um, and connecting with me. I think prior to that, he had been on mainly on YouTube. Um, so, and now he surpassed me in numbers and all that. And there's this, there's this bit, there's a little rivalry there. No, no, there isn't. Not at all. Um, but that is one of the things that pops up, you know, in streaming is people have this inner concept of rivalry. I don't like, hey, you're like your numbers are doing this, and I think pastors do this as well, like how many people do you have in your congregation, how many followers you got, and it's like this is the measure of your success. What is the measure of your success? And to me, that's not it. For me, it's like who have I connected with today, you know, who have I, like, seen in chat, who have I, like, if it's one or two people, that's great. Um, and to me, that's what keeps me going, you know. I deal with a lot of anxiety, so hitting that go live button is very hard. Um, and if I take a break off, like, it's even harder. If I take a week off, two months off, and I hit that go live button, it's very hard to do.

Do you have a good assessment of why that is hard for you, that anxiety that's there?

Um, you know, I have theories. My wife has more theories and hers are probably more correct than mine. Uh, but uh, it's simply, you know, a uh, I think it's just a nervous energy, if you will, about uh, being able to, that you're putting yourself out there, and especially if you are trying to be authentic, when you are going through a hard time, it's going to come out. When you're going through something that is, um, like, you know, this morning, you know, this is the second day of school for my kids, you know, we're getting up, we're trying to get everything made, you know, breakfast made. I'm up there making scrambled eggs and you know, the dog acts up, you know, and you're like, okay, come on, like, all that stuff, all that stuff comes together and you say, you know what, I got to present. And like, to some degree, you have to like put some of that on the back burner and say, okay, people don't really like, I want to interact with you, I want to talk to you, and I like, at the same time, I want to be authentic, that this is stuff that's going on with me. And finding that balance between the two of how much do I share and while at the same time being authentic is a constant struggle. And I think for me, a lot of that anxiety is around that, um, like, because I know for myself, I'm kind of a, as things happen in chat and I as I talk to people in chat, I kind of go off the rails too. I go off the rails just along right along with them. And uh, like, you know, I unintentionally start uh, talking about things that I was like, how did we get here. Why are we talking about, you know,

Where does imitation vanilla come from? And why did you bring that up?

And why don't we just use real vanilla? Because it's amazing. And by the way, I usually go to Mexico when, you know, every other year, whatever I get to, and I bring liters back, not, you know, one vial. I bring back the good stuff. And then when I'm almost out, it's like it's time to make another trip to go get some. Now I'm closer to Canada than Mexico. So it's not like I just get in the car and drive. You know, it's a planned trip. Like, it's just that, like, you just mention one thing. And so then I just take it and I just go in that direction because you can, and you can have fun with that, and you can be real. And it's, I think it's those unplanned things for me that just find joy of connection between other people that go, "Yeah, I know something about you that maybe other people don't." Uh, we connected over something that we both enjoy or we both were, you know, opposed to something. We both find ourselves uh, disliking the same team. So then we can be friends if we dislike the same things that other people do.

And and honestly, that's where it is. Everybody's looking for a connection point somewhere, and you know, whether or not they know it or not, the moment you say, hey, you know, this one thing, now we have a connection point, whether it's coffee. And I think that's why people get so addicted to coffee is they're like, you know, we, I could talk about the dark roast and they're like, oh, I have a favorite brand, I have a favorite thing I do with coffee, you know, and it's like, now we have a connection point. Um, weather, you know, why do we talk about the weather? Because it's the most generalized connection point we can have.

It's also non-threatening.

Yeah.

Uh, to talk about weather. Everybody can have an opinion about weather and it really doesn't matter because we have no control over the weather. So we can talk about it. It's relevant to today. It's relevant to tomorrow. It will never be a point where it's not relevant. It's also, unless there's a storm or other things coming, not serious of like impacting the rest of my life. Yeah, you know, so your opinion of whether you like cold and you like snow or you're like, "No, man. I don't ever want to see it in my life." Okay, good for you. We won't hang out a snowmobile if you like snow. I really don't snowmobile. I'm just throwing that out there. Or if you're like, "No, man. Sunny beaches." Like, "Yeah, let's go hang out at sunny beaches." Um, everyone's got their preference, and that part's okay. It's weird how that is something that we can be okay with everybody's preference, but so many other things in life, if you disagree with me, there's a problem.

Yeah.

Uh, you're different than me. Uh, I don't want to hang out with you. I don't want you to be a part of what I'm doing. Or like you were talking earlier, seeing rivalry is so easy to find. I wonder at times too if uh, like you're talking numbers and rivalry, if all of that at times does play into, I don't know if I'm going to go live today. When you start looking at your own numbers, when you start looking at am I making a difference in someone's life, it becomes a barrier to going. But one of the things when I was doing drama ministry and people would talk about having anxiety or before, you know, we're going to go in worship and we're going to go and they're nervous and all that, I always equated it to if you weren't nervous, you didn't have anxiety, that would be a problem for me because that means you don't care about what you're doing. And so I tend to at times for myself know, oh man, I don't have it to bring today. Should I go live? Because I'm not ready to give of myself today.

And you know what? Like, that is where true broken, like, like, that brokenness comes through. Uh, you know, and I, I almost, I have to remind myself if I'm scared to hit that go live, that means I probably should.

Oh, yeah. I agree with that. And and one of the funny things I made mention of this a while back, um, that uh, we play video games, right? And if you're taking fire, that always means you're going in the right direction. Uh, if you're taking fire from the enemy, that means you're going in the right direction. Um, you know, like I remember when I played Halo way back in the day with my wife and uh, we'd go on campaign mode and then I was always the guy like in uh, that was like trying to find a way outside of the map, you know, and suddenly nobody's firing at me,

You know? I could take the uh the Banshee up to the uh the top and know, hey, I'm outside where it's all just polygons.

And uh that was me. I was always trying to find the way out. And uh like like it was a escape uh room of some sort.

Uh but when I'd start taking fire again, I'm like, "Okay, I'm going in the right direction yet again." And but I've translated that at least over to like my spiritual life as well is that if I'm taking fire from the enemy, I am going in the right direction and I need to keep going because there's something that it's it's you know he's trying to keep me from you know and uh maybe sometimes it's it's God allowing that to grow me and sometimes it is uh can I repeat that comfy?

Oh uh yeah if you are uh taking fire that means you're going in the right direction. That's what it comes comes down to for me.

Yeah, that that is that is good. I hadn't thought about that before. That's interesting. Equating the way that you play a video game to, hey, does this say something about how I do ministry and how I do life and uh the way I I play video games, which I'm usually doing RPGs, is do as many side quests as I can so that I am above the level that I need to to advance the main quest so that the main quest is easy.

And I I love wearing lots of hats and being involved in lots of ministries and doing all kinds of things and and there's a part at times where it's like, well, what's the main thing you're supposed to be doing?

I don't know, but I'm having fun with all the things I'm doing. So, I'm I'm not really sure what the main thing is. Um, and and and at times it shifts and changes, and that's why sometimes it's hard to know.

Right now it's it's become a lot more clear in the last year and it is digital ministry digital missionary that's where I'm supposed to be and then there's all the different ways of well how do I do that in the space and like a year ago I wasn't doing this podcast I had no plans to do this podcast and then it became okay I'm going to focus on I work with the church digital going to focus on gaming how do we elevate how do we promote how do we bring this to the church how do we bring this to people that need to know there are Christians in a space that we need to be praying for. There are there are people in the space and you could do the same thing if you're feeling called to that and and go to your church and share with them and whatever.

I was like I know a lot of people and I like to talk to people. Okay. So because a lot of the podcasts I listen to are all like they're teaching me something I don't know.

That's that's what I enjoy is learning. So all the podcasts I listen to are people teaching me something I don't know. That's primarily the thing.

I mean, I do like people gabbing for no reason, and those are fun, but it's it's more of what am I bringing? It was finally when it finally when it came down to I can just highlight friends who are on mission and share share their heart and help them share what God's doing. It's like, oh, I got a place. I I got a voice. I can connect um and be able to do that. So, uh, yeah, finding that one thing is sometimes not the easiest thing to do of what is the quest that you're on.

Yeah. And honestly, like I, you know, we definitely anybody if you, if you watch a streamer, pray for them. Like I I'll be honest, pray for them because they are probably doing like the things that they are working on, the things that are happening behind the scenes.

They got a family. They're trying to hit that go live button every day or or as often as they can. Uh pray for them because um that connection point that you found with them is the one that other people might find as well.

And um we're called to be salt and light. Um and salt in the shaker doesn't do any good. And I think the church is a is is a is is a good example of salt that likes to stay in the shaker a lot of the time rather than being sprinkled about and uh giving a little bit of flavor. Um and you know we don't have one room in our house that is just our light room um where all the lights are.

Uh it's spread out you know to to give little darkness uh in different spots. And uh you you got to make sure and and I think the church is is as a whole um is not very good at uh spreading the light around putting it in the dark spots.

And I think that's where digital ministry is um very good at doing. Um and heck and we're and honestly a lot of us streamers are trying to do that in other areas of our life as well.

We're not really sure how to do it and we're we're exploring we're trying to figure it out and um because we're not called to not all of us are called to go to a different country and you know you know in in Nigeria or wherever and and do that.

That's not our calling. Our calling is to be present for our families and to uh provide for our families and to share the gospel whenever and wherever we can.

Yeah, that looks very different. Um for everyone because we all have different callings and different ministries.

Oh yeah, absolutely. I I got to go back to that that example there because I I love a good analogy to help people wrap their minds around something.

You don't have all the lights in your house in one room. I'm like, whoa, what a weird thing. Every like if like if you imagine walking into somebody's house for the first time and there's no lights in in the in the room, uh it's like, oh, we didn't put any lights in this room. That's okay. Uh, we've got we've got them in another room. And you go to the next room and there's no lights in the living room.

There's no lights in the kitchen. There's there's there's no lights anywhere in the house except the bathroom cuz they want to make sure that they can see really good when they're in the bathroom to make see what they look like.

So, all the lights are in the bathroom. How ridiculous would you like feel uh like walking into a house like like this guy? There's something wrong with him.

Why why why are all the lights like you really don't need to see yourself? Like one light would be okay. How about a light in the kitchen so you could see that the food is cooked properly?

Or a light around the house when you're wandering through the dark to get to the bedroom and you don't trip over things. The light would be good.

What a great analogy. That also made me think, too. Like, let's take that a step further. What if the sun only was shining on Sunday and it didn't shine the rest of the week?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I only I only turn on my lights once a week to conserve electric, you know?

Yeah, the rest of the time I just turn the breaker off.

Suffer.

Well, I've got most of my lights all on timers. I'm I'm still working to get all of them. I haven't got all of them yet. Um that that that is a you know, one of those things is like I want to make my life more convenient and all of that in some ways.

Part of it is I like having my phone I pull up and I can control everything. So, I don't know what issue I have there really, but there's there's that sense of I can see, I can know, I can have it all.

But yeah, you like the illusion of control. Is that is that it?

Yeah, I like Yeah, I like the illusion of Well, well, part of it, too, is uh Well, I've got fish over here, so it's also a little bit of lazy.

So, I want the lights to turn on in the morning, but I don't want to have to walk downstairs and turn the light on.

Mhm.

Uh I also don't want to have to pull my phone out all the time or hit all the switches and turn everything off.

So if I just program them all, then when I'm done streaming for the day, this whole room, everything just turns off. I don't have to do it.

So there's an automation thing, but there is a I can be far away like I've got my heating on my phone as well. So I go on vacation, I turn off the heat, turn the air off.

I'm in the airport before I get home. I turn it on so it's warm when I get home. You know, it's it's those kinds of things.

But I think that also just goes back to the idea of why why as a Christian would you want to have your light turned off all the time to conserve energy or electricity or whatever you want to equate it to.

Conserve the Holy Spirit's power so that it gets get used all at once when you turn all the lights on at once. And what a what a way to limit God.

I mean, in our own lives, we we like it talks about in scripture, you know, quenching the spirit. We can we can talk about that, but um oftentimes we do that in our own lives where we say, "Okay, in this moment, in this place, I'm going to turn on that that uh that that light, if you will, and the rest of the time, I'm just going to turn it off. I don't want to conserve I I conserve my energy." It's like we have some kind of weird idea that um we can't be that person over here.

We can't be that person over here. You know, I go to a Ren Fair. Do I I sit there and go, you know, I'm not going to be a Christian today.

I'm just going to I'm I'm going to turn off that Christ side of my life and and and uh join in into the festivities, you know, like I think and um wow, I can get into there some really old songs here.

Uh this will date me. Um there's an old Petra song uh called Chameleon. Uh it talks about you shine like uh uh I have to look up the lyrics now.

They were in they were there a moment ago uh where you you basically change in every circ every situation you know and um I think a lot of folks do that you know unintentionally and that that's the thing is it's unintentional they don't mean to they just go into that and they they think okay well this is my persona over here and this is my persona over here and they don't know that they're they're in a sense putting that on and I struggle with that with my my kids you know they go to uh you know, a school and this is one reason why we brought them all home to do homeschooling. Um, and suddenly their persona completely changes. I was like, "Okay, well, now we're having new issues and we're like, okay, you're coming home.

We're not doing that. You know, you're too easily influenced." And um I think for for us, you know, as streamers, we we t, you know, Twitch is a great place for influence, but it's also a really bad place for influence, too.

Uh you can get into the some of the bad streams. You can get in there and suddenly everybody's cussing and you're like, "Okay, you know, like this is how I fit in." And suddenly you find yourself saying things that you wouldn't normally say.

Um in in that and that's not always conscious to try to fit in.

No, you just want to connect.

What you hear repeatedly going in is what you begin to say.

So, I mean, even just take it outside of the realm of cussing. If if you Well, and I I lived in Texas for five years.

I had to consciously not let y'all slip in there cuz I'm like I don't know how long I'm staying here and I'm I'm not letting y'all slip in my vocabulary.

But my kids who were younger and were surrounded daily by native Texans. I'm in seminary so I'm not surrounded by native Texans. They're surrounded by native Texans.

The y'alls were easy to adopt because it's what they heard. And so it became their their their vocabulary because of they were immersed in the culture that used that vocabulary.

I I'll give you an example of of as I became a Twitch streamer. My my son had watched my sons had watched Twitch. My daughter had for years and I' I'd just kind of go like why are you watching people stream online?

I don't get that. I don't understand. Like dad just play your own game.

Yeah. Just play your own game. Well, I was always solo player anyway, you know, so it didn't like I didn't to watch someone else play was like chance that I could be playing.

So, you know, uh but I start using things like, "Oh man, this guy came in. There was there was these trolls coming in and this dude was super sus." And they're like, "Dad, you use that properly. How how did you know that?" Like, dude, you're you're you're starting to sound like us. Like, you're you you're you're starting to be part of the culture.

It's like, yeah, I didn't use it before because I didn't know how to use it and I wasn't there. And now that I'm immersed in some of the the vocabulary, the languages, it becomes part of what I say because I'm there.

And what we need is the salt and light to sprinkle in to the culture that's more prominent uh goodness into there. And uh yeah, in in but I still don't say y'all just in case anyone wants to know.

But but I did pick up the phrase because I really like this fixing to I really like that phrase because it means absolutely nothing.

I mean it like I'm fixing to go uh to the store. It could be three days from now that you're going to go but I'm fixing to.

At some point when I decide to I will absolutely go do that thing. Yeah. Yeah. You need to quit fixing to and get it done.

Yeah. Yeah. So a funny story on on like the dialect things. Uh, I'm originally from in central Ohio. You can hear it in my voice.

I live in East Tennessee, though. Okay. So, the way I got here, my I um my wife, she was from Kentucky and uh she moved up to Ohio when we had kids and then we moved down to Kentucky.

Uh took a job at a church and then uh then we moved uh back up to uh northern Kentucky, then back down to East Tennessee.

uh with each child we moved one state south and we're we're done. No more kids. We're we're she were stuck in Tennessee. Um but when we first got married, whenever she would get mad at me, her southern act, you know, dialect would come out, you know, and uh whenever she got mad at me, and that was fairly often. So, when I moved to to Kentucky to southern or I guess western Kentucky, um the uh I I thought everybody was mad at me for the first 6 months.

Um yeah, be I'd go through the drive-thru and that southern dialect would come out and I'd be like, "Oh, are they are they upset?" And everybody wanted to talk to me.

And I was used to Ohio where nobody wanted to talk to you. You go through the drive they through, they say, "Just get going." You know, like here's your food.

They throw it out the window at you. And then I moved to Kentucky and they're like, they want to have a conversation. And I'm like, this is weird.

This is not cool. You're having a conversation and I feel like you're mad at me. Uh I I just want to go. Give me my food.

Oh, that's that's super funny. Uh well I I had well moving from Michigan to Texas and Michigan we are very direct with people when we were upset and we just talk in a stern tone.

Yes. And my Texas did not understand that. And I would be just trying to show you this is irritating to me. And she and my wife would be like dude calm down.

I'm like I am calm. I'm not outrageous at all. No, you're scaring the poor woman over there because you're direct and Texas is not direct with things with when you're address like I'm sorry, I'm not going to beat around the bush when I'm upset.

Why would I waste my time doing that? Oh, exactly. Wait, I'm in a different culture. I need to learn and know the culture and adapt to it and uh yeah, so there's there's always those learning curves when you go into a new culture.

But to back up to something you said earlier of of when you go live of being authentic. Um it made me think of Paul when he's talking about when I am weak then I am strong.

And I think on some level the I don't know what to to label it but the um the we need to copy the church down the road because that church has numbers.

So that church is successful. How is that church successful? They present everything as success. So we have to hide everything that's not success and not be real and genuine has crept in in such a way that we doubt our ability to be weak to be strong.

Because most of the time when we're in church, if you're going to be on stage in in and and and sing, you have to be an excellent singer.

We don't let you up there if you're not an excellent singer. And and I I like every time I would encourage my leadership to say, "Hey, let's let this person share and preach." Well, they haven't had training, right?

So, so they have a testimony. They have something to share. They're going, they're not going to get better if they never get an opportunity.

Uh they they worry about theology or other stuff like if they say anything wrong, we can correct it. It's not hard. Yeah. But if we never give this is this is the church.

We can do that. We can talk to him. We can like why do we feel like we have to hide it, you know, because Yeah.

I I don't know. I I feel incredibly fortunate. Uh because the what I consider my home church um you know when I got newly married and was going to church with my wife and and really the church that that led me into uh returning to ministry or to the the thought that I could go into ministry. I had that as a kid and I thought it was taken away. That church had the it's okay to try and make a mistake in worship attitude.

And I didn't see that in a lot of places. It's okay to go try something and experiment. We were talking about that earlier. That's one of the things that's super exciting to me in digital spaces is will this work?

I don't know. Let's try. What if we do this? I don't know. Let's try. I mean, five years ago, four year four years ago, when people kept saying, "Hey, when are you going to go live?

When are you going to play games?" And I'm like, I don't know that I'm going to play games. Well, you got to do something.

You need to go live. We we're tired of waiting for you to to start streaming. Okay, I'll do my sermon prep on stream. Yeah, that that seems like the logical thing to do on a on a gaming platform.

Let's do sermon prep because everybody's just been waiting for that to go. Yeah. You're you're really going to upset the balance and, you know, bring something new to the space, right?

Yeah. It's like, okay, um, we'll we'll try this. I don't know if it's going to work. And you know, here I am, you know, 4 years later and I'm reading the Bible Monday through Friday on stream that on a gaming platform.

Yeah. Okay. And it's not just the Christians that show up. It it's it's all kinds of people show up to the space.

Yeah. And and and you got you got the trolls right along with them. But the cool thing is I almost pray for the trolls anymore.

like I pray for that they come in because you know it it shows you know in a sense that um every time one comes in you know and they drop their link or they throw something at you um it it's just one more experience that you can say you know what I'm doing the right thing I'm taking more fire I'm I'm going in the right direction you know so to to go back to that particular analogy oh yeah um and and and and you were talking about yeah going live and sharing your vulnerability and and all of that is not an easy thing to do. But what I have usually seen when you do that is if you become vulnerable then the chat responds with care and compassion and also there's someone else that now knows that hey I don't have to pretend that my life is all good if the streamer I'm watching is vulnerable.

I am in a safe place to be able to share my own vulnerability and my own struggle and all of those kinds of things that are happening in my own life.

Yeah. And their walls come down just as much as yours. And like um it's it's always better to have somebody to cry with um rather than crying by yourself.

And just being available and by clicking that go live. That's one way to be available. you know, you have your Discords, you have your your chats, you have the people that you connect with even outside of stream that you can you can call up on the phone and say, "Hey, I'm going through a rough time." Um, all of those are are there for you. All those are uh options uh for you, but the the goal, the end goal is that we are uh through it all lifting up the name of Christ because that that's where real joy comes from.

That's where um that that's that's the connection point above all connection points. You know, that's that's the the one area where, you know, as we we were all created, you know, in his image and as we uh go through our lives and as we interact with others, if that doesn't come through, uh then we're doing it wrong. If we're trying to put up a front and kind of hide that, it's, you know, that's not what we're called to do.

So, um, yeah, I like as digital space is an amazing opportunity for those who see it. Uh, and it's a it's terrible opportunity for those who try to uh um use it for their own ends, too.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess say so, so thinking about that, uh, do you have a couple of stories of of things that have happened with people in your community where life change has happened for them or you were able to meet them in their time of need?

Any, you know, anything along those lines that that just stands out that maybe uh would be a powerful testimony? Um, trying to think.

I know like um uh a buddy of mine, he he actually commented yesterday um on on stream actually um uh Jreak uh I mentioned him, you know, um where he had went through different things uh where his his mother had died a few years ago and um like for for me uh being able to like talk with him through that, you know, and and have that those interactions while he was going through that um with it probably helped me more than him.

Um because it was just like being able to be there for another friend, you know, and we had met through uh an online space and I could call him up and say, "Hey, you know, like here, I want to send you something, you know, and and be able to send that to him."

Um had somebody else um I I started doing this. I don't know if you know like what I do, my day job, uh so to speak.

My day job is I'm a wood engraver. I do laser engraving and I go to rent fairs and I sell it. So I'm a full-time vendor.

Um so oftentimes I've got one of your pieces. Oh, do you really summer? Yeah. Yeah. As uh from uh reach conference last year.

Oh, you got one of the little magnets, right? Yeah. I've got one of the little magnets, but I I more use it like a coaster.

Yes. Um Yeah. I thought I had it sitting here. I must have I must have moved it. So, like I've uh occasionally, you know, if I see somebody has like lost a pet or something like that, I'll do a wood engraving of their pet and I'll, you know, message them and say, "Hey, I want to send that to you." You know, um just it it's funny a lot of times it's just those simple little interactions that say, "I care.

I, you know, you're loved and you know, I I want the best for you." Um those kind of things uh speak volumes u not just to me, but you know, to other folks as well.

Um, so I have more connections like that. I don't have any big, you know, testimony things that I can I can share specifically, but I have a lot of little ones, you know, little little connection points like that.

Yeah. Well, little little ones. Uh, sometimes, you know, you just need a whole bunch of little ones in order to change the direction of someone's life.

And you don't know when that little interaction, that little connection is is going to make a big difference for them. Yeah. I mean, um, so here I I'll change the the topic just a little bit.

I know for myself, my first calling into ministry, um, was actually when I was in I was in youth group. Um, I was about 13 years old and it like I had been, you know, kind of nominally a Christian since I was like 3 years old.

And it was a lot of it was connected to my dad. My dad had got out of prison, he had actually accepted Christ in prison through the Gideons.

Um, and when he got out of prison, he took me up to a ministry inner city mission called Jesus People USA. It was in Chicago.

So I was there for the very first Cornerstone Music Festival in 1984. I was there. I was three. And we were there for about six months.

Um, and I'll preface this also with the fact that I think a lot of people have been hurt by the church and some, and I will tell you I'm one of them.

Okay. Um, but I keep coming back because it's where, you know, we're—it's not a, it's a hospital for the broken. That's what the church is.

And that means there's a lot of broken people in it. That means there's going to be a lot of hurt and it's going to be a place where hurt also happens occasionally.

It's not supposed to, but sometimes it does. Um, and we left there because I was being, you know, um, they had a Christian school there and they would spank the kids and they would do it a little harder than they should, let's be honest.

And we left there through that experience. I was three. Um, and we came back. My dad swore off church. He's like, "I don't want to ever go back to church ever again."

And um, I started going to elementary school. I remember even um, I wanted to like the school was going to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

My dad was like, "No, we're not going to read that. That has witches in it and stuff like that." I was like, now I look back and I'm like, you had no idea what you're talking about.

But anyway, um, yeah, it had witches in the name. So we certainly can't read that. Yeah. Exactly. So he had kind of that legalistic perspective.

Um, but because of where he had been from, okay, and what he had experienced. Um, and I would walk to school. You know, my school was right across the street from me.

We lived in this little apartment complex. And the quickest way to get to the school was, you know, to cross the busy street.

Okay. And I could walk, you know, a block down that way and there's a crossing guard. I could go down to the crossing guard and uh I chose not to do that most of the time.

So the crossing guard uh looked at me and said, "You are going to get yourself killed." And she said, "Come on down here." And she was very nice about it.

She invited me. And this is weird because it was like, "Don't get killed." A very, very simple thing for a kid to understand.

Don't get killed. You know, and after several times of almost getting smacked by cars uh on a four-lane road that where everybody went fast, um she said, "Come on down here." Now, what I didn't know is that the crossing guard was the local pastor's wife of the Nazarene church.

And as I got to know her, uh she invited me to VBS. And I was like, "Well, we've been to church before. We've kind of done that and we haven't done that for a while now." And there's reasons.

And um so she invited me and I thought okay let's go. And my dad was like, "She actually cares about my son. What a change."

You know, that's what he had experienced was somebody who didn't care. And we went down there and I'd started crossing at that crossing guard.

We went to VBS. My dad fell in love with the choir director and she became my stepmom. And um so like it's funny how things happen along your way that lead you back um to to where God wants you.

And it could be little things, you know, just, you know, somebody saying, "Hey, I care about your kid. Come on down here. We're crossing at the right spot." Um, and but the first my actual calling into ministry was three years after my stepmom and my dad got married.

Um, like I said, he had served in prison. Um, and uh, while there he had uh, we didn't know it at the time, but um, he had contracted HIV and uh, and AIDS.

Uh, and the night we found out he had AIDS uh, was uh, my calling into ministry. I didn't know who to call. I called my youth pastor up and while on the call with him um I you know as audibly as I hear you today and your audio is not acting up now um was that um you know this is what I want you to do with your life. I want you to uh I want you to speak my words and that was my initial calling in ministry and a lot of things have happened since but uh God keeps calling me back to that is share, share the love of Christ.

Yeah. Yeah. That's fantastic. But yeah, you're talking about all your journey, your journey is a fantastic journey even if the moments of your journey are filled with sorrow and strife and all.

So yes, I don't know very many people that uh I've had conversations with that don't say they've had some sort of church hurt in some ways.

We have, but it's a difference of realizing that hurt people hurt people uh very easily. And like you were saying is if the church is for people who are hurting, then they're going to end up hurting each other.

Sometimes intentionally, but most often unintentionally. Um, as they're trying to protect themselves or or others around them, they hurt others. Yeah.

And that's unfortunately the way it is. But you were saying that and I don't think I'd thought about this before when you were making that comparison and then talking about hospitals.

Well, I don't avoid going to hospitals just because I might catch an infection in the hospital unless I know it's rapidly happening in that hospital.

Um, my wife happens to work in healthcare so I know how to go evaluate to see um you know what is what is the prevalence of uh secondary infections in this hospital, what's their rate and should I trust this one or not. I mean, I know how to evaluate that. The same way I can evaluate that of a church.

Is this church hurting and sending people away? Probably not a good space for me. Is this church welcoming people that are strangers? Maybe it's an okay place for me to go. Um, and then depending upon on where your hurt is.

Well, I can go in when I need the ER, but I'm not going in for anything elective right now. Yeah.

Uh, because I'm still, I my body isn't physically able to. Well, spiritually, I might be able to go in for special events, but my body's not ready spiritually to go to a weekly service. I don't think we give enough people that kind of credibility when they've been hurt.

Um, and it looked like it sounds like in your story there was a piece of hurt and then a time gap and then the ability to start to have some mending and slow pathway back into uh connection with God and invitation with people that were going to care and love.

That that's just beautiful. Yeah. And you know, there's a song and this is a silly song in a way but um uh and I'm just thinking you know, you know, it talks about God bless the broken road, you know, I don't know if you remember that song.

Um, remember that. I think we all have a broken road if we admit that to ourselves and uh the funny thing is is that God uses the brokenness more than you know um through its little things that that happen along the way, things that happen in ministry, things that happen, heck, even in stream sometimes. Um, there are uh moments of brokenness all along the way where God is steadily changing you and in a sense whittling you away into what he wants for you.

He's still a creator and he's still creating with you. Um, like the old uh Sunday school, you know, he's still working on me.

Yeah, that's a hurting process. Yeah, haven't heard that one in a long time. He's still working on me. Oh man, that's a good song.

I don't remember much after the chorus, but yeah. Um, took him just a week to make the moon and stars, you know.

I think that's how it goes. Something along those lines. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. And Jupiter and Mars, I think, is in there.

Yeah. Yeah. Jupiter and Mars. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Out in the Milky Way past Jupiter and Mars or something. I don't know.

Somebody somebody will know it. They'll just type it all in chat. And uh or now where you got it stuck in somebody's head, it'll be there the rest of the day.

Exactly. Yeah. They're they're going to hear, you know, singing vegetables singing in their sleep tonight. I hope you do. Oh, well, it I am always thrilled by the journey that God puts you on and and where it ends up and how you go and and but if you hadn't been on that journey and you weren't where you are now, how would you reach the people that are coming to your stream? It would be really hard to do that.

Yeah, it would be difficult. And in all of those little points of brokenness and and let's put it this way.

Um, I'm trying to think of the best way, best analogy here is that um we were talking about those connection points and I think often times the points of brokenness are the connection points that God has planted in our lives, in our lives uh where we can connect with others and if I hadn't had some of those experiences, if I hadn't had um you know the things that have happened to me, I wouldn't have near, I wouldn't be able to connect with, you know, other, in a sense, other kids who have been through abuse situations.

I wouldn't be able to connect with um other people who have had issues with their parents and having to deal with their parents dying.

I wouldn't have um you know, like I go to Renfairs. I've shared this, you know, where we actually have these signs that we take, you know, I you know, there all kinds of things.

Just take go ahead take some time talk about what you do with Renfair ministry and in all of that. I mean, I know we're talking about podcasting, but I'm one of those that's like I am partially digital uh and and lots immersed in digital, but God's not done being in physical space and ministering to people in physical space. He's got avenues where I do that. So, yeah, share it because it's part of who you are.

Yeah, I'm a geek through and through. I'm going to just be very honest with that. Um, you know, I am always reading something.

Um, but uh we do, my wife is the same way. We love to um read our all of our kids have literary names to give you an example.

Um, and oh yeah, Pepsi is going to come see me at Ohio Ren. I hope to see you there. Um uh so anyway um we got into it um during 2020.

We were in the middle of the pandemic and um I got bored. I had been working from home for about ten years for Apple and I was like, I need to do something creative.

I need to do something with my hands. I need to get outside of the silly house. And uh we got us like a little, you know, glow forge.

Apparently the ads worked on me. And uh I was like, I got to figure out some way to do this. I'm always looking at something new and thinking, okay, I can do something with this.

Uh but little do I know how much God is wanting to do through it. Um, he's planted that in my art where I'm like always looking at things and then he figures out how he can use it.

It's weird. Uh but anyway, uh and we did a craft show. We just like made a bunch of stuff. We went to this little craft show and uh we sold out and I was like, "Uh-oh. Uh-oh."

Um, and uh we have to make more stuff. Like I love this making thing. I love making things with my hands. Why? What why have I never done this before?

And um I had always done art um you know drawing, picking up pencil. I used to do a lot of ink wash stuff.

And my wife, she used to be a charcoal artist. She did a lot of charcoal drawings. And I was like, "Okay, well now this is a thing."

We're going to do this." And we found out we had a little local medieval festival and we thought, you know what? I bet we could like get in there as vendors and we could go and just dress up and go to the ren fair and um just be there the whole time and have a booth and maybe we could sell some of our stuff. And we went and we did it. I remember the first time we loaded up all these different signs we made.

They were quotes from books and a lot of Lord of the Rings references. We have our middle daughter's named Aoen uh to give you an idea of one of the literary names in our family.

And uh we had all this stuff and we people would come in and we'd have these signs and we'd have scripture in there as well, you know, different things about who we are.

And I noticed that there's a common theme, you know, of all these stories and everybody's got a story to tell, but when we're drawn to stories, uh we it's another connection point.

And we made a conscious decision at that point. We were going to make things to sell. We're not making things to sell. We are selling the things we make.

That's a big difference.

Oh yeah, I like that.

And when we did that, when people would come into our booth, we could talk about everything we made. You know, we could say, yeah, hey, have you read this? Have you seen that? Have you have you checked that out? Have you you know, one of our early pieces was the Gospel of John. It was all 21 chapters on the Gospel of John. And we'd make this and it was this huge piece of board and it was one board. It had all 21 chapters on it and people would come up with it like and they'd look closer and there's like hey there's words there.

I was like yeah and if you check out right down here there's like the writing on the cross it's all capital letters that stood out. It's like you know king of the Jews you know this is Jesus king of the Jews. And um and I'd have these connection points and I talk to people about that and they're like, "Oh, I used I used to go to church." And then it became like I have these conversations about my faith because they're bringing it up because they're seeing it in our booth. And I was like, "Wait a second." Like God God's going to use this one, too.

You know, and as I made these different signs, um, and people would come in and we'd talk and it would always come up.

And as we continued doing that, now we're at big ren fairs. We're doing Ohio Ren Fair, uh, later this year. Um, and then we also have a book release because we have we wrote a book. We wrote a children's book, my wife and I did, and we're doing a book release at Ohio Ren on September 6th. So, if you want tickets and you want them at a discount, hit me up. I can get you in that day. Um and then uh we do um we go down to South Carolina for a ren fair. We're going to go to Florida this year for a ren fair uh this next year.

And God continues to expand the things that he can use. And it's amazing how he expands the things he can use um more than like if you if you close off parts of your life like my business is my business. It it's amazing how they can they can flounder. But when God says, "You know what? I can use that." It's amazing how he will expand it and turn it into something.

And uh that's what he's done for us. And now I'm full-time. I, you know, left the corporate job and now we do ren fairs. Like I if I was going to say to somebody like this is what God's going to use, it probably wouldn't be ren fairs or it wouldn't be comic cons.

I go to comic cons too.

And because there they're places that are notoriously um anti-faith in a lot of ways and now God's using it to to be a light there.

Um Romans actually came up for Ohio Ren Fair last year and helped me in the booth uh with Reach. Uh he I I said, "Hey, come on up." and he came up, he flew up and went to the ren fair and helped me in the booth and sold stuff in my booth and we had we had a good time and um it it's I I wouldn't have I wouldn't have even imagined that God would have used that, but he is.

Yeah. And and that's another thing too is how God can take something in you, begin to use it for ministry that then inspires other people in ministry to do something else unique to how God has has made them.

And yeah, I I resonate with the needing to do something with your hands. I I I I have a lot of family members missing hands. I have had stitches on my hand many times. I knew I should not do things with my hands for a living. So, I knew that.

But every once in a while when I'm just exhausted mentally, what I need is to do something with my hands that I can start and I can finish and I can accomplish and and it doesn't have to be something big. It just feels like, hey, look what I did. Uh that that your hands allows you to like, you know, the the the shelf thing unit over here. I I made that. Not a big deal. It's not fancy. It's not anything. It just serves a purpose. And uh and I' and I've got other things that I've done and I've I've done more construction with decks and stuff.

I am not a finished person as far as working goes. Like you're going to do the fine details and crown molding. I hire that out. That's not me. You you want the studs to go in, I can put studs in and I can drywall, but you probably want to hire the guy to uh mud the drywall. I'll hang it and I'll do the electrical, but the the finish work is not my skill set. Um, but I still love that like you're saying like the the creative aspect of I did this and I love that I'm going to sell what I make. I'm not going to make things to sell. That's such a a revelation to be able to apply in other areas of life. Why are you doing it? If you're just doing it to try to make money off of whatever it is you're doing, it becomes a chore to do.

Yeah.

Um, we started with no no intention that this would be a full-time thing. None. Absolutely none. We were just like, we want to make cool things. There we go. We made cool things. Good for us. Yay. And that was the end of it. That was all there was to it. And we went to a show and it resonated with people and we connected with people and then it became something else.

And what what a blessing.

Oh, totally. Totally. Have you ever uh thought about uh and maybe you have and I just I'm not aware of it. Live streaming doing the creative work of all the woodworking and stuff that you do.

Yeah, we actually in our business we actually do have a Twitch channel. We used to stream on there. The challenge is that all of the machines are very loud like from the sanders to the uh to the lasers. Uh occasionally I'll have the lasers up on stream. I used to do that a lot more. Um, but it there's a technical challenge there in have like I have all these like wireless like uh microphones I've I bought. So I could do that in the workshop. Um, but it's not very feasible to do on a regular basis. It it takes about an hour to set up everything in order to do it correctly. And I just it's like man once I get in there I can't interact with chat and I'm like it it I have to stop stop the sander and then talk to people. Um, so it it I I wish I could do more of that, but uh it it's very challenging to do that.

Yeah, I I thought I had seen you you do that before. Um, and maybe and I just thought was that my is bad? One of the things I've watched others others do with that is if if it's a two spouses, you know, who are involved, one is doing the work and the other is engaging chat and then that person can share when there's a break. Hey, this came up and that kind of thing. So, I don't know if that works or not, but I get the whole technical set it all up, make it work. If it's not on a regular schedule to do that, I also know because I I like doing the one off. I'm going to I'm going to be powerwashing. So, I'm going to set up and actually do powerwash on stream. Not powerwash simulator. No, I'm actually going to powerwash uh

IRL power powerwash simulator.

IRL power wash, not simulator. Uh I've done that on stream. I'm going to set it up. I'm going to do that. It's like, oh, that was a bunch of work. And you know, the other thing I'm doing, I could have been done powerwashing instead of explaining what I'm doing and talking to chat while I'm doing it. It takes a lot longer to accomplish the work sometimes. Not I'm not saying anything bad about it. It's just like sometimes you make the choice that the work needs done and you do the work.

The same way with I think like I loved bringing my kids along to help me do jobs. If I wanted the job done, I could have done those so much faster. Instead, it was like, "All right, we'll work on it. We'll get as much done today as we can, as much as you're able to help and and do that so that you're learning along the way and those things." And I know I know my wife that wasn't her forte. She would much rather just do it and get it done than take the time to go and and and teach someone else to be able to do it. But I I love the bring somebody along with you aspect of things.

Yeah. In in your uh relationship with your wife, who's the extrovert and who's the introvert? I'm curious.

Oh, I'm the extrovert. She's the introvert.

See, I'm the introvert and my wife's the extrovert, but she doesn't want to be on stream most of the time. She's She used to do a lot more on stream and she's very comfortable and she's very natural at it. I am not. I have to like I have to work at it and and it's funny to me because like she's so much more of a natural with it than I am.

Well, over over the years the the extrovert introvert in both of us has blurred quite a bit. So um the job that she is in uh and her boss who is awesome keeps pushing her towards teaching and being in front of people and so she has a skill set to be able to do it. She is very talented at it but it drains her tremendously. So she does it she she she is very I don't want to say meticulous isn't the right word. She's ve very thorough and intentional in the way she does things. And me I'm off the cuff. So we have totally different personalities. But the interesting thing is uh preaching in pulpit for 20 plus years. I got done preaching on Sunday and all I wanted to do was hide from people. I don't want to talk to anybody for the next 24 hours. I need to escape. Which is which such a weird thing because I can absolutely say before I started preaching on Sundays, I never had that thought in my life. I would have hung around for hours after the service. If somebody was talking, I would talk. I mean that would energize me and I like I knew that was happening. Actually streaming has got my energy excitement of talking to people back that ministry was taking away from me which is a weird thing to think about.

For me when I used to preach uh on a weekly basis um I almost likened it to every week climbing a a large hill and then base jumping off of it.

Like that was that was the equivalent. like I, you know, trudge along, you know, I can just walk up this hill, you know, like I'm hiking. Some some weeks were harder than others, you know, and my sermon prep. And then I I jump. And then for the next two days after that, I'm laying on the ground wondering, why did I do this? Why am I so drained? Why am I stuck on the bottom of this floor trying to figure out, should I climb up this hill again? Should I do it?

Yeah.

And it it was such a drain for me. And but that that I realize that's part of my brokenness where I have to say, you know what, like yeah, it is draining. It is but and it is work and it is something but it's worth it. It's worth it. And um I streaming isn't like that for me. I have that that initial before I hit the go live button, you know, where I'm jumping off the cliff, but then after that it's like, okay, we're good.

We're here, you know, and then it's just being connecting. Yeah. Uh, I'll tell you the interesting thing for me with streaming is like, man, I had thorough training on how to preach a sermon and I had such joy in crafting it. I had such joy in delivering it and all of that. And now that I'm on uh online all the time and engaging people and it's not let me give you a 40-minute monologue and then you can tell me at the end if if it was good or not.

I go to go preach and it's like wait a minute. Nobody's interrupting me. Nobody's asking me questions. No, nobody's putting emojis in the chat that they're in agreement with it. Like I mean, oh my goodness. Like I just I preached uh yesterday or Sunday. I'll be preaching again this week. I do some pulpit supply and it was like, okay, I get head nods and that's about as good as I get. Or I tell something funny and I get laughter and it's like, okay, but I don't know if you're really resonating with this.

Yeah. I don't know if that's just politeness. I don't know if that's just cultural. This is what we do or are you going to walk away that's made a difference in your life where on stream it's so much easier to stop have the conversation. I say one-on-one but it's not truly one-on-one. It's the whole community with the focus on one person as as it comes up in stream.

And it's like, man, that is so much more powerful than than a whole bunch of eyes on you and you talk for 40 minutes and you don't know if anything changed and people come up and shake your hand and say, "Great sermon." And I just want to go, "What was great about it? What are you going to do different? How was it?"

What was great about it? Well, I mean, two two levels. One, I want to know what you got out of it so that I know what you're, you know, trying to do. But two, I want to know for myself like what part did I do or did God do through me that that was good so I can do more of that? You know,

That that's a dangerous question. You know, I I I got you know, you ever get that blank look?

Well received.

Yeah, it's not well received when you ask that.

I don't know. I just wanted to say that. Okay.

Thank you.

So, you didn't you didn't really mean it. He just felt obligated to say something and that's okay.

And and in your humanness, you're like, "Okay, just shake my hand and go leave."

Yes. Yeah. Unfortunately, there is is that level. Well, and there's also too, and I think this is part of it, too. It's the it's the leading up to everything culminates on Sunday.

Oh, yeah.

That after it's after it's over, there is that exhaustion like you're talking about jumping off of the off of the cliff. Exhaustion of I spent all this time and energy towards this. I gave everything I had and now I don't know if it made a difference. And and maybe we go go back to the salt and light analogy.

Yeah.

If I'm in stream every day and you might show up three out of the out of the five days, maybe it's two out of the five days. I got to give you a little salt and a little light sprinkled throughout the week. And instead of you're in a really dark world, I turn the lights on on Sunday for an hour and you're you're you're shocked by it. You don't know what to do with it and then the lights are turned off and you don't get more.

You walk through the rest of the house and there's no lights anywhere.

Yeah. I mean, what what a like I I guess it's easier for people to tune into something that they can be passive about, but like in terms of streaming and and we have this that this ability, you know, we're we're reaching into people's homes. We're reaching into people's, you know, phones where where they are, you know, they I I know I know there's people in in my chat, you know, that are like, "Yep, I'm on the toilet. Let me flush." You know, like, okay, hold on. But you took they they took that moment to simply, you know, tune in. It was passive. It was just the spur of the moment, but they tuned in and they said, "Oh, you know, I need to I need to have some kind of connection." And I I love that.

Well, at the same time, it's it's not intentional on their part, but it's intentional on mine. And that's all it takes is one person to be intentional for that connection to happen because the other person, we don't know where they're at. We don't know what they're going through. Um, and church is one of those things, you know, I love church. I love going to church. Um, but I am a back row kind of guy. I like don't like I'm not I'm probably not going to come up to you on a Sunday morning these days. You know, I I'm I'm I don't serve in the church in that way, but I am typically uh on the back row, you know, I might even have my my phone out, you know, like who's live, you know?

Um and I've I've actually uh I've been known to have my headphones on in church and listen to my friends preach while I'm at a church someplace. Um I'm I'm bad that way. I'm sorry. Um I've had people call me out on on in the doors when I come in. They're like, "What? Why are you bringing headphones?" I'm like, "Sorry, not sorry."

Well, I know. Maybe maybe it says something else uh about others and not not as much about you. If if that's something and maybe it says something about the structure of the way that we do church that Yeah.

You know, is that way. Uh I I'm I don't I don't like to rail against the big C church. Uh you know, it's a big organization. It's taken decades and and centuries to be where it is. And it's going to take a long time for it to change.

Yeah.

I'm just more interested in helping the people that want to help change the lives of other people get better at what they're doing and find encouragement so they can continue to do the things God's calling them to which are strange and different and un unordinary um in the in the way that they want to go and and be called by God. And I don't know if there's a way that you want to be called by God, but I love when people find out and this was a revelation for me. You mean that thing I love, God can use it.

Yeah.

It seemed like it seemed like growing up that you had to give up everything that you loved in order to follow God.

Yeah. And and you forgot the fact that, you know, God created you because you're you. Like he created you with your own particular set of gifts, your own particular set of abilities for a reason. And if we're just simply saying, look, let's let's throw out all those reasons, you know, and then you have to, you know, surrender all that and not be you. It's like uh I think this is probably my fourth CS Lewis reference. Uh he talks about how um when when we are uh surrender ourselves to our creator, he makes us more of ourselves because he's the one who designed us in the first place. He makes us more us. And while we we we get rid of all the but it's not you know um there's a lot of ways you can misinterpret that. I'm saying in the sense that there is a particular design that God has for you and he's created you to fulfill that design. Not um you know some alternate version of yourself that is how you've you've viewed yourself um because that that might be broken. But who God has designed.

Yeah. And and not you're a copy of somebody else's design.

Exactly.

Yeah. That

So, one one of my favorite musicians who um in the Christian world uh over down through the years has been Steve Taylor. Uh often ostracized by churches and stuff like that for numerous reasons, but he wrote a song way back in the 80s uh I I want to be a clone. And it was talking about you going into church, you know, cleanliness is next to godliness, right? Uh I'm glad I they could show the way because I could never know the way to serve him on my own. Um like there's a kind of a tongue and cheek thing that goes on through all that. And um that's been one of my big influences throughout my life is I keep coming back to the these concepts of you know go God's design is much better than my own and it's always going to be much better than my own and I might not see how it's going to come out. I don't, you know, and one of the reasons I've even taken this into my woodworking because I love taking the old broken pieces, the things that nobody else would see, you know, like a broken piece of live edge wood that is all naughty and, you know, it's been out in the woods for years. Now, I've thrown it in a kiln. We've dried it and we've finished it out and engraved something beautiful on it. And now it's something worthwhile. And but the thing is, it was always worthwhile. Just nobody had found it yet. Nobody had picked it up and said, "I want to use this. I want to take this and I'm gonna make something amazing out of it." And I I kind of liken that to to us as people is that, you know, God's picking us up out of the muck and the mire and the the uh the different places in our lives and he's saying, "You know what? You're worthwhile and I'm going to invest in you and I'm going to create something that nobody else saw coming." And um I think often times, you know, and I don't get me wrong, I love the church. Um and I I often get accused of that, you know, in some regard or other. Um I love the church, but we often think that we have to have like somebody like the pastor's approval to do some ministry. And that got that that is I think a lot of pastors struggle with that as well. It's like they get up there like, "Why are you asking me? Go do it. Go do it. You know, you know, start that singles ministry. Start that um youth group that we don't have. Start those things. We can't do it. You know, we can't like a lot of most of the churches in America are 100 people or less. Majority are probably 20 people or less.

We sit here on stream, you know, we might have 10. Yesterday I got raided and I had nine like 120 people in my stream. I was like, whoa. You know, suddenly my platform grew and I was like in the matter of few moments and I was like, well, God, you know, like let's share this and uh it's a what what an opportunity we have even in the church to do new things that we often feel like we just need permission to do. I'm we're giving you permission. Our permission is right there in scripture. Go and do likewise. You know, the great commission, you know, go ye there from all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you. I am with you. And

Yeah,

Well, and and if you go to the start preaching if we go that way, I'm going to I'm going to jump right in there with you with the he's created some as apostle apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. So that the church can be fully equipped. Not so that the pastor can be fully equipped. Amen. So that the church can be fully equipped.

I've said this for a few years. I've been reluctant to share it too often on stream. I think I've shared it with one other person on stream cuz I just like I don't know. I don't want people to take it out of context, but the the Reformation took the Bible out of the hands of the clergy and it put it in the hands of the people. And what we need is ministry to come out of the hands of the clergy and be put in the hands of the people. We need another reformation.

And God's already at work in the reformation of doing that right now because there are so many people being called in digital spaces and they go to their church, their church doesn't understand or they go to their denomination, their denomination doesn't know what to do and they're not sure if it's real or not. Well, frankly, I mean, maybe this kind of started with the Jesus movement and we didn't know what to do with people that were called to go to hippies and they were called to go to well, you don't know what to do with them.

Um, so they didn't have a spot. Well, there's just so many people right now that are that are tired of I need to wait to have authority to do this when God is clearly calling me to do this.

So, I'm going to find someone who can be accountable to. Maybe it's not the full church, but I still have people I'm accountable to. I'm still talking to people. I'm still in relationship with people, but I'm going to go and be honest and do what God calls me to, no matter how crazy it sounds to everybody else around me.

I'm going to go and do this. Who's doing that? Nobody. Are you going to make money at it? I don't think so. Well, then why are you going to do it?

Cuz God said to. Why else would you do it? Um, Amen. Keep on going. Keep keep going. But at some point, like, like I said, I've had that thought in my mind for a while, and I don't know fully how to write it and express it so that the church would hear it. Um, have you ever read any of Mike Yaconelli's books? No, I don't think so. U Messy Spirituality. Um uh he was uh one of the founders of Youth Specialties. Um and he he died a few year a number of years ago, but uh he wrote a a few books. One called Dangerous Wonder and uh another one called Messy Spirituality.

And uh between like those and then you can I I'll I'll send you a link of one of his sermons. I think my wife's calling me about something. Hold on. What's going on? She's holding a dog. Hold on. Make sure. Anyway, I think she's holding a dog. Is that what I saw?

Anyway, um but between those books, it kind of shaped my perspective that, you know, you don't have to have it all together. God's going to God's going to take what you can give and he's going to change it and he's going to transform it.

And and your brokenness can be used. However you're broken, God's going to use it. And in um in the streaming space, we have this opportunity to explore that more than the finished uh performances that we see on Sunday morning so often.

And I love that. And I think that our the more we are real, the more we are authentic in our streams when we connect with other people, the more we have those connection points in community.

I love reach for that particular example. Um because it brings all these people that are just in the in the sense in the trenches, you know, doing it on a regular basis.

I love that. And because now we're not just doing it alone. Think how many s how many sermons you've prepped by yourself. How many have like just you and God?

Okay. Yep. But what if you had, you know, 20 other pastors that you could bounce that off of on a regular basis throughout the whole course of your week?

It it would transform your ministry, right? Oh, yeah. So, why don't we do that? Well, now, like, that's what we're trying to do with reach.

That's what we're trying to do with um online digital spaces, online churches. Now we're we're suddenly in community throughout the week, lifting each other up, loving on each other, and we're no longer just doing it alone.

And what what a great opportunity we have. Yeah. I I am fortunate that I have had occasions where I would work with other pastors and we would work through sermons here do that together.

But those would be maybe once a year or it would be with one pastor one year and then it's two three years and then another pastor and you're doing a you know a lent series together or an advent series and then that's it.

You know, you you don't continuously engage each other with the process that you're doing. You Yeah, you're right. You all go off. You all do your separate thing.

You all are in your separate churches. You're doing that. The the camaraderie in the digital space is we realize we need one another. We we realize that there are others.

We find encouragement and we find camaraderie and we find friendship there. It's it's just fantastic and and amazing on that level. And um yeah, Reach is a is a great example of that.

Within the church digital, we're doing a bunch of stuff that's not gaming related as well. We're trying to help people wherever they are in being a a digital missionary.

So if you're a digital missionary uh you know for instance we have friends in Pakistan and and some other closed countries that are physical missionaries who are realizing we need to spend time figuring out how to be digital because persecution is on the rise and we need to connect and stay connected

and keep people safe and how do we do this and and mentor and disciple people that are new. They're turning to digital means to be able to do it.

We're trying to help them and help them think through some of those things. And we've got people globally all over. So, yeah, gaming is one piece of what the Church Digital is doing and and myself and a few others are are are connections there, but man, we're we're larger than that.

We're more global than that. We're we've got conferences coming up um all online because we're global. So, how do you have everyone gather in one spot?

It it doesn't work so well. So yeah, we'll have four conferences coming up in the September and October of reaching your digital neighborhood of recovery ministry.

Our friends over in Europe will have a European one and then we're you know focused on gaming and we'll have a gaming summit on October 8th.

That's the one that people listening to this might be most excited about. Um you go to missionary.digital and sign up for that and it's totally free.

And if you can't make the date and time, sign up anyway, please, cuz you'll get the you'll get the videos later. I know it's not the same, but it also takes and it shows that uh our sponsors who who are covering the cost of us able to making it able for us to

do this, they need to know that people are interested in this if we're going to do it again. So, so that's very valuable if you're able to do that.

It's um uh missionary.digital digital. Is that is that right? Okay. I was going to drop the link myself. I was going to check it out.

Um, you mentioned a little bit ago that you you did some drama. I'm going to just backtrack that. I'm curious. Yeah. Like what was your experience in uh drama?

What what did you do? And I I know I had reached out to you at one point about that anyway, so I was curious.

Yeah. Okay. Well, like I say, when I was in elementary school, there wasn't lots of opportunities, but I was al always really incredibly good at memorizing lines and scripture.

So, I would like I even remember a song from a play that I was in in elementary school that's in French. Okay. Because I knew I knew if I said it you were going to ask uh sir Leont do looney dons looney dons sir leont do looney dons to now somebody

French is going to tell me my pronunciation is probably horrible but it's on the bridge avenue that's where we dance that's where we dance on the bridge avenue that's where we dance al together So, it was in a play about Paul Revere and I don't know why I had to learn a song

in French. I have no idea whatever that was, but that was part of the play. Uh, so I always loved doing it. Uh, but I also always love lots of things.

So, while I had some artistic abilities in that way, I was also very athletic. So, I was over in wrestling and track and over there.

So, in high school, I didn't do a lot. And then when I got to college, uh, between high school and college, I had I had surgery for a deviated septum.

I' probably had it since I was a kid. And if you don't know what that is, basically a broken nose and then your cartilage grows and then you can't breathe.

Well, as soon as I had the surgery to repair that, I had sports induced asthma and I hypervented anytime I tried to do any exercise.

So, I didn't I couldn't do any sports. So, you have overly strong lungs. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, apparently apparently overly strong lungs.

So it was like I was oxygen deficient and when my body got oxygen, it didn't know what to do with it. So uh so anyway, so then I I end up in uh going into theater because it seemed like a fun thing to do.

So we were doing trying to remember which play was which. Uh, we did The Hobbit uh at when I was a freshman and so I was one of the dwarfs and uh I helped work on building sets.

I got to build Smaug and uh create and craft all of that and do do my lines. And then um we did Robin Hood the next year, which is how I actually met my wife was in the theater.

I was uh the constable who was a bumbling idiot, didn't know anything, and I had lots of comic relief lines, which to me that's that's the best part.

Fun. Throw out the dumb stuff, all of that. So, um you're not going to find me in a drama. Uh more of the comedy stuff is is where where I enjoy.

So, I did that in college, acted a whole bunch of other places, too. And then I was saying that God well my parents got divorced as part of the reason.

So when I was 7 years old I like I'm going to be a pastor. My parents got divorced when I was 12. My mom get kicks gets kicked out of the church we're going to.

I'm like all right I can't go. I can't do this. I'm disqualified. My mom didn't go to church. You know you're a teenage boy.

You're not going to churches alone. Friends didn't invite me. If I had a girlfriend I'd go, but you know didn't end up going. So, um I'm at a Curtis Eastman uh or is it Eastman Curtis?

I can't remember which way his name goes. Um event and I'm just feeling like, hey, you know, God's calling me and and he does this not altar call, but he does, hey, if God is speaking to you, come down here, we'll pray with you.

Went down there, felt like God was calling me to do something. I get back from that event. I pick up the church bulletin and it says, "Hey, we're looking for someone to take over the drama ministry of our church." And I just felt like that's what I'm supposed to do.

So, I went and talked to them and I started doing it and it was just like that I can't believe I get to do something that I like and enjoy and get to do it for God.

It just didn't didn't match with my world view of growing up in the church. Yeah. And so, so I got to to start doing that.

So I directed and then I started rewriting because we didn't have capacity to have five people in a script or on microphones. So I had to rewrite everything for three people max.

And then I found out it was easier to write it myself. So I started writing. And then I was also acting in it and directing and all of that stuff.

And then um I I I was growing a lot at that time and and being fed by a whole bunch of other people that I listened to online and that and then God called me to to go to seminary and I had to wrestle through am I called to do this to do