We Started a Gaming Church Plant | Here's What Happened

Hey, welcome in. Welcome in. Welcome in everybody. Hope you're doing well. So, second podcast of the day. So, uh if you came earlier, glad to have you back.

If, uh, if you're not, weren't here, first time here, uh, I hope that you are going to have a good time hanging out with me and Pastor North, North Hill Live.

We're going to be chatting about doing ministry and doing ministry online. So, uh, North, you ready to go? All right. Hey, hey, Big. Good to see you, man.

I'm just checking on my own. Yep, I can hear myself. Good to see you, man. All right, put that aside. That's my low tech way of checking.

Yeah, pull my phone out. I'm watching on the phone. Can I hear myself? Yep, I sound good. Uh, and then, you know, chat can correct me because, well, my volume's not good.

You know, my everything is a work in progress, isn't it? Everything is a work in progress. I love you're just adjusting the camera there.

You know, I'm talking about having a problem with the microphone and the earbuds and all of that stuff. So, uh, we'll see who shows up.

Yeah, this is not a normal time for either of us to necessarily be streaming, but I appreciate anybody that shows up and everyone that's going to watch the VODs later.

All right. Well, the plan for these podcasts is to talk about or talk with uh friends that I have who I've met online and talk about what are you doing in digital spaces.

But before we talk about what are you doing, uh I want to start with why did you jump on Twitch? How did that whole thing come about?

And and and just kind of like what's the start for you? What drew you into being in digital spaces and particularly to be a Twitch streamer?

Oh, hang on. Hang on. Sorry. I I I had you muted. Sorry. My mistake. So, Chelby, you should be able to hear now.

I didn't unmute you when I... Y'all y'all get me on both ends now. Now, we should be good. Thanks, Choby. Appreciate it. What I was going to say is what I was going to say is uh like a lot of people I made the I made the Twitch switch over during COVID, uh but I started off as a YouTuber. So I did um YouTube devotionals basically like 15-minute devos on my YouTube site. So the way I did it is I typically would hike out in the woods and record myself talking about whatever I had on my mind.

I live in a place where there's actual hiking and not everybody has it. So, I'm like, you know, if I'm going to live here and go through the hassle living in the Pacific Northwest, and it is a hassle, I might as well get something out of it.

Um, and so that's how I started. And then COVID hit, and you may or may not know, I'm in an IRL church building. This is um this is what I do for my day job.

And I do Twitch as um specifically a church plant. So, a ministry of... So, my local church is called Christ Central. And Christ Central is a older church.

I don't mean just the building, although it's a old building too, uh, but older folk. So, when COVID hit, uh, they was they was they was real scared.

We actually lost a couple people and we shut down for 18 months. So, I had to figure out how to do church for 18 months, um, when I couldn't see people.

Yeah. So, we did drive-through communion and we did a lot of like phone stuff. I set this this room I'm in right now. I tore everything out of it and I set up a little worship stage where the worship team could come in and be the right distance apart.

Um, and so going through all of that, I realized that there was a serious need for people who couldn't physically get to church because our church grew during COVID.

Uh, everybody else did not, but our church expanded. We we I hate to talk about money, but we made more money during COVID. we had more eyes on what we were doing during COVID and that was because we went so far out of the way.

So I learned a lot. So when COVID ended um I started doing uh very simple Bible reading on Twitch. So all I would do was read a chapter of the uh chapter from the New or the Old Testament, like literally one chapter to myself because there was nobody there.

Y and then I would play um whatever video game I was into. Typically I play very janky things, things that are difficult, things that are simulators, stuff that nobody wants.

So I I would play I would play that for 20 or 30 minutes and it and then immediately people who were into that game would see that listed and go, "Oh, this dude knows what he's doing." Show up and realize I got no idea.

So everybody would help me and I it took about three months and we had you know a community building and I thought I think we're on to something.

I think we're on to something. Um and and I had a meeting with my council and my council had been asking me to plant a church for about four or five years.

Oh okay. And I said this looks like this looks like a church plant to me. um instead of us instead of us trying to put the money together to go buy a building, um why why don't we do this?

And so even though my people do not understand it in in any way, they really don't understand what I do. Um they have enough faith in the fact that the Holy Spirit does and they've uh stood behind me and let me do this four days a week.

Well, four half days a week. Yeah, that's... Is that as clear as mud? Oh, that's that's great. That's great. I love I well like I I just love the the shift that happens in different places along the way when you're you're seeing something but you're not seeing something and suddenly your eyes are open and you and you see it. So like I don't I don't brag because I was you know live streaming worship services 10 years before COVID that that's not a brag.

U I was doing it because I was meeting a need. I was meeting a need because I was at a church that had people 45 minutes in four different directions.

Literally four different directions 45 minutes away that are shutins, right? H how do we stay connected? And when I showed up, they were taking a VHS tape.

Yes. A VHS tape. One one copy, it went to one person on Monday, you got to watch it. Tuesday, it went to the next person.

You got to watch it. And it traveled and came back. And I'm like, we ain't doing that. we we can do better. So, we're we're gonna live stream and we're going to do a DVD for those who can't get the live stream and we're gonna get donated DVD players to bring to you so that you can push it, put it in and play cuz you know how many people got sitting around cuz they upgraded. So, somebody had tech.

We just collected the tech that was old, pass it out. But uh yeah, what's funny is like you're talking about during COVID doing you know devotions about 10 minutes.

I was doing shorts before they were shorts. That's what I was doing. I was doing two to three uh one to two minute occasionally I'd go to three minute uh just encountering something talking and I I did around drive around on my bicycle.

I went around walk around my yard. I went and did walks. I'd like oh hey there's a beautiful scenery here. You know what this reminds me of in scripture and I'd do that.

So before I think what's really weird is a lot of people will say you know do something for 20 21 days it becomes a habit and then you you'll just keep doing it.

I did exactly 100 of those and then I quit. I made it I made it to 100 and I'm like peace out. I'm done with that.

But but my big shift was thinking about wait a minute I've only thought about reaching people online that we were already connected with. So you had that same like COVID made me have that shift of wait a minute I can reach people I don't know online uh how do I make it so that it is targeted towards them not just the people I already know. So I love that. I love that and I love your your churches.

We don't know what you're doing. We trust the Holy Spirit's in it and we want you to keep keep doing it. Uh just going to look at chat here a minute because I think they're they're vibing off us and I don't want to miss anything.

So uh a couple hellos there and Tall Skinny Kiwi. Kiwi. Yeah. I don't know if Do you know Tall Skinny Kiwi? Oh, okay. No, I don't.

I' I've seen I've seen Kiwi on other channels, but I I've never seen him on my... Oh, well, yeah. Hey, random musician. Good morning.

And anyway, he's saying he got uh onto Twitch when he realized that people were doing ministry on it. When the internet started doing ministry there, he's like, I got to go check this out.

Uh let me see. Anything else? Just some hellos. Uh yeah, started video streaming. Tall Skinny says, "Uh, well, just uploading videos really back in 2000 because your mission gave you a digital video recorder and because it was seeing you I was seeing things overseas that you thought others might want to see after Apple's movie theater, your first video blog in April of 2000, went paid and you lost all your videos." Oh, no. around 2001, you started using web archive to host your videos.

That's an interesting thing. Yeah, I've got so many videos that are probably lost out there. All of my sermons, uh, when I started, uh, putting my sermons online, YouTube only let you put a three-minute video.

So, back in back in like 2006, yeah, I don't remember it was 3 minutes, 5 minutes, whatever, that was the max you could upload.

And I'm like, I'm doing a half an hour hour video. I need more more length. And I don't even remember the platform anymore. It's probably gone by the wayside.

So I I don't know. There there are a number of uh platforms that have gone away. The one that actually somebody on chat probably knows what platform became Twitch.

It was called like TED or it was called... It was called something else TV. It was a person's name. Tim Ted. Anybody remember? If anybody knows, um, before it became Twitch, it was a little bit more like YouTube in terms of, you know, you would upload it and it would save it.

Uh, and I was at a large church in LA and that was the program they used. And so theoretically, um, there's a video of me floating out there in in that format.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, 320 by 240. Justin, there it is. There you go, Choby. Justin TV. I was on Justin TV in Los Angeles.

Wow. I wasn't the senior. I was the executive. So, I was I had to know how it worked. But yeah, that was way back.

Oh, that's fun. So, on this journey, you you've you've got an understanding in COVID that, hey, there's a mission field and we can go to it.

You've been telling me I need to do a church plant. We've got a building. Then then what did you do? Did what started first?

Did you do rents in the building? Did you go live? Did you start hanging out in Twitch? Uh, did you wrestle with other platforms?

I know I'm throwing a bunch of questions at you, but you can answer whichever ones you want, right? Well, we we decided to do a hybrid.

And so, what we did is we jumped into a YouTube live for Sunday mornings. So, we figured if there's an older person who is, you know, at home sick or maybe has gone to a home, right, and they still want to keep up with what we're doing, an iPad and YouTube are just friends. It it just you link it on there once and they have it forever. So, uh, so that's and we still do that. We still do that for the live server.

I'm pointing I'm pointing to the sanctuary like y'all can see it. It's over there. Um, so we go live over there and then on this end I converted literally the room I'm in here.

I converted to like a little studio. So, um, if if you know what Well, you're a pastor, you've been in 100 pastor's offices. This was the typical pastor's office with built-in shelves.

I got a whole set of built-in shelves in there. giant desk in the middle. Yep. You got this giant desk in the middle where you sit on one side and you counsel people on the other side.

Well, that doesn't work for a worship studio. So, I pulled everything out of here. Um it had a tiny little desk with my computer kind of behind me and I would turn for the worship service, right?

Um and so because that was already set up, it just made so much more sense to go Twitch. I um the I I didn't even know it existed, but I got into uh mechanical keyboards, like build your own keyboards.

Is going to get really nerdy. Oh, love it. Love it. Okay, with that. I got a couple. Dive dive in. I got one here.

So, there there's this world. It the world's kind of died off because production has geared up. You don't have to build a keyboard anymore, but it used to be if you wanted an OG keyboard, right, an old school keyboard with a great clacks, that beautiful clacky noise.

Yeah. You had to build them, right? You had to build them. And it was a real specialized thing. You had to order all the parts.

You had to order the key caps. You had to order the board. You had to order the case. All that stuff. And so, but I don't know how to do it, but I wanted one.

So, I went online and said, "Where do I learn how to do this?" And there was a guy, I'll give him all the credit.

His name is Yo Kebs. Yo, K ebs. I don't think he Twitch streams anymore, but he he had a YouTube thing and he's like, "Yo, come to my Twitch stream tomorrow.

I'm going to build one live." And so I went up, he had two cameras, one on his face and one straight down at the key at his desk, right?

And he just built a keyboard and I was here doing church stuff, working, reading, studying, writing sermons, all that stuff. And I had him on on the side as I'm just slowly absorbing.

And after about three weeks, I realized I'd watched him for thirty hours or something. Just I just watched him and watched him and watched him and I was like, "Oh, that that dude's my friend now." And that's when it clicked that that was a real connection.

He's in Indonesia. Uh he stopped streaming because he's a professional person. He was a graduate student and he finished and he got a job job and he's off making money.

So it's like I feel like I know him. Does that make sense? Oh, totally. Totally. I feel like I know Yeah. I feel like I know Yo Kebs better than I know some people I see on Sunday mornings that I've seen for eight years every Sunday.

And I I did that over the course of a few weeks. And so that I was just hooked. And it was a matter of okay, how does it work?

Um, and I started with uh, you know, I downloaded OBS and started messing around with it. And a month later, I was live and meeting with my council saying, I think this is what I'm doing.

I think this is where we're going. Give me a few months and let's see. And, you know, in a few months, I had, you know, one hundred fifty regular people and people were subbing and it was like, really?

Because I'm not good at this. like, you know, I turn on Lux or somebody, I'm like, "Now Lux is good at it. Go follow Lux.

He knows what he's doing." And yet people had a connection. Um because we're people, right? Because we were we were friends even if we're not in the same town.

Yeah. Yeah. I the So that that's how I made the that's how I made the choice. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I I love the story of the realization around this is real relationship because this the the church as a whole still doesn't believe that it's real relationship and real community.

And it's not that I thought it wasn't and it wasn't that I was degrading it. I just hadn't experienced it. So until I experienced it, how would I know?

Uh so I love those I love those moments of the hey this person's my friend. I know enough about them. We've had enough conversations that we we know enough about each other.

And yeah, the the fascinating thing is is that person is no longer streaming, but if that person hadn't streamed, you wouldn't be streaming. The same way I always love the story, and I can never remember the guy's name, the guy that the only person he ever led to Jesus was Billy Graham.

Um, how important was that guy? you know, right? And and that's exactly it, you know. Um I think we all get our start somewhere.

I mean, you know, even people that are like YouTubers now or people that are on kick now or whatever, it's usually because they saw one thing, one person.

It It's never like um the platform is interesting. It's never like the technology is interesting. Nobody does it for that reason. Um you only do it because of a connection you're making.

Um, you know, the gamers like the connection because they can show that they're better or have a good laugh or whatnot. And I I think that just chatting people, theirs is like actual human connection, which is a lot more tied to what I do than gaming.

Um, you know, we do some gaming, but it it's not based on that. If it were, I'd have quit long ago. Um, so you you launched.

What were the struggles you had getting started in Twitch and getting that all up and running? What were some of the hurdles that you had to overcome?

I I mean the some of it was some of it was easy. Like some of the tech stuff was okay just because I've been YouTubing so I had you know I had reflex cameras and you know I had all this stuff that you would take out hiking.

So you know I had GoPros and I had all the things. So so that was fine. Um I I think what people don't realize is that there is a bandwidth necessity that you don't need if you're watching you're watching TV, right?

It's a whole another thing. So there was a a significant bandwidth increase um which then necessitated, you know, building new computers and all of that.

But that's all slow growth, right? the I think the the biggest thing for me, at least when I first started, was me speaking into the void, right?

Uh I I don't like to talk on the telephone, let alone talk to the void like this, especially if you if you're not even sure there's anybody watching, right?

Um you know, I have numbers on my screen right now saying there's a handful of people here and you have numbers on your screen saying there's a handful of people.

But what's interesting is, at least to me, is how many of them are in the bathroom right now? You don't know that. H how many of them walked over to make a sandwich?

And that's fine. That's what this platform is. But if you're not okay with that, I mean, it'll eat you alive. And so, I think it was a kind of a personal struggle for me.

I'm a very private um I'm I'm a very shy person. And so to to do this is very different. Um it it was the same struggle I went through when I became a youth pastor when I was I don't know twenty three years old or twenty two years old was that I was very inward.

I was a bookish person. I went into ministry because I like the study. I like the theology. I like the argument. Um but then I had to stand in front of a group of thirty kids and there's that hurdle.

And once you get over it, you're a different person in that space. Oh yeah. Sense. And I don't think it's fate. I think it's actual growth.

Um, some people say, "Oh, you put on your pastor voice when you pray or whatever." I don't think so. I think that that is the voice in my head talking to God.

And so when I come on stream and we dance and we play videos and I fall out of my chair because I'm horrible at games, I don't think I'm putting it on.

I think I've It's It's become It's growth, right? It's growth in that success. Exactly. For me, I think it came slow. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's interesting that um first time you go live you have to well this is the way the analogy I like to use is dead air kills and and you

can't have a radio station with dead air. You can't have a Twitch stream with dead air. You have to be like you can have music and you can be a slow chatter.

That's that's all good. But if I tune in and I wait to see if you're going to say anything to me and I say hi in the chat and thirty seconds later you haven't acknowledged me.

Especially when you have no one in the chat like like right now the chat is boopping a little bit. We're going to miss stuff.

That's that's not the problem. The problem is I show up and there's nothing else in the chat and I say hello and you don't bother to say hello.

We got a bunch of people just popping in here suddenly some uh of my um mods and I think you know them too. So uh but yeah that whole we got a loot.

Yep. I'm watching you people. Oh there I didn't say watch you people come in. Yep. Yep. So yeah, and those people don't stick around if and and if you're waiting for the, you know, the thing to count people, I think it updates every thirty seconds and it might not even be up to

date, you know, when you're actually doing there might be a delay. So, if I'm waiting for someone to show up and I'm just sitting here like I know physical space if there's two or three gathered together, we're like, "Well, should we meet or should we not meet?" You can't do that uh on

Twitch and build a community. You've got to go. So, you said it was difficult in the beginning. How long did it take you to get to affiliate or to get to having regulars that was showing up?

Well, I I actually I hit affiliate in about six weeks. Okay. I hit affiliate in about six weeks, but it had nothing to do with me.

Um, I got invited on Blessingboat. I got invited on Blessingboat and I rolled in on Blessingboat and I think the people that were there uh took a look at what I was doing and I opened with a little like just a little prayer thing and then boom, we jumped into a

game. It wasn't even particularly good. But what was interesting was I think I was different enough that people went, "Oh, there's a whole another vibe." Right?

Like I said, I'm not saying I'm good at it. I'm just saying it's different. Hey, thank you for the hype train. I appreciate you.

Oh, awesome. You got a hype train. It was I I did get a hype train. Thank you guys. Um Yeah. And so that got me over that hump pretty quickly.

But for that first six maybe eight weeks, there was one tool that I found. In fact, I think you use it as well. Do you use um or do you still use streamerbot or um not streamerbot?

Uh streamer avatars. Yeah. Yeah. the the essay at Stream avatars. Stream avatars made a huge difference for me because even if there was nobody in the room, if I had four people before, I feel like there's four people hanging out with me and they're still walking around.

Yeah. They they walk around for ten more minutes before they disappear. And so somebody pops in and says, "Hello, I got to go." there's in in my head because I see them because I've stood on stage and done preaching for so long that it makes sense that I have to have some sort

of representation. The downside though, the downside is some of those people are lurking and if you say their name, you know, I you just did them dirty.

So, I got to be careful. I got to be careful. But other than that, so that that was a big help for me. Um and it happened quickly.

And so, quick shout out to Blessing Boat, man. um Warrior has just been a king and we've tried to do everything we can to help him back because gave me that little boost at the beginning made a difference cuz as soon as you get a little bit of community that pops in to

see you once or twice a week. Yeah. Um that that fear of hitting the go live button goes away. Yeah. Sorry you're mentioning stream avatar.

So I'm I'm just going to add this to my channel. See if I can pull it up here. I haven't put it over here.

We'll see if it works. Hey, epitome. What's up, brother? Blessings. But I mean, I can throw it on mine, but Well, I was just thinking to show it on on my side if it's Yeah.

So people know. Yeah. Oh, there we go. Capture specific window. Where's the window? There we go. Oh, you know what? I don't have it.

Well, there you go. You can see it. I've got to set it some some reason it's not set to uh green screen the background so I'm going to have to hide it.

Oh, okay. Not a problem. Well, just having said that, it's a really cheap tool for people who are scared to go live. I I just think it makes a big difference.

And if you, you know, if that really is going to be the make or break for you, it's totally worth the, like, I don't even know how much. It's like 15. There's mine's up. Yeah. What, whatever it costs, it it was well worth it. And it doesn't go away and you can keep changing it.

I I found it to be um a big benefit for me. It's just a simple thing, but yeah, that's that's I think that's a there we go. I got my I got mine up there. You got yours up? Yeah. I I haven't put it on this channel yet, so I got to play around with it, but uh I'd rather chat than play around with it.

Well, I said I was going to turn all the bells and whistles off and now I'm turning them all back on. Well, hey, thank you guys for the hype train. I appreciate you. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good example, too, of so, you talked about blessing boat and then you talked about a little bit of a tool and it's it's that learning in the community.

It is it is, you know, connecting with other people, not being alone, not, you know, trying to just figure this out on your own, but having connection. I think I'm trying to remember if uh if we had connected before you did Blessing Boat or not. I know it was close to that time when you jumped on and did that about I think that's about when Yeah.

I I think I hit blessing. It might have been the week before I went on blessing boat cuz you grabbed me I think um I I had like four or five followers something like that when you grabbed me and said, "Hey, I see you're doing this thing. Uh why don't we get together?" And then we had a phone conversation about stuff you wanted to do. And then I think I was on Blessing Boat that weekend and that's when you know you get this big jump because the way affiliate works is you have to have a certain number of people on stream for a certain number of minutes to hit your numbers and it's not that big a number but it does mean you can't be all by yourself and I was you know bouncing back and forth between that number and you get an hour straight of blessing boat that's triple your regular viewership and it pushes you over for the month and that's it. And then it was and once you get that then people see you as that and it makes a difference.

Uh, tall skinny Kiwi is saying, "One of the reasons is OBS being intimidating. Uh, because it takes so many hours or over such a long time to build a following and the conversation all disappear." Yeah. You think you're more about texting in person? Well, that's where Discord is is a is a great place, too. Uh, but yeah, I say that OBS was a little more intimidating, but there's other options out there, too. Streamlabs OBS using Slobs is what I did to begin with. Uh, it was simpler, more ready to go. If you're just getting started, it was great.

I looked at a lot of videos on what to do, how to do it, watching streamers tell tell and teach how to do things, which is still constantly the vibe. Like, if if we asked questions in the chat here of a problem that we needed to solve, I bet you we would have somebody telling us who to contact or they would be the one to tell us how to do it.

No, that that that's absolutely true. Um I I'm still on slobs. People talk about they don't like it because it takes up so much bandwidth. It's better for me to spend the extra 50 bucks on a different graphics card and get the slightly better one and then run it overclocked. It's just it was easier for me to throw the throw the money at it than learn a new thing. And I know it is the same thing technically, but Slabs is great for me so far.

Well, I'm using SLOBS on my fish channel, so I didn't switch that over. I'm like, no, I'm going to keep SLOBS for that and I'm going to use OBS on the other side. And then I've got both that I'm back and forth between, which is, oh, I can do this over here. How do I switch that over there? And yeah, they're both valuable. And there's there's plenty of other ways you can do it, too. But those are just some of the most common ones.

Yeah, there there are other options. I think I looked at both. Um, in fact, I I may still be running OBS on the YouTube stream. I should probably know that, shouldn't I? It's just very simple. Uh, so maybe that's what I'm using over there. But I' i've used both. Uh, SLOBS just works for me. It it works closer to the way my brain functions, I think. So, it just it's better fit for me. I may get too many things on screen at some point and have to go back. But so, you run are you are you running via laptop, Flack?

Yeah, I'm on laptop. Okay. Okay. I I knew you went to laptop at some point. You haven't gone back then. Uh well, I started out on laptop. So, I had yeah. When I started uh streaming, I had left the church that I was working at before I started streaming. And so I needed to buy a home computer because I'd relied on getting laptops as a pastor at churches I worked at and then having it I could take it home because a laptop could go back and forth. So I had to leave that with the last church I had left. So I didn't have a computer at home. So I went out and bought a gaming laptop so that I knew I could grow into the capacity. Not that I was planning on doing games, but I I started with that and then it was down the road after doing it for a bit that's like, oh, I need a second monitor and I need to upgrade that. I did try last year after uh reach conference. I got a computer um refurbished computer through the connection there to be able to have my fish channel on a different computer.

So, I thought I was going to pass off the old laptop to the fish channel, but I ran into some issues with every time I went to startup in the morning, it took me 45 minutes to get it running and I just could not track down the problem. So, the fish channel that just runs 24/7 got the got put back into the computer and I went back to the laptop which two weeks ago I thought was dead. Um oh, no. Yeah. Yeah. So, I I think it was two weeks ago. Maybe that's a rough day. Yeah, maybe it was three. I brought it.

Well, that's the other beautiful thing I love about the laptop. As I travel, I bring the laptop with I can still stream reading in the Bible in the morning before I go do whatever conference I'm at. You know, I'm usually early enough I can do something even if it's abbreviated and be able to engage. So, the laptop serves that function really well.

So, I started it up, it wouldn't boot, and I'm like, "Oh, no." So, I run through the boot menu, the diagnostic didn't. No, it would would not. It wouldn't finish the boot menu. Okay. So, you yeah, you never got to post. No. So, so the computer won't start up. I run the diagnostic. We'll go back and we'll reset it to this point. Great. Do that. And then it won't start up. It's stuck in the boot menu. Won't boot up. Keep saying that. So, I just had to wait till I got home. And then it luckily I got back to that menu, ran through, do you want to back up? Yes, I'm going to back up everything I can back up. Do you want to reinstall Windows? No, but I'm going to because and then thankfully that was it and I just the last two weeks rebuilding everything.

So nice. I you know that is a good question. So when you put this this is a question for people who at least for me when I'm trying to do stream online, right? We're talking about the idea of not only just doing stream online, not just the tech stuff, but trying to do ministry while it's happening.

Yes. Attempting to be in a spot where I can throw up a a little video, you know, somebody comes in. We had somebody on my chat just a few minutes ago um hit a bit goal and give a gift to somebody on chat. Right. Yep. Now, if this was a regular stream, a big alert would come out. I know we're running a podcast so it's different, but a big alert would come out, fireworks would go off and there'd be a little guy dancing on screen. A a and then you say, "Hey, thanks." And that is a blessing. You're you're blessing the ministry. I can now take that biddy, right? I can take that cash and put it into more ministry or wherever we choose to spend it for gear updates, for giveaways, whatever it is. Uh, you know, keep the lights on. But whatever you're doing just stopped, right? Oh, yeah. It's all good, but whatever you're doing just stopped.

And and so the more I add to make things exciting to to to keep me engaged, to keep other people engaged, there is a point in which at a certain point it breaks down your goal, right? It's like um I don't know if you've ever been and I'm not trying to pick on one style of church or another, but I went to a church when I was in college where you walk through the door and they give you something that makes noise. They give you a tambourine, they give you a drum, they give you you walk through the door to this church. It was a college town, you know, and uh I was in seminary and I I was dating. We walk through the door, they give you this equipment, and at any point you can just go insane with it. And at a certain point, I was always afraid that we were stopping what the spirit was doing because I was like, "Hey, check me out." Yeah.

So, if I have a computer that is not doing what it's supposed to do, on top of the fact that I'm already running a three-ring circus, it can be really devastating, I think. Uh, so what do you do? I personally, I'm going to let you know what I do and then see how you respond. When when when something is broken on stream, I just start turning stuff off. I just tell people we're doing less and I start turning things off until I got a little background music and my mic. You know what I mean? I just keep shutting stuff off and I'll I'll go back to it later. Is that is that your approach or do you just throw your hands up and say, "I'll see you tomorrow." Uh, it really depends on what it is.

So, I I think for the the the the main thing is your mic's got to be working. If your mic ain't working, ain't nobody watching because they can't hear. I've had that before where my mic went bad and it's just like I can't fix the mic. We're done because no one's going to watch a video with a garbled mic for more than your your regulars will give you 5 10 minutes to fix it. You know, your your mods will give you a little longer if they trust you. Um but after that, everybody's out of there. They're they're not going to sit through it.

If your video is wonky, you can play around with yeah, my mod's laughing at me. Uh but but but it's like what's the what's the key ingredient? The key ingredient is I need to be able to hear you clearly and understand and and then I want to see you. And then what are all the extras on top that you're doing?

So uh I yeah, that's you're talking about it. That's what I'm that's what I'm thinking. I haven't rebuilt. So that's two weeks ago. I did have all those alerts on this channel. I haven't rebuilt those. That's a good reminder. Oh, go back and set the alerts up. Uh maybe we could, you know, because I did have uh one of my streams, we did have a a hype train here doing the podcast, which was super exciting. Uh so those those that don't know the the hype trains just people are giving donations to a certain level. You you reach a certain level and that's calculated based on, you know, whatever the algorithm is telling you is so many people have to give. So it's not just one person. So many bits or subs total up to it and then you make a next level and the next level.

I think they've unlimited now if the last I saw that you could just have unlimited amount of continuous level. I think it used to be capped at five. You could have a level five hype train and then I think it was capped. There was a number but it's like exponential now. So like once you get over like eight or nine like the numbers that it takes to get the next one are pretty absurd.

But those pretty high now I think. So that sounds a whole lot like, you know, Dungeons and Dragons where every level you go up, you double the XP that you have.

So if it's 100 at level one, it's 200 to get to level two and it's 400 for level three and 800, it's exponential growth to make it to the next level.

Yeah, that's that sounds like the right way to do it. Okay. Oh, yeah. So everybody's got to get paid. Yeah. Uh, so I was going to pick on uh I still want to keep going forward in the story because but so don't think I forgot that, but I like I like to pick up things along the way and and go on little side things. So you were talking about having things in the chat and in the stream stop you where you are.

Do you do you have those moments that have either been a bad stop you where they are? Like we kind of talked about that a little bit of oh the tech's not working but outside aside from the text not working. Have you had those? And then what have stopped you in your tracks where oh this is really a good moment to to to you know invest in right now to investigate further or to spend time in.

You know it it's been it's been more the latter lately. Um when you first start streaming it's always the stuff that breaks right and that's the stories you tell and that's what we talk about. Uh as you know when streamers get together we talk about when the mic broke or whatnot but I I think um you know lately it's been a little different.

I changed my schedule. Um as I mentioned from the very beginning we started um where I would uh read one chapter just straight through. Oh, that's right. I remember that to myself, right? Just read a chapter to myself and then throw on a video game and talk to myself and play a video game for about half an hour until I was burnt out because when I first started streaming, an hour was about all I could do.

I think most streamers can do six now if we need to, right? But that's how it was. It was like I could do an hour and that was all I had. And so if anything went sideways, I just shut it off and I would walk away from it, right? Just because I I knew I couldn't get it back in the time I had or whatnot.

And so the interruptions when I started getting things to work, they would be like, oh, I'd have 14 alerts going off at once. Um I still have that issue sometimes. Alerts go off on top of each other. I think I figured it out, but not quite. Anyway, so and that would stop things down like I was trying to do this thing and now I can't do this thing and I was playing this game and now I died because I was paying attention to chat. So that used to happen a lot, but lately it's changed. That's where I'm trying to get to.

Lately it's changed where uh because of my schedule change we do we do hangout time on Mondays we play an indie game something like one of the games we're going to talk about later today play an indie game just something sideline usually it's a ten dollar game an eight dollar game a twenty dollar game I usually don't play AAA titles at all once in a while I do and then on Tuesdays here we go we do Bible study and we do book studies so we do about uh maybe a fourth of a chapter a week. And we've done Hosea, we've done Hebrews, we've done James, we're now in Colossians. And so in those studies, I have a study on my screen.

I use Into Thy Word, which is free online study. I have a wall full of studies up here that I could be using. I use that because when someone gets into it, I can go, here's the website. Exactly. I'm not hiding where I get it. It's completely free. You like this, you want to share it with somebody, download it, copy and paste it.

I'm not making it up. I'll give you all my opinions all day long, but I'm not making it up. Here it is. And then on Thursdays, we do church. We call it third Sunday. And then on Fridays, we build stuff. We used to build models, and now I'm building a motorcycle. So Mondays and Fridays are hangout times, but Tuesdays and Thursdays, we specifically spend time in the word.

So, in the middle of a Bible study or even in the middle of a Sunday morning sermon or Thursday morning sermon, um if someone walks in, it happens all the time, probably once a week now. Someone walks in, maybe they're here all the time, maybe they're only here once a month or something, and they come in and they go, "Yo, I got that job interview." We will stop everything we're doing.

We stop everything. If you've been on my stream before, we stop everything. I put up the like the usually one of the screens that's just my face or a whole bunch of me or a celebration and we stop and we celebrate with them. The same thing happens the other way. Yo, I just got back from my my grandma's place. I don't think she's going to make it.

We stop everything. And and so both of those things, whether they're celebratory or I need community right now, everything else goes on the back burner, right? If we're if we're doing this for for the sake of people, if we care about people, if that's why we're spending our time, then whatever I had planned, it doesn't matter in comparison to what just happened in your life.

And that's awesome for the person involved. It's awesome for our mods. It's awesome for our regulars. They all pour in and love on one another. I you got to wonder the person who's there for the first time. Is that weird that they came in for a Bible study and I I I pull 20 minutes out of the middle of the study and I'm clearly trying to hustle through the rest of it.

I don't know if it's good for them or not, but that's not what it's about, right? It's about the community. So, um I'm I'm I'm a big believer in taking that how it comes. Um we had a a stream last Friday. I showed up to build motorcycle just a hangout stream and uh one of my tools was broken.

Oh no. Because I abused it anyway. So I couldn't build. So I came back up here. I got Do you know I have I have two studios. Anyways Yeah. I was going to ask you about to talk about that later. So I came up to the upstairs studio and I turned on community games and all of my people could come in suggest a community game.

Game we could play together, whether it's words on stream or whether it was Wordle or whether it was uh connections and we just played a whole bunch of them and we had like family time. One of my favorite streams of the month and it was a complete accident, right? So, the Holy Spirit is bigger than us and I this platform reminds me of that more than probably any ministry I've done outside of maybe missions or camping.

You know what I mean? Is the most if you're if you're not filled with the spirit when you're sitting and talking to people um you're going to get eaten alive. You you got to lean on him because someone comes in chat right now and says whatever they're I I can't even really keep up with chat.

But if I'm reading chat here and uh Epitomy says, "May the Lord bless your stream." Okay, that's what he just said. Good to see you. He's going to lurk. Thank you, Epitomy. I don't know what his face looks like. Is he throwing up his hands and saying, "I'm done with you." Right?

I don't think so. I know epitome. He's not that guy. Is he stomping out of here? Fine. Lord bless because that's what I'm supposed to say, but I'm done. You talking in circles. And he runs out the door. I don't know that because I'm not there. So, if I'm not filled with the spirit when we're talking, I will mess that conversation up.

Yep. And so, I feel like I lean on him a lot more in this format um than I even do when I'm standing on stage on a Sunday morning. I don't know if that's your impression, but that's how I feel. You know, you come to prayer time and you're praying for real people in a public forum with a bunch of people that don't know each other.

Um, the fact that people show up and put their heart and soul right there on front street blows me away every week. Um, because I'm a private person. For me to do that in your stream is scary. And I'm sure it is for them, too. But they do it every week because they trust each other.

And I don't know. It's a blessing. I'm going to get all emotional. Hold on. That's all good, man. It's all good. U All right.

Yeah. And this seems strange to say it, but you and I have been in pulpit ministry in multiple churches for decades. And I have felt more connected with people that I stream with than people that I was on a board with uh for years.

And and and just just think of the like you go back to your beginning example. You spent 30 hours with that person. You know how long it takes in a physical church with a physical building to have 30 hours with a person?

I mean, yeah, it takes it takes years. And if you're on the board, it can happen faster. So, yeah, I get to be a board meeting, but that's not one-on-one time. That's collective together as a board. So, I'm trying to build those relationships. They're going to I they're going to serve for three years. So, over that course of three years, yeah, I'm going to build that relationship.

It's going to get deeper. I'm going to see them on Sunday. I'm going to have these conversations, but in a year's time, I still may not have 40 hours of conversation with that person. I can have 40 hours of conversation with people. And I don't mean it's just me and them one-on-one, but in the chat back and forth, in Discord, back and forth.

So you can have uh a much quicker deepening of relationship and in uh a streaming atmosphere than than I ever had uh standing in in the pulpit. Your lights are uh going off and on. I I have a I have a sun I have a um Oh, you have a solar. What do you call it? I got a skylight. Got a skylight. So the cl when the clouds roll over, it goes dark and I got to turn lights on.

Okay. Sorry. Okay. No, no worries. I was just concerned that something was going on and cuz we were talking tech problems earlier so we didn't did you know did did I have a light on my desk for when it's dark but Okay. Okay. Well, I didn't know if the Twitch you know uh universe was going to come down on us for you know saying we didn't have any tech problems.

We're doing good. Yeah. You know, maybe that's it. It's like knocking on wood. If you talk about tech when you're using it, does it know it? You know what I mean? Does it feel that and come at you be? Yeah. But yeah, the the building of of the relationship aspect.

Uh yeah, and you and I uh we've spent a lot of time together, too. But we've spent it also offline uh with with pastor groups together and and just talking about what we're doing in ministry, walking alongside of people. Th that happens for I think in a lot of really good places right now. It wasn't there uh when I started. There was maybe one or two exceptions that I saw of, you know, some streamers trying to stream together, but they weren't necessarily Christian.

They're just trying to build and and, you know, camaraderie and maybe they stream the same game, so they played together and might be streaming as they played. But now there's there's a dozen or more that I know of, uh, streamer communities. Uh, you're in one of those. What does that do for you and what is the community that you're a part of?

Yeah, so I am in a stream community. I know you are as well. A number there's a number of different communities now. I'm in GMBB which is God's many blessings. In fact, I think the CEO himself is here somewhere. Um yeah, Big Gunk in the house. Yeah. Um God, Big Unk is in the house.

So uh it's God's many blessings and and it it is a group of people who were aligned together all of them a different point on their Christian walk right there are people in the stream community that would uh you know put their faith on front street and and pray on chat and all

That stuff. And then there's other people who are, you know, people who would attend church, right? People who would be part of your community, like at a local church.

But all people with the same vision that Twitch can be a positive place at the very bottom, right? That should be your bottom goal. It should be positive. You shouldn't be bringing in the world's mess all the time. And on the top end, it's a place where we can get together and love one another, you know.

And when we were still fairly young, I found Big UN. And back then he was streaming by another name. Leave that out because he don't go by that name. But he was streaming by another name. And I, for whatever reason, there was a spirit about that place, man. There was a spirit about that place that was just different. And it wasn't that he was ashamed of being a believer. But it was more in the background than it is now.

If you go on to his stream now, ain't no joke. He puts it right up front, right? And I got a chance to kind of see that happen. And he was beginning to put together a stream team at GMBB. I got the crown on my—if you're on my side of the stream, I don't know if I don't think Flatack can see, but on my side there's a crown up there that says GMBB.

And he has begun to transition. And I've seen a man of God that has begun to say, "You know what? I'm not putting my light under a bushel no more. I'm going to put it right out there." And his whole community is going the same way. Partially because he's a great leader, but on the other side, it's because they see you can do that. And guess what? God will bless you. It's going to be different. And it has been different. His community is different today than it was two and a half years ago, but I'm telling you, I love it just as much. I love it just as much.

And so that's been a blessing. And so on top of all of that, something that I'm a part of on the GMBB side that not everybody has the privilege of being a part of is he has a men's group, Men of Honor. And I've had a chance to sit in and listen in and be a part of men who have found each other digitally and have struggles like every other man I've ever met.

And maybe I'm just speaking to the guys right now, but it's tough. It's tough for guys to talk honestly to one another. If you didn't go to the same elementary school, you know what I mean? If you don't know each other since you was babies, then meeting a man somewhere at the gym or at the bar, wherever, and becoming friends and then having a heart-to-heart with that—that's twenty years out. That's twenty years out. But with GMBB, I've seen us as a group of guys do it over the course of about a year.

And so that is, if you know anything about church, that is fast-tracked. Oh yeah, fast track. And so just Big Uncle is saying fellowship is the starting point of healing. You ain't wrong. That's awesome. That's awesome.

You are all—anyway, so that's what GMBB has done for me. And it's also nice because when other people ask me what I do, I can go, "Hey, check out GMBB. Those are my brothers and sisters over there. Go check them out." And it's easy because you just do a search GMBB. Who's on, who's in the GMBB family that's streaming right now? And you kind of get a flavor of what's happening and it means a lot to me to be accepted by others.

It's what you're in the digital sphere, you know, when you when people say, "What are you doing ministry-wise now?" Especially people you've known in ministry forever, other pastor types, what are you doing now? Like, oh man, it's great. I got a local church. It's real small. We just we're holding our own. We're okay. Little community church, but we plant in this church.

Like, "Oh, tell me about that church, man." And I go, "Oh, here's the thing. It's on Twitch." And their eyes just glaze over and that's it. From then on out, what, what I'm talking voodoo, right? So being a part of a group of people that get it makes a huge difference. It's, uh, yeah, it's family. What else is it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Being part of a family of people that understand. Yeah. Super, super important. But yeah, totally. Totally. No. And you're talking about what do you say to people? You know, I, boy, the fact that I'm not in a physical church for the last year makes it really interesting when I have conversations with people.

So you're a pastor. What do you do? Well, I got a prayer booth at the artisan market. They're like, okay. And okay, then let me tell you about what I'm doing online. And then they're like, what? Why? Why aren't you in a church? Because that's not where God has me. I'm supposed to be somewhere else reaching people that the physical church isn't reaching, including the marketplace. The physical church isn't doing a good job. And I'm not—I've worked in the physical church. I love what they do and what they're trying to do. There's just more work out there than they are addressing and that we can, you know, fill in some of the space for that.

So yeah, I also love the number of people who, like Big Unk, like I'm watching you people. I go down the list in the chat. Chovy. I could just list more streamers that I know who are not who are not in a streamer group as well, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Taco. I believe. So not pastors but called by God, called by God to a mission field that the church has not yet sent people to. And so, yeah, let's embrace them. Let's encourage them. Let's support them. Let's lift them up. Let's help train them. Let's whatever is necessary.

So I love connecting all those people all over the place. So, yeah, just I don't want to just turn to something because I'm here to talk about you. So, um, sure. No, no, no. There's—well, I think we said it earlier. It goes back to what Big Unk said there is fellowship that you and I have together that is just super deep because we connected with you early on when you got started and we got in a group together with some other pastors who were trying to figure out how God is calling us into this space even though our church denomination may not have supported all of us. Even though they did the glaze-over look and we said, "I don't know what you're doing. It does sound like the Holy Spirit." Or some of us are like, "That sounds like heresy." But well, that's fine. I'll let I'll sort that out with Jesus later.

But for now, I'm going to do what the Holy Spirit's saying. I'll let Jesus handle me later. Let's just be obedient to the Holy Spirit.

And it's so refreshing to see men and women who have not gone to seminary, who haven't had the privilege that I had, saying, "I don't have time for that. God's calling me now. Let me just step up and share what I got." It's just so beautiful. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think if you or I either one had waited until we finished seminary to start doing the work of God, we never would have got through seminary.

I don't know a single seminary student that's like, "Well, I've never preached before. I've never read a Bible study. I've never been to church before. I just felt called and so here I am." It doesn't work like that. Yeah. Um, it didn't work like that for Paul, you know. It didn't work like that for the Ethiopian eunuch or Timothy. You, you—they, you right in the deep end is what happens. Stephen, all of them. Oh, yeah. You get in, you get into talking about the deacons. That's my favorite section of the book of Acts.

Oh, yeah. So we've got a problem that we need to fill this. Okay. So this is—I'll give you a modern version of it. I'm just going to rephrase off the spot. I've never told it this way. We need some mods in the chat. So what I need to do is get some mods in the chat. And then a month later, all the mods are gone because they're off streaming. That's what we have in the book of Acts. We have there's some widows and who are being neglected in the daily distribution of food.

So we need people full of the Holy Spirit to pass out bread. Why do we need people full of the Holy Spirit to pass out bread? I don't know. But the Holy Spirit done told them they needed to have people filled with the Holy Spirit to pass out bread. And the next three chapters are about how they weren't passing out bread. How they were bringing the bread of life to people. So you get signed up to pass out bread and instead you're bringing the bread of life to people.

I mean, I can't get over that story. And that's what I see all over the place in digital is people that are—I thought I was doing this, but now God's got me doing this. I don't know how I got here. I can't say no, so I'm just going to keep going. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, what is the concept that you can go make a disciple or you can go make a disciple maker, right?

Oh. Um, and making a disciple maker is what changes the world, right? Those are completely different things. And I think because of the way this format works, every person who comes to North Hill Live on the regular has seen me fail, has seen me say a dumb thing, seen me fall down. Has seen—what was it? Uh, what did I say? Tuesday? I'm watching you. I said, "There's only one person in the entire Bible that knows all of it, and it's Jesus."

And she was like, "Wait a minute. Doesn't he say only the Father knows the time?" I don't know. And I'm like, "Yes, he does. Yes, he does." Right? So who's the professional pastor here? Does that make sense? And so because of that, you can see the growth you see in Big Unk. You can see the growth you've seen in Pineapple or I'm Watching You People or Chovy. And they see each other and go, "Man, I want a little more of that." Right.

And that is what Kingdom Living is. Oh, yeah. And additionally, this is—this is so we go back to Blessingboat and what Blessingboat does, what GMBB does, what Taco does, what all—look, you know, DC4C, what all these groups do is we cross-pollinate each other. We take our stream over to another stream. And that's what raids do. We take our stream over to another stream. I so like this—this is like, you know, you put on your bucket list for God to for God because God's got to make it happen because you can't.

I would love to participate in an Easter physical raid train from church to church throughout town. I don't care who's doing it. If you find out about this happening globally somewhere, tell me. I will plan to go there so that I can go from one church who has a sunrise stream at six a.m. who raids out. They all get in the cars. They all walk down the street to another church who's got another service who they raid out to the next.

I'm going to just do this for like six, twelve hours. I mean, I want somebody to do this sometime someplace. A church raid train.

Now, some people going to show up like a raid train and just hang out, say the hellos, do the greeting, and peace out. You can't really lurk in physical space, but you know, they'll do their best to leave a hello and goodbye. But I want to be there the whole time. I want to hang out. I want to be like—that's just like since I figured out raid trains, I'm like, "Oh my goodness, what could we do in physical space to do this?" That's my version of it.

If you're like people would never do this, we do this with pub crawls, right? So I was thinking it could happen with churches, you know?

The only thing I can think of is early American church. You go back to like the early nineteen hundreds, didn't they do progressive dinner church?

Oh yeah. Where each member of the church would bake a dish or have a dish and so the group would slowly get bigger and bigger until you wound up, you know, at a worship service somewhere.

But that's all in one community. You're talking about cross-pollinating communities. Oh yeah. I want to cross yeah. I want to cross-pollinate. I don't want to just show up to I know everybody. I want to go meet people on Easter Sunday I've never met. And the thing is is you've got to start out on on a level of here's the smallest church and we got to end up at the biggest church and we got to bring all our people to it.

And I don't care if you have to have your own service for your own people aside from that. I don't care if you need to do that just to be able to participate in this.

I've also thought, what if we did that for the whole of Holy Week? And online online, we we start on Palm Sunday of Holy Week and we do a raid train of digital churches from from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. We just continuously raid the next church 24/7 around the clock for a whole week. Wouldn't that be cool? That that would be all right.

I'm wondering if uh if you had a list of uh even I'm trying to think of how you would go about it. You'd have to have Christian streamers. You have to have Christian DJs. You'd have to have you know Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. structure. And the problem is somebody has to do 3:00 a.m.

But I'm I'm all about it. Well, no. They're they're not 3:00 a.m. They're in They're in the Philippines. It's not 3:00 a.m. They're I'm I'm That's true. That's true. They're in Australia. It's not 3:00 a.m. Tall skinny. Yeah. Yeah. Goozie streaming. Yeah. Yeah. So, no, you New Zealand's going to be streaming. I'm not I mean, I won't be there for the 24/7 7 day a week. I just want to be a part of it. Everybody can get a slice of it.

I I think there is there is a is it in Houston? I think there's there's a church somewhere that does a Holy Week stream. Uh that is a week stream, but they have people all the churches from that town bring their worship team in for an hour each day depending on when and so the the worship set goes on for a week. I don't know what I want to say Houston, but I could be wrong. And I watched like three hours of that last year and that was impressive.

But that's one community. Um and I I can't imagine the electric bill or the anyway the air conditioning bill from that. But uh having said that that you know what we it would be easy to do on stream. You just have to have a database large enough and uh man who has a database that size. Um maybe the church digital has a database that size if I really had to pick it.

I'm I'm working on it. I'm working on I'm I'm building friends. I'm building friends every place I can. I mean it's Yeah. I got tall skinny Kiwi over here from you know New Zealand and I've got friends who are from the Philippines. I got friends from Singapore. I mean, I'm a little light in the Indian subcontinent. I've got friends there, but not really streamer friends. I've got ministry friends, right?

As you think about it, going across the continent. I mean, it gets easy when you get back over to Indonesia, um, and whatnot. Um, you're right, there is a tough continent there. South Africa's easy. We got I got a couple. Um, that's easy. Oh, I got Africa. Yeah, Europe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, then that would be a good time.

Look, if you decide to put that together, put your brother on the list, man. Oh yeah. I'm not ready. I'm not want Well, and like I said, if you're doing it for the whole week, it's not all going to be worship. It'd be Bible study. It'd be other things. It'd be things that you would you would commit to, but on the Sunday and the Sunday, and then depending upon your your Holy Week traditions, uh you might have services on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you know, you you might be doing Yeah.

Who get who gets Good Friday? That's a question. Well, you got you fighting for Good Friday at 7:00 p.m. Well, it depends because your Good Friday, if you're in New Zealand, starts before my Friday even starts.

It does. It does. They're living in the future over there. Yeah. Yeah. So, we got all kinds of things with that. Anyway, uh let's get back to to talking about what you've been doing. So, I'm talking about grandiose dreams for the future. What are what are some of the things that you have done on stream? Now, this is where you can talk about the space you're in doing that, creating the other space that I know you have. What has been the evolution of things you've done on stream, things you've added, things you tried and didn't work? Uh, and then going into the future, what you're planning.

Yep. Well, we we've done a number of things. I think I've already said we we've had this the room that I'm in now has been set up three different ways. I don't know if you we got uh we start off with just literally a desk and a guitar player. That's how we started in this room was just empty and I literally would face away from the camera and turn around to talk. It was it was the jank setup. You wouldn't believe. Um and we started there and currently I have you can't see it on the way the stream set up but I got a a wall of televisions be behind me.

Um it's funnily enough I did it at exactly the same time Lux did. We did it separate. He's like, "Hey, I got this new setup." And he was showing me. I'm like, "Uh, hold up. Let me send you a picture." Yuck. I did exactly the same thing, bro. Uh, and so that's interesting because that's one of our rewards. So, if you if you watch us for a while, uh, one of our rewards is you can put a an an image on the giant screen behind me, assuming that it's appropriate. A lot of people are pretty good. And so, um, that's kind of been the evolution of this setup. Other than I did have to go to two PCs. Um, I have one box that I stream out of. That's what that's the only one I'm using today. And then I have another PC that sits here next to me and that's what I game out of.

Um, that way I can keep my audio straight. You were talking earlier about trying to keep the audio clean. That was my easiest way to do it. Um, so I got two PCs in here. I built both of those. Again, piecemeal, right? You work your way up. Um, somewhere in the middle of this, we decided that we needed a stream that was more hands-on and, uh, Stro Vista came in to stream with us, our first, uh, co-star. We've had a number of different people stream with us. We've had Stro Vista, we've had Shiny, and we've had Brother Tom as our three regulars. We don't have any right now. I'm looking for another one. Um, but Strobista was a painter, is a painter. Uh, anyway, she's also my wife.

And so Stro Vista came in to paint and we did that. We thought, well, I don't really want her painting in my office. Um, so we had a classroom downstairs that wasn't being used. And so we went ahead and we set up a paint studio, which meant I needed to build a third computer and bring internet down to it. You can you see where this goes? It begins to snowball. I know. And so we ran It just goes crazy. And then and at that point I'm like, "Oh, wait. I need multiple microphones. So, we did physical microphones and then we did cordless microphones and then we did a combination of the two because I want one microphone on the canvas. You can hear her painting. One microphone on her so you can hear her talking and one microphone. Anyway, so that means you have to soundproof the room and it just snowballs out of control.

Well, in the middle of that, um, our schedules changed and Strobista couldn't stream anymore. So, um, Shiny came in during the summer. She's a college kid. She was home for summer and so she and I streamed games. She was in the basement and I was up here and we co-streamed. Uh so just like we're doing split screen now only we were in the same building and we did that for a summer and I realized that that was going to come to an end as well.

So we roped in Brother Tom and when brother Tom came he wanted to build models uh and building models doesn't fit in the paint studio. So I set up a new one. Um uh and at that point I realized this is going to keep growing and we want to do full Thursday morning. Well, we didn't call it Thursday morning at the time. We wanted to do full Sunday church, right? Yeah. Whatever. I think we originally were planning on Saturday nights. Um but we wound up being Thursday mornings. Uh so there's this room in the basement. This is a 100-year old church. There's a room in the basement that used to be the fellowship hall, but nobody wants to go up and downstairs with food anymore. So, it hasn't been used in years. And it's got this beautiful fireplace. So, uh be because I have no love of history, I tore the fireplace out and put in a digital fireplace, an electric one. Uh it fit in the gap, so I didn't actually break anything. But anyway, but I inserted this fireplace and then that studio space expanded from there.

And it's a very large room. Um we only use half of it and I think the portion that we're using is 1,000 square feet. I got another thousand on the other side if I need it. It's It's massive. Um, so now that space has um a table for building models. It has a table for me to stream like this and play games. It has uh a fireplace with chairs where we do prayer. It has a standing table where I can do preaching. It has a stage where we can do worship. and it has a um a motorcycle lift table where I'm building a chopper. Um so all of that means that that whole space had to change.

Um so that's all cordless down there so we can run around and my new toy I got a new follow camera and I love it. I can set it up in the middle of the room and it just follows my face. It so look I'm telling you and it wasn't even that I'll send you the link later. It's not even that expensive. Oh, no, no. I just had I didn't thought about putting it in the middle of the room and it could follow you everywhere. What if you does it get to a point where it stops or this one can go 360, right? It's It's not completely It's not 360. It's like 320. So, if it stops, you just walk around the other side of it and you grab it the other way. Uh yeah. So, it's almost 360. It's awesome. And so, um that is kind of what we've gone to now. And it's a lot more stable that way.

Um two cordless mics. Uh eventually we probably want three down there when we bring the worship team back, but right now it's two. And so it's just gotten really complicated. Um you asked what things don't work. Um there's a few things that don't work, at least not for me. Uh we tried a cooking stream. I cannot get the angles right. I can't it I move around too much. I talk too much. I'm too loud. I couldn't get that to work properly.

Um I I've tried IRL streams. We tried to stream from Finland when I was there doing a wedding and that doesn't function for me. I know you do IRL. It seems to work great for you. Um so that's been a struggle for me. Uh what else doesn't work? Um oh uh we also did karaoke worship streams. Ah, and because I cross I was crossplatforming to YouTube, uh, I got copyright strike one after another. So, that did not work for me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was I've stopped cross uh platforming. I'm I I streamed one at a time now, so I know what I'm getting into.

Um, what else? We did DDR for a while. Uh, that would probably work if I weren't fat. Um, but because I am, uh, that was a complete failure. Um, yeah, that's pretty much it. Oh. Oh. Um, we also did a whole section of old school gaming. Um, like like ROM style, and that was a lot of fun, but it it's a lot more limited than you remember when you're like, "Oh, we're going to play Atari games today." Visually speaking, it is a lot less interesting than you remember as a kid. And so we've kind of given up on on those things as well. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and gone to almost strictly simulators. Oh, okay. Which is which is funny, by the way, because I've watched you play simulators while I was actually doing those things.

So you were doing making maple syrup simulator and I'm outside boiling maple syrup and I'm like, you could come over. I could help.

You could help. Or I watch other people with, you know, the pressure washer simulator. I'm like, "Well, my deck needs washed. I should get it out and do it." You know, those kinds of things which are which are kind of funny.

Um, Kiwi, Kiwi, I'm sorry, Flack, go, but he's saying that he likes the idea of karaoke worship. He started doing it at conferences 15 years ago. Now he's trying to create it inside VR with AI generated songs that takes care of all the copyright issues. Interesting. I'm going to think on that, Tall.

I like the AI. I've been doing some AI generation for like walk-ons and for theme songs. Did I even mention that Hot Dog Summer's coming back?

We're bringing Hot Dog Summer back. So, oh, you don't know what that is? Hot Dog Summer. I have a hot dog roller like a 7-Eleven roller.

Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead, tell everybody. Not everybody's going to know. It's a Hot Dog Summer. So if you guys are from America, you know what a hot dog roller is. We always called it roller food when I was a kid. You put hot dogs on it, you can put taquitos on it. It's like you see at a gas station. And one of our rewards for the summer is I get, I got a, I have one. It's not in the room right now. It's in the kitchen, but I have one. It's about, I don't know, two and a half feet long. It's this big chunky thing and it'll sit on this table back here and it'll be full of hot dogs and you can redeem hot dogs and then I eat them on stream and there's a beautiful song that happens all AI generated. Actually, I wrote the lyrics. I wrote the lyrics. Um, Choby said chair sim. Yes. Yeah, we go, we get real, we get real specific. We've done chair simulation. We have done farming. We've done lawnmowing. Um, we've done rock climbing. We've done parkour. What other simulations have we done?

Food trucks. Um, construction. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. We did the worst possible. Yeah. Sorry, just that you were talking about the simulators and then the idea there that Tall Skinny was talking about with AI or yeah, in VR. I just saw a post today talking about how nursing homes are looking into doing VR and bringing people into VR who had limited mobility and those kinds of things, which just reminds me back in the day when they started bringing in the Wii so that they could try to do physical activity with their limitations they had.

So bringing people like technology is like on this constant something new to learn, something new to learn, something new to learn, and if you stop for a minute you get way behind.

Absolutely. I'm watching you, people says don't forget the Stanley Chronicles getting over it. Digging a hole. Yeah. The last one I played was digging a hole. Um, and if you think I wonder what that's about. You dig a hole. You think I'm joking? You. That's about. Well, I've got a pond. I dug a hole and then I filled it with water and fish. So I didn't need a simulator once again. So yeah. And you know, if we're going to, if we're going to talk about that, we're talking about digital ministry and I know that you found yourself in the virtual space. Um, I had a chance to go to a church digital conference. I don't know if I, I didn't, I didn't actually see you there. I know you were there, but you were running the digital or the um VR. I was in VR side, correct? Yep. You were on the VR side and I was on the other. I did pop in the VR side. Um, and I don't know that the VR is for me. It felt awkward to me. However, people that are into it are really into it, right? Um, the idea that you can set up a $200 million cathedral and it's just a matter of spending your time doesn't cost you a dime, you know, that I think there's something to be said for that. Um, especially for people with limited mobility, people who are shut in. Um, where at least in VR you have an avatar, so you're interacting with the space. Um, here you come into chat, you're interacting with my floating head, right? And so this is old school in that regards, but in the same way um VR is is still in its infancy.

Oh yeah, it feels that way to me. Oh, it's still is. And part of that is until there is a platform that establishes itself as long-term, it will continue to be that because there is the is it going to be over here? Is it going to be over there? Is it, is it, uh, and there's been plenty that we thought were and then it shut down.

But I'll tell you what, I've only been in VR for six. No, no, wait. We're, okay, maybe nine months now. Maybe. Maybe nine months. So I got a hand-me-down one from a friend, going to a conference and said, "Hey, do you, do I just posted it on the link of everybody going to the conference? Anybody got a VR headset that they would be willing to get rid of that they're not using?" And he's like, "Here, you can have it." I'm like, "Great." So I started doing that.

Now, I still don't know that it's my thing. I mean, I think it's hilarious telling the story of the first time I preached in VR. I started floating away into space and I couldn't get down and someone had to tackle me and wrestle me to the ground so I could finish my sermon.

Um, and I have tech problems every time I go in the space and it's like my anxiety, like you'll understand this, my anxiety in VR is I am a seminary student preaching. That is that is the anxiety level there of I'm going to lose my place. I'm going to, I'm going to miss my notes. I'm going to have tech problems. It's all of those things all over again. Uh, but I love that edge of I'm a learner. And so yeah, I don't know that VR is my thing. I just need to know enough about it so that I can encourage the people that are in the space, so that I can be aware of it too, what its potential is, so that when someone says, "Hey, I'm thinking about doing this in VR," and I'm like, "Great. Have you prayed about it? Is the spirit leading you there? How are you seeing it?" And jump into those things. So um yeah, the experimentation, evolving, all those things. I've just been so fun because our journeys are paralleled with each other and we're about the same length of time and you're with a physical church and I've gone into working with the church digital and diving onto that side of things. But there's this overlap because we have ministry experience with each other in physical spaces and similar stories in some way, uh, and kids about the same age. Uh, those kinds of things have just been really fun. Uh, what are some surprises that you did not expect to encounter being a Twitch streamer and doing ministry online?

Surprising things, things I didn't expect when I got into it. Um, I think there's been a couple things and it's not all tech, but I think the idea that when I got into Twitch, in my head, it was I hit this button, I do a thing, people show up and say good job, and then I stop doing that thing, and I go home or I go on with my day. Um, and it turns out that's not really how it works.

Um, in that if you really want to impact people, you need to be involved in Discord. Why? Because people in New Zealand have a prayer request at 3:00 p.m. New Zealand time, not 3:00 p.m. Does that make sense? And so totally. And they can't engage with me that way. And I've just said, I'm here for you. I've said the Holy Spirit has called me to this place. I am Pastor North. I want to be led by the spirit and be a mentor and be your prayer partner and lift you up and then I turn off and you have no engagement with me all day.

Well, I'm not doing that then. And so it's meant that Twitch without Discord, at least in terms of ministry, doesn't seem to work for me.

Uh, Twitch without pulling clips and throwing it on Tik Tok or Fandom or Insta or wherever you're putting it. Without that, you're cutting off your nose to spite your face because you're mad at Tik Tok or you're mad at Facebook or you're mad at YouTube.

Um, and so we, the idea that I can use this tech, these cameras, and these screens to preach the gospel is awesome. But if I do it for the three hours I do it a day and turn it off, I'm shortcutting what the Holy Spirit could actually do.

So my biggest surprise has been just like a local church, it takes all of you. It takes all of it. Um, and that means I have to set up barriers for myself just like I do for local church. I don't know how you did it when you were a senior pastor. I don't know if you turned your phone off at night. I don't know if you had time out with the wife where you didn't pick up your text messages or whatever.

I've done it both ways. Um, I did the 70 hours a week, kill myself and forget that I had a family. I did that and it about killed me. And then I've gone the other way where I'm like I do Sunday morning, the rest of the time leave me alone. Well, that ain't right either. There's got the middle is the answer. Um, and finding the middle in digital space is tough. It really is because if you have, if everyone in your digital space can ping you 24 hours a day, you won't sleep.

Oh yeah. And so um, setting up those barriers has been tricky. Uh, but I think I have a pretty decent balance. I don't think my people feel like if they post on Discord, I ignore them. They do know it might be a couple hours. You know what I'm saying? That's just how that goes. So that's all that's been a surprise to me.

And the second thing, which we've already touched on, is because that person is not sitting across a desk from me, because I don't know what school their kids go to, I don't know what grocery store they know, I'm not going to bump into them at Walmart. Um, the openness, I think it's because of the distance is frankly overwhelming. It's frankly massive. Um, in that people can be beyond open because they know there's a safety barrier there. Um, they don't have to be embarrassed. They don't have to hide themselves from me. We just put it right on front street and people seem to be all right with it.

Yeah. It's funny you say that because the person that got me into streaming was the pastor that I knew in a pastor group in town and so I started watching him. Oh. And then last year the pastor that came after him found me online and started watching me online. So it's like this weird weird connection.

But you're right. The bulk of people that you are meeting when you're doing this are not in your community. I've thought about if I were at a physical church, would I set up and say, you know, here's the name of my church, here's the name of my community, and try to get the local people to join and to come out and to do that. And I thought even if I did, I would be shortchanging what the Holy Spirit is at work of connecting people if I only focused on them. So I'm not saying I wouldn't focus, but I'm saying is if I limited that to being able to, well, you have to be in a 10 mile radius for me to be able to, you know, be in community with you.

Right. Right. I um, I had my first ever, this week, it's kismet. We're talking about this. I had my first ever local person, oh yeah, cool, in my town ever pop in. And it didn't come via Twitch. It came via Tik Tok. I just posted a Tik Tok video of me walking to lunch and somebody hit me and was like, "Yo, I've been, I've been watching your preaching videos.

"Are you in Spokane?" And I said, "Yeah, I'm walking down Indiana right now." And he hit me back. He's like, "Yeah, I'm in Browns edition." And I'm like, "Yo, I know where that is." And it suddenly turned into a conversation.

Um, and so maybe I am going to have that thing where digital people become real people. But um, I know digital people are real. I know y'all real, Donnie. I know you're real. Well, I say that's one of the fun things too. And I thought we were going to have a chance last year to meet up in person, but I have met up with a ton of people that I've met online in person. And it's fantastic because it reminds me of, and if you haven't had this yet anybody, it reminds me of when my friend from high school, my friend from college who we don't see each other all the time, we get together. It is like, oh man, it's so good to see you. I haven't seen you in such a long time. It has that same feeling in physical space that those deep friendships I've had for over twenty years, over thirty years, that those have had when I meet up with somebody in physical space that I know online. It feels like that. Oh man, there's a good, good to see you old friend, hanging out together. I know there's some chat going on there. You're trying to catch up some of that chat. Go ahead. If there was some things you wanted to throw in there. Um, review says, "That's why we look at TikTok, Kick, Facebook, YouTube as the sanctuary. Discord is the rest of the building." That's exactly what I'm saying, brother. That's exactly what I'm saying. We have people all over the world watching the Discord.

Yes. Um, I had the chance, in regards to Ryzen's comment. Uh, last week was my physical church's annual meeting. So if you've ever been to a physical church, you ever been a member, they have this annual meeting where everybody talks about where pastor spent money last year. Anyway, that meeting was Sunday. And in that annual meeting, we go through all of our statistics, right? How many people showed up on Sunday? How much money came in? Where did it get spent? What did the quilting group do? What did the men's group do? Right? All of that. Who came into membership? How many funerals did we have? All that stuff. How many babies were born? One of those statistics that we have now is how many people watched us either here on North Hill or Sunday mornings at Christ Central. And then how many people watched that recording later. Okay. I don't know if you've ever done this before. Um, but our live stream watch, okay, is about a dozen. Okay, not huge by any stretch. Our post-live stream watch was in the upper sixties per week. That multiplies as the weeks go on. Yeah. So if you, that means that what exactly what Ryzen is saying, that my time, my schedule is not yours and it doesn't have to be anymore. It's not by definition appointment viewing anymore. I think Twitch in some ways is, um, I did watch Dustin's interview that you did this morning. I watched that today, but I don't watch a lot of post-stream. It's tough for me to go back and watch a stream that I can't engage with. But for some reason, YouTube feels different. So again, um, cross-platform, cross-platform, cross-platform. Oh yeah, that's where I've seen real growth. Yeah, it's, uh, River, by the way, was the chatter. Oh, did I, what did I say? Did I say Ribbon? Yeah, it's River. You're right. It's all right. Uh, but it's what the platform does well is what you need to use it for. Twitch does live really well. Other platforms keep trying to copy doing live well, but that's not what they're known for. So yeah, I can go Facebook Live and I watch people that do Facebook Live and they have three people watching them. I've never seen anyone bigger than that on Facebook Live. Uh, YouTube Live I've seen bigger, but that's where people have a community already. It seems like you can draw that out of YouTube Live when you know, and I said I did services for years on YouTube Live as soon as they let us do that. Uh, but YouTube is a place where I go to because I want to go find content usually to show me what I want to do. Like, oh, should I use OBS or should I use Slobs? Uh, let's go watch a video and they'll tell me how to do that. They'll tell me which one I should do. So, you know, that's the first time I ever saw Dustin was camera review. Oh yes. That's the first time I ever met him was on a camera review. Yeah. Yeah. And then uh, I just put a thing on like, "Hey man, I bought your camera. I took your advice." And then like a month later uh, he was in our pastor's group and I'm like, "Wait a minute. Why do I know you?" Yes. And I had to look it up. I'm like, "That's why I know you." Yeah. It's funny how we connect. Oh, it is. It is.

Um, so do you have any stories that you can share about life change that people have had by encountering them over time or even in the moment of connections from Twitch?

Yeah, I have a few, you know, um, and we'll try to just share stuff that's been put on chat that's, you know, pretty open. When we first got into more serious ministry, uh, when I, you know, when I shouldn't say serious, we started off by reading the Bible. When we first got into kind of focused ministry, uh, and we was doing Bible study, uh, we had a young cat come on. I haven't seen him in a while now. He got a new job and schedule was changed. Young cat came on. You probably take one look at me and realize that I don't draw a lot of the young cats, you know what I mean? Um, when the young people show up, it's because they're looking for an older voice, right? They don't pick me out of a lineup off of Twitch and go, "Ooh, I want to hang out with that dude." It doesn't work like that. They, so when a young guy comes in, I know they're looking for something. And this was a young cat living in a small town in Russia. And he had decided that the Orthodox church that he'd grown up in, uh, he'd gone on a Sunday, you know, a month or two before he came into our chat. And the passage had been really clear that I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. Right? And then the rest of everything that was taught was kind of the Orthodox side. And I'm not putting, at least I don't know Russian Orthodox is different. I've never been to a Russian Orthodox church. But from his perspective, it was like that's all good and well, but if you're not praying to Mary, you're doing it wrong. And so he came to us and said, "Hey, explain this to me." And what I found fascinating was that the community, not me, the community said, "Everybody has questions," and they in chat started praying for him and taking care of him and saying, "Hey, here's, you know, here's my, here's my DM." Befriending him on Discord and whatnot. And for the next couple months, he keeps coming back, right? He keeps coming back. And he had this job and he lost it. Then he had that job and he lost it. And along the way, he kept coming to us going, "I'm trying to explain to my folks why I'm going to this evangelical church now and not their Orthodox church and how I'm still going to go with them all Easter. I'm still going to go with them for communion. I'm still going to do that because that's family and they're not teaching evil things over there, but there's so much more over here." And after the course of about six months of this conversation, you know, he comes in one day and he says, "Hey, we had a family picnic and I think I got it. My auntie, I think she came to Jesus for the first time and my family has never seen her in church and they're seeing the gospel alive with them. And we had a chance to celebrate with this young cat. Um, and it was a few weeks later, he got a new job and he couldn't be with us on whatever that time would be for him in our mornings. And I haven't seen him in a year. That story still sticks with me, right? Because that dude was bold enough to put it out there. How many other people are lurking in the back? Um, how many other people are waiting to see, you know, hey man, I know that when we get in the middle of the book of James, when we get there, he's going to say, "Honor your mom and dad." And I'm waiting. I'm waiting because pastor's going to say, "It don't matter if you agree. You got to do whatever mom says, you got to do it." And they're waiting to jump on it, right? But they're hanging out for two weeks to get there and the Holy Spirit's still working. And I've seen that happen over and over and over.

I don't know how many times people have come in looking for a fight. And I got great moderators. I got great moderators that will swing a banhammer if it looks like this is a fight and hold off. Hold off if it's a person with a real question. And that takes skill. That takes skill and it takes time. Um, but so that's story number one is I, that's the one that sticks with me probably the hardest.

Um, we've had a couple people come in that were suicidal and we've connected them with people in their area. Um, at that point I have to hand it off because I can't just show up at Bolivia or whatnot. You know, you have to find somebody in that town. Um, again, if they're willing to put it in chat, then I'm pretty happy to talk about it. But um, and then on top of all of it, there are private groups, right? There are private messages that come in from people that are more direct, more the way we see pastoral ministry historically. And I've been able to do that as well. Um, the real thing I think that makes this platform different than others is the privacy versus on stage is so different. It's so much bigger. Um, if I come into Flat Chaps, Flat Cap Dapper Pastor's chat and I say, "Hey man, um, I got mad last night and I kicked my dog," I didn't say that to Flat Cap. I said it to the twenty people in his room. Yeah. Right. And so the public aspect of it is so much bigger. Um, so the fact that we can engage that way and still love each other um is pretty huge. And the only other story I got, I got one more. Oh, we got time. Is something that just sort of happened. It just sort of happened. We were in, I believe, the book of Hebrews, and we're doing study in Hebrews, and Paul says, don't uh, don't forget to confess to one another, right? And it's just kind of in passing. Paul does this all the time. He throws a piece of theology that opens this giant canyon up. And it was about confession, not confession to Paul, not confession to Timothy. It was confession to one another, right? And we started talking about that as a community. And for the next few weeks, uh, I threw a little image on the screen of a confession booth. And whenever the passage got deep, I would throw the confession booth up and I would say, "Who wants to confess?" But when you do know, we all hearing it, so maybe pick a small thing, but let's try this on. And um, I think it was one of the first times I really felt the spirit move through the community in a powerful way where I mean I was, you know, I'm a big softy. I cry on stream once in a while and I was definitely crying that first time we put the confession booth up because people were coming in saying I've been struggling in this relationship with my brother. Here's what's up. And I'm going to confess that I could have answered the phone yesterday and I didn't because I knew it was him. Right? That sounds small but when you put that out to the world that is massive, right? That's huge. So it was that kind of that level of confession.

It wasn't, you know, it wasn't "I murdered my neighbor's parakeet," but it was deep enough that it made all of us just uncomfortable enough to know that it was real, if that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. So those are kind of the two surprising things about this ministry that I don't know that I get on a Sunday morning IRL, at least not regularly.

Yeah. And I think on some level we started with talking about the culture. And if you're in a physical church, you've inherited culture that was established decades ago. I don't care if it's a church plant. The people that are helping you plant the church grew up in a physical church plant culture that started whether it was 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 depending on how old the church is.

We've inherited that. We have a culture that tells us what happens and what's outside of the bounds. On Twitch, every streamer gets to set up that culture. And when you set up the culture is we can confess and we can allow that to happen. And we're not going to cast judgment as our first response. We're not going to condemn as our first response. We're going to appreciate and thank you for knowing this is a safe place to share and we're going to love on you and we're going to let you learn and grow along the way.

Yeah, it's just amazing. Yeah. I got a local person here. It's he's a—how do I say this politely? No, there's a lot of ways to say it politely. He's a vagrant. He lives outdoors. There's a man here in our local community that lives outdoors.

Every Sunday morning, local church, local church time. He knows that I open the doors at 9:00 a.m. He knows church doesn't start till people don't start showing up till 10:00, but a couple workers, you know, some worship team guys, maybe somebody reading leading Bible study will show up at 9:15. But I open the doors at 9:00. At 9:00, he knows that if you walk in the front doors, there's coffee and there's donuts and there's hot cocoa.

So he walks in at 9. He walks in at 9, says, "Hi, pastor. How you doing?" Gets a cup of coffee, gets a donut. We talk about where he slept last night. We talk about how his sobriety is going or not going as typically is the case. And then here's the thing. Then at about 9:15, that first car will show up. And he throws the blanket back over his head and walks out the front door.

That tells me something about the way the local church has handled people that look different, that smell different, that feel different, that have chemical problems, that have emotional problems, that have relational problems, that have marital problems, that have problems with their kids that have been in and out of jail.

That tells me something that I don't ever hear here. Not ever. Someone could come in chat right now and say, "Man, I just got out of the poke. I'm just out. I've been sober two days," and everybody loves them. Everybody loves them. Try that on a Sunday morning. There are churches that do it. And our church is a loving church. But that guy that comes in, I know his name. I'm not going to put him on front street. But that guy that comes in every Sunday morning, he doesn't know that about us. It's going to take a year, maybe two years before he trusts me enough to sit in the back pew.

Oh yeah. Well, and again, face time with him, you get 15 minutes a Sunday. How long does it take you to get that much time that a week of streaming gets you in front of somebody?

Right. And he could be on stream. Does that make sense? Anybody can be on stream. It doesn't matter what they look like. Doesn't matter what their background is. And because if they never turn their camera on, then whatever their—I don't want to say embarrassed of, but whatever that distance is they want, they can have it.

Yeah, yeah. They can have protection, anonymity, just depending upon what it is they need and what they're looking for. Sorry, I'm going to start preaching. I know that's not what we're doing.

Hey, we're just talking digital ministry. That's what we're doing. So how you got started, what you're doing. And you're talking about some of the obstacles along the way, some of the celebrations along the way. What would be like if there's people who are watching this and they're going, "Yeah, I don't know if I should do this if I'm called to it." What would be some good advice that you would give them on how to think through and process if they're called to be a digital missionary? And I don't even mean it has to be Twitch. Just thinking of, I'm, what would I ask myself if I were called to TikTok? If I were called to whatever place, how would I process through hearing the voice of God and moving forward? What would be my process for that?

Well, there, I mean it's just like being called to any ministry. There's a couple things. One, it doesn't actually have to be based on your interest. Believe it or not, most people who are full-time ministry that I know, those who have done it for years and are successful, didn't enjoy it. They didn't envision it. They didn't go looking for it. It never was like that. So first off, if it's like, yeah, I don't know about the whole barrier to entry, that's not an excuse because most of us who are on this platform that we don't love—I don't love having a camera stuck in my face right now. I have three of them stuck in my face. I don't, it's not natural. You have that's the barrier to entry, right? Either it's important enough or it's not.

Number two for me is what has impacted you? And that when I received my call into ministry, I don't know if I ever told you the story, flat cap. I was in a youth group. So I'm going back. Okay, I'm gonna jump back to age 17. This is how it happened for me. And I think it's the same way that happened for me even on Twitch.

I at age 17, I was in this youth group. And I was a believer. I received Christ at age 13 and then immediately did whatever I wanted like most 15 or 16 year olds. And at age 17, I got into a youth group mostly because there were girls there and I wanted to be where the girls were. And so that's what I did. I went to youth group and I hit on all the girls and all the leaders pretended like that's not why I was there and everybody knew.

So my youth pastor says, "We're doing a missions trip to Alaska and we need people to go and you got to sing and you got to dance and you got to perform for little kids. We're doing VBS in Alaska because these churches, all the men, all the women, they work in the summer when it's nice and that's when the kids need daycare basically. So you're going to be the daycare. You're going to be—" Um, and I'm like, I got no interest in going to Alaska. Um, and I left, so I'm not doing that. That's crazy. And I went to school and I told some friends about this trip and they said, "Did you know that that's the only state in the union where weed is legal?" And I went, "Hey, I'm going to Alaska." So you—no, you didn't tell me the story before. So I'm like, yeah, I'm going to Alaska anyway.

So I'm in Alaska. You got, it turns out to go to Alaska, you got to do all this training. You got to memorize these Bible verses. You got to put your first sermon together. You got to go to prayer group. You have to do a month of theology training. There's all this stuff you got to do. But in the back of my head, I'm like, "Yeah, but the first chance I get to sneak off into the woods, this is what's happening, right?"

And I'm in Alaska and there's this kid and I'm doing VBS. And part of the VBS is every kid gets a one-on-one with a leader. And I pull this little kid away. His name was Paul. I still remember it. Little kid. I pull him aside and I'm sharing Jesus with him. I was a believer, you know what I mean? I wasn't a complete heathen and I'm sharing Jesus with him. And I said, "Paul, do you understand?" He's like, "Yeah, I get it." He was maybe seven years old, you know? I said, "What do you say? You want to accept Jesus? You want to change your life? You want to give your life over? Get that fire insurance." And he said, "Next week." And I said, "Next week?" And he goes, "Yeah, yeah. Everybody in my life leaves me. If you're here next week, I'll know Jesus is real."

Woo. He left and went inside and I had a conversation with God at that point. Right, yeah. And God said to me, "Are you going to be the one that's going to be there for other people? Are you going to be the one that turns tail every time it gets hard, or are you going to do the hard thing and let people know that I'm real?" It's one of three times in my life where I heard the word of God like audible voice between my ears. The most real conversation I've ever had.

I go back home. I tell my friends. I tell my family. I'm going into ministry 'cause Jesus told me I'm going. My associate pastor pulls me aside after I told the whole church that I was going into ministry. And he says, "I know you. I've been watching you. I know what you're like. I see you smoking in your car before you come in. I see you hitting on the girls and hiding beers. If I see you on TV stealing money from old ladies, I'll be the first one to say that I knew you when and you're a liar."

I was not cut out to do this. Does that make sense? No one saw me cut out to do ministry at all. So if you're feeling like the thing that impacts me, the thing that impacts me is that conversation with the little kid being there and being that friend. If that impact for you was on Instagram, you should be on Instagram making that a better place. If the thing that impacts you is the second you wake up, you got TikTok out, you best be on TikTok making it a better place. The thing that impacts you is getting in fights on Facebook over politics, you best be on Facebook making it a better place, not a worse place.

For me, that new impact was I went on Twitch and I was making friends on accident and I thought, you know, I can make Twitch a better place, too. Anyway, I think those two stories of calling are almost exactly the same. Anyway, that's how I came into ministry. Um, so if you feel like you're being called, it should be a place that you enjoy being, but you're scared to death to be in.

I loved being in my church. Scared to death to get up and teach, you know. Yep. Anyway, that's my story. Does that resonate or way off base?

Oh man, that was just awesome. That was awesome. I didn't, I didn't know that. I was waiting for you to say, "So you talked to the youth group leader and you got to stay an extra week so that the kid would know you were going to be there for him." That's what I was waiting for.

I called my mom and she said I could stay an extra week in Alaska so that this kid would believe in Jesus and the church raised funds to send me home in first class. And uh it was heartbreak. I, the story does have a positive ending. I handed him off to um one of the leaders, one of the local leaders. I handed him off and I did get a letter a couple weeks later saying that that leader showed up at the little boy's house every day for a week and he finally said, "Yeah, I guess you guys are for real." So there is a happy ending, but it broke my heart. Can you imagine? You hear that? Oh, man. Just broke me down this. Yeah. Uh, tall skinny king. Yeah, that's cool. Fulfilling both being called and yet holding a holy terror regarding the Christian ministry.

I could, yes, totally get that. The, oh yeah. Well, I think most stories you have to respect. Yeah. Most or many stories in scripture revolve around feeling called and feeling inadequate simultaneously. I by being called you realize your inadequacies. I really think that the calling uh pulls out of you. Oh, wait. I don't have this.

I'm missing that. I can't do this. I mean, Moses, you know, probably the best one example-wise. I'm slow of speech and slow of tongue.

Yeah, that ain't that ain't a problem. We we we got that covered. We we got your back, boy. So, yeah. Many okay. Uh, anything else that we haven't talked about that you'd like to discuss before we shift and start thinking about uh, gaming because we're on a gaming platform.

We are on a gaming platform. Uh, the only other the only other compliment I had at all is that it is nice to see um, seasoned people out here in uh, the Twitch streets.

And I I think we consider ourselves both in that category. And uh, it's nice. I I'm beginning to see that that shift. Um I know that my first few weeks and months here, I I definitely felt like a senior citizen and it's less so now.

I think more people are realizing that it's it's not voodoo. And so if the thing that's holding you back is your age or um your station in life, it's not about that.

You can you can stream on a cell phone. You know what I mean? You can take a a a hike in the woods and share Jesus.

Open it up and OBS crashed when I opened up the game. So, I think that's a hint there that maybe I shouldn't try that game uh while we're streaming.

So, I'll I'll try it uh another time. So, one of the things I haven't set up yet is that I'm going to do some gaming streams.

So, maybe this isn't going to work always to be able to stream. So, yeah, I went to open it. It crashed my computer. It crashed OBS.

So, I'll play it later. But tell us about the game that All Will Fall and what it is you like about it, what what's the premise of it?

Uh how bad am I going to be at it? Well, that that's what I love about it. Well, I honestly I I literally pick games that I think I can stream.

Um any game that's sweaty, right? Any game that requires me to do things in a certain time or have any actual motor skills, those are the ones that I avoid because if I'm like, I don't know, you you pick whatever game you want, Call of Duty or something like that.

I can't talk and play the game. No way. I can barely play the game to start, right? Full stop. Let alone trying to chat with people.

And for me, and this is maybe this is old man talking, but for me, when I pop into somebody's stream and they are playing Call of Duty and I say, "Hey, what's going on?" and it takes them ten minutes to respond, I'm gone before they respond.

Yep. Not because it it's just my old man brain. I know that if I'm really into that game, I'll wait ten minutes. It's nothing but a thing.

But I'm not into it, so I'm not going to. So, I try to find games that I can uh play with one eye, you know what I mean?

That I could hit pause all the time. And so All Will Fall is one of those. It's a demo right now. The full game is coming out by the end of the year.

The premise is basically Water World. So you lived in a city and uh Noah Noah happened, right? The flood happened. The whole world got flooded out.

The the ice caps melted. It's not Kevin Costner Water World. No, it's like an actual so everything floods. Yeah. And so your city is demolished and so it's you and a handful of people on a boat and all that's sticking out is the girders from the city and so your boat crashes into these girders and you have to start a society. Um and the water slowly recedes like the water is receding in Noah's day. That's why it reminded me of that.

Um and so you have it's a survival game. So it's a survival building game. You build bridges, you build houses, you pick up survivors, you have to feed them, you have to gather trash and and you build.

It's called All Will Fall because eventually if you build too high, it all collapses into the ocean and you have nothing and all your people die.

So, it it's a real uplifting game. It's a real uplifting game. Um, now it's a lot of fun. If you like physics games and it's slow, you can set it for however fast or however slow you want.

It's got daylight cycles. Um, it's it's 3D. You can look underwater. You can do all sorts of stuff. Is it is it like Sims?

So, when you're setting the speed, like, you know, when I played SimCity Zoo, like I need these animals to breed. I've set it on fast so I can come back in an hour and they already did.

Yeah. Okay. Yep. Yep. You can turn it up, you can turn it down. Use sign workers. Yeah. So, it's like a resource management um building game.

So, if that's your jam, and it uses a physics engine, so if you build something that wouldn't actually stand up, it doesn't. Um, yeah, man.

And I found it a blast. Plus, uh, there's a plenty of failure in it, and so stream loves it when, um, I fail for whatever reason.

I'm a glutton for that sort of thing. Uh, yeah. And it's free. It's free right now. I think by the end of the year, it'll be twenty-five bucks or something, but right now it's free.

And the demo is long. I did two, three hour streams and we didn't finish the demo. So, it it goes and goes and goes.

Yeah. Okay. It it's a whole lot for very little. Yeah. Well, I will find a time to do that. So, that's one of the things I've got I've decided I need to do because I'm doing whenever this stream works with whoever my friend is that I'm going to be talking with on a time that works for you. So that might that so instead of saying, "Well, I do my podcast every Tuesday at four p.m. I'm sorry you can't make it.

You can't be on my podcast." I'm like, "No, I'm going to accommodate my friend. I'm going to meet when you can meet. We're going to do this." But I'm like going, "Oh, the channel needs to know there's something happening that's regular.

So I need to set up." So that's I think what I'm going to do when it doesn't work to stream a game. I I will take the game.

So, I've already got from as always. He wanted me to play uh I think it was Call of Duty uh I can't remember what zone or one it was, but he didn't tell me I needed to uh download this other app.

That's how you set up, you know, me or games. I'm like, I have the game downloaded. I can't play it. No, you got to set up this other.

So, that's on the list I need to do. Uh Duc and I didn't play a game earlier cuz he didn't have three hours to to hang out.

So, we just chatted for two and I figure, oh, I'll I'll game afterwards. So, that might be what I do is, all right, you get to tell me what game I'm going to try.

So, I've got it from you. I'll go give it a good try. U Yeah, I haven't figured out Yeah, I haven't figured out what that schedule's going to be yet.

I've got to in the next week I got to figure that out. But I've got um uh equipping digital missionary courses that I've got to lock in my time for those.

When I lock in those, I can uh decide, hey, here's when uh I'm gonna sorry, I'm just reading the church simulator. Yeah, you should try that.

Uh there is a church simulator. Have you tried it? No. Have you tried it? There is one. There is one. Oh my goodness. That'd be hilarious.

I haven't tried it yet. I haven't tried it yet. Yeah. You it's uh I think it's historical. Like it's uh medieval. Like you build a cathedral.

You're building a cathedral. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I think you I think you have to set up sermons and yeah. Yeah. It's a whole thing.

Yeah. I haven't tried it. I'm I'm not vouching for it, but I have seen it online. There's times where I understand simulator games. Okay.

Like Tractor Simulator, very few people will ever get to drive a tractor. Granted, right? Big rig simulator. You're not going to get to drive a big rig.

You want to feel it, you understand it? Great. Go do that. Or flight sims. Yeah. Or flight sims. Yeah. I get I get some, but some are just like why why did they make why?

Who doesn't get to do this? Like, and if you want to, it's not a high entry level to do this. Like, you want to you want a power wash simulator?

They're like a hundred bucks. Go buy it. What did the game cost you? Sixty. You could have bought the I know they're not that expensive, but when you get all of the extra perks that you can, you know, upgrades and yeah.

Yeah. Why a chair simulator? I don't know. Church simulator. Maybe because you don't want to be a heretic, you know. There we go. That's why I haven't played it because you have to schedule like prayer time and and like all that and I'm like there is that part of me that goes, do

I really want to play around with I don't know. I don't know. I take I take that stuff kind of serious. So that's that's literally why I haven't tried it, but it does exist.

Well, you could do actual prayer during that time. You know, I I could whatever is actually happening on screen and I actually do it.

Yeah, you actually do it, right? Yeah. Just just actually, you know, I don't know. Um, so other what other games are you you've been playing lately?

So, you got this one? Uh, yeah. So, I've been playing uh All Will Fall and I've been playing UFO 50. UFO50 is amazing. Uh, UFO 50 is my favorite game of the year and I know it.

I think it actually came out last year. Okay. But I've just found it. It's called UFO 50. It's uh six actually. You were talking about old school games or you and uh Ducen were talking about old school games.

Uh so UFO50. It's six developers. Five guys and a lady. I think six developers uh who created brand new eight-bit style video games. So they're brand new.

They've never been played before. Uh, but they they put a history like a fake history on them. The first game was in eighty-two and the last game's in like eighty-nine or something and there's fifty of those games and the concept is there was a developer called UFO that went out of business and you can now buy their collected set and these are brand new games and I'm telling you there is some gems in there.

We have had so much fun playing through brand new eight-bit games. Now that's an expensive buy though. I was shocked at how I mean it's fifty games.

Uh but it's not it's not free. It I think it was uh anybody remember was it like twenty-eight dollars? But we I've played it probably eight nine hours so far and I'm about halfway through.

And that's just trying all the games. Once you decide which ones you like, you go back and play them again, you know. Yeah. So UFO 50, that's a fun one if you like old school games.

I'm not particularly good at them. There's sidescrollers and there's puzzlers and all the stuff you would have played in the eighties only it never existed.

So it's like learning learning the history of the future. Yeah. I'm yeah. Eight-bit. They're all kind of eight-bit. Yeah, exactly. I'm watching yeah. I'm not the I'm not the biggest fan of uh eight-bit characters.

I I played Minecraft because it's eight-bit version and I have nothing against the game. It's like but we have better graphics. Why? Why would I?

Why? Why? You could make this rounded. You don't have to make them cubes. You could. So, anyway, that's the the new one's not even really eight-bit, is it?

Isn't it shade? Isn't it shade? Cell. I I do not know. It's made to look like it's eight-bit. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's more the look.

It looks like yeah, it looks like it. Yeah. But that's that's another one of those things where I tease my kids about it, you know?

Like I teased my kids about, you know, watching Twitch. I teased my kids about listening to podcasts at double speed. I teased my kids about playing Minecraft.

Okay, so I I'm doing all those things. I haven't played Minecraft yet. So may somebody's going to tell me that's the game I need to play.

You can't tell me because I just told you that. So they're going to have to watch an episode and then suggest that to me.

And don't this and chat, don't go spilling the beans on me, okay? I'm trusting you. I'm trusting you that you're going to make the person who's coming on the podcast have watched this episode.

No, no spilling the beans telling them to because I'll find out. I will. I'll find out. You told them. Yeah. Well, it's not going to be me.

Minecraft's not my jam. Um, my oldest child was an alpha tester for that game. So that tells you how long that game's been around because, you know, how old I am.

But yeah, Minecraft's not my jam. There's some crazy stuff people do, but it's this massive time commitment. They're like, "Look, I made a computer." And I'm like, "All right, I—what does it do?" It's a calculator. You can—all right, I—it took you how long? You know, I don't get it. But people love it. And so who am I to yuck their yum?

I mean, you know, I love Chair Simulator, so I just can't even imagine. I have not seen that game. So it's like, are you building the chair? Are you sitting in the chair? What are you doing?

In the chair. Yeah, you just sit in the chair. The chair. Have you—have you literally never seen—no, I've never heard of this.

Oh, oh, I—yeah, it's not a joke. We—it may be—uh, it may be my most watched clip of all time with—so, uh, it's a chair. You're going chair shopping. You're a little dude and there's about eight or nine characters you can choose. You go chair shopping. You sit in the chair and it tells you how comfortable the chair is.

The longer you sit there, the more your backside hurts and you have to stand up before you get to critical where you die because your booty hurts too much. You earn chair points where you can buy more chairs. The longer you sit in a chair, so you buy nicer chairs that are more comfortable that you can sit in longer to earn more points to get another chair.

And that is—every time you buy a chair, it leaves the store and it goes to your house, or you can go to your house and sit in the chair if you want, or you can keep sitting in the store and making chair points until you own all the chairs.

Is there an upgrade to this? Like afterwards, can you pick fabric colors? Like, can I have that style in that color?

I don't know if you can change the colors. There are lots of styles. Uh, one of them—what the—uh, the actual porcelain throne, the actual toilet, is very, very high in comfortability. It's almost the top tier.

Oh, that's—I do remember. Yeah, it's very, very high. Very comfortable toilet. Um, but yeah, Chair Simulator. So that literally is the quality games that I go for, and it comes back to ministry though, right? And that's why I keep trying to say—it's not—I honestly enjoy it because of the jank, me personally. That's just my personality.

But if at any point the game takes over what we're doing, then we've lost it, right? And if I'm playing a game like Chair Simulator or Lawn Mower or Farming Simulator 25 or have you tried Plastic Duck Simulator? Plastic Duck Simulator?

All of those games are low impact mentally, so I can hang out with people in fellowship. So to me, it's the right mix. And I know other people—um, I know that Dustin specifically, because I talked to him about this a while back, is a big proponent of playing through an entire game. You start at the beginning, you play all the way through, and you make a community base on that game. I think he shared that with me at one of the conference tables last week.

Anyway, so I think that was him. So you go through the entire game and you build a community and then you chuck that game, you pick another game, build another community. Um, and I think in a lot of ways it's the same principle. My principle is you're never going to see me play the same game more than four or five times. But I will have time for you always. I will always have time to stop. I think that's the direction I've gone.

Yeah. And Dustin, we were talking about how he got to that. And part of his was he had a different game each day of the week and then community would come in on Monday and find a game. He'd come back on Tuesday. "Oh, you're not playing the game I like." But right, I think with some of the things you're playing, they're not the game that people are looking for. They're coming because they're looking for the game. Like, oh, he was playing Dune too. Yeah, people wanted to come watch Dune too. That's what they were looking for.

And I'm not saying people aren't coming to watch Simulator, but I don't know that Chair Simulator is going to show up on the Twitch. Does it even show? Does that game even show up?

Right, so it does show up. Okay, okay. So there's—way, there's two ways to look at this, flat cap. And I have looked at the numbers. It's interesting. There's two ways. One is I could say, uh, you can go on to Twitch right now and say, "What's the most played game right now?" Uh, in fact, I looked it up a couple days ago. I don't remember what it is now. It's something that I don't play, obviously. Um, let's say it's Fortnite. I don't think it is, but it's one of those. It's an arena battle game of some sort. It always is. So let's assume it's Fortnite or FIFA or whatever. And I go, "Yep, I'm going to play that." Why? Because more eyeballs are on that. The problem is if I want to watch FIFA and I click FIFA and it's FIFA 25 or whatever, I am 50th on the list.

Yep. Right, because I'll have a dozen of my regulars, maybe 20 people in the room and I'm 50th on the list. Or I can pick a game that came out five minutes ago, right?

Yeah. And I'm the only person playing it. And if I'm like, man, I'm thinking about buying The Stanley Parable, but is The Stanley Parable good? Let me see somebody playing it. Because I've done that, and I go over and I see somebody playing, I go, "Yes, it's for me. No, it's not for me." Um, and that's kind of the direction I've gone. I've tried to go pretty niche. Um, and I'd like to say it's because I'm really smart. It—I think it's my personality. I really do.

Yeah, the AAA titles almost always fail me.

Yeah, yeah. Well, although you played—you played the D and D—well, not D and D. Um, Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate, right? BG3. Yeah, I played Baldur's Gate a while. Yeah. And uh, I liked it. I struggled to stream it though because there is so much happening on screen that I need to stop doing this for five minutes to read everything and look at the map and decide where my attack is.

Wait a minute, didn't we talk to her before and all it'll take me 40 minutes to play through what would take me five minutes if I'm playing by myself?

So yep, I didn't—I didn't play it very long. It's a great game, don't get me wrong.

Yeah, I tried streaming that. I struggled with it because one, I'm used to playing single player games and then you're just enthralled and focused on what you're doing. So yeah, I forgot—what did they say? Oh, where am I supposed to go? Oh, what are we doing here? Uh, and then also picking a new time with a new community essentially was starting over because I wasn't going to supplant what I already had established. It was start new. Uh, I gave it—you're adding. Yeah, I added and I gave it a three-month window of experimenting and said, "Nope, this game is—I'm not going to be the only Christian in this and draw people in." Uh, it just did not—uh, well, it was taking too much of my time, uh, for streaming it three hours, four hours, two days in a row, that the rest of the stuff that I was supposed to be doing was really getting put aside.

So yeah, absolutely. Yep. So that's kind of been my direction. I know it's a different philosophy than a lot of people have. Um, but if I can't be, you know, top ten in the world, then that's the other way to draw. I'm not going to be that guy.

Well, and I think that makes total sense. If you're going to the categories that have more people watching and you're not on the front page, you're not the top three, honestly, you're not going to probably get watched. You're just not going to end up with people watching you unless they go looking for smaller communities, because some people will, like, "Oh, I want a small streamer that's playing this game." You could show up there, but yeah, I'm not going to be in the category of people are coming to watch my excellent gameplay.

Correct, correct. And, you know, there's niches within that as well. I mean, we did a whole series—in fact, I haven't even finished it. The Rusty Lake series, which is basically, um, they—it's basically an escape room. Okay, so it's a storyline game, but it's an escape room. You have four walls you have to figure out. And it starts off really cute and then they usually get dark at the end and somebody dies.

But um, those games are great as well because it's now community engagement, right? I enjoy the game. I enjoy the struggle. Uh, you know, you got people in your chat that were like, "Wait, what was that? What was that code that we found before? We got to remember it again." Um, and that's not the kind of game you can play with 100 people in the room.

Oh yeah, it is the kind of game you play with 15 or 20 people, but the experience sticks with you. So um, and again, if you—if I put it, I'm playing Rusty Lake Hotel on Twitch, there's only going to be five or six of us playing that game.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't done a—uh, well, actually, um, where I live, they have an escape room that went in a couple years ago. I've not gone there. I just don't understand it. Like, escape room. I've got locked in a room before. I don't need to—I've already done that. Why do I need a simulator on this? Like, I'll tell you a story real quick on getting locked in and locked out.

So, oh, my daughter had to be three years old, I think. So she's not really tall. Uh, as a three-year-old, I go out to the car and shut the sliding door behind me, which I went out, but the latch locked when I shut the door. I can't get in the house because I don't have my keys. And she's locked in the house by herself at three years old. And I have to coach her through reaching up and pushing the little lever to unlock the door.

You won't believe how long that took and how big a celebration there was for I talked my three-year-old into pushing the latch to unlock the door, which she'd never done before. Uh, so that she wasn't locked in the house by herself. And this is before cell phones, too. So we ain't got a cell phone to call anybody to come and help.

If I go for help, I'm abandoning my daughter in the house, locked in the house alone. So I've got it. I'm committed and I'm stuck there talking through the glass door. "You could do it, honey. You're almost there. You can do it." And oh, like, if there were moments—if there were moments I wish I had on video, that's one of those moments would have been great. I would have been TikTok famous. I'd have been YouTube famous. My daughter would have had full ride scholarship to college.

Oh yeah, oh, you just need cameras on the inside. That's the problem. You got to have two. You got to have—you got to be ready for it.

Oh yeah, yeah, you got to just stream your whole life so that when those moments happen. Ah, see, you talk about having the big dream of the church-to-church raid train.