EP254 - Bubba Stallcup & Love Thy Nerd

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

Hey, I don't, I'm on Twitch. I don't know what I'm doing. This is all weird. Hey, everybody, Jeff Reed here with the Church Digital and Digital Church Network, and I am in the middle of an experiment trying to learn how to do Twitch. And so we're streaming this podcast interview. We're streaming this interview live right now on Twitch. We're gonna bring on the guests. We're going to talk about Twitch. We're going to talk about nerds and nerd culture and all sorts of fun stuff here in a minute. And I gotta tell you, I am a little bit out of my comfort zone, but that's cool. I'm learning as we're going along here. And so it's a pleasure to be with you. We're going to be engaging with the chat. I'm seeing Flat Cap in there right now. How you doing, Flat Cap? And excited to hopefully see some others jump in as we're going. But we're gonna talk some about nerd culture. I'm on this kick right now. Season three, season four of the Church Digital Podcast. Sorry, Twitchers, but we're doing this as podcast as well. And so we're talking about gamer church, Jesus Gamers, and church. How can we do unique things using this? And what's already happening in this space to reach the three billion plus gamers that are currently in the world today? And that's not even talking about the nerd culture. Chino Mage is in here as well. I am, I would not qualify myself as a gamer. Like, maybe I play a little Pokémon Go with the kids. But the last relevant game we've talked about this for me personally was like, I don't know, GoldenEye on Nintendo 64.

I'm kind of old school. Sorry, I even have a like a Nintendo eight-bit controller thing literally on my desk. I will sometimes play the eight-bit Nintendo during my lunch break, not on Twitch. Maybe I should start. But hey, what I want to do is let's start to bring some people in. We're going to really do an interview here, hanging out with this. And so let's go ahead and bring Bubba into the conversation. Oh, magically Andy Mage comes as well. Like, boom, it's all serious here. It's great to see you guys. We did the thing, man. We're doing Twitch. This is, is Twitchers, are you allowed to say Twitchers? Like, is that the thing? Or is that too like Last of Us? I don't know what I'm doing here. You tell me. What should I be saying? Is it not Twitchers?

Oh, no, no, absolutely. Nobody is policing it. You use whatever terminology you want. That has been proven throughout history.

Yes, one hundred percent. So I mean, let me reiterate up front. I sent an email out to the entire Church Digital database. We've got a bunch of people who have no understanding of what Twitch is. I consider myself one of them. Like, I'm not going to be this guy. Oh, I know what I'm doing. I got no clue. And so like, for a lot of people listening through the podcast, we want to start to expose by doing this series on Twitch every Thursday, three p.m. Eastern. We want to start to expose some people that maybe aren't aware of what church is and the influence that Twitch can have. We want to start to bring some awareness to that and maybe even start to talk about how churches can utilize Twitch. And so, you know, at Chino Andy, Andy Mage is on here now, and he's the resourcing director for Digital Church Network. I don't know that I've said that publicly on the podcast before. And so it's great to have him there. You go, Bubba. Welcome. Yeah, yeah. And so we're gonna get into Bubba for a second in a second because I really want to get into Love Thy Nerd and what's involved with that. Chino Andy, yeah, thirty seconds, one minute. Like, what's the tech that's involved with this? Well, how do we, how is this happening right now? What are we actually doing?

Back in the nineteen eighties, a guy named Al Gore invented the internet. And we have, no, I deserved that. I deserve that. Thank you. Um, so Twitch is this amazing platform that actually started as something called Justin TV. It was a live streaming platform that was ubiquitous with a lot of sports personalities. And Justin TV ended up kind of getting into some illicit things, and Twitch actually bought them out. And Twitch immediately started focusing on gamers. And Twitch is primarily where gamers hang out. It was almost all Let's Plays, so people trying to grasp the idea of watching other people play video games was this monumental thing. It has become kind of a zeitgeist in culture now. But Twitch has actually evolved over the last probably, I don't know, four or five years, Bubba, into becoming more of a just chatting sort of live stream. Let's set a camera up. Let's talk to a chat. And let's put some fancy lights and do weird things. Let's throw pies at people. And now we have Twitch. And so we have this weird clash of a fully formed gamer culture and now kind of this other culture that are mashing and turning into this mutated form of awesome.

Yeah, I think as it becomes more accessible, it grows. And when you're starting out, you had people that were literally just pointing camcorders at, you know, TVs and stuff like that. And now we have everything, overlays and all sorts of good stuff. So it's gnarly.

Yeah, yeah. So, um, Flat Cap actually called it out. Evidently you have to have a high level intelligence to be on Twitch to be a Twitcher because I have no idea what zeitgeist means. Like, that is a whole other world right now for me. I, you gotta Google things as people are saying at a much higher realm. So the Twitch way is you have two screens going plus your camera going. And so on this screen I've got my live thing, but then on this screen I have Google because things happen and I need to immediately make sure I know what's going on.

Yes, I can see that. Yes.

I want to tell my one Twitch story publicly right now, and then Bubba, I want to get into this. We're going to go to town. I have one quick story for me personally. This is back just a couple years ago. I was, um, I was checking out, you know, Mark. I was helping Mark launch Lux through Stadia. I'm trying to learn some of this stuff. And so I just jumped on Twitch and started following somebody. And so I jumped on, and this is back when, um, I don't remember what it's called, but it was like the GameStop there with the stock thing that was happening years ago.

Yeah.

So it was all in the middle of that. And so I like all these gamer guys were geeking out on Twitch because they were making all this money and talking about all making all this noise about it. And, uh, I switched over to this girl. And, uh, and so I started watching this girl. And I mean, she was cute. She was twenty something. And, uh, and so she starts, you know, talking. And evidently she had just finished a surgery, which I thought was weird. Um, and then, and then I found out she was, I just recently had a boob job, which I thought was weird that she was talking about that on Twitch. And then she started talking about her fans and followers. Oh, and that's when I discovered that I've been watching a porn star for the past, me up. Yeah, Mark will back me up. Sorry, I literally texted Mark and confessed, dude, I've just been watching it before me in this moment. I'm literally been watching porn star while I'm working. Like, I need to confess it to somebody. Probably tell my wife at some point. But you're the guy right now.

I would say that's a tale as old as time, but I just don't think that it is, man. Uh, but what it is is like when you launch on any social media platform period, there is like a formula that it's trying to feed you. And be like, hey, you're a man. This is the bracket you've been into. Here's the first swath of things that I'm going to give you. And then you have to train the algorithm. Al Gore's rhythm, as Sheena was talking about. You gotta train that thing to give you what you actually want to see. But that is that starting point is actually pretty common.

I will say I tweeted this out today. I did beat Tick Tock though. Tick Tock, when I first started Tick Tock, this was a, what, two years ago? When it became huge, three years ago? And I'm on, I, you know, I am a red-butted American. I like watching Tick Tock. But I like watching Tick Tock for two things. I like watching it for food and I like watching it for dogs. And then I'll throw sports in there occasionally too.

Well, okay, I recorded the Trinity exactly. Dogs, food, sports. Um, I have got to the point where, and I recorded this and I posted this, three out of every four of my Tick Tocks are dogs now. I win. Like, I won. And then the other one is an ad.

Yeah.

So like, I won. I think I beat the final boss. But the ad, the ad, Andy, because I saw that, I saw that the ad was Kevin Bacon. It was Kevin Bacon. I know.

So I think you got three dogs and bacon. Like, that is that's the best you can have, guys. I think I need to just go throw my phone out a window now. You're retired. You're done. Hang it up. Life doesn't get better than three dogs and bacon. And I'm out.

Yeah, you're gonna retire once, come back with the bucks, retire again, and then we'll see. And then I'm gonna go throw my phone out a window. And then I'm gonna go to Miami, down by Jeff, and somebody's gonna sell the sand that I was kneeling on for seven hundred on eBay. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, go to ESPN.com. We can, uh, we all have to do that too. Once again, you guys, you guys Twitchers, you're at a much, much higher level than I am.

Hey, you know what? I'm hoping this translates to audio podcast world. Um, maybe not. We'll have to see. And somebody can tell me. Somebody in chat, tell me what happened with kneeling at the sand in the beach. I'm curious. Um, so many things. But hey, you know what? Let's get into this and let's start to unpack the show here. So as we're diving into gamer culture, I'm guessing nerd culture kind of follows alongside with that. I almost want to ask Bubba, Stalkup here, the first question with Love Thy Nerd. Actually, Bubba, before I get into the first question, uh, which is what is nerd culture, uh, why don't you just set up a little bit? Tell us a little bit about who you are. Tell us about what you're doing with Love Thy Nerd.

Yeah, so, um, as previously mentioned, my name is Bubba Stalkup. I'm the CEO, president, and founder of Love Thy Nerd, which is an organization that has a really easy to remember mission statement. We exist to be the love of Jesus to nerds in her culture. And we do that by being an example of and also training other people on how to better love and serve their nerdy neighbors. And we do it a variety of ways. Easiest way to break it down is in three separate categories. We have intentional community, which is start off as Facebook and then migrated into Discord, where we believe true relationship happens online. Discord is just set up to do that. If you don't have Discord, that's a really good place to start. I got a couple of great places that I could point to that doesn't begin and end with the Love Thy Nerd Discord. So we've got intentional community. Um, that's not just online, but also in real life whenever we're hanging out doing game nights and stuff like that. I want to be intentional about the time that we spend together. We also have relational outreach, which is us

Going to places, whether that's digitally online playing games with people in spaces like say Destiny 2, World of Warcraft, stuff like that, or it's us going to what we call nerd culture events, which are conventions, Gen Con, PAX Unplugged, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60 thousand of your closest friends, that kind of a deal. We go and hang out and love people well inside of booths where we will activate missionaries. We create actual mission opportunities for people who don't want to go to Nicaragua and hang a door or swing a hammer. They'd be more comfortable. Not that that's the blend all, but sometimes effective ministry does kind of start in a comfortable space. And so we give them a space where they're gifted and that they like, they have a shared affinity with people to go and serve. And we have those moments at nerd culture events. So that's our relational outreach.

Then we also have thoughtful content, which is our website. We've got blogs on there. We've got resources, which are just really a compilation of blogs, articles, um, features. We have podcasts, YouTube shows, Twitches, all sorts of stuff. Like, anything that you could possibly think of, there's probably something on there about that. And so those are the three major things that we do in order to better love and serve our nerdy neighbors and to help train other people how to do that as well.

Okay, so let's back up even to that. By the way, I totally want to dig into like nerd missionaries and what's involved with that. Um, so much goodness right all in that. But what's a nerd? I mean, like, I've got 89 bobbleheads behind me, mostly Star Wars, Marvel themes. If am I a nerd?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, like, yes, nerds. Yeah, I mean, like, nerd and geek, they do have different meanings, but they're kind of interchangeable at some point. When we actually started, we were talking about some of those things. It's like, oh, you know, are we geeks? Are we nerds? Are we this and that? It's like, man, we're just trying to kind of umbrella this thing. And the idea is that like, when you really nerd out about something, it's like, what is the thing that when you start talking about it, other people start zoning out? Like, that's the thing that you're actually a nerd about. It really is, right? Like, some of the biggest nerds I've ever met in my entire life are like sports statisticians. Um, you know, people that play Fantasy Football. They are nothing dirtier in the world than Fantasy Football. And so like, we just try to help people understand like, look, man, it's you. You are one. Um, we're not trying to talk about people that just like Pokémon. We're not trying to talk about people that just collect comic books. It's everybody's nerdy in some way, shape, or form. You were talking about at the top of it here that you're not a gamer, but you might be. It's like, that's kind of where people are. I'm not a nerd, but man, I really like those Marvel movies. I'm like, nerd, you're a big nerd, you know? Like, Israel, Fantasy Football is D&D for jocks.

Caffeine gets it. Absolutely gets it. Yes, absolutely. I want to say something, Caffeine. I'm listen, we through the podcast, I've done 250 episodes, and every once in a while I'll get a quote that's like so good I say it's tattoo worthy. That right there is tattoo worthy. I would actually consider tattooing that and your name somewhere on my body. So thank you.

Well, hey, correctly, like he did. Yeah, that made my day right there. Um, so I mean, this is interesting because you're talking sports, and I never would have said sports is a nerd. But this idea, the thing that you're talking about, that normally people at some point want to zone out about, but you're still going about it, this is a very broad realm. Like, do you have a persona? Is not everyone at some point a nerd? I mean, by my wife, I would not consider a nerd, but at some point she keeps talking about like educational stuff because she's a school teacher, and I'm doing a confession hour here a little bit publicly on Twitch. Like, sometimes I want to zone out. So does that mean that she's a nerd? Like, are we not all of us nerds?

Yeah, I think that at some point you kind of gotta, you gotta draw a line somewhere, right? Because you could say that people nerd out about all kinds of things, but it, you have to be somewhat clear about it. That it's like, well, but not everybody is a nerd because in a certain spectrum you're talking about a thing, right? We had to, we had to say that for our community because people are like, I'm a card nerd, I'm a food nerd, I'm a listener, and I'm like, oh, okay, that's our fault. We did that, right? With how we broadened the term. But what we're really trying to focus on is pop culture, video games, comic books, and like movies, like tabletop experiences as well, like that kind of realm of nerd people that will go to a convention and dress up like a thing, right? Which again, what an interesting juxtaposition that is when you hold it up against football fans who will always dress up like a thing when they go when they go to the show, right? Um, so like, we're not just trying to be like, we're gonna wedge you into nerd. It's just, I want you to understand at the end of the day, we're not really all that dissimilar.

Interesting. So like, yesterday I was actually, I was wearing a Love Thy Nerd t-shirt, um, and it was that one that listed like a whole bunch of terms. I don't think I actually know one of them. I know was cosplay and, uh, and you know, games and things like that. But you're, when you're, so what's like your, let me just ask, what's your target audience? What's your persona? Like, who's who's the type of person, maybe, um, demographically, like, who are you trying to reach?

Interesting question. Um, we, the three of us had an opportunity to do a thing called the Megazord Summit, and while we were there in last October, October 2022, depending on when you're actually listening to this, but what we ended up doing was defining R1, which at that point almost five years into our ministry, we hadn't actually done other than to say we're just here to reach nerds. We'd never stopped and said, who is that? Who is that person? Who are those people? And what we actually came up with was the average age of a gamer is somewhere in the neighborhood of 36. It's like, it's a sliding statistic, right? But the reason that is the statistic is because in 1986, a very small man named Mario, Mario, landed on U.S. shores. He has a brother. Some of us, yeah, he did. Yeah, I think that's his name. Yeah, Fluffy. Um, some of us haven't known a life without him. And so it makes sense that that would kind of be, kind of a, you know, a median line. There are people older than us and there are people younger than us because our parents had to buy us things and our kids are going to follow suit, right? But as it stands, that's kind of what we shoot for. We shoot for people who are kind of around our age because that's a thing that we know and we understand, and we want to try and stay in our lane and be effective. Now, there are people out there that are trying to reach an older generation and people out there that are trying to reach a younger generation. We're trying to hit the middle point and train people on how to better love nerds from this spot so that they can love the people around them as well.

So what type of people, organizations, like, when you say you're trying to train people to love nerds, um, who are you trying to train? Like, what, what is, what's your, your ministry actually looking like? Who are you working with?

So we're working with a couple of different organizations out there. Um, we talked about, you know, the Megazord, and that's just an affectionate name that we came up with that works. But really, what it is, is we're working, you know, with, uh, you know, Digital Church Network on how to create a multiplication process that does this thing that I'm talking about. And so I'm kind of in charge of an area that's looking at other organizations, how do we reach out to them? Or when they reach out to us, how do we resource them best so that they can just affect the people in their vicinity? And so, um, I've worked with, um, Campus Crusade for Christ, now known as Crew, and varying versions of that because they're a different thing no matter where you look. Uh, we've worked with FCA. We've worked with an organization out of California called Urban Youth Workers Institute. Um, really cool. During the pandemic, we developed a resource with them, um, that we called 3D, developing digital disciples, because everybody moved off of all of that in-person stuff and had to go online, you know, per our U.S. government. And so how do you continue to be a church and love people well? We walked them through some stuff and helped them develop some curriculum, and we've got reaches all over the world, um, with organizations that do have names and organizations that don't, from really small two-people organizations to, you know, things as big as, you know, Crew.

Awesome. That's that's interesting. What I totally, when you mentioned Digital Church Network, I wasn't looking for the selfish plug. I was actually just curious who like who's interested in this in this space, and it's it's interesting. Um, you know, I sent an email out about this stream, you know, like I I think I said earlier to my to my database, to my list, to start to invite some people in, and, uh, I mean, it was it was a moderately opened email. I knew when with a gaming title like I wasn't gonna get all of my, uh, people like I would normally do. The open rates would be a little lower. Um, but it was interesting. I I got some some feedback from, uh, uh, International Mission Board, uh, which I was selling. Yeah, it was like, hey, we're, what are you, what are you working on? I want to catch up with you. I was like, I didn't even know the International Commission Board was getting my email. That's kind of an interesting thing. So, um, there is there is a chance that the IMB has actually heard of Love Thy Nerd and what we're doing. Um, I'm I'm I'm a part of a church that is in the Southern Baptist Convention here in Texas, and, um, there are people that have already been talking about the things that we do. We're doing, not just because we're doing it, because there are actually other people in the space. Um, there's a streamer out there. His name is Sancho Panda, and he is like, he's dude, holds a PhD. He is a speedrunner in games, and he works, you know, with Texas Baptist as part of the, um, the Christian Life Coalition, and that's his day job. And he goes and he speaks and he does all these things, and then at night he goes and he speed runs games. Like, there's a thing called, um, Awesome Games Done Quick, which is a collection of speedrunners, which are people that play games as fast as they can, sometimes breaking it on purpose, sometimes just doing an actual clean run. And he's been a part of that. That was had nothing to do with he does for his day job, but it's like, it's not just these people and these people that do things. It's all of us are kind of in the same realm because we have this shared affinity. Some of us, yeah.

So a PhD with that games? Like, you're my whole world view is getting shattered right now. Yeah, that's this is this is great. So you mentioned, um, you mentioned 3D's. It's one of those days where it's discipleship. Um, talk to me a little bit like, what what does discipleship look like for Love Thy Nerd? What what does discipleship look like in in gaming culture? What are some things that you've seen or maybe you're doing?

Yeah, man, what a great question. Um, discipleship in and of itself is multiplication. And so just as a short background, I I come from church, the church world. I didn't just attend church. I was a part of church staff for over 12 years at various churches in different capacities, and I spent five and a half of that as a youth pastor. And so, um, I've I've seen, I've seen a lot of things. Um, and I've I've seen discipleship done right and I've seen discipleship done wrong. And I think

When it's done poorly, it's programming. We have a thing that exists at this time. When it's done correctly, it's life. We do life together. We're going to know things about people. We're going to be intentional with the time that we have and relational with the things that we actually do with that time.

And so we take that because of our past experience, the staff here at Love Thy Nerd, we take that and allow that to inform what we do at Love Thy Nerd. And so we have a very organic platform on Discord where people can come together and talk about things and start stuff. But for people that want to go deeper, we first institute what I've coined as passive discipleship. That if you decide to hang out with me for any length of time, past the little bit of time where we're playing a game or whatever, you are going to see how I can best interpret how Jesus would or would not act in any given situation. I can't turn that off. Like, I'm not going to turn it off. And so like, that's what you're going to experience. Is this passive discipleship.

Active discipleship, we know that that is you're going to follow behind your Rabbi so closely that his dust kicks up on the hem of your garment. Like, that kind of stuff. And so for the people that want to move from A to B, that's where we have kind of those missions outreach opportunities. That's the first actual legitimate step that people can take outside of volunteering and doing stuff like that.

But when you come on a mission trip with us, which that's exactly what it is, it's a mission trip. When you come with us, we teach you and train you the best possible way to be effective in the space where we're going to send you. That doesn't mean it's a blanket statement. It's going to work everywhere. It's not a magic bullet or anything like that. But we're going to train you on the effective ways to reach people inside of nerd culture and almost specifically in the place where we're going to send you.

Maybe you're an introvert. Here's how to talk to people. Here's the secret sauce of how to get people to open up. I am not an introvert. Sometimes I forget that you have to train people how to do stuff like have a conversation. But rather than shaming them for not being this thing and fitting this model, we train them on how to do that.

Hey, you're not going to know what to ask. Here are four things that you can ask people to get them talking about their favorite subject, which is themselves. So that's a small part of what we do. And then we tell them, hey, people are going to ask you. They're going to understand that you're a Christian at some point. They're going to understand this thing. And then they're going to have a whole bunch of questions for you.

The biggest thing that we tell people is do not pretend like you know everything. You're not God's gift to mankind or even the people you're talking to. You're there to be a vessel. And if you don't have the answer, shut your mouth. Just shut it so fast and so hard. Don't even try to come up with an answer. The best thing you can say to somebody is, I don't know. That's a great question. I'd love to take time to find that out with you.

Andy, yeah, Bubba, I'm a huge fan of LTN obviously with Megazord and all that. But listening to your guys' podcasts, doing kind of all the content nerd stuff, there's that nerd term again, sorry. But have you noticed a shift ever since really the pandemic, but even before then up till now, in receptivity when talking about Jesus during these events? Like, is it, are people more apt to listen? Are they less apt to listen? Are we kind of in the proverbial Mars Hill thing? Are we past Mars Hill? What's the feeling like?

Yeah, so I think anywhere you go, and I'm assuming the audience that's listening to this podcast, right, we live in a post-Christian society. And almost regardless of what your interpretation of that phrase actually is, it doesn't probably mean what you think that it means. Because the fact of the matter is that every single person is a different person. They just are. People, I say this all the time. People are a sum of the moments that have led up to this moment. They're not this moment in a vacuum. Just because they're giving you lip or they're super receptive, it doesn't mean that that's how they're going to be all the time. And even if you have that interaction with somebody, you're not going to have it with another person.

And so I think that, well, I don't think, this has been my experience, is that the lockdown, the pandemic in general, like it made people stir crazy. It absolutely did. So they were just flat out more receptive to being around people when they finally could. Some people just, you know, being able to do the things that they wanted to do, whatever those things were. And other people, so long as they fit safe in the environment. And so we tend to lean towards the latter and not the former when we're trying to be around people and care for people. And so we want people to feel as comfortable as they possibly can because we know that people have all these preconceived notions about Jesus and who he is. At movies, TV shows, videos, podcasts, music, anything that is an outside source, you put on top of that their personal experience, their first or second-hand experience of what Jesus and the church are. We don't discredit any of that. We take all that into account.

And so if we're talking about how receptive people actually are to hearing the gospel, we take this approach. I told you one of our things was relational outreach. It is still outreach, one hundred percent, but it's predicated on relationship because we truly believe that in order to share that heavy truth, which the truth is that Jesus loves you, he died for you and wants to spend the rest of eternity with you in a place that you could never imagine, right? Like, that's, he has died to reconcile you to him and his father. That is what the truth is. In order to share that with people, as good news as that is, it's still difficult. And people are not receptive to it because so many Christians have treated people as projects.

At LTN, one of our core values is that people are people. They are not projects. And so if my end goal is just to make sure that Sally Sue over here knows Jesus by the end of our conversation, like that's not fair. If I brought my wife into a conversation I only had ten minutes with somebody, I could not make that person know my wife in ten minutes. But we bring Jesus into it, we want that to be as quick as the process is. And so what we do at Love Thy Nerd, and you know, to answer your question with like the receptiveness, I think this is why our conversion rate with the relationship is so high, is that we take the time to get to know people. We don't enter into things with a short-term mission mindset. We may only be there for three or four days at a convention or only have an hour or two with you playing a game, but we're in it for the long haul. We always are going to push people towards our Discord, not so they pump the numbers, but so that we have them there when they have a question or, you know, we want to talk to them because that's what's going to happen.

And so that relational outreach aspect of what we do, that's one of the things that we've seen that's been stupid effective because people, we know this, people long to know and to be known, right? They're not going to care about the things that you have to say until they know that you care about them. Like, all these cliche things that we say, it's like, man, the things that we say for a reason. But like, are we actually going to do those things? And so the receptiveness is actually tied so very closely to how you view them as a human person.

I'm so confused right now. Don't you know, like, to really do relational discipleship, you've got to breathe the same air molecules. I don't understand. You're doing what with through video? Like, this is so, no, it doesn't, it doesn't work. Didn't anyone ever tell you it doesn't work this way? I just, I don't, I don't get it. Like, this is, oh, I mean, sure, you're doing it. That's cool. You just got to get them connected to a church after the fact. But the rest of this stuff, this is garbage. I don't, I can't believe nobody ever told you that if you don't know me, um, that was the most facetious, sarcastic. It smells like irony in here. So the people watching on Twitch, like, but, but, but, no, I'm joking. Sorry, it's my fault.

You came from a physical church environment, Bubba. You mentioned that you mentioned that earlier. Stop limiting God. Ukulele, very ukulele. That is, it's funny. Oh my gosh, I'm trying to think of the Leonard tweet quote. He told me recently on that. Mm, Keys, you've been good too on chat. I met a guy face to face today for the first time who watches streams online, connecting in Discord. The in-person meeting is great, but we already had a relationship through streams and Discord.

You see, this is the thing. And I'll get to the question, Bob, in a second. Like, oh, you're fine. There is a type of person. I don't know if it's generational, if it's age-based, if it's, you know, more biased towards gaming and digital technology, if it's a digital native versus a Luddite, like, I don't know what the characteristics are. But in 2023, there are people that get it. And in 2023, there are clearly people that don't get it.

Amen. And it's been fascinating for me, you know, there's a season in my life where I tried to convince everybody that this digital thing would work. And that, you know, what happens? Yeah, I only convince a very small percentage. And everybody else, you're just wasting your time on. Yep. And I stopped. I stopped fighting those battles a couple years in. COVID, I ramped up 2020 fighting those battles. And 2021 is like, yeah, it's more fun just to do it. Just be being right, you know, I would tell people, it's like, you know, our battlefield and discipleship, and we're going to show you the results with what we're doing. You can keep talking. It's cool. I'm gonna be over here like helping, going with the goers, and actually doing something, which I love, Bubba. I love what I'm hearing. This is great. Tell me, how did you pivot away from what was your physical church kind of involvement? Were you on staff? How did you pivot away towards that? Are you still involved in that? What do they think with some of the stuff you're doing with Love Thy Nerd? Like, tell me, because that's the hard shift. I would love to hear some background on that from you.

Yeah, so back in 2012, we, I was serving as a youth pastor in Odessa, Texas. And I actually got fired from that position. And it's one of those deals where I'm like, I still don't know. I don't know at all what the reason behind that firing was because it was highly political and all sorts of stuff. Anybody who's been in the church world for any amount of time can maybe speak a little bit to that. It is a more common story than it is uncommon.

And so what ended up happening was we moved out here to Central Texas. And I got a job at a church that has one of the most staunch names that I've ever heard in any church world. And that's First Baptist Church. This First Baptist Church. And so like, okay, yeah, I mean, yeah, right there, you know, it's like. And so but I got a job as their first ever full-time technology director. And so I was kind of pivoting back into a passion of mine, which was tech. And the cool thing about it was that they'd never had anybody. The terrifying thing is that they never had anybody. And so if everything that happened was either revolutionary or basically black magic.

And so we kind of worked from there. And I kind of I'd come out of full-time active ministry. And if you're on staff...

As a tech director or person or whatever, man, I hope that things are going well for you. For me, it was really difficult to actually lead in a ministerial position because you're so focused on the tech and making things run properly, making sure that the lights, the sound, and the video and all sorts of stuff are running while also still moving in a direction that is pushing the church forward and not holding it back. And so kind of a lot of pressure and the hours were grueling, absolutely grueling. People think I'm joking when I say this, but there are multiple nights where I slept in my office and not because I was fighting with my wife, like, you know, it was just things that needed to get done that there were not enough hours in the day to do them. And so you know, you come out of that and not being able to like truly minister and stretch these legs and you know, share with people and all sorts of stuff. And so I found myself involved in an organization called Game Church. I was actually just looking for, hey, God's calling me to start something. What would I call it? A Google Game Church. Boom, there it was. They had already parked the domain and put up a website and all sorts of stuff. And so I just got involved with them over time, started doing community management with them, going on, you know, it didn't have this name at that time, but nerd culture mission trips. You know, and going to conventions and all sorts of stuff. Went to some of the biggest ones. We went to E3. That's starting to die down now, but we did that twice. It was really cool. Been all over the world like doing stuff, right? It's crazy.

And I told my church I was like, look, man, I'm finding my ministerial time here and not here at church. What are we gonna do about that? And so I finally came to a point in October of 2019 when we started really having conversations and pushing forward the stuff. And I was offered a full-time pastorate at a church plant that we were going to be doing. And the only caveat was that I would need to leave LTN and would I be willing to do that? And it wasn't malicious. Like, they were giving me basically the exact thing that I was asking for. And I said no. I could probably be convinced to do less, to you know, to not do more, but I'll never do less, right? Like, I'm not quitting. This is the thing that has carried me and I really do feel like God is calling me in this. And so we started a plan and my church supported me 100 percent. They paid my salary for a year so that I had a ramp in order to go. What I didn't know is that that ramp was gonna be super flat and that that ramp was gonna be 2020 and a pandemic and all sorts of stuff. But it didn't change the timeline. And my church has been crazy supportive ever since then, to the tune of in November of 2023 this year, they are hosting. They're the host space for our Nerd Culture Ministry Summit that we're putting on. Us in Lux Digital and a bunch of other places are going to be kind of coming together to do this to reach out to ministry leaders and organizational leaders, whether they're from municipalities or Boys and Girls Club of America, YMCA, churches, all sorts of stuff. Anybody that wants to better reach the nerds in their space. That's going to be the hub for this like three-day intensive where we train people on how to do that better. And my church was like, we would love to do that. Please sign us up. You can have the whole building. They gave us the whole building for the week, which is nuts. So cool.

I totally wanna like, by the way, your story of my story is not that different. And so I actually would love to maybe sit down over coffee or virtual coffee and unpack that because that was sure, that was beautiful. But the idea of really what I want to get into because you're doing this, the summit, the event, and the idea is physical churches impacting and reaching their culture. So I mean, podcast, you're going to have a lot of physical churches that are trying to figure out how to impact digital. So talk to them a little bit here. What does that look like? How can they take steps, even baby steps, to start to maybe engage in that nerd culture better?

Oh man, so my wife shared something with me the other day. And I am a plagiarist at heart. Like, what good Christian isn't, right? We didn't write any of this stuff. And so the thing that she told me the other day was the only way to get through it is to do it. And I don't know who said it before her, so she's just gonna get credit. Stalk up, bam. And so I'm a white knuckler as it is, and so I project that on to other people. And so I tell them all the time that you know, if you want to get it, get down into it like a nerdy quote. Here is a Master Yoda from Star Wars: do or do not, there is no try. Like, if you're looking at this as just a thing that you're going to kind of test out, I would just say, hey, do. Do you do that with your men's ministry? Do you do that with your children's ministry or your youth ministry? Is it a test to see if this is something will stick? And it's not because I can tell you for sure and for certain that these people do need that.

So I would say start where you can. Some of the easiest things that you can do is just to source those people, to find them, right? And this is it. This is you guys are getting candy in the lobby right now, okay? This is everything I'm saying is usually behind some sort of paywall. I do like candy. And so here's the thing that I tell pastors all the time: just add one nerdy quote to pick your genre. I don't care what it is. Add one nerdy quote or reference to your sermon, even if you don't know what it means. Like, ask somebody who does what would be a good thing. Maybe you know, let them listen to your sermon a little bit and kind of help you add it in where it would fit the best. And then just see how many of those people come up to you and don't tell you how great you did, Pastor, and don't want to you know, shake your hand and just be friendly to you, but go, I didn't, I had no idea that you like Star Wars. What? How did? When did that happen? Those people will start to come out because they'll feel comfortable. They'll see that representation of the thing that they are and they like to do. Like, that's an easy way to just kind of source people. And what it does is it shows them that you're, even though you don't understand it, you're comfortable with it. Like, Jeff, you've said a thousand times, man, you don't know anything about Twitch, but here you are on Twitch, like just stepping out and doing the thing. You know, Mage Above Me, Andy, here bringing people alongside of you that do know how to do that. That's actually what we're trying to do at the Nerd Culture Ministry Summit. Like, we're giving away, this is man, I haven't told anybody this yet except for our inner people. We're giving away one free ticket, all in thing that we're doing per organization that signs up so that you can bring somebody who speaks the language and understands it, can help you interpret it and carry the vision back to your organization. So it's not just we're trying to get people that come back and go, oh, I don't know something about a Pretendo, you know, some Mario, Mario, like be able to carry the vision back and actually implement some of the steps.

You know, I didn't put that together until you said it. My pastor, I attend a physical church here in Miami. It's a church plant. It's been open about a year, year and a half. The meeting movie theater. It's called Reality. Reality Church Miami, which has nothing to do with virtual reality. And my involvement there, I didn't know if Reality was over. No, no, no, no, it's nothing to do with that. I run their tech. I like, you know, AVL stuff, but that's how you've been doing that for decades. Well, my pastor Carlos is the biggest nerd when it comes to Lord of the Rings. Like three sermons out of four, he's gonna pull a quote or a reference from the movies. Like it's almost when he does it so much at this point, like he gets a laugh from the room because once again he pulled something from it. And that makes him so approachable, you know?

It's interesting. I've worked for another pastor that actually, like in his sermon, I'm not going to tell you what church, what passwords it's relevant for this, but like he actually publicly ridiculed Yoda and was like, this is the stupidest thing, literally like from the stage, is the stupidest thing I've ever seen in my life, man. And I'm not saying who. I really, I don't, I don't wanna, I don't want to do that. But what that did is that caused from me on staff, I'm like, are you kidding me right now? Like, that's half of my life and I actually, you know, knew the guy and had a relationship with them. Some of the people that were passionate about some of this stuff hearing him rip it negatively divided that. And so it's so true trying to engage that culture, speak to it or ask about it, learn about it, position yourself in a place of humility. You know, I use the term humble disruptor and we spend a lot of time on that in the past, but it's like, hey, you know what, do some radical stuff, but realize that you need to be humble while doing it and leading in this situation. And even for me saying, hey, publicly I don't know this stuff and I need to know it, I need to understand it, I need people to come alongside me with that. And Mark and Bubba and Andy and Megazord and so many others are just opening my eyes to what's already been happening in that space. And so now I don't have to tell stories about what could be, what discipleship could look like. I can tell stories of what Love Thy Nerd is doing and pointing to what they've already done, which by the way is multiple generations and things that are happening in growth and learnings and like this is not a fly-by-night approach, you know? It's to this point now when I talk about digital discipleship and digital church, it's not an experiment. Like, we are past the experiment stage. Yeah, we can try different things, but is this going to work? Yes, we're seeing the results of that and starting to understand that this is so good.

Hey, Bubba, Love Thy Nerd. So you're doing a conference in the fall. Like, how do people sign up? How do people get connected? How do people help? Like, give me the spiel. If somebody wants to get connected into this, how do they do that?

So the easiest thing to do right now is to follow Love Thy Nerd on all social media. We're in the process and at the end of February we'll have website for NCMS and we'll have social media and all that good stuff. We're just outside of our window for having that stuff ready to go right now. But if you follow at Love Thy Nerd on any major platform, we will not be able to shut up about it when we have information. I can guarantee you that. And so it's important for me to let people know kind of not just how you can do it but kind of what its main focus is. So NCMS as a summit, as a conference, whatever you want to call it, it doesn't matter, right? As an event, what it is designed to do is it's designed to create local ministry networks, okay? So we're going to be like heavy hitting the marketing within 300 miles of where I am, give or take, right? So from where I am, that means Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and you know, even kind of out there towards you know, the west Texas area. Now, everybody's invited, right? But the core, you know, thing that we're actually trying to accomplish is to create networks both.

In cities and in regions where people can actually be like, "Hey, I'm also doing that. Oh, I remember this person from here was also interested." They've got a network and, you know, list of contacts so that they're not doing things alone. They can find people to come alongside of them. And it doesn't have to be Love Thy Nerd. It just doesn't. If they would like for it to be, it can be. But we want to put people that are close to them that are doing the same thing, that have similar goals, create that network so they can do ministry together.

And then in 2024, Lord willing and the creek don't rise, man, if it goes well in 2023, we will move NCMS out of Texas and into another region, and then 2025 into another region. Just replicate, replicate, replicate. So anybody from across the world that is willing is welcome to come and fly in. But we're thinking, man, how can we make it accessible to people that can just drive? How can we create those moments for them?

Yeah, the Church Digital Network. We want to be a part of this. So we will talk through what that looks like, and there's definite opportunities to bring people in, to reproduce. I love your idea of, "Hey, let's reproduce this beyond." Yeah, anytime it's the idea of not growing something to be massive but multiplying to allow more contextualization and easy access, like what you're talking about, is such a good strategy in 2023 and beyond. So that is solid.

Hey, I want to dig in on something. You said as a quick throwaway, I agree with you. It was probably the most controversial thing that's been said today. "United States is post-Christian." Many people would disagree passionately. Many people would ardently fight that. It is. There's lots of stats, there's lots of opinions. You're like, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." We're definitely—I mean, we're—I'm not saying what. It's without argument. We're definitely trending.

Yeah, this is all completely like, uh, nothing's subjective. It's all subjective. Yeah, I'm curious why. What's your take? Like, what's your why behind that? I agree with you, but I was curious because that's a pretty strong statement.

Statistics. I mean, that's kind of the leading thing. Um, anybody who does that—if you look at, like, you know, the Barna Group and stuff like that, they're the ones that are kind of going out there and doing the sourcing. I haven't talked to nearly as many people as they have. Like, right, I know the people that I know, and I know the people that I get to spend time with and experience, and inside of nerd culture, I can almost 100 percent tell you that we are post-Christian. But we're in a post-Christian timeframe. I'm not even going to talk about geographically where we are, but just in time, it's very post-Christian.

And so you think about like, it used to be the expectation that people go to church Sunday, you go to church. It's Wednesday, go to Bible study. It's Friday, you go to prayer group, whatever it is. Like, that was the expectation. You can just look in schools, right? It doesn't have to be just even in their culture. Like, schools—they used to keep those times available for students because they were going to be in church. "Hey, we don't have Wednesday night activities because that's church night." Now we're starting to kind of move more into, you know, a secular way of thinking. And you know, there's a lot that can be talked about on that, and I'm more than willing to talk through things with people about that. But it's not necessarily—I don't think it's a bad thing per se, because I'm not a huge proponent of a papal state or national religion of Christianity.

I think that, and I talked about this a little bit, you know, last night when I was speaking at Lux, that if we're going to be true worshipers of God, that means that we have to sacrifice. And we're called to worship in spirit and truth. And worshiping in spirit means that we become that living sacrifice, that we die daily to the things that we want, the desires that we have, and everything that we knew before is gone. You know, we leave away. We leave those thoughts, those patterns, everything. I don't condemn people that don't subscribe to my belief system. And I think that that's something that pushes us forward is that rather than me standing out on a corner and yelling at somebody—or real talk, standing out in front of a convention and telling all the people going inside that they're going to hell—instead of doing that, we meet them, hear their stories, love them well, and encourage them to be better than they are, which is something that every single person on the planet should be doing. Nobody is done cooking. Not you, not me, not anybody. Like, we're a constant thing that is moving forward. And if we think that we can't change, then we're done. It's like sharks, man. Like, if you're not moving, you're dead.

And so that's kind of what I think of when I think of a post-Christian society is that it doesn't really have anything to do with what I think. It is all based on what I have experienced. And even inside of the church, I would say that we're feeling the effects of a post-Christian society in that some of the decisions that we have been making as a body are just different than what would have been made fifty years ago. Yeah, and that's not just one particular topic that I'm sure a lot of people are thinking about. It is across the board in some places. And so, yeah.

Yeah, and it's almost recognizing that there's been a post-Christian shift allows for more creativity, allows for more options. It allows us to recognize, "Hey, the model we've been running doesn't work. Maybe we should be doing something different." You know, it's interesting. I saw Black Cap, you know, say bless them. Quite literally, the book that I wrote—well, the book that Dr. John and I wrote—well, the book that Dave Ferguson wrote, we just stole all this stuff—but, you know, sharingjesusonline.com about how to do something different, a Love Thy Nerd, how to do something different. And recognizing that if we are true, if we are truly in a post-Christian—I want to get into the sociology of that. Recognizing like, whatever we've done for the past twenty-five years has lost us twenty-five percent of active church attenders. So what we're doing is not working. And recognizing, "Hey, maybe we should do something different." Leaning into that, you know, and I'll hear—I'll hear the church well, "It's working for us still." And it's like, "Okay, you may be the one church in America that's still having success. Good for you. Hopefully it stays that way for the next twelve months." But the fact is that more and more of it's going away.

You know what I do believe, Bubba? Um, I think that churches are going to get bigger. I think churches are going to get smaller. I think the Life Churches—I was actually Christ Fellowship West Palm Beach is like twenty thousand. They got fifteen campuses. Like churches like that will continue to thrive. But I think there's a completely different model that's going to be much more relational, much more small, coming out of this, much more digital, much more gaming, much more contextualized. You're going to see a lot more smaller pockets operate that are multiplying out instead of growing.

It was funny. I was actually listening to the podcast—Jay Crandall. I did a podcast with Jay Crane, that rantly from Saddleback. And he was talking about how big churches actually want to better understand how to be small, to be relational, which is entirely ironic because all the small churches want to grow as big as possible to be like that. Yes, sir. It's like nobody's understanding how to be who God's called them to be and operate in that space. And so some really—it'll be interesting in the future.

This has been an awesome time, man. Bubba, yeah. Bubba, why are you named Bubba? I want to know. This is—we're landing the plane. This is where we're gonna land. This is going to wrap up on. It's good because when I look at you, you don't look like a Bubba. Like, um, me, you know, six foot huge, six five. Like, you didn't seem to be a Bubba in physical space. Like, why are you Bubba? Bubba, what is it? What do you—what does he look like? Like a Tim? A Mark? Hey, my brother's name is Tim. There you go. I know, and I know a guy named Mark. This is crazy.

Um, why am I Bubba? Well, I guess it all depends on who you ask. And so if you ask the females in my family, it's because my sister could not say the name Michael. My name is Michael David Stalkup Jr. I have no problem with my given name. I just don't use it very often, right? But in that time that I've had this name, nobody has called me Mike. A few people have called me Michael. Nobody's ever called me Dave or Davey or Junior or anything like that. I've been Bubba, A1, since day one.

If you ask the males in my family, it's because I am a Junior, and my dad was Bubba, because they—my family came from Central Texas. Like, that's—I didn't know that, but that's where they came from. I was raised in—I was born in England as an Air Force kid, and then I was raised in, you know, Eastern New Mexico. So I didn't know a whole lot of Bubbas. I knew like two other Bubbas, period. You moved to Texas, and everybody and everything is named Bubba. I've met women named Bubba. I've—everybody calls their kids Bubba, their husband Bubba, their dogs, their cats, everything is Bubba. And so it's confusing. It was so confusing that I did not know that my name was Michael when I went to kindergarten. They were calling Laura, and she said that was crazy, man. I got somebody here that has my same last name, and my teacher leans in and goes, "Sweetie, that's you." Oh, okay. We got to do better, parents. We just have to. We just have to. Typical Mike.

Yeah, to teach kids their names. It's not hard. By the way, at LTN, uh, is now going to be calling him Mike. So just heads up. Good luck. People have said, "Hey, can I call you Michael?" You're willing to call me anything you want. Chances are I'm just not going to respond because I've gone a very long time without hearing that name.

Has your wife ever called you Mike, like in a fit of anger?

No, it's still Bubba. And that's hilarious.

Yeah, to other people it's not hilarious to me when it happens. But sweetie, get in here. Get angry at me. I want to laugh. That's what we're saying right now. Let's get that, Matt. Or let Matt make this happen.

Let's uh, let's get Mike at LTN.com. Let's get the email address. So so good.

Hey, listen, we're gonna land the plane. This has been—it's been an awesome time. Remember, Twitch family, Twitch people that are watching right now, thanks for jumping on here. Click the follow on this DCN channel. We're going to be doing this show interviews every week, three P.M. Eastern, right here at this channel, Twitch.tv slash Digital Church Network.

I'm actually looking at my calendar right now because I have no idea. Yeah, who's next week? Jonah? Oh, Jono? Yep. Next week we're digging into esports. Jono, uh, digging in and learning about what church, what Jesus, what discipleship, what opportunities exist maybe in that space. Super excited about the conversations that are happening there. Are twenty followers like—I don't know if that's good. We've had, you know, consistently ten to twelve on the stream for this. Did we just launch this thing? This is great. And so thank you for being on. Your podcasters, those of you that are listening, hey, you know what? If you're listening to Bubba on Thursday, three P.M. Eastern, right here on Twitch, we're gonna be doing it again. We're gonna be talking to Jono in real time. Bring questions. Let's hang out together. Thank you all for in the audience for jumping on. I hope I didn't screw this thing up too bad, but uh—

Looking forward to doing it again. And so for Andy, for Don't Call Him Bubba, Mike, uh, this is Jeff with Church Digital and Digital Church Network and a whole bunch of other fun stuff. Thanks for jumping on the podcast. Thank you for jumping on the stream. We'll see you next time. Show you have a good day.

Does somebody actually click in? How do we, how do we stop this thing? We're still going because that's absolutely hysterical for people to hear this. Uh, I'm gonna click finish and everyone's gonna leave the stream, right? See, Mother Goose gets it. Mother Goose 421.

We could fix this in post. The best thing ever. Yep. Stream for 30 more seconds. Yeah, my other Goose was actually my nickname in high school. Wait, what? Honestly, hold on. This is, this is the after the credits stinger. Like, this is the app. This is the post show. This is the post show party. Nobody knows this about my life that that's interacting.

So I was, I was a, I was second team All-State football, um, offensive line, defensive line. Um, but I was very, I was very pastoral as a football player. And so like I cared for people. Like, you know, it was funny to be honest. I actually in the Heinzmann, I hated football because I cussed like a sailor. Like, and it's what I hated about me. Like, it's impossible to play football and not cuss. I truly, truly believe that. Uh, and I'm sorry. I've apologized. They got many times for it. So anyway, but I was, I was, I was pastoral and caring but dropping f-bombs regularly. And so uh, the football team, um, like yeah, I, I was co-captained it, had whatever. And uh, this guy named Mike or to go, it was a linebacker, number 50.

Said, you know, one time I was like caring for somebody after they got like beat up, trying to pick him up, encourage him. He's like, "Mother, uh," he said, "Mother Goose, would you just shut up for once?" Hmm. Dude, Mother Goose for like two years. They're actually my, uh, somebody, somebody put in the yearbook, printed in my senior yearbook, "Mother Goose got his feathers ruffled." And so like, it was in reference to me because I ended up yelling at Mike about it. So I was like, so anyway, that's not what you wanted. What, Mother Goose? Thank you for the four through one. Thank you for the flashback. Like, I hadn't thought about that story in years, and you just, you took me there. Thank you. I appreciate that very much.

Well, I think this is what you did. Yeah, by jumping on Twitch podcast, people come hang out on Twitch. We learned something today. Number one, Mike Stockup is going to be organizing something. Number two, Mother at Mother Goose underscore Jeff Reed uh is going to be joining Twitter here pretty soon. So stay tuned for that. I'm gonna get a fake account. I, I have finally made it. Get on have a fake account. But somebody else put the time into that because Lord knows I'm not. Absolutely awesome. All right, I'm gonna click the finish button here. Goodbye, everybody.