EP003: Jay Kranda and Creating Healthy Biblical Community thru Church Online

Hello and welcome to episode three of From Text to Testimony. I'm Andy, I'm one of your hosts, and I'm going to be joined by John Pile in just a few minutes. And this episode is, I don't know, kind of a freer ranging, a little bit of a romp if you will, through communicating with the next generation—kind of the generations that are a little bit younger than you, and for some of you even a lot bit younger than you. And communicating with the generations that are digital natives can feel pretty daunting, especially when you're trying to talk about Jesus and when you're trying to text with them when there is some weird sort of abbreviations and some modes of conversation and some things that they're talking about that you might not really get, that you might not really understand. John and I are here to clear up some of the things. Now, this is only part one. This is going to be, like I say, like I said earlier, a little bit of a freer ranging conversation, and we hit on a number of topics that we're actually going to come back to in parts two and possibly part three, depending on how much we get through in part two. There's definitely going to be a followup to a lot of this because we get a lot of questions as pastors and really as Glue users, just like yourself, how to talk to people, how to actually be authentic with them without seeming like you're bombarding them with, without seeming like you're just trying to get to prove a point with them. And so we kind of dive into that today, plus we kind of have some more stories, some really cool things that have happened in and around Glue, and also some other things just that we find funny.

So with all of that being said, sit back and relax and get ready for episode three of From Text to Testimony.

And as we reconvene here for episode three of From Text to Testimony, my dude John right next to me—I don't think we've ever gotten like an official introduction into your, let's put it this way, your habits and your kind of things that you do on a daily basis. Like, what does a day in the life of John Pile look like?

Okay, so wake up one. The first thing I'm going to do, unfortunately, is pick up my phone. That's just what I do because I'm being real. Like, I wish I could be the guy that was like, "Well, I open up my Augustine Bible and I spend an hour and a half in quiet meditation underneath the stars." No. Wake up, kind of go, "Okay, any emails or emergencies happen? Any pastoral care emergencies that I have to take care of?" No. Okay, then just like wake up, kind of get into my day, make a tea. I'm a tea guy, not a coffee guy.

Oh, really?

Yeah, love a good tea. That's an important thing for me. There's a cream Earl Gray from this coffee shop we got in upstate New York that has become like a just like a special treat when Daddy needs a special treat. That's a drink it with honey. I drink tea with honey, so little local honey that helps the allergies, kind of keep in the pollen, kind of a deal. I'm responsible for getting my kids to school. After eight years, basically, of taking kids to school, we finally figured out that the division of labor should be my wife does quality control and I do taking them. And so she's like, "Do you have everything?" instead of me just being like, "Whatever, man, you got what you got, bro." Sorry. She's like, "You got your lunch? You got your water bottle? Is your hair combed? Did you brush your teeth?" And then I run the kids to school, and that is probably taking me to about 7:30 in the morning, right? And so central time, if you're tracking time zones—not that that matters.

Yeah, no, I am. Excellent. Who doesn't?

And then from there it's like, "Okay, what do I need to do today? Do I need to get into the office? Do I need to make some content? That might be when I take some time for reflection and reading and just taking a moment to calm down. Do I get a chance to go, 'Hey, honey'?" She's a school teacher, so it's like, "Hey, can I bring you some coffee and get a chance to see you?" Mr. Romance here.

Yeah, hey, you got to keep it fresh, bro. Coming up on nineteen years at the end of the month.

Keep it fresh.

Yeah. And then I jump into the work day, and that is, as a pastor at a church—shout out to any pastors that are listening—it's widely varied. I have meeting days. I have writing sermon days. I have past—yesterday was a pastoral care day. It was just person after person after person after person. And because—not that this is a segue—but because I am connected digitally to a lot of people and younger people in the next generation, a lot of that has to do with texting. And so I'm interacting with people through digital means all throughout the day, and that's a big part of how we do pastoral care.

You're a real pro. You should be a professional podcaster when you grow up, John.

I'll think about it. Okay, yeah, they don't make a whole lot of money and really not a whole lot of prestige, but you know, you get people to know your name, so there you go.

Yeah, if anything it costs money. You just spend money.

Yeah, you spend money to podcast. You're not making money. Yeah, yeah, because there's always a better piece of gear to buy.

Yeah, totally.

That's awesome. Yeah, the pastoral thing—so I'm glad you touched on. We're going to get to the texting thing because that's like, you know, what we do around here, From Text to Testimony. But the pastoral care thing and the fact that every day is different—I've been a pastor for fourteen, fifteen years now, and the one thing when my wife and I first got married about ten years ago, I had to try to tell her, "Babe, listen, this is not a nine-to-five job. Some days are going to be nine to two. Some days are going to be seven to two. Some days are going to be like ten to ten. And then other days, like for seasons, you might not see me. Like, for Easter and Christmas seasons, like there's six weeks there where you're just not going to see me because I'm going to be there and then I'm going to be late. We got rehearsals, we got set, we got this, we got that, we got the other thing." But the one interesting thing that I always try telling potential people that are wanting to get into ministry is the only regular day, the only normal day you're ever going to have every week is Sunday. People think—most people think—like, "Wait, what do you mean?" That's like when all the people are here. Yes. That's the only day that is the same. You know, there's obvious little differences and things like that, but by and large, you know what time you're going to wake up, you know what time you're going to be done, you know if you got a lunch meeting, you know if you got to go back at night. That's it. Everything else is up in the air.

How do your kids deal with like Daddy sometimes not having the most regular of schedules?

They tend to like it because I end up—because you can pick them up—because I get to pick them up from school on a lot of days. Like, they miss me on certain days, but most of the times, you know, we try to do a thing with our kids where we don't do video games on weekdays. We try to avoid video games on weekdays. Good. So when I'm gone all day, like on a Sunday, they get to play video games and sometimes barely notice I'm gone. And so I'll, you know, I'll leave before they wake up and I'll walk in the house at like five or six that evening sometimes, and they'll be like, "Oh, hey, did you step out for a second?" And it's like, "I've been gone all day, bud. All day. All day. Love you too." And I, yeah, I do want to say Sunday is such a regular day, like, and because you're just locked in, it's what you do, and you're there, and you know there's some clear boundaries of your schedule and rigidity that we don't have other days.

Yeah. And it's the end of my work week. And I know a lot of people look at Sunday as the start of their week. It's the end of my week. My week starts on Monday morning. Really, my week starts when I get to get home. And if I get to take a nap, that's when my week works, because those Sunday afternoon naps—oh, I mean, I think heaven is going to be filled with just the feeling of a Sunday afternoon nap. Like, that they hit different. My goats hit different. It's just like it's like all of the energy has vacated your body and there is not a care in the world. You might have to think about your fantasy football team for a little bit, and that's it.

Absolutely. So for this episode of From Text to Testimony, like you heard from my intro, we're talking a little bit about communicating to the next generation. And I don't mean the next generation like babies. What I mean is the next generation like the one that's behind us. So if you were with us in the first episode, John and I actually talked a little bit about the fact that we are not the digital native generation. You know, we, John and I, are in our early forties, and we don't represent what would typically be known as the next generation. In fact, I think we're technically like the common generation now. Is that what we are? Maybe millennials?

I think we're getting there.

Yeah. So the millennial generation is kind of the one that is in the bell curve right now, but there's a generation behind us that is digital native, that is digital friendly, that knows nothing except the ubiquitousness—there's a word—of our phones, of texting as a way of communication, and all those other things. And that's what we're talking about today. Now, this is going to be a multi-part episode. We're going to bring on a friend of ours, Megan, next time. We've got a couple Megans. The best, man. We've got a couple of churches that we're getting lined up to talk to them as well because they have some interesting communication strategies. But for John and I to kind of wrap about this for a minute in our text section, John, I wanted to come to you first, and I wanted to ask you: do you have any of those texts that you got from somebody from the next generation that really just kind of stick out to you? Any stories that you want to bring to the table today?

Yeah, and I have. There's at least one, but here's the almost too common one: "Hey, I'm struggling with my mental health. I don't know where to go. There's not a church around here that feels like I can connect. Help me." And there's not a lot. Some of these texts that we get have specific asks, right? "Can you pray for me? Can you get me connected? Can you do this?" But a lot of the texts from the next generation are just kind of—it feels like almost like a vomit of just like, "This is where I'm at and this is what's going on." And you know, our job then is we're kind of responding and kind of sorting through that. But it's just a repetitive process of, "I don't know what I need help with. I just know that I need help, and I don't feel good."

So that's interesting that you point that out because one of the things that I kept running into as I was doing a bit of research and going back through our essentially our texting history with a bunch of explorers, I could definitely tell when there was a divide. And this is going to sound like I'm being ageist, and I don't mean this inappropriately or anything, so please forgive me. But the texts that I was getting in a lot of times were, "Depressed. Just broke up with my boyfriend. Just broke up with my girlfriend." And you know, there was no need. It was just, "This is going on," and there was not a whole lot of punctuation, and there was never usually any capitalization, right? And then if I would respond and then they would—you know, if we actually started a conversation, a lot of times I would get the "so-and-so emphasized this" or "so-and-so liked this," meaning that they had done a tapback on their iPhone, which is hysterical because it doesn't come through in Glue like that. It just comes through in the old like green bubble thing, which is

Absolutely fantastic to me, but the point of that, and here let me read one, and this is from a woman named Tanya. Okay, after the first time—this is just the initial text. She had come in through the ad topic of Church's care relationships, and it said:

"Okay, after the first time of my relationship, me and my boyfriend keeps breaking up and getting back together and we want to be with each other so bad. We just break up over everything." And that was it. That was the whole text.

And we'll talk a little bit about the conversation in the next thing, but are you finding that more and more and more it's just statements instead of actually like wanting to connect with an actual person?

Yeah, it almost feels like a generation raised in social media. All part of what they know how to do is just emote and just like throw it out there, right? And so like, it's a lot of the one-sided, almost not even thinking about who's on the other side of the conversation, that somebody might actually respond, but just "this is where I'm at and this is what I'm feeling," so it just comes out.

So as a care pastor, then, how do you respond to that? We'll get into tips a little bit later, but how do you find yourself responding to those? Is it a stock response like, "Hey, I'm so-and-so from so-and-so church. Just wanted to know I'm praying for you. Is there any way I can help you?" Or is there something else that you're doing?

Yeah, there has to be context. So there does have to be an introduction for sure. There has to be like, I'm defining who got this so that you know who's on the other side of it. But I have found generally that stock answers—for like, I think they can, at least with younger people, it feels like they can tell when it's the same thing you've sent to everybody that's texted in. And maybe that's just a thing that I hold in my heart, but I think they know when it's like a prepackaged auto response of like, I feel like they can feel it in their bones.

Yeah, and so while I'm introducing myself, I want to make sure that I show empathy first and foremost for whatever it is, um, because this is a universal thing in dealing with young people since like Romeo and Juliet probably—of younger folks, right? Whether in your twenties or your teens, whatever problem you're going through tends to feel like the end of the world.

And it's really easy for us as grown-ups who've experienced more life to be like, "Oh yeah, there's other fish in the sea," right? Like, the breaking up with a boyfriend is a perfect one, because I've gotten those too, of like, "I feel like we're meant to be together, but we keep breaking up." And it's like in your head you're like, "Oh, kid drama," right? And you can kind of pooh-pooh it. But I think this next generation, especially, needs grown-ups who take them seriously and take their problems and their needs seriously, even if it doesn't feel that way for us. And you know, broadcasting and posting about stuff might seem silly to us, but when somebody's breaking up with someone that they feel like they love, like, let's take that seriously.

And so even though I do introduce myself, I do try to bring empathy first and foremost to be like, "Man, that sounds really difficult. I'm so sorry you're going through that." I'm going to ask you a little bit later how you do that, um, like a couple practical tips. But something you just said there that I want to pick out before we get into the testimony section is that you need people who take them seriously, and that's something I keep finding with my kids where they resonate so with me—obviously I'm the dad, like they're going to love me, fear me, respect me, whatever thing you want to put around that. Fear not in a sense of like I'm going to come home and throw things at them, but fear as in like, "Hey, I don't want to disappoint him." The healthy type of fear. The flip side of that is like, I noticed when they get in small groups with, especially like here at youth group, they are attracted more to the leaders, even if they are older leaders, that are actually curious about them, actually asking questions. Is it very self, or do you find it's just a different way of communicating?

Well, it's a different way of communicating. Like, I don't think they're selfish any more selfish than any other generation that's ever come and gone. I think self is just a difficult concept for this generation in a way that we've never experienced. And so identity in self is such a crisis right now for so many young people. And so I like, I'm pretty sure the research—and I think it was Kara Powell and some of the other Youth Institute kind of research—is like, young people are going to be attracted to the person of the most influence that takes themselves, that takes them seriously. And it's what you said: it doesn't matter if they're seventy, it doesn't matter if they're twenty-seven. If it's somebody who's genuinely interested in them and cares, then they're going to gravitate towards that person. And that you cannot fake. You cannot fake that. It's something that you really can't manufacture, no matter how hard you try.

So in the midst of that, then, and we're just going to roll right into our testimony section because I don't want to stop this conversation—in the midst of that, where do you see God moving, either in and throughout Glue or in and throughout some of these texting relationships that you've had as a care pastor? Where do you see the Lord kind of working in that?

Well, what is really hard about it is that he works in their timing. And what I mean is, I mean, the Lord works in his timing, right? But we don't see the fruit of the work on our timing, right? Because we hear something and we go immediately, "I'm going to get you plugged in and we're going to do this, blah blah blah." But you sometimes have texting relationships. First of all, it was weird to me that some people prefer to text about big problems than call, right? Like, that was just something that I didn't consider. But some people want a text, and it's like, "Okay, cool, let's do that."

Um, but it allows for slow—I would say slower, but, uh, progress. Slower from our perspective. What I would say from their perspective is more intentional of when they're actually going to take those steps. And so it might be months until they take the next step because it's a more texting. In some ways, it's like more intimate, but also like less—uh, you don't see as much of the person, right? Because it's just words. And so it's less intuitive, maybe. Uh, it's intimate but not intuitive.

And so you're texting with folks, and so I just see God working in the time of the person. You know, maybe they don't text you for a couple months, but then they're like, "Hey, I'm reading the Bible again. Can you blah blah blah?" And text is a great avenue for infrequent communication but not feeling like you're letting someone down or missing the goal. Because I think, as I've worked with young people, it's like, "I want to go, okay, we're going to start reading the Bible together and we're going to go through this study and we're going to do this, we're going to do that." And when they don't meet the mark, it's so discouraging that they'd rather ghost me than connect. They would rather ignore the relationship, sacrifice the relationship, because they didn't feel like they were living up to what I had for them. And so texting is a medium that allows the patience to set in.

Yeah, and there's a pace to conversation as well. I remember when I was first getting in a relationship with my now wife—this is eleven, twelve years ago—we would text nonstop. Um, but now we don't, you know? It's that our texts are very much like, "Hey, can you grab milk and cereal?" or "Hey, uh, check on, make sure the garage door was shut?" You know, stuff like that. Sometimes it's like a longer conversation, but by and large we have a face-to-face conversation set up. But the—I remember the texting nonstop. There was no timing. It was just like, "I'm trying to get out as many messages as possible to this woman that I really like and I really want to spend the rest of my life with," and she was doing the same thing back to me.

And I don't—I feel like that's kind of lost right now, because I look at my daughter and her boyfriend, and they sometimes don't text for like three to four hours in between each other, which is like unfathomable to me. But I think there's a pace there. There's a speed of—yeah, not of thought, because I think my daughter is way more intelligent than I am and was at that age. It's not an intelligence thing. I think it's more—you're exactly right. Like, God has almost slowed down the digital native generation, and it's weird because I think a lot of us, especially our age, we looked at the generation behind us when we were in Bible college and when we were watching people kind of grow up and in our early years of preaching, and we would say, "Oh man, the world is moving at such a breakneck pace. But I—and like, I don't know how we're going to keep up and I don't know how we're going to do all these other things." But if we step back, it's us, the millennial generation, that is actually creating the breakneck pace. Yes. The generation that's younger than us, as evidenced in their texting, doesn't want that. They're almost actively rebelling against that.

Yeah, and we're so reactive to notifications and things like that. And so like, I—that's a millennial thing of like, "Oh my gosh, I got five notifications. Oh my gosh, I got to do this." And the intentionality that you're talking about of "I'm going to text you when I can text you"—yeah, like, I like it. It's the ball is in my court to return this text, and I can do it whenever. And so it actually weirdly, like you said, it's almost counterintuitive, but it slows down the pace. And I think it's why different apps like TikTok and, uh, you know, Snapchat when it was super popular, and other things like BeReal and other like snapshot-of-life platforms have been, um, more popular, because it's not like, "Oh, I got to respond to this notification to do this thing and people need to know what I'm doing." It's like, "It's like boom, you give a snapshot of your life and it's kind of supposed to be real." But they really are slowing down, and they really aren't about this breakneck pace that we—and we have to own that—that we have kind of created.

Yeah, the—the woman I was talking about, lady, girl, I guess she's technically a girl that I was just talking about—her name's Tanya. She was the one that had a boyfriend and they broke up and, y, y, y. Um, so it's interesting you talk about—so she first texted in on January twenty-fifth of twenty twenty-three. And then I didn't—and I almost lost the story until I was doing a little bit of research before this. She texted in, then, and then I responded, "Hey, I'm Andy, and I'd love to get you plugged into our community that'd be able to help you out and pray for you and pray over you, especially with your boyfriend." And she ghosted me for like two months. And I figured like, "Okay, this is just another one of those Glue things." Like, you and I are both very—and anybody out there that's part of the Glue ecosystem, you know, like, that just happens. There is you're shotgun shooting all these things. Sometimes she texted back two and a half months later. So this is March—January, February, yeah, March thirteenth of twenty twenty-three. She texted back, "Oh hey, thanks so much for that." And then we started—we started up a conversation. It was just, "Okay, thanks for that," and then the conversation started, and it turned out she's like twenty-three, twenty-four. She's a young professional. She just got out of college, and she's working. Like, she's training to be an LPN—licensed professional nurse or licensed practicing nurse—and she was looking for a group, a local group to kind of hang around with. Lo and behold, we had a—we have a—

Young professionals group here, a group of like twenty-some that are in that weird sort of not in college but also not like wife and husband and kids, you know? This is Tanya. And so I've kind of got her into that group. I got her connected with that group. And lo and behold, she starts showing up to their meetings. And she's still been showing up to their meetings. And this is October, middle of October 2023. They just had their last one a couple of weeks ago. And she's still showing up to go to the bar and hang out, to go get pizza, to go watch a football game. Like she's doing these things. Yeah, which is great. And she's meeting people. And she's meeting, you know, she's avidly worshiping here at the church and all this, all because I had given up on the relationship. And then she did not. And like, I think there's like a ton of weight and a ton of merit to what you're saying. Also, as you were texting, I got three notifications on my Apple watch and I had to just like glance down to see what they were.

Yeah, so we're to blame here. It's well, it's so amazing though because you brought up that point and it's like we are captive to our digital technology. And it actually goes back to what I started this in. When I wake up in the morning, right, the first thing I do is check my phone on my notification. I am, to a certain degree, a slave to my digital life, right? And it is something that is, it's not healthy. And so we're not celebrating it by any stretch. Like it just kind of is what it is. I see this generation trying to break those bonds because they keep open lines, right? And so lines that we think are closed, of "oh, they haven't responded," and in the course of a week it's like, "ah, well, this is somebody who's not going to respond." But she kept the open line of going, "well, I know there's a place that I could reach out. I just don't want to do it right now. It's not the time for whatever reason." And there's a real sense of knowing yourself to have that kind of ability to keep the open line. And so I would say don't close those lines, right? Like don't close the lines to the next generation just because they don't seem interested. Keep it open and let them come on their own pace. And I think that's part of why they feel, maybe we can be critical and selfish of them, us and the Boomers and the Gen Xers, is because they're like, "oh, they're just going to do it on their own time." And it's like, yeah, well, they're kind of breaking some of the bondage that we're creating to these things that don't matter.

Yeah, there's an interesting thing that we've been talking about. You need to show empathy, number one. Yeah. But you also need to not close that communication. So for you, give me like a couple of tips. How do you show empathy when you're responding to an explorer that through Glue? Like, what are the kinds of things that you're looking for and the things you're saying?

Yeah, great. The first thing is you don't want to move to answers too fast. And so empathy is kind of sitting with people in it. And instead of trying to go, "okay, here's the response," think of it as an invitation into their world and going, "hey, it sucks that this happened." You might not say that, but you might say, "hey, I'm sorry that this happened," or "that sounds really difficult. I can't imagine what it's like to do this." And so you have empathetic language that you're coming with. And after the introduction of like, "hey, I'm Andy. Hey, I'm John," like, "hey, man, that sounds really difficult what you're going through right now," and just, uh, I forget what you call it, but it's like it's not legitimizing. It's validating.

There we go. It's validating their concern and going, "man, I can understand why you would feel that way." But also, you know, you're not going like, "oh, yeah, that happened to me too. I had a breakup," right? That's what their friends are going to do. Their friends are going to go, "oh, when I broke up with my boyfriend, blah blah blah blah blah." Their parents are probably going to be like, "and this is, you know, I have kids and I do this to my kids, right? Your parents are going to be like, 'ah, I remember when I,' okay, and they're going to give you advice." And so as somebody who can care for them as an adult, not as a peer necessarily, but as a mentor, an adult, somebody who can help guide the way, a spiritual guide, you're coming in next to them and going, "man, that's got to be really hard." And you're validating something that other people might not be validating. And in empathy and validation, you're taking them seriously. You're saying your, that's all empathy really is in this kind of relationship. You're going, "your problem matters to me, and I can understand why it matters to you. It's really hard." And now you've opened a line. That's what that's the opening. You're going, "well, now you can share other stuff for me because I recognize that this is hard for you."

Two things. Number one, do you feel like your kids actually hear you as like the Charlie Brown character? Like, is that your voice to them?

So many times I absolutely do. Like, I'm like, "you literally cannot hear me. Literally." Yep.

So that's number one. Number two, the empathy thing. So a person, I have never been an empathetic character. I'm sympathetic, meaning I can sit with you, but empathy is not sitting with you. Empathy is that sort of like I'm putting myself in your shoes and I'm living that with you. Is there any sort of like training? Is there any sort of mantra? Is there any sort of mindset you need to get into if you are not an empathetic person?

Ooh, that's a good one. I don't know because I'm not an empathetic person because I, oh sorry, I don't know because I am a naturally empathetic, like it just happens. And so I don't know what it would take to get in that mindset because I'm empathetic to the cashier, like whatever. Um, in working with people who aren't as naturally empathetic, the first thing to do is stop. Like, there has to be a break because people that tend to not lead with empathy sometimes have like an agenda or a pace or, "hey, we're trying to move this along. I'm trying to check some boxes," or maybe more task-oriented. "I'm trying to get this thing done. I'm trying to do this." You have to stop the task orientation and switch to people orientation for a moment. That the thing in front of you is not a checkbox. It's a person. And this is not a task. It's more of a project of, you don't know where it's going to go, but you just got to leave yourself open to kind of being there with this person. And so when you stop, I think there's something naturally in us that God has wired, especially as believers, where we can weep with those who weep, we can mourn with those who mourn. There's a natural way that when somebody says something that engages us emotionally, that we go to our emotional library of going, "when did I feel like that? Yeah, when did I feel alone because my boyfriend broke up with me?" And it might not be like, "I've never had a boyfriend break up with me," right? But I have had girlfriends that broke up with me. I have had disappointment of losing a job. I have had like, what have I had that would put me there? And what would I have wanted someone to say to me is usually a really good way to start with empathy.

And a practical tip I want to bring out is actually from Dr. John Harris's BLESS course that we now have available in Glue and all throughout other resources as well. The first one of that is begin with prayer, but the L, the second part is listen. Become a good listener. Um, a lot of times I think you know you talk about task orientation. I'm task-oriented with the next generation in particular. They don't care about my tasks. My tasks in all of that are something that can be shoved to the wayside essentially with the next generation. They are something that they don't necessarily care as much about. And I find myself getting a little frustrated with that. So I guess our last tip there, any tips out there for people that are finding themselves frustrated with the next generation?

Yeah, I think what you said is really good because when I talk to, let's say, our Boomers, right, an older generation, they have so much concern that they're taking my time, really, because they're like, "oh, you're a pastor. You have a lot to do." And so they do take in mind the tasks, right? They do think about, "oh, we're busy." And to your point, I don't see that with Gen Z at all. Like, they're not thinking, "I have a life beyond them." Like, whatever. And you can, you know, you can say it's because of this. You can come up with any negative reason. And so I think the advice is, um, fill in the gap with like your full, we, my wife and I call it "full buckets," right? Assume the best and just assume that even though they don't maybe care that like you're having to take the time to do this or you're bending over backwards or you're, you know, you're doing, going above and beyond for them, they might not acknowledge that nor care about it. And that is not all. So assume the best of them. But my challenge for you is going, "well, are you doing it because they're going to appreciate you, or are you doing it because it's the right thing to do?" And those are the hardest people to love is the people who don't give us anything in return, which is exactly what Jesus talked about, right? Like, even the Pharisees will like, can love somebody who loves them back, right? Um, that's, uh, gosh, I think it was in the context of prayer of like, "like, nobody gives their child a stone," right? That kind of thing. So yeah, that's good stuff.

I think in the next episode we're going to dive a little bit deeper into some of these because there is some really good points there. And actually, I want to bring a little bit of, I'd love to bring a special guest on, um, who's a little bit younger than us to actually answer some of these questions. Like Megan Carter, who is a little bit younger than us. Go Megan, go Megan. So we'll have her in the very next episode. But until then, we love you. Thanks so much for tuning in to episode three of From Text: The Testimony. We'll see you next time.