EP315 - Mentoring and Disciple-Making in a Digital Age feat. Katie Bulmer

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Through this podcast we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church, but more than tech for tech's sake, we'll address deeper questions. Is discipleship making possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? And where does the metaverse and artificial intelligence fit into all of this? Whether you're a big or small church, the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church digitally and physically. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Hey everybody, welcome to episode 315 of the Church Digital Podcast. My name is Andy. Of course I am not Jeff Reed here, and we were given Jeff another week off to recover from everything that happened in Korea at the Lazon conference. And I'm sure he's going to be full of stories and connections and networking opportunities and, you know, the things that happen at major, major conferences like this, especially a global conference like Lazon was. But actually, today we are taking over the podcast yet again, just like we did last week when we got a chance to talk with Ian Simkins. Who, if you do not know Ian Simkins, please go give him a follow on all of the socials. That dude is doing digital in a minimal and simplistic way, and yet it is anything but minimal and simplistic in its message. And my goodness, go listen to the episode. Go follow Ian Simkins. That's episode 314. It'll be in the doodle dos below if you're watching this on YouTube, or if you're listening on podcast, it'll also be in the show notes. But this is episode 315, and we, as the Hybrid Disciple, are taking over. And one of the things that Ashley and I really were doing when we were recording these episodes—we recorded a while in batches, and that's just kind of little tricks of the podcasting trade. And one of the things that happened was as we did a bunch of our interviews in season two, we noticed that there was kind of a common theme happening, and that theme was discipleship happening in unlikely scenarios.

This episode with Katie Balmer, who you're going to meet in just a few seconds, is unlike any other episode that you're going to hear. Katie is a podcaster. She is an author. She's a motivational speaker. She does, you know, she runs the Truth for Your 20s. Like it is a very women and female-centric thing. But don't let that kind of shut the episode off and just be like, "Well, this is only for women," because there's so much truth that Katie brings to the idea of digital discipleship and more than just digital discipleship—doing discipleship in different spaces and places than we're used to. And she's incredibly encouraging. She is one of the coolest people you ever get the chance to meet, and Ashley and I enjoyed our time so much with Katie. So okay, enough about me and all of the things that are happening all around. I need to get you to this episode. Here you're going to hear a little bit of intro, and then we are going to be off and running. So here we go, episode 315 of the Church Digital Podcast. Let's dig in.

Well, we're back, and we are opening episode five here, much like I have been opening the rest of our episodes in season two so far, with the saying this is a fun one. But it is—this is a fun one. Ashley and I here on the Hybrid Disciple are joined by Katie Balmer, the host of the Truth for Your 20s Podcast. And she's got books and speaking gigs and all sorts of things all over the place. She's a mentor. She's really passionate about helping college-age women figure out their place in the world, and it is such a kind of a niche, but it's a broad niche. It's something that is also desperately, desperately needed. And so in this episode, Ashley and I kind of get into the history of where Katie was and how the Woman at the Well story changed her life and changed her outlook on ministry and really affected her deeply. And it really has been affecting her ministry and the stories that she's able to tell about the young women that she's affecting, and also the young men and sometimes the dads like myself that she's affecting, is just fantastic. I can't wait for you to hear a lot of this, but I also can't wait to hear some of your followup. We've been getting a lot more engagement and follower stuff, traction on YouTube and on Instagram. And if you're not actually following us on YouTube or Instagram or on TikTok, and if you're not one of those that has actually hit the old subscribe button or thumbs up or anything like that, please go and do so. We'd love to hear from you. Obviously it helps get our numbers up and all that, and we're really cool with getting numbers up, but more than that we get a chance to actually converse with you. We want to create this Hybrid Disciple community wherever we are at. So go and do those things. All of the links are in the doodle dos below if you're watching on YouTube, and if you're on TikTok or on Instagram or anywhere else that you can find us, they will be in the show notes of this podcast as well as in our bio. Okay, enough of me blathering on. Let's get to Katie Balmer here on the Hybrid Disciple.

Well, our next guest here on the Hybrid Disciple—if you are watching on YouTube or any other places that we're streaming this or that you can watch this on demand—she seems to be in some sort of Florida room, except I don't think that she's actually in Florida. Katie Balmer, thanks for joining us on the show. Where are you in the world?

Thanks for having me. I am in the mountains of Chattanooga, Tennessee, so not Florida, but I am a plant nerd, so what I'm not doing—what we're going to talk about today—I'm fiddling in the garden and with my plants. So here's my here's my other children behind me.

I like that. Okay, I was going to ask if you have if you had named them, you know, Fernie and you know Rodriguez or something along those lines. The mountains of Chattanooga—actually I used to live just north of Atlanta, so you know Chattanooga was less than an hour for us, and I'd always get up there. I Chattanooga has this one thing that I don't know if you're familiar with—it's called fiber internet. You guys have fiber internet everywhere up there?

We do, and I didn't realize it. It's called Gig City, so my internet's faster than yours probably. I don't know.

I didn't know this, but this is a thing.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. I am in just—I actually I petitioned my wife to move up there. She said no, because that's where—we can't go there just for the internet. Like you'd need to give me some sort of other reason, and I couldn't. So hey, Katie, throughout this throughout this show, if you can give me a reason to move up to Chattanooga, like I'll be there moments notice. I'll be glad to show you the mountains in the distance. They're gorgeous.

Awesome, love it, love it, love it. Well, Ashley actually introduced me to Katie through—yet again, we were talking off camera and behind the scenes—and a lot of people talking about the fact that you can't make real relationships online and do all these other things. And Ashley and I have never been online, even though we've done a thousand podcasts together, and both Ashley and I feel like we could just go hang with each other's families for days and be comfortable. Ashley, you actually met Katie online as well. Can you walk me through all of that and how you got introduced to her?

Yeah, um, so Katie and I both have TikTok. Um, and we both—I would say our target audience is the opposite side of the same coin. Um, so young women predominantly, I would say 18 to 26 or so. Um, and she—the women that I kind of target are women who have gone through really grimy situations, may still be in really grimy situations, whether it's through sex work or sex trafficking or strippers, or, you know, just people—young women whose society as a whole kind of set aside because of my testimony. And Katie works very closely with young women who just are more—I would say mainstream—but who really may struggle with self-worth because that's a common thread among young women today. And so I—the FYP, which—if the—I don't know how it's just the way that TikTok determines who you want to see and who should see you—um, I don't know if she saw me first or I saw her first. Um, but I we I started seeing her content and followed her, um, and she started seeing my content and followed me, and then we just, um, she has a podcast which we'll get into, and she uh asked me to hop on her podcast, and so I did that probably a year or so ago. Um, and ever since then we've just kind of, you know, made sure and stayed in touch a lot. TikTok back and forth. TikTok sometimes will do this wacky thing where it for whatever reason won't push your content out unless somebody's viewed at a certain number of times, and so we've like got this cheat code where all like, "Hey, I just posted this. It's not doing anything. Will you please, please go do all of the things so that it like pushes it out of purgatory on TikTok?" and she'll do the same with me. Um, and I listen to her podcast now. Um, as a single woman, a lot of the things that she talks about actually applies to me, even though I'm much like double the age of the girls that she's uh targeting, you know, and so yeah, that's how we met. Um, she loves Jesus, and I love Jesus, and so that's been just the commonality there.

Lady, uh, yeah, Katie, the host of Truth for Your 20s Podcast. Uh, again, thanks for being here. So first off, tell us all about the podcast. How you got all that started. Like, how you got ministering to women that are in your 20s, because like none of us on this podcast are in our 20s anymore. Uh, and so where where did you kind of get the Genesis of that idea and all of those things?

Yeah, there's several different Genesis, so depending on which road map we're going to take here to explain how I got there. But yeah, so I—my husband was in youth ministry. So when we first got married, he was in youth ministry, which kind of naturally you become a big sister, you know, we were in our 20s, but just naturally kind of became a big sister to to young women. But even before then, when I was in college—so I got saved as a senior in college—so like kind of walking out of that. But through those days, definitely living for—I say boys and Bacardi, you know, like all the things the world have to—looking for love in all the wrong fraternity boys, all the things. And the Woman at the Well story—thank you—um, John chapter four is what changed my life. The longest recorded conversation with a heartbroken girl. I just love it with all of my soul, and it shook me in all the best ways. And I was like, "Does does everyone know about this woman at the well? This is the coolest thing ever." So you know, I started talking about it. And for sure, very early as a baby Christian, I heard God was like, "I want you to go share this with sorority women." And you know, as we do, fingers in the ears—what? Nope, don't hear that, moving on. So ignored that call. Um, get married, find my husband, we get married, youth pastor. So I'm doing the good Christian things. I'm a big sister to to youth girls. I I dive into a homeless ministry. This was just a long big, you know, look at me, I'm such a good Christian. I'm saving all the homeless people in the world. Find myself depleted. I had put my heart and soul and everything into helping this one particular girl. She was going to be a success story. Like we had pulled out all the stops, got her an apartment, she was living in a car, but we got her an apartment. We got her a job. Like yay! Until I realized I wanted a better life for her much more than she did. She let all the pieces fall. I'm in the closet having a hissy fit. "God, can't you see? You know what a good person like, what are you doing? Like, are you asleep up there?" And again, he was like, "When did I ever ask you to do any of this? Share your story with sorority women."

Woman and I was like, "Oh yeah, I remember that." So this is how stubborn I am and how God has to be like, "Slap, slap," for real. So there's a lot of story to that too, but long story short, I started getting involved in my sorority. I was an Adpi, so you know, it's kind of an easy door to get back involved with that. Like, you know, "Hey, I'd like to be an adviser. I'd like to serve." And very shyly was like, "Hey, so I kind of have this passion. My background is in marketing. This whole time I've worked in TV, print, radio advertising. I saw how, as Ashley talked about, 18 to 24-year-old women really do have trend-setting power, and there's so much good that they could do in the world if they realized how powerful they are when it comes to marketing. I learned this through marketing, and then realized, you know, why don't we use this power for good?" So I shyly mentioned to these girls, like, "Hey, I see sorority women have cool influence. If we can use it for good," and they're like, "Why don't you come talk to our chapter about that next Sunday? 225 girls. The mic is yours." And I'm like, "I'm sorry, what?"

So that was my very first speaking opportunity, which has now grown to I've gone to 70 colleges nationwide. That first time I had no idea what I was saying, but obviously it grew and became what I do now. Yeah, and there's a lot of other little rabbit trails along the way that this path has taken me, but I don't want to answer your question in three hours, so that's the short of the story.

No, that's what we do here. Three-hour answers is good. I have one last question, or one more question before I turn it over to Ashley. Did it feel, as you were going back into a sorority to really offer your services as an adviser, did you see any of the impact you were actually going to have, or was it kind of you were focusing on the day-to-day, minute-by-minute kind of discipleship pathway that you were going to be taking?

Yeah, I would say I had no idea. And really, kind of to get me in that, I was a yoga instructor. So this whole time working in advertising, I also became a yoga instructor. Who saw that coming? And I had a young lady at my church, so I hear this, have this, you know, meltdown moment in the closet. "God, can't you see how hard I'm working?" He's like, "Hello, share your story with sorority women." But then I'm like, "What does that even look like? I'm like 30 years old at this point. Do I go knock on the beautiful sorority mansion? 'Hey, God told me to come talk to you guys.' You know, that won't be awkward. Called the police on me."

But a young lady at church said, "Hey, aren't you a yoga instructor? Can you come to a yoga class for our sisterhood?" And I'm like, "Can I ever?" And this was an Adpi, and that's what I was. So it was like a natural lead. Started doing classes with them, started getting to know the president, and then that's when she invited me to come speak. And so yes, no clue. 100% God wanted me to get there more than I did. I did not have a vision for it. I stumbled like a doofus along the way to get to where I am now.

Yeah, amazing. I say all the time that when I look at the totality of my life, how even the weird, seemingly obscure things that you happen to fall into, how those things even play a role in what your ultimate purpose and calling is, and the concept that God wastes nothing is so, so true. Because even, I say all the time, like, I grew up in the middle of nowhere, Northern New Mexico, like 15 miles from a town of 2,000 people, two hours from a single stoplight. Okay, wow. I was obsessed with West Coast gangster rap in high school. Tupac, yes. And my dad would be like, my dad would be like, "I don't understand how you identify with this at all. It just doesn't make any kind of sense. 'F the police.' Like, there are no police here. Like, why are you even like this? Just doesn't make sense, right?" Like, nothing. And you know, my church predominantly focuses on urban spaces, and we have a whole section now called Hip Hop Hermeneutics, and it's like lessons in hip-hop. And it's like the little, you know, the 13-year-old kid in the middle of nowhere New Mexico that should not have been obsessed with, you know, all of the West Coast hip-hop things, it all plays into that.

So it's always interesting to me when I hear people's stories and they're like, "Well, I just happened to start teaching yoga. It didn't really make sense." And then that one seemingly minute thing that you just did because you enjoyed it can be something that completely launches an entire section of ministry that she would have never, you know, even imagined doing. And so I think that that's just an interesting thing about God. Like, as people are going through life, you know, don't think that the obscure thing that you're really interested in isn't one of the things that God wants to use. I mean, even gaming, like, you know, you have people who are super obsessed with video games that are now able to minister to an entire group of people that nobody else can reach just because they like to play Call of Duty, you know? It's not a minor thing. Like, God puts those things that we like and the things that we desire to do. I think that those are all intricate parts of who he creates us to be to reach the people that we need to be able to reach.

So whenever you decided to launch a podcast specifically, what was your mindset behind that, and what caused you to want to step into the podcast space?

Yeah, so that's actually the youngest of the things I do, if you will. So you know, I started, well, I kind of dove into what I'm doing with the ministry to sorority women, but that wasn't really a thing until I launched an ebook. This was the, they told you to do this back in the day, like, to do an ebook to get people to put, get on your email subscriber list. No idea what I was doing, but that ebook, I had some sorority women, this is really good. We can shoot the cover of it. We can help lay out the graphics, and it turned into an actual book just printed through Amazon, like the average person could do this. I had no followers. I was like, you know, no idea what I was doing. So I had this actual printed book. I go to some conferences, and I'm like, "Hey, you know, very shyly again, I have this book that I see the incredible trending power of sorority girls, but it's probably not good." And they're like, "Yeah, why don't you come speak to our chapter?" That's how I got speaking opportunities. That's how it started.

And so anyway, the podcast, that was the book and then the speaking opportunities. The podcast happened, it's probably about four years old now, and so that happened just really wanting to talk, have longer conversations about things I was saying on social media. As we know, our attention spans are getting shorter, and there's only so much you can say in 15-second TikToks or even, you know, minute-long, and there was just so much more to be said and so many more conversations I wanted to have. And the podcast, I was actually being interviewed on several other people's podcasts, which is wonderful, and I was like, "I have a lot more to say." So I did that, and then I thankfully have had the opportunity to interview a lot of people too. A lot of it is interview style, but I get to, I'm on the list for a lot of publishers, so people, interesting people who have books coming out, I get to meet them. And I always say, ask them at every interview, "If you could have coffee with your 20-year-old self, what would you say?" And that's so fun because I get to hear from really cool people who are doing good in the world what they would say. And yeah, so that's kind of how that all came to be.

And how do you feel, because we give advice a lot to spiritual leaders and pastors and people and nonprofits, et cetera, about the digital space specifically? And you hear gurus, like I jokingly say don't come at me in the comments, but my patron saint is Gary Vee. So the patron saint of marketing, Gary Vee, you know, he says that he thinks everyone should have a podcast, that there's literally no one on Earth that should not have one because one, you can chop it up into short-form content, but two, that we all know at least several interesting people that don't ever get their stories out there or whatever the case may be. So as you stepped into the podcast space, what are your thoughts about ministries having a podcast outside of just their general ministry stuff, like outside of preaching, outside of, you know, social media, outside of that? What are your thoughts on that?

Okay, about a podcast, I don't know that I would say everyone needs a podcast. It's a lot of work. It is. I mean, Gary Vee is great, and maybe I can certainly be open to be argued with that, but I will say that everyone needs to be showing up online. That is such a low-hanging fruit, literally. Like, before we got on this call, I got a comment on one of my posts, and I get this all the time. "You guys, are there any men talking about healthy dating culture like Katie is?" I get that all the time. And I'll talk to guys every now and then, and I'm sure there are, but I just don't hear it. If there were a thousand, there needs to be a thousand and one. Because especially Christian voices, like, how crazy for you to be thinking, "I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I don't know how to do TikToks good enough." Just say something. Fail. Get it wrong. Learn. Delete the stupid post once you see it better in a year. But you have to start somewhere. I mean, some of my first TikToks were stupid, but I had to start to figure it out.

And yeah, I'll get on my soapbox about this, but your listeners are the target audience for me to struggle with love and tell you and shake you by the shoulders like, "Show up online. Your voice is needed. There are million loud voices out there. There are not enough true voices." And as someone who speaks to young people, there's a lot of confusion. Again, even if you see three people on your, you know, your browse that are saying something similar to you, your voice is still needed because you might be into gaming, like you said. You might live in a different part of the country. You might have brown hair, blue eyes. People are going to relate to you differently than Joe Blow who's saying the same thing. Say it. Say good things on the internet, please. This is me begging.

I think that it's interesting that I have recently become friends on TikTok with a lady who she was in pornography for seven years, and now she's very active in anti-pornography initiatives and she loves Jesus and married, has kids. And she and I got into a conversation about that very thing. That from certain vantage points, people might say that she and I talk about the same thing. We actually talk about very different things because pornography and prostitution, while they're on the same road, are in different lanes. And so somebody had told her, "Well, I already follow this girl over here, and she says blah, blah, blah." And we were kind of chuckling about it because if you were to scroll through the people that follow me versus the people that follow her, they are drastically different people. They are not even remotely the same people. And it's not because both of our audiences don't understand or relate to the other person's stuff. It's just the way that I package things and deliver things is a completely different way than the way she talks about things and packages things.

And I think that we have to wrap our heads around that. The gospel is the same way. Whenever you are in faith circles, there are ways that, I mean, you can take mega-famous pastors like, you know, T.D. Jakes, who is a phenomenal preacher, obviously known all over the world, is nothing like Stephen Furtick. Nothing. Now, he did mentor Steven Furtick, I think that they have a pretty solid relationship, but stylistically, visually, there's no, so would you tell either one of those men to stop preaching because they weren't like the other man? That's just completely insane. Like, of course we wouldn't say that, like, you know.

You could compare Mike Todd to Billy Graham. Like, they're both—you would never tell either one of them to stop sharing the gospel because they just identify with a completely different group of people. Then, you know, I do sometimes wonder what Billy Graham would say about each individual, like new up-and-coming pastor. Like, I'd really like to hear his thoughts sometimes, but that's a rabbit trail we don't have to go down.

So, yeah, I think that you're right. I think that I do believe though that if you are in a medium to large-sized church and you have the staff for it, I think that they should have podcasts outside of just traditional church because sometimes, for instance, Impact Church—I am in Phoenix, Arizona, in Scottsdale. That's a big church, and there are so many retired and current professional sports team people that go there. That church is known for that. Like, people retire from the NFL, they move to Arizona because the heat's better for their joints, and they all go to church at Impact. And you know, to sit down and have weekly conversations with these solid believers that are men that have that presence in the world because of what their career has been could be game-changing. So it's kind of like I think that ministers that are in that space that have the staff, 100%, should do that.

Yeah, yeah, their voice is needed for sure. So show up, show up. Yeah, yeah. So I actually, following up on that, you're your target audience is obviously women. Do you have this—a two-part question. Number one, do you have men that listen to your show? Number one. And number two, if they do, do you ever get any feedback, positive, negative, otherwise, from men who are trying to actively partake in what you're putting out into the universe? I know that they're there, obviously it's the minority.

I have heard through DMs or emails or whatever from a few, and it's funny. I got an email one time. It was like a forty-year-old dad, and he's like, "I know I'm not your target market, but I have daughters, and just thank you for what you're doing." And so that was really kind. I can't think of ever having pushback from guys, so that's nice.

Now, what's funny is I'm a speaker too, so I travel to all these sororities, and more often than not, there's at least one or two guys in the audience, even if they're just doing sound or he's the fraternity four-life director, whatever. And I'll say, you know, like, women's empowerment gets a bad rap because then that gets into the feminist rabbit train, and that's not what I'm about. But I'll say things like, "Raise the bar and dating. Don't date dirtbags." Like, this. But ten out of ten times, the guys are always like, "Thank you for saying that." These are good guys who, you know, agree with what I'm saying about stop putting up with guys treating you like crap. I mean, most good-hearted guys are like, "Yes, thank you."

So I guess the short of the stories, I don't have a lot of guys in the audience, I know, but the ones that I do, I've always heard good things about. And I have had probably the most common guy-related comment I get is that, like, "Are there guys out there saying what you're saying, Katie?" And I'm like, "Maybe, I guess I don't know. But if you know who they are, tag them, and I would love to be friends and help cheer them on and share their stuff. And I'm on your side. I love that you're that."

Listeners, if you're in your, you know, if you know about males, if you want to step in and have a wide-open niche here, you go. Like, Katie handing it to you on the platter. Like, getting solid relationship advice. Yes, we can set up a phone call. Basically, what I'm asking is guys who want to talk about what it looks like to date with integrity, what it looks like to—hey, you know what? It turns out God's design is best. He isn't trying to hold out on you because he's mean. He loves you, and he wants what's best for you. Grace with truth. These are conversations that need to be had because I can tell you, Cardi B and a lot of other people are just saying a lot of other things in the world, and there's confusion. If nothing else, and there might be lack of conversations at home, and their nineteen-year-old friends aren't much help. So they need positive voices in the world.

And we always say, I'm a mentor. I do online mentoring as well. But sometimes the people who mentor me and the people who mentor the people on the other side of this conversation, you might have not have met them in real life. But thanks for this world that we live in, this modern day, you can be a mentor to potentially thousands of young men or young women by picking up your smartphone, what's in your pocket. It's just amazing.

So with that in mind, whenever it comes specifically to discipleship—because we really want people to understand, you know, mentorship, discipleship, those are very synonymous things. I think mentorship is a more broad term used in a more secular society. Discipleship, I think, is mentorship with just a deeply spiritual element that is obviously focal. What would you say? How would you say discipleship plays into what you're doing? Because you're in an interesting place where you don't necessarily know what someone's spiritual walk is like. They might be believers in Christ. They may not. You know, they could be agnostic, or there's so many a myriad of things.

And I think it was our second episode I talked about the difference between covert and overt discipleship. So there's overt discipleship where someone knows you really well, you absolutely know they're a believer, and they may even ask you like, "Hey, you know, Katie, I see you and your husband have an amazing marriage. You have healthy dynamics. I know that you love Jesus. This is something I want. Will you disciple me? Can I purposely step under?" That's like overt discipleship, right? Like, it's overtly you're clearly discipling them. There's no secret. Then I said there, I believe that there's something that's called covert discipleship, which is when people want to be around you for whatever reason, and you're not necessarily full-on like giving them like biblical truth with the proper jargon, right? Like, "Jesus said" or "the Bible says," but you're very definitely giving them biblical and scriptural principles, and they walk away with a seed planted in them. And I think that that's—I call that covert discipleship. Like, you're discipling, you're just like under the radar.

So my question is, whenever it comes to discipleship and what you do, how would you define the two? And do you believe that covert discipleship is a thing? Covert's the more under-the-radar one, right?

Yeah, I haven't thought a lot about it, but my hot take is yes. I say I do that when I go to colleges because when I speak to, you know, I'm booked by universities to speak to four hundred girls that they're, you know, they're sorority, like they're panhellenic or whatever it may be. I am speaking the truth. I am doing a lot of things pointing them to good habits, good healthy behavior, but it is not like a Christian message. Now, my podcast is definitely faith-based. My social media, that kind of stuff. When I do online mentoring, a lot of people will book a call with me, and I almost always—they're—and I ask like, "Do you want faith-based advice?" And they know me enough before they book a call and spend money. Like, they probably know what I'm gonna say, right?

For the six-week mentoring, I say like, "If you are not interested in biblical advice, I'm not your girl, because I can't do that deep dive and not point you to Jesus, because I'm not doing either one of us any favors." I can think of very few conversations I've had with just the one-time call that they were like, "Yeah, I'm not really interested in that." Most of the time, they are.

So I guess the short answer is, when I go—when I'm, you know, going to a college, I do have a more like under-the-radar, if you will, type of conversation. And then hopefully pointing them down to a more intimate—here, okay, hopefully you liked what I said. Hopefully I gave you some good advice, but I can't do any magic. The only one who can is Jesus, and here is some more information about him, and here is what changed my life—the woman well story, if that pertains to them or whatever. But yeah.

And then, like, I guess coming back to our earlier conversation, the woman well story has been around for a while, right? And it was like brand new to me. And I remember doing a Bible study at our local college and sharing this with another girl. She's like, "Wait, did you know that like, she left her water jar there and went to go speak to the town?" I'm like, "I mean, yeah, that's kind of like the main part of the story, like, of course I know that." But she's twenty. This is brand new to her, you know? And so back to our conversation of like, you think everything's already been said, you think that all the main stories—like, maybe someone out there doesn't know that David killed Goliath and why that's important, right? And if that's a story that like totally is important to you, share it. Share it. Why it applies.

Yeah, I have a very similar love affair with the story of Rahab because in the story of Rahab—and I grew up in church, you know, I had obviously read it many times—and the story of Rahab, she hangs a red cloth out the window. And I actually teach a lot when I preach about things in the Bible because I feel like if the story felt the need to mention that object, that there's probably a lesson tied to the object. And so anyone who understands the historical significance of that red rope, it was something that she would have had to hang over her door to let people know that she was a prostitute. And in order for her and her entire family to be saved, she had to hang what she was out the window. She had to fully own who she was to first let her saviors know that she was this thing so that they could rescue her. It was like a way of identifying her, right? That's how they knew not to kill her. But also, the amount of freedom that brings. And if she had hidden it, they would have all been killed.

And for me, symbolically, you know, it's very much a—if you've been through something grimy, in order to bring salvation to yourself and generations of people after you, you need to own what it is that you have done and who you are. Don't be ashamed of it because that's how salvation comes, and that's how freedom comes—is by hanging this thing out the window. And I have preached that at multiple women's conferences, obviously longer and more articulately than that, and over and over, people are like, "I have never, ever, ever, ever in my life correlated those things."

And so you're right. And it goes back to what we're saying about how something that I say will hit one particular group of people, even if it's the same story. I mean, you would probably teach the story of Rahab from a different vantage point, Andy. You would teach the story of Rahab from a different vantage point. And so it's the necessity for being very present online, I think, is really kind of the main thing that people need to hear. I think it's just, it's not about, "Oh, there's already five hundred thousand pastors that are preaching."

And it's funny because so Andy and I have been on a podcast recording like grind. We've recorded several last week. We've recorded several this week. We're basically recording a whole season in two weeks. And so we've had lots of conversations. But what I'm noticing is in every single conversation, what comes up is it really—you cannot focus on the size of the audience. Rather, the impact that you could potentially have on a single individual. And that has come up, Andy, I think in like every single—all of them. Like, all of them. It's like every single one of them is like, "We, if you, you can't be focused on, 'Well, I may not have as large of an audience on my podcast as Katie has on her podcast,' or, you know."

You may not have as big of a following on TikTok as I have on TikTok, but does it really matter though? Because that one person that needs to hear it, God's going to make sure that that one person hears it. But if your voice can't be found, then it becomes a problem. And so I think that that's interesting, Andy. That I mean, and we've had people—you then we interviewed Ken Arrington who's in Puerto Rico planting gardens, you know? Do you follow him on TikTok? No, sounds fascinating though. He's amazing, but you should follow him. Um, but he's like a Biblical historian and like does crazy amazing things with him and his wife. But you two are very, very different and you are saying the same thing. And then Ian Simkins, we interviewed him, he said the same thing. Like it's just been like person after person. So I think this season is like, and it's the same thing that God's been putting on my heart since December that I've been posting about on TikTok and my Instagram, which is impact over accolades. Like God is 100% more concerned with your willingness to show up and be impactful than he is with whether or not you have a zillion people that are listening to you.

Yeah, I have a quote in my little quotes that inspire me. Think, um, anyways, obedience doesn't require an audience. And so it's just showing up. And now, of course, there are ways to show up better. Like people listening are obviously people who have great things to say and you YouTube that all day long for just different ways to film your videos to make it effective. But don't let perfection stop you because it's better to take some action than wait for perfection because that's never going to happen. But yeah, I mean, make your video a little engaging if you can do a little bit of work, but mostly just hit publish.

Yeah, when I first started and even now, kind of my TikToks, and I mean I film like cinematic commercials professionally—like that's what I do—and my TikToks, I am like me. I'm just going to talk into this phone because originally, kind of like whenever God was like, well, I guess it's probably God through my daughter. My daughter's like, "Mom, you need a TikTok," and I'm like, "I'm not doing that." And so I did it very begrudgingly, you know? Um, and so I definitely didn't put any effort into it. And now I try to do more. And I just find that my lane seems to be just film what you film and put it out. Um, but I agree like there are so many ways to learn how to be more engaging. So Andy, what were you going to say?

I was going to ask, so Katie, you are relentlessly positive, and I mean that in a good way. Um, like there is sometimes you meet people that the positivity is forced. Um, but everything that I've seen from you on social media, I've I admit I have listened to probably a number of your episodes covertly. Yeah. Uh, I have a seventeen-year-old daughter, and so um, I'm she's my girl. She's going to college next year. We have a nineteen-year-old son, and I was fine kicking him out of the house, but the seventeen-year-old girl, uh, I don't—I think she's actually currently like right above me sleeping, taking a nap before she has to go to work or track practice or something. I don't want her to leave the house ever. I want to like, you know, just just no. She's not going to leave. Boys are idiots and stupid, and I—you—the world is bad. And so what you're saying is relentlessly positive to women, and I super appreciate that. Do you ever find yourself getting into a rut because of that? Do you ever find yourself like repeating the same thing over and over and over, and then going back to L and saying like, "Hey, I need something new here," or are you just like that superhero single-minded? I'm charging this thing down and I'm running it down come hell or high water.

Great question, and thank you. I, we love our young women. I have two daughters as well. Uh, I always say, you know, having two daughters makes me very passionate about the next generation of young women. So that's another thing that God did. It's funny. I would have told you, as we're pretending like I know, that I was gonna have three boys, and again God's like, "That's cute. Let me let me show you what you need." Um, so to answer your question, um, okay, well, one funny story that is actually a perfect example of this. I have a video that I did. It's not even my audio. I said, "Just a reminder: he's not your soulmate. Why your soulmate would actually want to date you." Okay, I've posted it twice. It performed all right. I was in this TikTok rut, as you alluded to earlier, Ashley, where none of my videos were getting any. So it's like, whatever, let me just post this again. I posted it before, we'll post it again and see what happens. It is still going crazy with over a half a million views at this point. I've had people, "How dare you? My soulmate is going to date me. He loves me." Wow, thank you so much for saying this. It's just going the same exact video that I posted before. So I've been very encouraged to do the same thing. I have reposted some content. I've said the same thing different ways. There I talked to something about how when our grandparents dated, they had less options, but the marriage, you know, usually had a longer longevity in those days. Now there's a mil different factors we can unpack, but are we really better for having thousands of options that we swipe through on the internet? I said this whole thing in about a minute video. I said the whole, "Not better, right?" And then I kind of unpacked that and said the same thing in seven seconds. So it's just so interesting that you can kind of say the same thing. And especially if you've been on TikTok or you know any form of social media for a while, you said the same thing six months ago, say it again. You can post the same exact video like I did with that soulmate thing, or you can just unpack it in a different way, you know? Different song, different video, different whatever. So I don't think I guess I have social proof that saying the same thing doesn't get old. And I think about the way we are, you know, like we're scrolling through, "Oh, wow, that's really good." But even when I see the same person's post the same thing, "Thank you, because I needed to hear it again," or maybe I missed it the first time, or maybe I wasn't following you a year ago when that went viral. I don't know, but I've never had someone say, "How dare you post the same thing?" You know, like, so I don't think it ever gets old, especially when we're doing what we're doing. We're saying what we're saying, and your audience is the same. Like, no one listening is like going to be, I don't know, selling snake oil or saying unuseful content into the world. They're saying positive things that need to be said and need to be repeated. So I don't know. Thank you for the comment about the positivity. Um, but I I do think I, and um, I'm a very tenacious person. My background is in marketing and sales, and so maybe I guess I um, maybe I see things a little differently. But I am very excited about, maybe a little bit blindly optimistic, about the next generation of young people, and I do see the good. Yes, there's bad. There's, but you know, every person in their fifties looks back and says, "Oh, the younger generation, they're they're," since the beginning of time people have done that. And I disagree. Like, of course there's bad, but of course there's so much good too. And if we focus and call out the good in these younger people, that's what they need. They need a permission slip. They need someone a little bit ahead of them in life seeing, "I see good in you, and I'm cheering you on, and here's how I want to help you." Like, that's what we can do as not twenty-somethings anymore. And I just want to be a voice and an encourager. I have a lot of conversations with people. They book me for calls, not necessarily for mentoring, but they want to do what I'm doing. They want to be a speaker. They want to do social media. And again, it's not competition. Let me help you. Let me share your stuff. Let me support you. So yeah, as you can tell, I have strong feelings about all of that.

Yeah, and I don't—I don't mean to, I don't mean to say that you know, you are your message is the same over and over, so forgive me if it came off that way. What I what I mean is in the translation, I was trying to jump there, is that discipleship is literally saying the same thing over and over and over and over. And for me, uh, I was a pastor for—I've been a pastor for fifteen years—and there are times even in my pastoral ministry I'm saying the same thing over and over and over and over and over. Same, same, same rhythm, same everything. Obviously you got to try to make it fresh and try to do all the things there, but but there are times when I'm discipling somebody it's like, "Man, can you just can you not get it? Can you just not get it?" And that's me being a hard-headed—like I'm a one and a three on the Enneagram. Like I'm I'm very braggadocious, and I—that's your three as well, so that's I think that's there's a marketing thing there as well. Like that's just that's how it is. Uh, but but but for me, like I run out of energy, and the thing that amazes me about you is that you you haven't, you you're not running out of that energy. Like you're continuing to. So so I commend you for all of that.

This is me patting you on the back and saying like, "Well, okay, my mom is seventy, and she does all the plays for the middle school, all the costumes for the middle school play. Like she's just a little ball of energy." So I think I got it from her.

Wow. But I do that for mentoring. I feel like I say the same thing on calls, so I ended up recording the same things I go over for a digital course, and I encouraged like, "Hey, why don't you buy this instead of booking a call because it's cheaper, and I'm probably gonna answer your question?"

Well, we are pushing up on time, so I think the last question that I have for you is um, something that's definitely happening across churches in America is there's just this mass exodus of Gen Z from the church, from the traditional church specifically. Um, they are very hungry. I work with a ton of Gen Z. You do as well. Um, Andy does too. There, it's not that they don't want to have a relationship with God or they don't want to have a relationship with Jesus. They just feel some kind of way about traditional church settings for a myriad of reasons. Some of them valid, some of them uh, not valid, but you know, valid to them. Um, so if you were talking to a room full of pastors that were wanting to figure out a way to re-engage Gen Z specifically in an impactful way, what would your advice be to them?

Yeah, there's there's a lot to. I think the first thing is, like it or not, and again, every generation has done this, we don't want what our parents had. We think that it's uncool, outdated, it doesn't apply to me. And we can argue that because the gospel is the same and it's and it's always good and it's always applicable. But I think that they are craving something deeper. We love this about this generation, that they do want, um, you know, we have that Asbury Revival as an example of people, yeah, young people do want a deeper dive. And so our church did something recently, and it was they encouraged people to fast. They encouraged like just some go up to the church and pray. It was open from seven AM to seven PM, just a more intense, which sounds crazy because a lot of people think, "Oh, you know, Gen Z wants to sleep in all day and not work," and I mean, I'm sure there's statistics on that too. But what I see is the people who are interested in church, they want, they're searching for what's real. And if we can give them a taste of, "Here, you know, we don't have it all figured out," and and say that too. Like, "Here, I'm a pastor who, you know, I I don't—this is not a facade. This is just a broken man or woman trying to figure it out. Here's what I've learned this week when I was..."

Studying scripture, I think this is interesting. What do you think? Have a conversation. And I think that what I see is a lot of pastors doing that, having a lot of great conversations. I see a, I'm excited about what I see in the church, that it's not just a "here I am in my suit and I don't like anyone who thinks otherwise." I think that that's definitely not the trend anymore. I'm sure somewhere in Nowhereville there is that happening, but again, maybe I'm just blindly optimistic, but I do see very good things happening. I do see very good conversations happening.

I would encourage them to ask, maybe they surely they have a connection to some Jennys. We love you guys. We want to open the doors for you. How can we make that possible in our ZIP code with our resources? Invite them to invite their friends. What would that look like? What would you want to invite your friends to? And you got to be realistic. You're not going to have a full band or whatever it may be, but I think that a lot of pastors might be surprised by the answers because they may think that they have to have a Passion, you know, type of performance. But I don't see that. I see a lot of Jennys just wanting and craving something that's real.

And I would say if there is a conversation with a young person or any person like, "I don't go to church because X, Y, and Z happened," I get that. But I would say don't judge Jesus based on Christians. We get it wrong. The church gets it wrong. We're all a bunch of broken people, and if we were all perfect, then it would be messed up when I attended or when you attended, you know? So just conversations to have, just some, you know, vulnerability to be like, "We're all figured out. Would you like to join the party as we figured it out together?" Something like that.

I mean, that's like a mic drop moment from Katie right there. Like, we're all broken, we're all messed up, and broken people. She's just going to walk away with a clock on her neck like Flavor Flav. The Flavor Flav, you made my day. Yeah, come on. Like, nobody knows Flavor Flav anymore. I guess that's the all three of us, right? Yeah, yeah. No, I saw you. I saw you lift up there. You're going to have to catch that on YouTube if you didn't get a chance to do that.

Katie, last question for me. What's going on in the future for you? What are the next weeks and months look like for you in terms of podcasting and life and all the things there?

Oh, well, I have a dream for another book, baby, based on my homegirl at the well. So look for that, hopefully. Yeah, I'm just loving the girls. The age of our daughters, we're just very involved in their lives, soaking in those moments as they are getting older. As you alluded to, I'm right there with you, and just loving it, loving life, loving all the things. We're involved in all the sports and all the things going on, and of course my plant babies as well. And we have a puppy that made me question my life decisions. She's almost a year and she is a handful.

It gets better with the puppy, trust me. It's, we've gone through that a couple of times. They stop chewing on the, my latest puppy, she chews on the baseboards every once in a while, and I just, I can't figure it out, and that's going to be frustrating to fix. Is your puppy at that point yet?

No, but get that apple spray. There's this bitter apple spray you can spray on stuff.

Okay, you have that? Yeah, okay. Yeah, no, she's just psycho, you know? Some of them are. I love it. Some of them are. I love it. But our daughter loves her.

Of course, of course, of course. We are so appreciative of you joining us on the Hybrid Disciple. We're going to have all your links and all of your everything for Katie in the show notes and in the description below. Katie, thank you so much.

Yes, thanks for having me.