Questions Led to Community: Here's What Happened

: All right, welcome in everybody. Welcome into the Gaming Outpost podcast here on Twitch. And if you're watching the VODs later, appreciate you. Thank you for watching and hanging out.

: I hang out with friends who are in the gaming sphere, who I call missionaries, whether they do or not, and I love hanging and having conversations with my friends.

: So, let's welcome in Mother Goose 421. Not to be confused with other Mother Gooses out there. Okay. My brain was going to 420 and I'm like, that doesn't make sense.

: Yes. Actually, I do know a few people that have done Friday weddings because they wanted the date and it didn't matter. So, okay, let me just check here. I wish I had a better way to do this.

: You know what? I still had you muted. Oh, you did? Okay. There we go. Now Chad, I can hear myself.

: Yeah, you know, it's small little things. It's not like big tech problems. Although I did have my computer crash on me earlier today and I was a little bit in a panic mode because I went to stream this morning and OBS shut down, shut everything down and I'm like, "Okay." And then later after I was done streaming, my computer just went black screen and I'm like, "No, what's going on?" But all good.

: All good. Yep. Sometimes the OBS will do some weird things after an update here and there. So I don't know. It just happens that way.

: Cool. I'm happy to be here. Yeah. Supersonic telling me you were muted here. I got it now. Hopefully we're all good. Supersonic, let me know if I'm too loud or if she's too loud.

: I'm trying to keep the levels where it's going to be good for everybody. Her volume down twenty percent. Okay. Check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check.

: Is that better, Sonic? Check, check. Here I am. I'm talking hopefully twenty percent less. I'm not sure how to fully do twenty. I mean, I put it down twenty, but what does that mean for the person listening?

: Twenty-ish. Yeah. Yeah. A smidge. A smidge. ABCs. One, two, three. I make folks who come on the stream together, I usually have them say their ABCs for me while I do a sound check.

: Okay. A, B, C to E, F, G. Well, I was in theater, so we do other warm-up exercises like "What a to do to die today at a minute or two to two. A thing distinctly hard to say but harder still to do. Mama made me mash my M&Ms."

: Oh, well that's singing.

: I wasn't singing. Mama made me, even in Burb language. Oh yeah, it's a thing. Well, it is a pleasure to have you on here.

: So the setup for what I'm doing is I'm just inviting friends on. And I don't care what label you use, but I view you as someone who is intentionally Christian in a space that is not intentionally Christian.

: And to me, that is a person who is on mission. And a person who's on mission is a missionary. So I'm not saying you need to use that title, but to me, in some capacity, whether you're a pastor, whether you're a lay person, a person who is intentionally Christian in a non-Christian space is a missionary. And I think we all should be thinking about where can we be missionaries and I especially love being a missionary in a digital space because well there's a growing number of us but for a long time there weren't that many and I love connecting with people and figuring out what was it for you that led you into streaming and then with leading to streaming, wagers just follow. Got to follow. Thank you for the follow.

: Thanks for the vlog. So what led you into streaming on Twitch? And maybe it was a longer story of how you got started in Twitch, how you got over there, why you decided to stream, and then you know, did you start intentionally as a Christian streamer to begin with or what that whole journey was? So I'm going to give you the floor to just share with us.

: Yeah. Well, I was born in 1986 in Sarasota, Florida. No, I'm not going to start that far. Um, well would you agree that COVID changed everything for church?

: Yes it did. Absolutely. COVID changed everything. And so when we went through COVID at my local church, I've been at my church now for this is my eleventh year at my church here in Fort Wayne. We survived COVID and then we saw that everything changed.

: During COVID all of the churches now became digital creators. We were reaching people through the interwebs and we didn't have the seven minutes of intentionality for people to come in and experience our church, experience the vibes. That's seven minutes to make an impression. We now had seven seconds. It was as quick as your thumb flips. A quick view and a thumb flip.

: So a lot of churches switched over to a digital mindset. How can we help to create community through the digital realm because that's what everyone had jumped to? Zoom calls, doing online groups, doing pastorship through there, like sermon giving, sermons, giving worship, you had connections through Facebook Live and all of those things. And I do believe that Twitch took some of this growth during that time during COVID. Twitch saw a huge influx of streamers.

: And so for us, we were already on the cutting edge of creating digital content because we were in the process of creating small group content and making it evergreen. So we were taking the sermons and then we're taking like the studies and we were creating things from it and packaging it in video form and being able to reuse it.

: If someone needed a sermon series about marriage, we could already pull that content for them and give it to them. Sermons and questionnaires and things like that. And so we had already been kind of thinking through a model of a talking head instead of just when you sometimes when you look at online sermons you see the pastor on the stage and the camera is following them as they're moving.

: But our model was a talking head. So it'd be much like this where you would just see me talking to the camera. I would be looking at the camera. I'm talking directly to the person that's on the other side. And so that was very different for us in the COVID years.

: And so springboarding off of COVID, we wanted to explore the digital realm a little bit more. And my husband is a gamer. Okay. And he is a tried-and-true nerd. He's a nerd and he's amazing and he loves Batman and games and video. I just, he's so great.

: And so he got to thinking about how, you know, he knew about VR church. He would visit VR church and he had some great experiences there. He was also doing some classes through Bethel, doing some online, they would do Zoom meets through Bethel University. He was doing like some sort of spiritual something degree. I don't know what it was but so he just saw some value there and he said, "You know, I wonder if we could replicate this."

: He said, "I know that there is a space out there, this new digital ministry." It was brand new. Digital missions was a brand new term. It was just now starting to form. And he's like, "I want to be on the cutting edge of that." And so he bought a computer. He learned how to build a computer on YouTube. And he started streaming. And he still has his, he doesn't stream anymore. There's a whole story as to why, but he's the one that started streaming in our household.

: It's free forever today. Free forever today. I'm going to put it in the chat in case anybody wants to see my man forever today.

: So yeah, totally smarty pants one hundred percent. VR church is way cool and it inspired him to do more. So he started streaming and let me just tell you, I was like, "Well, that looks fun. I want to do that. I play Call of Duty. I could totally get down with hanging out with people and meeting people and being hype and all that." So sure enough, thanks for the sub, go fully. I appreciate it. Three months. Let's go. Let's go. You're the bestest.

: So I was like, "Yo, that's for me. I want to do that. I want to try it." And so my husband Josh, he built my very first ever stream setup on OBS. He got it going and I started just playing Call of Duty. And I thought that's what I was supposed to do. I didn't stream under any Christian tag. I had no idea there were Christians on this platform. What?

: And then I think what had happened was Twitch started seeing my bio and kind of took cues off that to form the algorithm because the very first Christian streamer that I ever popped into was Miss Positivity. Okay. And from Miss Positivity, it springboarded me into Mama Llama Face at the time, Pastor Don, like to you, to ukulele, to all these other people.

: Um, and then I hit this like streamer crisis that I think some streamers go through when they don't really have a vision for their streams. And the crisis was I felt like I didn't know who I was as a content creator, right? And I didn't want to just show up and play games because, you know, I had a conflict. My spirit inside me was conflicted. And my spirit inside me kept saying, "Gosh, would I be playing video games if there were three people over here hanging out with me? No, I'd be hosting them and I'd be chatting with them and I'd be in their space. I'd be asking them questions. We'd be like connecting."

: And so I just kept feeling this conflict and I took some time off of streaming. I took the summer off. And when I came back, I started streaming under the just chatting category. And then I also streamed under the Christian tag because at that time I had just been enjoying kind of this whole community of Christian streamers and I said, "Okay, I want to try a just chatting stream and just talk and connect." And so that's why I call myself a community-focused streamer. Because I'm usually very like into the chat, reading all the things, having the discussion. I don't care if the chat is falling way behind. It's fine with me. That is what I love to do.

: So it's really formed over just this crisis of self of who I am as a content creator and who I actually want to be and how God has gifted me. The Lord has given me a present, a gift of being able to make friends easy. I love people. I love being in people's space IRL and on the digital space. I have life experience where God has put me through things both good and bad to help me relate to people on sometimes levels that folks would not expect.

: And so I just, that is kind of the genesis or like the process of me becoming this person in digital missions now where I know who I am as a content creator. I'm comfortable with really settling in that just chatting and I have such a passion and a love for people in the digital space in a sense of like everybody that's in here right now.

: You know, I'm looking at Blessing Boat with Warrior and Sonic and Theo and even Joey who's brand new. They're more than just a name on the screen, right? And they're sitting in their homes or sitting at work or they're sitting in their cars and they're watching us and interacting with us. But they're all individual very special people created by God for us to encourage and for us to live on.

: So that's kind of like how I became Mother Goose 421 in this space. Um, again, I think that I was muted in the very top of the stream. The 421 in my name is from my anniversary. It's coming up thirteen years. And then Mother Goose just came from my oldest daughter.

: She just calls me goose instead of mom usually. So that's the vibe. Yeah, that's awesome. Uh, there's a question if you are going to reach conference.

: Yes, I will be at reach conference. I have a couple of responsibilities. I will, I'm going to show up a little bit early and see if I can help out and volunteer wherever I can. But I'm going to be helping with a talk with Christian Ninja. We're going to talk about originality. And I'll probably, you'll, if you're here and you've heard the story, I'll probably retell that again of just my crisis of self as a content creator.

: But I'm going to be doing that. And then I'm also going to be helping out with the worship as well. Um, leading worship with a couple other streamers that also do instruments and singing and things like that. So I will be there. Yeah, that's very cool. By the way, and I'm sure you've got your own code. I'm not sure. Is it goose or what's your code?

: Yeah, uh, yes, it's Mother Goose. Oh, it's Mother Goose. Okay. Mother Goose. All right. So anybody in her chat that wants to go, there are still a few discounts for ten dollars off the price if you put Mother Goose in. And mine is flat cap. So you can use either one of those codes. Get ten dollars off. I think the last I saw we are at seventy registered right now. So far out. That's incredible. Yes. Let's go. Yes. Exactly. I don't have my ticket yet, but um, I don't either because I was like, I'll just wait and see what happens, you know, with the discounts for us.

: Uh, Pastor G, happy anniversary early. Uh, how sweet that you're getting an Easter birthday this year. That's awesome. Ah, you want to go to reach conference, Lord willing. Well, I hope to see you there, Joey. That's really cool. Um, and then I was reading your comment. Born and raised a Christian household, but begin to follow Christ in twenty twenty-one. Praise the Lord. It support. You're like super smart. Got it. I like video games, books, podcasts, anime, manga. I don't know how to say it. Manga or manga. I'm not obviously not into that. I don't know, but I think it's manga, but I'm probably wrong. Manga. Okay. History and of course Christ. I like to study the Bible, theology, and church history. Oh my gosh, Joey, you're so smart. Go ahead with your bad self. I love that. Pastor G saying he's uh, twenty-nine years anniversary. Wow. So I'm thinking he's wondering how long is, how long have you been married?

: Yep. Uh, thirteen, thirteen years. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Pretty amazing. Really been without Christianity. Then God gave me all of you. Praise Jesus. Praise the Lord. Coley. Yep. Amen. All right. I love the chat. The chat is like, I totally agree with you. I started with not playing games, but part of that was I played on Xbox, so oh yeah. I knew how to get it to work to come over, but I wasn't going to play and not engage the chat. And I'd been watching on PC, and I was like, "Okay, I got to figure this out, but I don't have PC games." So uh, mine, mine was more people kept going, "When are you going to stream? When are you going to stream? When are you going to stream?" And and then finally I decided, well, I'll do sermon prep. That'll be really exciting. Nobody will show up for that. And they will show up. And they will. It was awesome. Like, oh, you're going to kind of do a behind the scenes kind of look at how you're prepping and and talk through all of that. So I think for it was at least four months. I think that's all I did. One day a week I did sermon prep. That was it. I might have been an hour, two hours and the rest of the time I watched a bunch of other people uh, to learn and find and I really love connecting with people that are that are Christians in the space and trying to be an encouragement for them.

: So I love that you have come into um, the realm here where we're all interacting and engaging. You're over at reach conference. We've got blessing boat in the chat. I'm over at TCD. There's a whole bunch of groups of Christians that are out there and and it's really loving and encouraging.

: True. So as you were going along, uh, what were some obstacles uh, that you faced when you started streaming before you made the decision of, of I'm going to take time off and assess myself before that? What were some obstacles that you faced? Well, I had a big learning curve with the tech side of things. I had no idea really. Audio, the tech things were the biggest learning curve for me because my husband had set up my very first OBS. And so, you know, streaming is a little bit of an art with some of the rhythm. Uh, you have rhythm, you have a little bit of knowledge, but if you have neither of those things, it can just be trying to trying to fly with no wings.

: Um, even though you can push the start streaming button, you know, just like earlier when you were trying to fix the audio. Yeah. In the beginning, those things can be very hindering to just even relaxing and vibing and playing a game well because you're thinking of other things. So I think that was one thing that I learned early on of just um, that it's okay to have a starting place and it's okay to learn and grow in this space.

: Um, another obstacle that I had was I wasn't really sure how to deal with trolls necessarily at in the beginning because I came in uh, really wanting to be patient, kind, gentle, and all the things and really give a lot of grace. But, you know, there are just some trolls that just want to see the world burn. And they, they really, it's not that they don't deserve grace, but as a protection for the rest of my community, I've chosen a little bit more of the motherly thing of just saying, you know, if if they're not going through with warnings, if that's not making a dent, then this person probably shouldn't be um, shouldn't be around my my family, my Twitch family. I'm just really protective of them. So I've come, but we love them and we pray for, yes, we pray for the trolls. God bless that person.

: And also, we protect our family. And if someone's coming in hot and heavy with derogatory things or just being flatout mean, we're not going to, we're not going to do that. But I didn't know how to handle those things at the time. And I didn't have any mods. I didn't have really a lot of experience. And so those I think were the two off the top of my head that I can say was a big learning curve for me. I'm happy to have grown through it as well. Well, if you, if you don't grow, then you're probably not going to keep doing it. Uh, you know, figuring those things out, those challenges. Absolutely. Uh, blessing boat saying. Yeah. And now you help other people figure out their tech. Isn't that a nice growth? Isn't that crazy? I know. Look at how far I've come that now I um, I can I can help coach and and honestly, it, it's, it's so fun for me to help other people who are new at something because I remember the frustration of trying to figure it out. I love helping new streamers. I love helping new streamers. I love helping um, kind of what what Christian Ninja does, but on a way small, small, small level. Christian Ninja really has this whole thing fleshed out with a whole class and everything. I just want to make you some fun emotes that are very simple that you can fill up your slots with so that people feel like they have some branding to go with your channel. I just want to tell you how to like fix something on your OBS quick or how to set up a cool alert that you might like in my channel. So um, but I do love helping and um, I appreciate you saying that. Uh, blessing boat. That's very sweet. Trolls can be horrible, but we love them and pray for them. Yes. Or oldie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or the oldies. Yeah. Drop drop some fun emotes in the chat, everybody. Drop your fun emotes. Just do it.

: Hey, you know, that's that's a good example of things that are intimidating when you don't have a knowledge and understanding and later like now like I just threw a bunch of emotes that I made. Oh yeah, I did that. That was fun. I, you know, I took this, I modified it, I did this, I did the other thing as opposed to, well, I've got an old one that's me tipping the cap, which is probably I just did a GIF on my phone and it worked and I was like so happy and excited that that worked and I'm like, okay, I don't know what to do after that. That was my whole thought process. I have nothing left to do. Um, and and you have all the the fun goose. Uh, which I think my favorite is the goose taking notes. That I think is my favorite one. You like that one? I love the taking notes one. Yeah. Uh, supersonic. That's another thing to work on. Moderation, you know, how to timeout ban and how much to regulate the certain words from being said in the first place. Not just adding individual words.

: Totally. It is. Who do I have followed? Um, I didn't catch it. It's so small on my screen I can't see it. Oh, is that Blessing Boat just followed? That's weird. Yeah, I kind of think that, you know, if if there were if there were what Christian Ninja does is so important and valuable and I hope that his influence grows in that area because there are some things I took his class um, the taco taco creator class and I just remember going through this going I wish I had had all of this coaching before I started streaming right or at least in the very beginning to know that there's more to this than just showing up and pushing just starting start streaming and playing a game. Like there's more to this. Once you start your streaming, you all of a sudden are whether you think you are or not, you're a leader and people are people are watching your content and so what you're saying matters. How you present yourself matters. Um, because like you said, just how you were saying you weren't really sure if people would show up for something like sermon prep, but but people want to show up. No matter what you're putting out there, somebody is going to show up. They're going to find a connection with it. Yes. And show up.

: So there's just way more to it than just pushing the button. Yeah. And I was just thinking going back to we were talking about trolls and there were some comments about band words or those kinds of things or other stuff. There's also a kind of troll that comes in with a specific kind of name trying to get you to say their name. And yes, I wonder it's all for that all the time. Yeah. I I think that sometimes, especially if they're trying to come into a Christian stream, that part of their intent is to get you to say it and then clip you. The thing but but see what I do is I accidentally say it. So I I've just I've just I've stopped when people if they're brand new and they say, "Hey, can you give a shout out to so and so?" I'm just I just I straight tell him I'm like, "Excuse me, I will not do shout outs anymore because people try to get me to say stuff that I should not say." So welcome. Yeah. And um, how can I help you? I'm so daffed. I'm because in the moment when you're reading through all this chat when you're when you're reading through all this chat, it's just kind of like accidentally. It's just part it just becomes part of the chat. So I've learned I just, that's another thing I learned. Don't do that. No. Tall Skinny Kiwi. That's a cute name. That's so cute. Oh, you've not met tall skinny Kiwi before? No. Tall Skinny Kiwi is not a streamer, but he has been in digital ministry for a long time. Love that. Well, welcome. He loves hanging out with Christian streamers. And he'll even get up at three in the morning if uh, he knows somebody's doing something. He'll get up and support. Nice. That's so cool. Yep. Watch Trolls on Jackbox. Oh, yeah. Certain games. Certain games. Yes. That's why whenever I've done Jackbox recently, I haven't streamed under the Jackbox tag.

: Oh, I just keep it just chatting and I just yeah, yeah, because it causes too many of the trolls to come out. They draw inappropriate things and say a lot of inappropriate stuff.

: So I ain't trying to parent, y'all. I didn't come up here to parent. What? But your mother goose. Isn't that why you're your mother goose?

: So that everybody can y'all need to get your act together. Mom, what should I do? Mom, somebody's picking on me. Mom, come on. No, I don't want to tell. I don't mind giving advice, but I don't want to tell you to stop drawing inappropriate things in my stream.

: Not parenting the trolls. Yeah, I ain't trying to. Yeah, not parenting the trolls. Okay, good plan. Yeah, no, thank you. Uh, so with uh, with doing streaming and you're involved in your church, is there is there because you were saying it to begin with that your church was really trying to lean into doing digital things and they're really accepting. How does how is there any connection between your church and what you do or does that bleed over in one way or the other?

: There's a small connection. My church streams on Twitch. Uh, you can find it at the point online on here on this platform. Um, and I have some of my mods that mod for my channel also will mod that channel. We only stream on Sunday at uh 10:15 Eastern, but it's our full full service. And uh we have a small Discord. The the thing that we lack is we need someone to run that area.

: Yeah, my job at the church is first impressions, grow groups, and also events. So, um I we we would need to build out the um leadership a little bit and have someone specifically to run the moderation for the online content that we have and then also for the backend stuff like the Discord and things. We we went through a little bit of a shift, you know, when we came out of COVID. We said, "Okay, somehow or another, our online audience grew like crazy on YouTube." We had, we started out beginning of COVID with about 200 subscribers on YouTube, but we grew to over 20,000.

: Wow. In the short COVID year. Something about the algorithm, something about maybe some Google SEO, who knows what it was, but there were people watching from all over the world.

: And um so then we fast forward to to about a year and a half ago. We say, what is our digital who is our digital content serving now, right?

: And now that we've come out of the COVID space and we realize that a lot of our digital content is really being consumed by people who couldn't make it at church that day. It's no longer really being touched worldwide. So, we haven't really put a lot of effort into creating or or building out the digital side of our ministry through my church at this point.

: Yeah, I think it was I think it was God grew. So, it was awesome. Yeah, the Lord grew it and there were a lot of a lot of amazing amazing uh testimonies out of that time period.

: But gosh, everything just changed during COVID. It was crazy. We had no idea what was going to happen or why it was happening. And if you were to ask us how to duplicate that, we honestly would not be able to tell you how to duplicate the growth on YouTube in such a short time. We wouldn't be able to tell you. I get kind of nervous from the how do I copy what you did idea. Right. Right.

: Right. Because that is what the church has been trying to do for the last 40 years or more is somebody did something, they were successful. Let's copy what they did. It'll be successful. Yes. Yes. But I'm sorry. You know what uh Steven did going around and preaching the gospel and then Philip did going around and preaching the gospel was not the same way that Peter did it and not the same way Paul did it.

: Exactly. Exactly. And so copying is doesn't doesn't necessarily equal success. And I love what you do, but I don't do what do what you do, you know?

: Uh, I I think that's one of the most exciting things I see in Twitch especially, but all over digital is creative people using their gifts and talents to add to the voice within the body of Christ for the whole kingdom.

: So, so you started out with playing games, which that's what the platform is for. And then you had to find your voice in that to be able to say, "Oh, okay. A lot of people do that. That's not fully my voice. My voice is something else. I bring a different skill set. Yes, I do not have the skill set to do first person shooters, let alone do first person shooters and have a chat with anybody while it's happening.

: It's very difficult. And it's very, very difficult.

: So awesome how God used COVID for good with that terrible time. Yeah. Wasn't that a weird time, Coley?

: It was so weird. We used to wash our groceries and walk one way in a grocery aisle because there were arrows on the floor.

: Oh yeah, I forgot about the arrows on the floor. Yeah, the arrows on the floor was that was a weird time. Churches in digital ministry is a growing niche. There are some nuances that I think church should start to take up. It's possible that I might be taking over the digital ministry side of my church.

: Well, I think that that would be very wise because you're very good at it. If so, I'm going to discuss uh trying a few things and see how it goes.

: What kind of things would you want to implement, Donnie, if you had the opportunity to be in leadership in that role? That's a great question.

: I was I was going to say, "Hey, Donnie, if you need to hang out with other people trying to do things, you know, hang out in the church digital, uh we've got a lot of people doing stuff." We also uh have a course equipping digital missionaries to be able to think through. So not the same as the taco course, a different course thinking about missiology of what does it mean to be a missionary in a digital space and how do you approach it from the standpoint of if I went to a foreign country, I would learn about the culture. I would learn all kinds of things. True. How do I walk into a digital place and learn the culture and not bring my preconceived ways of doing it to the culture that I'm coming to?

: Ooh, that's really good. That's really good. Uh Donnie, you're thinking a pre-church show. Oh, that might be cool. Oh, I love that idea. If you can sell your church on that, that's cool.

: Disco, good to see you as well. Hello. Hello. I feel like it's been a minute since I've seen you. Are you doing all right? Are you excited for Easter?

: Oh, I see what you mean, Donnie. Yeah, we we have uh we created when we were doing the over COVID, we would have a pre-roll. Um, it was a faux live service though, so we would already pre-record the service blah blah and get it out and but it would it would debut at a certain time on all the platforms.

: Um, I I would love to do a pre pre-show kind of thing. That would be super fun. You need like a switcher. You need some like some like tech to do it, I think.

: Oh, you need a tech person. Yeah. To to run all of that. that when you start getting into that kind of a thing. But uh you know with COVID I mean I'm one of those weird people that had been streaming live services on YouTube as soon as YouTube let us do it. I I didn't you didn't wait. I didn't wait for COVID but I was not seeing it as a mission field. I only saw it as a way to reach our shutins and our sick and our snowbirds and that was it.

: Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to make sure you don't lose community when you can't physically be present. That was my my thought. So, it wasn't until that I was like, wait a minute. I know we've had strangers that have wandered into our stuff, but I've never thought about going to them through digital and and I realized some of the things that we were doing were awful.

: Like, we have our camera. Well, we're not putting our slides on. We aim the camera over to the slides when we put the slides up and then we come back like this is done. We're not doing that anymore. We're fixing this. We're gonna we're going to do better so that the person at home uh can have a better experience.

: Yeah. Can have a better experience. Yeah. We we went through that same mindset just at the not last year but the year before around Christmas where we we took a little bit of u money. We just invested in our our cameras. Yeah. And we went back to where we had a foe live. So we pre-recorded the sermon. We pre-recorded the worship and then we would edit that and mix it and put it on all of the platforms around the same time as the service time would be happening. We decided to just go live and we had to have a little bit of an investment bump. We also had to have someone mixing live because even though you know sound is very important as well, we wanted it to sound uh really good just like it does in person.

: So now every Sunday the the sound that you're hearing is mixed um live uh for the service. So it was a lot of shifting and changing but again it's it was um just a it's a process. It was a process where we started out creating content specifically for people reaching people for Jesus helping people find and follow Jesus through the digital space.

: Now it's from an online perspective from my church. we're just serving the people who just couldn't be there that week kind of a vibe or live out of town, etc.

: Right. Right. Yeah. And and I think that's gonna eb and flow as you do things and and Donnie threw a question in there, but as we're thinking about churches and how they can adapt, I love that you are in a church so you can be thinking about those kinds of things.

: Um, and I'll answer Donny's second question first. He he said you got an audio problem. What you do is you turn on the audio and you go you wiggle the chords and you will find which chord is bad. That's one of the ways. It's not the only problem, but I've had that several times at churches that the cord's just worn out. You need to replace a cord.

: But that's one way to find which cord it is. Just wiggle it and uh if it starts popping, you know that's bad. Um but also one of the things that I was thinking during COVID is all of these churches just went and invested thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars and they sit there empty for most of the week. I was really to begin with before I I I got into Twitch, uh I was thinking we need to figure out how to make this usable the rest of the week.

: And then as soon as I as soon as I got on Twitch, I'm like going, I really wish the church would figure out how to take their camera, point it at the screen, turn it to the side, have a studio set up, and they can rent out their space.

: I actually thought about trying to do this. I'm I have entrepreneur ideas. I have no idea how to carry them out. So, somebody go do a great idea. Somebody go do this. Is just like you can um somebody go do this. Yeah. Somebody go do this, please. Like Airbnb, you rent somebody's home.

: Um there's also office studios. You can go rent office studios by the hour if you need it. Churches should rent out their space to be able to have Twitch streamers come in, podcasters come in. Uh you probably already have a bunch of people in your church who are on Twitch. What if you could bless them by giving them better equipment to be able to stream so that they could actually produce better quality content and you're not using it for half the week, more than half the week anyway, you know? And I know that there's cost issues and all of that stuff of, oh, we're going to ruin the tech and all that then for then then rent it to them and have a tech person that you hire and trust to do it, you know?

: Yeah. Yeah. I love the idea. So, someone take it and run with it. You heard it here, folks. He does not have a trademark on this. Nothing. I want to see it happen. Your billion dollar idea. That's right. You know, it'll be I think you're right. I think you're right.

: Whatever. You know, I don't know what you call it for the churches, but uh you know, um we have along the lines of the church being empty during the week.

: Yes, we have this giant lobby at my church that sits empty during the week. And what we had, we prayed, prayed, prayed, prayed, prayed, and finally we had a brand new executive pastor.

: Oh okay. And he felt like the Lord was saying, "Let's do a coffee shop." So we are opening a coffee shop in our lobby in the summer. They start demo in the summer and I think by fall time we should be able to have a working coffee shop Monday through Saturday kind of a vibe.

: And we are hoping that it brings in people that typically would not step foot in a church ever. But when they are around our church, we have a lot of fun in the lobby. A lot of times we theme out the lobby for sermon series and things like that. So maybe they're intrigued. Who knows? But at least they're there at a place that's going to be welcoming, friendly.

: The staff will all be walking around here and there through the week as well. It'll be nice place for us to meet, for small groups to meet, a usable space during the week that typically would sit empty.

: So I totally feel you there on the empty space. No way. Yeah, Donnie's got another like using the stage for rental for local bands and music. I've been at churches that would do that. Like the school would come in and use it. Competitions would come in and use it. So I love that thinking.

: By the way, I have a friend who actually took his church, and it wasn't in a traditional church building. He took his church, started a coffee house in it, but changed the name to Mission Co, or I think it's Mission Coffee House. I might be wrong on that. So it's a mission coffee house now and the church meets in the building. So that's so cool. Yes. So they totally revamped it. They do mocktail night on Thursday nights. They have a professional bartender who comes in and makes non-alcoholic drinks on top of having a barista that's there the rest of the week.

: That's so cool. That's so cool. That good event, event type thing. I love that vibe. That's so cool. Yeah. I wish it was closer. I'd go visit more often. But I know to add the drive on top of spending extra for coffee, you know. True. True. I'm going to come visit the coffee shop.

: Do it, Bobcat. Do it. What? Ask a coworker to talk and go have coffee. Yeah, it would be nice to just go downstairs and have a change of pace. I think I do love coffee so much. So it'd be nice to just go downstairs and get a coffee or a smoothie or something.

: Semi-local church is also a theater. Oh, we, you know, funny you say that, because we started in a theater way back in the day. My church, this is the twentieth year of my church. And they, their very beginnings was in the Rave Theater in Fort Wayne. They spent the first three years just renting out the space and meeting in one of the theaters and the kids would meet in another theater on a Sunday. It's crazy cool the origins that my church has.

: Any concern about Jesus turning over tables of the money changers sort of thing with these ideas?

: You know, I haven't had any concern. My team hasn't had any concern. I really see our building and our people as wanting to help people find and follow Jesus. And if they come in and they want to have coffee in a building that is safe and clean and people who are kind and that's the very first interaction they have with someone who is a Christ follower, then so be it.

: I think that you can give me some good pastoral insight here too about, you know, when Jesus is turning over the tables, he's also seeing the heart of the situation. It wasn't just him going in and being upset that they were selling high-end lambs for sacrifice. It was the heart of these people taking advantage of other people. And so that's not what we're trying to do at all. We just want to love people where they're at.

: Right. There's several different layers of what the money changers were doing. One is, oh, you have to exchange your Roman coins for the temple coins, and we're going to charge you a fee for that to be able to use them in the temple. Then you give it to the temple, and we sell it back to someone else, and we charge them again. So it was a system of taking advantage of people.

: And then what I would also do, as my understanding, is if you come in with a lamb and I go, "No, that lamb's got a blemish. Can't use it. Buy this lamb over here instead." I'll buy that lamb at half price, sell this one to you at full price, and when you leave, I put the lamb you brought in over there in the pen, and then I sell it to someone else and tell them the same thing.

: But I love the question though, Phantom, because I think those are things we could and should absolutely consider. And there's different ways to set this up as far as if you're going to have a coffee house. It could be anything you could be doing, but just we'll just take the coffee house idea. Is the church own the coffee house? Is the coffee house a nonprofit? Is the coffee house a for-profit? And then how do you run and operate that? So there's lots of different ways to do it.

: The reason that my friend did it was when they looked at a map around the area, they said, "What does our community need?" And they said, "We don't have any coffee houses within walking distance of anybody that's in our community." I mean, there's the gas station. You could go in, but you can't sit there. You can't enjoy time with people. So they approached it from filling the need in the community. That's good. That's where they started from. And so I don't know that they're making money off of it right now. I know that there's the idea is to provide a service to the community and that's kind of our vibe too.

: We're our church is located right in the center of Fort Wayne and so there's really not a coffee house up and down our street necessarily. There's a Starbucks kind of close but we have such, it's a time such as this because right around our church we have a lot of new homes going in and young families moving in. This area is really, really growing. Also, they're building a gas station down the road, which is crazy for the place that it is. But yeah, no, I I love that question too, because it does stop you and want to make you ask like, why am I doing this? What is the purpose? And is my heart in the right place in the process of it? So I like that. I like the question.

: It's very good. Yeah. I don't need to go through a priest, sacrifice, or other things to talk and seek to God. Yes. Yes. Yes. And people are holding others back from being with God.

: One of the kids from my old church grew up and loved board games and video games and he started a gaming ministry meeting at the church rec area on non-service days and they bring in friends and neighbors to play games and share church community with all that's really cool.

: Yeah, board games is a whole other different culture too. There's like video games and then there's board gamers. Oh, Bionic Coley. Is that right? I'm trying to get the name right. Bionic Coley. Bionic. Okay. Bionic. That makes more sense. Bionic Coley, so encouraged by all of this sharing. Thanks for talking. It's very sweet.

: Absolutely. Absolutely. I very sweet. Yeah. Just Coley. Okay. I think we should because in some places the church doesn't know what they can or should or haven't thought through those things. And I think one of the best places is to go to people who are pioneering in the space and figure out what has worked, what hasn't worked, what are you learning, what can I learn from you, how can I adapt, how can I get better, how can I do some of those things?

: Yeah. Yeah. True. I agree completely.

: Can you play a song called, it's a song by, what, with a man who is struggling with addiction?

: I don't know this song. Wait, did somebody tell me about this song? I can't. Somebody had a similar chat last stream, but I don't think that it was you.

: Can you shut up, pastor? Don't know who that is. Don't know who that is. I am not going to be up on music. Don't ask me about music from this century.

: Let me shout him out here on my side of the stream. Okay. There it is. Oh, wait. What is, oh, oh, oh, oh. Here. Here. Bobcat. There you go. Oh, you were asking my name. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's not letting me do it on my OBS chat, but Bobcat will take care of it on my end.

: Okay. Yes, he will. He do it. I'd love to hear a couple of stories of just impact that you have seen in the space, whether it was something that you did, something that happened in your chat, something that happened in Discord outside of the realm, but just connections with some people and some impact stories if you've got a couple of those.

: Gosh. Well, I can speak from my perspective of things that I've had happen on the digital space. Do you know Z Sahu? Yes. That girl can just pray. Yes. She can just pray the house on down. And I have been in her stream when I have felt just heavy and off. And she'll be doing prayer and she'll just pray for me. And I'm telling you, I have felt the Lord through her streams before. She's such a sweet, sweet, sweet girl and also very in tune with the Holy Spirit. And so those moments I treasure.

: I remember doing a co-stream with Ukulele once. It was for our, it was for her empty chair stream around November, around Thanksgiving. We had someone come in that was very heavy, very, very heavy laden with a lot of issues going on and not long after that he accepted Christ and he started a new fresh walk with the Lord and so for that season it was really sweet to see the change.

: I have really enjoyed getting to know people off-stream as well, whether it's through gaming. Even though I don't play a lot of games in stream, I'll game off-stream with folks and playing new games and stuff. And so that's been really sweet too, finding those moments to just connect and do something that other people really love and be in their space a little bit.

: And then I've also really enjoyed the Discord vibes. I really like Discord. For a long time, I didn't have a Discord as part of my channel. And even now, I have a Discord, but it's private. So you have to earn a certain amount of channel points. We have to get to know you first. Yeah. I try to get to know people first before they hop in the Discord. And the community gets to know them as well. And then they can redeem and then I'll say yes or no. So the Discord vibes are really fun. It's like my own little hut and I get to do fun things in there and it's sort of like an afterparty vibe, but it's been sweet to have some Discord moments of prayer and connection and Bible studies and just chatting and hanging out in a Discord. It's been really cool. So those are some of my favorite moments.

: As far as an impact on what my stream has been for other people, I don't know. I think the Twitch space is very encouraging. There's encouraging. I mean, I'm sitting here thinking like Coley is very encouraging to me. Rey is in the chat and she's super sweet and very kind to me. Bobcat, Bobcat452, that man will just randomly message me when I'm having a struggle bus of a morning with my kids and he'll just be like, "I'm praying for you, Goose." And get this, he's in Australia. He's in a completely different time zone. And so for him to message me just when I need to have a little bit of encouragement is a godsend. So it's things like that, it's just very sweet. They're all very kind to me. I will say that. Yeah, they are very, very sweet and encouraging to me.

: It's fascinating how many little ways there are to encourage people in digital spaces. Like, yes, some—like, I've got to—like, I don't think all my commands are working. I tried to get him set up. Doesn't think like I've got him working, but you know, I'll get him there. But like, different people have their own different ways of setting it up. Like, "Oh, I can give you a hug. Oh, I can share love with you." Uh, one of my mods, uh, I'm watching you people is like, "Oh, I want to pass cookies around." You know what? Some people don't like cookies because, you know, the sugar, so I want to pass fruit around. So I have a redeem on my channel that you can redeem if you earn enough points. Redeem a command and I'll make a command for you. Oh, nice. Let's go. But I have all my commands secret. So if you put the command in for command, it'll say what? You think I'm going to tell you? Start guessing. You'll never figure it out. Um, so my plan was to, you know, you redeem and it's going to be a private one that only you know. And she's like, "No, the fun is everybody can do it." Okay. So I put a timer in that's a message. "Hey everybody, you can pass cookies and you can pass fruit." So pass cookies and fruit because somebody created the thing, but you can't know the rest of my commands. You know, it's those are still hidden.

: But you're right, it's such a small gesture, but it just brings a little bit of levity to the chat and a little bit of encouragement. And it's a pretend cookie. It's not even a real fruit, but it brings me joy still. So there is a secret command that we are to figure out. I don't know. Try exclamation point goose. See what happens. Uh oh. Just kidding. Oh man. But you're right. I mean, it's the space is so sweet. Everyone is just so sweet and kind and kind to each other. You know what else I love? I love when someone comes in that maybe they're new to the chat and they just come in with some heavy, yeah, and all everyone jumps in and just gives hugs, exclamation point hug, just gives in an encouragement. Someone's taking a moment to minister to them. They're ministering to each other through this platform. It's so beautiful to me. It is the picture of what Christ wants us to be as a community. Bearing one another's burdens, loving each other where we don't have to know the whole story or your whole background in order to just love you right where you are. And that's one of my most favorite things about this place, hands down, 100%. Yeah, it, you know, there is a lot of places where that is not true. But as I go from many streamers and then most of the Christian streamers, that is a thing that is overwhelmingly true that someone comes in with something heavy and they're going to be embraced with love by the people who are in there.

: Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's beautiful. It's just so beautiful. Hi Paul. Hi DJ. I know there was a prayer request earlier that someone had asked for prayer for their wife that she was not—it was okay. It was Coley. Coley. Yeah. Um, let me go back here and get it. We were in the middle of something and I just I want—I didn't want to like we were talking about blessing people. So I just thought maybe we should pause and pray. Yeah, we can pray for K's wife. We are hoping that she's better by Easter. Um, Coley, will you put your prayer request in there again for me, please, so that we can be specific? Poor Fab. Yeah, I was put for adoption right after I was born. I was adopted, too. Did you know that I was adopted? I did not know that. No. Yeah, I'm adopted. I was adopted. I have discussed this before. What you talking about? I'm sure you have, but I'm not in your stream as often as I would like to be. Uh oh. Oh, you're adopted, too, Ray. I don't know if I knew this about you. Maybe I did. Maybe we talked about it on the phone. I feel like I knew this about you, Ray. Oh, I see. She wants to be able to take uh sundown to brothers for Easter Sunday. Yes. Um, do you—so, so what kind of sickness is she sick with? Coley, what happened? You didn't know that? Oh my gosh. No, you don't have to feel bad. It's okay. I mean, you do you feel bad for not knowing? You don't have to feel bad about that at all. Uh, you know, I may not talk about it much, but you didn't know that I was adopted. My non-bio brother was adopted as well. What? Oh my gosh. Well, look at us. Look at us who are adopted. We're all adopted in the family of Jesus. There you go. But we're actually adopted. Yeah. Yeah. That's so cool. It's going around her work. Oh, that's right. Yes. Yes. Yes. Going around the retirement community. That's right. That's right. Um, do you want to pray for Coley or would you like for me to—I'll do that. Okay. God, we're just praying for Coley, uh, for his wife who is ill, who's been sick, who's been throwing up and just wants to be able to enjoy time that she has available with her son that is home from college and be able to take him back and do all the other things on Sunday to be able to be in worship and all of those things. So we pray for healing, we pray for restoration, we pray for strength. Uh, may you give her rest as well and uh just be with the whole family and uh anyone else who is uh struggling uh in similar ways uh who didn't put prayer requests and we just pray over them as well. Everyone who is here, everyone who's watching this later, we just pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Whitebeard punk monk Jesus was the only one to take me. Yeah, that's right. Uh, I've known you for ages and didn't know you were adopted. Yeah. So, fun fact, actually. Um, I met my biological family a few years ago. So all of a sudden, I had titles that I never had before. I was never a sister before or an aunt, but now I'm a sister and I'm an aunt. It's really kind of cool. Amen. Amen. People feel bad. Not funny, they feel bad, but funny. Yeah. You know, my um—I'm so thankful. You know, that song um, um, "All my life you have been faithful. All my life you have been so so good. With every breath that I am able, I will sing of the goodness of God." That is my banner song for my adoption story because even when I didn't see it, when I didn't know it, his goodness is chasing after me and put me in a family that really loved me and um took very, very, very good care of me. So praise the Lord. Yeah, that's really cool. Praise the Lord. I got to say I don't talk about this too often, but my wife and I, we almost adopted a child. Did you? Okay. It didn't—it didn't turn out to get that um to the adoption. It was a 16-year-old who um Ariela Rose was uh the girl's—the child's name and uh she had no brain. She was going to be born without a brain. Life expectancy three years and oh my word. So we went through the whole process before birth. We were there uh shortly after birth the birth happened. But when Ariela was born, the doctor said three days at life expectancy and teenage mom is like, "What kind of mom am I if I can't hold on to a teenager for three days and take care of her?" Oh. So she took back uh the adoption. It still wouldn't have been final until dad, you know, had his rights taken away. Uh it ended up really a blessing. Uh she got to meet her dad for the first time. She never met her dad. So out of this whole situation, she got to meet her dad. Uh wow. And uh so she lived three months. We got to visit with her on a regular basis over those three months. And then three months. Yep. That's it. She lived for three months. So what I love—what I love in that whole uh story is I can tell you a lot of details of how it happened, how it came about, but if I do, I'll start crying. But I'll tell you this piece. When they came and interviewed our kids, my youngest one said, "How, you know, they asked the questions of the kids. How's this going to impact your family and how's this going to place and all this stuff?" And he's just like, "It's just someone else to love. That's what it's going to be. She's going to be—" That's so sweet. "She's just going to be someone else to love in our family." And I was like, so bless—bless. Thank you for sharing that with me. That's so sweet. Yeah. Like I said, I won't share other details. I'll just start fully starting. I do it every once in a while, but I have to be prepared for it. I wasn't planning on that. So yeah. Bless. God bless you. When I was a kid, my younger non-bio brother was being mean. Said, "You're not my real brother." So my mom encouraged me by showing how God used all the adopted people in the Bible. I was getting—I was ten—getting bullied by an eight-year-old. Wow. That's a great uh that's a great thing to do. Okay, go mom. Yeah, love that. I thank the Lord because um although my bio dad is more than capable, his kids grew up loved, successful, and thriving. He didn't know about me at all. Uh, so I thank the Lord because I was raised to experience so many things though I wasn't a grateful teenager. Same. Okay. Same. But the Lord protected me from my bio mom's path of witchcraft. Her and her daughter part. Oh part. Oh man. Yeah. So you were shielded from that kind of uh being raised in that environment also. Hello EG wife. Hey girl. Hey. Hey girl. Hey. Yeah that's amazing. Yeah. You just—it's not a story that I would have written for myself in any way. But God is good and he's working all things out for our good. Be blessed, Dy maker. Thanks for popping in. Appreciate it. Good to see you, sir. Yeah. I—the chat is so much fun. I mean, just where people are. You don't know what they're going to say. You don't know how it's going to turn out. You don't know what—yeah, what the—and then and then all of a sudden, you make these connections with people. Like one person says something and now all of a sudden there's several of us talking about adoption and our connections with it and what that means in our life and just so powerful that those things can just happen spontaneously. What? Yeah, Christian ninja's reading. We were just talking about you earlier. Welcome in Raiders. Welcome. Welcome in everybody. I appreciate you. Uh, I don't have—I don't have a raid uh update thing to run and all of that stuff yet. Like on my other channel, we'll just shake our hand. We'll just get excited. Hi guys. I'll welcome in—I'll welcome in raiders when they when they start showing up in the chat. Oh my goodness. Let's go. I found Christ during COVID and that's when he knew I'd be ready and find them allow that to happen. Amen. All in God's timing. My parents weren't supposed to get a baby because they already had two kids, but I was listed as special needs because of my parents. So my parents said they would take a baby with special needs. I see. I see. Very interesting. Black cap didn't get admin privileges. Okay, King. Yep. Welcome in. Welcome in, Quiz King. Welcome in, Blocker J. Glad to have you here. Thanks for coming in. I love this chat right now. Yeah, when you talk about saying something and then somebody chimes in on this, you know, you could always just drop a bomb in chat and say like, "Pineapple pizza is an abomination from the Lord." And just watch what happens to chat after that. No, it's an abomination from Canada. Just drop the bomb and run. Just see what happens. Hi Hannah. Hey girl. Welcome. Hi, Sam. Hey, Samis. It is not. Cats are better than dogs. Yeah, just drop that grenade in there. Well, fish are fish are easier. They don't jump on you in bed or sneak out and grab your legs from underneath anything. So, you know, yes, fish. Oh, you can have your pizza opinion, but Canada comment, I don't know. What did I walk into? I know.

: Samus, how are you? Did you not also know that Canada is where pineapple pizza comes from? They're the ones that invented pineapple pizza. Ben Pineapple.

: Ben. Yeah. Burger King hat dog or Doge. Doge, I think. I don't know. Welcome in. Welcome in everybody. Glad to have you. Pineapple and jalapeno.

: Ooh, interesting. Interesting. Interesting. I probably wouldn't do it because I'm not a spicy food eater. How the jalapeno will burn me up. All right.

: I am, friend. Hello. All right. Well, we thank you everybody for coming in. I appreciate you all coming in with the raid. Christian Ninja, you've been on the podcast already and that's it's so much fun to have friends that just pop in and hang out.

: Yes, because of all the pineapple grown in Canada. Obviously that made me laugh. Obviously that made me laugh. Gabe, welcome in. Yeah, I don't know.

: Is Christian just still in the chat or did he have to jet because I was going to sing his praises? Well, go ahead anyway.

: Go ahead anyway. Well, you know, I just was telling him we were talking about him earlier. What's up, Corky? Um, just I'm so impressed with him and the love that he has for streamers and other people like he is doing his thing, creating writing content, books, and having these AMA discussions.

: And so I love his vision for just being this like online pastor of uh it was funny cuz we had a conversation. We had a collab.

: I don't know if it was last month, but really all the things that we've learned in ministry, ministry just through being in the ministry and the leadership principles.

: It's crazy how much they actually apply to a digital space. Isn't that wild? So I just I love the guy. He's super cool. He's very smart.

: And God bless you, Christian Ninja, and thanks for the raid. Yeah, and his whole journey is an amazing journey too of where he's at and how he's reaching people and how he's connecting.

: So I might have to make sure I tag him in the VOD for when this VOD's there to here's one to go watch.

: It'll be over here or over here. I don't know how to do that part, but oh, Corky, hello girl. Good to see you.

: Welcome, welcome, welcome. Um, also I saw I saw Gabe Horn697. Hello. Welcome in. And then I saw somebody. Oh, I know Hannah, I know you're here.

: Tropic Turtle. Hi. Welcome in, Turtle. Good to see you. Yeah. My parents were brother and sister closed. Adoption abortion was legal in 1973, but my mom wanted God in my life.

: And even though she was 13, she gave me up. She was so young. Holy. Wow. Wow, she was so so young. Bless her. Also, Bobcat, thank you for the bits.

: I appreciate that. It's very sweet. Yeah, White Beard's telling me I need to learn that. I know how to like put it so it will put suggestions.

: I just don't know how to specifically pick the one that I want it to show. That's the part I need to figure out. So it's not that I'm it's just one more thing I've not thought about.

: Oh, in this video I want you to go to that video. I just go show the latest episode or show one that's recommended. I haven't been making the choice for people.

: So learn, learn. I know. And I boy I'll tell you what it's so many ways. Um and I tell my wife this often.

: I feel like two things. One, I have not been learning as much in the last three years since I was in seminary. And I don't mean just like Bible knowledge and learning.

: I mean, that's part of it, but also tech learning, uh, culture learning, exposure, all of those kinds of things. Like, my learning curve is super big right now.

: But I also listen to a bunch of podcasts all over the place, learning stuff. I'm watching videos, learning stuff. Uh, and the other side is I've never felt as excited about ministry since I was in seminary.

: Like, I know what God's calling me to do. I know what I'm doing. I see what God is up to. Uh in a way that when you are like in the middle of ministry and you just start doing the daily grind, you just kind of like, well, I'm excited about Easter's coming up and I know I got to do all this work and we got to go through all of these things and and that's not bad.

: It's just not excitement about it. Ooh. Yeah. We um I can understand that. You know, my church is um we do try to really kind of keep things fresh and exciting and doing all the things.

: So really innovating and creating along the way. I'm very blessed to have that kind of team. Uh but yeah, you're right. I mean, most of the time it's Sunday is always coming.

: Yes. All right. Sunday is always coming. And so finding um finding you really do have to have being called to to ministry. You have to be called to a vocational ministry because it ain't easy.

: And a lot of times it comes with a lot of heartbreak as well. And things you want to say that you can't say cuz you're in ministry.

: You know, we're human too. Sometimes we want to we want to uh deal with things a little differently than we than we we want to deal with them differently than we actually want to, right?

: So like sometimes I want to say the things that I know that I want to say but that I shouldn't say. One because I'm a child of God, but also I'm in ministry and I can't do it.

: You know what I mean? So there's so many different levels to being in vocational ministry. I never expected to experience the gamut of emotions that I have.

: But you're right. I mean, Sunday's always coming. Sometimes it gets a little uh mundane every now and again. That's another way to say it.

: Mundane. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Hello, Darth. Hi, Sizzle. Welcome. Oh my goodness. I love Sunday because I get a break in my ministry. Let's go.

: Sundays are great. Sundays are hype. They're great. And for vocational ministry, it just might hit a little bit different. Don't you think, Flat Cap?

: Just hits a little bit different. Vocational ministry. Oh, yeah. It it does. Uh oh, hold on. We're getting a raid again. Oh, hold on.

: You're getting a raid. Awesome. Hello, Pastor Don stopped by to hang out here. Let's go, Pastor Don. Thank you so much for the raid.

: Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Yes, he's waving. Yes, we're all waving. Houston, thanks. All your yes, I love this Blocker J. All my tabs are converging here.

: Everyone's converging. Hello, Will. Hello, Bunny Noodles. That's a super cute name. Yeah, welcome in Raiders. Thanks for being here. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Mother Goose and I'm doing a collab today with Flat Cap Dapper Pastor and the Church Digital.

: Uh we're just talking all things ministry, digital ministry today. Um we do a lot of uh just chatting here on this channel. Flat Cap does a lot of sermon prep and um ask me anything type of streams and a little bit of gaming as well.

: So we're glad you're here. Welcome in. Yeah, nice raid. Yeah, that was really fun. You were on Dins earlier. Let's go. Let's go. So if you're new here, tell me about you.

: I'd love to know more about you. So would uh Flat Cap here. Yeah. Like I say, I didn't do that when I had my raid from Christian Ninja.

: I should have done that, too. Introduce myself and have you introduce yourself. Hi. Hi. Yeah. So, uh I'm over at the Church Digital and we're doing a podcast here.

: And it's the point is to just talk about ministry, digital ministry, whether you're a missionary or not, doing being an intentional Christian in a digital space.

: And talking with friends about doing that who are in digital space Christians and in Twitch cuz it's gaming. So, but I have been a pastor for twenty some years.

: Uh I started streaming several years ago. I mostly read the Bible. I have this this is what I'll do if you come to my stream.

: I have hats. I have fish. I read the Bible. Um, Pastor Ducen's is much more, you know, his intro. I, you know, I believe God loves you and I love you.

: God loves gamers and I do too, you know. U, mine is a little bit more silly. U, but it's, it's really about engaging people and being around and connection.

: So, it's it's a lot of fun. So, welcome in both streams that came in merging here. Four streams now into two. Let's go. Let's go.

: I love uh Ro, do I say your name? Roku. Roku, I love that you're streaming. Welcome to the streaming community as a streamer. Uh we were just talking earlier about like the origin, my origin story of coming into streaming.

: And if you're brand new in it and you want to do um something under the Christian tag or whatever, hi baby girl. I'm leaving.

: Okay. Bye. Bye, baby. Have a good time. Um, you know, there's so many amazing people in this stream right now that do stream and that would love to partner with you to help answer questions and stuff.

: I was just going to suggest Christian Ninja even and I'm sure Pastor Ducen, but ask questions. Ask all the questions. U, but I'm really glad and proud of you for starting streaming.

: That's amazing. Yeah. Or the avatar if your culture. Nice. If your culture yeah, I understand that. Darthoro just followed. Hey Darth, thank you for the follow.

: Darth Row, welcome. Yeah, very cool. Very cool. So sweet. Banana is Hannah. Hey, welcome in. Yeah. Uh, Pastor D, how was your stream? What'd you guys do today?

: Check text. No problem. Okay, got it. Yeah. So, any what were we talking about before the before the uh before the raid came in?

: You remember what we're talking about? Oh, ministry. Ministry hard. It's hard for vocational love on your pastors, man. Love on your pastors. So, you were okay.

: I don't remember where I saw this, but I know that um for myself, this was always the case. So, Monday is the hardest day of the week for a pastor because come on, preach.

: Yes. Because you are you are sitting there analyzing everything that happened on Sunday. Did I do something right? Did I do something wrong? Was was somebody offended by this?

: Was it my fault? What uh tell them. So, Mondays are just super hard. Uh it also I have a whole hangover. Oh, yes. I'm tired on Monday.

: I put everything I put my energy out there on Sunday all day long. Well, I'm I'm tired by Sunday afternoon. So, I'm glad I didn't usually have Sunday evening activities cuz I was I was spent by Sunday afternoon.

: But, uh I think I saw this somewhere and I keep trying to find it again. Um is that uh a pastor um doing self harm is most likely to happen on a Monday.

: And so, a few years ago, I started doing the Monday after Easter as a prayer day for pastors. So, I will be here on stream on Monday.

: It'll be the Church Digital this year. The past couple of years I've done it on my own stream. Uh, let me pull it up.

: I don't remember what time. Like, I just put the I made the flyer earlier today. Let me open it up because I don't remember.

: That's so cool. What time I said? So, from 3:00 to 5. So, yeah. uh some of the stats out there and these stats are a couple years old so the numbers might be off but 56% of pastors feel immense stress uh 43% feel lonely and 20% in the last year have considered self harm wow first of all the lonely part yeah loneliness wow that's so sad okay read it for me again so that I can digest that uh you know what about I just put it in chat here yeah put it in the chat.

: I want to see it. I want to I want to that's so sad. Oh, it totally is sad. Um do you know why it is?

: Do you know why that well well, I don't know that I know the reason why that is. I mean, I'm sure there's a gamut of reasons, but but would you think that pastoring is a lonely job?

: It's it kind of is a lonely job essentially for for most, not for all, but for most. And I would say that what I have seen is that pastors really want to protect the flock.

: And so they don't have a trusted someone that they can talk to that's in their space or in their circle. They're not seeking community themselves, someone to be transparent with, someone that they can like be a sounding board with.

: I think that that happens a lot more often than it should. Oh, but do you would you agree with that? Oh, definitely. Definitely. And I I feel really privileged that I did have other people that I connected with. I was in pastor groups. So, so I would have that support. One of the difficulties is, you know, the church down the street is your competition on some level because because if people leave and go there, then you're, you know, don't have enough people to pay your salary. So to to have so there's a lot of reasons why other pastors won't want to connect with you. And sometimes their congregations don't understand.

: I'm actually part of a group uh John 17:23 uh network or or.org. I think you can get there from both of them. Barnabas Ministries. They've got a several titles. So, uh you set up groups of pastors who meet together based on John 17:23 where Jesus high priestly prayer. He prays for unity in the body that as I and you are one that they will be one and that the world will know that you sent me because of their love for one another. So the whole purpose of those groups is to bring people together around unity uh so that we can support and lift up one anothers just like we're talking about pastors don't always have someone to talk to.

: Well, even if you have someone that you feel trusted in your congregation, there will be something that comes up at some point that either you don't feel you can trust them or when you do share, they prove you can't trust them. And so, you need to have someone outside the congregation for that. So, I've I've set those groups up for years. When I got into Twitch, it's one of the things I started to try to do. Uh, and you don't have to actually be pastor by title to be in one of those groups. If you are doing the work of a pastor, shephering people, counseling people, discipling people, then then you need to be in a group where you have people that understand what you're doing and so good.

: So, I know. Yeah, I love that. That's so good. I love that you're doing that. I love that you're a part of that and you see the value in community. And community isn't just for lay leaders. It's not just for folks who are just attending church. It's for pastors as well. and those in uh leadership positions in their church.

: Um I love what Blessingbo said here. This is the same that can be thinking that is the same that can be the thinking on Twitch with all the Christian streamers. I I wholeheartedly agree. I think there there's how many how many millions of people is it 8 million or 9 million on Twitch now? um for viewers um and Twitch stream like accounts I guess it would be eight or nine million stats somewhere but I don't have them right in front of me.

: Yeah. And so it's a big old ocean out here. We're not in competition with each other. We're trying to make sure that people, you know, not everybody is going to like what Goose offers. What? But no, it's true. Not everybody going to like what Goose offers, but but somebody's going to like something else that somebody else does. And that's why we need each other. It's the same idea as the body of Christ. Not everybody can be an eye. Not everyone can be a hand or an ear or a leg. Um we all have different gifts and different things to bring to this platform that make it the beautiful little community that it is. And uh and so I I wholeheartedly agree like it's the it's 7.5 per month streamers millions.

: Oh my gosh. Hi Carnage. So 100% agree with that. Blessing boat 100%. 7.5. Okay. I was thinking it was seven a a month but yeah it can be surrounded by people but not really connected due to the cultural view of elevated. Yes. Yes. A blocker day. Not sure if that's super No, it is. And we've talked about this in my family because my kids are PK's and uh and and this is this is one of the things that I always try to verbalize with my with my church family is I'm a hot mess. I don't have it all together. My my man is a man and I'm a lady. We have heated fellowship. We got a normal marriage and we love God. And so really just painting this picture like even for those who are in the stream right now, what you're seeing here, like I this is what I'm presenting to you. I love God and I'm a hot mess and I'm a mess without the Lord. I mess up. I I I get mad and I'll I'll I'll cry or I'll be upset. Sometimes I'm happy, sometimes I'm sad. Like I have all the same emotions and feelings that you do and I'm in the ministry and it's it's just it's normal.

: But I feel you. I feel you, Blocker J. Like I try to protect my kids from that thinking of feeling like people are elevating us, but sometimes they do it automatically without without us asking. Do you know what I mean? like they they look at the pastors, they look at people in the ministry and they just think that automatically we're holy and we really have our lives together, but it's really not the truth all the time. Like I really do suck at life sometimes. It's very true. But, you know, I think it's just I don't know. It's just the it's the blessing. Maybe it's the it's just the way that leadership is in in church. I guess sometimes you just can't get around it. Just can't get around it.

: Pastors, pastors need accountability partners, says Hannah. Yes. And then also fellowship for support and comfort. Yes. Yes. Fellowship also needs to be a part of. So in the John 17:23 groups, we do four things. Uh just to kind of give an overview. So we tell our life story. Uh that's a huge important thing that we do. We learn each other's life story because when you learn someone's life story, you're trusting them and you learn to gain trust with someone else. So, we share our life stories with one another. Uh, yeah, we That's cool. We read the Bible. Now, we're not sitting here doing a Bible study. We we we approach it from the standpoint of, "Hey, this impacted me this week." Or, "Hey, I was reading this and the Holy Spirit spoke to me." Or, "I read this and I was just confused. I just want to bring it up and share it." So, we're not telling you theology. We're not doing that. We're intentionally across denominations. We don't want to have arguments. if we'd want to do stuff outside of the group with a couple of us that want to have a later that's an okay theological discussion that's not that's not group stuff u right so we we do check-ins with each other how's life how's ministry what's going on in your life so I know a lot of people's you know personal stuff that they're struggling with that they can't share and then we pray for one another so we do those four things that's it and I think anybody anybody can do that in a disciplehip group anywhere you don't have to be pastors you don't have to missionaries, you just gather together, share your stories with one another about where did you come from, how did you get here, uh what's going on in your life, uh look at the word of God, and pray with one another. Those four simple things are easy to do.

: Yeah, I love that. I love that. Uh I think about that need genuine selfless friends who receive and give 100%. Yes, genuine selfless friends is more important. Absolutely. Uh, what would you say to people who don't have a church near them that they feel is properly promoting the word and therefore don't attend a weekly service?

: H uh, that was my part. Okay. So, h I would say I don't know. There's a lot of different facets to look at that. Um, I know that this this this opens a little bit of a can of worms of preference versus worthiness. And also, is the church actually doing things that are not biblical? And also, you know, is it is is is maybe is this church have an interim pastor or someone who's just trying to hang in, you know what I mean? Like, you never know. I would say um pray and ask God. The Lord is going to give you wisdom on where to land. I know that finding a church home is a giant step in your spiritual journey and it's very important to find community. You can have community here on Twitch. Don't get me wrong. I think it's it's this is absolutely real real feelings, real connections, real emotions. And also, if you can have that IRL person that just wraps you up in a hug, I think that's very valuable as well. And so, the only thing I can say without knowing more of the context is just pray and ask God. The Lord will give you wisdom. And in our heart we plan our ways, but the Lord directs your steps. Um, what do you have for that?

: Plat Cap. I, you know, I don't have a church that I get to attend. It's one of those hard things when I'm not currently serving as a pastor in a church. I've been interim. So, which which that means I go to one church, I serve there for a period of time. This is what I started doing during COVID. And when that contract's up, when the they have another pastor or uh there's something else that they merge with another church, whatever the outcome of my service is, I then have to start over again. And right now, I I don't have a church that I am attending. So yeah, I've actually been trying to figure out this week, what do I do?

: Normally today, Monday, Thursday, and you might not celebrate this and you might go, what did I just say? Monday, Thursday. Mon Monday Monday, not Monday. Not Monday, Thursday. Like Monday, Thursday. Yeah. Like I when I was a kid and I heard people saying this like in in junior high, what do you mean Monday Thursday service? Like the week's not long enough today. Your week's not long. I just learned about it today. Oh, you just learned about it. Okay. Yes. Because somebody was telling me about it and I was like, I don't even know what that is. But they they told me all about the vibes.

: But yeah, so you celebrate today. What do you What did you do to celebrate today? I I have not. Um Oh, you haven't? I haven't. But normally normally um Monday, Thursday, Monday means commandment. So it's when Jesus gathers in the upper room and he says, "A new commandment I give you that you love one another." So what I usually do on the I have like about six, seven, eight different types of service that I do. One of them that I've done which I really love is I set up a table up on top of the stage and it there are 12 seats and 12 people at a time come up and take communion sitting at the table sitting in a U shape that would be similar not on the ground not laying on one another but coming up taking communion and we do readings and we do songs in between as people come up and take communion and then they go and have a seat.

: Um love it. So that's one of them. Another one I've done is we call it a service of the nails. And so at part of the service there'll be a cross, a wooden cross up front. Every single person comes forward and hammers a nail into the cross. Oh my gosh. A very uh symbolic. Yes. And and the the echoing of the hammer will just go on and on and on in that way. So Wow. So Wow. Uh, so that's why it like I didn't grow up with it, but it's my f like I love it more than Easter. I really do. I It's my favorite service. I would have gone to uh church perhaps with my in-laws, my my home church that uh since I met my wife. Uh but they decided they weren't doing one this year. They they decided they weren't going to do it. So they they left the denomination. They went to another denomination. and now they're getting rid of the trappings of the old denomination and not doing it. I was like, a.

: So, while there might have been churches in town by me that would have done it, it wouldn't have been the same feel. You know, when you go from one style to another style of of how do you make that happen? And a lot of churches do Good Friday services. So, yeah, that's true. That's true. Wow. That's really cool. I love that that has come up twice in my day.

: Yeah. So, yep. That's what Monday Thursday is. Some will do Good Friday services. Sometimes you do a tenon, which tenon is I can't remember what the name means, but you'll start cutting the lights out because you're going to be in darkness.

: That's one of the other things that we usually do at the end of the service is we call it stripping of the elements. So, anything that's in the church that represents Christ. Uh so, you take any cross that's there that you can take out, you take it out. You take the communion elements out. You take the Bible out. You you strip it because there's no hope in the world because Christ is in the grave. And then on Easter morning, the first thing that happens in the service is you process in with all of those things because Christ is risen.

: And so it's like one of those things where if you if you don't get the the the Thursday evening or if you could do it on Good Friday, whatever, uh if you don't have that piece and you just show up on Sunday morning and they're processing in with it and you're like, "Well, why what do they do this every week? What if I just Yeah. Why did they do that? It's it's it's it's kind of void of meaning.

: And so I think in some ways and I have a theater background, so I love the dramatic and I love being present and I love the experience in a room. Sure. But when I can't have that because of whatever my limitations are, if they're physical limitations, if they're mobility, if they're financial, if they are reliability of my trust and value in the community that's near me, online is totally viable for that.

: Now, you and I have talked several times where we've been in each other's streams. Yep. But we've never been in person. and we're going to be really excited when we see each other when we get to reach conference.

: It is it is going to add to that. And I think one of the things too that a lot of people overlook and I make this analogy as far as thinking about digital ministry is oh well in person is better. Uh and you have to be there, you know, you have to go in person is well Paul wrote a letter to the Roman church. He had never been to Rome when he wrote that letter to them. And he does describe longing to see them and being prevented from seeing them, but it didn't prevent him from doing ministry to them when he could not be physically present.

: Sure. So, yes, if you can find a church in in your physical proximity that that you can attend, then absolutely uh follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and go there and do that. And when you can't, I've got several places online that I hang out with people in in community and where two or three of us are gathered together. We are the body of Christ. Digital is real. Um it's it's not I know we say IRL, the church digital. We're trying to avoid that. We're saying in person, not in real life because yeah, my relationship with you is real. It is growing just like a relationship would be in person.

: The other thing that fascinates me and and I I say this regularly is there are people I have a deeper relationship online than people I was in church with for six, seven, eight years. And part of it is the length of time that I spend with them. If I'm in church on Sunday and I preach and then I get to talk to I get to talk to a dozen people afterwards, that's it. Yep. And it's and it's nothing deep and meaningful. I don't know your life story unless you shared a prayer request. Yeah, I say it's it's superficial sometimes.

: Also, we're getting another raise. Yeah, I see that. Drao, hi. Dra Draabo. Draa Bro, welcome in everybody. Welcome. Welcome. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much for the raid.

: I'm doing a collab with Flat Pastor uh here at the digital the church digital. I'm so happy that you guys came. Mother Goose and Flap, let's go.

: A I want to uh catch up on chat a little bit because there were some really good um some really good comments. Uh I love Tiny House of Worship. First of all, um who who is speaking through the Tiny House of Worship account tonight? Who is he? Is it Rebecca? Who is this?

: You mean you're human and need Jesus? Crazy. I know. It's like we're we're human. We're human, too. Um, that was part of my inspiration for starting my journey as a Christian streamer is trying to spread the message the way I believe it's meant to be spread based on what I've read in the Bible. So, yeah, I uh I'm excited to check out your streams. I'm excited for your community to grow. And I think it's really cool that you're um going to hop on and do your thing and uh be a light in in the community.

: And the more the merrier, uh, Roku, absolutely. Um, let's see. Uh, I'm a glutton for punishment, says Blocker J. I'm a PK who is now a missionary and it's definitely nice to have someone to just tell them that the at the end of the day we suck just as much as the next person. Yes, that's so true. Checking in daily to the church digital Discord is a really important part of my life. Well, praise the Lord. Thank you, God. Another crazy thing is not only the culturally competitive mindset in ministry sometimes, but also the insane imposter syndrome as well. Yeah, true that. True that. Pop into VR church or new reality fellowship in VR. Distance is no barrier. Yeah, that's what I was telling I don't know if you were here in the beginning, Phantom, but that's how I got into Twitch was my husband was into VR church for a little while and he had some really sweet experiences through that platform. Uh church home. I don't understand this concept personally being involved with an actual an actually church building. Okay. Why can't it just be a group of Christians you're friends with? Was that not what the early church did? I mean, yeah. I think it's fine.

: To clarify, when I say church, I I'm talking about a building. So, it could be it could be it could be a micro church. It could be a home church. It could be it could be a lot of different expressions. I was only making a difference between if you have physically a place you can gather versus online. I think they're both viable and I don't care about the size of it. Yeah, true. It could be small, could be big, could be whatever.

: Uh I think I think I've heard this where which would be better for the kingdom. Uh 10,000 churches of 10 or 10 churches of 10,000 which would make a bigger impact on the kingdom.

: Oh, come on. That'll preach right there. Yeah. that will preach. Um, challenges, virtual hugs are not as cool but still acceptable. I know. So, um, if you're going to reach and you're you're not lurking right now, will you put a one in the chat for me, please? If you're going to Reach or at least you have intentions to go to Reese, I would like to see who's going. Reach is going to be the conference that'll be in Winter Park, Florida, November 6th through 8th. It's going to be a lot of uh streamers there, a lot of Christian community, and so I would love to know who's planning on attending.

: Um yeah, so I I'm going to be there. I know Flat Cap, you're going to be there, right? I'm going to be there. Yep. I haven't bought my ticket, but I I booked my Airbnb. So nice. Yeah. Um but it's it's it's I say that I asked that to say like we're going to be doing a lot of hugging, a lot of hugs, a lot of high fives, a lot of fist bumps. It's nice to see people face to face that you already feel like you have an established relationship with on the digital realm as well.

: Yeah. Blocker J, waiting on approval from my boss to attend. That's nice. So, you have intentions to go, God willing. Amen. Unknown. Let's go. Let's go. Roku, are you going to go? Are you thinking about going or have you heard about reach yet? I always look to Matthew 6, the section of the Bible that the Lord's Prayer comes from. when it comes to people insisting that you must go in person. So you kind of like just be like boom look at Matthew 6 5-15. Is that what you do? When you pray, go to inner room and when you have to shut your door, pray to your father who is in secret and your father who sees what is said in secret will reward you. When what uh why you get mad and frustrated ministry leaders, you need Christ as much as we do. What a blessing to know uh we all go through the same things.

: Yeah. Uh I get very mad and frustrated sometimes. The the thing that I feel has happens is I just get disappointed. I get very sad if if someone has I don't know like I don't know we're the church isn't perfect. Our church isn't perfect. We sometimes we sometimes we miss the mark. And it breaks my heart when we do it. But it also breaks my heart when people have a hard time with just forgiveness and uh they see us as being we should not be making mistakes. We should not be dropping the ball, but we're human and sometimes we just can't do everything right all the time. Yeah. So that's the thing that's really hard for me because I I I love people and I love to serve and I love to like to to to walk with people from point A to point B and to feel like I'm a part of letting someone down um always has an impact on me. And so that's that's probably the hardest part for ministry, vocational ministry for me is when those things kind of happen.

: So it happens. It does happen. Husband is thinking of starting a home church since uh we've had a hard time finding a church. Yes. Oh my gosh, Jen. I'm sure you'll have lots of people that might come and just just have your church in your basement or in your living room or something.

: Well, you can you can also think out of the box. Uh by the way, I've got friends who do all kinds of weird stuff. So, I'm I'm not the weird one out there. I I just want to say that. Um, I have a I have a friend who who uh does church in the bar. So they they actually I mean I I'm a brew pastor, so I go down to the brewery. I'm not running church there. He does actual church uh in in the bar.

: I just go down there and do like I do on stream, have conversations with people, try to plan some events to draw people in to to have conversations about what's going on in life. But he does church at the bar. Uh another one is barbecue pastor. So, he goes to barbecue events and what draws people. Yes, barbecue pastor.

: Uh, you'll have to go look him up. But, uh, wait, is he on Twitch? Uh, I know he's on Facebook. I don't know. I don't know that he's on Twitch. So, these aren't these aren't Twitch streamers. Yeah, these are Okay. Okay. These are like pastors. These are pastors who are who are doing other things.

: Yes. Very cool. Um, but what's interesting on some level is we we have finally on some level got to the point of saying, "Oh, if we want to reach cowboys, we have a cowboy church. Oh, if we want to reach bikers, cowboy church. If we want to reach bikers, we need a biker church." But yet, oh my gosh, if we need to have a gamer church, we can't.

: A lot of people don't think you can have a gamer church. At least at least the bulk of the church. And sure, the the stats that I just saw, I'm going to get up. They're in the '9s. I don't remember exactly the number. I want to say 93%, but I might be off by a couple of numbers. Uh, Gen Alpha, 93% identify as a gamer. I believe that. I believe that. I had two Gen Alphas in my house. Uhhuh. And I would absolutely believe that.

: Uh, barbecue pastor. Barbecue pastor. Is that like roasting your pastor? No, no, no, no. He is the pastor for barbecue. He goes to barbecuing events. He he live streams barbecue and he live streams a service on Facebook. So barbecue pastor but yeah. No, not barbecuing your pastor. Let's let's get this clear.

: Oh yes. And VR pastors as well. Yes. Um yeah, I'm I'm not really the pioneer that that I pretend to be. I just keep moving in a direction and and then I'm look back and go, how did I get here? Uh because I I had no plans to stream on Twitch for six months. People kept asking when you're going to stream like I'm not going to stream.

: Why would I do that? I don't want to do that. Did you know what streaming was though? Oh, did that make sense to you?

: I knew what it was. I'd been watching for a while. I knew what Twitch was for for quite a while because my kids would watch Twitch and I'm like, why would you watch someone play a video game? I don't understand this. I know, right? And here we are. But but then I also don't understand going to sporting events that I'm not participating in. So I have that bias, too. You know, I don't like being a spectator. I like to, I want to participate. I want to participate.

: So absolutely. That's why I started playing Call of Duty because my husband was having so much fun and I was like, I don't want to watch you have fun. I want to have fun myself. So there are VR pastors as well. Uh, those who go into game, which I will never play, except the modded one.

: Okay. Okay. A third of the world plays video games. It's close to 3.5 billion. So yes. Wow. Yeah. Therefore, the harvest is plentiful. Uh, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. We need more streamers. Uh, sorry. In a VC, so didn't get to hear everything, but it wasn't a fun time. Played some Minecraft on a Christian server. Um, someone got set up last night. Very cool. Well, I'm so happy. Thank you so much for the raid. It's very sweet. I'm happy to have you here. And um, yeah, happy Holy Week to you. Uh, I think the main hiccup people run into with the no gamer church is thinking media is sacrilegious, that anything highlighting, focusing on the human experience is inherently contrary to God. That's um, that's great insight, Roku. Yeah, I would say that there's probably some truth there.

: Yep. Um yes, Miss Jelly Beans bugged you to be part of our event. Lol. Oh wait. Who? The uh, are you talking about Blessing Boat? Is that what you're talking about? What event? Uh, like Harry Potter and Pokémon are popular targets of the satanic panic crowd. But you know, you have to know a little bit about Harry Potter and Pokémon in order to reach those who love Harry Potter and Pokémon.

: Yep. Uh, to be, you get it, being all things to all people. I don't mind knowing about vehicles. You know, I have a past where I used to work in an automotive shop. Did you know that? No. Now you know. Wow. I used to work in an automotive shop. So I know about vehicles and it helps me be relatable to people who also love vehicles.

: Absolutely. Um, in a former life, I was also a CNA. I worked in the medical field. And so that helps me have a little bit of experience to be able to relate to a nurse or another CNA or someone else in the medical field. Also, one time I was in jail. Did you know that? No. I've been to jail before. Yeah. And so having that experience, I just want to know what, you know.

: Yeah. No, I um, I was accused of a crime I did not commit. I spent three days in jail. Really? Until someone bailed me out. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And so uh, since then, my record's been expunged and all the things, but I've been in jail and it was terrible and I can relate to the people who've been in jail. I know. I know. Warrior. Can you even believe it? Crazy. Um, but yeah, I mean, I get it. A popular target for the satanic panic crowd. Like I think it's important to still embrace some of the things that our culture is putting out there and redeem it for the Lord. Use it like Paul used the statue of the unknown God. Use it to draw connections to God. You know, use the things of this world to draw connection to the Lord. It's on that level. It's so funny that we have such a small, limited view of things. So I remember going through, you know, what we called the worship wars of can you have a guitar, can you have a drum? Those came out of the beer hall. Can we have those? Hey, thank you for the follow. Yeah, because a lot of the hymns, many hymns came out of a beer hall tune.

: Well, that was what I was going to say is the organ came out of the beer hall, which a lot of your organ came out of the beer hall. The piano came out of the beer hall. Uh, all like, okay, so I don't think I've done this on stream in uh, in the church digital. So I don't mean to offend anybody, but I'm going to offend somebody. Oh no. Oh no. So Luther hymns are absolutely bar hall tunes. Bar hall tunes. So this is what my friends and I, this was not, you need to hold on. Hold on. You can you talk. I'm gonna take, so baby girl needs, okay. So this was not endorsed by the seminary I went to, but uh, when Luther songs would come in, we would have our fake beer mugs in front of us, and uh, this is what we do.

: A mighty fortress is our God. Drink. A bulwark never failing. Drink. Now we didn't actually have anything. We just had our mugs and drink.

: Wait, it's like I didn't get to participate. Oh, do it again. Do it again. A mighty fortress is our God. A bulwark never failing.

: Hey, so that's quality. Yeah. So just like don't do it on Easter Sunday, okay? Don't do it on Easter Sunday or Good Friday, but next month when a Luther hymn comes up, just sit there with your hand and go, "Oh yeah, it does." Yes. Christian drinking hymns. No alcohol. Let's go. Yeah. Yeah. We're, I'm drinking tea here. I'm drinking tea. My word. God bless. Yeah. I didn't realize that the piano or the organ was a bar instrument.

: Yeah. What's interesting is Silent Night was written on guitar and the reason Silent Night was written as the organ was either broken or needed repair. I don't remember the fullness of the story, but it was written on guitar because they needed something for Christmas Eve for mass to happen. So they got their person to go write Silent Night. So without a broken organ and a guitar, we would not have Silent Night.

: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Worship wars. That's insane. Yeah. It would be like to have two fuse of people in on that joke. Well, we, I started this and then I got a friend to do it. And by the end of seminary, four years later, there was at least a dozen of us that would do this. Now some would look around and see how close professors were and decide to participate or not, but I'm sorry. You're throwing down Luther and I'm, I got my mug out. I'm ready to go. I'm, I got my mug. I'm ready. I got my mug. I'm ready. I'm ready. Well, I should also, I should also add the seminary I went to, you had to sign a thing of what you believed when you started and behavior that you would follow. And one of those things is that you would not drink. So this was even funnier to wave the beer mug in chapel where we had committed to not drinking.

: Insane. Insane. So fun. Well, we've had like, we've had good chats. I love this vibe. Yeah. I have to do this again. Yeah, absolutely. Um yeah. One other thing I did want to ask before we go is as you're looking to the year ahead, do you have things that you are planning that you are excited about or that you just see God moving in a space that excites you about being in digital ministry?

: Let me think about that question for a minute. Um, yeah. As we get closer to spring, I will be moving outside. I'll take a stream outside. And those are some of my favorite times. Oh, because we'll be out by the fire. We'll be gardening. We'll be moving dirt around and chatting with each other. And for me, it's just um, another connection, a glimpse into my life. And uh yeah, I don't have it all together. I'm messy in all the things and I'm okay with it and I'm very confident in who God has created me to be. So that's something I'm looking forward to. I'm also really looking forward to Reach. I think Reach is going to be just uh, a beautiful event. I know that it was amazing last year, but I think that uh, this year I'm just, I'm just really, really, really looking forward to it so much. So those, I think just off the top of my head, those that's what I'm looking forward to. Also, um yeah, I really look forward to seeing more streamers, more people hop on this platform, more people make it big, more people to be partnered, more of the Christian community to really see success um, pave the way for the rest of us to learn and grow and reach other people for the Lord. And um, I'm excited for this tag and this section to take over Twitch. Won't he do it? I always say, Lord, I think you're just going to take over Twitch. I think it's going to be your platform. Wouldn't that be amazing? So maybe um, that's another thing that's just not just this year, but through all the years that I feel like I'll be part of this community. Um, I don't have plans of going anywhere anytime soon, you know. So yeah. What about you? Oh uh, well, I am constantly, well, this is one of the things that this year is doing the gaming outpost for the church digital. So I've been in leadership of the church digital a couple of years in senior leadership. And last year, we shifted from trying to be church planting organization, discipleship focused organization to be a digital missionary sending agency. I love that shift because it still means we can plant churches, but it's the digital missionaries that will do it as God brings about community around them. It also means discipleship is happening because that's what you're going to do with people in your community. And so uh, as so I went from being the relationship director, which part of my title, which I really loved, was have you met Ted? And so it's like I want to know people where they are, what they're doing, those kinds of things. And I've shifted a little bit with being uh, the outpost leader for gaming. And we've got outposts. So we think about them is platform is place. So if you are on Twitch, that is a platform. It's just like going to a country. You need to learn all the culture of that place. If you are going to be on TikTok, it's a different culture. I don't understand TikTok culture. I mean, I post stuff over there and I follow friends. I don't understand that. I just don't, I haven't spent enough time in there. I just go over and I tag my friends and I scroll through. I don't even watch. I just go heart for you, heart for you, heart for you, heart for you. And then I and then I'm on my way. Um, okay. But uh, so I, my role has shifted and so now um, my role is uh, director of tangible resources. And that sounds like a really fancy title that means really a whole lot of stuff. Yeah, it's so fancy. So essentially what that means is if you are in ministry, you're doing stuff in digital spaces and you have a need, I find out who can fill that need with an actual thing. So I'm working with VR church right now trying to help them with pulpit supply uh, because they don't, they don't have enough people. They don't have enough uh, volunteers. They used to have multiple staff and they've lost some of those. So how do I help empower them? How do I help them uh, fill those needs? So so my long-term goal is, you know, physical churches, you have here's your pulpit supply list. You go down the list of people. I still working on trying to create a digital pulpit supply list. I'm not going to vet anybody on theology. You get to do that yourself, but I'm going to vouch for this person has the capability to bring a message to your community if you need someone to fill in. So beautiful. It's trying to find those things that are missing and gaps that denominations might have for you or long-established churches might have networks of, but in the digital space, we don't really have it yet. So trying to find out what those things are, fill those in. Um yeah. And then super cool. I love just let's try something new. So uh, yesterday I did a sewing stream because you did a sewing machine. You could use a sewing tag. Did you use the sewing tag?

: I tried to look for sewing. What I found was makers and crafters. Yes. Yes. I found look at you. Did you meet anybody new from that community?

: I don't think I did. I don't think I had if if they came in, they didn't say much because I didn't I I didn't think they said much.

: I had I had people that knew me that showed up uh and and hung out cuz they were like fascinated like so cool flat cap sewing pastor is uh you know uh in the house today.

: So it's good to try new things. I love that. But what I was what I was doing was I was sewing my cosplay outfit for Reach Conference, but I also I've got a cosplay event next Friday at my local brewery cuz I'm a brew pastor.

: So I set up an event there. We're going to do a cosplay event. So it's like, oh, I got to get this done. Awesome.

: How about I stream this instead? So I just love trying new things with that. I've been really enjoying on my fish channel. I do u co-working streams and it's it really is a way for me to be accountable to getting some things done getting things done because otherwise I put them off I do other things but if it's like oh once a week I need to do writing and I'm going to do it on either Monday or Friday when I'm doing so I didn't write on Monday that means tomorrow on my schedule is going to be writing that's what I have to do because that's what I plan to do is do that so it's like this accountability that streaming has got a hold of me to to do that where otherwise you get the tyranny of the urgency and you oh this is more important I got to do it now this is more important I'll get to that.

: I you get it through yeah my my stream knows I'll say oh I should do this it probably means six months from now it'll happen like oh I need to make an emote for that or oh I need some commands or oh I need to do it'll be happening in six months it's not a priority oh my god I'll get to it so maybe I'll try a co-working stream. I just set up uh OBS on my work computer yesterday because I was at the church for a couple hours and I had nothing to do.

: I was stranded. My husband ran off with the car and I still had rehearsal. So I just set up real quick scene on OBS and I streamed for a couple hours and it was so fun.

: Uh but yeah, maybe maybe we'll just like watch like you can just see me. Basically, when I work I do I do this a lot.

: So you'll just see my head this will be it. Well, that makes for W co-streaming content, you know. Well, that's where, you know, I've got the fish ponds and all of that up.

: So there is something to watch besides me. Uh but um so, uh welcome by the way. Thanks for the follow Dirty Dog and Phantom.

: Appreciate that. Yes, I do need a bigger monitor. I absolutely need a bigger monitor. Wait, what? How big is your monitor? Uh only 36 in.

: That's that's um that's quite big. I know. I know. But I've got this screen and that's I have like it's totally filled. And then my second monitor for the laptop is also filled.

: Uh so it's yeah, I I I I want to be at four monitors. Honestly, I feel like I could fill them with stuff and be working and all of that.

: I do have two computers, so that helps. So that does help. That does help. Oh, that's small. Yeah, it's not small. That's not small.

: What's up, Nick Gage? Welcome. Yeah, co-working is cool, but my stream was bad for my job. Making calls are boring. Deanna, I thought we were in a huge ministry call.

: Yeah, so yesterday I had a stream from the church and I had a couple people walk up and I was like, "Hey, I'm in a stream right now. Just just a heads up. It's because you're on camera or whatever." Well, they sat down next to me and they wanted to have a conversation with me and they didn't care.

: I don't know if they realize what a stream is. So they probably had no clue. They had no idea. And so I was like, "Okay." I was like, "Hold on, guys." So I went and I put them in front of the plant and they talked to the plant for a good I don't know, six minutes maybe. Um really really uh really entertaining plant conversation while I took care of some ministry things. But, um yeah. So, then I was I was set to just if I'm streaming out and about where the muggles are, then I will let them know um that I'm on a ministry call.

: I'm on a call right now. Yeah, that makes yeah, they'll understand it. I'm on a call. I'm on a call right now. It's a live ongoing call that I'll be on for the next three hours, but I'm on a call.

: It's funny. Well, you know, I'll just say that too with the the the I never thought I was going to do a podcast, okay?

: I didn't think that was going to be my thing. Um, and so I, you know, the Church Digital's got several podcasts that are out there and and they're they're ongoing and and I love listening to them and I I binge podcasts like crazy.

: I I used to make fun of my son who would listen at double speed and I'm I'm now up to triple speed. So, you know, there's oh my gosh.

: Yeah. I like I tell you, I listen to a a lot of podcasts. I I I changed some water in my fish tanks today and I probably listened in an hour and a half four pod uh four podcast episodes that were an hour long.

: So jeez. Uh you can process that fast. Yes. Yes. Now each each podcast has got its own speed that you can max out at.

: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's insane. It takes it takes practice and and and you got to work your way up. So, I started out at, you know, two, you know, one and a half, two, two and a half and and I've worked up, but there's there's that ongoing learning of everything that you do that's that's just so exciting on some level. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. You don't listen that fast. I no, I can only do like 1.5, maybe two, depending on the the person talking.

: Oh, knowing how a person speaks let you speed up too, so easier with people you've watched a lot. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.

: And and these have been over time. Like there is still a podcast I can barely get to two on. Uh she she's she usually is a really really fast talker and it's like listening to her on double speed is probably what other people would be on quadruple speed.

: So sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Depends on if people talk fast or not. Yeah. Well, I I just encourage people, you know, go ahead and speed mine up.

: I I have a I have a really slow delivery sometimes because I like theater and so let me have a dramatic pause for you for empasis so that you'll pay attention.

: Oh my gosh. So, so which is really fun to do when you're preaching and you're just about to say the most important part and then you just stop talking.

: You just let it hang. Yep. And then and then depending on what it is, um, you just whisper the answer to make sure they're paying attention.

: Look, Coley said, "I thought it was a rule that you couldn't triple speed at double speed past her." Oh, cuz then it's like five times speed.

: Yeah, that wow, that's wow. Thanks for the learn, Donnie. Oh my goodness. That's too fun. Well, it's been a pleasure. I don't know if uh are you want to play a game?

: If you want, we can play a game here. Here's what here's what I'm going to I'm going to test out a game with you and we're going to use this platform right here.

: We're not going to do anything. But I don't know if you've ever seen um Jimmy Fallon uh the show where that he has his guest put on a headphones and then he does the whisper game and he whispers a word or a phrase and that person has to guess what it is because they can't hear what they're saying. They can only read the lips. Oh my. So we're going to we're going to try that here. And I I've I've wanted to uh to to make this work for my own streams so that we can bring guests on and play this game together.

: So, I'll um I'll go first. I will mute myself to you, but the stream will be able to hear me. Okay. Um mine won't.

: Uh but yes, your yours won't, but um but yeah, so it's it's going to happen. Are are you ready to play the game? I'm ready.

: Okay, here we go. I have no idea. I I can't I am awful at reading lips. No idea. I'm just going to guess Mother Goose.

: Okay, good try. It was stream deck. Stream deck. Okay. Okay. I could tell it was too juice box. Yeah. Juice box. Juice box. Pastor Deluxe.

: Yes. Okay. Now, I'm going to mute you to me. Hold on. Here we go. All right. I'm going to mute you and me. Here we go.

: And I'm going to do like this. You go. All right. Okay. Watermelon. Watermelon. Watermelon. Yep. I said watermelon. Watermelon. Yeah. Is that a yes?

: I can't hear you. Yes. Oh. Oh, I must be really good at reading lips. Wow. Okay. Okay. Do another one. Do a harder one.

: Let me see if I'm just really good at this room. I got lucky. Yeah. Okay. Here we go. Hold on. Hold on. I'm mute your audio.

: Here we go. Okay. I'm gonna take my headphones off here, too. So, so says so I'm not cheating. Fish pond. Fish pants. Fish pond.

: Fish pants. Fish pond. Fish pants. Close. Say it again. Fish pond. Fish pants. Definitely looks like you're saying fish pants. Nope. Fish pasta. That's a funny one.

: Fish. Fish. Fish. I was reading the chat. Fish pond. Fish pants. That's what it looks like you're saying. Need a second word. Okay. Fish.

: Fish past. Fish past. Fish paste. Oh, that's awful. Fish fish paste. Fish. Fish pants. Keep going back to fish pants. Fish. Fish sauce. Fish.

: Fish. What's the second? Yes. What's the second word? Give me some phonics. Past. Pond. Past. Pond. Pond. Okay. Okay. All right. I'm gonna I'm gonna mute.

: Let me see. I give up. What is it? Fish pond. Fish pond. That's how you say pond is through pants. I didn't say pants.

: I said pond. It looked like you said pants. Fish pond. Cuz you do a big ah. Fish pond. I don't do a big ah in anything.

: So you don't do it. Okay, here we go. Another round. I'm muting myself. I knew it. Thank you, John. All right, I'm muting I'm muting you to me.

: Here we go. Or I'm muting myself to you. That's what I'm gonna do. Here we go. The new word is hold let me think of a word.

: Well, before you think of it, the reason I did watermelon is because when I'm you were in choir, you were told if you don't remember the word, don't know the words, just say watermelon and it will always look like you are singing the right words.

: So that's why I thought I could trick you with watermelon. No, you just knew it right away. No, you just knew it. I knew it.

: Watermelon. I know that old trick in the book. Yeah. All right. Here we think. Let me think. Okay. All right. Dog stream. I got dog stream.

: I don't I don't know. You love coffee. Sorry chats. I love Judy. Okay. I dream of genie is koi stream. Cog team. I I I'm awful at this.

: I just like I have no idea. I can't like I call of the team. Coffee with tea. Call of Duty. Go call of Duty.

: Oh, okay. You almost got it. You almost got it. Okay. I will do one more. I wasn't I I wasn't getting I wasn't getting duty there.

: Okay. All right. Here we go. I'm going to take my headset off so I'm not I'm not I'm not cheating. Here we go. Okay.

: And I'm going to mute you. Actually, I'll keep I'll keep the audio on. We'll try it like this. Maybe we'll try it just keeping the audio on.

: All right. And I'm going to turn this way down so I don't hear so I'm not cheating. All right. Go for it. Noah's arcade.

: Noah's arcade. Sharon Sharon. Noah's arcade. Terwin's Terwin's a key. Yeah, Terwin's a key. Noah's arcade. Terwin's ugly. Who's Terwin? Oh, why are they ugly?

: Who's Terwin? What? Terwin's ugly. Noah's arcade. No one's ugly. Noah's arcade. Joe. Joe was ugly. Who's Joe? Why you calling so many people ugly?

: What is happening? Do it again. Noah's arcade. No one's ugly. That's right. No. No. You're a little closer. Yeah. Noah's arcade. No one's ugly.

: Can you give a hint? Maybe maybe use some uh this time use a little bit of like charades. See? Let me see if I can get it that way.

: Oh boy. He's looking for stuff. Oh boy. Oh boy. Noah's arc. Noah's ugly. Noah's Noah. Noah's arcade. Noah's Noah's arcade. Arguade. Ug. Arcade.

: Uh, hold on. I give up. Okay. Okay. Go. Noah's Arcade. Noah's Arcade. You don't know that from Wayne's World? No. Okay. Okay. Okay. So now you try.

: I'm going to do one more. And now I want you to take your heads off. And this way your chat your chat can hear.

: Ah. Oh my gosh. This is so funny. Here we go. Can you hear me? Okay, here we go. Jesus loves you. Jesus loves you.

: How'd you know that? How'd you do that? Cuz I probably heard someone say that, you know, and read their lips before. I got one.

: Okay. A doover. A doover. Okay, take it off. That was too easy then. Too easy. Okay. Almond Joy. Don't do it. Almond Joy.

: Help you do it. Almond Joy. Hope you do it. Almond Joy. I Almond Joy. I I got one. You can't give me that. I got one.

: You're going to make me do another one. Almond joy. Almond Joy. Almond Joy. Almond Joy. You're going to sub to me for the whole year.

: Just sub. Right. That's what you're saying. Going to sub to you. Almond Joy. Open Jordan. Almond Joy. Hungry. Almond. Almond joy. Almond. Open jury.

: Joy. Open jury. Almond joy. Almond joy. Open tweet. Oh. Open tweet. Oh, open chewy. I no almond joy. Almost chewy. Almond joy. Jolly rancher.

: Almond joy. Almond joy. Bears. No. Okay. Put it back on. You said gummy almond joy. Almond joy. Look, I was splashing the right. All I could see was blue.

: I so I have that looks like a blue for a Jolly Rancher or a gummy bear. Oh man. So you could see the whole catalog of candy running through his head.

: I know. What? What? Oh gosh. Yeah. Thanks for playing with me and helping me test out that game. I I think that is hilarious.

: I I okay, so this is probably the the the game I've done best at so far. So I'm just going to say that. I I am not successful, but probably still still the best.

: So uh Christian Ninja had me playing some game that by the end of it cuz I don't play on the computer. I use a yeah.

: Uh I don't use a keyboard to play games, so I had to use a keyboard. Like I'm getting tendonitis over here. My hands don't push buttons like this.

: I'm the same. I'm the same. Oh, it was awful. Oh my gosh. And uh not everyone's had games. Some some crashed the computer trying to run the game at the same time, but you know.

: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This one didn't. So that works. Yeah. You did good. You did good. In my in theory, it works. I think we like it.

: I think I might like it better if we just take take our headsets off. I think that's the way to do it because then you get the the stream gets to hear and laugh along and the VOD has it in there, too.

: So I think that's a way to do it is take your headphones off. I think so, too. Take your headphones off. No cheating. No cheating, you know.

: So in theory, it works. So I'll have to do it a night to just have guests on and uh play around with that a little bit.

: That should be fun. Oh, yeah. It always helps too when you can see the face. If people have a face cam, you can see their reactions and stuff.

: Oh yeah. Well, well, like I said, thinking if they have avatars, this would really be a hard game. I know. It would be. It would be.

: It would be. Oh, boy. Well, thank you again for having me on. It's really a pleasure to uh do a collab. And any last thoughts you want to share with anybody?

: Um, God is good. Let's go into uh to Easter weekend celebrating the resurrection, the gift that was given. That is the most profound gift to ever been given.

: And um I love everybody and I'm thankful for the Twitch community. Thankful for Flat Cap. Thankful for everybody that I've met. Thankful for everybody here who's hung out with us tonight.

: Praise the Lord for this little community. It's amazing. All right. Uh anything I could be in prayer for you about Easter weekend? Okay. Yeah.

: For you know ministry fam. We've got a preview service tomorrow night and then I have services on Saturday and Sunday as well. I'll be singing be doing some singing and doing my thing um with uh with my church fam.

: So pray for the people who don't know that they're going to meet Jesus this weekend that God is already preparing their heart and that uh they have a real encounter with our Lord that is undeniable.

: All right, we'll pray for you. Got another follow. Thank you KCJA. It's a really fun game. You want to try that? You should do it, Ty.

: You should do it. We we kind of were testing some things out today, so we just learned. Take the headset off and do it.

: You know what? I I was just looking. Uh what? Another raid. Yes. Let's go. I'm watching. Oh. Oh. Oh, I'm watching. Coming in. Let's go.

: Disco Bearhead loses great C1318. Hey girl. Yes. Welcome in disco. I'm watching. Welcome in. Big hugs to you Darth. Big hugs. We were we were just about to pray.

: Everybody coming in. I was going to pray for Mother Goose. Um and so she was asking prayer for just the weekend and I was just sharing in chat.

: Uh I'm doing a stream on Monday to pray for pastors. So if you would like to have your pastor added to the list, here is the link to be able to put your pastor's name in there and then what other info you want.

: It's all up to you. The only thing that's required is to put your pastor's name in there. But if you want to share more info about what's going on, the church, those kinds of things, you're welcome to do that.

: And then on Monday, uh from 3:00 to 5, I'll be praying here on the channel. Um, I've done that the last couple of years.

: So we'll be praying. Love that. Um, flaming with kn flaming I said flaming. Flamingo with knives. That's the problem with running words together. They can spell other things, too.

: How was your stream? I'm watching you people. I hope you are having a great stream. Is Mother Goose close enough to a pastor? I am.

: Yes. I'm a I'm a pastor. I'm a I just been I got ordained um recently. Oh, did you? Cool. My pastor uh he came on board about a year and a half ago and he uh came from a church that had female pastors and he was like, "Y'all are doing all the same things that these men are doing and you're discipling and you're shephering." He's like, "Why aren't we calling you pastors? Why are we still calling you directors?" And I was like, "I don't know." And so I went through a whole ordination process and took some testing and stuff like that.

: So yeah, I can marry him and bury him now. It's kind of cool. Not not the most exciting part of the job, but yes, it's the thing.

: All right. Yeah, I'm legit. That's cool. All right. Let me pray for you and then we'll we'll find somebody to raid out together, too.

: Okay. Okay. All right. God, uh we're just praying for all churches that have plans, events that are going on today, tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday, all honoring and lifting up Jesus.

: Uh, I just pray for Mother Goose, all that she has to be able to be responsible for, to be able to bring the love of Christ to congregation, those that she knows and those that would be visitors.

: Pray for all things to go smoothly, but more than them going smoothly and for stress to be out of the way. We want impact in people's lives.

: We want change in people's lives. We want people to be drawn closer to you. So give her everything that she's in need of. Give her the strength that she needs.

: Give her sleep. Give her uh just a wonderful time of serving that she can feel used by you, God. We just pray this and everyone who will experience it this weekend.

: We pray it in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you. It's very sweet and I I receive that. Thank you so much. Absolutely.

: Um yeah, such a blessing. Such a blessing. I find it interesting because other churches would not even think of doing that. Although us women are doing the same work for the church.

: I think it's just a denominational difference. Um and maybe pastoral leadership. The pastor that we had before had more of a Baptist background. Yeah.

: My my church does ordain women and has been since the 70s. Uh and others have, but not everyone agrees. And I'm not here to tell you what you need to believe.

: If we want to have a conversation, I'm open to a conversation, but that's not the the point of this. So do you have a suggestion of someone to raid out to?

: You know, I haven't let me look. Let me just look real fast and I can um once we end the call, I'll end I'll kind of wrap up things and then I'll raid over.

: What about ukulele? Ukulele is on. She's doing yeah, she's doing makers and crafting and stuff. I don't know how long she's been on for, but um we could hit her up.

: She she barely ever does it. U I don't get to rate her often because she's a morning streamer, so it'd be cool to hit her up.

: Yeah, she is doing her uh monthly uh charity stream. Yeah, that's perfect. So yeah, we'll go fantastic. We'll go over and support her. Yeah, I love it.

: I love it. I love it. All right, my friend. Thank you so much for uh collabing with me tonight. I appreciate it. I'll see you over there at ukulele stream in a few minutes.

: It's been a pleasure. It's been fun. Thank you for joining me. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Hannah, will you give Flat Cap a a shout out for me?

: Also, the church uh digital. That would be amazing. All right, my friend. Bye bye. Thanks everyone for being here. Appreciate you all. Thanks for all the raids.

: Oh my goodness. The raids. We we had the love tonight. We had lots and lots of love. That was amazing. So sweet. So sweet.

: I love them. All right, my friend. Talk to you later. Yep.