WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:25.680 All right. I'm going to tell you right now. I'm going to tell you the mind blowing moment for me in the first 10 seconds of this podcast. The average age of a video hardcore video gamer in America is 33 years old. Now I'm 43. I'm 10 years away from that. And so don't hear any judgment in this, but I don't understand how a 33 year old person in the age and stage of life that they are, that they actually have time to sit down and be a hardcore video gamer. 00:00:25.680 --> 00:00:52.220 Like I remember me at 33, life was crazy ministry, running businesses. It was not, dude, I want to sit down and play Halo. Or, you know, for me, I was actually probably golden eye on Nintendo 64. That was the last game that I was probably really hardcore on. And so, but that was, oh my gosh, that was like 20 years ago. I was in my twenties. I wasn't in my thirties. And so it's fascinating for me. Honestly, right now, I don't, a confession hour here on the show. I don't understand the video game culture. 00:00:52.420 --> 00:01:07.360 And so I wanted to solve that. So I went and I met a new friend. I met pastor Susie, Matt Sousa from God squad. So it's a digital only church that exists on Twitch. It's probably one of the oldest Twitch churches as, as near as I can tell. 00:01:07.360 --> 00:01:31.480 But pastor Susie has a passion to be the church for video gamers. And he understands that video game culture. He understands that Twitch culture. He understands how to engage with people on discord. And these are all things that I'm like, pastor Susie, tell me, teach me. I want to learn here how you're effectively engaging with people. 00:01:31.480 --> 00:01:47.960 And maybe, maybe even there's lessons for other church planners and other churches that are out there on how to better tap in and engage to effectively reach this video game culture that is so allergic to the gospel right now. 00:01:47.960 --> 00:02:05.580 And so we brought in this conversation, Pastor Susie from God squad. We also brought in Mark Lutz, who's the lead pastor of recently launched Lux Digital Church, another digital only church that's effectively not being a church for video gamers. 00:02:05.780 --> 00:02:12.920 Mark was very clear on this. He wants to be a church of video gamers. And so doing some awesome things there. 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:21.240 It brought these two guys in. Man, let's just sit back and learn something and better figure out how we, the church, can engage in this culture. 00:02:21.380 --> 00:02:31.340 How can we maybe even start streaming? What does it look like to be a church that is effectively reaching this video game culture? 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:44.720 Pastor Susie, uh, pastor Mark Lutz and myself, Jeff with the church digital and stadia church planning in a conversation that I'm simply calling Twitch streaming community in the video game culture. 00:02:45.020 --> 00:02:48.960 Okay, everybody. Here you go. Matt, let me, let me, let me start off with you. 00:02:49.040 --> 00:02:52.920 I would love to learn more about video game church God squad. 00:02:53.100 --> 00:02:56.720 What is it exactly that you guys are doing, uh, there through God squad? 00:02:57.120 --> 00:03:04.000 So we have set on a very, very interesting mission to really reach a very specific group of people to reach gamers. 00:03:04.200 --> 00:03:09.540 And so God squad church is a church that we started back in 2016 and it started off very interesting. 00:03:09.660 --> 00:03:13.740 It was exclusively online, which is relatively normalized in today's world. 00:03:13.900 --> 00:03:17.320 But, uh, we started online church back when online church was of the devil, right? 00:03:17.360 --> 00:03:20.320 Like when it was back in the day, when it was, you know what I mean? 00:03:20.600 --> 00:03:27.540 When it was unheard of, we started five years ago with a very specific mission to reach a group of people that we believe nobody else was reaching. 00:03:28.280 --> 00:03:39.940 You know, I come from a background that's, you know, heaven church background, that's heavily always promoting missions and mission fields and sending out missionaries to go into a specific group of people, learn their language, learn their culture. 00:03:40.140 --> 00:03:42.140 And the reality is the same is true for gamers. 00:03:42.360 --> 00:03:46.400 There are 3 billion gamers worldwide who are online. 00:03:46.540 --> 00:03:47.640 It's the world they live in. 00:03:47.760 --> 00:03:50.120 They escape from the realities of life and they go online. 00:03:50.120 --> 00:03:58.320 And when we started finding out that online live streaming was a potential area of ministry, we had to dive right in. 00:03:58.500 --> 00:04:04.320 We learned that 3 billion gamers were online, spending 1.56 trillion hours playing video games a year. 00:04:04.460 --> 00:04:08.560 And sure, you might have mixed feelings about that or our gamers playing too many video games. 00:04:08.600 --> 00:04:09.640 In a lot of cases, they are. 00:04:10.100 --> 00:04:15.860 But as the body of Christ, I believe we're called to love people the way that they are, but then love them too much to let them stay the same. 00:04:16.240 --> 00:04:21.580 And so we just started asking ourselves, how do we get the gospel to people who don't leave their house? 00:04:22.620 --> 00:04:28.620 How do we get the gospel to people who aren't already in local churches or aren't people that go to hang out at Starbucks? 00:04:28.820 --> 00:04:30.620 And how do we get the gospel to people that are online? 00:04:31.060 --> 00:04:38.840 And so we set on an adventure five years ago with God Squad Church to have a place that could evangelize and reach gamers online, share the gospel with them. 00:04:38.860 --> 00:04:41.700 And our vision statement is gamers winning together. 00:04:42.380 --> 00:04:43.480 We are reaching gamers. 00:04:43.580 --> 00:04:47.300 We believe that the ultimate win is what Jesus said to live life and life to the fullest. 00:04:47.520 --> 00:04:48.960 The ultimate win is not to be rich. 00:04:49.140 --> 00:04:50.420 It's not to have a ton of fame. 00:04:50.500 --> 00:04:51.880 The ultimate win is to know Jesus. 00:04:52.260 --> 00:04:55.800 And we believe that faith is better done as a multiplayer than it is a single player. 00:04:56.360 --> 00:04:57.660 It's not meant to be done alone. 00:04:57.740 --> 00:04:58.540 It's meant to be done together. 00:04:59.080 --> 00:05:05.760 And so it's very, very different than, you know, a lot of different ventures back then because we did it only online. 00:05:06.220 --> 00:05:09.820 But we stand on the same mission that many people have to make disciples of all nations. 00:05:09.940 --> 00:05:12.100 We've just chosen our nation to be the gaming community. 00:05:12.600 --> 00:05:18.920 And God has really, really blessed us in going into a certain community of people that are normally ostracized by the church. 00:05:19.680 --> 00:05:21.900 Gamers are normally ostracized by the church. 00:05:22.080 --> 00:05:26.780 We have had stories because, honestly, when I first started streaming, and we can dive into that a little bit later if you'd like, Jeff. 00:05:27.160 --> 00:05:31.000 But when I first started streaming on Twitch, it wasn't really supposed to end up being a church. 00:05:31.380 --> 00:05:33.040 It was really just a form of evangelism. 00:05:33.540 --> 00:05:37.740 And I ended up encouraging people, like, hey, go get plugged into a church in your local area. 00:05:37.880 --> 00:05:39.120 Go find a church you can go in. 00:05:39.700 --> 00:05:40.880 And people started doing that. 00:05:41.340 --> 00:05:44.060 And they would walk into church with a Dungeons & Dragons t-shirt. 00:05:44.780 --> 00:05:51.380 And to be honest, Jeff, I started having more horror stories than testimonies of people saying, yeah, I wore a Dungeons & Dragons shirt. 00:05:51.460 --> 00:05:53.560 And they told me I had to change my shirt before I could come in. 00:05:54.580 --> 00:06:02.400 And we started having, like I said, more bad stories than good when we realized maybe just promoting people to go to a bunch of churches that we don't know, have never heard of. 00:06:02.560 --> 00:06:08.180 Because most Christians know that just because you're a church doesn't necessarily mean that you're the kind of church that I would want to send my friends to. 00:06:09.320 --> 00:06:10.600 And so we said, you know what? 00:06:10.640 --> 00:06:14.260 If this is going to keep on happening, let's just become the solution to the own problem we're having. 00:06:14.900 --> 00:06:18.660 Let's start a church online with a mission to reach gamers from Christ. 00:06:18.660 --> 00:06:20.080 And we've done so. 00:06:20.140 --> 00:06:20.940 And God's blessed us. 00:06:21.020 --> 00:06:24.120 Our church has reached thousands and thousands and thousands of people. 00:06:24.220 --> 00:06:25.880 Many people have given their lives to follow Jesus. 00:06:26.360 --> 00:06:29.160 And it's been a very, very different journey, which we can talk about. 00:06:29.620 --> 00:06:36.360 But that's really been our goal, to reach people that no one else is reaching, which I think is every follower of Christ's goals, to reach people that no one's reaching. 00:06:36.900 --> 00:06:37.580 That's beautiful. 00:06:37.800 --> 00:06:41.840 Life is better played as a multiplayer and not single player. 00:06:42.040 --> 00:06:43.860 Like that's tattoo worthy right there. 00:06:44.900 --> 00:06:47.580 Pastor Susie, I may put your name on my body. 00:06:47.580 --> 00:06:52.820 I'm just saying it'll, I don't know that my wife will agree, but there's a list. 00:06:52.900 --> 00:06:53.360 There's a list. 00:06:53.460 --> 00:06:54.620 And that was a great quote. 00:06:54.760 --> 00:07:04.260 Now, Mark, one of the things that I've loved, and we've talked about Lux Digital Church, and we've had you guys on in the past with some of the other Stadia planners. 00:07:05.100 --> 00:07:10.640 But you had this nuance, and I want to maybe park on this a little bit and get both y'all's take on it. 00:07:10.700 --> 00:07:20.520 As I recall, and I don't mean to misquote you, Lux Digital Church is a church of video gamers and not necessarily for video gamers. 00:07:20.700 --> 00:07:21.640 Am I saying that right? 00:07:21.760 --> 00:07:23.120 Is that the heart behind it? 00:07:23.220 --> 00:07:27.780 Yeah, something we've always said with Lux is that Lux is a church where gamers are. 00:07:28.580 --> 00:07:45.320 And so we're not necessarily a church that is specifically for gamers and gamers only, but we are a church that exists where gamers already are, which gives us that proximity, gives us the capability of doing a lot of evangelism primarily inside the gaming community. 00:07:45.500 --> 00:07:54.740 We're using the tools and the language of the gaming community, but we had a lot of people sort of early on in Lux as we were in the planning stages before we launched. 00:07:54.840 --> 00:07:56.760 We're like, hey, can I come and be involved? 00:07:57.120 --> 00:07:58.220 I am not a gamer. 00:07:58.480 --> 00:08:07.480 And what we've found is that there are a lot of people, and if it isn't them who's not a gamer, their spouse or their partner, whoever that is, is not a gamer. 00:08:07.640 --> 00:08:09.800 And they want to do it together. 00:08:09.800 --> 00:08:14.800 So like our friend, my friend, Corey, who's a team lead, his wife, Chantel, is not a gamer. 00:08:15.120 --> 00:08:17.120 Brendan, his wife, Mackenzie, not a gamer. 00:08:17.660 --> 00:08:20.120 You know, Haley and Chad, Haley's on our team. 00:08:20.200 --> 00:08:20.900 She's not a gamer. 00:08:21.380 --> 00:08:29.300 In fact, I just know this personally from talking to Matt, but I know his wife really wasn't a gamer before everything with this, and my wife isn't. 00:08:29.660 --> 00:08:32.360 And so we were communicating pretty early on. 00:08:32.360 --> 00:08:37.320 Like we're a church that exists where gamers are, not a church that's exclusively for gamers. 00:08:37.500 --> 00:08:42.700 It's been more helpful communication to let people know that they're welcome here, even if they don't play video games for us. 00:08:43.140 --> 00:08:45.480 Matt, does that kind of align with what you guys are? 00:08:45.560 --> 00:08:50.600 I'm just curious because in my mind, I was thinking, oh, yeah, this is all about video gamers. 00:08:50.820 --> 00:08:58.660 But what Mark's describing is not, you know, exclusivity as much as an aim and then allowing more in. 00:08:58.720 --> 00:09:00.040 What does that look like with God Squad? 00:09:00.040 --> 00:09:00.800 Yeah, sure. 00:09:00.900 --> 00:09:07.960 So I think any church that seeks to be like exclusive obviously is, in my opinion, contradictory to the gospel, right? 00:09:08.260 --> 00:09:16.260 But we do have a very specific target, and we have really kind of targeted something that is very niche because no one else is reaching them. 00:09:16.500 --> 00:09:24.380 So we wouldn't say that we're a church only for gamers, but we would say that our church is so heavily just involved in gaming culture. 00:09:24.380 --> 00:09:32.940 I use a lot of gaming analogies and things in my sermons that if you are a gamer, you're instantly going to be connected. 00:09:33.600 --> 00:09:37.200 And if you're not a gamer, I speak in a way that people can still understand. 00:09:37.520 --> 00:09:53.200 And we really make it evident that a church is built on Jesus Christ, not on gaming, but that entry-level conversation, especially being a church that's founded on Twitch, which is ultimately a video game website, we have been more intentional to target those gamers. 00:09:53.200 --> 00:10:09.540 And so where we might differ than Lux in this mark, this is why the internet needs youth, that's why every church needs to exist to fill in the gaps that other people aren't hitting, is we are definitely targeting those gamers where it's more like we're on a mission to reach gamers, but if you're not a gamer, you're also going to be welcome for sure. 00:10:10.740 --> 00:10:14.860 We believe like the tighter we can make that niche, the more we can hit that target, yeah. 00:10:14.860 --> 00:10:16.200 Yeah, I love that. 00:10:16.260 --> 00:10:24.700 We use the language a lot of the one, like find your target audience, the specificity of what is the billions of people on the internet. 00:10:24.860 --> 00:10:28.040 You're not going to like, I mean, you quoted 3 billion gamers online. 00:10:28.480 --> 00:10:32.900 Like you got to have some sort of a niche to reach for, which I want to put you on the spot here. 00:10:33.680 --> 00:10:36.000 Yeah, so you said there was an illustration involving gaming. 00:10:36.120 --> 00:10:36.720 I'm not a gamer. 00:10:37.100 --> 00:10:38.500 I would love to hear though. 00:10:39.440 --> 00:10:44.200 What's an illustration that would tie to a gaming something that you would use in a sermon? 00:10:44.200 --> 00:10:46.460 Do you have anything like on the top of your head? 00:10:46.820 --> 00:10:47.800 There's so many. 00:10:47.920 --> 00:10:53.300 I think one that I love to reference often is the idea of tunnel visioning. 00:10:53.420 --> 00:10:59.820 And so in the gaming world, for those that might be listening, tunnel visioning is where you have obviously an entire gameplay happening in your screen. 00:11:00.360 --> 00:11:04.100 And there's lots of things like you got to keep track of how much ammo you have. 00:11:04.160 --> 00:11:07.520 You got to keep track of your map that showcases where enemies are. 00:11:07.600 --> 00:11:11.040 You got to keep track of the entire screen where you can see what's in front of you. 00:11:11.040 --> 00:11:14.580 But in the top left peripheral, there might be an enemy hiding in a corner with a sniper. 00:11:15.180 --> 00:11:18.300 And obviously, you have the dead center where you're actually aiming. 00:11:18.840 --> 00:11:22.800 And what a lot of people do is they tunnel vision only on that one aspect. 00:11:23.300 --> 00:11:29.280 And you only can see what's directly right in front of you and you miss all the other details that are happening around us. 00:11:29.760 --> 00:11:31.820 And in the same way, I think we tunnel vision our faith. 00:11:32.300 --> 00:11:35.720 That we tunnel vision on just the negativity of what's happening right in front of us. 00:11:36.020 --> 00:11:42.120 And we forget that if we would look outside of the little aim in the middle of our cursor, we would see that God's right around the corner. 00:11:42.940 --> 00:11:52.220 And so that idea of tunnel visioning and just that idea of how can we take video games and implement them into our faith is one that we really find very, very beneficial to connect with our target audience. 00:11:53.320 --> 00:11:53.900 That's good. 00:11:54.320 --> 00:11:54.920 I haven't played. 00:11:55.020 --> 00:11:58.420 Honestly, I haven't been good at video games since like GoldenEye with the N64. 00:11:59.340 --> 00:12:02.960 So that was my platform and then pretty much everything after that went downhill. 00:12:03.360 --> 00:12:06.540 I used to do some like Halo parties in student ministry. 00:12:06.900 --> 00:12:10.600 But yeah, those guys were so much – the kids were so much better than me at that point. 00:12:10.800 --> 00:12:16.040 I just basically aged out my son's 10 and he kicks my butt in pretty much any video game we play at this point. 00:12:17.320 --> 00:12:21.060 What's the – what are some challenges? 00:12:21.320 --> 00:12:23.640 Okay, so like you're a digital-only church. 00:12:23.680 --> 00:12:24.620 You're with video gamers. 00:12:25.720 --> 00:12:41.260 Your audience typically – I don't want to call this out and I don't want to be rude, but maybe some socially awkwardness, not necessarily clearly communicating well as a general role, and then you get them on video games and things like this. 00:12:42.600 --> 00:12:49.120 What are some obstacles that you guys face as you're doing ministry aimed at video gamers? 00:12:49.920 --> 00:12:50.300 Yeah, sure. 00:12:50.560 --> 00:12:53.980 As the guy who's been doing it for four weeks versus the guy who's been doing it for five years. 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:58.140 It was like – I'm really glad that I'm on the show today. 00:13:00.020 --> 00:13:06.920 But I think that – I'll just speak just very openly and about just today. 00:13:07.220 --> 00:13:15.060 I mean literally today, somebody who was new to our community and was – it was close to my heart, right? 00:13:15.060 --> 00:13:18.140 Because it's one of the first people to come to faith in our community and that's important to me. 00:13:18.820 --> 00:13:23.900 You know, peaced out of every way that I could contact him easily, just gone. 00:13:24.840 --> 00:13:35.880 And in the online world – so if this was the physical world, if somebody knew who had come to faith, I would actually probably consider trying to bump into them, right? 00:13:36.220 --> 00:13:37.820 I might have their phone number. 00:13:38.020 --> 00:13:39.520 I might try to get to their house. 00:13:39.980 --> 00:13:44.540 I might try to swing by if I know their address and knock on the door and just say like, hey, what's up? 00:13:44.560 --> 00:13:48.240 If we've done something to hurt you or offend you, we just want you to know that we love you. 00:13:48.420 --> 00:13:49.760 And if you're moving on, that's fine. 00:13:49.800 --> 00:13:54.660 But we just – we want you to know that if something was misunderstood, we want to be able to correct that. 00:13:54.900 --> 00:13:57.260 And you don't have the luxury of that in the digital world. 00:13:57.740 --> 00:14:04.640 People can come and go and they choose – like everything is up to them in terms of how engaged they're going to be. 00:14:04.780 --> 00:14:06.160 You don't get to dictate that. 00:14:06.560 --> 00:14:14.680 And in the physical church, there's a – you don't get to dictate it, but you get a little bit more control over how engaged an individual is because you get them in the building. 00:14:14.680 --> 00:14:16.480 You get them a little bit more locked in. 00:14:16.960 --> 00:14:24.560 You can kind of get them into that face-to-face conversation, and that makes a big difference in terms of moving people along sort of like an intentional discipleship pathway. 00:14:24.760 --> 00:14:28.080 The online world, if they're not going to engage, they're not going to engage. 00:14:28.260 --> 00:14:31.720 And there's just nothing – you cannot do anything about that. 00:14:31.900 --> 00:14:34.520 There's some perks to that, and there's some negatives to that. 00:14:35.100 --> 00:14:39.440 But the negatives are kind of – I mean, to be honest with you, the negative parts of that are daunting. 00:14:39.660 --> 00:14:41.720 Like they're not small. 00:14:42.020 --> 00:14:43.580 They suck pretty bad. 00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:51.960 And so I think that that is one of the things that in the limited amount of time that we've been doing ministry with Lux, that's something that I've already run into. 00:14:52.120 --> 00:14:54.680 And it's like, okay, it's just not as easy to move people in this. 00:14:54.680 --> 00:14:58.240 And we all know a lot of times people don't move not because they don't want to move. 00:14:58.300 --> 00:14:59.440 It's just because they've forgotten. 00:14:59.840 --> 00:15:00.700 They're too busy. 00:15:00.880 --> 00:15:01.600 They're too stressed. 00:15:01.640 --> 00:15:02.080 They're too anxious. 00:15:02.160 --> 00:15:03.940 With anything else that's going on in life, to move. 00:15:04.060 --> 00:15:06.060 It has nothing to do with a lack of desire. 00:15:06.480 --> 00:15:10.240 And if you were able to maybe have a conversation, you might be able to propel them forward. 00:15:11.060 --> 00:15:13.800 And sometimes you don't get that opportunity, or at least not as easily. 00:15:14.340 --> 00:15:15.580 What's that look like for you, Matt? 00:15:15.580 --> 00:15:20.600 What are some of the obstacles and challenges doing ministry with video gamers? 00:15:21.100 --> 00:15:21.300 Sure. 00:15:21.460 --> 00:15:25.060 I think for us, I mean, there's so many different obstacles that it faces. 00:15:25.140 --> 00:15:34.860 But I think for us, some of the biggest ones are, especially when you're first building like entry-level relationships with people for the first time, there is so much that you have to work. 00:15:34.860 --> 00:15:42.620 You have to work exponentially harder to get to the same point of rapport with someone that you would if you guys could sit down and have a cup of coffee. 00:15:43.220 --> 00:15:45.380 And that can work itself out in so many ways. 00:15:45.520 --> 00:15:48.020 One, because you're just meeting and they're online. 00:15:48.440 --> 00:15:52.800 One, they might just be talking through text messages, through Discord messages or email. 00:15:53.320 --> 00:15:56.920 You haven't reached the point where maybe you've done a voice chat or an audio chat with them. 00:15:57.080 --> 00:16:02.560 And that can lend itself to so many different difficulties, won't it be what they call in the gaming culture, what's called a keyboard warrior. 00:16:03.180 --> 00:16:10.680 The fact that when you don't know someone super well and they're in maybe a general chat, they'll say things that they would never say to people's faces. 00:16:11.340 --> 00:16:19.180 They'll engage in certain levels of drama that someone's not going to walk into a church lobby and just start yelling about random topics. 00:16:19.400 --> 00:16:21.720 But they might do that in a public chat. 00:16:22.180 --> 00:16:28.700 And so you're going to run into those difficulties of having conversations that you might never have with people in person. 00:16:28.880 --> 00:16:36.520 But that can also be a pro, not just a con, because some people are willing to be more vulnerable and honest because maybe you can't see to the face of face. 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:42.280 But on top of that as well, because it's an entry-level relationship, you can't see them in person. 00:16:42.920 --> 00:16:47.420 Sometimes it makes it more difficult to be able to read body language, to see facial expressions. 00:16:48.040 --> 00:16:52.500 And what I mean by that is sometimes it can be difficult to tell the authenticity of a conversation. 00:16:53.540 --> 00:17:08.240 And sometimes online, what's what's called a troll culture where people are being disingenuine, you might end up having a 45-minute conversation where your heart is broken for a person's story and situation, only to find out that they've actually been lying to you. 00:17:08.700 --> 00:17:10.680 They're like, they're just wasting your time. 00:17:10.760 --> 00:17:11.800 They're just joking around. 00:17:11.880 --> 00:17:13.260 They're just, they think it's funny. 00:17:13.360 --> 00:17:20.300 So they're causing all this drama, only to find out like it's actually just some college kid who just kind of is bored and wants to serve some trouble. 00:17:20.660 --> 00:17:27.020 And so that can be very, very difficult, not only because of the situation itself, but then the effect that it has on you. 00:17:27.120 --> 00:17:37.640 And we have to be very intentional to train ourselves as pastors and leaders and train our staff not to let those situations make us go into every situation going, is this even real? 00:17:38.600 --> 00:17:48.280 And so we have to be intentional to train ourselves like we are literally going to believe what we hear and give our hearts and compassion toward that person until we have a reason to believe it's not. 00:17:48.540 --> 00:17:50.640 Because if not, your heart, you just start growing emotionless. 00:17:51.180 --> 00:17:53.680 Everything you hear is like, oh, this struggle, it's probably a troll. 00:17:53.860 --> 00:17:56.800 This struggle is probably not real because you can't see their face. 00:17:57.240 --> 00:18:00.380 At the very, very beginning, intro level conversations, those kind of things can happen. 00:18:00.440 --> 00:18:03.200 And they definitely make human connections a little more difficult for sure. 00:18:03.980 --> 00:18:07.700 What's the percentage of those types of, you know, borderline troll-like conversations? 00:18:07.840 --> 00:18:08.780 How much of that are you facing? 00:18:09.420 --> 00:18:15.500 If I were to put a percent percentage on it, I would say maybe somewhere like 30%. 00:18:15.500 --> 00:18:19.420 So not the majority, there's a lot of trolls on the internet. 00:18:19.860 --> 00:18:24.100 There's a lot of trolls that will spend time making up stuff. 00:18:24.160 --> 00:18:26.120 We've had people make up full-blown stories. 00:18:26.900 --> 00:18:32.640 And I'm talking 30% of people that would maybe go to the extent of like saying things that are not true. 00:18:32.760 --> 00:18:36.940 If we're talking about people that are just going to cause trouble for fun, it'd probably be higher. 00:18:38.560 --> 00:18:39.740 It'd probably be higher than that. 00:18:39.920 --> 00:18:45.000 But I'm talking about the people who like they come in and say like, I've, you know, I've got a certain problem or whatever. 00:18:45.380 --> 00:18:51.360 I would say probably somewhere like two to three out of 10 people are being disingenuine about something. 00:18:51.840 --> 00:18:54.960 And so you have to work harder to get to the heart of that. 00:18:55.260 --> 00:19:00.300 But in those situations, Jeff, I'll be honest, they can actually end up being so beautiful. 00:19:00.300 --> 00:19:09.100 Because when you are able to talk that through with someone rather than just banning and removing them and actually work through like, why did you find the need to do this? 00:19:09.140 --> 00:19:09.480 It's fine. 00:19:09.560 --> 00:19:12.280 Let's find the part of your heart that is broken, deep rooted. 00:19:12.680 --> 00:19:21.520 And when you work through that, the level of deep trust they now have for you and your church and organization is higher than if someone had to come in with no problem and you were just nice to them. 00:19:21.680 --> 00:19:24.540 So we can actually end up really turning around in the favor of the kingdom for sure. 00:19:25.080 --> 00:19:27.760 I mean, I'm talking out of my league here, but what is that? 00:19:27.840 --> 00:19:30.760 That's like, what's the, it's not fishing, but it's something like fishing, right? 00:19:31.360 --> 00:19:32.440 What that's called? 00:19:32.940 --> 00:19:34.380 It can have a bunch of different terms, yeah. 00:19:34.620 --> 00:19:35.480 Different terms, yeah. 00:19:35.720 --> 00:19:42.760 But the heart of that, if somebody's doing that and they're reaching out for something, it's a cry for attention. 00:19:43.020 --> 00:19:48.760 And so minister, I mean, you know, when I tell, I tell churches all the time, like trolls need Jesus. 00:19:48.760 --> 00:19:50.520 And so work through that. 00:19:50.520 --> 00:19:57.660 And so, but the fact that it was, I just, I'm shocked that it's that high of a percentage for whatever reason. 00:19:57.860 --> 00:20:00.920 That just, that was not the thing I was expecting you to say right there. 00:20:01.640 --> 00:20:01.760 Yeah. 00:20:01.860 --> 00:20:04.700 It's just so easy to say things that aren't true on the internet. 00:20:05.140 --> 00:20:06.520 Mark, have you seen that ratio? 00:20:06.760 --> 00:20:07.820 Like 30%? 00:20:08.240 --> 00:20:08.880 I don't know. 00:20:09.060 --> 00:20:09.860 I don't know. 00:20:11.060 --> 00:20:17.920 So, but I, but I do understand that so that there's a, there's a benefit in that is, is that, I mean, I, so I think we had one this week. 00:20:17.920 --> 00:20:19.480 It's really hard to tell because you just don't know. 00:20:19.580 --> 00:20:21.060 You, you oftentimes just don't know. 00:20:21.100 --> 00:20:33.140 So it's someone who stopped in at the end of service during our post-show Q and A time and said, you know, Hey, like I have a, I have a body count, which is, you know, body count represents how many people they've slept with of over a thousand people. 00:20:33.300 --> 00:20:37.360 And, you know, they gave their age and, you know, does, does God still love me? 00:20:37.660 --> 00:20:42.660 And then, and then, you know, their immediate response afterwards was, was something that made me feel like this is off, right? 00:20:42.660 --> 00:20:43.760 Something here is off. 00:20:43.940 --> 00:20:45.680 I don't know if this is true or not. 00:20:46.500 --> 00:20:52.480 Keeping in mind that the, the online world and the gaming world are a little different, right? 00:20:52.580 --> 00:20:57.660 The online world, like people troll just because that's what they do. 00:20:57.660 --> 00:20:59.700 Like it's, it's, it's not uncommon. 00:20:59.700 --> 00:21:03.120 There's a larger concentration of that in the gaming world. 00:21:03.120 --> 00:21:06.840 And especially in Twitch culture, that's, that's a very strong thing in Twitch culture. 00:21:06.940 --> 00:21:22.040 You're not going to show up at your average online church stream at church, you know, at whatever.online or.church and, and, and show up and have that experience at nearly as much because they're, but, but Twitch sort of, um, that's, that's part of what goes on there. 00:21:22.040 --> 00:21:23.660 That's part of the culture of it. 00:21:23.660 --> 00:21:32.320 And, you know, like for me, you know, I, I live stream nowhere near as much as Matt does, but even in my, my live streams, I'm open about being a believer in those live streams. 00:21:32.320 --> 00:21:33.440 I'm open about Lux. 00:21:33.500 --> 00:21:43.480 I'm very real during those live streams, but we've had people who came in and, you know, their only thing is, is like they create a name that if you say it correctly, we'll come across as something vulgar or nasty. 00:21:43.480 --> 00:21:46.440 And I'm usually really bad at pronouncing names. 00:21:46.560 --> 00:21:53.220 Um, so kind of like the ongoing joke is when people jump in and try to get me to pronounce something, I'm actually immune to that because of how bad I am at pronouncing words. 00:21:53.520 --> 00:21:56.020 Um, but, uh, but that, but it does happen, right? 00:21:56.020 --> 00:21:56.720 It does happen. 00:21:56.840 --> 00:22:02.160 And, but the beautiful thing is, is the way that you interact with that, even if you don't reach that individual, right? 00:22:02.160 --> 00:22:08.680 Even if that person came in, realized that you're not really going to bite on it, they're going to get a serious response when they were looking for an outraged response. 00:22:09.180 --> 00:22:12.240 Um, they're, they're only going to pop in for a couple of seconds and then they're going to peace out. 00:22:12.300 --> 00:22:28.220 But the way that you interact with that does for everyone else who's viewing and everyone else who's there, it matters to them because it allows you to display the grace and love of Jesus Christ in a way, uh, to the rest of your church or the rest of your viewership, um, that, uh, that you couldn't do. 00:22:28.220 --> 00:22:37.320 If the, the troll coming through is something, you know, preposterous, um, you know, wouldn't, if they wouldn't have brought that up, you would not have been able to respond in the way that you got a chance to respond. 00:22:37.460 --> 00:22:42.120 And so I think there's, there's cool opportunities that can be found in there. 00:22:42.460 --> 00:22:46.700 Um, I think sometimes you just have to realize is that when the troll that comes in, the person that benefits, isn't them. 00:22:46.780 --> 00:22:53.760 The person who benefits is everyone who's in the stream, but them, um, because you get to interact with them in a positive and a loving and a graceful way. 00:22:54.000 --> 00:22:57.160 And it gets to sort of set that example for others. 00:22:57.280 --> 00:22:58.180 I think that's a good thing. 00:22:58.800 --> 00:22:59.200 Yeah. 00:22:59.200 --> 00:23:05.260 That's a solid conversation about, you know, handling a troll in, in Twitch, in Facebook, in anywhere. 00:23:05.380 --> 00:23:06.500 That was, that was beautiful. 00:23:07.180 --> 00:23:12.600 Um, pastor Matt, how you've been, you've been doing God squad, uh, say five years. 00:23:12.720 --> 00:23:13.800 How, how long has this thing been going? 00:23:14.060 --> 00:23:16.480 So the church launched in 2016. 00:23:16.660 --> 00:23:19.640 I started live streaming on Twitch in 2014. 00:23:20.260 --> 00:23:22.840 So I'm going on seven years of live streaming on Twitch. 00:23:22.920 --> 00:23:23.060 Correct. 00:23:23.160 --> 00:23:23.300 Yeah. 00:23:23.740 --> 00:23:24.880 So this was back. 00:23:24.880 --> 00:23:29.980 So you spent two years, you, you said earlier, you like, you were doing evangelism and not church. 00:23:29.980 --> 00:23:39.660 And then you decided to like do the church, um, a little bit, just to be more of a, a center place for these kids to land where you trusted the environments instead of sending them. 00:23:40.060 --> 00:23:42.000 Talk to me about, about some of that. 00:23:42.000 --> 00:23:44.940 Like what was the evangelism, not a church? 00:23:45.020 --> 00:23:45.700 What was that season? 00:23:45.700 --> 00:23:48.680 Like how those conversations go for you? 00:23:48.780 --> 00:23:58.380 What, what's the difference maybe between that evangelism being that digital missionary versus now you're, you know, calling yourself a church and you're operating as a church on Twitch. 00:23:58.380 --> 00:24:01.540 So what, just spend a little bit on that experience. 00:24:02.020 --> 00:24:07.760 So when I started streaming on Twitch, Twitch under that name was still relatively new and I'd never heard of it. 00:24:07.840 --> 00:24:12.400 My quick Google search on like a way to connect with gamers live, whatever led me to Twitch. 00:24:12.400 --> 00:24:17.160 And I found a streamer by the name of summit one G and he had 25,000 viewers watching him. 00:24:17.320 --> 00:24:27.560 And I instantly knew, can you imagine if this guy was sharing the gospel with these people live where they had an opportunity to ask questions and to engage not only with him, but with the story of faith. 00:24:28.080 --> 00:24:34.260 And so I just literally just asked my wife, like, would you be comfortable with me, you know, dedicating a few nights a week to be able to do this? 00:24:34.300 --> 00:24:39.280 I was working full time at a church as an associate pastor and she's, you know, for her, she had no idea what I was even talking about. 00:24:39.360 --> 00:24:40.780 Sure, you can try it. 00:24:40.780 --> 00:24:43.380 You know, as long as you're not dedicating too much time to it, you can give it a try. 00:24:43.780 --> 00:24:51.620 And I started going on Twitch and just literally engaging with anyone and everything I can while I was playing a game called Halo that you mentioned earlier. 00:24:51.620 --> 00:25:01.620 So like literally while I'm in the video game, like shooting people in the game, telling people about Jesus, whether it was through voice chat, telling the people that I'm speaking with or the people who are watching. 00:25:01.620 --> 00:25:06.780 And I would make my title, you know, because back then there was way less streamers on Twitch, a pastor playing Halo. 00:25:07.020 --> 00:25:10.300 And some people would come in because they thought it was a funny joke. 00:25:10.600 --> 00:25:14.760 Some people would come in because they were in disbelief and some people came in for curiosity. 00:25:15.240 --> 00:25:21.100 But regardless of the reason they came in, once they were in, I was engaging with them, building relationships, sharing the gospel. 00:25:21.540 --> 00:25:24.560 And we would have moments where we would literally pray right then and there. 00:25:24.560 --> 00:25:31.540 And sometimes over a voice chat, sometimes in the actual, you know, stream chat, people would be saying yes to make a decision to follow Christ. 00:25:31.620 --> 00:25:36.960 And we just saw more and more and more and more and more people giving their lives to follow Jesus. 00:25:37.340 --> 00:25:42.820 People literally addictions from pornography being broken because it's common in the gaming community. 00:25:42.920 --> 00:25:46.560 I know it sounds crazy, but in the online world, it is not uncommon. 00:25:47.460 --> 00:25:50.900 And if you're going to die, anyone here is going to dive into the world of online church. 00:25:50.900 --> 00:25:56.400 Be prepared for the moments where there are people literally watching pornography while watching your service. 00:25:56.680 --> 00:26:02.560 So these people are engaging in all kinds of content on their second monitor, third monitor. 00:26:02.880 --> 00:26:09.940 And you're literally coming into their lives at a moment where their addiction is literally being played out. 00:26:10.060 --> 00:26:14.360 And you're sharing the gospel with them while the, and like chains are being broken mid act. 00:26:14.400 --> 00:26:20.320 And it's like, it's like real getting down, like boots on the ground, put your gloves on type ministry. 00:26:20.320 --> 00:26:22.420 Because you just, you have no idea what they're engaging with. 00:26:22.880 --> 00:26:29.960 And so we started seeing people being set free from addiction and people giving their lives to follow Jesus and literally sharing with their spouse and their spouse getting saved. 00:26:30.140 --> 00:26:36.760 And, and then like I talked about earlier, Jeff, where we started hitting the roadblock was when we started trying to get into the discipleship. 00:26:37.700 --> 00:26:46.080 Because while I was trying to do like Bible studies and stuff in the live stream, Twitch chat and really like, how can I go from evangelism to the discipleship? 00:26:46.700 --> 00:26:56.920 Then people started coming in and the dichotomy I started facing was while I'm trying to teach people deeper things about God's word, there's tons of new people coming in like mid Bible study. 00:26:57.300 --> 00:27:04.980 Like when you're having a small group and you're focusing on teaching, you know, God's word in that small group, there's not a bunch of new guests walking in the room in the middle of the group. 00:27:05.700 --> 00:27:09.280 So there'd be people joining the chat being like, God's fake. 00:27:09.680 --> 00:27:10.740 God's not even real. 00:27:10.860 --> 00:27:14.620 And I'm like, well, I want to, I want to address that more evangelistic question. 00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.080 But I'm in the middle of answering this guy on like, I'm reading the Bible for the first time. 00:27:19.140 --> 00:27:20.260 Don't understand what this verse means. 00:27:20.600 --> 00:27:24.040 The two are difficult to accomplish at the same time. 00:27:24.540 --> 00:27:29.840 And so I was like, you know what, let's just focus on evangelism and let's send people elsewhere for discipleship. 00:27:30.840 --> 00:27:38.840 But then what we started running into was, like I mentioned earlier, these places where they could get discipleship, where they could have their own pastor, their own shepherd, their own flock. 00:27:39.740 --> 00:27:41.760 We were just getting more horror stories and good stories. 00:27:42.300 --> 00:27:54.660 And we started realizing, like, unless I can call every church on the planet and, like, interview your pastor, understand your theology, understand the heart and the culture of your people, I don't know what's out there. 00:27:55.640 --> 00:27:57.620 I don't know what's, I don't know where I'm telling you to go. 00:27:58.020 --> 00:27:58.920 I just, I don't. 00:27:59.360 --> 00:28:06.240 And it ended up being really damaging, not only for that individual, but then for us, because it started coming back to bite us. 00:28:06.320 --> 00:28:08.680 Like, oh, Pastor Susie sent me to this awful church. 00:28:09.760 --> 00:28:11.300 And then it started coming back to bite me. 00:28:12.300 --> 00:28:13.580 Like, making me look bad. 00:28:13.740 --> 00:28:16.920 Like, I knew that this church was bad and I was like, go there anyway. 00:28:17.000 --> 00:28:18.000 Like, I had no idea. 00:28:18.720 --> 00:28:24.540 And so we really just started finding out, like, one, for a lot of these gamers, these negative situations are happening. 00:28:24.900 --> 00:28:33.600 But then, two, a lot of these gamers, for many reasons, and this is what I started learning about online church as a whole, there are some people who won't thrive in a physical location. 00:28:34.400 --> 00:28:37.760 There are some people that, for whatever reason, maybe don't thrive in large settings. 00:28:38.180 --> 00:28:43.140 We encounter a lot of people that have social anxiety, some people that deal with things like autism. 00:28:43.700 --> 00:28:46.120 And maybe for them, large groups are intimidating. 00:28:46.540 --> 00:28:49.380 I mean, there are people literally on Twitch that have, like, Tourette's. 00:28:50.120 --> 00:28:55.780 And, like, that would be a struggle if you're sitting in a large group of 100 people and you're just kind of blurting things out. 00:28:55.920 --> 00:28:59.900 But when you're sitting alone in your room, that struggle doesn't become a distraction for other people. 00:29:00.440 --> 00:29:03.520 You can hear the word of God without other people turning and staring at you. 00:29:04.040 --> 00:29:07.760 And so we just started learning overall the overall benefits of online church. 00:29:07.840 --> 00:29:13.360 And we just knew if we're going to reach gamers, let's be the beginning and the end. 00:29:13.900 --> 00:29:18.360 And what I mean by that is, like, let's do the evangelism and the discipleship, not one or the other. 00:29:18.360 --> 00:29:22.980 Let's be a one-stop shop for people to come to know and really know Jesus. 00:29:23.880 --> 00:29:25.080 Yeah, a lot of questions. 00:29:25.220 --> 00:29:29.700 Like, I really want to ask, how is that transition or what does that even look like to be that full-fledged church? 00:29:29.880 --> 00:29:32.220 But let's dig in a little bit. 00:29:32.340 --> 00:29:37.340 So you're reaching a different type of person, and you highlighted that, and that's so beautiful. 00:29:37.560 --> 00:29:40.320 We talk about that all the time. 00:29:40.860 --> 00:29:43.740 Digital church reaches a different type of person. 00:29:44.240 --> 00:29:46.900 Stadia, we talk about microchurch reaching a different type of person. 00:29:46.900 --> 00:29:51.140 Like, we're doing all these different models to be more effective in reaching different people. 00:29:51.680 --> 00:29:57.240 There are people that will never go to the building or were burned by the building and aren't interested in going back in. 00:29:57.260 --> 00:30:00.520 So we've got to do something different to reach them. 00:30:01.140 --> 00:30:21.060 I would love to dig into a little bit here, like, how is digital, how is Twitch church, where is it, is it easier to connect with this, you know, penultimate model of what a Gen Z, 16-year-old, 13-year-old, like, what's your one? 00:30:21.160 --> 00:30:22.060 Who's your target? 00:30:22.600 --> 00:30:25.900 And then maybe, how are you doing a digital church? 00:30:25.960 --> 00:30:26.960 How is it more effective? 00:30:27.500 --> 00:30:29.160 You both have ministry experience. 00:30:29.280 --> 00:30:32.600 How is it less effective than in the physical space? 00:30:32.600 --> 00:30:40.660 So, like, who are you trying to reach, and where is it easier and harder necessarily to do that in digital space compared to physical? 00:30:41.020 --> 00:30:41.260 Sure. 00:30:41.460 --> 00:30:49.360 So our target audience is literally the average age of hardcore gamers, 33 years old, which might be a surprise to many people. 00:30:50.260 --> 00:30:52.720 So you're not even – you're not a Gen Z at all. 00:30:52.840 --> 00:30:54.400 You're smack in the middle of a millennial. 00:30:54.800 --> 00:30:57.540 Yeah, so a lot of people are like, oh, that's so great that you're doing kids ministry. 00:30:57.700 --> 00:30:59.740 I'm like, you don't understand this at all. 00:31:01.560 --> 00:31:03.320 Yeah, average age of hardcore gamers, 33. 00:31:03.480 --> 00:31:07.100 So by 33, most people are already in their profession, already married, and already have small children. 00:31:07.840 --> 00:31:10.000 And so that's really the people that we keep in mind. 00:31:10.540 --> 00:31:16.100 And, like, so that's why, you know, I think there's a large, obviously, you know, generation within the gaming community. 00:31:16.420 --> 00:31:17.880 There's obviously lots of teenagers. 00:31:17.880 --> 00:31:29.720 The misconception that people have is that most gamers are not teenagers, but teenage gamers have the most amount of time to be playing video games or to be sitting there and watching Twitch. 00:31:30.160 --> 00:31:32.380 So there's a lot to understand the nuances of that. 00:31:32.440 --> 00:31:42.620 But for us, literally our target audience is we want to reach that gamer who has either been burned by the church, does not understand God at all, and literally would never step foot into a church. 00:31:42.620 --> 00:31:47.600 They would just never step foot in, and we just – we want to go exactly to where they are. 00:31:47.880 --> 00:31:53.020 If you literally – if you scroll through Twitch, there are rules that pop up when you go into a streamer's stream. 00:31:53.380 --> 00:31:57.380 Most two most popular rules are don't talk about politics and do not talk about religion. 00:31:58.000 --> 00:32:04.020 Those are the number two rules of just – it's not actually a Twitch rule, but the streamers will establish, like, culturally, you want to talk about religion? 00:32:04.120 --> 00:32:04.800 Go do it somewhere else. 00:32:04.860 --> 00:32:05.460 Get out of here. 00:32:06.080 --> 00:32:07.540 And so that's the people reaching. 00:32:07.760 --> 00:32:13.360 How can we break through the barriers of helping people to know Jesus even though they currently hate Jesus? 00:32:14.280 --> 00:32:16.260 It's not even for most people that don't believe in him. 00:32:16.380 --> 00:32:21.440 Most people hate, like, in the gaming community, most people, like, whatever Jesus is, I don't like him. 00:32:22.380 --> 00:32:26.840 And so that's our target of, like, how can we build deep relationship with people first? 00:32:27.320 --> 00:32:33.840 That just starts with, like, our common interest in a game or in just a culture of, you know, nerd culture and movies and all that kind of stuff. 00:32:34.000 --> 00:32:39.900 It always normally starts there, and then once we've built a level of trust, then people are willing to go there with faith. 00:32:40.400 --> 00:32:45.120 Because if I'm being fully honest, my gamer name used to be Pastor Susie. 00:32:45.460 --> 00:32:55.080 And what I found out through relationships with some of my other successful streamers was, man, Susie, like, I got a chance to know you and I love you, but my viewers won't watch you because of what they think you're like. 00:32:55.640 --> 00:33:07.000 And so I actually took the word pastor out of my name, and it's exponentially opened up more opportunities for me because people are coming in already with a negative preconceived notion that they hate God and they hate pastors. 00:33:07.460 --> 00:33:12.180 And those are the people that we want to reach, but we weren't able to because of those limitations in the way. 00:33:12.700 --> 00:33:14.040 Mark, have you experienced that? 00:33:14.540 --> 00:33:15.900 I mean, yes and no. 00:33:16.480 --> 00:33:22.080 First off, if you are interested in ZOA energy drinks, that's really how you connect with Pastor Matt. 00:33:22.080 --> 00:33:30.560 If you watch his stream, the first 40 minutes of his stream every day is him raving about ZOA energy pretty much every stream. 00:33:31.520 --> 00:33:33.020 I didn't pay him to say that, by the way. 00:33:33.100 --> 00:33:33.260 Yeah. 00:33:34.960 --> 00:33:35.720 Yes and no. 00:33:35.840 --> 00:33:36.280 Yes and no. 00:33:36.440 --> 00:33:43.820 So, I mean, my evangelism inside of the online gaming community started a year and a half ago through podcasting. 00:33:43.940 --> 00:33:45.420 It didn't start through live streaming. 00:33:45.560 --> 00:33:50.560 So live streaming was something I aspired to but didn't own the equipment for, didn't feel like I had the time to do. 00:33:51.060 --> 00:34:00.380 And now I'm doing it a little bit, but honestly, you have to go to where God gives you, where God is at work in your life already, right? 00:34:00.380 --> 00:34:18.680 And so for Pastor Matt and God squad, like for him to not stream the amount that he does would be an enormous mistake in my opinion because of the amount of influence that he's been gifted in the streaming community, partially because he started seven years ago, which was a great time to start on Twitch. 00:34:19.260 --> 00:34:23.800 Starting in 2021 is a really, quite honestly, it's a terrible time to start on Twitch. 00:34:24.800 --> 00:34:28.440 Just because discoverability is so horrible, horrible, horrible. 00:34:28.660 --> 00:34:33.120 So God gave us blessing through the online community, through podcasting. 00:34:33.180 --> 00:34:44.440 And what I have found is, is that I typically will close every three or four episodes where I'll say something either about our church or about the fact that I'm a pastor and I say, Hey, I'm here, I'm here for you. 00:34:44.520 --> 00:34:46.480 And so I, there's just an open door. 00:34:46.480 --> 00:34:55.680 If you want to talk, what I have found is what we have connected to more because of that is people who have left the church and have no intention of returning. 00:34:56.360 --> 00:35:00.200 Not so much people who have never, ever been to church before. 00:35:00.780 --> 00:35:03.480 And I have encountered a lot of people who found it to be intriguing. 00:35:03.480 --> 00:35:05.740 And those are typically people from Europe. 00:35:05.740 --> 00:35:08.180 Like there are people from Europe who've just found it intriguing. 00:35:08.540 --> 00:35:14.200 They've literally, they've never been to a church and they don't, they don't necessarily have a negative conception of church either. 00:35:14.680 --> 00:35:16.580 So there's a, there's a cultural thing there. 00:35:16.600 --> 00:35:20.140 I think a lot of the negative perception of church that I've encountered is U S based. 00:35:20.140 --> 00:35:26.340 A lot of people from the U S North America, specifically, maybe Canada, just really, if you're a pastor that, that they're, 00:35:26.360 --> 00:35:28.120 there's something really negative that goes along with that. 00:35:28.440 --> 00:35:29.380 Europe is not so much. 00:35:29.420 --> 00:35:32.620 It's actually been so de-churched that there's something about it. 00:35:32.660 --> 00:35:33.500 It's like, Oh, you're a pastor. 00:35:33.580 --> 00:35:34.220 It's kind of intriguing. 00:35:34.220 --> 00:35:35.960 Like, what do you, what do you do? 00:35:36.080 --> 00:35:37.800 You know, or they'll say, Oh, you're a father. 00:35:37.800 --> 00:35:42.420 And it's like, well, I'm, I'm not, I'm not, but they don't, they don't have any understanding. 00:35:42.580 --> 00:35:53.300 So I, that might be rambling a little bit, but, uh, you know, I, I, I don't know how much we've encountered, um, a natural disdain for, for the online stuff, but we're also very new. 00:35:53.640 --> 00:36:03.300 Um, and, and pastor Matt and God squad did plant from a place of a more significant platform, um, than what, uh, than what Lux has planted from. 00:36:03.580 --> 00:36:04.340 Time will tell. 00:36:04.400 --> 00:36:05.780 We'll see what happens when it goes. 00:36:05.780 --> 00:36:09.920 There's always, there's always new opportunities, like even in, even in 21. 00:36:10.400 --> 00:36:18.020 Um, Hey, so pastor Matt, tell me, uh, so you, you made the shift away from evangelism, 2014, 2016. 00:36:18.020 --> 00:36:21.580 You started a church, uh, aimed at 33 year old males. 00:36:21.860 --> 00:36:25.140 Uh, that's also the age that Jesus was when he died. 00:36:25.140 --> 00:36:30.400 So I don't know that there's a parallel, but, but there, there's something there to maybe unpack at a later point. 00:36:31.280 --> 00:36:32.980 What makes it a church? 00:36:33.140 --> 00:36:36.260 Like, like in your mind, just curious, not, not judging. 00:36:36.460 --> 00:36:40.980 I'm actually very essentially ecclesiology, like have these conversations all the time. 00:36:40.980 --> 00:36:46.520 But for, for you, when you're like, Hey, this is what makes this a church compared to what it's of before. 00:36:46.800 --> 00:36:48.680 What you, you said discipleship. 00:36:48.740 --> 00:36:52.180 Let's, let's put more definition around that discipleship word earlier. 00:36:52.180 --> 00:36:53.520 So what, what is it? 00:36:53.600 --> 00:36:55.600 What makes, uh, what makes God squad a church? 00:36:55.900 --> 00:36:55.980 Yeah. 00:36:56.060 --> 00:37:00.920 And this was a question that honestly, we took very, very seriously and we still do to this day. 00:37:01.140 --> 00:37:08.060 But especially when we first started launching, because I'm just not a guy that's willing to do something cool and new and innovative just for the sake of doing it. 00:37:08.080 --> 00:37:10.300 It always needs to be biblically rooted in God's word. 00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:13.700 And so you can't just do something and call it a church, right? 00:37:13.720 --> 00:37:18.840 It needs to be biblically approved of what God, the creator of church has ascribed to be a church. 00:37:19.240 --> 00:37:25.280 And so that's why when we first started with just evangelism, like it doesn't matter that I'm opening the Bible and read it doesn't make it, it doesn't make it a church. 00:37:25.600 --> 00:37:32.480 And so for us, there are some things that you need to cross off the list in order to make sure a church one, there needs to be the sacraments. 00:37:32.740 --> 00:37:34.580 There needs to be practicing of the sacraments. 00:37:34.760 --> 00:37:37.340 And so one that is easy and another one that is very difficult. 00:37:37.680 --> 00:37:38.940 One that is easy is communion. 00:37:39.280 --> 00:37:40.180 Communion is very simple. 00:37:40.400 --> 00:37:45.320 You just encourage your community to pick up their own supplies and, you know, crackers, juice, whatever that might be. 00:37:45.360 --> 00:37:48.800 And a practice can come in with you that, that one we find to be very simple. 00:37:49.020 --> 00:37:53.020 Honestly, for us, Jeff, what was a little more difficult was practicing water baptism. 00:37:53.700 --> 00:37:57.820 If you're going to be an online only church, how in the world are you going to do water baptism? 00:37:58.180 --> 00:37:59.740 And we really wrestled with this. 00:38:00.160 --> 00:38:04.860 And it just came down to our understanding of scripture that, you know, we see the baptism of Jesus. 00:38:05.060 --> 00:38:06.640 And in my opinion, there's four things present. 00:38:07.220 --> 00:38:09.320 There was a person who was willing to be baptized. 00:38:09.320 --> 00:38:11.220 And obviously not in Jesus' situation. 00:38:11.360 --> 00:38:13.360 Jesus didn't make a decision to become a follower of Jesus. 00:38:13.460 --> 00:38:13.980 He was Jesus. 00:38:14.360 --> 00:38:19.880 But in our own baptism, there's a person of repentance making a decision of Jesus who wants to make that public decoration. 00:38:20.460 --> 00:38:23.160 We see, obviously, that there's the presence of the Holy Spirit. 00:38:23.280 --> 00:38:24.560 We see the dove that ascended. 00:38:24.960 --> 00:38:29.240 But obviously, if God is not present at your water baptism, you're really just, you're going for a swim. 00:38:29.860 --> 00:38:32.880 There is obviously the presence of water, right? 00:38:32.980 --> 00:38:35.420 You really kind of can't have water baptism without water. 00:38:35.740 --> 00:38:41.900 And the fourth element we found was there was some sort of other person, whether you want to use the terminology, officiating the water baptism. 00:38:42.340 --> 00:38:43.940 Someone else was present there. 00:38:44.000 --> 00:38:46.800 And today we see that that'd be someone who's dunking you in the water. 00:38:47.200 --> 00:38:49.360 And we ask ourselves, okay, what can we do online? 00:38:50.040 --> 00:38:52.060 We can have a person who's made a confession for Christ. 00:38:52.320 --> 00:38:54.820 We can have the Holy Spirit because God is omnipresent. 00:38:54.960 --> 00:38:56.620 It could be in your body of water. 00:38:56.700 --> 00:38:57.520 It could be with me in my room. 00:38:58.080 --> 00:39:02.120 There's obviously the presence of water, which is, you know, that's accessible to most people. 00:39:03.040 --> 00:39:05.520 But I can't be in the same room as you. 00:39:06.200 --> 00:39:07.600 I can't touch you. 00:39:08.120 --> 00:39:13.760 And Jeff, we really had to ask ourselves, are we important enough? 00:39:13.900 --> 00:39:17.140 Am I as a minister, am I as someone that could dunk you in the water? 00:39:17.460 --> 00:39:25.720 Do I matter enough in an experience that is between you and God, that if you are a person who's made a confession to follow Christ, 00:39:26.540 --> 00:39:32.440 you do have an opportunity to make a public declaration of an inward transformation because we can provide that through the online audience. 00:39:33.120 --> 00:39:34.640 There is the presence of the Holy Spirit. 00:39:34.900 --> 00:39:36.220 You are in a body of water. 00:39:36.220 --> 00:39:43.160 But have I convinced myself that I'm important enough that because I can't touch your shoulder, your baptism doesn't count? 00:39:44.240 --> 00:39:45.040 And Jeff, I'll be honest. 00:39:45.120 --> 00:39:47.340 I couldn't convince myself that I mattered that much. 00:39:47.800 --> 00:39:49.160 I just couldn't do it. 00:39:49.500 --> 00:39:53.400 I couldn't convince myself that I was that important that I could take that away. 00:39:53.880 --> 00:39:55.760 And so it might seem a little strange. 00:39:56.000 --> 00:39:59.540 But what we do is we have a heavy vetting process because things could go south. 00:39:59.580 --> 00:40:01.500 And you'll begin to understand that as I say this. 00:40:01.700 --> 00:40:06.120 But we have people that will gather in a pool from their neighbor, in a lake. 00:40:06.300 --> 00:40:13.940 But we also let people literally go in their bathtub and to dunk themselves in the water publicly, making a confession before Christ, the Holy Spirit. 00:40:14.140 --> 00:40:16.240 I believe the Holy Spirit can go into your bathroom. 00:40:16.860 --> 00:40:17.920 I know I'm not saying strange. 00:40:18.060 --> 00:40:19.040 It might sound funny. 00:40:19.600 --> 00:40:28.980 But we're giving – literally, we had a person from the Netherlands at 1 o'clock in the morning because of the time zone difference who did not have a local church in his area that was truly preaching the gospel. 00:40:29.520 --> 00:40:31.460 He did not – his house only had a shower. 00:40:31.940 --> 00:40:33.300 He did not have a friend with a pool. 00:40:33.760 --> 00:40:44.400 So what he did was he spent a few hours cleaning out his trash receptacle, like the big ones you put in front of your house when trash day comes, filled it with water, and dunked himself in it to be baptized. 00:40:45.200 --> 00:40:53.740 And I know that might sound outrageous, but I was like, what more of a beautiful story are we seeing of true life change and repentance? 00:40:54.020 --> 00:41:03.220 People don't put themselves on the internet in a trash receptacle unless they've truly given their lives to follow Jesus, and they want to make that publicly known. 00:41:03.780 --> 00:41:07.980 And so having those sacraments, first, Pat, is just absolutely imperative. 00:41:08.180 --> 00:41:09.760 You can't just be in church without having those. 00:41:10.380 --> 00:41:12.900 But really, the biggest part where it comes down to is community. 00:41:13.700 --> 00:41:15.820 Church needs to be a community. 00:41:16.360 --> 00:41:17.940 There needs to be discipleship. 00:41:18.040 --> 00:41:20.020 There needs to be iron sharpening iron. 00:41:20.420 --> 00:41:23.240 That's why we really, really heavily rely on things like small groups. 00:41:23.400 --> 00:41:26.920 We call them experience groups because, one, we want people to experience the presence of God. 00:41:27.180 --> 00:41:28.860 We want people to experience faith. 00:41:29.060 --> 00:41:30.480 We want people to experience them together. 00:41:31.000 --> 00:41:35.080 But our slogan is gamers gaining experience to level up in their faith. 00:41:35.740 --> 00:41:40.520 Like I mentioned earlier, Jeff, faith and life are much better done as a multiplayer, not a single player. 00:41:41.160 --> 00:41:50.520 And so getting people to be together through video chats and voice chats and asking questions and praying and studying God's word, I believe those are just so easily accessible online. 00:41:51.140 --> 00:41:55.740 You could do that all different times of the day before people go to work, after they get home, during their lunch break. 00:41:56.100 --> 00:41:59.380 But without community, you're not a church. 00:41:59.620 --> 00:42:10.720 And this is where I struggle, honestly, Jeff, with the online church becoming a new fad of churches just sticking a camera in the back of their room and being like, hey, people at home, just watch what we're doing. 00:42:11.760 --> 00:42:14.180 You're watching the service, but you're not part of the body of Christ. 00:42:14.580 --> 00:42:15.260 You're not serving. 00:42:15.360 --> 00:42:15.880 You're not engaged. 00:42:15.940 --> 00:42:16.460 You're not giving. 00:42:16.760 --> 00:42:18.500 You're just a spectator, not a participator. 00:42:18.680 --> 00:42:21.420 And that's where I think the key of online church really needs to exist. 00:42:21.960 --> 00:42:27.900 Now, you told me off air, you know, talking about that gathering, talking about that community, talking about the importance of all that. 00:42:28.700 --> 00:42:37.480 2020, you guys, we're doing a we're aiming to do a physical location as well as like the God Squad, the virtual, the digital stuff, the Twitch stuff. 00:42:37.720 --> 00:42:42.080 Talk to me like what's the heart, maybe some of the mindset behind the physical. 00:42:42.080 --> 00:42:59.220 Yeah, so our long term vision is to extend our online presence into multi-campus physical locations where we will differ than most churches is what's happening in the physical location will have a different experience what's happening in the online location. 00:42:59.800 --> 00:43:07.580 And so you'll even see some larger churches today when it comes to transitions and, you know, the greeting and the offering and communion, they'll shift to a different person. 00:43:07.580 --> 00:43:11.800 And that person, and I see the benefits, they can cater to the online person only, they can read the chat. 00:43:12.380 --> 00:43:17.200 What we do is we engage with the chat and the people in person. 00:43:17.300 --> 00:43:24.380 We make it one all-inclusive experience where when it comes time to get prayer, there are people that can walk up to the front of the room and pray with a prayer worker. 00:43:24.720 --> 00:43:28.400 But there's also people that can type in the chat and talk about what they need prayer. 00:43:28.960 --> 00:43:34.600 And by having all of it be done in one experience, because what we do as a church is after service, we all hop on a video game. 00:43:34.840 --> 00:43:42.280 That's not really a gaming platform, but a voice and text chatting platform called Discord, where everyone, no matter if you're a physical or not, can talk to each other. 00:43:42.560 --> 00:43:50.160 And what's happening is you might have been sitting in the physical location, but then the guy on stage read someone in the chat, hey, my grandmother diagnosed with cancer. 00:43:50.240 --> 00:43:55.720 Now the person sitting in our Virginia campus goes, wait, my grandma's been diagnosed with cancer. 00:43:56.360 --> 00:43:58.920 Now when I get on Discord, I'm going to go talk to that person and connect. 00:43:59.480 --> 00:44:05.560 So it's truly all the locations really coming together rather than I'm from this location, that location. 00:44:05.900 --> 00:44:10.420 We're just one church in many locations, all experiencing the same experience. 00:44:10.420 --> 00:44:19.980 And the reason we want to also add additional is because we believe that online church is a true expression of church, but I believe that it's not for everybody. 00:44:20.940 --> 00:44:21.520 It's not for everybody. 00:44:22.240 --> 00:44:28.340 Some people can't thrive in an online, you know, what might feel to them like an impersonal location. 00:44:28.580 --> 00:44:32.280 And so we just want to have both to be able to meet the needs of both the people that we're reaching. 00:44:32.960 --> 00:44:34.140 Oh, that's beautiful. 00:44:34.400 --> 00:44:36.760 You're doing the physical, you're doing the digital. 00:44:36.760 --> 00:44:41.500 Now you're digital first in the way you're thinking, in the way that you grew the thing. 00:44:41.620 --> 00:44:45.020 And so digital is a higher priority, I would speculate, yeah. 00:44:45.180 --> 00:44:51.700 So like doing that, but then adding the physical to help connect with a different type of person there. 00:44:51.860 --> 00:44:55.120 It's a state that we would call that a multimodal approach. 00:44:55.520 --> 00:45:00.360 You're doing a video game church through Twitch and then eventually doing that in physical space. 00:45:00.360 --> 00:45:07.460 By the way, I can't wait to see what that physical space video game church looks like with a bunch of 33-year-old hardcore video gamers. 00:45:07.800 --> 00:45:10.360 And yeah, like that's intriguing to me. 00:45:10.440 --> 00:45:11.220 That's really good. 00:45:12.300 --> 00:45:15.760 Hey, so we're going to wrap because this has been a great conversation. 00:45:16.420 --> 00:45:26.720 And we're going to have to do it again because I'm really intrigued on Twitch and even just hearing from both you guys, anxious to see how things continue to develop with God Squad. 00:45:27.340 --> 00:45:35.840 Obviously, Lux Digital Church has a special place to my heart and anxious to see how Mark continues to grow the ministry there. 00:45:35.940 --> 00:45:37.920 But let me ask this just as to land the plane. 00:45:38.400 --> 00:45:39.840 There are some churches out there. 00:45:39.900 --> 00:45:40.900 Maybe it's physical churches. 00:45:41.060 --> 00:45:42.060 Maybe it's Mark. 00:45:42.160 --> 00:45:53.260 Maybe you're talking to the next digital-only planter that really wants to get into Twitch and be a church of video gamers and not necessarily for video gamers. 00:45:53.440 --> 00:45:54.940 So let's close with this. 00:45:55.320 --> 00:45:56.200 Piece of advice. 00:45:56.360 --> 00:45:56.940 Next step. 00:45:57.240 --> 00:45:57.940 Where to start? 00:45:58.500 --> 00:46:02.860 Somebody's coming into this thing cold and they want to do something in Twitch. 00:46:03.040 --> 00:46:03.900 How do they get started? 00:46:03.900 --> 00:46:05.760 What advice would you give them? 00:46:06.200 --> 00:46:07.320 Mark, why don't you go first? 00:46:07.800 --> 00:46:12.780 I mean, honestly, if I had someone who was coming in literally cold, they had no experience whatsoever. 00:46:13.100 --> 00:46:19.980 They themselves either were a gamer but don't have anything in streaming experience or they aren't a gamer. 00:46:20.260 --> 00:46:23.860 And you just got to start by hanging out in streams. 00:46:24.700 --> 00:46:31.140 It may sound wild, but the streaming culture is an entirely different language and you have to be able to speak it. 00:46:31.300 --> 00:46:33.280 And I'm learning to speak it, right? 00:46:33.280 --> 00:46:38.560 And I've spent a lot of time in streams over the past couple of years, but I am learning to speak it. 00:46:38.680 --> 00:46:40.240 It is its own subculture. 00:46:40.440 --> 00:46:41.600 It's its own thing. 00:46:41.800 --> 00:46:47.800 There is going to be so much language and inside joke type stuff that you just don't have any comprehension for. 00:46:47.920 --> 00:46:54.780 Keep Wikipedia close by because that's going to be how you're going to understand a lot of the stuff that comes through your chat. 00:46:55.180 --> 00:46:58.880 Otherwise, you're not going to understand because the language is just different. 00:46:59.080 --> 00:47:04.040 If you're genuinely looking to get started, you need to spend some time on twitch.tv. 00:47:04.440 --> 00:47:06.580 Go find some streamers that you enjoy. 00:47:06.780 --> 00:47:08.000 Watch some big guys. 00:47:08.200 --> 00:47:12.040 Watch some little guys and start hanging out in some streams and participating. 00:47:12.380 --> 00:47:13.960 See how they interact with their chats. 00:47:14.440 --> 00:47:19.200 See how a big streamer versus a small streamer interacts with their chats because that's very different as well. 00:47:20.360 --> 00:47:26.100 And honestly, go look at people who are using decent equipment and kind of have what they're doing. 00:47:26.220 --> 00:47:30.300 I would encourage you actually to go hang out and match stream twitch.tv. 00:47:30.420 --> 00:47:31.360 I think Susie Live. 00:47:32.320 --> 00:47:33.340 And I know he streams. 00:47:33.380 --> 00:47:35.500 He can tell you, but he streams throughout the week. 00:47:36.000 --> 00:47:44.680 But his stream is a really great example of how to sort of engage with a community of people and still be a video game stream. 00:47:44.820 --> 00:47:54.680 But he offers such a multitude of different things between real talk questions, his faith-filled Fridays, all of these different things that he has going on that is really helpful. 00:47:55.300 --> 00:47:57.780 But then also, like, go hang out in Tim the Tatman stream. 00:47:58.240 --> 00:48:03.680 Like, see what that culture is like and see why 40,000, 50,000 people come and hang out with him. 00:48:03.860 --> 00:48:05.600 Study Ninja, one of the biggest streamers ever. 00:48:05.740 --> 00:48:15.440 See the difference between when he was streaming to 100,000 people and now he's streaming it to 15,000 or 20,000 people and the huge personality shift that's happened in him over that time. 00:48:15.820 --> 00:48:20.160 But do a little bit of digging because I think that that would be a great place to start and spend some time there. 00:48:20.680 --> 00:48:20.880 Cool. 00:48:21.020 --> 00:48:22.760 We'll put some links in the show notes to that. 00:48:22.860 --> 00:48:25.300 By the way, maybe do what I did. 00:48:25.300 --> 00:48:30.500 I was like, hey, I want to watch some streams, engage some streamers, learn on some things, clicked around. 00:48:30.960 --> 00:48:35.740 I think I saw the people talking about, like, the whole Bitcoin GameStop. 00:48:35.880 --> 00:48:41.400 I think I saw that stream before it actually happened, honest to God, because I remember some of that conversation. 00:48:41.560 --> 00:48:44.080 And then, like, a week later, it's like, oh, look, it just did it. 00:48:44.580 --> 00:48:51.420 And then the other thing that I found, and I'm not necessarily proud of this, I managed to stumble my way into a porn star's Twitch channel. 00:48:53.040 --> 00:49:00.520 I mean, just like, and honestly, I watched the stream for probably an hour and a half before I realized, oh, crap, she's a porn star. 00:49:01.200 --> 00:49:05.860 And then quickly called my wife and said, hey, I'm sorry, I just, you know, long stories, we don't need to get into it on air. 00:49:06.560 --> 00:49:08.420 But, yeah, get engaged in some of that culture. 00:49:09.300 --> 00:49:11.320 Pastor Susie, I should have been watching your stream. 00:49:11.380 --> 00:49:14.000 That probably would have been cleaner than the porn star. 00:49:14.000 --> 00:49:18.680 But y'all tell me, Pastor, what advice would you give to somebody starting out? 00:49:19.120 --> 00:49:29.960 So if anyone is looking to get in the world of digital church, my first thing that I would encourage them to do is to build and maintain one relationship with someone they do not know in real life. 00:49:30.840 --> 00:49:39.320 What I mean by that is if you want to have a church that is engaging in building relationship with people that you don't know physically, you have to know how to do that first. 00:49:39.500 --> 00:49:42.080 And you have to be someone that even wants to do that first. 00:49:42.320 --> 00:49:58.880 I think one of the biggest struggles that churches are having, adding additional campuses or digital campuses or just becoming an online church, is they're not the kind of people that truly see the value or believe that you can actually have a relationship with someone you don't know in real life. 00:49:59.620 --> 00:50:03.520 And so you've got these pastors that are encouraging people, hey, guys, get engaged online. 00:50:03.860 --> 00:50:07.420 But they don't actually engage with online stuff. 00:50:07.540 --> 00:50:09.560 But they're not actively on social media. 00:50:09.780 --> 00:50:12.120 They're not – they don't know what it's like to have a friend they've never met. 00:50:12.900 --> 00:50:16.120 And now they're asking people to be a part of a church with a bunch of people they've never met. 00:50:16.500 --> 00:50:17.780 And it's super important and it's real. 00:50:17.920 --> 00:50:20.800 But, I mean, you will live out the things that you truly believe in. 00:50:21.320 --> 00:50:27.320 And so I think if you're going to try to start a church of online people who you might never see their face, you might actually never hear their voice. 00:50:27.640 --> 00:50:30.920 You will for some of them if they were willing to go to video and voice chat with you. 00:50:31.360 --> 00:50:32.520 But that would be my first step. 00:50:32.580 --> 00:50:38.320 If you want to learn how to shepherd people online, build and start one relationship with someone you've never met and maintain that. 00:50:38.400 --> 00:50:41.000 And if you can do it, you're probably cut out for online ministry. 00:50:41.600 --> 00:50:45.360 And if you can't, you're just – unfortunately, you're probably not because you don't believe in it enough. 00:50:45.360 --> 00:50:50.560 If you don't believe that relationships can be had online, and if you can't, online church is probably enough for you. 00:50:52.040 --> 00:50:55.540 I got to tell you, I don't think I've ever heard anybody give that advice before. 00:50:56.120 --> 00:50:57.100 Just start with one person. 00:50:57.780 --> 00:50:58.920 Start with one person. 00:50:59.460 --> 00:51:00.460 Build that relationship. 00:51:00.720 --> 00:51:01.460 Do that shepherding. 00:51:01.560 --> 00:51:02.560 Follow it all the way through. 00:51:03.120 --> 00:51:08.440 And if you like that model, if you can do that, if you relate well with it, then multiply that. 00:51:08.580 --> 00:51:09.180 Grow it. 00:51:09.420 --> 00:51:10.760 That's beautiful. 00:51:11.060 --> 00:51:11.560 That was great. 00:51:12.480 --> 00:51:14.180 I may make that another tattoo-worthy statement. 00:51:14.180 --> 00:51:16.920 So, hey, we're good to go here. 00:51:17.060 --> 00:51:19.800 This has been fun, but we're going to land the plane. 00:51:20.960 --> 00:51:22.480 Pastor Susie, we'll have to bring you back. 00:51:22.620 --> 00:51:24.420 Mark, well, once again, we'll have to bring you back. 00:51:25.200 --> 00:51:29.100 But for Mark, for Pastor Susie, this is Jeff at the Church Digital. 00:51:29.600 --> 00:51:32.280 And State of the Church Planning, thanks for jumping on the pod here. 00:51:32.320 --> 00:51:33.340 And we'll see you next time on the show. 00:51:33.880 --> 00:51:34.380 Y'all have a good day. 00:51:34.460 --> 00:51:34.600 Bye.