A Digital Theologian - DK Hammonds

Couldn't quite put the words through explanation of it, I could just feel like God is kind of pulling me out of this thing that I thought was a part of my life into what I feel like is my life. And so it was almost like this alignment of calling and purpose, converging on one another and now the time it had to be right, the acknowledgement had to be right, the place had to be right, all those things had to be right so that God could use me further. What's up everybody? I'm DK Hammond and a little bit about me, I am a digital theologian that has been coined, given to me by a good friend of mine and what that person does is I get to bridge technology and theology into one place and into one conversation and this is the Faithfully Shore. Welcome to Faithfully Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys through their ministry work and everyday life. Join us as we delve into their challenges, moments of encouragement and answered prayers. The Faithfully Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithfully, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. Learn more at Faithfully.co. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired as we unveil the heart of faith through stories from the front lines of ministry on the Faithfully Stories podcast. Could you tell me a little about the beginning of your faith journey? How did you come to faith in Christ? Yeah, man. My faith journey started at a small church called Mercy Sea Baptist Church in Little Rock Arkansas under the leadership of James Astro and I was seven years old and there's pictures around me and my story, me walking into the pulpit of the actual journey and the day that I accepted Christ into my life, my mom actually captured a picture of that, which I'm really stoked about. And so from there, it had been seven years old and I even felt like I was called to the ministry at a fairier age. So I have a lot of in-depth intuitive knowledge because I've been around this thing since I was a kid. And one thing that stood out to me was my pastor at the time, James Astro, who was going on to do the Lord, I went to him and said, hey, I feel called to minister. And his response was, no. So imagine being trying to reconcile at seven years old, you feel God is impression that God has on your heart at seven years old and he said no. And the reason he said no, I didn't find out to like my 20s, why he said no, it was because he felt like there was more living for me to do than preaching for me. And he felt like it would make my preaching better if I would have lived outside of that content. Now, you know when people get that kind of news, they instantly go down this journey line up, not the construction, but almost rejection, right? And you feel like, hey, I'm being, I'm rejected from this. I can't preach. They won't let me do it. This then the other. And then it becomes a big to do. And so I went away from church for a period of time after seven, so we're in my 20s. Went away from church and you know how God works. If you attempt to go away, he'll come back to you and he'll pull you all back in. And he pulled me back in and I have been a part of ministry and church. And I'm grateful for this journey since then. And so accepted my calling officially at like 2021, went from 2021, accepted my calling to Sunday school teacher from Sunday school teacher to youth pastor for four years, from youth pastor to helping people to plan churches, from helping people to plan churches to training leaders, all of that in my faith lead journey. And so now I'm at a place where I'm in IT systems as well as being a preacher. So it gives me a very deeper understanding of how things work from a godly perspective, a seminary perspective, the logical perspective as well as a church one. And so that's kind of how my story unfolds. I hope I told it under five minutes because I've been training myself to do that all my life. Yeah. So let's backtrack to, you said you were seven. Yeah, man. What was the pull to go into the pulpit? Yeah. Kind of hard to say at seven. What was the pull? But it was one of those things that I couldn't shake it. And it was very clear to me that this is what I felt like I was called to do. And I'm trying not to be just super deep about it. Because to me, it's not a super deep story. It was one of those stories where I, you know, I got hit with an anvil like Tom and Jerry. No, no, no, no. This was one of those stories where I got baptized and I instantly fell over time that this is the way that God would have me to go. And there were certain promptings like somebody speaking over my life and saying, you're going to teach people and teach the nations at 12. Okay. Well, I do remember I didn't fully go into it because he told me no, but there was those promptings just kind of slowly nudging me back. And so that's kind of my, how my story kind of unfolds, man, nothing traumatic happened. It was all a god type of thing that I'm super grateful for. So what was the progression that led you to finally admit the call I felt at seven is actually the call at 20, whatever. Yeah, man. So my testimony is at, you know, in my adult years, now I had gotten married, had kids and that calling thing came back. And I was fighting it. I was really out there in the streets having the best time of my life. I was out there having a great time drinking whatever the case may be. I was out there doing it. And one day I was sitting in one of those little small clubs that I probably shouldn't have been in at that time at night and God spoke. And he said, leave here, or I'm going to do something for you to leave here. It is your choice. And I had to sit with that in this kind of liberated state. So I told my best friend, Kelly shorter, it's nice, I brother, it's time for me to go home. I sat in the parking lot, sat in my driveway, young family, remember, and I'm just out here doing my thing, kind of almost running from this thing. And I sat in the parking lot and I felt this tension on my chest. It wasn't heartburned. It wasn't gas. It was this tension that I was gradually with. One of the house couldn't sleep days on end, just couldn't sleep kept feeling this tension, asking God, okay, what is it that I need to be doing? And one day I went into church and I was just like, I'm so tired, I cannot do this, this way anymore. I got to find me a different way. And I went up for prayer to my pastor and I said, I just feel like this is the time. This is the time to accept my calling into ministry. The past of the time is Robert Coates and he was like, okay, cool. And from that moment forward, I've been in the preaching, teaching, leading ministry. I said, Mom, how old were you? At that moment I was about 20 when that happened. Okay. So you met your wife before this call, right? And you got my dad. Yeah, I have a different wife. Y'all don't edit that out, that's why. I was married prior to and so that my children's mother at the time, yes, were married. And she understood it, but she didn't understand the tension that I had to wrestle with because she wasn't called to the ministry to do that. I was called to the ministry to do that. I was trying to explain it to her and I couldn't quite put the words to explanation of it. I can just feel like God is kind of pulling me out of this thing that I thought was a part of my life into what I feel like is my life. And so it was almost like this alignment of calling and purpose, converging on one another and now the time it had to be right, the acknowledgement had to be right. The place had to be right. All those things had to be right so that God could use me further. And yeah, I was like 20 years old, preached my first sermon by 21, took my first youth pastor at position at New Hope Baptist Church at like 24. So I was in a ordained ministry at that point, helped plant my first church at 27 with another friend of mine, Pastor Cory Hughes in Arlington, Texas. And then from there went to another church, the Cypher Center Community Church here in the Soto where I was a, I was a youth pastor there for a period of time, then I went from youth pastor into training leaders and campus pastor. So that's kind of like my convergent and now I'm in systems in IT. So that's kind of how I went, man. Yeah, it's always the perfect storm of like all these things and it's like creation. Absolutely. Do you mind if I ask more questions about your first marriage? Absolutely. No, so this is a question I asked to all pastors who just never started off being a pastor, but then after they got married became pastor because like you said, the wife never signed up because they didn't know you liked that. And afterwards, it's this whole new life that affect the first marriage or how did she take it? Good question. I would think at first, because we were both young, we had no idea, there wasn't a lot of mentorship that we were seeking out. She was going along the ride because I was the host. And so she was counting, we were both getting training as we went. I'd be honest with you, it wasn't necessarily the best way, but it was the training that we received at the time. So for her, if I'm honest and transparent, she struggled quite a lot because again, I signed up for the regular guy. I didn't necessarily sign up for this preaching ministry and living in a fishbow and being scrutinized or given up your time and talents for someone else. That's not what I signed up for. And so that was a tension that we had to consistently work through as a couple. But I don't think that was the demise of the marriage at that point. That was just something that we had to work through. That honestly, I don't think that we did. We never came to a full thing of it because for me, I was always trying to sense the voice of God. And for her, it probably felt like I was pulling her in a five different direction. And that could be unsettling. I don't know where the next place is going to be. This, that, and the other, I have two younger kids. I'm trying to establish them and equally try to establish myself. So sometimes calling, accepting a calling can be a selfish matter. If we are like, truthfully honest, this is you and God, and then you include these layers of family. And now family has to put aside their lives so that you could chase after the spirit of God so you think so you have to be sure and ready. So that's kind of how that went wrong. Is there anything that you understand now in your older age looking back? Maybe you could have done something different, not to like save the marriage, but it just kind of ease a transition for a person who, again, didn't sign up for it, but maybe these are the things I should have thought about or talked about to help ease the transition. Yeah, bro. I think for me, it is communicating, communicating what you got going on inside of you. Even if you don't have the words quite yet to share, share what you know. But at the same time, others need to offer space so that you can share. And it's easy to land that stuff down of what God may be doing or couldn't do. What we should do, you know, so that would be the lesson if I'm talking to someone now and you're in the tension of relational tension with your marriage, potentially, your old marriage or whatever the case may be that you sit down and you attempt to communicate. And I wish I would have went to counseling then. I don't think that would have helped. But I would have been able to better put into words what I had going on inside of me to my significant other side. So my next question is about your kids, if you don't mind. Sure, man. A lot of the podcasts, like more than half of the people I interview grew up in broken homes where the parents divorced someone. Really? Yeah. I mean, even my parents got divorced, but I was like older and I shared like, when you grow up in like a 10s household, all you want them to do is separate, but when you get older, you appreciate it that they stayed longer than they did. But like, now I have an opportunity for you, like, how did you break into your kids like this family that are changed? And then later you get remarried, like, how do you introduce that to your kids? Like, it's not their fault and like, you know, this is just kind of like the messiness of this world and there's enough grace to forgot to like redeem it all. Well, you're always trying to find a place to explain the young children what's going on with older adults. And then my finding, you can explain it to them. But if other adults are on board with explanation or they have a different viewpoint of explanation, your explanation is going to kind of get caught up in the merciless of this relationship tension. So for me, my kids were young and I sat down and explained to them, hey, dad is going to be moving and dad is going to be doing the follow. I've always tried to have a clear, open communication with my children about me. I can't explain for everybody else, thought about me and said, hey, this is what's going on with dad and this is what I have to do. So for me, I moved to another state. I moved to Texas while I lived in Arkansas and they were young. So it's like, oh, okay, dad, are you going to still visit and come see us? Of course. But then time goes by and you go on the visit, maybe a little different because you're 400 miles away and your money is just not adding up. And so you have to be honest with your kids and they're going to be angry and that's okay. Once they mitigate that at an early age, then they can take, then they have the luxury of having introspection and retrospection and they'll be able to see exactly the point you're trying to make and or do. So my son comes to me now and like, hey, dad, I get it at 24. I understand what you had to do, I understand why you had to do it. I did not understand it now. I got you cold, you know, you guys were always at the forefront. So in terms of always trying to, in terms of the relationship, always trying to, I consider blended families to be this crockpot and yeah, you could put it on low, but if everything is not seasoned right, it's not going to be well for everybody. And you have to find the happy media that is not going to cause arguments, but simply get this ship on the right direction and keep everything going. And so that was like the middle part in the end of my kids, my kids are adults now. Smooth sailing, no problem. And so I think the best thing I learned out of that is create your boundaries when you're transitioning. It's going to be tough when you have children, but the other parties need to know what you once had you didn't have. Now you have this. Here is your boundary to operating in. Here's how I'm going to handle you with the utmost respect. I'm not going to treat you wrong on social media or talk about you bad. I'm going to be straight up and outstanding for you because my children are watching it. And I don't need them to see another side that they don't need to say. No, thank you for that. I appreciate that. I think as I get older, because when you're younger and you grow up really conservative, you think marriage is no divorce whatsoever. And I get it. We want that to be the ideal. But just because my understanding now is just because a marriage ends doesn't mean the family ends. You know what I mean? Yeah. To have good relationships with people and say I'm thankful that we had this because we have children now and that's the plus thing. But it's not the end of the world, you know, and we have enough grace. And Jesus says, marriage is temporary on this earth, you know, it's a problem we need to deal with here. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So one last question about marriage because we have, you know, have this time, how did you feel meeting your current wife and like your past experience kind of made you hesitant to getting remarried, you know, because the statistics outside of at least church and Christian context is like, as you get more married, the divorce rate is higher. But like, I feel like if you kind of learned from the past, now you have better prepared for the tools to like be more successful on this one. For sure. My wife, Aisha, amazing. She is the quintessential introverted, powerful storm that I would say storm, but steady ship that is always moving ahead. And I met her at a friend's house, who is a chef friend of ours that we share mutually. Her name is chef, a tam. She's out of Memphis, Tennessee. And upon going to our house one day in September, she was cooking and of course, DK loved some good cooking brother, please understand that. So she was over there cooking and I walked in and my favorite movie was on which is coming to America. And they're watching coming to America and I'm like, oh, cool. And so it incomes this woman whose hair is all over her head, she's calling her kids there. And I was like, oh, never seen this lady before, love her, love her quiet strip, love her approach to her children. I'm interested. Let me just see. And so I end up having a conversation with her and Chef Tam after the fact. And I end boxer, hey, I would love to, you know, take you out of the day. And her response was, if you spell my name correctly, you can. And 10 years later, I have been with the same woman since that time. Now, let's back it up and talk about how much time was spent on a healing journey to ensure that I didn't take drama, drama or additional stuff into the next. Let's talk about also what it takes to love yourself because the only way God can sing you better love is if you already love yourself, right? And so now you have a person who loves themselves, a person with the drama behind them, a good understanding of their life, a pretty good career going for themselves and he's a preacher. Now quick story here. I never told her I was a preacher until I threw a date in because I knew exactly what they would do. Because I've been through that and she has been helpful and alone for the journey. And I was like, where were you at 10 years prior to because I could have been out of here by prior to that. And so that's kind of how they do it. And so I've been very tired here, we share four kids among us, all of our kids are adults and they respect the careers, doing amazing things, I have one daughter who's married. Now and so I would not trade this journey and doing life with her. She is my confidant, my friend. She is my idea of wall where I can just throw stuff off of. She is the safe place for me and she doesn't make it hard for me to actually explain what I feel like God is doing within me and she is an excellent collaborator and partner. So that when it comes to doing the things of God, it does help them. My wife is also a praise and worship leader. She sings. She's in the church. She's involved. She stands in the dynamics. And so we've been rocking straws ever since, Rob. Dude, you're making me jealous, you need to stop. Does she have a sister? I'm very single, bro. She has a couple of sisters in the middle of that. Yo, hang on, hang on, I don't want to get any one in trouble. Please, I'll clip this out, keep this. I'm kidding. I'm definitely keeping this. I'm not ashamed. Yes, man, she has two sisters. I'm glad you said love yourself because I am beginning to understand that's so important because I think the world is confused that loving yourself doesn't mean you're full of yourself. There's a difference. Right? Loving yourself means, oh, God created me this way. He's given me this life. Yeah. I'm so thankful. I actually love my life and who I am in my strengths and weaknesses because I thank God for making me the way I am and it's just you genuinely authentically finally accepting yourself as you are. Yeah. Yeah. And when I live out that way, I'm just more confident of like, absolutely, I like this. Nobody wants to. My wife says something like this is so important. How can you, this is from her perspective, how can you expect for me to love you and I can see visibly that you don't love yourself. So you need to make sure that you love you because I can love you the way that you love you because you're going to end you like that. And so I think that's so important when it comes to somebody loving you where you are, but they have to see that in demonstration. You feel me? She's a wise woman. You're lucky. Man. Man. No doubt. So let's pivot and talk about how did you start getting into technology stuff and like merging that with theology? Well, good question. Let's see. One second. Well, technology came about because man, I made a transition in my career when I moved here. I was doing a lot of customer service work and I wanted something a little bit more stable something that I could grow with. And so a friend of mine called me and was like, hey, man, because we're working at another place in insurance, hey, man, how you feel about learning SQL? I was like, first of all, what is SQL? I have no idea. What is SAP? I have no idea. He said, if I trained you and I pay you this amount of money, would you come? The money was astronomical. And I went and I've been on the trajectory of IT in terms of any support roles all the way to director for the span of 15 years. And so a lot of my work is done in the start of world. I hate to have a company that was bought by an agency's list called Fixed Repair that I work with as a director of IT. Revel support or revel POS, if you ever want to send a bond and you scroll there, POS system now, that was our team working with that. And so I work with those companies helping building their support structures and God kind of made it to where I transitioned out of there, was working for some churches and collaborating. And what ended up happening was it was, it was so surreal, my wife called me one day and was like, hey, this church is higher. Would you consider taking your talent so a church I said, no, look, I'm more rebel. I think outside the box, this may not work. So I tried it because she told me to do it. And I've been with this particular church working in this particular position for the last three years, helping support, structurally support, technologically support the organization of the whole with over 17 employees plus and just really structuring it from a system standpoint and making sure that processes and systems are correct and well and able to help us, here's my word, scale, your love that word, scale. Every church needs to be thinking, how can we multiply ourselves? That's the Bible, that's the gospel. When the gospel say he sent them out two by two, it wasn't so they could have dinner at the STK or paris or capital grill. No, it was to multiply themselves. It was to scale the gospel. And that's a conversation we don't really have in terms of scaling. How do we scale the gospel to get it to the highways and by ways of compelment to come? So that is how in a short form, I got involved in that. To let's have that conversation. What is your understanding and approach to scaling the gospel? Sure. A part of scaling is that I see a lot of people trying to scale their organizational identity, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're like scaling disciples, you know? Yeah, man. So, okay, I will give you my brain thought, brain trust and anybody who may be listening, you can have this. If you're thinking digitally and I'm going to go through a process and you're going to be able to kind of follow probably, if you're thinking digitally, by me just speaking to someone in the chat, it's scalable to point blank period. Hello, how you doing? Where are you from? This becomes a repetition. Repetition becomes a thing that people expect they interact, that becomes scalable. And from that chat digitally, I'm then going to invite them to a physical location or a small group. And you can follow this in the Bible, I promise you, I'm not off the scripture, I'm pretty much on it. I'm just using text and layer it. One of our small group, I'm going to invite them to a meeting or a church or a church service or whatever to have, a case may be. And then from that invite, I'm going to potentially get them plugged into anything adult ministry light, like a small group or a certain team or a membership team or whatever the case may be. And then from there, I'm going to ask them, hey, I see that you're here, so glad you're here, would you mind certain? They're going to say, absolutely. I'm excited. Let's go. They've been baptized, membership, now they're serving. Now it's time for them to go and disciple someone else. I have just talked through, and less than three minutes, how to scale the ministry so that people can experience God in this true reform. Now, in that scaling, add your technological pieces that do not remove the human touch. The human touch can never be replaced. I'm sorry, you can get all the chat, GPT is all you want to, but it's something about the human touch that goes from what the Bible calls hard to hard, breast to breast, correct? And when you build that, and you have the human trust, and you have the ITPs, and you haven't understand how the process and system works, then now you can baptize 50, 100, 150, 250, 700, and you can go back and have membership class for 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000. Then you can go back, and you can say, now go serve and deploy them to their various service areas and opportunities. We'll go find a small group and deploy them to those various small groups, and now you have stailed all because you said hello in the chat, and that's how you merged into worlds together. I'm so glad you said that, and I completely agree, and this is why people freaking out by AI, they don't understand what it means to be human, right? Yes. Humans need other humans, like, absolutely, Jesus said, the Bible says man is not good alone. So, technology, if it isolates you, you're screwed because you're like unhumanized or dehumanized. I love that. Yes. So, that's really good in a more macro sense, so coming down to practical things, like what do you do with your church, that kind of like make sure you have those human touch points? Sure man. So, human touch point number one, let's go back to the same process. Human touch point number one is I spoke to you in a chat, but I offered you prayer, human touch point. I spoke to you in a chat, but I invited you to church, and I followed up with the invite. Okay? This is where you can insert, plan your visits, and follow up calls or text messages, and follow up calls. Then from there, that person wants to join. Okay? Solid. Now they feel like the QR code provides the information, and receive one or two emails saying we're so glad you're here. Just that. Then they get a text message directly from the leader, meeting is going to be here. Just that. I'm going through, and I'm showing you stuff, or what you need to do. Okay? Now they say they come into you in church, or they come into you in a chat, or they email you. Hey, man, anything else I can be doing? Yeah? Have you considered joining a small group? Now I have considered that. What are those? Now I'm explaining the small groups, what they are, how they work, how they're going to increase and fortify your faith. Then I'm going to walk you over to the small group, a domain, where you can sign up for a small group. Then you're going to see the leader's name. You're going to email that leader, that leader's going to email you back. So glad you're here, so glad that you chose. Then you move on, so forth, and so on, right? Every process that I create, because I am a relationship guy, has the human element in it. It's unavoidable. You cannot avoid it. There has to be some interactions or conversations, some talks, some throughput, so that people can understand. So here's the whole reason for it, I understand and know that you care, that's it. Showing the human experience in church is showing that we care, and we're demonstrating the love of God to people who need to experience Christ. You can do that, melodically, and you can do that, spiritually. So after they go through the whole process, a lot of churches, they have a problem of like, oh, our job is done, they're in a small group. You're a job lover. Exactly. We're all the same page, brother. So could you unpack, okay, they're in the group, they're serving. Now how do you get them to repeat for another person that they just experienced? So now we're talking about discipleship. If you guys do not know, I do have a book about the seven steps of digital discipleship, please go to my website. We sell it if it's $7, it's worth to pick up so you can get a process of what I'm saying. So when we're talking about discipleship of a small group, we have several different ways that wish you can be disciples, right? And I don't think people are using one of these ways a lot, but I think we should. The first way is yes, you need to create a tunnel from your small group into something that, because you, okay, let's back it up. So if I'm in a group and I'm the group leader, my job in the group is to assemble the power ranges and to know strengths and weaknesses. Once I've assembled them and I understand that strengths and weaknesses, it now is my time to fortify them. Why am I fortifying them? Because I'm trying to see as a leader who can lead, who can be the white power range or the red one and lead the troops to battle if I'm present or not. Once I've identified that, then I think here's a free one. Then now you can create pipelines, you can create your pipeline for leadership, discipleship, and you can create your pipeline just for people who just want to kind of stay there and be steady. There's three layers in between. You're going to determine, okay, you probably need to be a leader. So here are the steps I want you, I identify for you, then I think we'll be dope. And you identify them steps and you, here's the thing, you walk with them through it. The discipleship is about doing life together. It is the relationship equity that you build with another person to walk beside them and graciously show them the way. That is discipleship in his purest form. Now how do we flip that and make it digital? Some churches can create learning management system that could replicate a part of this journey. Hey, I want to go deeper into the word. What we created in our church was called Foundations of Faith. I built the interface that is created for the Foundations of Faith and ultimately our pastor is walking through the journey of discipleship to give them foundational tools that it's going to take for them to stick in the church ministry. Now you've done that. You've shown me that you can follow a process. Now let's see if you're ready to lead. So I've discipled you here, now I'm a disciple, you're a leadership and from discipleship of leadership, now you're ready to be deployed. That is the process in terms of adult or simulation and how they're interwoven into discipleship and how we can replicate the people along the way. There has to be something within that process that teaches people that they shouldn't be afraid to replicate themselves. So many times in church, man, we just want to have these superstars, these rock stars. I am only as good as a team that I built. And if I build a good quality team and they show up to back every time we do it, they're going to be excellent, they're going to get after it, it's going to be powerful. And they're going to be consistent why? Because they've seen the demonstration of that in real time. So that is a way. There are other technological ways that you can do it. You can do this through text. You can send people short form codes that they can go somewhere else and get more discipleship. You have right now media who also can offer a level of discipleship. You have now chat GBT that can create discipleship plans for you or pulpit AI that can take the past discernment and then take a sermon and then reroute it into discipleship plans. So we have a plethora of tools that we can use to disciple. We need to determine the process of discipleship and then add the tools later. Yeah, your church is so lucky to have you. We've got all the tools and knowledge, man, because I'm just like everything here. So like this past Easter, they were reading the road to Emmaus and those guys were like, like, wasn't our hearts burning when he was talking and now I feel the same way. Every word is like burning up my heart of like, yes, because the problem with superstars is one, they don't scale and two, they get old and die. So what are you going to do? You know? Yeah. And you have to always be thinking as a leader, I've been training leaders for a long time as you can see and I'm always thinking and I'm never feel for his one question. Who can replace me? I'm not afraid of that. I'm not afraid of that at all. If you feel like you have it, come get it. I want you to have it and I want you to go as far as you can go and I want to give you the tools that I can give you so that you can be a better version of who I am. I'm absolutely not afraid of that, right? And so I have people around me who are stronger, who can build databases, who can who work in corporate America and they work for me and I'm just simply building their lives up. So when it's time for me to go do something different or I need to be over here for five minutes, you don't panic. So the best thing about leadership for me that I'm trying people not to do is not to panic. There's nothing you can do to break this. We can fix it. It may take us some time, but we can fix it. So yeah, man, I get a chance to do this, I get a chance to help churches and my consultancy build this kind of stuff so that they can see, okay, here's where you need to go. It is one, biblical, two, theologically supporting the Bible, and three, able to scale the results. We just had this conversation in multi layers so you have to catch all of this and you're the exact one I mean. And this is how you do it. So yeah, I'm one of those superstars, man, I don't care. I am Scottie Pippin. You can be Jordan. You can go for 40. But who's going to lock the team down that that player does get who's going to do that? Who's going to shoot the three ball when you can't when you're sick? Who's going to that is me? I don't mind coming behind and being as supportive as I need to. Why? Because it is building the kingdom of God. And that is the ultimate success measure for me. Yeah, I feel the same way. I always said I work really hard so I don't have to work anymore. That's right. Yeah. I want to be irrelevant because people don't understand when you're up on top, there's a million things going on and you are responsible for so many people and I'm like, why does people want this? I don't understand. I don't. Literally, if God did not call me to do the certain things that I feel like I'm called to do, I would just be in bed like nefix and chilling and I'd be like, I'm good. I'm just waiting for you to come back. I'm blown. I actually like the idea, I mean, because now I'm at a place where I can support my church and support other churches to do this and I would love to continue to support the other churches who are just kind of on the custom thinking about how do I create this digital discipleship model? What I'm surprised about the tools that the churches aren't using, like their customer relationship management systems and how that system alone can support and help you call people or help you text people or help you keep in contact with people or help you track milestones. Like it may be a person that for instance, they'll do cracks where your milestones will determine where they fail and who needs to contact them. So having these types of measurable helps you see your job at an easier rate and pick that person up faster so that we can run and walk together along the way. I mean, it's just human nature to be comfortable with the status quo and tell something drastic happens or you realize an impending doom, then you'll be proactive, but a lot of people are just reactive. So the beauty of the kingdom is that like bad churches, they fail and all those people go to good churches. So as long as you are building a good church, you don't have to like really mark it and you just wait until the flood starts coming, but like he said, you need that system in process because how are you going to do this thing when everyone's running to your church? Absolutely. No doubt. No doubt. Absolutely correct. Absolutely. What are you hoping for at Facely? Oh, man. Number one that's faithfully will get an app. So I don't know if it's color, but it needs to come on down the pipeline. It's going to be a while before we get mobile, but I love that that faithfully would build genuine community for people to find faith, hope and work. I think you guys have something very unique that most people aren't even considering. Most of these places don't have a ethic that is closely connected to Christ in any form. It is more atheistic in terms of their build up. You guys are centering Christ. And that part I can totally get behind. So my hope is that more people would be exposed to faithfully. I hope this conversation does that. And I hope that faithfully would collaborate more with other brands like social media church and myself so that we can really promote and get you guys out of it. How can we be praying for you and your family? Man, currently my wife is doing her doctorate, so be prepared for her. She finishes next year. So she's gone home for that. One of my daughters is in nursing school right now. She finishes in the this year, and my son drives trucks. So keep him safe while he's on that road. And my other daughter, my baby, she's in school and she works full-time. But as for me, I'm praying for the next steps. What is God doing next, kind of sensing what he's doing in the earth realm, as well as in the spirit, and who I need to partner with and that they bring me that and partnering with him brings joy, peace, financial success. So those things is what I would be pretty cool. All right, man, thanks for coming on the podcast. Indeed, my brother. In time. All right, that's it guys, bye. Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. We pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff, and volunteers. The Faithly Digital Platform offers innovative and practical tools and resources to enhance connection, foster collaboration, and promote growth within the church and ministry space. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review our podcast to help reach more listeners like you. Stay tuned for more uplifting tales from the frontlines of ministry on the Faithly podcast. Stay bold, stay faithful, and never underestimate the power of your own story.