Adapting Discipleship in the AI Revolution - Michael Whittle

00:01 - Speaker 1
Like there's this whole debate in the church on do we use AI or do we not, and I think that's like the wrong debate to have. That's like debating are we going to use email? We still don't understand. And listen, I'm not a technologist, I'm not a developer, so I'm learning all of this on the fly. We're literally sitting in a technological revolution and the amount of change that is going to happen in the next five years, we literally legitimately cannot even comprehend it, and the pastoral ramifications of putting our head in the sand is completely unacceptable. We missed it with social media. Hey, my name is Michael Whittle. I am the founder of Pulpit AI and we exist to help pastors, preachers, teachers and churches repurpose sermon content to make formational content, discipleship content and help build many digital networks inside of their local congregations. So excited to share more about that, and this is my Faithly story.

00:56 - Speaker 2
Welcome to Faithly 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 Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. Learn more at faithlyco. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired as we unveil the heart of faith through stories from the front lines of ministry. On the Faithly Stories Podcast.

01:37 - Speaker 3
Let's start off by how did you even come up with this idea of Pulse it AI, and is it part of the AI craze or, like you, had this like idea from the before it's all started?

01:51 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's a great question. So, to make a long story short, I have been for the past 18 months really trying to. I have felt a holy unrest I guess is the only way to explain it about, um, just the, the faith-based content space. You know, um, I uh really interested in just kind of the faith-based YouTube channels and podcasts and and and all that kind of stuff, and so for the last 18 months have been experimenting with, you know, what is kind of building a unique media brand in the faith-based space look like. And so I had been kind of building that, you know, with some friends, honestly, just kind of slowly running some experiments and in that process got a bit under the hood of kind of the world of the Christian influencer a little bit, which is an industry which is so funny to say that there is, like this industry of, you know, christian influencers and content creators and uh, you know, when we were looking at how would we scale the business and what would we need to do, there was just no way to do it without sort of um aligning ourselves with that kind of sub industry and uh, and that was just really not something we were super interested in doing.

03:07
I'm also a local church pastor, pastor for the last, you know, 10 years in Los Angeles and now in Nashville predominantly young adults. And so, you know, as a local pastor, I was just seeing, like how our young people were being formed online through these Christian podcasts and influencers and like I'm like, where did you get this wild theology? It's like, oh, from so-and-so YouTube or podcast and anyways. All that to say, I just I'm I kind of came back to this point of like, okay, what are we going to do here? And it was like this weird sovereign thing.

03:40
I was literally just going how do I help local church pastors with, you know, their content and their discipleship material? You know, I, I know hundreds of pastors and they spend all this time studying and writing and teaching and and they do it with such conviction. Most of them just preach a sermon and that's that's it. You know, and I just it was this weird coincidence where I was came across this piece of technology that I uploaded one of our podcast episodes to, and it was. It was an episode that was, you know, rather theologically dense and pretty nuanced, and what it spit me back out in terms of like show notes and summaries and all of that stuff was just it was, it wasn't like what I was getting just like directly in or working with chat, gpt or whatever.

04:32
And so I basically just reached out to a friend who's a developer and I said, hey, if we get the license to this API, could we build something around this? And I just it was literally going to be like this MVP that I was going to show to 15 people and didn't even really think about like the it being like the AI craze. I actually wasn't even thinking about AI being a part of it. And then I was like what are we going to call this thing? And started playing around online. And it was when I bought the domain like pulpitaicom. I was like, ah, this is like this is going to be a part of that moment, you know. But I just wasn't sure, like I was so unaware of the way the Christian world was thinking about AI at the time.

05:15
And anyways, that's kind of a long story short. We kind of spun up a little web app and, as an MVP, and showed it to a few people and, um, I put out a tweet about it and, uh it, it kind of exploded and went, you know, like viral on twitter and sort of the weird christian twitter zeitgeist, and uh, I thought, okay, maybe we have a, maybe we have a business here. So, uh, it's honestly been. That was in june and so, um, here we are I.

05:45 - Speaker 3
I wish I could say I masterminded this whole thing, but well, often you have like an idea and you don't know how it's gonna. I always say an idea is like giving birth to a baby. Yeah, it sounds good initially, but you have no idea how it's gonna end up yeah, man, yeah, you don't.

06:02 - Speaker 1
You know, the Twitter thing was funny because it and I guess I didn't think about it with the name and you know our tagline on the first landing page we built was like supercharge your sermon. You know, my background is in media and advertising and so I just had fun with it. And you know, initially people thought that, without reading what it did, people thought that it was going to write sermons for you, right, like it was an AI sermon writer, and so, funny enough, a couple like really big Twitter accounts like reposted it, kind of like dunking on it, you know, and like saying, like this demonic you know, like kind of just fully, like just railing on it, and so it just took off and it was. What was interesting was there was sort of two responses. There was the response from the Christian blogger, the seminary professor, the journalist or the publisher who were like we don't like this, and then there was the local church worker.

07:06
Wait did.

07:06 - Speaker 2
They say why.

07:09 - Speaker 1
You know, I don't even know that they have a why. To be honest with you, I think that part of what that industry exists to do is to pontificate online about ideas, which is fine, I have no issue with that. But it's like you know, they just it was like they had a problem with saying that a sermon was content in the first place. Or, you know, a publisher reaching out and saying this is, this is really bad for the future of like, faith-based content. And I responded to him publicly oh, because your publisher hasn't been publishing books based on sermon transcripts for decades and using ghostwriters, like you know.

07:47
So it was just this like, and I was so shocked at the response because, on one hand, I'm getting all of for lack of a better term like christian academia in in many, in many ways, really disliking it, but then local church workers and local church pastors reaching out to me literally by the thousands going, oh my gosh, this is genius, this is going to save me so much time. And so it was just this weird but also such a classic differentiator between sort of like, the academy and the and the, you know, the, the worker, so to speak, the church worker. But and in all fairness, I actually do get the conversation that needs to happen around AI. I'm not like hating on all that, I appreciate it and I think it's fine, but I think we never really intended to build a product for that person. We intended to build a product for, you know, the local church pastor and the local church media team. That person we intended to build a product for, you know, the local church pastor and the local church media team.

08:47 - Speaker 3
Yeah, I think always the problem is people react out of fear rather than be curious. And even if it's a terrible idea, my thought is now like how did you even get to that point? Like, let's go on this journey of what was the source, and how did you come to this logical conclusion that in your mind, this is a good idea?

09:06 - Speaker 1
but like, yeah, yeah, and so, like you mentioned, look, I probably didn't like. Well, I was just gonna say, you know, I probably didn't do myself any favors. I am, I'm not one to back down from, you know, discussion and and I tend to do it through joking and sarcasm, which has not always served me, served me well, and not me too. My first response was you know, I'm a charismatic, I'm Pentecostal, and so I said you know, it's not a sermon writer, but if I could create a large language model that helped you know my area, my sandbox of Christianity, be more theologically faithful, would that be that? Would that be awful? Because I bet I could. I bet I could create a model that would help pastors be more theologically faithful to the text. And I was joking, and then, of course, that just added fuel to the fire, but it's been fun.

09:58 - Speaker 3
My hot take is as AI and AGI comes to full fruition, content is going to be so easy to make and it's funny because people are worried about their idea as if it's an original idea.

10:14
But I think all ideas come from God, because all good things come from God, so any good idea you have, it's from Him, so we try to take ownership of it. And this whole idea of originality, when actually every thought is processed of old information with a new context. So it's not even your idea. You have an old idea, it just became refreshed, right? And furthermore can.

10:37 - Speaker 1
I say furthermore, if you are studying scripture and coming up with an idea that nobody has ever thought of or come up with, there's a possibility that it's not an orthodox idea. You know what I mean. Like, I always find these people like I've got this, I've pulled out this nugget from the word of God that nobody in the history of Christendom has ever thought about. It's like oh, maybe that's not as good of a thing as we think it is, but that's my hot take. That's my hot take.

11:09 - Speaker 3
I'm going to push back a little bit because not necessarily it's like a new, but it's like a renewed. You know the whole thing with the old wine and the new wine, because something I've been coming up with in my own mind on this new journey I'm on is this understanding of like spiritual intelligence and like. It's crazy how like, even if you want to start from like christianity, start from the reformation.

11:31
Right, they were like previously, the 1500 years, no one got saved, right yeah, let's just say it started in 1500 with like luther and calvin, like it's crazy that we haven't innovated when our understanding of the world has drastically changed. And I think there's this fear of like when we apply new concepts and new principles but like the principle stays the same in the Bible. You know, and I'm beginning, to read the.

11:59
Bible in such a fresh way. It makes more sense to me now because of how I'm understanding in the modern world me now, because of how I'm understanding in the modern world and like I want to actually give you a lot of credit too because I listened to one of your sermons about apostleships and shepherding yeah, I did a little research, right and your like perspective on apostleship, about entrepreneurial.

12:18
It was like so refreshing and new and like thank you modern. And I was like dang, that makes so much sense. I feel like that's me and I don't want to call myself an apostle, because you kind of called that out. If someone calls them apostles, run away.

12:30 - Speaker 1
You know it was yeah, no, sorry, go ahead, no, go ahead. I was just going to say it's funny. That was a series that we studied. In fact, we used Sam Storm's, a lot of sam storms writings, uh, that informed that sermon series and it was actually really cool during that that sermon series. What we did is at the end of every sermon, we said, hey, if this, if this particular gifting is resonating with you, like, come up to the altar, let's pray for you. Um, and that was the apostleship was the only one that we didn't, because we said, hey, let's like, let's, let's, uh, let's, let's, let's, let those be conversations, because that's just such a different, it just feels like such a different thing and, um, yeah, that was a really fun, fun message.

13:15 - Speaker 3
That was, uh, about a year ago, I guess yeah yeah, most people think start of life is glamorous because they see like, like, like what was it? Airbnb? And strive and like, oh yeah, they made it, but like they don't see all the millions of dead bodies that never made it because it takes resilience it does yeah, and something I've been learning recently is like there's a difference between being strong because you're hard and being anti-fragile because you're fluid and yes, flexible.

13:42 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yes, yes, man, that anti-fragile word can get me going on a whole other tangent, that probably. But yeah, I fully am with you. I am fully with you.

13:54
I think that the anti-fragile nature of someone, I think, is oftentimes the thing that can be the differentiator between whether or not they're going to be successful or not, because oftentimes it's like if you just keep showing up and you just keep trying, but it's in that in-between right when it's like I mean, I don't know if what I'm working on right now will succeed, I don't, but I do know that it's not going to be me succumbing to the fear of risk, yeah, and, and like, I think, like in entrepreneurship, it's like I think he who can stomach the most risk wins within reason. Right, like my appetite, and my appetite for risk now is different with a wife and two kids than it was when I was 24 years old and I would just, I could you know so. But yeah, I think you're totally right. That anti-fragile nature is, I I fear is becoming less and less normal. You know, in in in people. But that's a hole, that's a rabbit hole we probably don't need to go down.

14:57 - Speaker 3
One of the reasons why I was so looking forward to talking to you is, like I love ranting too Cause one idea that sparks into like a tree of, like it's so crazy because in my mind let's just say you did build this thing and, on a personal note, like I'm gonna make sure you succeed because if my church planning thing happens I'm gonna need your tech right I'm not gonna rebuild it, no way.

15:20
That's just too much time. So I want you parallel track to like be successful and like oh because's successful. I'm like oh because in my mind it's like, oh, I don't have the right content, I don't have the right sermon. Like people can learn from AGI, then I can now actually be a pastor. And like care for people, cause that's something that can't be humanized. You know, again, motivation and maybe their purpose is off kilter, thinking like oh, this is who I am, because I have all these great things to say, when actually it's like dude, no one cares. Like in 100 years, like it's going to be archived or something. But right, the people who remember you will remember you because of, like how you live with them. Right, the relationship.

16:01 - Speaker 1
yeah, yeah, that's so true. Yeah, it's, you know, and there was a lot of the push, a lot, lot of pushback that I, I, you know, look, I, I understand it. Um, I, I think being like a, a tech doomer, like you say, it's like it was when we were chatting earlier. You were like what have we innovated since the printing press? You know, um, I think, like being a doomer about all of this is like not going to serve the church. Well, I, really, I really don't. I think, like pastorally, like there's this whole debate in the church on do we use AI or do we not, and I think that's like the wrong debate to have. That's like debating are we going to use email? What the conversation needs to be like. We still don't understand. And listen, I'm not a technologist, I'm not a developer, so I'm learning all of this on the fly. We're literally sitting in a technological revolution and the amount of change that is going to happen in the next five years we literally legitimately cannot even comprehend it, and the pastoral ramifications of not having of putting our head in the sand is completely unacceptable. We messed it. We missed it with social media. We missed it and the church missed it.

17:22
I heard a story the other day from a friend who's got a pastor. Who's a pastor in Canada and he has a family in his church husband, wife, two kids. Youngest daughter has Down syndrome. The mom just passed away after a two-year battle with cancer and pastor preaches a sermon after the service. One day the husband comes up to the pastor and they're just casually talking and chatting and the pastor's just catching up with. You know this gentleman in their church who six months before had lost his wife and is now raising these two baby girls on his own. And this guy just starts to talk to the pastor about how he is taking all of the letters, all of the video, all of the audio, all of the voice memos from his late wife and has found a service online that's going to turn her into a bot that he can then put up on the TV so that the girls can have conversations with their mom. And I just he told me this story and I said how do you pastor that If you have no idea like, and if we think that that is just happening in rare occurrences?

18:35
Man, that is like we haven't even begun to understand the pastoral ramifications of how our people are going to, how their jobs are going to be upended, etc. And you name it. So, anyways, I'm, I'm, as you just mentioned, I'm ranting, um, to put our heads in, to put our heads in the sand and just say, oh my God, we're going to freak out over AI and content. Man, that is like that's. That's the equivalent of a church 15 years ago saying like we'll never have a Facebook page, you know, um? Or actually it's even, it's even bigger than that, it's, it's. We will never use the internet, you know. So there it is. There's my, there's my rant for the faithly podcast, but uh, yeah, no, there's going to be more.

19:20 - Speaker 3
That's that's a lot of that's.

19:21 - Speaker 1
That's a lot of the stuff I'm thinking about. And um, contemplating is not just like not how does the church practically apply it, but like not how does the church practically apply it, but like this is the world we're living in, and if we're to pastor and disciple people, there's no ignoring the world in which we're living in now and what it's going to look like over the next five, 10 years.

19:37 - Speaker 3
So One of the best quotes I've ever heard was from John Piper. He says outlive them. I think there are cycles and people who are going to not adjust to a changing world and obviously you hold on to again your core purpose and identity. But if you don't adjust, there's a new generation growing up with this already. So, let alone like your current congregation, how are you going to help understand your core beliefs to the context that the new generation is coming up in? Because you're just going to sound like a dinosaur, right Exactly. And so that actually gives me a question, because on one of your podcasts you said you talked to one of your theological mentors about backlash and you're like what am I doing? I need help. But you never answered what they said. So I want to know what do they say to you?

20:24 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean, I think the sentiment was hey, listen, you're not doing this with an ill intent, You're not, you know. Both of those people were like listen, if you like, what's the difference between even if you were building a sermon writer or something that helps you study, kind of. Their first thought was like well, Logos uses AI and has been using AI for years, and pastors have been purchasing sermon series online for years. So like, is that? Is that right or wrong? No, it's a personal conviction thing, you know. And and so their their thing was like dude, you have accountability, you have people in your life that are holding you accountable. You're not out here trying to like, build something that's ultimately going to harm the church and harm people. So like, run your race and and do it, and do it well and literally care not about what like.

21:18
And you know like, these are both guys who are in academia and leading academic institutions and just said listen, like, let, if John Piper said, outlive them.

21:29
Their response to Christian academia was like, let them argue, because they've been doing it for centuries and they're not going to stop. So like, just don't even like, just just don't even worry about it, you know? And I think their big thing was like you have pastoral accountability, just like a senior pastor has pastoral accountability. As a Christian business person, you have pastoral accountability and you know when we do that we were just safe, you know, Um. So that was kind of their. That was their response, you know, and they both, from a theological standpoint, would fall into like the technology is neutral, you know, standpoint, Um, and. But most of them were like the theological implications of this matter are so much less relevant than sort of the Christian online zeitgeist is saying that they are. It's more the pastoral discipleship focused like how are we leading our people into, how are they going to interact with it versus, should it exist or not exist, or any of that.

22:27 - Speaker 3
I went to a pretty conservative seminary but like a lot of charismatic and it was weird because my youth pastor was very biblical. So he was always about like we've got to read the word, we've got to read the word, we've got to memorize the word, but then we're going to have these like three hour prayer nights over the internet. It's crazy and like I thought that was normal. I thought that was normal, I thought that was true, same, yeah. And then I went to like Westminster and they're so black and white. I was like one like I've never heard someone just break it down systematically. This is amazing.

22:57
But two like they're a hardcore about, like we're right and this is why they're all like oh, okay, and you know, I kind of fed into that. So I kind of see this like trajectory of. What's going to shift is because there's something with the human psyche that you know if you're talking to someone is fake or not right. So if it's just information, that's one thing, but if you want a human connection, that's completely different thing. And I think what we should worry more about is like fakes, you don't know if this person is real or not. So I think there's going to be a greater need or want to meet in person right.

23:35
Until they get robots and cyborgs and say, let's play people. That's another problem, Exactly Like I think we can never Embodied the embodied community.

23:44 - Speaker 1
Yes, yes.

23:45 - Speaker 3
There's something you can never get rid of the humanness, because we're built for meaning, like computers can't generate that. Yeah, I want to talk about it Like how you grew up. Like you said, you grew up really charismatic, but then those are falling out. Yeah, tell me a little bit about that.

24:00 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so I didn't grow up in church, didn't grow up in a faith tradition. You know, my parents would say they were Christians, but that was not like a part of who we were growing up, it wasn't a part of our worldview. And and, um, yeah, honestly, when I was 13 years old, a friend invited me to a charismatic Pentecostal megachurch youth meeting and, uh, you know, I, about a month before that, I had been at a, um, kind of like a local Southern Baptist youth night, you know, and had heard the gospel preached for the first time and remember, like, writing like this is so Texan, because I grew up in a little suburb of Dallas, a little town of 20,000 people. And I remember driving in the back of my cousin's pickup truck home after that night, after hearing that message, and like, for the first time, going like, okay, god, if you're real, like I want you to be a part of my life, right, and then, and then it was about two months later that a friend of mine invited me to this youth ministry and man it was. I walked in and it was like the first time that I had been in, like a live worship experience, and it was like youth men. It was like back in I don't know if you remember, there was this era where they were calling youth ministries, youth churches, and it was like you know, it was like the youth church movement and there was 350 kids in there and man worship band was amazing and, uh, man, god touched me in a profound way that night and I felt the Holy spirit. I I still to this day you could never tell me that like the hand of God, you know and man, from that night on I dove in headfirst. I was, I mean, it was everything to me.

25:39
And you know it's funny, like I say that it's sort of like the charismatic Pentecostal tradition. It wasn't as crazy as a lot of them are. You know, like, looking back, like probably in my mid twenties I was like man that was a circus and now I've sort of look can like look back with like a lot of appreciation and go. You know what it was. It actually was pretty balanced. Um, it was sort of a mess theologically and, you know, ultimately became sort of prosperity, gospel-y, which I actually think was like probably the most harmful part of it, not necessarily its charismatic expression, because it was a church that was birthed out of a prayer movement and so it was very big on prayer, it was very big on the prophetic, it was very big on intercession and moving in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

26:23
And man, I just like, did the Lord touch me, like probably a handful of times from, you know, between that night when I was 13 to when I graduated high school and, um, yeah, did ministry there and and honestly learned so much, learned so many beautiful things actually, um, and then, yeah, you know, like any sort of big mega church stuff comes up and the leadership can either decide to handle it with integrity, uh, and or they can decide to, you know, try and save face and um, so, you know, it was a church that was falling apart at the seams behind the curtain, but really just from a leadership perspective.

27:05
And so, yeah, when I was 22, 21, I, I was working at the church full time, I was in Bible college and I just woke up one day and I said, if this is what ministry is, I want nothing to do with it. And I quit and moved back in with my parents and um, never ran from God but definitely was like you know, all right, I'm done with this ministry ministry thing. So that was kind of where that yeah, that was, that was sort of the genesis of of of all of that. And then I did, you know that summer, after I, you know, stepped, stepped out of ministry, I made a short film with a buddy of mine. Um and uh, wrote, wrote, wrote a script and just fell in love with it and got actually a job, an internship, in New York city.

27:47
An independent film was being made there and I went out there to kind of help with that and, um, I just caught the bug and like came back home and said I'm moving to la and moved to los angeles, re-enrolled in film school after going to bible college, enrolled in film school, got an internship at a, at a film production company and, yeah, kind of just like at the age of 22, was like total 180, so that was we need to talk because I have so many ideas, movies or short films because because I'm a visual person, but just also, I feel like there's a shift in culture right now too, with disney falling apart and, like I know, and the angel studio is kind of blowing up there's room, there's a pocket.

28:30 - Speaker 3
Now a new way to tell an old story right a hundred percent yeah yeah, that's so true.

28:37 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I think. I think it's one of the most interesting. You know, having just moved from la to nashville, it's apparent that the entertainment industry is crumbling. I mean the old way of doing things is just it's dead.

28:48 - Speaker 2
And.

28:49 - Speaker 1
I've been in LA I was in LA 14 years and um, so I think that there is like wide open spaces for people who are, who are creating like great film and television. Um, that isn't even necessarily faith-based but, like you say, it's retelling an old story. You know people want it, so I agree with you, 100%, 100%.

29:14 - Speaker 3
And it's always the same cycle. There's like a debt cycle. There's like even in the Bible, like in Judges and throughout history, where again you start off trying to help people, getting feedback, but then you veer off course because now you're about profits and then, once you get comfortable and big, it's about these ideologies and what we stand for, and then you lose your audience and all the audience wanted was again a connection you cared, and so, as long as the message is resonating, they'll keep coming back.

29:43
But if they don't feel anything, why, would you know, they continue to pick you when there's other options? Like you said, we're living in like this revolutionary place, but not necessarily because of AI, but just because everything in culture is kind of getting flipped upside down and I feel like there's so many opportunities for entrepreneurs to step up and be like hey, I have this passion and I want to do this and I know it resonates with people, because every time I talk to them they're like, oh, wow, that's great.

30:11
Yeah tell me about your entrepreneurial journey.

30:14 - Speaker 1
Man. Okay, so it's been crazy. It's one of those things where I got baptized by fire into the world of entrepreneurship. So I was working at this independent film company. It was 2000, maybe 11, I 11, I guess maybe 2010, back half of 2010, beginning of 2011 and, um, uh, the independent I didn't know it because I was just a kid really but the independent film, independent film as a business model was was you know it was. It had been collapsing right for, you know, maybe four or five years. At that point there was just not a market for it.

30:53
Um, the company I was working for lost its funding. I lost my job and it's funny to even call it a job. It was a glorified internship. I think I was taking like 250 bucks a week, you know it's like, but that's that's LA for you, you know, that's Hollywood. So, um, I kind of, like me and my roommate, kind of tried to sort of build this little production company. We were like making music videos and like random brand stuff, but like it, just again, you can't make a living. You could make a living doing that.

31:18
And I got a call one day from a buddy and he said, hey, who was doing media sales at this at this company that owned the majority of, like the taxi top inventory in New York City and was building some like interactive digital networks inside of all the black cars in New York City and it had a big experiential division. And he called me and he said hey, the company's based out of New York, but the CEO lives in in LA and there's like a small team here of about 12 people and the CEO's assistant just quit and if you can get up here today, I bet I can get you this job. Oh, wow. And so I literally went up and I met this guy's name is Lawrence Hallier, who to this day is still he's not a believer and in fact we still love to debate about. He's a staunch atheist and I'm a Christian and some of our best conversations have been about that. But, man, he introduced me into the world of entrepreneurship. So he was the guy who reinvented the taxi top. So he came up. He was building a printing company in the nineties. One of his clients in San Francisco, who was a taxi top company, couldn't pay their bill and uh, so Lauren said listen, give me your company. You know, we'll call it a deal. The guy was like I want out anyway.

32:29
And at the time taxitops were these gross, you know cone shaped advertisements that basically it was adult nightclubs and cigarettes and you know really you know kind of alternative lifestyle stuff that was being promoted on them. And he said, okay, I'll take your company. And he redesigned the taxitop and, you know, built a company and owned you know 80% of the taxitop inventory in the United States and ended up selling, selling that um to uh, verifone or was it Clear Channel, I think it was Clear Channel Um and the minute his non-compete was up he went and he re-signed all those taxi leases and he started building the company again. And so I came in, he sort of I kind of. He hired me as a personal assistant and he was transitioning from building out of home media networks to these sort of like interactive digital networks that were all centered around transportation. So over the course of seven years I helped him launch seven businesses. We built interactive digital networks inside of all the taxi cabs in Las Vegas and in black cars in New York City, singapore, macau, and, and so I just honestly got a front row seat.

33:41
We had this weird detour building a consumer product company that got sued out of business by BlackBerry, which is a whole other wild story and I just fell in love. He just gave me a front row seat and instead of just like you know I wasn't I mean, I was his assistant on paper, but really I was like you know he would send me to Las Vegas and say, hey, in 90 days we have to have this digital network built, like talk to the taxi companies, hire and build a sales team, figure out how we're going to go to market. And, looking back, it's probably just because I was cheap and I was down, you know, to like work 80 hours a week. But I loved it and and so, you know, at the right around that same time, one of my best friends planted a church in LA, and so me and 25 of my friends, you know, planted that, which church planting is entrepreneurial in its own right. And man, I just I got the bug and I fell in love with it.

34:31
And the ups and the downs, and you know we were building these. It's funny, we were building these transportation based companies when uber and lyft was like kind of really taking off and so I had a front row seat to like the industries that uber and lyft absolutely changed and crushed. And so it's like, yeah, I just man, I got baptized and I feel like I got like a decade's worth of like business and entrepreneurship school over the course of seven or eight years and, yeah, man, just got the bug and loved it and have been chasing it ever since. It's just, it's a blast. So that's kind of the long. That's like the short, I guess the long short version of where that started.

35:13 - Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean you were basically being discipled by the guy.

35:16 - Speaker 1
That's exactly right and it's funny because I am, I would even like there are some things that even still to this day, I'm like oh my gosh, that's the way Lawrence would have said that or handled that or negotiated that, and you're right, it was discipleship would have said that or handled that or negotiated that, and you're right, and it was discipleship.

35:29 - Speaker 3
It was definitely discipleship and it's mind boggling how, like in the business world, they might not call it those things, but they get it, and when in the church it's not real life guys.

35:41 - Speaker 1
It's follow me as I follow Christ. Right, it really is. And he was saying follow me as I go build businesses, and it was one of the analogy.

35:50 - Speaker 3
I have in my head is like we're children of God right, so we're your child but like God's not physically here, so we need to follow somebody and walk the steps and see how they did it and you know, not gripe about the mistakes or whatnot right and not be jealous of their success, but just go through the motion, because in the beginning you have to. You don't know anything right and it's not about this. Like you gotta like experience it, so that this and your heart connects and you're like, oh, I get it. What not to do? What to do in this specific situation, so that later on it's like okay, I'm in a similar situation. What?

36:21
do I need to do right and so like you're ready to kind of like walk on your own. But initially, anyone who tries to do it on their own like burn out because they realize like it's almost impossible. And I think that's why jesus like instilled in us this model of discipleship, because as humans, we need formation.

36:39 - Speaker 1
Well, and most of the time and this is where I can like jump on a soapbox, right it's like most people don't want to be discipled, they just want to do it. And so, like I always tell people, like you know, gen Z and millennials and I can pick on millennials because I'm a millennial like we want it and we want it now we want to change jobs 37 times and it's all about promotion and a little bit extra money and it's and, and especially when it comes to entrepreneurship, it's like what can I extract from every environment to just simply keep going? And I'm like man, I probably stayed at that job with Lawrence five years too long. But guess what? And guess what?

37:14
You know what I learned in the church is serving and honor. And so you know, when someone, you know, when Lawrence, needed someone to pick him up from the airport, and most people would say you know, I'm not gonna do that, I was like I'll do that because you're really smart and I want to sit in an hour and a half of LA traffic with you and just listen to you, listen to the phone calls you're making. Like you, like he was negotiating.

37:37
I remember one time he was negotiating a deal worth tens of millions of dollars with Steve Wynn for the you know, it was a, it was a legend and and I was just like, wow, I'm privy to all of this. I'm learning and I'm learning and I'm learning. And I probably got underpaid and I probably missed opportunities to do other things. But, like, I look back on that now and I'm like man. So when someone asks me like you know they're young and I'm like, what should I do in my career, I'm like pick somewhere that you're learning a lot from and stay there too long. Like, stay there too long, too long. Like stay there too long. Make the boss come to you and go dude, get out of here.

38:14
Why are you still hanging around Because you learn so much? And that's discipleship. And I didn't realize it. I didn't really realize that I was being discipled. But you're totally right, man, and I think it's that way in ministry, it's that way in the church, it's that way in business. It's like if we don't, if we don't want to take the time to be formed and discipled, there's just not a lot of roots and and and and that anti-fragileness can really easily take over.

38:35 - Speaker 3
Yeah, so you know how I said I'm learning new things in a fresh paradigm. The whole abiding thing Jesus talks about like it makes total sense now, whereas before it was like you better be near me, I'm like I don't want to, like I want to do my own thing. But now it's like, oh, I get access and when I'm just in your presence and just watch what you do, I learn so much and so you absorb like the experience in the moment and that your knowledge now becomes understanding. And it's amazing, like people would pay like money you know lots of money to be around the access you have it's crazy.

39:13 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, and it was honestly. I believe it was the grace of God and what he taught me in ministry that was able to keep me there Like it just was. It was those, it was godly principles that I didn't even know I was. I was working out now I do but then I didn't even know I was.

39:28 - Speaker 3
I was working out now I do, but then I didn't you know, yeah, so it's just like you're just doing what you think is right in the moment, but looking back you're like oh everything God said was right Exactly.

39:37 - Speaker 1
It's almost as if God the principles that God outlines in his word. They actually help you flourish in life.

39:54 - Speaker 3
It's like he designed life for something exactly. Who would have thought? Who would have thought that he knows what's best? Yeah, right, yeah, so let's get into. Like what sucked you back into the church history world because you know that that also called um appicino.

40:00 - Speaker 1
Like, once I'm out, he sucked me back in I got, I got tricked man, I legitimately got tricked. No, uh, you know, one thing I never didn't do I struggled with my ideas around church. I honestly didn't spend some years not really serving God, but I stayed in church.

40:22
I kept going every single week that I was able to and just developed relationships and friendships to, and just developed relationships and friendships. And, honestly, it was the people in my church in LA that that didn't let me keep walking away from something that God had put in me and kept just asking and giving me opportunity. And, you know, believing in me and and then, you know, you, just out of sheer friendship and loyalty, is where it started. You know, I love my friends, I love what we're building together and I want to make it great, um, and then, yeah, man, it was just. It was just. It was just like these slow steps and the next thing, you know, I'm like leading one of our locations with my wife and, uh, absolutely loving it, you know. So that was that was it. I think it was seeing healthy ministry not perfect, nothing's ever perfect but, um, seeing healthy ministry, you know, and slowly, it was hard.

41:20
For me, though, it was a long journey back. It was a lot of saying no, um, and a lot of like. I remember early days getting back in, we would like head to like leadership meetings and I would get panic attacks because I was just like I don't. This is like way, you know, this is like crazy. And so I think I think you know my pastor and they were just patient with me, like affirming in my call and affirming in my gift, but also patient, but also like not letting me be a victim, but also like not letting me be a victim if that makes sense, like the amount of times, like you're still going to let that experience keep you from doing what God has called you to do.

41:55
Like at some point it went from. It went from like gracious patience to like coach, like dude, enough is enough. You know so, honestly, it was the people around me. It was legitimately the people around me. That. And then my wife, you know, meeting my wife and seeing what God had done in her life and seeing how he was using her and and kind of just, yeah, all happened, all happened like that.

42:19 - Speaker 3
Yeah, something I'm realizing more and more recently is it's so easy to give up when you feel like you're not connected to anyone or like you have no consequences, but you're surrounded by people that actually care about you, and it's much less about you care about them, but you care that they care about you and you're like yeah, exactly that's exactly right, I'll keep going, yeah, yeah, yeah I think they're just a misunderstanding of community.

42:41
Community is not a bunch of people, it's just crap. Like you need friends, you need friends to be like hey, I love you.

42:49 - Speaker 1
Or like I love you like, yeah, I mean, dude, I had I had you know. So, jake, who's? You know? My pastor. He's also one of my best friends. You know, my mid-20s I was, I was dating someone I shouldn't have been dating and after about six months of me just like knowing it and knowing it and him being patient, one afternoon I'm over at his house and he's like, dude, I'm done listening to you about this. We're getting in the car right now. I'm driving you over there and I'm not. I'm sitting in the car until you, you, you break this thing off like I'm done. He's like I've been patient, I'm done, and I remember being like, holy crap, like this is a friend, this is like a brother you know, and you're exactly right.

43:27
It's like when you, when you have those people around you, you know, and you're exactly right. It's like when you, when you have those people around you, you realize how impactful it really is and you give them access.

43:34 - Speaker 2
You know, you don't.

43:39 - Speaker 1
You don't get a bet Like it's. It's ironing, sharpening iron. We want to make that sound really cute, but it's painful, man. It's painful Um and uh, but that's why community is essential. It's why God made us for it. So I be. I would be gosh.

43:53 - Speaker 3
I can't even imagine where I would be without that community that's been surrounding me for the last 10 years and this is also why I don't worry about ai that much, because I can't imagine ai being friend, like it'll be an amazing assistant but, it can't be a friend that's going to call out your bs no no yeah, I mean, look, I think, I think there's a, there's a subset of people who are isolated, who are honestly have some mental health stuff and some you know or some

44:19 - Speaker 1
some addictions, like I think there are. There is a subset of people that that can and will like I think I just read like japan is like having an epidemic of that right now of like just of like middle-aged single men who are, but but I think, and I think we've got to obviously look at that but like as an overall broad, like exactly what you said. It's like people know real and people know fake and and so, like an AI friend, I think is is, for the vast majority of people, something that you know is not going to be a thing. Maybe I'm wrong, but I would agree with you on that.

44:52 - Speaker 3
And this is why I kind of like what Sam when they're filming, even though he had that crazy situation at OpenAI, so like Twitter was insane a few days.

45:02 - Speaker 1
Can you imagine being a developer at OpenAI and holding millions of dollars in warrants that you are just about to be able to like, liquidate, Like you've already bought your second home in your head, Like you know what I mean. And all of a sudden it's like wait a minute, is this going to happen or is this not going to happen? What a wild. Well, it's like a season of succession all wrapped up in one weekend.

45:25 - Speaker 3
Yeah, that's another conversation. People don't realize your stock means nothing until you IPO or you get bought, and it's just pieces of paper. So he's saying this is why we ship a not-so-great product and we're iterating with the public because we want to have conversations and people who are concerned about this, instead of railing on your soapbox. Join the conversation. People want to listen to you. Have a perspective that might be valuable, but don't be aggressive about it. Explain your logic right like we want to understand and make this safe so exactly, yeah, exactly yeah.

46:02 - Speaker 1
it's a wild man. That's just a whole other. All the, all the stuff around ai right now and what it can do and what it can't do, and the understandings and the misunderstandings it's a, it's a wild, it's the wild West, it's literally the wild West right now.

46:18 - Speaker 3
But as Christians, like I have to remind people all the time. You know, I need to remind myself too, but we have a safety net Jesus, like we already know the end it's a revelation. So until now, until revelation, and if people actually read Revelation I've been reading that a lot lately just because of the whole AGI thing I think the beast is actually AGI, but you know that's another story but like there's like wild, wild things, things get really bad and I think that's just a natural progression of human nature. Without God's grace.

46:51 - Speaker 1
Yeah, the world, the world, the world is going to get more chaotic and the church is going to get brighter.

46:57 - Speaker 3
Yes, that's the thing that to me is in in.

47:00 - Speaker 1
You know, if we, if we talk about sort of the theology around the book of revelation, there's so many questions and so many perspectives and all this kind of stuff, right. But I think many perspectives and yeah, all this kind of stuff right. But I think if it's like, yeah, the church is going to get brighter, the world's going to get crazier, the church, that doesn't mean it's going to be easier.

47:16 - Speaker 3
It doesn't mean it's going to be easy, but it means it's going to get brighter, you know and it's funny because even in human history, like christianity exploded under persecution and suffering and I think us in the west, like we have a luxury of being in this country, that we have all these freedoms, you know.

47:34 - Speaker 1
The church is built in a climate of war and I don't mean that in like, like. I mean that you know, like it is built, like you just said, it has gained its most ground, it has advanced. There's been seasons where it's had to go a bit underground but even then it was, it grew and was powerful. So I think you know, maybe the church, maybe it being a little bit harder, is not a bad thing, Maybe it's a good thing for churches and Christians. Do you know?

47:59 - Speaker 3
Leonard Ravenhill. I love him, man. He says stamp eternity on my eyeballs, because I think too often we're either too obsessed with the past or the present or our generational future, rather than like oh, actually at the end end, and like every sermon that's like gospel centered yeah, you land on Christ. But, I don't hear much about like the urgency of the last day coming.

48:25 - Speaker 1
No, no, yeah, we need a Leonard Ravenhill chatbot. I'll tell you what. Right now we need a Leonard Ravenhill chatbot and we need to make it free for all of gen z, gen z, here's the rule. You, you gotta just just two years of straight leonard ravenhill sermons and see if that doesn't disciple you into some uh come, that dude didn't play around man. That guy preached hell. That guy preached salvation. That guy preached I. That guy preached salvation. That guy preached. I mean yeah, anyways, don't get me, don't get me started, I love it.

48:53 - Speaker 3
No, I want to, because here's the thing about your tech right now, because it's consuming audio and video, and I know it was meant for podcasts, which is like crazy, because I always thought, if you just consumed all the podcasts of people, right, you can make a chatbot out of them, right. But instead of that, what if you just took all the podcasts of people right, you can make a chatbot out of them, right. But instead of that, what if you just took all the best sermons and all the best people and just create a content out of that, right? And so now we have again a wealth of information. But now, how do you translate it? How do you apply it? What does it mean in my situation? So that's the more pastoral skills that we need to foster rather than, like again, be content farm.

49:31 - Speaker 1
A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I mean, you know, listen, I make no apologies for saying like you know we're. I mean, yeah, I want to build the largest repository of sermons in the world and I want to do something with it.

49:47 - Speaker 2
And.

49:47 - Speaker 1
I want to partner with the people who preach those sermons to do something with it, and I think that's really important. I think you're exactly right. You know, I think you're exactly right. It's like we haven't even begun to understand what we can do with all of this information and all of this data. And if we believe that the sermon I believe the sermon is the greatest art form, it's the greatest art form ever created and you know why would we not maximize its effectiveness in every way that we can?

50:19 - Speaker 3
I Also think, because not a lot of people have experienced but entrepreneurship like starting from scratch. They confuse a task Right with a skill and I have to remind people. That's why I keep saying I was an unconventional pastor, because my skill set wasn't just to preach and teach and shepherd, it was to solve problems. At the end of the day, all human beings are problem solvers. But where we get lost is we define the moral code of what we think is good and evil right that's exactly right god, you know standard and so like.

50:56
If we just get into this problem solving mode and you can solve people's problem in whatever context, you're just so gold, because that's just so rare absolutely and so I actually want to ask you, like, what is your ministry of philosophy? Because I know you're really big on the local church, which I love. Again, like researching you, I was like, man, this is like my twin brother right now. Just a lot of things that are happening. I got to be best friends with this guy.

51:22 - Speaker 1
Yeah, man, my ministry philosophy, man, that's changed a lot over the years, yeah, so you know, it's kind of funny, right. So, like I sort of it's funny. I was talking to a guy yesterday and I said it's funny and I don't know what the reason is, but for whatever reason in God's sovereignty, he has, over the course of my life, put me in very close proximity with very successful men who, for whatever reason, like having me around and want to teach me things, and so, like you know, I got saved at this mega church and the pastor who was the pastor there, who is still a hero of mine and he served God well and did he have his issues a hundred percent. He also had a massive stroke in 1999 that I don't think that messed with a lot of stuff. So he's still an amazing guy, faithful, made some bad decisions, but is an amazing man, right.

52:23
But you know, I had a front row seat to a church that went from nothing to six, seven thousand people like that, who had weekly television shows worldwide and and he oversaw 6 000 churches and so I saw the mega church growth engine really up close as my introduction into ministry and then, you know, pushed that against starting a church with 25 people in the koreatown neighborhood of la and and and then growing. We grew to four locations and you know, five years or something like that, and we were growing and then thinking I'm here, going, man, I'm a great pastor, I can grow a church and I can get a bunch of young, cool people in LA involved and giving and serving and leading groups. And then COVID hit, it hit and you know, we go from thinking we're the best pastors in the world to like why are all the people in my church deconstructing their faith and posting heresy online and leaving the church and leaving just just like? And I was like, oh wow, I was really good at like building church members, but maybe I wasn't great at discipling people, yeah, and so I'm not listen.

53:31
I want the church to grow. I want the church to be big and bold and creative and beautiful, but I think my ministry philosophy has become a lot more local, a lot more discipleship, focused and, honestly, man, simple, word and spirit. Are we teaching people the gifts of the spirit and how to commune with the spirit? Are we teaching them the Bible right, like you know? Do they understand the scripture? And are we teaching them how important community is and are we just, are we based? Are we, I mean, like that's the, that's the philosophy now?

54:01
is just like word, spirit, discipleship, and you know, if it grows, it grows. I don't, I I think I think what we run the risk of coming out of, sort of like the boomer seeker, sensitive mega church model that was attractional and I like talk to a young, a lot of young guys all the time who are planting churches, and it's like we we also can't forget to be missional, like we also can't forget that the gospel does need to expand and we do want our neighbors and coworkers to get saved and planted in a local church, and so I think we're going to have to. I think that's going to be the challenge of the next 10 years of this generation of like church planters is like keeping a big missional focus while also being very super, super, you know, focused discipleship. It's just reorienting. I think church has become.

54:45
Church is not the evangelism engine, right? The number one reason we need church is to glorify God and to edify the saints and then to reach the world, in that order. And so I think that I guess maybe that's my ministry philosophy is like what does church exist to do? First of all, glorify god and worship him, and our, our worship songs, we sing, should reflect that, our, our sermons, that we preach, are decided first and foremost to glorify god, and then and then to edify the saints, and and then to reach the world. So I think, if you're doing it in that order, that I mean at least that's my ministry philosophy. Um yeah, I don't know if that makes sense or not, but just to me it's so much.

55:26
It's so much simpler than we, we make it out to be I love that.

55:30 - Speaker 3
You said well simplicity. Like I bought the domain, the simple gospelorg, I love that. I love that Because it's funny, because even my own journey he did not send me to successful people, he sent me to disaster. My senior pastor, the last like full-time job I had. No, he said I was a parish trooper Like. He just like put me in crazy situations and I would just like revamp it.

55:54 - Speaker 1
That's a gift man, that's a gift.

55:56 - Speaker 3
Yeah, it sucks, but here's the thing. So, like it helped me with bootcamp too, because coding honestly anyone who went to Westminster Hebrew to winter like intensive is mind boggling, I bet. I bet Coding was harder because you have to reframe your understanding in a logical way and it was just so hard because I just didn't think that way. And, honestly, the only way you can get into one of the FANG companies if you do data structures, like you understand how things work and then they test you, right, and you think these are so stupid. You never use this in real life in code, ever. Right, it's just complete conceptual.

56:32
And then, once you get more advanced, you're like, oh, actually, you see these patterns everywhere, right, and so this whole idea, with the whole like my spiritual intelligence, ideas, like there are patterns in the Bible that are matching with how the universe works, right, and when you understand that one thing, now you can like build this logical tree of like, oh means this, this means, this is this, and all this to say I feel like, because of like the renaissance and the rational movement, we always thought like, oh, you need to have information and memorize everything so that you're prepared for every situation. But again in entrepreneurship, like you have no idea what's coming, so you better have like core principles that apply to any context so that when you're there, you're like idea what's coming. So you better have like core principles that apply to any context so that when you're there, you're like okay, what's most important to us? These things? Okay, now that we believe in these things, how does this connect to a solution? And that's just a.

57:26
It freed me from having to remember everything. So as long as, again, I had just very simple patterns and core principles from and I think that's always a miss right and then people are amazed by like oh, how did you say? I'm like I'm gonna completely honest. I'm like really dumb, like I'm not smart. The only thing I have is just like I just remembered the pathway of this is the principle and this is how I understand it just sounds good.

57:54 - Speaker 1
So I'd love this yeah, yeah, that's great man.

57:57 - Speaker 3
That's so cool, I love it uh, can you get into your uh panic attacks a little bit? Absolutely, yeah, like did you always have them or it was just a ministry, and how'd you deal with it?

58:09 - Speaker 1
man? That's a great question. Um, yes, I had my first panic attack when I was eight years old. Oh, wow, yeah, so my father. As far back as we know in the dad's side of my family, the men have struggled with either severe depression or severe anxiety, and so, thankfully, I had a dad when I was eight and had a panic attack for the first time at school. He knew what was happening, you know what I mean Like, and it was weird because that would have been 1994, 95. I think.

58:44 - Speaker 2
I was in the fourth grade.

58:47 - Speaker 1
And now the beauty of a dad, the beauty of a family, knowing how to deal with that, uh, also just means you automatically deal with it the way they did. So, you know, I mean, I was on prozac when I was nine, oh, wow, um, and clonopin when I was nine. So think about, think about that. That was the solution. Um, and you know, I've been on and off medication for most of my life and I never had any like the crazy horror stories you hear with people about that. It just honestly, it like worked and helped, you know, like at the level that I used it.

59:24
So, but so all that to say it's been, it's basically been like this year would go years without anything and then all of a sudden it would come back again. You know, even as of late. It's funny, like you mentioned listening to me, my sermon, that was the last sermon I've preached, because I started getting panic attacks while preaching. And I've preached and I've preached thousands of sermons, hundreds and hundreds of sermons, and for whatever reason, and there would always be like hints of that, you know. But, but not in any way. And you know it got to the place about a year ago where I just said, okay, I'm going to take a break because it it's literally so miserable and I'm actually not even clearly articulating what it was.

01:00:05
I want to clearly articulate like it's funny if you talk about that message you're talking about, I pretty much just read off of an iPad, because the whole time I'm literally like I'm going to faint at any moment. You know, and I tried everything. I mean, you know, I, I stood up in front of the church and I said, hey, if I'm up here, I'm probably, you know, and and and. So I'm actually right now currently in the process of, you know, we just moved, so I'm trying to find a someone to go see, cause I think I know what causes them, at least the preaching part of them.

01:00:31
But that's the only part of my life now that I have panic attacks or really any kind of anxiety at all. I think I've, like really over the years, done everything I can to try and like deal with the problem before it creeps back up again, you know, so it's. It's been a long time, it's been a long journey, so the sort of like general anxiety isn't, you know, diagnosed like general anxiety disorder, right, right, so that was like kind of the struggle my whole life. Now the specific panic attack thing attached to preaching goes back to and it's funny, it took me a long time to over, like some therapy, actually remembering this moment.

01:01:07
But when I was 20 years old, I was leading a young adult ministry at my church and you know, when you like, it's funny. I've actually never told anyone this. So this is, this is funny to even be talking about this, but I love it, you know. You know, like if you go like a whole day without eating and you get like the shakes, that feeling and you sort of like feel faint yeah, okay, yeah, but like you know, like your blood sugar's down and you're like die, like.

01:01:33
so one night I was, I had gotten up to teach at this young adult ministry and I like got hit with this like dizzy spell, like not nothing, actually nothing mental about it, it was just like purely physical, like I hadn't eaten, I probably drank too much coffee and I, the whole sermon, for the first time I was, was like literally the whole time I was teaching I was like I'm going to faint at any moment and for whatever reason, like that thing, which is weird, because anxiety, you know, there are these like triggers to it, especially to panic attacks and it so.

01:02:05
So what it did was like in print. It like it kind of like turned this thing into this, basically being anxious about being anxious, and so the fear is literally like I'm going to get up there and I'm going to have a panic attack which then leads to, you know, so it's like, it's like this, like death spiral, basically. Um, so that's actually what my doctor thinks is like the Genesis of that, because speaking in front of people doesn't make me nervous. Communicating doesn't make me nervous. I feel very at home in front of a group of people teaching, talking whatever.

01:02:40 - Speaker 3
Wait, I'm sorry You're saying this all started just that day where you physically felt.

01:02:49 - Speaker 1
That's legitimately what? Because something kind of just imprints. At least that's what we think currently. That's legitimately what? Because something kind of just imprints, yeah. And so when you, you know so at least that's what we think currently I'm still I'm kind of like in the process now of really trying to work on it, because teaching is something I want to get back to as soon as possible, but it just with starting that, with that mixed with starting the company.

01:03:10 - Speaker 3
Things were just too crazy to be able to allocate the right amount of time to do that, you know so no, that makes a lot of sense to me, because something that I've been on this journey of like figuring out my own triggers and traumas it's like I've heard it all my life, like it's like childhood trauma, like shut up, like there's like defense mechanisms, but when I really think about it I'm like, oh, so my issue is I become a terrible person when I'm angry.

01:03:40
And most people are like oh yeah, it's like no, Because I'm very emotionally all in or all out, that's just who I am. I can go from zero to 100 in a split second. And so I realized a lot of that was embedded in me, because I grew up scared, because I grew up like not a great home life.

01:04:02 - Speaker 1
Yeah, a guy who's been a mentor to me in ministry said when a man's default is anxiety or anger, there's something deeper going on, like that's the check engine coming on. And he said it usually manifests in one or the other anxiety or anger.

01:04:17 - Speaker 3
I just totally see that, like my anxiety, it's not anxiety, I think. Maybe I grew up anxious, but I hardened myself and I grew up in the 90s, so it's like exactly I was like out at night or whatever, but I was always with church people.

01:04:30
But, like you know, I was like, independent and I grew up with guys that we just like, ragged on each other and curse each other, but like, we loved each other, like, and so like you can't do it to any of us, but we can always do it to each other doing it.

01:04:42 - Speaker 1
Yeah, exactly, it was normal for me to be hard, right.

01:04:46 - Speaker 3
And now when I got into ministry, I'm like what is up with all these soft dudes? They would get really hurt. And now I understand okay, that's just not how you want to shepherd people and love people by offending them. But like I never thought it was a problem until, like yeah, this past year when I had to really start killing my ego, and you know this totally god thing and really like figure out where this anger is coming from.

01:05:13
Man it's. It's crazy because I feel like what's happening now and again. I have no evidence for this, so this is totally under. You literally have to create new neural synapses Anytime. You have a new memory or you reframe it. And here's the crazy thing I learned recently because I've been on a rabbit hole with YouTube about the brain All thoughts go through your emotion first.

01:05:39
So, every time you think of something, even if you don't feel it, it's because, like, you haven't applied a meaning to it, but when there's meaning, that starts flooding, and so I have to like, fight this, like and it's funny how you said you get anxious about being anxious, I get angry that I'm like damn it. Yeah, I know what is going on and family is like always the perfect people to trigger me. And it's funny, two years I was in atlanta. I was super comfortable. God dragged me back home to the one person that drives me crazy, and so, like, I've been doing a lot of repenting and I'm still not there. So I'm like kind of like ignoring her too because, like, I love my mom Right, anything I terrible, I say, is just complete honesty Cause, if anyone else treated me that way, like you'd be, you'd be dead to me.

01:06:29
So this is how I like how I deal with her, but like, yeah, like she just doesn't know how to not be a mom and let go, but yeah, she just you know that's hilarious.

01:06:42 - Speaker 1
That's hilarious. You know, actually, who I found to be super helpful is on all these topics is a look Queens local pizza Scarrow. He is a book called emotion emotionally healthy spirituality emotionally healthy. Jairo, he has a book called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Emotionally Healthy Discipleship and his devotional. He's got a 40-day devotional. That's been super helpful for me. For all that stuff Whether it's personal ministry, anxiety, frustration, fear, you name it his resources have been gosh. They've been super, super helpful.

01:07:11 - Speaker 3
So here's another hot take super helpful. So here's another hot take. I think people misunderstand scripture because if you actually just read it as it's like happening in its own timeline and not apply meaning after the fact, then things make a lot more sense and you know, we love to prove text, don't we?

01:07:29 - Speaker 1
We love to prove text.

01:07:30 - Speaker 3
It's not even just proof text, it's like proof contexting.

01:07:33 - Speaker 1
You know what I mean? Well, it's the. I mean, well, dude, proof contexting. Do you know what I mean? Well, it's the. I mean whoa, dude.

01:07:36
But but the thing is is, like you know, it's like we have an entire generation of people who have been taught to read the bible first. Uh, what does it mean to me? Versus what does it mean? I mean, think about, like, as much as I love devotionals, like the devotional movement taught us how to go. What does jeremiah 29, 11 mean to me? Forget about what it meant, forget about what it actually meant, forget about what the author was actually saying in the context in which they were saying it. If we read scripture through, just simply what we're trying to make, like what it means to us and applies to our life, we're like we're actually missing the beauty of scripture, right, uh? And it's not that, it's not that doing's bad, it's just that we've got to try and find out what's actually being said before we try and interpret it to what it means for us. You know what I mean, so I love what you're saying.

01:08:22 - Speaker 3
So let me blow your mind a little bit, because I now think that's even a little too far. I think we need to start with. What does it say? Just even translation-wise, is this coherent in a modern understanding? And then the next question that has been really helpful is like why is this here Not? What does it mean? It's like, what relevance does this fact have? Like greatest thing, genealogies I'm like always like trying to get through it and not reading it, or like freezing through it.

01:08:53
But, I started using ChatGP 3 to be like, okay, what does this word in Hebrew mean? And you get all of these understanding and you realize oh, you know how you said, like Papa Dei, like the name is important because the name gives it an identity, because it helps the person hearing the name something. So every name in the Old Testament has a meaning behind it, because it's like a character study, and you're just like, oh my gosh, it matters. So I've been like reading slowly all the genealogies what it means. And like Cain, it means like of substance or like filled with something. But Abel is like vapor and it's like this oh, like Moses is helping us understand, like there with something. But able is like vapor and it's like this oh, like moses is helping us understand.

01:09:40
like there was something inside cain, but with evil he was more pure and we were just like whoa. I did not understand that before I know, and this is why, like, I want you to be successful, because I want your thing to like extract that for people to understand. Like, oh, yeah, the way we've been reading it, yeah, it was helpful up to now. But, like, we have so much more information about the human mind and the emotion and just who we are, yeah, when was the last time you changed your mind?

01:10:07 - Speaker 1
Yesterday yeah, what was it? The number that I would sell my business for? Did it go up or down? It went up. Yeah, it went up. So like what?

01:10:18 - Speaker 3
led you to change your mind. Like what new information did you have? To be like, oh, make you reconsider.

01:10:23 - Speaker 1
Part of it was spiritual, part of it was practical.

01:10:25
So you know I mentioned that my daughter was born and we had some serious health problems with her. So she was born, she was fine. We brought her home. Two days after having her home she woke up and she was projectile vomiting green. So we rushed her back to the hospital and she had intestinal malrotation. So her intestines had twisted around on each other three times.

01:10:48
And this was kind of right in the midst of this business, kind of blowing up, and when you have momentum like that, people were hitting us up and they were wanting to invest and you should go this route or go that route or do this or do that, and you know. And so my daughter's in the NICU and after the surgery we knew she was going to be fine, but she was in the NICU for nine days. And you know, when you're a new dad and you're trying to figure out what it means to be a dad and a husband, you're for me anyways, I went into like protection and safety mode and so in my mind what I didn't realize is I had gone from like I actually want to build something that changed the world to I need to provide for my family. What's the quickest way for me to do that? You know, um, and it caused me to, frankly, waste a bunch of time, waste time negotiating with people who wanted to invest in our company. That, had I not been in the midst of that, I literally would have had one meeting and said great people, not the right partner, uh, not aligned visions. Great people, not the right partner, not aligned visions. But stability, stability, stability, stability.

01:11:57
You know, at the same time, we've since launched the product and I'm actually seeing that our vision for the product continues to grow and innovate and iterate. And I'm going, oh, wow, yeah, we don't just have like a content repurposing tool, we have something that can unlock a whole new way of millions of pastors sharing their sermons with billions of people. And so, yeah, it was part business, part internal and then, honestly, just part reaffirmation of a calling of like. You know, am I sure this is going to be successful? No, but I know that God asked me to build it. Am I sure this is going to be successful? No, but I know that God asked me to build it. So I also just have to leave success up to him and not try and make sense of it in my own intellect, if that makes sense.

01:12:43
And you know that, right, it's tough in the world of tech and startups, like it's all about information and new information and changing this and what about this and what's the market and all this kind of stuff, and it's like it can be really easy to get caught up in that. So you know, the AI space is a crazy place to build because you're changing your mind all the time and you know when OpenAI Dev Day comes and people that are interested in investing in your company go, wait a minute, what's the platform risk and what about this and what about that? So you're constantly having to go like this. And I think just even yesterday, I was talking to a brilliant guy and he just asked me that question what's in, why, why are you building this and what's the number you sell for? And as I started to talk it out, it was like this part of me came back of like no, no, this is a vision. And I got to remind myself how I was thinking about this when I first built it, not in the midst of this.

01:13:41
So, yeah, I don't know if that's the kind of answer you were looking for.

01:13:44 - Speaker 2
Yeah.

01:13:44 - Speaker 3
That was perfect, because that clearly resonates, because I think people confuse truth and ideas. Ideas are constantly changing and iterating, right, but a truth and I don't mean like an absolute, like, yes, there's objective truth, but like an unchanging thing that is timeless, yes, and something that is timeless is just human nature.

01:14:09
And that's how, human beings, because if you really think about it on a very simple level, everything in the world is made up that's not created from God. You really think about it on a very simple level everything in the world is made up that's not created from god. Right, think about it right, right, right, because someone saw something right and I'm not getting into like a philosophy rabbit hole now and it's shocking that, like aristotle is the father of science and all he did was take all of his teachings and understanding and he started observing things like I wonder why it's like that? And he started writing notes and people were like, oh, this is great, and they expanded on it. And so it really just comes down to if you understand people, that's the game, guys, that's the game. Just understand, because people will never change.

01:14:48
That's so true, that's how we are.

01:14:50 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so thanks or are yeah, so thanks for that, of course, man what are you hoping for at facey?

01:15:03
man, that's a great question. I I think you know when I, when I was, we just chatted with you guys for our podcast just before this, and I think what, even just in that conversation with you guys, what I really felt excited about was, yes, of course, the product and yes, of course, what you're unlocking. But again, I think it's changing the narrative, taking back the narrative on what it means to be a person who has vocationally given yourself to church and to ministry and helping people connect to and work for healthy churches who want to take care of them and want to.

01:15:35
You know, like I just I think that is it's so needed, it is so needed, um, and I think when I look at that, I look at the space you guys are cultivating in the community and and, um, I think that if, if that is sort of the byproduct, the business will be successful and you guys are going to help churches. But I think if it's a place where somebody who feels like I know what it's like to get to a place working at a church where I go I don't know if this is sustainable for me to keep doing practically and I don't know what to do about it can keep people in the ministry who have been called to ministry. You are doing such an eternal, an eternal thing. You're doing so much more than just like helping churches with a task. You're literally like like keeping the body of Christ moving and thriving, and so that's what I hope for.

01:16:28
I hope that that's the place you guys can be, where someone can go. Okay, maybe I need to make a change, or maybe I need to bring someone on to the staff or whatever, and but I know that if I can go, okay, maybe I need to make a change or maybe I need to bring someone on to the staff or whatever, but I know that if I can go here, the kind of people that are a part of this community are people that are like, believers in the church and believers in keeping people building the local church, who are called to do it.

01:16:47 - Speaker 3
Thanks. How can we be praying?

01:16:50 - Speaker 1
for you. Well, you know, we're sleep training our child at the moment. So I think, you know, I two young kids, man 10, a two year old and a five month old is crazy. So I work, you know I'm leading a startup, my wife works at a at a startup, so life's pretty crazy. We just moved across country. So I think, just you know, a season of some rest and normalcy would be would be amazing. So that would be, that would be the prayer I would say.

01:17:21 - Speaker 3
All right, thanks, mike. This was great. We're definitely going to talk again.

01:17:26 - Speaker 1
I hope so, man. I love it this has been phenomenal.

01:17:28 - Speaker 3
All the things that are happening in your mind. I love it.

01:17:30 - Speaker 1
He's doing crazy things. He totally is dude. It's been honestly an honor to be here to chat with you, and we'll keep doing it for sure.

01:17:37 - Speaker 3
That's it for the podcast.

01:17:39 - Speaker 2
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. Rate and review our podcast to help reach more listeners like you. Stay tuned for more uplifting tales from the front lines of ministry on the Faithly Podcast. Stay bold, stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story.