The Beautiful Bible - Brian Chung | Faithly Stories

00:01 - Speaker 1 Who would have imagined, I guess oh my gosh, I don't even know 20 years later I did quick math, that might not be accurate, but many years later that God would have me actually publishing a magazine, but not just any magazine, a magazine of God's Word. And so I think I just want to first just say this is such an honor that I'm just so grateful to God for this. This was not in the roadmap of my plan Originally. Again, I wanted to become an accountant and God had a different story for that. 00:30 - 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 Brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders. Learn more at faithly.co. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired on the Faithly Stories podcast. 00:58 - Speaker 3 Brian Chung. Welcome to the Faithly Stories podcast. 01:02 - Speaker 1 Thank you so much for having me. 01:04 - Speaker 3 So it is really an honor to have you on today. As I shared before we started recording, I encountered my first Alabaster Bible like six or seven years ago, and I was so struck by it. So to have an opportunity to meet you and talk to you is really, really exciting. 01:22 - Speaker 1 I'm excited to be here. 01:24 - Speaker 3 Okay, so I mentioned Alabaster, I mentioned the Bible, and it's because Alabaster is a publisher of the Bible, but not just any publisher of the Bible, the publisher of beautifully crafted Bibles that are like works of art, and in fact, you all have a mission, that is, to see all of humanity experience God as beautiful. So what first inspired you to start Alabaster? 01:53 - Speaker 1 I know that we're doing a podcast, but for the folks who are watching, I do have a sample right behind me so people can see what it looks like. Yeah, pull it up, let's see it. Yeah, I actually have a mini version of it right over here. 02:07 - Speaker 3 That's perfect. That fits right into the screen. I love it Wow. 02:10 - Speaker 1 But it normally comes in a magazine version size of this. But what makes Alabaster Bibles a little bit different is we weave beautiful imagery and thoughtful design into each individual book of the Bible. So we're thoughtful about typography, about the images. The images aren't random. We do an in-depth study of scripture and we choose images to go alongside the scripture in the hopes that people can experience God through beauty. 02:38 But where this all started was you might be surprised to hear that I didn't grow up Christian. I grew up in a Buddhist household. Wow, born and raised in Hawaii. I am a son of immigrant parents in Hong Kong and I remember coming into a college agnostic, believing in a God but not really following anything, and I had gotten glimpses of Catholicism, of Christianity, glimpses of Buddhism from my parents, and so that's why I landed as agnostic. I became a Christian after my freshman year in college, and that's a whole different story, but we could save that for another time. I became a Christian after my freshman year in college, and that's a whole different story, but we could save that for another time. I became a Christian after my freshman year in college. 03:28 I remember going back home to Hawaii after my time in LA, my freshman year in LA and I remember saying God, if you're real, like you showed up in LA, I want you to show up in Hawaii, where I have no Christian family, no Christian friends. And so, if you're, you to show up in Hawaii, where I have no Christian family, no Christian friends, and so, if you're God, show up there. And God totally showed up. Two of my closest friends became Christian in college. They started Bible study in Hawaii and they invite me and I remember going to my bedroom, opening up my journal and writing you're real, I guess I'm a Christian now. You're real, I guess I'm a Christian now. 04:05 Next thing I know I go to the local Christian bookstore in Hawaii and I get my first Bible. It's a leather bound Bible, traditional Bible. The first couple of pages, as you know, are actually not the story of the Bible but things to fill out. It was about the translation had maps. The Bible but things to fill out. It was about the translation had maps, and so I was really excited to just jump on in. But it was just different than what I expected. The text was small, the pages were thin, two columns, some words in red, other words in black. I didn't know what any of that meant and I was just a little intimidated at reading the Bible. And so I go to college, I take my marketing class and I remember getting my marketing textbook and loving to read my marketing textbook. And the reason why is because it was designed like a magazine and for the first time I felt excited to read any college textbook, just because of how it was designed. And I thought to myself could the Bible be designed differently? 05:16 I didn't do anything about it at the time. So I became Christian. Originally I wanted to become an accountant but God, totally like, redirected my career plans, went into ministry, college ministry after college for eight years and it was towards the end where I meet my co-founder. His name is also Bryan Chung, spelt with a Y instead of an I, so my first name is Brian B-R-I-A-N. His first name is Brian B-R-Y-A-N. We both share the same last name, Chung, and not related at all. 05:53 And I remember having a conversation with him about art and faith and I told him about this book written by a pastor in Southern California. His name is James Chong and he writes about how every generation asks a spiritual question. So for boomers, a spiritual question was what is true? So you see a rise of the apologetics movement, people wanting to prove and show that God is true. And Xers their spiritual question is what is real? And so you see Gen Xers not wanting to have a debate. We just want to be authentic and real with each other. Millennials that's my generation. So our spiritual question was what is good? And so, millennials we want to do good and just works in the world. And so you see a rise of justice movements that happen through millennials, and this was back in 2014. And he makes a prediction of what Gen Z's spiritual question would be. And he says their spiritual question would be what is beautiful. 06:58 And immediately when I read that, I was like I see that even happening now. This was before the rise of the Instagram influencer. This was when Snapchat was starting to become a thing. This is when the term Netflix binging started to become like a saying. This was when people started judging companies and churches by their Instagram or their church website, and I saw us moving towards a very visual generation and I thought to myself I want to show the world that God is beautiful. And so I'm having this conversation with my co-founder, Brian, and he said let's do something about it, let's put up a website, let's write a blog. And then I shared the idea like no, actually let's design the Bible like a magazine, let's point people towards the beauty of God through visual imagery and design. And his eyes lit up and he said let's do it. And so the next week he comes back with a name, with a vision, with a design, and we're like let's make this happen. And so that's sort of the launch of it. 08:14 We had no idea what we were doing? No idea, no background in publishing. My background was in Christian ministry and business. He was an artist, and so we had some background in publishing. My background was in Christian ministry and business. He was an artist, and so we had some background in design. I studied design also at college. We had no idea what we were doing. All I knew is I wanted to put it on a Kickstarter, which is a crowdfunding platform, and so, for those who are not familiar, you would basically support a campaign and, as a result, you would get rewards. So in this case, the reward was a book that we would make, and it was an all or nothing campaign. So you either need to raise for us as a $35,000 goal, and if you raise that amount, you get it. If you don't, you get nothing. And so we're like let's do $35,000, because I think that's how much we need to actually make this thing a reality, and within 10 days it was fully funded. 09:13 - Speaker 3 Wow. And so what did $35,000 get you at the time? Did it get you one copy or did it get you like? Talk me through what you could achieve with that. 09:23 - Speaker 1 Yeah, so at that time we released Matthew, mark, luke and John, so all four gospels um. It was for the first minimum order quantity, which I think was around like two thousand per book, so would cover just that, and we luckily raised more than that. But I think in that moment I remember when we got fully funded, there was this moment of wow, this really matters. 09:57 - Speaker 3 Yeah. 09:57 - Speaker 1 Like people are longing to experience God in beautiful ways, in visual ways, wow. Experience God in beautiful ways, in visual ways, wow. And so, also, it was the time that I realized this is no longer going to become a hobby, that I actually have to figure this out and make this book, because at the time we went to the local print shop, we only made 12 pages. The rest were blank. 10:21 - Speaker 3 If you look at our original Kickstarter, they were just blank pages to make it look like a book and everything else was just yeah, we made 12. And so we're like we have to design this thing. We didn't have a printer, we had to find a printer, we had to find a fulfillment center. We didn't know anything that we were doing, but we made it happen. I want to dig into. I'll start out maybe just by saying that your story really resonates with me. 10:50 Some people are surprised that I didn't grow up in a Christian home either. My parents were also immigrants from Taiwan. What you're doing now with Alabaster and what we're doing with Faithfully, I mean it just is such a testimony to this family of adoption. Right, that is the Christian family, and so, anyway, that is so beautiful and I love the all or nothing approach. You know, you had a vision, you knew what you wanted to do and you went all or nothing. So tell me about that moment when you realized you had to, like, actually do this and that this was your calling. Was there a job that you had to quit to do this? 11:33 - Speaker 1 So I was still doing ministry at that time. I was working for a Christian nonprofit. We were ministering towards college students a Christian nonprofit, we were ministering towards college students, and so I guess, luckily, we did a lot of the work during the summer, where things were a little slow. My co-founder at the time was doing a lot of the work while I was still doing ministry. I think I only gave like four hours a week to this, but I was the original designer. I was in the InDesign file. I have no background in InDesign, but I was in the InDesign file designing the layouts and I remember saying to my co-founder, Brian I don't know if this can be me, I don't know if I could do all four gospels. 12:23 - Speaker 2 Yeah. 12:23 - Speaker 1 And so, um, uh, my co-founder was also working for the same nonprofit and, uh, we were ministering at a campus called Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and that's where we also met our first designer. Wow, her name is Josephine and her background was layout design yeah, editorial design. And so we decided, josephine, we need your help. And so she helped us make the books. But then it was finding a printer, and so we had ordered a bunch of books, of magazines, that we really, really loved. One of them was Kinfolk. It's this. 13:07 Some people describe it as the Martha Stewart for millennials, it's a high-end luxury, like kind of lifestyle book, and we decided to reverse engineer where it was printed from. So there's these websites that you can see where they was printed from, and we just did that. We find the original printer, which was Hemlock. We're very proud that we print from Hemlock. They're based in Canada and we're like let's make it happen. And so we had just a lot. We just tried to figure it out. I had a friend that was in e-commerce. He's a mentor of mine, his name is Vey and he helped me with the business side of it. After we printed all the books, we shipped them and he was very generous and lent us his warehouse space. 13:52 - Speaker 3 Wow. 13:52 - Speaker 1 And I remember asking a lot of friends for just free pizza Could you help us pack boxes? And so yeah, that's the story. We just kind of figured it out and we made it happen. 14:05 - Speaker 3 Wow, okay, so just to give our audience a sense of how far you've come. You've been doing this for 10 years now. 14:12 - Speaker 2 Yeah. 14:13 - Speaker 3 And you have won a lot of accolades. You and Alabaster, tell us about where you are in this moment and some of the milestones you've achieved. 14:21 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I never would have imagined us being here today. I constantly thank God for this wild journey that I've been on with Alabaster, and before I go into the accolades, I will say that I remember when I wasn't a Christian. I was in high school doing yearbook design. I was the art director for yearbook and I remember asking God, God, if there's a job that I get to do this, I would love it. Wow, and who would have imagined, I guess oh my gosh, I don't even know. 20 years later I did quick math that might not be accurate, but many years later that God would have me actually publishing a magazine, but not just any magazine, a magazine of God's word. And so I think I just want to first like just say this is such an honor that I'm just so grateful to God for this that this was not in the roadmap of my plan Originally. Again, I wanted to become an accountant and God had a different story for that. 15:24 But yeah, since then we've sold over a million books, bibles and Bible studies. We've been one of the fastest growing private companies in America, awarded by Inc 5000 more than five times. Personally, I've been an honoree of the Forbes Next 1000 of Most Promising Entrepreneurs. Our Bibles are now used at luxury hotels, one in California, just down the street from here, as well as in Paris. We have over 7,000 five-star reviews across all of our products, and our products are now used by celebrities like the Biebers and the Kardashians and the Jonas Brothers, and so it's just been a wild journey to see all those things happen, and I am immensely grateful. 16:18 - Speaker 3 Wow, I think. I think thank you for sharing all of that. I know it can feel like a little uncomfortable sometimes to share the accolades because it's certainly not what you got in the. You know, it's not why you started it, but I think it's important and so encouraging, especially to ministry leaders out there, because I think these days, especially where I am and where you are right, like in a big city, being a Christian, let alone being like a ministry leader feels so countercultural. So to hear things like a million beautiful Bibles sold, to hear things like one of the fastest growing private companies, I think that's a real encouragement to leaders. So thank you for sharing that. How did you choose the name? So thank you for sharing that. How did you choose the name Alabaster? I mean, I knew how you chose it as soon as I heard the name Alabaster, but I would love to hear it from you. 17:12 - Speaker 1 Yeah, it's really a wild story. I mean I'll Google the quick version first and then the long version. The quick version is in the Book of Mark. There's a story of the women with the alabaster jar and it's this expensive jar of perfume broken in front of Jesus. The people were scolding this woman. That jar could have been sold for X, y and Z denarii, and Jesus knows what she has done is a beautiful thing, denari. And Jesus knows what she has done is a beautiful thing. And it is the first time in the book of Mark where Jesus calls something beautiful. And for us, as we're trying to answer the question of what is beautiful and show the world that God is beautiful, that's why we chose the word and the name Alabaster for a brand. 18:03 The long story is my freshman year. After after my freshman year, I got invited to so I guess the summer of my freshman year got invited to a Christian camp. And again, I'm not Christian, not religious and they said we're going to go to this camp for a week and it's gonna be a lot of fun. Brian, you should come. And for me I'm like, oh great, I love to hang out with friends and I love having fun. So I end up going, I end up going, and then I realized that this wasn't just any camp. It was a camp that we would be studying the Bible for eight hours a day. 18:43 - Speaker 3 They left that small detail out. 18:45 - Speaker 1 Yeah, they left that little detail out. So here I am studying the book of Mark, and not just any book of Mark, the second half of Mark which, if you, you know, I'm sure you all, the second half of Mark is really, really intense. That's when Jesus starts going to the cross, and I'm reading, I'm reading, I'm reading and I'm just like angry and frustrated for the first couple of days, and then slowly I start opening my heart. Maybe God will speak to me. And I remember studying and reading this story, the Woman with the Alabaster Jar, this story, the Woman with the Alabaster Jar, and I remember reading it and for the first time I started crying uncontrollably and I had no idea why, and I mean now, looking back, I feel like it was God speaking to me For the first time, God really speaking to me through his word. And why it spoke to me was because the question that the facilitator was asking was what is your alabaster jar? What is this thing of extreme worth that Jesus might be asking you to break in front of him, where the world might see it being a waste waste, but I might see it as a beautiful thing, and, and for me it was. 20:13 I mean, I didn't just go to USC to just do ministry. After graduating college, I went to USC to become a CPA, to have a nice paying job, to drive a nice car, to have a nice title. And even as someone that again wasn't religious, I felt like I was like, could you give that up, could you break those things and could you do something else? And that story has been really, really impactful for me. After graduating college, that was the story that God brought me back to like, okay, could you not pursue business and just do ministry for eight years? Could you waste your life how the world might see it be wasteful for your 20s? And so it also. I guess also the long story is that this story has been really impactful and meaningful in my faith life, and so that's also why the name Alabaster. 21:16 - Speaker 3 I love it. Well, isn't it so like God to ask you to give something up and then to give you something even better? All those things that you wanted, when you can surrender them at Jesus's feet, like what he'll give you is so much better? So I want to talk a little bit about the Bible in the digital age. Yes, so we just had YouVersion on our podcast and we talked to their head of communications about the fact that they're celebrating over a billion installs of the YouVersion family of apps. 21:50 - Speaker 1 I'm one of those people. 21:53 - Speaker 3 I know, me too, me too. I think there are hardly any Christians, especially in the US, who don't know that icon on their phone, right Like we all know the YouVersion app, and it's amazing. And I'm just curious as a publisher of the physical Bible, how do you see the role of the physical Bible in this digital generation? 22:17 - Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a really, really great question. I don't think it's mutually exclusive. This just might be me, but I'm the type of people just for any book I have the physical book, I have the Kindle book. And I have the type of people just for any book I have the physical book, I have the Kindle book and I have the audio book. So anytime I have various different options to read a book and I think, for example, I might just want the physical book to not have any destruction. 22:53 I might want to have the Kindle book when I am traveling or can't carry everything around. 22:56 I might want the audio book when I'm working out or on a commute, and I just feel like the more options for people to experience God and read God's word, the better, and so it's just creating more spaces that people can engage in God's word. And so for me yeah, I mean I carry this around and it's easy, it's light, it fits in my pocket, but sometimes I don't want to be distracted and I have all the apps on my phone that's trying to get my attention, and sometimes I need just something physical to read, to highlight. I'm still very like I like to write and highlight things down in my books, and so that goes similar, for I believe write and highlight things down in my books, and so that goes similar, for, I believe, physical books, because people can do that a little bit more, and so I don't see them as mutually exclusive. I see them as just giving people the opportunity to engage in God's word in a variety of different ways and in more ways than ever before. 23:50 - Speaker 3 Yeah, that's so good. So you mentioned, Brian, that you're a millennial. I'm a millennial as well. Yeah, I'm a millennial no-transcript reference for me, but I wonder if you feel like. I feel that like you need to like see and feel and it needs to be like a physical copy to like, really have it soak into you. 24:32 - Speaker 1 Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, that's why we're really intentional about our design and that's, I think, what sets us apart, that other, not just Christian books, but just books period, where we're really thoughtful about the layout, the design, the imagery, how people use the book, how people engage the book. I remember when I was in ministry we would hand out a bunch of Bibles to people who weren't Christian, as just please, be engaged with God's word. And I will never forget the response that I saw from someone who wasn't religious they would open it up, flip a few pages and then put it in their backpack. And then I remember I was so excited I had the first prototype of our Bibles and for a good five to 10 minutes they would just flip page after page after page, reading, absorbing, experiencing God. 25:34 And in that moment, when I saw that, I was like there's something here that the medium of how things are presented actually do matter. And so for us, we're really nerdy about it. We even think about the paper type and the paper color. Wow, different types of white paper, cool paper, warm paper, different trees that they're printed on. But for us, we all know that the story of God is a beautiful story and for us, like, could we create a really, really beautiful reading experience, and so that's why we're really intentional about that. 26:13 - Speaker 3 Yeah Well, so you have a lot of objectives that you're trying to balance. There is a clear sort of creative artistry that is at the center of what you're printing, but then you're also there's sort of spiritual integrity that you're trying to maintain, and you're also trying to build a successful and sustainable business. How do you manage the tension of those things? Because I imagine that sometimes they might seem a little bit in conflict. 26:40 - Speaker 1 Yeah, For me this might sound controversial, not intention at all my investor, and he is also Christian. He runs one of the largest baby crib brands in the US. I will never forget how he talks about running his business, where he says that sales and profit you should never aim for sales and profit that's always a result of loving God and loving people, Result of loving God and loving people. And so he talks about how do we worship God through our work, how do we worship God in our business? Is it to produce sloppy work? Is it to not be excellent in our work? And he said no, it's to do everything in excellence, the best of our ability. And so for me, I think about what does it look like to run an excellent business, not just for the sake of it being a good for sales and profit, but actually in worship to God. 27:47 And then, secondly, love people. What does it look like to love our customers? Well. What does it look like to love our customers? Well. What does it look like to love our teammates and our employees? Well. What does it look like to love our partners and printers and manufacturers? Well. And so for us, that's also really, really important. And so I think about loving God and loving people as the things that my primary objective and sales and profit. That's a result. 28:17 - Speaker 3 That is so good. Thank you for sharing that. Running a business in that way isn't easy, right? It's almost easier to follow the business principles textbook and go after those sales and profits. You're doing it in the Jesus way. It can't be easy, and you've been doing it for 10 years. So I'm curious if you can share any mistakes you've made, lessons you've learned over this past decade. 28:43 - Speaker 1 After we printed our first Matthew, mark, luke and John. I will never forget this mistake because it was one of the most painful mistakes of launching Alabaster. And we sent all the books out and one of my friends emails me. He says, brad, I started reading, I'm on March, chapter four, and I don't know if this is just my book or not, but there are verses missing. Yeah, yeah, a couple of weeks later not a couple of weeks like, maybe like a couple of days later, he like emails I finished it, I finished and there are more verses missing. I remember that weekend because I'm the, you know, I'm working that weekend. I drive to our warehouse to open up every single box and the read, read our bibles, and I find out every single book has verses missing from the book. Okay, look, we're. 29:42 - Speaker 3 I can almost feel the pit in your stomach that you felt all those years ago yeah, I was so stressed. 29:51 - Speaker 1 I was like what do you do? What do you do in this situation? Right, like a couple of different options. One not tell our customers, Just let it be Okay. One not tell our customers, just let it be okay. Two let our customers know, and just let it be. Three let our customers know and fix the problem, reprint it and reship them out. Okay, for those who are listening at home, what option would you choose? Okay, also, letting you know that a reprint would also cost you $25,000, not including shipping back to the customer, okay, and that you have no money because you spent all the money on the first production run. 30:29 - Speaker 3 I think I would. I would want to do three, but it would seem like so insurmountable to me I might settle for two. If I couldn't get all the way to three, I would be tempted to do one because really many people will not notice Gosh this is a tricky one. What did you end up doing? 30:50 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean obviously three. I think for us it was this question of this is our first time running a business, and so what does it look like to set a standard of integrity for us? And you know, I didn't know the language at the time, I was not mentored by my investor at the time, but I think for us it was like what does it look like to love God and love people well in this moment? And for us it was making it right to our customers. And it was the Bible. We could not have verses missing from the Bible, and so we informed all our customers, we let them know and we also made a fun little fun thing where it's like can you spot the chapter of the verses missing? 31:36 - Speaker 3 Wow. Well, so it's no wonder that you've been able to do what you've been able to do since, from day one, you have done it the Jesus way. You've done the heart thing, you've done the integrity thing and you've built what seems like a very loyal following of people who know they can expect quality and beauty from you as a publisher. Well, thank you for sharing that story. 32:01 - Speaker 1 Yes, that was a big mistake. 32:03 - Speaker 3 Wow, oh, wow. Okay, so you didn't grow up a Christian, you became a Christian and then you became a ministry leader and then you became a Bible publisher and so in a lot of ways, publishing the Bible has probably been like the preponderance of your faith journey, right Like over the last 10 years, like how has it shaped your faith journey? How has your faith grown in that time? 32:32 - Speaker 1 That's a really great question. I think when I first started running Alabaster, I mean, it was like it was right after ministry. So I was like, okay, like producing these books, I could have greater impact there's, you know, and I was leading a ministry about 200 students and I was like what now? Now, 1 million Bibles, wow. And so I think that was like oh, like this could be a place to really impact a lot of people. And that's I remember, like people were asking me what's the vision, what's the goal? And I think I wanted to show the world that God is beautiful. And but if you were to ask me today what's most important, or the thing that I think, like I wake up and I think about it's actually my team and creating a beautiful workplace for them. Um, and I think why? 33:24 Why that has changed and what God has spoken to me about is that Jesus's ministry is all about people. And, yes, he ministered to the crowds, but he has he added his disciples, disciples which were the 12. He had his three and then he had his one, and he also had face-to-face times with people. It wasn't just the mass preaching, it was to the leopard, it was to the bleeding woman, and he had this really small moments of face-to-face moments with people, and I think God has just continually to remind me that in my faith it's yes, you're impacting the crowds, but you still have to remember the people in front of you, and so for me that's been like the I don't know God just sort of bringing me back to that, like you have these, like big visions for what you want to do, but you can't forget about the people in front of you. 34:20 Yeah, I know I talked about like the accolades of a million books, like I think also about the stories of the like, more than just the number, the actual people that our books are being impacted, and so hearing stories like yours of like your first time experiencing our products, just it makes me I'm like this is all worth it. 34:41 - Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to talk about your team for a second, because I can't remember if you mentioned this accolade, but you, alabaster, has won an award for one of the best places to work. Can you tell us about that? I mean, is it free Starbucks, endless vacations? 35:02 - Speaker 1 What can people? 35:03 expect at Alabaster yeah, I mean I'll just first start off with. It was never always like this. I think it's really important for me that I communicate, that I really care about our team members, and so how do I physically express that? More than just the standard norm, one of our values is above and beyond. How do we go above and beyond for our customers? And one of the things that I ask as a boss and an employer, is how do I go above and beyond for you? How do I go above and beyond? What is the standard? 35:38 - Speaker 3 In meeting a lot of church leaders, ministry leaders over the last few years as we've built faithfully, I have really truly never come across a group of people that have had in them this desire to create and build. I've spent a lot of time in other sectors. I spent a lot of time on Wall Street and there are creatives there too, but people in ministry man like. There's something about knowing that you're made in the image of God that, I think, sparks like this creativity. Everyone wants to build something, start something, create something. As someone who followed that spark, who followed that call and built something that is alabaster, what would you tell those people who are feeling that tug to do something? What are some of the maybe things they have to do, things they should avoid? 36:26 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I would say for folks who want to do something, to just do it. I also have a lot of people who have expressed yeah, ministry leaders, creatives, other aspiring entrepreneurs that have a lot of ideas. Um, I would say only one percent of those people actually make it happen. Um, it kind of sticks in the idea mode, um, and so I think I always encourage people with that idea is just try it. Um, and why I say that is because, and share that percentage is. I ask the question why? Why is it so low percentage of people who actually go and do it? 37:05 And I think about what were the barriers for me, and it was fear of failure, fear of what people think of me, a fear of making mistakes, fear of wasting money or just losing it. All. Fear of instability, fear of not being able to pay the bills, all real fears. And I'm reminded of multiple stories in the book of Mark, where Jesus talks about the opposite of fear is faith to step out into deeper waters, to put out the nets in the deeper sea and to have faith. And I feel like in our walks with Jesus it's like what's that continued next step of faith? And sometimes it is starting that new thing and trusting that that may be something that God might be speaking to you or moving your heart in, and the act of faith is obedience to those things. 38:02 - Speaker 3 Wow, I love it. I love it. Well, I don't know if you can see this on the screen, but there's a work of art behind me that was created by a Christian artist named Hannah Robinette, and what you probably can't see on the screen is that it's filled with white squares, like hundreds of white squares on this canvas, and this piece is entitled Faith what Cannot Be Seen. So I feel like that's a great place to leave the conversation. Thank you so much, Brian, for sharing your heart for the Bible, for God, and sharing your alabaster story with us. It is so beautiful and so inspiring. 38:41 - Speaker 2 Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. 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