Find Full Transcript Here: https://www.checkpointchurch.com/post/nerds-of-pray-jate
Nerds of Pray is the podcast where Nerd Pastor Nathan Webb of Checkpoint Church sits down with some of the leading people in the realm of Nerd/Pop Culture Ministry. He asks them questions about their specific venture into the ministry, as well as what first led them to the intersection of faith and fandom.
In this episode, Nathan sits down with Jate Earhart, founder of Love Clan and full-time Twitch Streamer known as JateLIVE.
Support Jate Earhart:
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/jatelive
Discord: http://loveclan.net/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ThatGuyFromTwitter/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JateLIVE
Nerds of Pray is made possible by the support of Checkpoint Church, the church for nerds, geeks, and gamers online. This episode was hosted, produced, recorded, edited, and mastered by Nathan Webb. It was captured via Cleanfeed and edited in DaVinci Resolve.
Intro/Outro Music is Royalty Free: "The Little Broth" by Rolemusic
Key Art/Logo was created by: Nathan Webb
Character Art/Avatar by: mondayvibes
To support Checkpoint Church and the ministry they produce, please like this video and subscribe to our channel or these other sources:
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Website: http://www.checkpointchurch.com/
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Our next episode will be dropping next month and will feature Luke Filipiak of Love Thy Nerd. Look forward to that and thanks again so much for giving us a listen!
If you have any recommendations or would like to be considered as a future guest on the podcast, submit your name and biography to checkpointchurch@gmail.com.
The Checkpoint Church Podcast Hub is the hub for all of our podcasts, sermons, and special projects. To learn more, go to checkpointchurch.com or send any questions you have to checkpointchurch@gmail.com.
RAW UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT (MAY CONTAIN ERRORS):
Welcome, Jake, Welcome to the welcome the podcast here. Happy that you're here in the nerds of Pray. The way I typically like to just start these off is just with a general introduction for people who may not know who you are, or I may wanna know more about you with just who are you. And then I like to always ask where are you?
So both physically and on the interwebs, what's kind of your, your space on the internet that you might call home? Yeah.
I'm Jade and I run J Live and a Discord called Love Clan. So, Stream, roughly like always. And then when I'm not streaming, then we will be in discord. Just kinda like chatting with people.
And it's I guess it's been two, probably two years since I, I've been streaming full-time hours. Not, it's different than necessarily saying like streaming full time, but yeah, stream full-time hours. I do something something different every day. We've got but we have things that are in there that are specific for reaching people that are far from God.
My, my goal is not to reach Christians. My goal is very much to reach people that have never had a relationship with God, or that maybe are just completely unchurched. Like maybe that's a thing that growing up, but it's, they've never thought about it since then. That's kind of my, those are the people that I am personally.
So I consider myself, I originally felt the call to be an online church pastor for gamers. I actually was praying for something. There's a lot longer story there, but I was praying for God to give me something specific Ephesians two 10. And I prayed that verse for about six months and felt like God said, What about a game church?
And so that's, that was, boy, I joined Game Church, which was like a group at the time. Sure. And that was a long, long, long time ago, but I just, cuz I literally googled what the prayer was, you know, like Game Church is what came up in my mind and I'd never heard of that. And so I went and looked around to see what, what existed.
And that was probably eight, nine. I don't know, it was like nine years ago or something. 8, 8 8 maybe years.
But I'm sure that whenever you came to that kind of calling and conclusion you are a nerd . You are somebody that, that goes towards the gaming culture and towards the gaming community.
And so I always like to know more about people that are in this work. Cuz typically I find that, if you weren't a nerd than the nerds, geeks and gamers of Twitch and Discord are gonna sniff you out. They're gonna know that you're not genuine. So you gotta geek out over a lot of fun stuff.
So, I'm curious, we're all a melting pot of our own sorts, and we have these different things and it wouldn't take long for somebody to check out your Twitch stream about section and c just how many different areas you do dive into. But if you had to like, sum up the j experience into one flavor what flavor of nerd would you consider yourself?
What's the one thing that rises above?
Oh boy, I, So I think most people could do that. I don't, I really don't know if I could do that, cuz I'm I am like the definition of all things to all people when it comes to the, this thing, but. I can't relate to people outside of the nerd culture, like it has to be in the nerd culture.
But it's like I've watched every anime, like I've watched, I've play every video game. Like that's my, that's kind of the thing is just being able to at some level relate with people. But yeah, I've played, like, I'm currently, I like to joke that I'm on track to beat every video game, but like, obviously that's impossible.
But but I've probably played 10,000 plus video games at this point and I've watched thousands of anime. So it's usually somewhere in those two worlds. Cuz I'm like learning Japanese.
That's I this really guilty pleasure right now where I have discovered it all started with good reads and I started on good reads and that was where I was tracking all of the books that I was reading.
And I like reading books a lot. And then I was like, maybe I'll see if there's anything out there for like music. And so I found 1001 Records and they have their own website. And then I was like, well see if there's anything for anime. And there's like, Oh there sure enough is there's analysts out there and then there's, oh, there's letterbox and then there's backlogs.
And so now I'm just like keeping track of everything I consume at all times in all the different,
places at the internet. I've one for video games cuz I don't have one for video games and I'm backlog. I've been Okay. So I've been like kind of worried to start that list. It's scared because it will take me so long to go through and like try to remember all the old games.
Like whenever I said that the first thing that came to mind was that game that came in the checks box. Mm-hmm. , Do you remember? You know, Checks Quest I for or something like that. And that game was awesome, but that for some reason that popped in my head. It was just like, Those kinds of games where you would like Pepsi Man, I don't know.
Oh yeah. Like how you gonna remember Every little random game, but
whenever I first got on backlog, so some people use Backlog, some people use Gigi. Those are two, the two like big competing ones for for logging all your games. And I went through on backlog, like the first 50 pages of the top games and I was like, this is too much of my time.
So I stopped after 50 pages. I was like, this is where I'm gonna call it and I'm gonna make top 10 lists every week of each year going back. And that's how I'm gonna add my favorites of that year at the very least. So I'll catch up on the past 10. So I'm up to 2009 now working backwards of my top 10 games of each year.
And that's been something that has kept. From going absolutely crazy to every game I've ever played. But at least to get the ones that matter,
I'm gonna do it. Yeah, we'll have a day. We'll have a day. We'll just if you know a game, say it. And we'll check and see.
I've played it, It sounds absolutely daunting.
So let's go back to the very early days then. Let's go back to those old school checks, Mix J days. Where did you first begin on your nerdy journey? Were you just playing, Pokemon day one? Did you come out with a game boy? What was your story and very
origin? Yeah.
I'm in Missouri by the way. I forgot to, I'm adhd so I, I'll forget to come back and say where my physical location is, Not that it matters. I literally moved here cuz it's cheap. And so it's like, there you go. I can do the online stuff for cheaper. Early video game days is, so I was playing, I, I started playing technically at a, babysitters.
They had Legend Zelda, like for the nes. Oh. And That was the first game that I was really, really into. But before that even, my, my dad had an Atari 2,600 and he had like every game for it. So I, I got really, really good at joust. I played a ton of joust. That was one of my first favorites. I played through adventure.
I have I know how to play yours, revenge, you know, that's like a . Sure. Like, what are you looking at? There's just like dots in the middle and then the, it's a little shooty thing, and like, I, I'm dead. I don't what happened, So defender, whatever, Just random moon lander. So I played a lot of those games and, but the game that, the thing that really, really set it off at the beginning for me was, my parents were kind of, they were, I don't wanna say hyperreligious, but they.
Believed they didn't believe that video games were from the devil, but there was enough sermons about it that they were like, maybe . Sure. So we were, we're not sure, and if we're not sure, then we're gonna just ride the fence instead. So they had a, we'll just put it at arms length.
I think they tried to, they had this rule where like, if you had to beat every video game that we already had to get a different one. And so that I had to play like every Atari 2,600 game. So I've beaten e for Atari 2,600, which is You had
to, Yeah. You were required .
I I was required to do it as a thing.
I remember getting getting a Game Boy Pocket for Christmas one year, and I, that's, that was the first time I, My mom says that's the first time that she ever saw me cry. Hmm. Because it was like, it was such a, it was a it, it meant that they were allowing me to, like, that they had recognized that video games were not and that i I, that they would buy the games for me.
So I had a GameBoy pocket, I got like a Zelda Links Awakening, I think, or something like that. So yeah, it was that's pretty much the start, I guess for me. And then I grew up with anime that was just kind of in the household. We had lots of Studio Jubilee stuff,
so. Sure, sure. So you you experienced through the actual, like, origin of the anime themselves.
Whereas I was very much an adult swim kid, so that was, my parents did not know I was watching anime . It was like I was watching it on the side, whenever I stayed up until three o'clock in the morning, I was definitely not the one that was just like, Let's watch spirited away together.
They'd be like, What are you talking about? Yeah. My, my parents were totally outside of the sphere there. Yeah. But so you mentioned you know, very religious family upbringing in that sense. And so I'm a pk. My dad was a pastor grew up with also very similar religious house. I was also the third born, so I was hands off.
They didn't have like too much concern for me. They were kinda like, You'll survive, we've done this twice. You, he's got it. So there wasn't a whole lot of micromanaging necessarily. The nerdiness within me. But I'm very curious, knowing that you've grown up in this religious house, knowing that you discovered Game Church through prayer and through contemplation of like this gifted calling.
Normally the way I ask this question is, where do you first find the intersection between faith and fandom? And you've already said a little bit about that, but I wonder if we can unpack that further. Whenever you first, you know, Googled Game Church and it first came up, what did it look like being a part of that?
Did you meet up at a con? Did reach out over email? How did you make that connection with folks in this space?
Yeah. It was really just like, again, it's, it's kind of weird, but it just was outta nowhere for me because I wasn't thinking about it at all. I played video games all the time, and at, when I was growing up, video games were definitely the nerdy thing, like not the cool thing Sure.
At all. It's not at all cool to play video games. And that was. It's way different now. Like, I'm really jealous. It's, of course, this is how it always happens, you're just a little too early or a little too late. Right. And , But that was like, I was not thinking about that. I remember going to, we would have like, we'd have halo contests and like local lands and things at our church.
And so that was probably the first time that I was like, Oh yeah, like, we're fellowshipping while shooting each other with rockets and shotts. Like, this is a thing. But I didn't really, I didn't give it any more than yeah okay. Like it's cool. I guess it's fun thing to do with your small group every once in a while, once every year or something.
But when I literally did pray. The same prayer, like, God I wanted, again, it is a longer story, but it was sort of like what I was doing. I was doing motion graphics for like bigger companies. Mm-hmm. , and I'd done 'em for Nike and Google and all this other, all these bigger companies.
And I felt like what I was doing was just to make money. And it wasn't to, it wasn't for something with a purpose. And once I started, a specific thing happened in my life, but there was a point where like I recognized that what I was doing didn't matter. Like if I died, it wouldn't have mattered at all.
Hmm. And so I was like, Well then who am I living for? What am I living for? Like, is this even what I want to do? Like if I did this for another 30 years, would I actually be happy that I had spent that time? And if not, then like, why am I even wasting my time with this? You know, it's sort of the idea in a video game.
When you you're like leveling a weapon that you don't even actually want to use at the end, and you're like, Why have I already put five stats into this class? I'm not even going to want to spec in at the end. You know, I felt like that with my life, like looking at the time I'd spent and okay, then what does matter?
And it started to kind of ruin my job, where I would do a job and I was it looked cool and I liked it, but to what end sort of a thing. And when I prayed that I wasn't expecting like, Oh yeah, let's merge my passions and my hobbies and let's put all that together and use it for God's glory.
It was just like it. J I literally just heard what about a game church? And that I'm not necessarily doing a game church now, but I, it put me in the right direction. Like it put me in the path that I want, that I needed to move into. And now since then, it's this recognizing the. All things can be used for the glory of God.
Even my hobbies, like even my free time can be used to glorify God and I if I, if there's something that I'm doing that I can't glorify God in, then I don't want it. So that's, it was really a life change thing. I want people to hear now, they probably would hear. Yeah, definitely.
The nerd side of things. I want more, There's probably people that, they have other hobbies, like they have other things that they can use and they can, God wants to use all those things. I've been talking about like bowling ball ministries, sure. I don't know, like there's different, like places you can use that stuff, but it, for me it was gaming just because I'm a gamer, you know?
And like anime, cuz Otaku, So those are I think at the very beginning it really was just, Where can I have a relationship with somebody and like actually have a chance to chat with them. And it was originally Destiny. I was I was playing Destiny one and doing raids and at the end of the raid there would always be a bunch of people that were like, I, thanks.
And then they would leave and then there'd be one. I ran raids regularly. Like we did Vault of Glass all the time at the beginning and would just run people through it. That'd never done it. And every single time that I did raid, I would pray for everybody that was gonna be doing it. And just mostly for their mental health cuz it's like, this is gonna be a, you know, Right.
A three hour thing if they're not like ready for them. But it's a little selfish prayer maybe there . But that was, you get into the raid and at the end of it there were every single time there was somebody that would just stick behind who would just be like, Hey man, like, do you wanna just go run?
strikes or something, and that good raid. That was fun. And then we'd just chat and the conversation every time turned into one of them. I, this guy, I the first thing I, he said, I was like, Well, tell me about yourself. And he said, Oh, well, you know, I'm a carpenter. And I was like, Oh, I don't know much about carpentry outside of Jesus.
Like, it just like immediately was like, oh yeah my family's kind of religion. And just, it became a whole conversation. We talked for, two hours or something about the why he wasn't in faith anymore. And it just was a great conversation. And so that those things happened enough that it was, it just made sense from then on.
It was less a question of like, should we do it? And it was more like, how do we do this the right way? How do we do this better? Which, you know that for, like you said, if you're not a native, that would be a much. Bigger mental leap, but There wasn't a theology attached to it.
It was just right. This is literally where people are, and this is where God placed me, so we're going to do it here. It's just how do we do it? How do we do it the most effective way? Yep. What's the.
Something that's really up and coming, especially in the Methodist Church, is this idea of the fresh expressions movement coming out of the uk.
And I'm sure it's picking up all over, but just in my circles, you're seeing more and more fresh expressions, movements popping up of here's a a beer in hymns where they might hang out at the local brewery or they might try and meet up somewhere, like a bowling leg or something like that.
But I think what's really unique. Even broader than gaming ministry. I think gaming is just the way that it's maybe being done the most intentionally. Cuz we have a whole platform called Twitch, right? We have this whole thing where they really do hang out, but online ministry has this connectivity that I think it's hard to find.
Like you can invite people to come to beer and hymns with you, but there's something about playing games online. People are already doing it. They're already there. And so it's like showing up and just being present in that place. And people just naturally draw in to the community that already builds there.
And I think that there's a temptation sometimes for us to invade and colonize. Whereas what I've seen from Lovey Nerd and from Love Clan and from these online nerd ministries is I've seen that they're entering into the space and just opening up arms. Rather than harping or expecting anything immediately from the beginning it's a relationship building that for some reason is just really intuitive online.
Yeah. Yeah, totally agree with that. With that in mind, you mentioned that you felt called for a game church, but that you don't really consider necessarily what you have a game church. And so I wanna talk more about love plan. I wanna talk more about what is that exactly? In your words, what definition, if you had to put a term to it.
And then once we define that, let's just talk about how that got started and what that has turned into.
Yeah. I really don't put it in towards, And the main reason is I don't, I like having the conversation depending on which side it is on what it is, and kind of let the person de define for it more.
Mm-hmm. . Because in the past we have like church. Manifesto things that are, this is, you know, this is what we as a church, this is what we consider ourselves as a discord. This is what we consider ourselves as streamers. This is what we consider and like it's statements for these things. But the main thing that I was I recognized was the people that I was trying to reach did not want to go to a church.
Hmm. So I'm not gonna call it something that they don't want to go to. If they look at it from the beginning and they say, I, well, I'm not looking for a church. I'm not gonna click that. It, you don't click something that you're not expecting go to, you're not wanting to go to. And that doesn't mean that they don't need it.
And so that was sort of the, the thought was like, well, I had church people who were telling me from both sides. You're like, you need to call this a church. This is definitely a church. What you're doing is. And from the other side, you cannot call this church. It's Blas for me to call this a church. Sure.
Which we, we both have mutual Yeah. Conversations like that. But that was a I dealt with that for so long before I just hit this point where I was like, Here's the deal, church people, I literally don't care. I don't care what you call it, because it does not matter to me.
Is it effective? Is it doing the things of what a church should do? That's all that I care about. And if not, is it doing the things of what a min what a ministry should do? And if not, is it doing the things of what a missionary should do? And so like that's the some people's definition is like, you just, you literally say Oh, I'm a missionary.
I'm not a church planner. And it's Oh yeah, you're being really effective as a missionary. I'm like, Great. Like that. That's all I'm, that's all I'm trying to do. Or there's some people that are like, Wow, like this is my, I don't have a local church and this is taking that space for now. And and so it's okay.
I gotta tell you, not to, call that, that, So there's a, there's a lot kind of purposeful ambiguity to it, just because the titles really turn people off in today's thing. We, you look across the board literally almost everything that has a title is because there's an alternative that people are either for or against.
Mm. And so I don't like I don't like denominations. Sure. I, this year especially, I've been more and more turned off to the idea of a denomination. And I've been hurt. I've been given lots of examples for like, where they're positive and I don't know where the line for where I, where that is. There has to be some line where it's no longer Christianity or whatever.
But as far as like the labels go a lot of people don't want to even consider church because they're like, You guys don't even agree on everything. You guys can't even agree. So if you guys can't agree there's thousands of Christianity. So why would I follow any of them? You know? And that's, it's just the, I see this split, I see this huge split in our wording.
And so I don't want to cause even more of that in the people that I'm trying to reach, that, like I said, they're not expecting to go to a church. And and so I don't wanna I'm not gonna add that additional barrier that has no reason to even be there in the first place. True. By labeling it like that.
Yeah, I think you, you've highlighted an important part of like tradition and inheritance and baggage and the things that we bring with us, and that's what we're being given a chance. A lot of set aside the pandemic, of course that was a big like cultural reset. Sure. But the internet in general was a huge cultural reset where we've been given the opportunity to take the reins and where anybody can do this ministry.
Of course it's a calling, of course. It's takes a lot of work. It's not like it's easy, but it is something where truly the that inheritance is no longer necessary. You can use it as a tool. You can use it as something, you can take it and run with it. But it's not it is the only way that ministry is being done in an important way, and it's not the only way that the great commission is being fulfilled.
Right. So it's a great thing. Yeah. I think that's an important thing to note as people enter into their choices and why they put the baggage that they do. So let's continue on with the scenario from the beginning of. You learn about game church, you decide you're gonna start this thing, you've got this calling.
What is the first step of love of Lovelan in particular and of your streaming plan? You said you've been streamed out two years, but I think you said your calling was a little bit before that. Did you start on Twitch? Did you start on Discord? Were you doing YouTube lives?
Were you posting videos? Like what, how did it all kind of start to take shape at the beginning?
Yeah, so I, once I like, decided this is what I was gonna do once I heard that yeah what about a game church? I quit my job and I started working at a church, planning church and I was there for five years as a tech director.
And went through a, an entire church planning residency for a year. Was on the track to start a church, like a physical building. But in the process over those two years I didn't want to, while I was in it, I would say like a growing period mm-hmm. and really a learning period and just absorbing a lot of stuff from my pastors and stuff.
It was a there I wanted to still be, I wanted to know the type of people that I was going to try to reach mm-hmm. And so it was, I was connecting with people online because it's what I could do while I was working. And that process, that's the same thing with Game Church. Game Church ended up splitting Love Clan came out of that split the same way.
Love that I nerd did. Okay. So we all are like the people that you mentioned from Lovely nerd we're all close. Like we've hung out in person and in the past and love those guys. Love to still hang out with them and chat with them whenever I can. And so yeah, there's there's a lot of.
There's a lot of similarities in those for that reason. But that is a, the discord came out from that. Okay. And so the Discord grew and we were, Mm, I'd say, I don't know, it's like a, probably a couple hundred maybe then at that point. And it just grew from word of mouth. A lot of people just said, Oh yeah, like, let's play games or something.
And then they added their friends. Originally it was a Discord for Destiny specifically. And then we started one because we didn't, we realized Destiny was ebb and flow. We're gonna want one for all games. So we made a new one, and then people ended up coming over from that one. And yeah, it was a very, it was very much a, an online, very quick thing with Discord.
But through those relationships, I recognized at the beginning, this is when I started to really feel like. I needed to do it online only. And I wasn't gonna do the in person, cuz there was a point where I was like, I've decided I'm gonna do online. And the biggest point was that I was every night staying up so late that I would go into work later because I was one on one having these conversations through discord and people would message me just at all times of the day.
I was having a hard time getting my work done at church because I was responding to so many people's I'm dealing with this, I'm having this problem. Can you pray for me about these things? And so I was just responding to them all and I didn't have time to respond to all of them. And I, it felt very backwards to me.
That's what, Okay, so I'm working at a church and I'm having not enough time to do the church thing so that I can do the relationships with people. This matters so much more to me. Like I'm just, I need to figure out how to do this better. And yeah, that's, that the original. The shift that, that was for Discord.
Mm-hmm. . That was big thing shift for streaming actually came from. There's a friend from I that, I've had friends, I've been friends with him for nine years online, and we talk a lot. And his he's atheist. He's not he doesn't believe there's a god at all. But we've had lots of good conversations and he's been very open about things that, like what he thinks and how he feels about things.
And there we both went to Japan together and when we met in person, so that's another whole thing about meeting people online versus it was very natural. But that was, we met for the first time in Japan. And then was he went to the church. actually spoke at a church in Japan while I was out there with a transla.
Yeah. And cuz I had some friends from that were running a church in ju in Japan. And so he went there and he said, This is the kind of church I would go to if I was gonna go to one. Not that I would go to one, and that I invited him to this like motion or I invited him to this. We had a small group that we were running through the Discord and I just invited him to it and he said, Well here's the thing.
I can't spend that much time on something I don't believe in. Hmm. Just being very open about it. Sure. Which is, was very helpful. Yeah. But that, that made me think because we did spend a lot of time just streaming our games back and forth and just playing games and watching each other play games.
So that's why I was like, what if I just stream like what we've been doing? What if I just do that on Twitch and I do the Bible discussion there and then you can just watch and if you want you can tune in. But you don't have to cuz it, there was only 10, You can only have up to 10 people in a.
Discord with the private call. Sure. Nowadays you can do a channel and you can have cameras in the channel, but that it was only voice for channels Right. At the time. And you had to do video through the Yeah. So that was really, that was it. That's that's why I started streaming was so that I could do a Bible discussion while I was playing a game, which is now what we do every Saturday.
And he's been to a lot of them since then. Like almost all of them he's made. And and so that was, it was like specifically built, and this is why I say this, every Saturday we have the Bible discussion games in God for the purpose of people that have never read the Bible before. Mm-hmm. like we wanna have a, And the wording is really important to me too.
Like, I don't say a Bible study because if I can't replace the word Bible with science, then I don't say it. Hmm. So I wouldn't, I personally would never go to a science study because I've, I haven't studied science. I, that's That's, I'm like, there's gonna be a test or something, I'm there for like homework.
But that's, but we say Bible study, like it's just super common. Yeah. But when you replace certain words with other words, then it, you start to see like how it sounds to somebody on the outside. So I replace church with synagogue or with a church with a a mosque. So what would it take for me to go to a mosque on Sunday?
Well, I wouldn't go to a mosque. That's not my religion. Yeah, exactly. But if a friend invited me, maybe I would the coffee and the front would not convince me to go to the mosque. . I don't know why we think but the coffee's really good and we got donuts. And it's I, would you go to it for that?
So those are the questions that I've asked is okay, so what does that look like online? You know, with a we, I say bible discussion because I would go to a science discussion. I think a science discussion, it's, it just feels more open. It's Oh yeah you don't. Know too much about it.
It's not a study, it's just a discussion. We're just talking about it, trying to figure out what it's saying, understand it, and that's all we do. I don't, I say I don't write a sermon. I'm not like, I'm not smart like that and go to seminary. But just a guy that read the Bible and it changed my life, like I absolutely want everybody to have that experience.
I want them to know what it feels like to know there's a God that loves you and cares for you and wants the best for you. And so on Saturdays we re do a Bible discussion for people that have never read the Bible before. And it's the wording is ist, I think, important. And that's how I feel about the whole thing.
It's why I like, like I was saying, Oh, I won't define what it is and personally consider myself more missionary than a church planner. But that, but the missionary side of things requires more pastor pastoral care than a lot of than a lot of pastors do. I think on in a physical place.
Cuz I just spend so much time streaming for the purpose of where people are at, meeting 'em, where they're at. And then hopefully they will trust me with a Saturday where where we'll be able to really read through the Bible. And if not, usually it starts with prayer. You know, my favorite thing to do on stream is pray for people.
And if I get a chance to pray for you I consider that a huge honor. So those. Those are the I don't know. I can't remember the original question, but I we have no,
This is great. You're answering the question in more, so I mean Yeah. You're taking it to the next level and I appreciate it.
I think that the importance of language is great. And you violated something that we've definitely noticed in, just church at large with pastors are becoming more and more like chaplains. We're really serving on a health based level. We're doing visitation, and that's important ministry.
But we've become where all pastors are chaplains and nobody's really doing the mission work anymore. So I think that is a important highlight of who is, who's doing the work of meeting new people and reaching out to people that haven't heard the good news or haven't been had anybody just to sit down with them and bring them into an honest conversation.
And you've definitely expanded my mind a little bit with the idea of what would you replace the word with with a Bible study and with a science study, yeah that's a great point. I think that's a really awesome highlight. But taking it from the theological side to the professional side, you went from once a day, like you wanted to just do one Bible study, and now you have everyday streams, pretty much.
You've got you know, awesome custom panels on there where you talk about all the different things that are gonna happen on any general day. You you are a full-time every day streamer. Sometimes I'll catch you playing Neon White at at 7:00 AM the next day, from the night before.
How, what does that look like? What does a full-time streamer look like to you? What does what do you see your role being as a full-time daily streamer?
Hmm. Yeah. It's weird because like full-time generally would be the money side of things. Mm-hmm. . And a lot of this has come I've been blessed by a lot of online churches L'S, Digital, just.
Just as helping that again, as a missionary, like I require that Sure. To just make it, And I currently, I'm looking at buying a house, which would be really nice at some point, but right now I'm living in a basement. It's my dad's basement, which is a parsonage connected to the church that he pastors.
There we go. So this is not gonna be, I can't stay here super too much longer. But that's so the I never want a lot of people look at it and they're just like, Wow, like, how you do that? Well, a lot of it is just through, through that kind of stuff. Being allowed to have a space to live that relieves a lot of burden.
So the costs have been way, way cut down. But my, as far as time goes, yeah, I dedicate way more than 40 hours in a week, like probably 50 hours of just streaming by itself. And that's not including all the time to set everything up. Sure. I build everything myself. So we've got luckily I know most graphics so I can build my own graphics and make my animations and change overlays and all this.
And for me it's a lot of 1% better every day. I say that a lot, 1% better every day because that's how, I think that's the only way to really, to get to all the stuff you just said is it's overwhelming. Sure. There's no way anybody could start at that stage. And so instead it's, at the beginning it was really easy.
I would do one thing and the stream would be 10% better. We're gonna, I'm gonna get a camera like, Oh wow. Like now we have a camera. That's so much better. I'm gonna use my phone instead of the camera. Oh, wow. My phone camera's way better like it, it took me an hour to figure out how to get that set up with the app, but like now it's way better.
Oh. Like I figured out I can color change. The camera and now it matches everything else. Okay, that was better. And I've figured out how to use a, I have a green screen sheet, like, oh that improved it. And it was just through the small, like one thing at a time. Small improvements and it gets the 1% takes more time now, cuz to improve a stream every day by 1% now is really difficult when you're like, it looks good, I don't know what I wanna change.
And oh, I have to, I have hardware limitations. I can't do anything else without it. I've had to remove things. I have things I'm waiting to put back in that I can't because it's it's, I'm at a, I'm at a limit on stuff, right?
Yeah, we're getting to the point now where we're still with a whole lot of excitement.
So whenever we started streaming, we did two days a week, and then we'd start, we added a third day and I was like, Look at this. We're a third day. This is crazy. And then I was like, what's next for us? And so we extended 'em out by an hour. So we added technically a whole nother day by extending them out.
And we just changed our schedule this week where now we're pretty much going every day of the week with every other Friday. So that's an exciting change. And it's wow. It's it feels like there's no ceiling, but of course there is, Right? There is a limit. There's a point where you just simply can't put anything else towards the time.
And so you have to work on improving the craft and improving the things that are going on during the stream. So what does that look like for you? Is it, you have your parameters that you work within your themes of each day? But even then do you find that it becomes just mostly interacting with the chat?
Is that what makes the day to day different? Or do you have. Do you spend time, at the writer's room on a table figuring out what you're gonna do this week? What does that look like?
No, I definitely don't. I definitely don't do any of the I'm not a very big prep, prep ahead of time guy.
And a lot of that is, a lot of that came from the same thing I was saying about the like Saturday thing. Mm-hmm. , I don't even read the chapter ahead of time. We're going one chapter at a time through the Bible. And I don't want to, I don't want it to, I don't wanna get in my mind it's it's the d and d problem, like some dms are so dungeon masters.
They're like super, super into I'm gonna write this story and it's this way and it's gonna be such a rigid system. And then what if your party members are just really interested in this rock and it's really important and like this, No, trust me, that's not an important npc. And it's yeah, but what, did they have something secret going?
You have to be a little bit loo, a little bit malleable for that. And this I'm not writing sermons and that's, but we do three hour discussions every Saturday through, through the, it takes us three hours almost every week to read through a chapter of the Bible because people have questions.
And I know this is completely off of what you were saying, but it's, I think it's an important, I think it's important to, to connect these things because I, one thing that I've noticed a lot with pastors, and this is what was my core why I did it the way I did discussion based, is people, pastors were, in my opinion, answering questions that people weren't asking.
Hmm. Like I would watch a sermon and I would hear a verse and be like, Oh wow, like I really wonder about this. And then they would talk about a whole different verse for like the whole sermon. And it's a verse and I'm like, Yeah, I already know. Like I already know that's not. I was curious about what you thought about this thing.
It feels like you just dodged it because you didn't wanna talk about it. Or maybe cuz you just didn't think that maybe that wasn't something that you thought of, whatever. And so instead we just read and people come up with things that are like, Hey, I actually just read a verse that this reminded me of and it was this.
And what do you think about that? And why do some people read it this way? And, you it's, that's what you're trying to do as a pastor is to think like that, right? Yeah. Like a good pastor tries to know their community well enough to answer the questions they're gonna have, but they do it without them asking them.
And it's like that so many loops to jump through co compared to when you're streaming they're asking them they're literally just saying them in the chat right there. And you have to like, and you respond to those and And I think the problem becomes if you feel like you have to have the answers, like you have to be the person that knows everything.
And I just, that was the pride of just, I had to get rid of that and just say, Hey I'm not gonna know everything guys. I'm not even a pastor. I'm just a guy who read the Bible. So if I say anything helpful, then that's just, wow. You know? But we can Google it if we don't know it, or we can ask Chad, or I can just come back to you later.
That would work if I don't know the answers. But I'm just gonna be open and we're just gonna chat. That was, I
think that that's a, that's a very Jesus like method of approaching it with a question. Mm-hmm. , right? Entering into the conversation and just letting it be a conversation. Something that I like to wax poetic about too often is I think that we think that the Bible is all that Jesus ever did, but I wonder how many things were too boring to write about.
I wonder how many times Jesus just sat in a room with some people and they just made jokes, or they just hung out or just talked about whatever was going on, or the weather that day. Like we don't have that stuff written down because the, writers didn't think it was important, but that stuff happened.
And so just entering into general conversation with people and asking questions of them, I think that's incredibly vital to what we do.
I don't think I answered your question at all on that one. I No, you definitely did. I completely
dodged it. Definitely did. That basis of a full-time streamer, what does the streamer life look like?
Why full-time? And then how do you prep for that full-time work? So I think you definitely Okay. Wrestled it and answer that. It's just kind of off the cuff. You've got your themes to work with them, but for the most part just bring to it with the chat, bring to it and if the chat isn't there, just roll with
the bunches.
Right. I'll add to that, that my first year cuz I, yeah, that's what I wanted to, How about my first year of streaming? I streamed 17 hours a day on average. Oh my goodness. So I went the other way. I went the other way. You were saying like, we're adding things, that's probably you more healthy. That healthy.
But I was like I didn't ex when I started streaming, I did not expect to do it as a job at all my, the first time somebody gave me a sub, I laughed cuz I was like, bro, it, you don't get the payouts until a hundred dollars. So it's not gonna be, it's gonna be like, two years from now before I ever even get whatever you just subbed with your prime gaming.
But thanks, it's so funny now cuz it's like monthly thing now. Right. But that was a it was not at all that, and it still isn't about that. It's just there was one person there that I was actually having good conversations with and then there was a second person and a third person and I was like, I'm having three good conversations with people while I'm playing video games.
Mm-hmm. . That's crazy. That's why would I want to do anything else? Mm-hmm. not everybody would feel that way. Some people, some people relate with that, that, probably the people that are listening to this podcast probably relate to that, but recognize that there's, that is a what one in a hundred people would actually want to do that at all.
Right. Like it's a dream job for me now. But I didn't even think about it. It was just as a job. It was just like, I am playing a video game and chatting with friends and like we're having real conversations and just getting to know each other, and that's all I've ever wanted. I grew up as like the nerd that had to play games by himself because nobody wanted to play games because it was too nerdy.
And it was like, all I really want is one friend to just chat with while I'm playing this game. And like, they can take a turn, we just pass the controller back and forth. That's all I really wanted. And it's like I get to do that as a daily basis thing, get to be that for some people. To where I just, that's all I, that's really what I needed.
And so I don't know that was the 17 hour grind was just waking up and then stream and waking up in stream. And I've, I still do that a little bit, but I've pulled back to do other things like fixing the stream, but also to just watch other streamers. To help other streamers. I don't want the stream to grow big.
I've actually hit a limit where I don't want it to get much bigger. I'm, I stopped posting on Instagram and on TikTok cuz it was being effective. I was like starting to get people from there and I realized I didn't want it. If the stream gets too much larger, I miss chat and I miss the prayers and stuff.
And so, yeah. As it is right now, I've tried to stop this stream from growing for about a year. It's stayed pretty static at about where it's at, which is good. I stay at about a 30, 35 people is like, when it starts to get too high. So when I get big raids, it's thank you, but like I'm actually, I'm hoping that I get one person from this raid that like they really needed. Yeah. Whatever I can bring and I that. That's good. But and so a bit grade is nice just cuz maybe there's one or two people that just happens to be the type of person that I can connect with.
But I'm, I am not looking, I don't want, hun I don't even want partner numbers. Honestly. I'm not looking for it. I don't think it's, I don't think it should be the goal for everybody. Mm-hmm. , I think most streamers focus, they think of growing their stream. I posted this, but like a lot of people, when they think of growing their stream, they think of numbers.
They immediately, first thing is average viewer growing my stream, average viewer. It's the very first thing people think about. And I don't think that should even be a thought. I don't think that should be the main thought. Your growing your viewers as a, like the relationships that you have with your viewers.
Yeah. How does it look like to grow that relationship? Should be the absolutely first thing and. And so I, that's what I focused on is the people there are really mean a lot to me. Mm. A lot of them have my address. Like we chat outside of the stream a lot. We're Facebook friends. It's just a much more personal connection and it than probably a lot of other streams.
And I can only manage that because it's not bigger. And if it gets bigger I'll have to, I'll have to figure that out I guess at that time. And I'll have to pivot cuz it's not like a small group where you can just split it and make it, but that's why I've been pouring into other streamers a lot because I need them to be, if I do, if something's changes, I need to be able to lean on other streamers that I can put people to and say this is a place that you can get that more in intimate then I can give you right now.
And and so that's Love Plan has shifted a lot to. streaming as a helping grow other streamers. Mm-hmm. so that we can make sure people are still getting that without it maybe coming from me and I'm having to change roles a little bit.
Gotcha. I think knowing your why is an incredibly important thing, knowing why you're doing what you're doing.
We, we, we set that out after a couple months of doing everything and realizing that oh, we shouldn't be on every platform because that's gonna burn me out real quick as the pastor and the one doing the things. We figured Twitch the number that we care about. Is we consider it our coffee shop.
So we're like going into the coffee shop and parking ourselves and talking and getting to know people. So even more than average viewers, even more than relationships really for us is like, how many unique eyeballs saw us today? How many people saw us hanging out in the coffee shop? That's like our parameter.
And then on Discord is where we're building the relationships. And so we, we made the difference there for ourselves of like, why are we on Twitch? Do we care about making partner? No, that's not our priority at all. We're much more concerned if our discord ever starts to plummet or if we have nobody interact over the period of, whatever time that's gonna stress me out.
And that's gonna be like, All right, time to pivot. Because that's much more our priority knowing the why are we there and why are we here? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's really good. That's totally, Yeah. So thinking in line with this though, you're talking a little bit about where you don't want to go like right now, but what does the future look like for Love Clan for eight Live?
Where do you wanna be in like five years? Have you even thought of that? Is that even a consideration or is that a just living in. .
Yeah. I mean, the plans of man will fail, so, Mm. Yeah. Whatever. I wasn't expecting to ever do streaming five years ago, so it wasn't I don't think it would really help to think like that.
Sure. It, but it, I do, I plan to continue to improve this stream specifically 1% better every day. That's, I just continue down that path. That's just out of respect for the people that have, they give this, the time, they give it the money. I'm gonna continue to put that back into it.
Time and effort and all that. And and also just if we're gonna do all things for the glory of God, then if it's Christian, it should be better. A lot of times it ends up being Christian gets this like second rate, the, like the worst movies and the worst games and the like, the worst everything.
Because it's just second rate and it should be the best music, it should be. People are like, I can't, I have to like, not think about the lyrics because, but the dang, the music is so good, it's just not, and it's repetitive and it's cookie cutter and it's rare.
It's rare to find some people get it across the board. Some people really get it and they get it. It's it's the best. But a lot of times I think we have a lot of cookie cutter stuff and so I, I wanna make sure that it's not that I wanna make sure it's really crispy.
But I would say I, I hope that I could look back five years from now and count my successes not through my thing, but through other people's things. I'd, I really hope I'll be able to look back and be like, That person did this and this person did this. And and just be able to list off all the things that other people I was able to like, be a small part of helping, because I will not always be here.
And so this being a disciple and making disciples that, that is seeing the garden in somebody else's fields, and really being like there, I have my small area but the amount of impact that I can have by making a few disciples can make disciples and make disciples to generation and generation past that.
And so I'm a lot, I'm shifting now and I need to shift more to figuring out how to help other people do the same thing. Mine's been, has been effective. Like I, I have. I love being able to look at this and say, yes. Like God has absolutely used this in huge ways, way beyond what I would've ever expected.
But if I want to see that again, I don't think it's gonna be in my scaling. Like I said I don't think it'll be more effective if mine's double the size. I think it actually becomes half as effective from where I'm at right now. So this is the sweet point of everything that I add to this will not really improve it, it will just dilute it.
It's the big, deep and wide type of thing. Sure. Like how far, how much, and and that's not, maybe not bad. Like maybe the diluting is not bad. If it is, if there are conversations being had outside of that. If the one-on-ones are quality and I can whatever, But I'm thinking I will probably have to shift more to being a really good streamer to like, How can I help other people be goods really good streamers, and how can we help other people really catch the vision of making disciples that make disciples?
And if there was a lot of streamers, we had a whole streamer culture that all thought that way. That's I think the only way that we're ever gonna reach millions. And I don't think it's gonna happen through a single stream. Sure. I, that's, I think that's what'll happen. I think that's the love Klan's move in the next five years.
I think that's my move in the next five years. But God could say Nope you're going to Japan now and not later. And that's, it'd be a whole different thing. I might be streaming on a 12 hour shift.
Well, we have a question here from the community that I wanna make sure that we ask from a nerds, a prey listener here who knows a little bit about the kind of intersectionality of your ministry and of your growing up in, in real geocity or whatever it may be.
And they ask, what is one thing from traditional, And by traditional, I assume they just mean like the church we all grew up in. What's one thing from a physical church building structure that you have either brought with you to online ministry or that you think is really everyone should bring with them to online ministry and then vice versa.
So what's one thing the traditional church can do for the online, and what's one thing the online can bring to the traditional?
Yeah, I brought my bible actually from the church now .
That's a great answer. That's Sunday school 1 0 1, right? I love it. Yeah. Bible,
Jesus, God. . I, Yeah, that's a good, that's a good question.
What did we bring.
I don't know. I don't, I, it's, that's difficult for me to think about. It's difficult for me to think about cuz I, I don't know what I don't know where the line on that is. It's really blurry cuz there's a I was a tech director, so I did all the technology for the church and that kind of just transfers over where it's yeah, you know how they're looking at the screen during the sermon and it's got all the graphics on the screen and then they, and then the sermon's being played, but they can look up at the screen and read the stuff.
It's what if we just cut that out and instead of them coming to our screen, we did it at home , and they just read the screen on their screen. And, but there wouldn't be a person there. It doesn't really matter. They're sitting so far back that the person's on the stage and like they've got a microphone and so they're hearing it through speakers.
What if they were hearing it through their speakers? To me it was a lot less of this like huge weird disconnect that people say of let's, like online versus the in person. And it was just this natural like it, it was, it's just gray. It's just this like slow gray fade into it's not really that different.
Like people are on their phones while the sermons are going on and they're looking up recipes for what to eat, that after the sermon's done, like they're doing other things at the same time. What if they could do that? But they did it any time during the week. What if they could had access to the sermon's 24 7?
And when they're dealing with things on a. A Sunday morning or on a Wednesday afternoon, and they're really needing something. What if it was there? And so the, I really I found it very fascinating that there was this whole online versus in person thing. , because I was just like it's just a, both are good, neither's bad, but it's not even a, as black and white as you put it.
Like you're gonna do no technology in the church. No, There's gonna be some technology. Well, do you live streamer services? Yeah. We've always live streamed it. It's like, it was always a fade. There was always something else there, but we hit a certain point where we were like, No, no, no, no, no.
Now it's too far and we don't, whatever. So I don't know if there's really, I don't know if there's really a line that I could draw and say like the online versus the in, in person. I don't know. I honestly don't, I don't, I can't think of anything. Has come from one or the other.
I, I don't, I guess I don't really see it that way, . Well, I think
you, you still highlighted a good point of just talking about the nuance between the two. And so many people do wanna draw that line, and they want to draw a line in the sand between the two. But the reality is that the presentation isn't what matters.
It's the kind of discipleship that happens behind the he screen. What are we actually doing? What are we actually making a difference here? And some churches are really good at that, some are really bad online and physical. Yeah. It's just a matter of answering that question of are you actually reaching?
Are you actually doing the work? What comes for me with traditional ministry is always the kind of sacramental rights, obviously the sacraments, those are important. I don't even wanna debate 'em. Sure. But, the things that aren't sacraments that are foe sacraments that we turn into these things that are maybe more important than they actually are worth.
That's more the area where I'm more concerned of what role does music take place online? We don't have a worship service at Checkpoint, even though we do Dawn the name church. We are Checkpoint Church. We don't have a worship service, and I'm not sure we ever will. And our sermons are not like normal sermons where I do this particular thing and we have the doxology and then we do our ties and collections.
Right? There's there's certain sacred cows that we worship that, that exist in a traditional ministry setting that I don't think translates so well. But something that does work really. For us, at least in our particular context, is like prayer requests. That was something that even in the church model that I was growing up in, took more of a backseat.
It became less of a thing where it was like, you don't have a prayer time cuz there's too many people in the room. Whereas now we have a constant 24 7 discord channel where it's like you can drop a pair any time you've got one. You don't have to wait for that 10 minute segment on Sunday morning that you can raise your hand and unspoken right.
That the, there's none of that anymore. So that's something that I think has come from traditional ministry that's almost blossomed into something new in a digital ministry that I really appreciate. That is good. We're almost to our final question here, which is our classic, But I always like to ask this question of looking at the big picture, and this may even go back to what you were talking about with your kind of training streamer's idea for your five year plan.
But what do you think the big picture future of the connection between faith and pop culture looks like for you? And you've been a part of it, you've seen a pretty big evolution of game church into all these different things, and there's Christian gamer's guilt before that. There's been this evolution that's happened.
And so if you could think of what the future looks like where do you think this particular connection will be headed in the future?
Yeah. I'm, I am worried for the next generation. And everybody always says that, but I really am, I'm really, You look at like Gen Z and.
That's like the most connected generation and it's the least connected from the church. They, if we're not finding ways to connect with them then that's on us. Like that they have every, we have every excuse to connect with them. Like there's so many different ways to connect and instead it's a lot of like guilt blaming of they just don't want to go to the church and they don't wanna go to the way that you've done it.
And the methods change. So it is definitely a, I would say in America, again, we always have to like kind of premise cuz it's a lot different in other countries. Sure. But like in America, definitely we're in a bit of a do or die. A lot of churches are probably gonna die, I'd say in the next 10 to 20 years.
I was expecting that before c. And c was like a nice excuse for a lot to bow out that probably should have done it five years ago. I think there's a large number that just did not it's like blockbuster, that just way too slow on the uptake on these things. And I think it will become, like I said, where it's this kind of this we think of gray as a bad thing, but th this phasing of like local and physical and you get it where you are and for where you can and what you what you need.
And that I think is just gonna be a lot more necessary. It allows for a lot more, it allows for more consumption and it allows for a lot more time with people. The amount of time that I, people are talking about though in person is just so much better because you can hug and because you can touch and you can give and all this, but like the amount of time you can spend with somebody online mm-hmm.
just outweighs it. It doesn't matter. I, if you can, a hug is worth whatever, however many hours, doesn't matter. Whenever I'm like 50 hours a week with people and you get 30 minutes on a Sunday or, whatever. That that difference is so big that it's the same thing between somebody that really likes movies and goes to the movie theater once a week versus somebody that now has Netflix.
Like they just have infinite access to it whenever they want it. And it's wow man, they just they're going at it. And I think that same thing is what will and should happen to our churches, to our online, to our. I, we need to see, we need to see more specific sermons being available at any time.
Not just the whatever one you had on Sunday, but if you're dealing with anxiety, you should be able to have easy access to those sermons at quick when you need it. And I should have access so that I can give them to the people that need them. And that I should say, watch this and this really, this is what the Bible says about this.
I should have access to that. And the fact that hasn't been done yet is something that's really I've struggled with. I built a whole website idea around it and tried to get funding and but there's, there is a large, that is what's I think is gonna change, is it needs to be more accessible and more on demand and more, And we think those are just negative things because we've heard from other sources that these are negative things.
It maybe is negative when you can binge Netflix, we saw with the with the. People will consume that content if it's high quality. Right. If it is available. And like it's hu it's huge and we need more of it. And so I think of it if it's through streamers playing video games, if it's through groups of people just, watching stuff together and talking about it or whatever.
I've seen lots of d and d groups that are ho hosting, like Christian campaigns. Absolutely. Figuring out how that works. I just think we gotta get more creative. And it's not for the matter of like creativity's sake, but it's just as a people, we are so fed with all this content that if we're not, if we're not in that space, I think we're just, we're missing out on a lot a lot of opportunities.
So I don't know. I don't know what it looks like in the future, but I know that you can just look at how. How the generation will be in the near future, in the, like next five to 10 years, they're gonna be all connected online. They're already all connected online, and we're gonna see more VR spaces and we're gonna see, whatever meta's gonna be.
So it's just, you look at what that is. And if we're, if the church is not matching, that is not the message, the message stays the same, but if the methods are not matching the direction that the world is going where they are not meeting them, where they're at, then then it will fail.
It will not, it won't be there anymore. . Yeah, it, cuz you can't run a church without people and if they're not going to show up where you are, cuz you don't show up to where they are, then you can't expect it to. Yeah,
I think there's like a new wave of digital monasticism that's coming into the world where it's like, we need to be digital monks.
We need to be people that are just living here constantly. We're existing on this space. And I think that's something that I'm wrestling with as we continue to plant this church in the sense of a very much mainline denomination. That some people get it and some people really don't.
Right? . And so it's like figuring out how to way weigh those things and to explain those things and to work through them. I think you, you've put it to a really interesting explanation behind it. And I can even think of, there are like a couple of like keystone sermons that live in. Rent free.
Right. Where I think of like, Love him or hate him, went through some controversies, but like Rob Bell's neuma videos in my head forever. Yeah. Like, I will never forget Noma, and I'll never forget Louis Giglio's, how great they are, where he went through space. And those are like, Louis Giglio preaches every single week at Passion, but I know one sermon from him and I'm never gonna forget it.
Right. And I wonder if we should be thinking more about that. Like what is our one sermon, what is our one thing that we wish that people would never forget us for and would just answer the question that we need answered, Scratch the itch we need scratched. I think that's a great word.
That's a great thing to think about. For clergy or for people that are in this in this space of understanding what they can get from a digital ministry and what they should need from it. So yeah, that's, Awesome stuff. I like to always close these with the same three questions.
They're the same questions that we ask on our discord, and they're just questions that I think humanize all of us. This may be a tough question for you because as you've said, it's all of it. But what are you watching what are you playing and what are you reading right now? What are the things that are currently in your sphere?
Mm. I'm currently watching I'm trying to learn Japanese. I'm watching UU hockey show with love, no, English subtitles. So I'm just watching it in Japanese and I understand, 10% maybe of what's happening . But that's, I'm watching that in do rayman, which is japanese cartoon. Sure. Little blue cat guy or whatever. And I'm watching that the same way because it's just easy Japanese to consume and without subtitles.
And is that a first watch of you h a show or have you already seen it before? Yeah.
Yeah, It's the first watch. Wow.
So, man, that's gotta be fascinating
It is difficult. I had already watched Hunter. Hunter, Okay. So like I follow the style is the premise, of what's going on cuz Yeah. As like a showman. But yeah. So that, that, that's what I'm watching. I'm playing, I just finished Neon White since we mentioned it. Yeah. I'm loving it.
I'm like 90 hours or something in and I feel like the game just started cuz now I'm going for No, it's getting real speed runs and Yeah, I'm currently, I'm now top 1000, so I just hit 9, 9, 900 something. So I'm I'm just slowly grinding rink, trying to get that. And then one, am I reading?
I try to read chat every day. I read a lot of chat messages. Honestly, it is funny cuz I feel like I've, I feel like I read a ridiculous amount and I just recently realized like how much, I'm like, Oh, I don't really read too much. And then I thought about it, I was like, I'm literally reading all day, like crazy amount.
But if I'm I was, I'm reading a little bit of, I have this here, but this just came out, but it's called Metachurch. Oh yeah. It's a great book. Yeah. So I've been reading that a little bit and I'm reading some stuff from Alan Hirsch. He's got some things on five Voices, the Aest and whatever, reading some of his stuff.
And yeah, I think that's,
Very cool. I'm in, in starting I wasn't planning on starting it, but Lys recoil, I wasn't gonna start it. But then Hadda Kajima tweeted about it and I was like, Well, if it's good enough for Kajima, then I think I have to watch this show. And so I've started that and I'm loving it and then I'm playing through Xena Blade three.
Of course, gotta play it. As soon as I saw it came out, I was like, I loved one and two so much. I haven't played X because I got a, we used super late, but I'll eventually play that. I guess it was also on the Ds or something, three Ds, or maybe I'll get back to it. And then I just started reading goodnight, pun pun, somebody.
Normally I don't listen to YouTube comment sections. Mm. Yeah. But this is a manga. And somebody in the comment sections is one of our videos was like, You should do a sermon on Goodnight bun bunt. And I was like, that's an interesting recommendation. Never heard of that one. Yeah. So I looked it up and I will say real.
Very, very disturbing. , but absolutely immersive. I'm totally in the world. Every single chapter it ends with like this big twist and I'm like, Well, I gotta read the next chapter now, so Right. Right. Enjoying that. And I, that's what manga does best for me, so I try to read a chapter of manga every day just to keep myself in it.
And that's been a fun one, yeah. Awesome. Love it. That is gonna wrap us up for now, so I just wanna turn the forward over to you for any shout outs. Any things that you want to do. Don't follow you on Twitch, or at least don't watch you on Twitch Live. Give you a follow, but then don't watch live if it's above 35, if you see's got 35 just people hop out there, right?
Yeah,
yeah. It's just the, Yeah it's really tough cuz like 35, I've been in chats that have a thousand people. And the chat is slower than. And so I don't know. It's really difficult because there's some days, like usually nights you hit after midnight and chat goes dead or whatever.
And, but there's a lot of lurkers and then everybody raids because they're gonna go to bed. And so I've had points like where my stream is the most viewers, I have the least amount of engagement. And where my stream has the least amount of engagement, usually 10 or something on maybe Sunday earlier today there's I think 12 people.
Sure. But I couldn't keep up just chat, chat just is going as fast as it can. So that's an interesting, like what to do with that. And so when I, you were saying like, you look at the eyes a lot of the time, at the end of the month, I look at how many chat messages Yeah. I got every month.
That's a good one. And that's like one one of the most important for me. So yeah. Anyway yeah, I'm, I guess I'm live, I'm on I'm on Twitch, Jet Live Discord love clan.net. And. Maybe if you wanna add me on a video game or something, just send me a message on Discord J 0 0 0 1 and we can play something sometime.
I'd love to chat if maybe there's somebody that's thinking about, if you're listening to this podcast, there's a good chance that you're already deep into this. And so at that point you should probably message me so that we can help figure out how to make you a streamer. , there you go. So that you could do the same things.
So if you wanna just message me I'd love to help anybody that's interested in that and just have that, start that conversation at
least. Or at the very least, get your steam code and see if they can't beat your uh, leaderboard on neon white. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. At the very least. All right, very cool.
Thank you so much for being here, Jay. We appreciate ya. And we'll be sure to put all that stuff down in the description down below so they can find all that information. But thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me.