What happens when your faith questions lead you down a
YouTube rabbit hole? On this episode
of Compass Finding Spirituality in the Everyday, we sit down with
Reverend Matt Patrick, an Oklahoma pastor,
theologian and creator of the Connectionalist
YouTube channel, and we dig into how digital
spaces are shaping our spiritual journeys. We're going to hear
how Matt's passion for deep theological conversations,
honest exploration of doubt and Methodist pers
come to life online and what it really means
to connect faith to everyday living in a hyper connected world.
This episode scratches a couple inches for me as of course I love
exploring the ways in which faith is an always on presence in our
lives, but I also love learning about some of the innovative ways
that the church moves into the world. Now, for a lot of people,
talking about faith on YouTube probably doesn't sound that innovative
anymore, but as Matt is going to point out, it's not a widely
utilized pursuit in my slice of the faith o
spear, so to speak. Cool. So stick with us.
Discover how YouTube communities and thoughtful dialogue and a spirit
of curiosity are helping people encounter faith in church
in fresh ways. And of course, if you find conversations
like this valuable, well then like subscribe,
leave a comment or a review on your podcast listening platform
of choice. Thanks. Let's meet Reverend Matt
Patric. Now we're gonna get talking outreach and
theology, all in the course of talking about YouTube.
As you've been growing your channel on YouTube, I'm wondering if there are
other rabbit holes or channels that you seem to get
sidetracked by. Like what are some of your favorite things to just research out on
YouTube these days? Oh, YouTube is an
infinite source of folly and
wisdom at the same time. I,
I honestly, my main passion is actually not the theology,
which is probably going to be surprising. American history has always been one of
my deepest research passions. I went to school for theology for seven years. So obviously
I, I do like it. I, I have a YouTube channel about it,
but I would never start a YouTube channel about American history because I, I'm not
credentialed, you know, in the same way to talk about, I don't speak with any
kind of like, I don't think authority. Not that that matters on YouTube apparently,
right. To a lot of people. But American history
vlogging through a lot. Chris, Chris
Mai at Vlogging through History. He does a lot of reaction content. He's a
historian. He does a lot of his original content. He's kind of an expert in
the American Civil War, which is one of my main areas of study
is, is in, in American history is that period. So I love
theology, but then I'm also a nerd. So video games,
card games, that kind of stuff. That's. That's what I'm on YouTube a lot for.
Yeah. Do you go down the rabbit hole of watching live stream on
video games? You know, it's funny.
Yes. At a certain point in my life, yes, I
was very into like Twitch and live streams and stuff like that. And I would
watch a lot of streaming stuff. Now that I'm not single,
I find that we watch a lot of. My fiance
and I watch a lot of content together. Right. And Twitch is something
I watched when I was single and it was like in the background a lot.
And I'm usually not like, you know what I'm saying? So now I've had like
a dynamic shift in my life, so I don't watch. Now you have a companion.
It was a companion and now I have a companion. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good
way. That's a good way to put it. So, yeah, I, I watch. I still
watch live streams from time to time. And
speed, I like speed running. I don't know if you know what that is. Video
games, people playing video games as fast as possible. It's like a fun,
very nerdy niche of the Internet. That's, that's pretty fascinating actually, the
deeper you dive into it. So. Well, your channel is the
connectionalist. What inspired your channel? Well,
you know, there's some pretty specific instances about that. I,
I started following theology YouTube just a few months
ago, actually. I didn't really engage that side of the
Internet. You know, it was my job. Right. So I'm not on YouTube to follow
stuff for my work. And so
I, I started watching some content. There was some really good stuff out there. But
what really spurred it on is conversations I was having
with students. I'm a pastor at University United Methodist
Church. It's on the campus of the University of Tulsa,
which is a Division 1 college. It's the only church on campus.
And so a lot of people are like, oh, you're a campus minister? I'm like,
no, no. I'm a pastor of a church. It's a full church.
We have a campus. We have a Wesley foundation across the street from
us. But historically the church has just been there since,
in some ways before the university. And so the church has been there a really,
really long time. And I just, I
interact with a lot of students. And what I was really finding is
they were getting their theological formation on YouTube, almost
all of them that I was Talking to were getting
theologically formed by YouTubers primarily, or people that had
a YouTube presence. And the more I went down the rabbit
hole, I realized there's not a ton of methodist presence on YouTube. There's
a ton of Catholic presence. Presbyterians.
I had a commenter the other day say that's because those two traditions
emphasize academics and learning more than
Methodism maybe does. And I thought that was an interesting. That
was an interesting thing. I'm not sure if I completely agree
with, but I think he may be on to something with that also. There's just
a lot of Catholics. There's like, there's over a billion of them. Right. So that's
just that. But. But Presbyterians seem to be
in some ways disproportionately represented on YouTube versus how
many Presbyterians there are. And so I was like, well, there's not a lot of
Methodist present, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna start this and see where it goes. So.
Yeah. All right. So when you were
designing the channel, did you have an audience of your students in mind?
Yeah, that was kind of the audience I started with in mind was,
you know, it's really funny. I didn't, like, sit down and do, like, a plan
and be like, oh, man, I'm gonna target this demographic now. I will tell
you my. Analy tell you. Over 90%
of my viewers are men. And. And
almost 90 plus percent of them are under the age of 40. Okay.
Which is a pretty standard. Fascinating, isn't it? Because if you go through most
churches, those are not the demographics that you see. Yeah, yeah.
Churches these days are mostly older folks and mostly
majority women, for sure. I think. I think the church has
long understood that without the women, the church actually wouldn't operate
because the women do the majority of the work. The congregations I've ever served.
And so it is very interesting
to see that. And I'm sure that's a. That's almost an episode in
and of itself of why that's happening. Yeah.
Was there a specific kind of spiritual hunger or a need that
you were trying to address? Like, when you were laying out the channel, did you
have it in mind to say, like, I definitely need to talk about
this topic and this topic. Yeah.
What I have noticed, Ryan, and this is a larger trend
that's starting to bear out in the data. And so I'm starting to say it
more and more confidently. I firmly believe that the
pendulum is shifting in American religion
back towards traditional expressions of Christianity.
That has been, I think, the case for a while. I think it's been the
case since the pandemic, and I think it's mostly being driven by young
people. And the reason I say that is because when
I started at University, Methodist, of course, it was under the pandemic. But even the
year one students were coming back, we had a hard time getting students involved.
We would do all sorts of outreach stuff, and we just couldn't get students involved.
But then this year, all of a sudden, there's just 20
students just coming every Sunday. I haven't even
talked to them. They just show up. That's not
normal. That's not the norm. That those of us who are
millennials and older, the church we've been living in for the last 20 years, that's
not a normative experience. And nothing had really changed.
There wasn't a lot. There wasn't a ton of change that had happened. And when
I got to start talking to some of the students, what I found out is
most of them were interested in traditional expressions of
Christianity, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox.
They found my church, which is very high church, Methodism. Of course, Methodism is a
broad spectrum. Right. In terms of worship, but mine's very high
church, very traditional, and that's what they were resonating with.
And so when I set out to do the channel, I set out
to kind of address some of the things that have been coming up in conversation,
which is just like theological matters. Right. I do
believe this, Ryan. This is a critique on Methodism that I think is completely
fair, and that is we have focused so much on
doing Christianity and Methodism that we have forgotten how to articulate the
faith, and we don't articulate the faith as well as we could.
And we are in an era where I actually think that's more important than
ever because there are so many articulations accessible. And
so articulating Wesleyan Arminianism. Right. Articulating that
viewpoint is important, and what we say about God
matters. And so what I set out on the channel, it was. I'm going to
talk about that hard. The hard
theology stuff that isn't being addressed by
our churches a lot. Yeah. How much of
that, in terms of lose. Kind of losing the language to
express the faith or being. Yeah. Unable to
articulate. How much do you attribute that to. To kind
of being a complexity of. Of faith?
Because I can remember, like, wanting to sit down for
ordination interviews, for example, and just wishing that I could just kind
of say, like, well, in. In Second Corinthians, it says this,
and then everybody would just kind of be like, yeah, that's what it says. All
right, next question. Yeah, yeah, but there's more to it than that. So
as part of what you're trying to accomplish, like providing a lens for people
to begin to identify how they might
articulate some of these deeper topics or. Yes,
I specifically think the Wesleyan Armenian and when. I mean, Armenian for
viewers who may not know the, the kind of free will approach
to the way God works in our salvation. Right.
That perspective is somewhat unique in Christianity
in terms of. There's a lot of more. The predestination side, the
Calvinism side, even Catholicism is a form of predestination.
But that Wesleyan Arminianism, I think is such an
important witness in the modern world. And Methodism is such
a. I always call it a thinking person's tradition. And I think
Catholicism and Presbyterianism are thinking persons traditions as
well, where we really emphasize
the, the proper articulation of God or
actually the rigorous academic trying to understand God and
study who God is and understand that. And yeah, there is a
complexity to it that I think, I think
sometimes we don't want to take on because it is like you said,
you know, I wish we could, I wish we could just say, well,
we're just all going to love Jesus and do stuff, but it's just not that
simple. Right. Like what we say about God matters. And I think in
this modern day, with Gen Z and below,
they're like, well, why is your articulation of God better?
Or why is your articulate, why should I believe your articulation of who God is
versus what the Catholics are saying or the Eastern Orthodox Church is saying?
And if we don't engage that discussion,
it's really easy to lose it. I think a good example of this is
communion. I think I handled this on our channel. I
think Methodism got very close in the late 20th
century, in the early 21st century, to almost losing
the central place of communion in worship to the point where
I was serving in churches, where it almost felt like communion was a chore. It
was like, oh yeah, it's this thing we got to do once a month. It
takes a really long time. But the proper place of communion is actually the
center of our worship. Not preaching, not music. It's supposed to be the
centerpiece. And we almost lost that in our tradition.
And so I see a lot of younger ministers trying to like reclaim that piece.
And so because it is so complex, I think sometimes we just would
rather throw up our hands and be like, let's just, let's Just serve God and
love God. And I think that's great. But I also think about what we say
about God matters, and we should engage that part of the faith as well.
Yeah, I love that idea of kind of reclaiming communion
as the. The centerpiece, not just of, like, the worship service, but as the
centerpiece of kind of our. Our rhythmic community, our
existence. Yeah, yeah. It's. It's. It really should
be the centerpiece of our existence, like, as Christians. Right. Like, it is
the one thing that we have done from the very beginning that is basically
untouched and unaltered. I mean, it's been altered,
obviously, in the way that we do the liturgy, but
for the most part, the rhythm of it is pretty much
the same. And it is. We are spiritual
presence people. And what I mean by that is we believe that
the presence of the resurrected Christ is present in the communion elements, that it's
not a symbol. Right. And a lot of American evangelicalism treats
communion as symbolic. Right. And so if we're truly going to be spiritual
presence people, we should be having communion weekly in our churches at
the minimum. And so that's kind of where I'm at on that. And
I think it's a really good example of when theology gets
watered down so much because it's complex and we start to water it
down to people too much, we end up losing key pieces
of it. And so it's kind of a balancing act. Yeah.
So do you ever feel like you have to. What? Within the
context of YouTube, do you feel like you have to water down some of
what you're talking about in order to be
relatable to a particular audience or maybe more.
More poignantly, to even, like, engage with an
audience. To find an audience. Yeah. Because it is an open space.
You're certainly not going to academics. You're trying to create something that is
accessible to anybody. Right? Yeah, That's a really good question.
You know, it makes me think of Adam Hamilton. I think Adam
Hamilton's greatest. One of his greatest gifts, among many that he has,
is his ability to articulate complex theological ideas in a way
that can be broadly understood by the general public. That is not
easy to do and to do it without making errors
consistently, it's very difficult to do that. And so
in the. I. I don't feel like on my channel, I have to water down
too much. I more just try to take. I either do my own original
content, or I take content and react and give commentary to
it. And what I try to do is basically explain
whatever the person is talking about or add to it in a way that
I feel like anyone with an 8th
grade education can probably understand. And I don't think that that's watering
it down because the essentials of the faith are like, complex,
like the Trinity. Right. Trinity is a very complex idea, but
it's simple in the sense that it's best understood as a mystery. Right.
That's a very simple thing. But if you really try to dive into the Trinity,
it's a very complex thing. And so I try to.
I try to both be communicative in a way
that most people can understand, but also to respect my audience enough
that they can understand difficult things as well.
That's a really good question. I'd have to think probably more on. Yeah.
But when bringing theology into public open
spaces, I find that there are
two kinds of topics
that tend to garner the most
response. That there are. There are those topics which
touch people off in the negative aspect. Yeah. The argumentative
side of things. I did one of those yesterday. So that's why. Hey,
let's talk about that in a little bit. Yeah. Table it for now, though. But
then there are. There's the. There are the topics that touch
people off because they find them valuable. And I'm wondering if
you've been at it long enough on YouTube to. To notice, are there specific
topics that people are responding to because they find
this theological viewpoint valuable? Yeah.
You know, it's really interesting. I think the YouTube algorithm likes controversy,
for sure. Of course it does, because humans like controversy. Right.
People say, oh, the algorithm does this or the algorithm does that. No, no,
no. Humans do that. Right. And the algorithm feeds what humans want.
Right. That's the fact that controversy does well on YouTube is not an algorithmic
problem. It's a human problem. Right. So the algorithm is just responding
to what we keep asking. The algorithm's amoral. Yeah, the algorithm's amoral. It
doesn't have morals. Humans. Yeah. It's just feeding us what we want, which is
controversy. I think
what I've noticed and I've been surprised at what does a lot of views and
what people engage with is apologetics, like, straight up. And
I have been quoted before by people to say
apologetics is mostly a waste of time. I have said that in my
ministerial role because I've always felt that
faith is to be experienced, not argued into. Right. And this
comes to the point of Jesus, right. Jesus saying, come and see. Right.
Jesus doesn't spend a bunch of time making a, like,
argument for God or for himself. He Says, why don't you come and
see what it is that I'm doing, right? It's this invitational
experiential thing. But then I come to kind of understand that
apologetics is a way that some people come to faith.
That's the way that they are able to get there. And so apologetics
specifically between Protestants and Catholics, the differences between
Protestants and Catholics, those videos do wild numbers
and that for some reason, I can do a. I can do a commentary over
the book of Exodus, and it's going to do 10% what,
a video about critiquing a Catholic thing that
I've seen or discussing the differences between Protestantism and
Catholicism. That does a lot of. That does a
lot of numbers, because I think that young people are searching for,
who am I? Am I Catholic? Am I going to be a Protestant? And they're
researching that for themselves. And so what I'm trying to provide is this is what
a Methodist is, right? This is what we believe, at least what I believe
and my interpretation of the tradition. And I feel like that's
the most helpful thing I can do for our. For our tradition. So.
All right, so did.
How would you describe, then, apologetics for the. Maybe the
uninitiated or. Yeah, that's a. Yeah. Apologetics is basically just
arguments for God, right? Arguing for the existence of God or arguing why
Christianity identity is correct versus other
faith traditions. Right. And I think that
there's a lot of value in that in the modern day. And I've actually seen
a lot of people, I've had comments on my videos where people are like, hey,
I've been researching. I'm going to go to a Methodist church on Sunday because I
found this channel. And this, this is. This is who I. What I
was looking for. This is how I felt about faith. But I couldn't find a
home. And now I found it, right? Or I've had people say that they
found the channel and they're thinking about converting to Christianity. Right. And so it's
like, I have my parish ministry here, right.
But the world is my parish, right? And, and I'll tell you,
going back to that earlier question, I. Somebody asked me, why did you want to
do a YouTube channel? When I first started, and I meant to tell this story,
Ryan, is that I didn't actually.
I have always felt that YouTube, it always felt
watered down. It always felt like even though I was a
consumer of it, it was not a space I wanted to enter. It was almost
like an undignified space, Right? The dignified space
is Academic papers or the pulpit or the
church. And the YouTube was kind of this open air
preaching, new style of the world being the
parish. And then I thought of the story from John Wesley's life where he finally
relents and decides to preach outside when he doesn't want to
be more of a. He's commits to be more vile. And that's essentially why I
started the channel. It was like, I have to. I feel like I have to
do this because that's where the fruit is. Okay.
All right. So as you're expounding,
expanding, talking about apologies, whatever it
is. Yeah. You know the word that I'm going for there,
Are you to get a sense that you're. You're trying to
ease people of doubt or, I don't know, explain away
doubt? Or do you feel like doubt has a place within the
faith journey? Doubt definitely has a place. I mean, if
doubt is driving you to a deeper place in your faith and
it's healthy, if you're not dealing with your doubts.
Now this, this sounds more like a pastoral counseling session. Now, if you're not
dealing with your doubts or you let your doubts tear you down, then it's not
healthy. Right. Doubt in and of itself is not a sin. It's how you
respond to it. It's much like anger. Right. Anger in and of itself is not
a sin. What you do with anger is, is where it can
be sinful. And so I don't try and explain away doubt. I try
to explain how I understand the faith and how I've gotten
there. Right. Like, one of, you know, we always talk about, like, the historical
arguments for Jesus. Right. Like, there's more historical evidence for the
resurrection of Christ than almost any event at that time, more than any event
of that time period. And we accept all those other events as
historical facts. Right. And so, but there's way more
outside, like just having so many
manuscripts of the New Testament from
very, very close to the purported event itself. And we
have events from Roman history that we treat as fact. And the
closest manuscript we have to the event is like 800 years after the
event. And we treat that as a thing that actually happened. Right. So
we have a very broad set of historical
documents of people who knew people who
were there. Right. And I feel like that's a very compelling case to a lot
of people. And so there's always going to be doubt. Right. Because we can't
prove it. But I think it helps people to say, okay,
if I'm an intellectual and I'm coming at this from an intellectual angle,
this may be how I can first open my
heart and open my mind to the possibility of faith
is through those more historical arguments.
So has this process of trying to first uncover the
questions that other people might be asking and then offering a
perspective on them, has that journey impacted your
own faith in any way? I would say that's actually the biggest impact it's
had. I feel like my faith
has been pretty static probably
over the last five to six years. I've been very knee deep in ministry,
doing stuff, you know, getting fixed,
doing part again. And what I really discovered in and of myself is a
renewed faith that I found in the tradition.
The more I've studied in order to provide content,
the more I've unlocked this rich, specifically
Western Christian tradition that we come out of
in Methodism, out of the Protestant Reformation, right.
Is that the Protestant Reformation was never meant to.
To start a new church. That wasn't the point. It was meant to reform the
Roman Catholic Church. And then they got kicked out. And so they were like, well,
I guess we're kicked out, so we have to start. So Luther, you know, he
didn't try and start his own church. That wasn't really the point. And so this,
this Protestant tradition is really. To be a Protestant is to
say this is what the church is kind of supposed to be. Right.
Without all of the extra stuff that we don't feel is essential as
Protestants. And so my. But my hope
is, is that the church can come back together, of course, in the future
and reunify. But it has really informed my faith.
Some of the Latin pieces of the faith from the, you know, something I
listen to quite a bit is Anima Christi, which is a Latin chant from the
11th century. That's something I found in the course of my study. So it
really has enlivened my faith and allowed me to reach back
in time to the tradition itself and find
where my place is in it as a Methodist. What
our place is in it. All right.
Does it also help you
articulate or formulate stances on some of the hot
button topics you already alluded to? Like the video
that you just released. That's, you know, probably a hot
button topic. Sure, yeah. Even afraid to say. Why am I afraid to say it?
Are we talking about the abortion? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My. I did a video on
abortion and I, I feel like I've never been
afraid. In fact, I actually, before I posted the video, I asked myself,
you know, I'm 32, almost 33 now. I'm not 22
anymore. And there's a big difference. You start to really think things
through more at once your frontal lobe is fully developed. You
start to really think things through because you've had some experience of things blowing up
in your face, right? And so you're like, I don't want to say you become
more risk averse, but you start to ask yourself more reflective questions
before you do things. And I asked myself, is this going to be helpful
to people? And did I do it correctly for something
that's so difficult to talk about? And I had some
hesitations, but I decided to post it anyway because I feel
like we have to change the way we talk about things,
right? We have to be willing to be a little bit more empathetic and gracious
and compassionate in our disagreements with each other. And I felt that's what the
video did. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to go ahead and post
it. But yeah, it. Reaching back in the
tradition has helped me articulate some of my more progressive, I
think some people would call it some of my more progressive or modern viewpoints. It's
helped me get better arguments for them. I've been better at articulating
them because I'm having to defend them. Right. And so I've really found myself
actually changing the way I think on certain issues. Not changing my position,
but changing how I get there. And that's been probably
one of the most valuable things for me personally in this journey.
And. I've heard you
articulate a, a sense of importance about
the church or the community of faith as you're putting your videos
together. Do you ever have the idea of
this being a vehicle directly for people to kind
of come in contact with the community of faith? Like, do you hope that somebody
watches your video and is like, well, I think I want to go to
church. Yeah, you know, I, I've been thinking about that a lot
is how do I, how do I help people
encounter the church? I did a short on this, a YouTube short
on this a couple of weeks ago that got a lot of nasty
comments. And the, the YouTube short was, you can't be a solo Christian. And I
spent 15 seconds basically saying, if you are
singing worship songs in the car and, and listening to a sermon in the car
and never going to church, that's not Christianity. You are out of communion
actually with the church. And a lot of people did not like that. They did
not like that. But I was like, but that's, that's the historic position of the
church is that you have to be in communion with the body. And it
is, it is super important that we say that, I think,
and not in a mean way, but just to say, if you are in that
place, that's great and I'm glad you're doing that. But you'll only
grow if you have a community of faith that can grow around you. Right. And
that's basically what I said. I wasn't mean about it or anything like that, but
I, I, it's been learning to find my voice in that
and to be willing to say some of those tougher pastoral things that I maybe
need to say. But there were a lot of people who are like, no, you
can do that. I'm like, But I,
I feel like sometimes as pastors in the, in the endeavor to be
pastoral, we don't say the thing that needs to be
said. And I think that's a huge mistake
for pastors sometimes is that a lot of times in the
endeavor, in the journey of trying to be pastoral,
we don't say the thing that is true. And
I have found in my ministry that when I choose to say the hard
thing that is true, it always ends up better
than avoiding it. Right. To say the thing that needs to be said always
ends up better. It's hard, it's super hard in that five
minutes where you're having to have a tough conversation. But it, it is always better
than the harder conversation that comes if you ignore those things. And so,
yeah, I've been trying to, I've been trying to steer people towards the church
in that. And that's something I'm probably going to be doing more
as I, as I do. Content is like, hey, here's a tutorial on how to
find a church for you. Right? Like, that's a great video I might do
at some point. Like, you got to decide what kind of worship you know you
want if you can't go to church on Sundays. There are churches that do church.
Not on Sunday. Right. And so helping people make that
first leap into walking into a church. Yeah, it's important.
Oh, well, since you are kind of out in the, in the
agora, in the public place meeting people
who are maybe faith curious but don't have that
faith background. For somebody who is curious about Jesus or curious
about Christianity but really unsure where to start, do you have
some recommendations for where they might go? Should they
be scrolling YouTube and go to church? You know,
it would be ecclesiologically wrong for me to
say start anywhere other than the church. The church. The church
is the body of Christ in the world. And I understand if you're
watching this, you may be like, but, man, I had a really bad experience with
church. Or this happened. Or this happened. I totally get that.
100 empathize with that. But there is no way
ever that God, that your encounter with God
is going to generally be more likely to be better at YouTube
than it is inside the body of Christ. I, I just feel like
you can have a bad experience. It's safer. YouTube's safer. Right. You can,
you can watch it from the comfort of your home. There's less risk to you,
but there's also less possibility of reward, in my opinion, of the
real relationships that you can find. And here's what I would say. If you're a
young person and you're like, man, you know, I don't know
where to go to church, or I'm looking for a church for the first time.
I'm, like, kind of Christian or I'm exploring Christianity. One of the best things you
can do. I'm not kidding about this. Find a little church in
your town that has got like 30 people on Sunday
morning and show up and they're gonna love you. I, like,
I, I, most of the time they're gonna be like, like, you're going to be
in charge of that church in like, six months. Because they're going to be like,
this is awesome. We got this new young. If you want to, like, have a
big impact in a church and a community of faith, you can go to
a mega church. Yeah. And like, you can go to all that and you can
do that. But if you go to a small mainline Protestant church
in your town and you plug in, you could
basically, you can have a much larger impact doing that
because those churches are looking for those people. That's, that's who they
want. And yes, you're going to have conflict. Yes. Things are maybe not all
always going to go your way in that, but that's the church. Right. And it's
so much more rewarding to accomplish something in
faith with the body than it is on your own, because that's how
Christ intended for us to do it. So
that's funny. And if you're in those shoes, if that, if you fit the bill
and you're in Nashville, Tennessee, reach out. I know just the church for you.
Absolutely. I'm sure. I was about to say Ryan's probably got a church for you
to go to, because there's so many that are like that that all it would
take is a couple young families to transform that church. And you would actually.
It's like I don't think sometimes people realize it's like you should never do things
for selfish, like ambition. Right. Like
you don't want to be selfish in it. But it's like I always tell people
like, you know, it's so funny, like if you're just like a young family,
you could probably end up going to some church and if you really engage
there and the church kind of comes up like they're probably going to name the
church after you. Right. Like, like because, because they're, they're going to be
so that you came and did that and that's never going to happen
in more of the kind of corporate megachurch environment which is, which is really
geared towards seeker sensitive kind of stuff. And so if you're really looking
to dig your claws in and really make an impact, one of the best things
you can do. Yeah. Is is show up to a small to medium sized church
and just dig your teeth in and really try and get involved. Yeah.
Well, I may be kind of asking for a friend on this mat. Wink, wink,
that's okay. But no doubt
whenever you put yourself out there and express
opinions, even with the, with a heart of humility,
people are going to come at you at least in you know like a YouTube
space or any kind of social media space. So when
that happens, how do you kind of
rebuff yourself or you know, keep it from
taking you to a negative space? Yeah. Any of the people
who say that it doesn't affect them are lying.
It does. You see that comment? It's really nasty.
It's. I've had a couple people make comments where I'm
like, that's actually a really good point. And I don't think if I was debating
live with them that I could deal with that actually in the moment. That's actually
a really good point. It makes me rethink things sometimes, which is actually a good
thing. There's fruit in that actually. But yeah,
sometimes there's just mean comments, nasty comments. People call you all sorts of things.
You're not a Christian, you're a heretic or whatever it is.
I think for me,
my co pastor Matt will tell you probably more than most people, I like a
good fight. It's not a great trait, but I
like a good. I'm part of that human condition that feeds
that algorithm. Right. The controversy doesn't bother me
as probably as much as most, but it does. There are sometimes you get a
nasty comment. So what I typically do is I'll type
a response comment and then delete it. Yeah, okay. And
never send it. I feel like my job as a pastor, since I am
a presbyter, I'm an elder, my job is not to
argue so much as it is my first job is to
be a pastor, and my second is to argue my theological points. And
so if I'm ever not being pastoral in an argument,
which I've done on the Internet, and I probably will
do it again, that's probably not what God wants me to do. God wants me
to approach it first as a pastor to the people who are, who are engaging
with my content. But from time to time on a nasty comment,
I will respond because it's also the pastoral thing to do, to
reply to stuff that is particularly egregious,
to make a point that that's not okay or that
that's not going to be acceptable in the community I'm trying to cultivate on the
Internet. It. And so it's kind of a balance.
What I try to do is discern the Spirit in that moment. And
I try and trust my first inclination on that as not my inclination,
but as something God, if my first inclination is
or not first inclination. But if my first discernment of the Spirit is. You should
delete this comment. I usually delete it because I can feel God telling me,
you know, the Spirit. I can feel the Spirit convicting me. That's not going to
be helpful. But there are times where I feel completely convicted. No, I need to
say something about this. But, yeah,
I've learned to accept that when you put your ideas in public,
you are opening yourself to criticism. And there are some videos I'm sure you've seen
where I have been pretty critiquing of
the video. Right. That I'm watching or reacting to that I. I've kind
of felt maybe bad about later. But then I realized, no, when ideas are in
the public space, they are open to public critique. That is the nature of, of
the beast. Now, you never critique people's character unless it is
necessary. But you, you stay on the argument, not their character.
But really vicious critiques on
somebody's content can sometimes feel like you're critiquing their character. And
so I've had to deal with that some too. Yeah, it's kind of that idea
of play the ball, not the player. Play the ball, not the player. But sometimes
you play the ball so hard that it feels like you're playing the player. Right.
I'm critiquing this person's argument. I'm torching it
so much that it feels like I'm torching them and their intellect.
And like, you got to be at that point that you feel like you got
to start to draw back a little bit and, and take a breath and, and
re center yourself. So it's, it's. I'm still learning. I'm still very
new. So has there been a video that's come out for
you yet where you thought, I don't know if this one's gonna hit, and
then surprisingly, it kind of takes off in a mini viral way?
You know, they're. I'm trying to think, you know, some of my best
ones. It's so funny. Many people know who Redeem Zoomer is huge.
The theology YouTuber. He's like 22 years old. Most of the stuff I
react to him does really well because he's just so popular.
I, I've been surprised at the Catholic Protestant stuff when I,
when I do, when I, when I
feel like I rightly critique the Catholic Church on something
those videos do. I never think those videos are going to do well. And they
always do well. And I, I really think it's because
there's a lot of people right now, there's a lot of Gen Z people who
are thinking about becoming Catholic and who are growing up
Protestant. I think that's a real thing that's happening because of the traditional aspects
of it, because it's rooted in tradition in a generation and
in a world that feels so chaotic, that feels
the news cycle every day is so wild. I think it's a generation
that's looking at millennials and they're looking at Gen X and they're saying
secularism, since the year 2000 has
failed to produce fruit in this society
because there was this kind of secular turn at the turn of the century, and
they're looking at the fruit of it, and they're saying, I'm not impressed with
secularism's fruit. And they're looking at the most ancient traditions
because they're like, man, these have lasted for they the
rise and fall of nations, the rise and fall of empires. Nothing has been able
to stop these traditions. And so they're interested in them, so they're
researching them. And so when I'm doing videos where I'm critiquing something
that's in the Catholic Church or I'm talking about the differences, I think there's just
a big appetite for that right now because there's a lot of young people
identity searching their faith. So it's been really fascinating. I
had one that got, like, to 2,000 views in a couple days, and I was
like, I didn't think that video was good, but I guess people like that.
So that's how sermons are too. I think a sermon's bad, and then
everybody's like, oh, that one really touched me. And then I'm like, I. I'll. Night
before, I'll be like, oh, this is a. This is a banger sermon I've got
going here. And nobody says anything to me. Nobody ever says it's bad, but nobody
says it's good either. So it's like, you know, you just kind of learn to.
To understand that the Holy Spirit's doing a lot more than you think
in that interaction. 100% cool.
Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I feel validated in that
perspective as well. Every time I think, whoo.
Probably one of the best ever. And people are like, that was nice. That was
nice. Thank you, Ryan. Thanks. Good job today.
Now there are times when you're like, oh, I feel like I just kind of
verbally vomited for 20 minutes. People are like, I just needed to hear that so
much this week. Or, you know, my other favorite. Would you mind telling me what
you heard? Yeah, yeah. My other personal favorite. You know, my son
needs to hear that sermon or my. My daughter needs to hear that. I'm like,
but you do too. You know, like, we all need to hear it,
including the person preaching it. So. Yeah. Well, Matt,
thanks so much for spending this time with us. Where are people going to find
you on YouTube? The Connectionalist. So it's kind of spelled
weird. It's like Wesley, you think of connectionalism as
Methodist. Right. So it's like C, O, N, N E X,
I O, N, A L, L,
I, S, T. Yeah, the connectionalist. If, if. If
you search anything close to that on YouTube, I.
I've got enough videos up now. It generally comes up now. So that's the
best place. Make sure you like and subscribe. That's what I always tell people. That's
the best way. If you want to. If you want to support methodism on
YouTube, which you should, because that's where Gen Z is
getting introduced to denominations and their faith. That's where it's happening. If you want to
support that as a Methodist, make sure you come, like, and subscribe. That's my plug
and I'd love to have you. Anybody on the channel who wants to come and
comment and be a part of the community. So stuff. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. For
our Methodist friends listening. Like we, we would really love to kind of overturn
the algorithm there. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Support the good stuff. That's
right. That's right. That brings us to the end of this
episode. If you'd like to learn more or take a deeper dive into
any of the topics that we've talked about, be sure to Visit our
website, umc.org compass there
you'll find episode notes and of course along with lot more episodes to explore, so
don't miss out. In fact, a couple cool follow ups for this episode
would be number 149, humor, theology and
Deep Questions with Aaron Hicks Moon. Or episode
number 141, community comedy and Church
Renovation, which explores several more stories of the church
creatively meeting the world. We want to give a big thank you to
the team at United Methodist Communications for making the Compass
podcast possible. And if you haven't already again,
please take a moment to subscribe, rate and review the
podcast wherever you're listening or watching. It really
helps other folks find us and it lets us know what you're enjoying
or what you'd like to hear more of in the future on
Compass. Thanks so much for joining us today. We
hope you'll tune in next time time as we keep finding
spirituality in the everyday peace.