Transcript
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Hello everyone, I'm Stephen Strang.
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Today on The Strang Report, we're going to hear from a very popular YouTuber, Alan
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DiDio, who uses social media to minister to millions.
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He has an amazing testimony of how, after being an atheist, he became a passionate
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follower of Jesus.
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He is the founder of Encounter Ministries and is a bestselling author and host of the
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Encounter Underground podcast and Encounter Today on YouTube.
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His media ministry alone reaches millions of people around the world with the gospel
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of Jesus Christ.
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Now he's sharing what he has learned on how to use new technology to reach others.
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Stay tuned to see my interview with YouTube phenomenon, Alan DiDio.
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Alan DiDio, tell me how you became a podcaster and what is your vision for the future?
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Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me.
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What a beautiful office space you have here.
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The staff is amazing.
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We wanted to come out here, particularly because we have such a passion for media that was
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birthed in 2019.
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In the winter of 2019, in November, I received an urgent word from the Lord in a visitation
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in my office where he asked me this question.
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He said, what would you do if church was entirely online?
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This was in November of 2019 and it was so urgent, so strong.
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I got some of our key staff together and I said, I don't know what this means, but we
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need to figure out what would it look like if church was entirely online?
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How would we reach those people?
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Not just for views and clicks, but how would we actually make contact, bless them, have
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accountability for them?
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We started digging into that as well as the media side of it, how to do that well.
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You know the story history has been made already that January we began to implement, February
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and then March the world shut down.
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We were strategically in the right place to reach people to minister to them because we
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obeyed the word of the Lord.
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That is amazing story.
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Of course, eventually we worked through COVID.
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So what is your vision now?
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Well now we want to go beyond this because what we discovered during that time is that
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media had become such a low priority for us and it should not have been.
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Media should have been a high priority.
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And we realized that there's simple, free, easy things that we could do to reach millions
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of people.
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So now we're reaching millions of people every single month.
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And it's not because we're a mega ministries because we're implementing key strategies
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that we learned during that time.
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So now we want to teach other pastors, church leaders, Christian business owners to do the
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same thing.
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So our vision now is to teach 1000 believers to reach 1 million people a month, which would
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be the equivalent of a billion people a month with the gospel.
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How did you get that vision?
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I mean that is so huge.
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It's hard to get your mind around.
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It started two years ago when we realized that churches didn't have access to the resources
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necessary to learn this.
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So we had our first Christian media conference.
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I think it's the first of its kind.
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Training ministers how to do media with an anointing.
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Again, not after views, not after clicks, but how do you do it with excellence and with
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an anointing?
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And it was such a success.
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We did it again and attendance grew and we realized we want to now that we can, we can
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do this.
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We can build a community of pastors and church leaders.
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But Steve, we had people in that first media conference who have come to us afterwards
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and now they've broken 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, reaching millions of people now.
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And we realized this is an achievable goal to train believers how to reach a million
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people a month, at least through social media.
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Well, forgive me if I sound a little skeptical, but you know, over the years I've heard some
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very enthusiastic Christian leaders say if we, you know, there's X number of Christians
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in the world and of course they claim everybody who's Roman Catholic or grew up Christian.
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Each one wins one.
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If each one wins one, the world is won by Christmas.
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It never works that way.
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So, and I realized that a goal is something that kind of pulls you that you can move toward.
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But let me ask you two questions.
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Have you figured out where you are right now?
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Because you're not at zero.
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You just described that some people are already doing this.
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And what are you going to do to get around this tendency that, you know, somebody's not
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going to, everyone's not going to win a million.
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Maybe some will do several million, some will do nothing.
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Just talk to me about that.
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So we realized after these conferences and people kept showing up, kept coming back that
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there is a hunger for it.
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We know that we have a couple hundred who are willing to take up this challenge.
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And so we've put that a thousand ministers goal in front of us.
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And it is going to be a challenge because the challenge is getting believers to understand
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the urgency of it, the need for it, and that they can do it.
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And so we've brought on board some amazing ministry gifts to help us get that message
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out.
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David Diga Hernandez, Mike Signorelli, John Maxwell is going to be joining us to help
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us get this message out.
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And Joseph Z, Todd Coconado, a whole host of ministry gifts are going to be joining
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us to help this vision come to pass.
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I truly believe we can do it.
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It might take some time, but we'll get there.
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I love the vision.
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Tell us about the conference.
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Where is it going to be and when?
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And I'm also interested in what people are going to learn.
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Well, it's called the Armed Media Conference and it's going to be in Charlotte, North Carolina,
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August 1st, 2nd and 3rd, and the Refuge Church, which seats about a thousand people, is hosting
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it for us.
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It's a beautiful, beautiful facility.
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And people can expect to get the practicals how to, whether you're in front of the camera
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or behind the camera.
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You should send your media team, but if you're in front of the camera, you need to be there
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too.
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You're going to actually learn how to apply these principles from simple camera setup
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to lighting to AI, artificial intelligence, how to incorporate that monetization, how
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you can monetize your content on social media and how to do it in a way that can reach more
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than the biggest mega ministry out there.
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Because social media has leveled the playing field.
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Anyone has an opportunity now to have a voice.
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If they just do these small, simple things that we've learned over the last few years,
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then they can reach as many people as the Lord puts in front of them.
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What are those simple things that people need to learn?
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Well, a picture is worth a thousand words and most churches pay no attention to their
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thumbnail and there is an art behind it.
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Our son, Evan, is sitting off set here and there are simple strategies and templates
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you can use because if people see a thumbnail they're interested in, they're going to click
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on it.
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Titling is important.
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Most churches title their church message October the 2nd, 2023.
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That's not going to get you any views.
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So there are certain things, certain key principles and templates that we can lay out for you
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to show you how to do that and then how you present your content.
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You got to dive right in.
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You got to dive right in.
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You got to get right to the point and you have to answer specific questions.
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Simple things like that are going to help people reach 10x their current reach on social
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media.
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And give me some examples of people that have come to your conference and actually done
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this.
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There was a pastor who we actually sat down with with his ministry and there was one video
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that wasn't performing well.
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We changed the thumbnail, we changed the title and within a few days that broke a hundred
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thousand views and then television companies like Daystar and others started calling him
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to ask him to interview about that content.
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So it just shows the power, the power of that, the power of that kind of reach.
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If you just make a few small tweaks, small tweaks lead to great peaks.
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If you just make a few small tweaks, titling, thumbnail, description, your presentation,
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then it can magnify your reach beyond anything you could imagine.
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Well that's exciting and you talk about social media and of course that's a new medium, a
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medium that's happened in our lifetime.
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And you know there's a lot that's bad about social media but there's a lot that's bad
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about all media.
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You know I think of the printing press, think of all the bad things that have been printed
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on the printing press.
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But the printing press, if it hadn't been for that the Protestant Reformation would
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not have happened.
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The Bible would not have been printed and made available to the public instead of just
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the priest before they were hand copied which took a year probably for someone to do it
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and then they would chain them to the pulpit in the church.
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So no one can run off with it.
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That's exactly right.
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But the printing press made the difference.
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Then you have media that came later, radio and TV.
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Think of all the bad things on TV but think of the way that TV has helped spread the gospel.
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So it is with these new media and especially AI which is very, very new, so new most of
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us don't even really understand it.
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What do you think, give me your evaluation of AI, what are the potentials for good, what
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are the potentials for bad, how can we fight the bad?
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And I guess here I'm asking you all the questions right in a row but you're going to deal with
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AI at your conference.
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What could people learn from your conference?
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When Elon Musk was asked about artificial intelligence he said with AI we are summoning
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the demon and he compared it to a movie where you watch this guy, he draws a pentagram on
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the floor, summoning a demon thinking he can control it when in the end he's not going
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to be able to control it.
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He said it didn't work out too well for that guy.
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And so there's a lot of risks.
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3,000 AI researchers were recently surveyed.
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48% of them said that they believe there's a 10% chance AI will destroy humanity.
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How would you like to get on an airplane where 48% of the people who worked on it said yeah,
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there's a 10% chance you're not going to make it.
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So there are certainly threats and it fits right into the Antichrist agenda but at the
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same time it's just a tool.
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It's just a simple tool and it can be used for good, it can be used for bad.
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And I believe AI is going to be one of the great force multipliers for the advancement
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of the gospel.
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Churches have got to get on board for as long as we can to utilize it to take the gospel
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to the whole wide world.
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Otherwise the enemy will have a field day with it.
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So you're going to talk about AI at your conference.
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Is that right?
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Yes.
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You can essentially have added staff for no extra money by using AI properly and it can
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help you with your media, it can help you with script writing, it can help you with
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titling ideas, thumbnail ideas, it can help you with emails.
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There's a lot of things AI is going to be able to help you with without having to hire
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another personal assistant.
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You know, it's exciting about the conference.
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I know that we're going to send some people.
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That's one reason why I wanted to help promote it because I think that these things, you
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know, there's a lot of conferences, but there's some that you really need to go to.
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And I think that yours is one of them.
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But talk to me about your ministry encounter today and about yourself.
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Your ministry is here before the conference.
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It'll be here after the conference.
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What can we expect from encounter today and what are you really, really excited about?
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Well, at 17 years of age, I was an atheist and I had an encounter that changed my life.
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And so our ministry is all about creating an atmosphere, creating a place where people
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can encounter Jesus and encounter the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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And in these last few years, there's really been a heavy emphasis by the Holy Spirit for
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us to begin to focus on end time, training end time believers for the next great awakening,
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preparing them for what's coming so they can be equipped and engaged.
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They don't have their head in the sand or their head in the clouds.
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They've got their mind renewed by the washing of the water of the word.
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And so what you can expect to see is we're going to lean into eschatology.
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We're going to lean into end time preparation of believers so that we can take this gospel
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to the whole wide world.
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That's important.
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And as we wrap up this short interview, I want to give you the last word.
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Why is it that you need to say to my viewers and listeners about AI, about YouTubing, about
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your conference?
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I want to say this.
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It feels like that a lot of believers are trepidatious about what they see happening
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in the same way the children of Israel were intimidated when they saw Goliath, the giant,
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their first encounter with a Nephilim-like creature.
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They were intimidated by that type of supernatural opposition.
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But David, just a young boy, was able to take on that opposition in obedience to the word
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of the Lord.
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And we can do the same thing.
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We can overcome.
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And I think many of you have that spirit within you that when you see that kind of opposition,
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you say, who is this uncircumcised Philistine?
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She should defy the armies of the living God.
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This is our moment.
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This is our time to rise up.
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Don't be intimidated.
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Greater is he that is in you than he is in the world.
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And you can do it.
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You can reach a million people a month.
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It doesn't matter if you're a single mom.
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I know of a woman who was 60 years of age who started a YouTube channel, now has a million
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subscribers and knew nothing about YouTube.
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Now she has a million subscribers.
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You can do it.
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All you have to do is get around people who are already doing it, and it could transform
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everything.
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45% of Americans have watched an online church service in the last year.
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They're tuning in, but what are they finding?
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We have a church.
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2020 showed us this.
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Holy unprepared for this war.
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33% of those attending church in person founded online.
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What does that mean?
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Online ministry is a slippery slope.
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If we'll get them on there, we'll get them in here.
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This is the missions event of our hour.
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This is what we need to be focused on evangelism through technology.
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Somebody say an N.
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