When the Chain Breaks: Finding Unexpected Peace and Divine Encounters in the Chaos

Announcer/Intro Voice: Control-Alt-Redeem is for anyone called to ministry in the digital frontier, gamers, streamers, and everyday believers navigating life online. Each episode equips you to live on mission and the real stories of lives being changed. Reset your expectations, reframe your mission, and redeem the space you're already in. This is where digital ministry gets practical, creative, grounded, and hopeful, one episode at a time.

Leighton Seys: All right. Welcome in, welcome in, everybody, to... Control alt, you're thumbing all over the place. So we're good, right? We're good. Ah, okay. Hey, I do the same thing. And in fact, I have you still muted on my side. So we both did it.

Stratus Live: Perfect, there we go. That's so funny. I was like, wait, what did I do wrong? Oh no, I didn't do it.

Leighton Seys: You know, that's where when you are doing everything, you're the tech guy, you're the guest host, you're just running all the different things. And that's how life is, right? That's how life is in the streaming realm. Good to see you, buddy. So it's all good there. So welcome in everybody. This is the Control Alt Redeem podcast. We are looking to reset the culture and redeem the space. And so we're hanging out in digital spaces. We are on Twitch. I bring my friends on from Twitch and we chat and talk about what's going on, what's happening in ministry. How did we get started? and what god has been up to in the space so welcome in stratus live welcome in hello everybody glad to be here yeah and uh we get we get not only you but we get your your avatar there as well you get you have to guess which one the real me is though that's the south part Yeah. The tough part there, depending on if you spend a lot of time online or not, whether whether that would be the confusing thing. This is a paid actor pretending to be me. It's a paid actor. There we go. We got several people coming in. Supersonic. Did I not set the game to the.

Stratus Live: That's a good call. Thank you. Come on. Just chatting as well.

Leighton Seys: Thank you for that. If I had it wrong, I did have it wrong. Wow. I missed that. OK.

Stratus Live: It doesn't look like it worked.

Leighton Seys: So I will change that. There we go. And reset that. So hopefully that helps. Yeah, it's one of those things where I've seen people do it both ways. Put podcast and some do just chatting. And some of it depends on how much you engage the audience or not. If you put podcast, people kind of have a set idea. And it also helps people know that, yes, we appreciate your chat and we want to address your chat, but there'll be more times that we'll ignore it. And we're not going to try to play catch up with chat versus if we're just chatting, then we don't want to miss anything. so a little bit of that going on so really important distinction yeah yeah well that's at least how i see it maybe i'm wrong in in making that assumption but that's that's kind of how my brain processes the difference between the two and it's also what i think i've seen as far as being in streams i've been in streams where people put podcasts they don't address chat at all uh they're they're just recording it's just them on screen and i'm like then why are you going live on Twitch if you're not going to address people? And it's fine if you say we're going to chat and then we'll have a conversation at the end with Q&A. That's still cool. But I've watched podcasts that were live and they never talked to chat. And I'm like. Just go record it and give it to me. I could listen at double speed. Why am I here live if I don't get to engage you? But that's why I love Twitch. And I don't know about you if that's one of those things for you that's enjoyable about being on Twitch is that live aspect of interaction. Do you enjoy that aspect of it?

Stratus Live: Um, I do. Yeah. I would, I would say, um, uh, a lot of it is the interacting, like, you know, just being on the spot, whether it's, you know, something unexpected happens in the game you're playing or like, what the heck, like a huge rage just happened. Like, you know, there's a lot of different things that can just catch you on, uh, catch you on your toes in a good way.

Leighton Seys: Of course. Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for, thanks for the follow there. Tropic turtle. Appreciate that. Well, I'd like to start when we finally get done with this little intro banter, whatever we're doing with... I like to ask everybody when and how did they get introduced to Twitch? And then along that avenue, when did you decide to go streaming live? And those could be the same time. And then when you went to stream live, did you begin as a Christian streamer or did that happen later? And so that's where I kind of like to start, lay the groundwork. of the beginnings because i think in some ways other people that are contemplating getting started that's a really helpful story to how did they how did you process through it process through it how did you manage those things so that others who are thinking about it or or feel like maybe they should get started they kind of go oh i i know how that is or that's where i'm at or even to go wow this isn't the right way to do it maybe try a different way

Stratus Live: right absolutely a lot of really good questions i think um i think there's a good way to give the timeline there so um first hearing about twitch uh my brothers were both actually streamers um they were dabbling in esports and stuff like that so they both were actually partner twitch streamers back in their day I, I'm not sure if one's trying to stream again or not, but, um, they'd been on and off, um, with e-sports basically. And so I knew of Twitch, I knew of it. And so I never really like hopped on it and didn't really check out channels. I was kind of just doing my own thing. Um, I vicariously play with them every now and then in their group and stuff. So I'd get like a little bit of my feet wet, but, um, I was like, I'm still doing school. I'm focused on that. Um, kind of just let this be a little aside, fun thing every now and then when it happens. um by the time streaming came onto my radar as a thing of interest um it was very intentional like hey uh gonna be ministry focused kingdom minded with it um but kind of was just like we'll see what happens when it happens right um i had a really i had an ancient pc from like 2010 or something like that it was like an office desktop or something not even a gaming computer or anything like that um so it was like worse than an xbox 360 at the time pretty much but um like it was basically during during pandemic um i think 2021 was um like i'd had things set up i'd set up like twitch studio and whatnot and all that um because that's what i started using as because it seemed like you know newbie friendly i'm not very tech savvy i would say but um i just kept putting it off i was like i'll go live eventually i'll eventually press that go live yeah and just keep putting off keep putting it off and then i remember specifically the moment um we were playing among us with a group of um actually friends i knew through j it was some of jade's irl friends and stuff um we were playing among us and one of them specifically like well you're gonna go live eventually right i was like yeah he's like why don't you just go live right now i was like That's a good point. So we went live with that Among Us stream. I'd been hanging out a little bit on Twitch. I'd been hanging out in the Valorant community, actually, because that was basically after that Among Us stream, I was a Valorant streamer at first, just being kingdom-minded in that space, trying to get good at the game at the same time. But yeah, I mean, from there, kind of just the journey kind of had itself go. Felt very specifically like... not to build my own community in that regards like everyone like a streamer has their discord server and stuff that stuff's great i'm not bashing that at all i think it's neat i think it's essential to build and foster communities but um i felt god specifically put on my heart to be a bridge be like a network like a human network um my first name being travis uh traveler traverse troll like toll bridge and stuff like that it kind of you know it seemed to make sense and be fitting to some point to some degree right um so yeah i was just trying to like you know be involved with other people's communities whether they're faith-based or not if they weren't faith-based um you know just try to be a light and just love on those people if they were in the in the faith then hey can kind of help like be a little more intentional about like drawing the road map for them um Which then led to the VTubing thing eventually. I remember seeing a few Christian VTubers, which was an interesting thing. And I was like, hmm, what would this look like? Something I, like, I'm not an artist by any means. Like, even a lot of, like, fine arts and stuff came to me very late. But I went on, I found some, like, free-to-use stuff, made a model from scratch. I remember hanging out in Aki and Pham's Discord server while I was working on making the model. And I was like, whoa. guess it's done i thought i was gonna spend like another month and a half working on it but let's just see it and so went live launched the first model went for it and then that opened a lot of other doors specifically like for like you know christian vtubing community and being a human network there as well and then partnering with some ministries in there so um yeah honestly it was just like like you're playing games anyway why not just go live doing it and you know see what god does and it's been amazing over the years when he's done with it yeah that there's a whole bunch of things that i i want to stop and ask more questions let's let's just back way way up because let's give it a long timeline and then we can whatever you want to pick apart let's go i like that but it's like that my brain's going wait wait wait wait

Leighton Seys: So your brothers were esports. Were they were they doing this just on their own independently? Were they doing this in connection with any school or organized esports? What was what was what was it that they were doing specifically?

Stratus Live: That is such a good question. So it was kind of before collegiate esports or scholastic esports really picked off, took off. This was Dota 2 days when it first started, you know, like, which Dota 2 is still like, I mean, it's still like one of the largest esports prize pools, but like, like this was me in high school, them just finishing, like, well, the oldest one, he's a bit older, but the middle one, he's like... basically two years within two years of me so he was just finishing high school um and he just went for it he just playing they started they did like a semi-pro dota team together okay and then um the middle one specifically he jumped around from other games it was uh when overwatch first came out he was part of a team with overwatch um i got to dabble a little bit in some of the scrims there and have so i got it again like i got to vicariously enjoy the scene without the like putting in the work right yeah well i

Leighton Seys: Yeah, I was just asking because I was like, the timing of when you were saying that, I'm like, that really sounds like before collegiate esports got started.

Stratus Live: Yes. This was like 2016-ish, 2017-ish when they were starting, I feel like.

Leighton Seys: Yeah, I was curious if they were in some of those really early ones or they were just doing it on their own. That sounds really cool. But I could see where you've got older brothers. who are doing something, and having had kids of my own, I watch the different ways that they react of, I'm gonna outdo you, so I'm gonna go do this, or that's your thing, and I'm not gonna get compared to you, so I'm not gonna go anywhere near that. Which way would you say that you lean towards?

Stratus Live: um i mean i i made the joke i was always a sweaty salty gamer like i mean we'd always be very competitive but um for me like it just felt like school was like getting my bachelor's getting my masters and that kind of stuff just took the priority yeah um if i wasn't gonna do my masters like i thought about dabbling in like smash bros and stuff like that but um yeah it was just like hey that's cool i hope it works out for them it's great that they're doing that but that's definitely not my path um and then especially with the content and stuff it was more of god like hey let's move your heart from winning the game and moving your heart to being there for people kind of thing which is still i'm not fully there i'm not saying it's done it's definitely a long process

Leighton Seys: An everlasting process. Exactly. It's an ongoing thing that we're all working and endeavoring towards. And you had said that, you know, Jate, Jate Live, and he's known pretty far among the Twitch community, especially the Christians pretty much all probably know him. If you're not, you're probably living under a rock somewhere and you're not really, really out there and running into people because like it seems like everyone in every community knows of Jay if they don't know him directly. So was Jay one of the first ones that influenced you? Did you see other Christians in the space and decide that was the direction you want to go? Or did God lay that on your heart initially before running into Christians in the space?

Stratus Live: God definitely laid it on my heart before getting in the space. It was just like, hey, you know, they're doing it to compete. They're doing it for professional. Like they wanted it to be their job. I have my job at the university and stuff. What would it look like to just be kingdom minded in that space? And Jay was definitely one of the first I connected with back when it was Game Church. uh i had stumbled upon that group and it was the first like city play was there like game night i went to um so that's where i met jay and like some of the other people and then that was also their last city play before game church split up into the different groups that had it had split into so um i kind of just rode the boat with love clan i was around um when jay was working on it day one i i'm not saying like i built love clan excited i was still i was along for the ride pretty much um But yeah, seeing it grow from day one where, you know, it was its Discord server. And then once it just became this thriving community in that space, then Jay was like, all right, let's do streaming now. And then he went on Mixer and all that. But that's, we know how that journey goes.

Leighton Seys: Yeah, but I just love those facets of thinking about it because it seems like there's different waves of people that God calls into the space. And even if they don't know each other initially, they're they have a similar calling a similar desire and they step in about the same time and then there then there seems like so that's like the early like jade is one of those early uh pioneers out there uh susie live is one of those early pioneers out there there's several early early ones out there and then there's a wave that came just before the pandemic and then just after the pandemic like there's that and they're a little bit different in those two groups that are there uh that are in the space but it seems like God was preparing some foundational things happening before there started being more and more people. And I think as I see Christians getting into the space, we recognize other people in the space, and we're like, that just multiplies into more people feeling like, I could do this. I didn't know it was a possibility. I felt God calling me to it, but didn't know I could. And so now it's like, oh yeah, I can step in and do that.

Stratus Live: Absolutely, yeah. And you even see, like, it's almost like the gens, like, the generations of each, like, group that comes in. Yeah, it's really interesting because, you know, we're all minded, like, same mission, same minded, but, like, just the routes or, like, you know, just what's going on at the time, like, you know, like, Kyori, Lupine, like, Kaito and, like, them and stuff, like... like when the vtuber boom was hitting like they were there and so they got to see like you know that front lines of like being missional in that space um and then like he's like this this boom now we see with like whatever new trends are going like when tick tock started blowing up tick tock live and seeing like who who was like you know being missional in that space like it just um yeah you know god god will have a time and season for each person and then you know just as paul had their barnabas like maybe you're not direct partners in your mission but he'll bring other people along to uh help you so you like just that assurance like hey i'm with you but like also there's people with you too so you don't have to like feel alone in it kind of thing

Leighton Seys: Yeah, and if you follow that model of Paul, every city he goes to, there seems to be a person or two that he resonates with. Some travel on the journey with him, and some stay in the city where he went to. So I think that in some ways is the people that migrate together along the way, kind of like you and I are both together in the Reach community. But we don't overlap in our streaming community from when I go live, I'm on in 8 o'clock in the morning, my time zone. So that's 5 o'clock in the morning, your time zone. You're not up watching me. I am in bed. And your community is not up watching me. And then, you know. you're uh we're on now at 10 o'clock at night i'm usually in bed at 10 o'clock and it's only seven for you but you know it's it's one of those things where time zones sometimes limit where we're actually live together but we're active in the discords together we're active in some middle of the day uh you know calls and things like that so it's just fascinating to me how those those things overlap and we can be on parallel paths and God could be leading us the same way, and we occasionally get to interact with each other in a deeper level while we're paralleled to what God is leading us towards.

Stratus Live: love that you mentioned that because yeah um especially a lot a lot of people i i do like online with are i end up being like cst est people so um during the semesters when i work on school schedule like i mean i go in basically teach from nine to seven on most days when i'm on so i get home they're going to bed i'm like hey guys i'll send them the message they'll see it tomorrow kind of thing but like because i mean sure maybe not the live space is that connection but um still stuff like discord stuff like platforms that you know we can just get to it on our on our wavelength of where we're on time so we can still be in lockstep with each other even if it's not um that like asynchronous being in the same space at the same time but hey for holidays we can make it work right yeah yeah absolutely absolutely um

Leighton Seys: I did want to, you had mentioned the migration over to doing the VTuber. What was the pull there and the desire for that? And I love that you brought both yourself and your VTube self. I've not had that on my stream before. I think that's super cool to have you both side by side. So thank you for doing that. But I'm just curious, what was it that was about that that you're like, I want to join in that realm? Because I don't know that everybody watching this or listening to this is gonna know or understand V-tubing. Just if they're listening to the podcast, they may not. So kind of walk through, what was that pull, desire to move in that direction?

Stratus Live: right absolutely um so at first i had stumbled on some like bigger streamers and stuff that i would watch um one in particular uh he had he had a he had a vtuber model made of him uh it was a box and uh the box would pog whenever he talks So I was like, I just thought it was the funniest thing. Like I knew a little bit of YouTube. Like I'd watched like Code Miku before and stuff like that, where she like does the full tech. Like you see like the immersive, like you get the whole behind the scenes experience of making it and stuff. I was like, that stuff's cool. That stuff also looks really intimidating. Like I said, I'm not an artist. then i stumbled upon like uh i was watching an aki stream and he had rated jerry lupine so i saw oh you know hey she's doing it and you know she's christian and she's entertaining and like streaming and then like oh i stumble upon some other christian youtubers okay um and so you know whether like the stream is their mission or not they're still kingdom-minded in their presence and in their space it doesn't mean every stream is a bible study but i was like Let's dabble in that. Let's see what it looks like.

Leighton Seys: Okay.

Stratus Live: And yeah. Yeah.

Leighton Seys: So you kind of just develop from there. Yeah. Some of it was exposure and building relationships that moved in that direction. That's cool. As you've been streaming in this space and moving in, what have been some... difficulties you've had to overcome some obstacles that have got in your way they could be things that happen with stream and they could be things that happened in your personal life or outside of stream that you ran into that just made streaming difficult or things you've had to overcome in order to be a twitch streamer bringing the gospel to people

Stratus Live: really good question um tech will always be one um i i make the comment you know i live in a space that is for iro real life job all that stuff it's a miracle um i i mean living in la area it is absurd trying to like survive on your own out here but i have some partial support and stuff like that um so it's great for that and that's the big picture priority but uh tech stuff is very limited here uh not the best internet it's always not the best quality but um you know like that stuff that if it truly gets in the way of the mission there's always something you can do about it but um For the most part, I'm kind of just putting that stuff on the back burner because I do feel a calling from God to eventually leave California. And then I'd be able to like further expand upon that stuff, like maybe update the model, do like VR streams, like full body VR stuff is some things I've been passionate about and seeing where that goes. But so at the same time, like. lot of the waiting on the lord has been coming up this past couple of years i'm in that patience arc i make the joke and so some of that stuff's like yeah just wait on it do what you can now um you know you can still you don't need to have a three thousand dollar model to do v tubing well like you can use a png tuber and you know just you know have fun make content you know um so doing what i can in this space now but also like kind of tempering myself in the way of like do i say it like maybe like put the perfectionist in me to the side and be like hey you know do do the best you can with what you have right now but don't be like be content with where you are right now as well i guess it's a better way of saying it So yeah, that's definitely been part of the journey. Consistency. School schedule makes streaming tougher sometimes. Work schedule. I had been, 2023 I think was probably my best year of consistency with that. But then 2024, I just had to peace out from most of the online space, mental health stuff. me filling in the blanks where god was speaking and god was moving and then things not happening the way i thought they should happen i'm like oh i'm not in a healthy place theologically right now like i need to take a step back and recheck something so um yeah it was actually reach con where i felt god gave the green light to be streaming again and stuff so we've been kind of diving in trying to be consistent with that again as of recent

Leighton Seys: is that something that you have uh encountered before being a streamer of that impatience kind of moving and then god showing up in different ways or or is that new like maybe you weren't fully actively pursuing god to to run into that before what what what has that experience been for you

Stratus Live: I think the biggest, like, not biggest, like, strongest, most potent encounter of that I've experienced has definitely just been, like, these past couple years. Because I feel like it's been intertwined both in stream and real life. Because I love my job. It's great. But when you work in a school system, like, there's very fickle variables of, like, getting enough classes and stuff like that. going somewhere else isn't magically going to fix that. Right. But, um, you know, just trusting God in that right now, but also trusting God that like, am I taking the appropriate proactive steps that I should be? Cause I'm not just going to sit there and God's going to make it magically fall on my lap either kind of thing. Right. Um, so yeah, I'd say they both hit like at the same time, which made it a lot stronger, made it a lot more patients growing arc moments. Um, I think that, yeah.

Leighton Seys: Yeah, it's interesting, and I've probably shared this in the stream here numerous times, but one of the things that I remember so fondly from the... It's the first week of chapel every semester as I was in seminary, and that was... You just came in. You just decided that you're committed to following God. You know what you've just done. You've put a target on your back. And there are attacks that are going to be coming your way. And I don't know that everybody who's just suddenly feeling a call from God and says, well, I'm going to go live. has has any of those kinds of thoughts in their mind that i've just raised my hand and put a target on my back and so uh it's so true though that those things are going to come and i think also it's not just then every time you commit to a new level of something in your faith or you commit to i'm going to go and try something new for the lord there is that that potential again that oh now i'm i or those around me might might be a target for the enemy to come against us absolutely um yeah whenever you're saying yes to god uh so there will be forces that will not be pleased with that and

Stratus Live: I'm thinking, I'm just like, kind of my brain's just going down memory lane a little bit. There was a few encounters. When starting out streaming, there were people like, you know, not like a full-on hate raid, but people who just come in and be antagonistic and stuff. And, you know, you could... them in their place you could tell them like dunk on them prove them wrong but what does that really accomplish at the end of the day so you know it was the challenge that i thought god was leading me towards is how to show love and how to meet them where they're at in those moments you know someone could be you know wanting to just make a mockery of your faith and then all of a sudden they've never been met with love in response instead. And then that kind of gives them a 404 error in themselves. Like, wait, what do I do here? Like, huh? Like, what? Like, they're not offended. They're not fighting back. Like, and then maybe that breaks down a wall in their heart and heart, you know? And I know stories of people that, like, I've seen in other communities that have had those moments. whether like I get to firsthand experience that or not. I mean, that's not for me to say that's for God to say, but you know, maybe some of those encounters have been part of the seed planting process itself.

Leighton Seys: Sorry. I was, I was just chuckling really hard at you're giving them a 404 error. Like, yeah, that's. Like, oh, yeah, I know that one. That one comes up quite often. I know where I'm supposed to be going, and I know this is valid, and no, it's not. There's a 404 error in the way. I love that thought there. So you know of those, you've witnessed them, but maybe not per se actually in your own stream, other than maybe you're planting some of those seeds. But I... I think that Jesus talks about the analogy of some plant the seed, some water it, others harvest it, and then telling the disciples where they were at was harvesting where others had planted and watered. And so we never know which part of that we are going to be contributing. And even in some of those, like... I feel really fortunate. I've had two really unusual cases this year where I've had individuals, one was a Muslim who was in my channel for about a month, and that was it, and then they disappeared. And they came back months later and said, hey, I just want to let you know I'm getting baptized on Sunday. Like, what? What's happened in the meantime? All I did was either till the ground or plant something, and then others were involved that caused them to go and get involved with some Christians they knew in person and go to a church that they could go attend, and there was a whole bunch of life transformation. I don't know which part I was, you know, tilling the ground or planting the seed or just watering it. But I got to be a small part of that. And then another person just popped in like last month and said a similar thing about, hey, I I'm getting baptized on Sunday. I just want to let you know. And then we had I don't know if you you were. got to be at it there were a couple of people that were getting baptized at reach conference and you know some of them some of the pools at the airbnb oh yeah had had baptisms happening it was so good yes hey samarella welcome in so good to see you friend i hope you're doing well and if i don't see you before then those who are listening later this is getting recorded before christmas so merry christmas to everyone who is here whether you're christian or not it's still a time to celebrate for most people with family and friends so uh christmas indeed yes yes uh which is you know ultimately part of the reason that i'm here is if we're not celebrating christmas and christ hasn't come then then why am i going into twitch space what's the purpose what's the purpose yeah yeah uh Yeah, so thinking about that, why don't we just shift and thinking about REITs for a minute? Because I think that's a good tangent to go on to. We're talking about impact in people's life. We mentioned it a couple of times. You and I had a strange occurrence to be able to spend time together. But I want to start with, I've got my trophy back here. from yes it's it's going to be painted for either a affiliate anniversary or streamiversary i'm going to paint it on on cam uh but i'm saving it so it'll be a down the road thing but We, I think, first got introduced to each other because Reach Conference was doing a 90-day Helldivers challenge. And I don't know how you got signed up in it to begin with, but then all of a sudden it was, hey, can you help lead this thing that's ongoing? Because the initial person that was going to do it, I believe, got sick and had to step aside. Their life just turned upside down. Their life was totally turned upside down. And a bunch of us were committed to doing it. Now, I'll have to air my grievances here because Festivus is also just around the corner. And I had signed up to do it at 10 a.m. And then it got switched. And and I was the other way around. I don't remember. Anyway, the time got switched on me. I wanted to sign up for the other time. Suddenly, everybody was in one group and I wasn't happy. And I'm like, but I'm committed. So I'm going to show up. I have a hard time when I commit to something of not actually following through and doing that. So how did how did you get started in that?

Stratus Live: Yeah, so what I teach in university is fitness. I got my master's in kinesiology, so specifically adapted fitness for exercise with people with chronic disability. So when all of a sudden each piece that thing was happening, moments I originally reached out to like, oh, dude, like. your gamer and fitness and stuff. Let me connect you with this guy. The guy was originally going to lead it. Um, so we had a little bit of back and forth, but it mostly ended up just being like, Hey, I'm down to like partake in the group. If I needed us help at all, I'm more than happy to help out. Um, so then once that stuff happened jeesh was originally like hey i was like jeesh you stream you lift you don't do it he's like okay um and so i was like you know kind of just um you know just being there as a support as an assist as needed um i think there's a really awesome opportunity god was using for jeesh and you know um letting him step into that and step into that leadership and so i kind of just felt like i was kind of the dude behind the curtain whether it was the occasional um actually guy to make sure people were safe with technique or uh eventually leading some groups and stuff um but yeah and so hp has been great

Leighton Seys: I did appreciate your explanation. I am one that needs the explanation as to why it happens. And some of this comes from coaching. So coaching wrestling, I needed to know the leverage points and why things work because I needed to think of how to prevent it from happening. So I love the both and of the thinking through all the kinesiology aspects of things to know if I'm doing this this way, this is the outcome I should expect. If I do it a different way, it's a different outcome. My mind is going to how to prevent things often because I don't want people doing those things to me. And then the frustration when you can't prevent someone from doing it. i think that's also good like and i think this more my age i am more prone to injury now than i ever have been i don't want injury more than ever i mean when i was younger i didn't care i'm injured so what i'll get over it i'll heal fast i don't heal fast anymore i have the weekend to heal up i'll keep playing on it if i can walk i'm okay exactly oh yeah yeah like if If you don't play with a broken arm, I mean, what are you, a wuss, you know? Like, you know, I remember the first time I heard about turf toe and the laughter that ran through my friends. Oh, my goodness, you stubbed your toe and you can't play. And, you know, making fun of wide receivers because they're the only ones that would, you know, not play with a stubbed toe. So, oh. So. Did you enjoy the time of leading that and helping us to be able to accomplish that 90 days?

Stratus Live: Oh, absolutely. It was great. If it was selfish, we would have liked it a little bit later, but that's okay. It was quite early for me, but it made sense because sometimes I could literally help out with the workout, then immediately book it to work for my first class. So it actually worked out incredibly well there in the grand scheme of things. It was a blessing. It was great. It's definitely something I'm passionate about. um gaming fitness ministry like those are kind of like the triangle for me in that regards of um amongst some other passions i'm still working on like music and stuff but that takes a little more time right but um yeah it's been great um actually looking at uh what we did with the hp stat is we made some specific groups kind of like made a little team network now so we have our different stuff mine's booting up um after the holidays i'm giving it that breather but um but i thought i was like hey just do friday mornings dibs don't know what it's going to look like but we'll see and kind of just taking that variety exposure of like hey um you can try different styles see maybe hey you've never worked out this way before hey you don't need equipment to actually get these results you want and maybe you hate that trend and you never want to do it again or maybe you love that trend and it ends up being something that sticks with it for you because at the end of the day the best workout is going to be the one you stick with it doesn't matter how mathematically perfect or incorrect it is kind of thing. As long as it's healthy, leading you close to your goals and you can stick with it.

Leighton Seys: Yeah. And I really like the aspect because there is a whole level of which as a content creator, as a streamer, I can sit in front of the computer all day long. As a pastor, I sat at a desk in front of a computer most of the day long. It is really easy to neglect my physical health because I sit in front of a computer screen all the time. So I love the fact that we were talking about that in Reach Conference as one of the things that we wanted to level up. was our health. And I've seen several people in the community that did the 90 Day Hell Divers that are now full on engaged in making sure they're caring for and taking care of their physical health and doing different activities and doing those kinds of things.

Stratus Live: Yeah, amazing to see, even just occasionally glancing in the HP stat and just seeing, you know, the consistency came from it and people like, you know, owning it, like, hey, like, this is part of my life now. This is something I want to do. It wasn't just the 90 days and I'm done. Peace out kind of thing. So, yeah, absolutely. I completely resonate with that.

Leighton Seys: Yeah, there's. I think there's going to be more people that that can do that. But it's one of those aspects, like I was saying, that like it's easy to neglect. It's easy to forget about. It's easy to put aside. And not just for that. I mean, like almost I would say a whole bunch of our societies is doing that. You go to work, whatever it is, you're not really mobile active. We drive in vehicles, whether it's your own or public transportation, to get back and forth to work. we're not walking 10,000, 20,000 steps a day like our ancestors did. A few people are out there doing the 10,000, but you would be doing a whole lot more of that if you were walking to get your water at the river, if you're going out to hunt and get your food, if you're going out to the field to get crops. We do so little as a natural part of life in the way that we've

Stratus Live: we have inherited the world that we live in absolutely i'd go as far as i work i call it a physical activity epidemic because we're seeing a lot of health issues medicare costs all of that medical costs um but here we are inconvenience that we have to walk further in the parking lot when we park to go to the gym taking those extra steps um Yeah, we got some work to do for sure. So it was really great to see and reach, to follow up with that and actually being part of that change. So it was very encouraging.

Leighton Seys: Yeah. The parking closer always cracks me up with the people that are trying to get that perfect spot up front. So they have very little distance to walk to get there. And good grief, I parked on campus when I commuted to college. in the middle of a cornfield and i would have to walk a half mile to get to class so it's just like you found any spot you got lucky and then you just picked it and you sat there and you never moved your car the whole day because you were gonna there was no chance of getting as soon as you back out of it yeah yeah that's yeah like there's sharks circling the whole parking lot so like i like my ideal parking spot is i pull through so i don't have to back up

Stratus Live: I don't care if I'm a half mile away.

Leighton Seys: I don't have to back up. I get to pull through. That's what I'm looking for. So I will give up a half mile of parking to pull out forward instead of backing in or backing out. But, you know, I guess I pay for it or I get the blessing of walking all those extra steps to get inside.

Stratus Live: Yeah, I, uh, I, I, people always, I don't think of it, like, it's a little weird quirk, I guess, like, I always park weirdly far, like, instead of using campus parking and stuff, like, I park, like, I know this one spot on the street side in front of this one house, it's my vicarious fake house, because hopefully I'm not inconveniencing them by always parking in front of their house and then get a nice little, like, 10-15 minute walk in real quick.

Leighton Seys: Well, also too, I do like to park with the intent of getting out of the parking lot faster than everyone else. Exactly. When I was in high school, I didn't park in the parking lot. I parked on the road that was parked next to the campus, and I parked the closest spot to the stop sign so nobody could park in front of me so I could always get in my car and drive to the stop sign and be away from school while everyone is fighting the parking lot. to get out of the parking lot. I'm already at the road and I'm already down the road. But I just had to walk three times as far as they did to get in their car. They just had somebody sitting in front of them that doesn't know where the gas pedal is. And the payoff's worth it. There you go. Who knew where this conversation was going to go? Weird question here, but I'm going to go there because maybe you know. I know there are a few people that do streams on Twitch that are workout streams. And I don't know that I've ever seen any that's well attended, but I'm just wondering, is there anybody doing VTuber workout streams that you know of?

Stratus Live: not really um there's there's one vtuber i know of um he's very fitness minded and stuff but um a workout stream itself is really tough to manage because like You're not running the class. Like, you're just working out. People are allowed to, like, join in if they want. But, you know, you're not paying for a workout liability. Like, there's all those, like, fine tape, right, if you really wanted to do something like that. VR, I feel like you could potentially maneuver it. But especially, like, during some of the first-gen full immersive VR stuff, like, it was still a little limited. So I think we still have a little bit more to go before it's really there. mocap suit integration is kind of what's going on now which could could get us we're pretty close to there i would say um i would give it like one or two more gens before we could really see that avenue kind of maybe be paved where like hey guys i'm just going to show you my workout you know if you have questions about it here's what i recommend kind of thing you can do it on your own time um and you you can consult outside if you have those qualifications and credentials like hey like reach out you can do a consultation i have my certification but on the stream itself it just gets really blurred to try and like do that as the stream um someone like i i always love watching susie streams pastor susie when he did his workouts because he just talked about what he's doing and why he's doing it and he would do their sign he'd look up the science he'd do the research behind it it's like oh here's why i'm doing this and i was like i agree i have the degree and like i went to school for it and you're you're doing right research you're not going on random joe on youtube who's like i'm jack shredded and this is what i did it's going to work for everyone else when it actually doesn't work kind of thing right yeah yeah well i think that's i think that's true with anything and i think even more and more today than ever

Leighton Seys: you don't know what the source is that somebody's quoting. And I have found myself numerous times, even studying the Bible, and someone will say, where's the source on that? And I will go... oh, I don't know. I've heard this from multiple pastors throughout the years. I don't know where the source is. And I started to become more and more aware of that idea of where is the source to be able to point to the criteria for it. As I become more and more aware of that, I realized there have been things that... hey, I wasn't necessarily fully sourced well on some of the things that I had learned and I needed to unlearn those or do more exploration to find out when those started and how they came about and go, well, maybe that's not the best thing. And, you know, we have that with diet and exercise at times too that will... oh yeah tell us this is this is the thing now and then later science says no that's that's not quite true there are different things about it that well we we learned something different about it i get to have way too much fun with those things um

Stratus Live: I'll just tease one right now. So the side plank, for example, the side plank exercise. It's a variation of the plank, but your sideline, whether you're on your hand or forearm. So Dr. Stu McGill was the one who constructed the exercise. And the illustrator in the textbook messed it up and had the feet stacked on top of each other. but what that does is that puts extra strain on your spine so you're just trashing yourself while trying to get a good quality workout so if you actually separate the legs one in front of the other um they're staggered then you're doing a side plank correctly kind of thing so uh i love those little things people like you know we've just grown accustomed to like oh yeah sit ups are king you know like in which you sit up for everything it's like actually

Leighton Seys: better exercises you can do for that right and so that that always gets me like like i nerd out about stuff like that all the time that's cool yeah i guess i i nerd out when we start talking bible stuff so that's that's my area of nerd out is is get in the greek and hebrew and somebody found something or the meaning of this word behind that and So, you know, go down a rabbit trail on all that kind of stuff. I love to find that niche where people just, like, I'm so excited to talk about it. Can I tell you about this? So I knew we were going to talk about working out for a little bit there. So glad we could do that. I wish I liked working out more. I don't. I have been on lots of sports teams. I will work out for a team. I will work out for a team to excel. I will work out to do my part for the team. But if it's just myself, it is really hard at times to go and do things. And I'm self-motivated. So when I'm not motivated, it's really hard to decide I'm going to do it. But if I've already decided I'm doing it, you're not going to stop me from doing it. So it kind of goes both ways.

Stratus Live: I call myself the dog with a tennis ball in that regards. Like, if there's any objective game, sport, something, like, I'll run three miles and not even know it. You put me on a track to just run laps. I'm two laps in. I'm like, what am I doing with my life?

Leighton Seys: Yeah, that's one of those things where I figure you went around the track once. You completed it. Why would you keep going? That was the whole goal. Like, if the track needed to be bigger, they would have made it bigger. One lap is enough. And then I end up coaching cross-country, which was like... okay yeah i'm i'm the expert you want to listen to uh but uh that 12 laps around the track and then you run your 16 laps around the track well it it became really fun uh and it was like this ongoing joke for me that the kids would like want to know what the plan for the day was and all my answer ever was we're gonna run and then what are we gonna do we're gonna run some more That's the plan. Like, okay, what are we doing first? Well, you got a mile warm-up, so go run your warm-up and stretch and then be ready to run after that. And it was just like this ongoing joke that they would just kind of, what are we doing today, coach? What are we doing? It's like, we're going to run. And so I wanted to. We never ended up doing it. Get a shirt that just said cross-country workout. Run, run, rest, repeat. Because that's really all you need to do. We did do other stuff, but it was just the fun aspect of it. I like, I don't know how to tell you what my plan is going to be. Cause I don't have a name for the stuff we're going to do. Like we're going to run Hills or we're going to go do this. I had games I came up with for running around town and doing other things so that it wasn't boring. And, and, and we did other stuff. So I don't know if you've ever done a game called bigger or better. ever heard of this game i don't think i have okay so i get an item that i give every single one of the kids so i just give them an item oh this is just sitting here right next to me as a 20-sided die they go and knock on the door of someone's house and they say i need something bigger or better than this that's great so so this book over here is bigger but i don't know if it's better but i can trade you because it's bigger and so they would just run all over town trading things up uh we got like bicycles by the end of the day i'd give them like a paper clip or a pen and they would come home with a bicycle um got a computer that actually ended up being uh the computer that i i started using for recording everything because i didn't have anything that's so great so i ended up with a computer for the team ended up with an amplifier like i'd let the kids keep stuff but someone's like they didn't want it like hey you want it coach so yeah i had a bicycle that came one time somebody had a wheelbarrow that they got a tv i mean just like stuff that people didn't want sitting around like you can have it and they would just trade up and sometimes people would say Yeah, I don't want your garbage that you're trying to trade me. Just take this other thing. And so they'd come in with a whole handful of stuff. And that's a fun way to get a workout. Running around carrying stuff would also make it more difficult because you couldn't carry everything and run. And there was always – I did this with all of our things. If you don't get back on time, you don't win. like in order to in order to win there is a hard stop that you have to be in the building in my presence to to be able to whatever the things were that we would do we also do a a canned food drive run around town and collect food uh for the food pantry so it worked out in a massive fortune

Stratus Live: Yes, yes, work out and amass a small streamer fortune.

Leighton Seys: Not a fortune, a small streamer fortune. That's really good. Maybe I should implement that around here. I need something better than this old chip that, you know, it's got to be all tech stuff, you know, upgrade my tech. uh bigger or bigger that's the ai sales of ram i need a better ram stick here you go can you get me a better ram stick there we go oh well we're talking about um some of the obstacles that have come in the way of streaming and then life. Has there been some blessings you've experienced as being a streamer or ones you've witnessed for somebody in your streaming community?

Stratus Live: um streaming i mean yeah it was always an unexpected blessing like i thought i was just gonna kind of be here in this space like um i mean generosity of people is astounding um when whatever i made i tried to make sure at least like 90 of it was going back into the stream as much as i could kind of thing but even then it was like I barely streamed one month and it was like my most profitable month. I'm like, huh? Like, isn't this supposed to go the other way around? Like, how does this work? But I mean, not even just like money. Like I remember specifically one time. was i think it was in the spring i think it's spring like 23 or something like that like life was life was being a bit tough um i think there was i pretty sure it was a family loss at the time and stuff like that and i was just doing a just chatting stream i remember assassinator state steph raided and not only did she raid but then she just went like full auto like blessing in the chat and i'm just like i just like lost it right there i was just like like what the heck like how how does this like man and and like going like being in the opportunity in my position like i've seen a lot of prayer move like um god move in ways um there was something a specific test of faith i guess you could say like comfort zone pushing um god had um told me to put a word of encouragement redeem on my stream that for an easy seven points um i would pray kind of like seeking like a prophetic prayer just of encouragement on the spot just whatever god's saying listening prayer let god speak worst case scenario it's me kooky imagination whatever life goes on you're out down seven channel points best case scenario God is reading your mail like telling you something meeting you right then and there and the moments that have come from that have been absurd um one in particular I remember oh sorry go on oh I was gonna say could you tell us two or three of those yeah so um one in particular i remember a friend of mine she had like done the redeem and i was like i i don't know why i just can't get this like image of a strawberry out of my head and i was like i don't even know what it means because i'm not supposed to interpret it anyway i don't want to know what it means it's usually easier that way compared to if i think i know what it means and it's like oh i'm going too much of me talking rather than letting god talk if it's really him in that moment right then like that was a Tuesday that Thursday she like tells me like she got a DM from her friend she's like you're like a strawberry you're sweet blah blah blah like just like this like just full like encouragement thing that was just completely resonating with what was said like beforehand and like that's the cool thing about God in these moments like it's not fortune telling I'm like oh you're gonna win the lottery it's like no like God will either be reinforcing something he's already telling in you or reminding you of something you've forgotten so that's why it's like a word of encouragement in that regard like it might be something completely abstract to me i even made this example at reach i was like you know listening prayer i'm praying and then all of a sudden daffy duck stuck in my head and like oh cool and the guy's like it's funny you mentioned daffy duck because you know my really close relative and i like his favorite cartoon was daffy duck he had this really good daffy duck voice but then yeah he was the one who read me the bible and i first got to see it and it's just this really intimate moment for him suddenly while it's like Nothing for me, which is perfectly fine because it's about them in that moment. It's about God meeting them where they're at. So I love that stuff. I love the Holy Spirit moving in that way. But, yeah, it's been just, you know, going out in faith. Like a lot of things, God's like, go out in faith. I'm like, this is going to be awkward, but I feel like God's saying it. And then, of course, the way he just ends up honoring that obedience that he's calling you to just.

Leighton Seys: the most amazing things happen yeah that's that's super cool i would definitely say and i odd thing i have prayer on my channel at seven points as well so that's that's kind of a weird thing uh like why seven i mean i have a reason for seven but why do you have seven uh so the prayer request itself was one point just like easy mode okay but then the word of encouragement was seven just for like you know the significance of the number seven um

Stratus Live: It was like, hey, you know, we're going to the word of encouragement prayer is specifically a prayer of like. i don't want to say putting it to the test because that's not at all the right like terminology but like like expecting an immediacy in this moment with this prayer request like uh i asked god for something like a normal prayer of petition he's going to move on his timing but i'm asking god like hey can you speak in this person's life right now whether it's a word an image anything just let it be a view just please not be of me i'm gonna wait there until it happens and if it's an awkward silence it's an awkward silence and then if i think i got something here we go does it resonate oh it makes no sense at all okay don't worry about it maybe two weeks later it makes sense to them maybe it never makes sense and you know oh yeah maybe i messed it up or maybe God will honor it in a different way.

Leighton Seys: Yeah, that's not something that my tradition within the church has or does. I don't know if you use the word prophetic word, but those words, those impressions that people get, I've watched other people do that, and I've experienced it on the other side. So is that something that your church tradition, your faith tradition, uh does around you that you you experience yourself and that's why you thought or the holy spirit was leading you to say yeah this is something you could i could use you to give to other people it's a really good question um kind of takes a little bit more of the questions to answer it so i'm going to kind of rewind a little bit to give some concept um

Stratus Live: basically like my church background like i'm technically non-denominational but i've been a part of like all the denominations i feel like at this point and it's not like there's something wrong with them like i went to a baptist school helped out at a presbyterian church helped out a lutheran church i think they're all great i think you know in a healthy context it's different expressions different modalities of the same um intent the same mission the same purpose which is following the biblical jesus following god who he's revealed himself through that right um around end of high school early undergrad um we were specifically at a church um that we were helping out with and some missionaries from south africa had hung out there and like they're at a life group my parents were hosting stuff and basically all of a sudden um they thought and my family my parents thought at the same time like hey y'all are supposed to live with us uh for a little bit during the season so we had a full house it was packed i had two families living in here and they like were like god was supposed to show us the reality of the holy spirit moving today like miracles and stuff like that um a lot of amazing things i could go on a whole different podcast episode before i feel like trying to keep it precise to the point um specifically what happened with me um Again, other backstory I won't go into, but I was born with a disability. Part of how it affected me is I had seizures growing up. And God gave me the craziest 19th birthday present. He healed me of my seizures with those missionaries praying over me and stuff like that.

Leighton Seys: Very cool.

Stratus Live: So, yeah, I haven't had a seizure since that day. I haven't been on. I was going to get off meds immediately. I knew I was healed. But psychotropic meds, you want to take due process, right? Like follow the procedure. So my parents are like, no, you should wean yourself off. So I respected that. But I've been off meds since. So any doubters? sure the experiment's still going if you really want to or you could be like hey maybe there's something real to this and give it a shot and see like experience God for yourself kind of thing but so um the movement of the Holy Spirit became like really just palpable and strong in my life and seen in other people's lives and stuff and again it's not I'm special I have a gift or something like that it's God just choosing God giving directions and he's like hey I want you to be along for the ride and if you are awesome you get to witness it if not you'll find someone else and make it happen anyway right so um yeah so just like yeah i i even though i don't even know what denomination i'd fall under like i'm very pro holy spirit moving today and kind of just going in those leaps of faith of like hey spirit moves awesome it's gonna be amazing if it was me and not the spirit well life goes on you know as long as it's a safe moment as long as there's obviously very ways to abuse that and and make it in a bad way that i think a lot of people unfortunately do but as long as you're seeking the biblical backing behind it and just in a healthy way pursuing this there's no real lose out of the situation in those moments

Leighton Seys: yeah and i i think there are different ways that the holy spirit interacts with different people so you know we all have different spiritual gifts so i would i would try to interpret because it does say uh in in there the word of knowledge or a word of wisdom I would say in some way, I think that that could be what you're doing. I don't know if that's exactly what the biblical example is doing, but if the Holy Spirit can do that and give a word of knowledge or wisdom from the way we understand it, that sounds like what that could be. So I don't doubt that at all. But I do love your caution in there of test it, because we should be doing that. We should be saying, is this valid? Like, man, that is a powerful thing to have someone lay hands on you and be completely healed of something that's been an ongoing thing in your life and be able to go off medication, which there would be evidence of the healing.

Stratus Live: Yeah, absolutely.

Leighton Seys: I just tried to catch up on chat. Turtle's saying, I was raised in a Baptist church, so now your favorite phrase is, I was one of your charismatics. Well, I don't consider myself a charismatic. I have gone to different Pentecostal churches at times for various different reasons. Actually, early on when I got started as a streamer, there was a Pentecostal church that met inside of the church that I was a transition pastor for. So I was going to be there for a year, year and a half, however long it was going to be. And there was a Pentecostal church that met there. So I got invited to go to their church service, which was after the service I went. So I started going there several times. I had them lay hands and pray over me, which was a pretty fantastic thing. And people, you know, talking about the... streaming that i was doing and they had no knowledge of the streaming that i was doing so that's pretty powerful uh encouragement for me that i was in fact hearing from the spirit when i thought i should be streaming to have other people speak that over me as well which was kind of cool i did lose your camera yeah no my computer is chugging along and i'm trying to fix it real quick okay

Stratus Live: too they're good michael's still here that's right in case one gets vanished now i hear you're good and yeah sorry i'm just gonna try to fix this real quick yeah so

Leighton Seys: Other than some personal experiences like that, I'm not entirely sure what that I always would do or how I would have viewed it. Certainly, I view things a whole lot better. And like you were saying earlier, especially in the digital space, if you're pursuing after Jesus, I like I'm going to let the Holy Spirit deal with you and your denomination oversee you. I'm not going to tell you to change what you believe you should be doing. I will gladly have wonderful conversations with you and pray with you and and help in any way I can. But unless the Holy Spirit's given me a word that I should give to you and then I wouldn't do it on stream, I would do it directly with you. But I my experience with the Holy Spirit is not the charismatic side, but it's not necessarily what I grew up with. where I will talk, and I do this often on my stream, talk about I'm arguing with the Holy Spirit. That's my experience. The way I describe the Holy Spirit is it sounds like your own voice telling you to do something, but it's something you don't want to do. So I know it's not, you know, my own idea to go and do this because the Holy Spirit is saying go do it. And I'm arguing with the Holy Spirit or I'm complaining about something. And the Holy Spirit goes, well, then why don't you do this about it? And I'm like, because then I won't be able to keep complaining about it. So, you know. no absolutely i i've heard that word like the holy spirit like that so much like oh we're going there are we okay i guess this isn't me since i don't want to go there right and to me that's a good like it's not that the holy spirit won't call you to do things that you will enjoy and you'll like doing it's not that that's true It's more obvious for me to know it's the Holy Spirit and not my own idea. When it's something like, hey, maybe I should go do this. A couple of years ago, I thought, well, I'm stepping into this. I've been talking with Romans and a few other people about streaming. Maybe I'm supposed to go and go full-time, try to work towards partner and stream and start doing gaming because gaming wasn't how I got started. Well, I did that for three months, four hours on Monday, four hours on Tuesday, in addition to everything else I was doing. I didn't have any more people watching my stream after three months than I did the first time I went live streaming a game. And it was like, I'm burning myself out. So maybe this was my idea, and this wasn't what God had in mind. So maybe I shouldn't try to make it happen. So to go back to your talking about having patience is not one of those things I'm really good at. also I like well even content itself is a long game yeah sorry I'm gonna interrupt you but like yeah like you make a change you could make that change for four years and see no change and all of a sudden like oh yeah you know it was but it was like committed to it and then committed to evaluate and the evaluation was maybe I'm doing this to try to promote myself and that's not what absolutely not what I should be doing If it had been, no, I'm not doing this to promote myself, it would have been, okay, then let's give it another three months and see if we do something different. Or maybe I need to adjust it. Maybe Monday and Tuesday is the wrong day. I missed my audience. Or maybe it's the wrong game. But it was like, no, I think I was trying to make it happen, and that wasn't what I was supposed to be doing.

Stratus Live: Seeing through what could have appeared as those layers was like getting to the heart of it.

Leighton Seys: Yeah. Absolutely. So when you have a, I think this could be, and the Holy Spirit isn't clear, it's easy to run ahead of. And now, I am convinced I'm not supposed to leave Twitch. I'm supposed to hang out here, and this is where I'm supposed to be. I had no idea I was going to do a podcast a year ago. I mean, that wasn't even a conversation yet a year ago. So here I am. I don't know how many episodes in and into the second season, into the revamping of things because the first was amazing. Yeah, it's like, okay. And like this, I'm not going to run out of friends to be able to have on the podcast. They'll just either decide that my podcast isn't worth the time and God's done using it, but I won't run out of friends to invite on the podcast. It's... And there's always something unexpected that the conversation goes to. And I had no plans. I just get curious, and I like to learn. And learning more about my friends is one of those fun things. And seeing what God is up to and celebrating those things is just super fun for me. So, yeah. I love it.

Announcer/Intro Voice: That's why I love it.

Leighton Seys: uh let's see where were we at before okay so we did talk about reach a little bit uh why don't we just kind of fully uh talk about that so you got involved with it to start with with getting invited in to to do the hell divers and teacher were you in the discord community much before that did you you didn't go to yeah did you go to first year of reach i was first year i remember you were at the first year reach yeah i didn't i didn't connect with the v tubers that were at the first year uh so if you were connected with the v tubers then then so you were at reach the first year did you do the Alpha Course? The Alpha Series? Yes. Yeah, you did the Alpha.

Stratus Live: I was part of Peoria Lupine's team, and so we were the bundle. Myself, Mako, and some others were all part of it. It was like five or six of us were that team for that ministry specifically.

Leighton Seys: Okay. Okay. That makes sense. That makes sense. So for those that don't know, part of the original thought behind getting some streamers together was we were going to prove to some different organizations, the church at large, that this is viable ministry and people are responding to it. So we're going to go do an alpha course within our communities and bring the gospel to so many people and see what we were able to do in a... short window of time and then reach conference was a celebration of we accomplished a lot of those things so i i ran it and actually when romans came to me and said we're we're thinking about doing alpha i'd already taught alpha many times and i was already thinking i was already so this was like i don't know if it was confirmation for for him or not but as soon as you said that i go dude i was already planning on doing that this year I already had the Holy Spirit talking to me about what can I do in my community, and I'm like, I know Alpha. I'll just go do that. And so it was like, yeah, sign me up. What do I need to do? How do I help out? What can I do? And so it was cool in that regard. So had you had exposure to Alpha before that, and those that don't know, Alpha essentially is an introduction to the Christian faith course.

Stratus Live: Yeah, so it's very interesting. I had multiple instances of like indirect, like almost secondary connection with Alpha. One of the ministries I was a part of in undergrad on campus, they were a part of the church called Valley Vineyard in our area. And every Sunday evening, they would go through Alphas. I didn't know what Alphas meant. I thought it was just something specific to them or something part of their thing. but then at the time of year one reach um i was going through the bible and year plan through the pastors who made the alpha series and so you know your devotional some of them they would make that and so then i made that connection i talked to akiva i was like oh and then like i talked to jade about i was like oh you know it's just all those dots like wow it was like god was like speaking to all of us at the same time about this potential mission thing that he was preparing the way for who would have thought

Leighton Seys: yeah yeah so cool uh yeah i didn't i didn't know you were over like i said this is one of those things like there's just so much to always learn and have conversations with with people and and figure those things out so yeah that's right you were so you were there uh at the alpha the first year what was not alpha at reach the first year what were some things that your community learned going through alpha

Stratus Live: That's a really good question. So the way we did Alpha, we would all watch the video together and then we'd break up into smaller groups amongst our teams. Now I'm having to like go through my memory. the thing with my alpha group that was very interesting is at the beginning we had a lot of non-believers in my group specifically which was really cool and really interesting getting the perspectives and stuff and then like the middle like i know other groups were still good but my group kind of ended up being like a christian bubble in a moment i was like well how can we explore deeper with this and so i tried to like tailor those questions towards our audience at the time but then towards the end it kind of started like refolding itself and so um i think at least personally speaking um you know it gave you a great template they give you a great resource to initiate those conversations if you don't know how to have those conversations if you don't know how to create that space for that environment um which i think is really great i think it's really good with that system um because we can easily get caught up in like know sharpening ourselves with the word and stuff but then we're just always stuck in the christian bubble instead so how can you take that without completely just full sending into some other like random community you don't know and then just taking that walk the plank leap of faith kind of thing how can you like mesh both those worlds together where you can still have the christian grounding because it is a christian devotional plan technically it's just tailoring the questions in a um inquiring perspective as opposed to an already believer perspective kind of thing

Leighton Seys: Well, one of the other things that's, I think, so valuable about Alpha is that Alpha isn't there to answer your questions. Alpha is there to engage you where you are in the question. So instead of the leader, the facilitators being the experts in the room with all the answers to teach you, They are there to redirect you to deeper thinking or to invite others into the conversation. Hey, that's a really interesting thing that you shared. I'm fascinated. Could you tell me more about it? Or, wow, that was such a good answer. What do others think about this? That's one of the wonderful things that I love about Alpha is it really taught me how to have conversations with people who are not believers. Instead of saying, I have all the answers, they're right here.

Stratus Live: Or the Bible says this.

Leighton Seys: The Bible says this, and so therefore it's true. Well, that's fine if you believe in the Bible. But if you don't believe in the Bible, that's... You know, that's like somebody who's a Muslim quoting the Koran and you're like, well, I'm not going to give it the time of day. I don't believe in the Koran.

Stratus Live: Good talk, buddy.

Leighton Seys: Right. Good on you. I'm not going to pay any attention to you. It's the same thing. Now, we might argue it's not the same thing because we have the power of the spirit and the spirit indwelling people that the word won't return void. Agreed. However, the conversation goes a whole lot different if I engage the person instead of I'm the answer person to make sure you know all the right answers and you have to believe the right way. We now have relationship development that's going and happening so that you begin to trust me even if you don't trust the Bible.

Stratus Live: Are you talking at them or with them kind of thing?

Leighton Seys: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good analogy too. You're talking with them instead of talking at them. Yep. So I love that we did that. I thought maybe we'd do it again for year two. It didn't happen. We moved and shifted in a different direction. It was valuable for what it was. We did a different thing for year two. What have been some of the most impactful things for you? you either that you were able to learn and grow yourself from the two alpha conferences or an experience that you were able to have where you watch someone else grow and change so year one um was definitely that like

Stratus Live: not it made it real kind of thing but it created that layer of depth because this is people i mean like 2016 2017 i've been doing like sure i wasn't streaming yet but i was still online in discord still like you know doing ministry online in these spaces you know being a like trying to love on people reaching out to uh you know save versus non-save kind of thing um so year one really kind of like just added so much more depth to the mission god had been using in my life because it's so easy to feel like well there's no like worldly product from it or something like where's your like success where's your legacy or something like things like that that you know which are understandable it's not like it's wrong to pursue those things because i mean that's the visible tangible value you can see of it but like something more important than that that we're actually working with and seeing that we're all together and also seeing because by year one of reach you know i had been streaming i had this mission and i was basically doing my mission in front of me like i'm seeing jake connect with kaito and the vtubers and and they really hit it off and they really end up like and then jake does his vtubing thing like i'm seeing like you know aki connecting with like people i knew that you know i thought they would have never interacted based on their communities and stuff like that right and and so year one was just that kind of was just the overwhelming theme of that like for me personally just seeing you know like hey you know this is god's mission He's invited me to be a part of it. But whether I drop the ball or not, God's going to do his thing. Like, sure, I still need to try my best. I still need to go for it. But his mission isn't dependence on me.

Leighton Seys: Yes, absolutely. You just get to participate in it.

Stratus Live: Yeah. Exactly. The elephant in the bridge. So I'll get to it a little later because I want to finish your question first. You two, definitely a little different, a lot bigger, but a lot of still like, you know, God connecting. I feel like the irony is like so many of the God talks were... so often outside of the events themselves yes like god can work beyond the structure of the conference at times like um there were like like the stat chats were amazing don't get me wrong i'm not i'm not bashing the conference by any means but you know god isn't limited to working amidst the conference schedule kind of thing and so you know all year one like we're always like gaming like hanging out in the hotel lounge afterwards uh year two was really just like conversations in between each event i i missed i missed the beach server tournament my bad like you know because god was busy having important conversations going on so um you know it's kind of people that you know certain people that you know i knew of like and like i thought were friends but then like all of a sudden i'm having like three four hour conversation with them and god's just like you know growing us in ways and breakthrough in our lives that's like you know neither of us are pastors we're not like you know i don't know how to say it like none of us is like it's not like an authority like speaking into a point like a mentor thing but it's like god just doing it himself with you both because you both are seeking god while seeking each other i felt that with so many different conversations just connecting with so many different people um people who i knew of who um part of the network person is sometimes you'll know people but they won't know you you know because um content creators you're making your own space it's understandable that's your purpose that's your mission that's your job like yeah you'll see people like if you collab with them and like i think reach helps lift a lot of people's heads up so they can see oh yeah they're not alone in this but um you know the pros and cons of not having my community sometimes like oh yeah i do know i can't connect with all these other people but then the cons is like you know sometimes there's those connections it's like are you again it's like but then god still moves regardless of it right so um yeah i think for me specifically um friday night stood out the most friday night worship session stood out the most for me for each i missed all of that though because god was just personal breakthrough personal development personal things that have just been felt on hold for at least a year and a half if not more um sure they're not they're not solved they're not fulfilled But he's meeting me where I was in them and he's pointing to what next steps can look like with that.

Leighton Seys: Yeah.

Stratus Live: Even as they've been creaking the door open a little bit, at least there's like, oh, this was correct. I wasn't just wasting my time this whole time kind of thing.

Leighton Seys: Yeah. For for conferences, I've always been one of those people that the content has never been the key to the conference for me. Often, like I would go to a conference, come back, have conversations with my wife about the conference. and she would say so what you know she was asking me questions about the conference and i'm like yeah i don't know what the speaker said i bought his book the first part was good but then they said this one phrase which my mind went down this road and the holy spirit was working on me with this and then i was processing all this other stuff and then i had a conversation afterwards with this other person so it's just like like it was never like i can get the content I'll get the video afterwards, which I usually do. Yeah, the recordings, right? I'll get the recordings. I'll learn all the stuff I needed to that I missed. But what I couldn't duplicate was being in the presence where I was around other people, where I could take that one root of what you're saying. My mind could relax enough to then make all these connections with things. And I would do that. Now, as I've gone through conferences more and more. What I'm finding is what I want more is the engaging people who are at the conference and including the vendors. I love engaging the vendors in what they're doing and what's going on in their lives and what they're bringing. building those relationships, because I'm also a networker. I am always plugging things together with other people. If you come and hang out with the Church Digital and you're going, hey, do you know anybody that's doing it? I'm going to be one of the people that says, yeah, let's Let me connect you with somebody else that's doing it. That's just the natural part of who I am. So I love that connecting piece. We need to play, you know, well, in my denomination since it's a Dutch heritage and my wife is Dutch. We call it Dutch bingo. And that's when, oh, you need this. I know that person who knows that person who's in this church. And let me connect the two of you together. We call it Dutch bingo is what we call that. That's great. I'm a Dutch bingo champion. I connect people all over the place. I love doing that. It's a lot of fun. And if you're listening to this podcast and you're going, hey, I'm not a VTuber. I don't know about that. Hey, I'm not a Twitch streamer. I don't know about that. Well, that's okay. Reach out anyway, because I probably know somebody that's either thinking about or doing some of the things you're thinking about. In fact, I want to say January of this year, I connected three different people that did not know each other that were all talking about doing sign language ministry digitally. Oh, wow. That's so good. So I don't know where that's at, but my job is done. I've connected the three of you, and if God's going to move in that space, I got to help out, and now I get to sit back and see what God does, and He blesses people, and I may never, ever know. So good. Dragonspit, never chatted here before, but thanks to whoever gifted you a sub a while back. Awesome. Well, welcome in. Glad to have you here.

Stratus Live: yeah there was a random uh anonymous gif sub bomb that happened in my stream the other day and it was like a bunch of people like hey i didn't even know this channel existed but i'm gifted a sub okay he's like okay we'll take it i've always found that curious of how you can get subs to channels that don't exist um but i think part of it like maybe like raids of raids and then another raid happen if you leave a tab open sometimes like you get put in their database because like there are channels like i click on it because i accidentally clicked on like i was trying to find like the stream next to it and then like three minutes later you were gifted a sub to them i was like i didn't even chat immediately clicked out i feel like it's like if you got in from a raid or like a blind query like that's a i could be interested on that but that's my personal theory

Leighton Seys: Well, that would make some sense because early on when I was watching Twitch and I was doing a lot more watching because I wasn't streaming yet, I would have six tabs up and I would just leave them up 24-7. And so I would end up in all kinds of weird places by the time I got back. So there's probably – it could be like from four years ago or five years ago that I was in your stream and didn't even – I don't know you exist because I never watched you. That makes some sense. Okay. But to go back to Reach Conference, so I alluded to this, and I love doing this in the podcast, by the way, alluding to something, and you've got to hang around and see if I actually talk about it later. We had... like interacted in the the hell diver thing and we had interacted in the discord server but like i mentioned we're both on opposite sides of the coast of the us we're in different time zones we're i'm a morning streamer you're an evening streamer and then that gets amplified we're we're not on around the same time to be able to do too much engagement with one another So we're going to leave. And it was when, you know, all of a sudden they're talking about shutting down the airports and cancellation of different flights and all of that stuff. And because the government was doing it, there was no requirement from the airlines to provide any compensation or hotels or anything like that. I get to the airport after. So I did the Airbnb. I had a bunch of people there. I rented the vehicle. I'm shuttling people, looping. I'd been to the airport three or four times already in the day before I showed up, returned the rental car to go to the airport. So I've already been back and forth multiple times during the day. I show up. I can't scan. It won't scan. It said I'm in first class now, which is cool. it's got the wrong date it's got tomorrow on there so i they have to wait in line get up to the person at the counter and i'm like i know they've got problems and when you know that like if you ever worked in the service industry be patient with people like raising your voice and getting upset. They're not the ones who cause the problem. They're the ones who can fix the problem. If they can fix it for you, always going to get more value. by treating them with dignity and respect and love. So I'm just like, hey, I'm not sure exactly what's going on. Here's what it is. Can you check into this for me? Is there any way I can get home today? I was supposed to be on this flight. I get changed. Then that flight's canceled. Is my first flight still going? Can I get on that flight again and get out? What happened was my flight got shifted to a new flight, but I only got on standby. I didn't actually get a ticket on that new flight. Then that flight got canceled. So since I'm all patient and talking to them and she's like, I can't change anything. I don't have to. But since you were originally here and that happened here, I'll give you a hotel room. So and I knew other people had had some issues and problems and some people are staying another day. I just went to the discord and I said, hey, anybody else? If you get stranded, I got a hotel room, and you can come and hang out with me if you need to. So I was just about to go to bed. I'd just taken some cold medicine, and you had messaged and said, hey, is that room still available? And I'm like, yeah, that'd be awesome. And I didn't tell you this, but I'm thinking in the back of my mind, I was just about to lay down. If you hadn't messaged me... I would have been asleep within like 15 minutes and you, you, you would have just been stuck at any other stall.

Stratus Live: Yeah.

Leighton Seys: Yeah.

Stratus Live: It's wild to think about.

Leighton Seys: Right. So, so it came through and I'm like, ah, okay, yeah, I'll be fine. I'll just, you know, I'll just wake myself up. I won't, I won't go to sleep. i had to have been halfway coherent through half of our conversation but it was it was amazing conversation that we had it was great had had dinner together and then chatted until i finally said i'm i'm gonna pass out i gotta go to bed get up to go to the airport but we had it and man we were talking some deep stuff which was really really cool and doing some reflection and speaking into i think each other's lives in a really cool way that i think god does when you have those moments where it's like i got i'm just here and i was like oh that's that's why i didn't get to go home because we needed to have a deep conversation which was fantastic and i i'm still reflecting on some of the things i can re

Stratus Live: recall i don't think i could recall everything that happened but it was like really powerful and meaningful to be able to hang out with you for a few hours at night it was cool man yeah it was uh god wanted us to have an after party in the midst of a chaotic storm yes um yeah like i mean from my perspective of it it was it was very easy to um know get caught up in the panic and stuff like that yes um i my flight got delayed i i had to go from florida to fort worth and fort worth to los angeles area um and i'm just like looking like my connection flight is perfectly fine dfw was fine it was orlando there's impact like there goes my flight uh Then they move us back, move us back, finally get us on the plane. I'm like, let's go. We're in the plane. Surely we're okay now, right? We stayed in the plane for about the duration of the flight. And they're like, hey, guys, sorry, our shift's over. We've got to take you back in. We tried our best, but... We didn't make it through the queue of the gridlocked planes because of the concoction of government shutdown, weather doing its thing. So, like, at that point, I'm, like, just trying to be calm. Like, I know God's got a big picture, but it's really easy to freak out in the moment. And I was like, whoa, I don't remember having anxiety. It's been, like, I was a little kid since the last time this happened. But this is all of a sudden manifesting. Like, what's going on here? So, I'm, like, just standing in the airport. I'm, like, caught in a decision, like, trying to figure out what to do. And I'm, like, I'm just going to pull the trigger. Let's see if that room's there. And if I got caught in hesitation, trepidation, or anything like that, I mean... all those gates would have just like proverbially been closed in theory like you think about it that way like just all those all those variables lined up like that and then yeah just hung out in the hotel and yeah like god was like hey you guys don't have any you don't have anything you're bringing like no baggage no like agenda you don't have anywhere to go like so we can just be as as raw and pure as god wanted to take that and yeah it was it was an amazing moment and it's just like yeah the peace of the holy spirit amidst that was just like and then you know you just can't make up the variables afterwards we're on the on the tram to get the airport yeah from the hotel it's playing worship music i'm like what nice hello

Leighton Seys: Yep.

Stratus Live: Yep. Everything in that, like just such an intentional sequencing that you cannot, you cannot make that. There was no random chance there at all.

Leighton Seys: Yeah. And you had, you know, plenty of time before your flight. So you hung out with me in the queue, making sure that, you know, I got up in there, I got checked in, I was good to go. It would have been great if we're in the same, you know, terminal and we could have hung out even longer. But it was like, When you get done with a conference like that, you're like, oh, man, it's done, and I got to go back. It was like, no, it wasn't done. There was more. There was more, and it was – and I also – I didn't have anything that I needed to rush back for. So I didn't have that anxiety of, oh, I got to get back today. It wasn't anything long – it was like – I did jokingly when I checked out at the – airport and i had to pay my parking uh she said she like i got home at i don't remember it's like midnight or something still even though i was early in the morning i had a massive awful four or five hour layover uh you know on the way back but i'm getting there and i'm like paying for it and i'm just joking like she's saying something about this or whatever and i go well you know i was supposed to be here yesterday and so you know that but with everything going on i go hey uh can you comp the government for that extra that i have to pay in parking she just laughed so hard like i can't do anything about it i know you can't i can't do i know you can't i'm just trying to you know make make light of the fact that like One small decision can complicate a lot of people's lives, and there's a lot of ripple effect that goes into it. And then there's a few people at times where you get the opportunity to see it a different way, and I think consider it all joy. And that was the attitude that you brought, and I really appreciate that, being able to spend that time in there. Instead of just being alone in the hotel room until I fell asleep, we got to hang out for a while.

Stratus Live: it's such a it's just such a i think on both our ends it's such a testament of like you could be there alongside everyone freaking out and panicking in that or you could let the peace of the holy spirit work in you and through you because instead of i go up the receptionist i'm like how dare you guys do this when it obviously didn't do it like you're the token person not yelling at them not like you know showing them love and grace and patience like whether they deserve it or not right and so like like those are the powerful moments that like we can be so mindful of and if we're intentional in those moments like

Leighton Seys: Oh, absolutely.

Stratus Live: The doors that can open for God to move is just amazing. I remember, sorry, just a real quick rewind. The number one thing that was holding me back was because I had work that next day. I canceled my Wednesday, Thursday classes so I could fly out. But then Monday, I was like, I can't take off three days of classes. That's way too many canceled classes. I mean, I'm texting my coworkers on a Sunday afternoon who's going to check their work phone kind of thing, work stuff, right? And they just immediately got coverage. at the first delay the first onset i was like oh cool i don't need to think about monday now like i can just deal with where i am right here and just let god do his thing and like i mean i feel like that was one of the first assurances like getting coverage at works usually a nightmare people aren't available at a time that's why they're not scheduled on those shifts right so um so yeah that was just the first thing they just got like hey i've got it And I've got some things in store for you. And so, yeah, it was just so beautiful. Yeah.

Leighton Seys: And it's not like that would be naturally my want to go to. It'd be like, I want to solve the problem. I want to solve my way. I want it now. But it's just such a better approach on some level. I'll also say this. Usually, well, I'm going to put it a different way. I've worked in the service industry. And when I was going through seminary, I delivered pizzas. And it's amazing, amazing what a $5 tip can do to your entire night. Now, I know that was 25 years ago, okay? So a $5 tip isn't the same today as it was 25 years ago. What do you mean?

Stratus Live: That's rude nowadays.

Leighton Seys: A dollar tip was usually what you got. You did not get more unless somebody was being generous. They might give you $2. So a $5 tip was like over the top, like outrageous tip at the time. and i was like i if i got that tip on a friday night and i got stiffed all day saturday and i got like no tips i was still on a high from that five dollar tip the day before it was it was that significant and and i think i took the attitude especially with with industry where you you you are the person is serving you and you can see they're having a bad day You can either go along with the bad day that they are experiencing. And say, well, my food was cold. It took forever. It was awful. And you deserve no tip. Or you can take it and say, the food was awful. It wasn't here on time. Everything was wrong. And I saw you doing your very best. I'm going to give you the best tip I can give you because I want to change your day. And I think that's some of the attitude that we can have as a Christian is, I can see that this is not your fault. I can see you're doing your best. How do I change the trajectory of the rest of this shift that you have? And who knows, maybe even the rest of your week to move in a different direction. And I think we do that also when we come into streaming. Somebody comes in, like we were talking about earlier, and maybe they're trolling to begin with because life is falling apart. They're trying to control one aspect. They're trying to get something in their life that they feel like they, and this is how they're going to choose to do it, but you don't know what's bubbling under the surface, what they're responding to, what they're doing.

Stratus Live: and and you get to be the person that shows them a different reflection than they're expecting to have in the moment what a a practical way to be in the world and not of the world of course it's not only condensed to that but that's the exam because everyone else is expecting the normal response but you know all of a sudden whoa what like that 404 error comes in

Leighton Seys: I am going to smile and think of you every time I see a 404 error. I mean, it's just – you know what? I might even the next time it happens, if I remember in the moment, is to screenshot it and send it to you. I might do that just to – Just to kind of go, hey, thinking about you, buddy. Yeah, everybody just starts spamming 404 errors to distract.

Stratus Live: And before my DMs are flooded, I'm like, whoa, what's this? I was like, oh, it's all 404s. It's all 404 errors.

Leighton Seys: Oh, what a fun inside joke that would be. Wow. I'm just trying to think if there is anything we didn't cover reflecting on on reach that maybe you wanted to share or think about.

Stratus Live: I feel like reach stuff was pretty good to talk about, you know, Alpha initially then kind of impacted the conference. I think that covered most of the bases. It's just whatever comes next with Reach is what we'd have to see.

Leighton Seys: Oh, yeah, yeah. I've already got my tickets, already planning on being there. I definitely, you know, I've committed to several different places over the years of where I want to spend my time and invest and network. And so, yeah, I... Unless something interferes with it, my plan is to continue to go to and be a part of REACH as far as I'm able to, as well as some other places. And God's got me connected with the Church Digital and trying to do other things through that space. And so networking from there is a lot of fun. And that's got me doing the podcast. Without the Church Digital, I wouldn't be doing the podcast. So that's an interesting thing. Thank you, the Church Digital. giving this man a mic to have this amazing podcast yeah to be able to connect these awesome friends yeah it is it is super cool well the what what happened was i want to say a couple of years ago we did have a number of of uh twitch streamers come on and we did a gaming like i don't remember a six or eight week series kind of thing so we created the channel and did all the streams on the channel. So I believe Susie live was on the podcast might've been Aki. I don't remember if Aki was on it. Bubba from love thy nerd. I think Mark from Lux digital church. So some of those people were out and probably jade too. And then it was like, all right, now what do we do with the channel? Well, they started doing multi-streaming when they had regular guests for podcasts, but it didn't have a lot of traction. So it was kind of like, Well, we have this channel. What should we do with it? Do you want the channel? OK, what is what should we do with it? So, you know, had some conversations and I was like, all right, let's do this. And then I, you know, I'm like, OK, I don't know where I heard this. So I don't know if that's actually true or not. But I heard the majority of podcasts don't make it past 10 episodes. So my thought was, I don't want to publish it anywhere until I get to 10 episodes.

Stratus Live: So we're ready for 11 episodes.

Leighton Seys: Right, right. So as soon as I hit episode 11, I'm like, all right, we're putting it on YouTube. I've got it. That's so funny. I've got some feet. I mean, like the other thing that somebody was saying not too long ago was the first time they went live was the worst stream they were ever going to have. And I'm like, oh, that sounds awful until you go, well, that means I get better all the time. And Jade says this all the time. Get one percent better every day. I'm hoping this is one percent better than last week or the week before, because, boy, I don't know if I want to go back and listen to those first few episodes. They were kind of rough. And the trajectory and the plan has changed a bit and been refined. But all the way along, God has been using it and doing some amazing things. And it's just so much fun getting to know people on a deeper level that when I'm just sitting in your chat, I don't ask all these questions. I don't. I just sit and I go. all right you're playing the game all right you're doing this thing i joined the conversation in the chat i don't get curious about what god's doing and your life and all of those things which it's just so much fun more fun to to talk through and all those things

Stratus Live: absolutely yeah being able to just take that um space where uh i i stream like yeah i mean it's great i mean we have a lot of we know a lot of amazing streamers who do great jobs connecting with their chat but it's it's a train is going one way and you're either going with the current or the train for that conversation um it's like but wait what about this you know um And so, yeah, I think there's definitely like spaces for stuff like this and like, yeah, podcasts and just chatting blocks, just taking a, let's stop the train for a second, you know, for those who need to need a rest stop real quick, you know, let's, let's, you know, if we can go deeper, let's go deeper with that and see, see what's going on.

Leighton Seys: yeah and and in a podcast i i have more control to to do that than uh in the chat where absolutely it's it's really cool and i and i think we we end up exploring some things that like a couple of you like oh let me when we rewind let me think about that it's I'm not always good at that. This is one of those things that I struggle with for myself is to do those things, but I'm really curious with other people, and I think I can help think through some of those things. So just thinking in that vein of where God has brought you to, some of the things that you've encountered, some of the blessings you've had, the obstacles to overcome, what is God calling you to do? uh either expand or move in a new direction or what are you excited about to do next year it's a really good question um the only way i think like god was saying like throw out the net

Stratus Live: Oh, next year. Oh, I had a lot of when digitally and in real life, like, yeah, throw out the net was basically what you were saying. Yep.

Leighton Seys: That is, that is a risky thing to do is to not have a safety net to catch you, um, to step out in faith and believe that God has got you. That is, well, I can say that's, that's where I was. What was it? Two years ago, three years ago, uh, went to NCMS and, um, Pastor Scar was talking about same kind of thing, but his language was, are you willing to trust God again? And I went... I already did. I shouldn't have to do it again. Like, no, thank you, sir. Change the question. I don't want that question, but it's kind of, you know, really when I was stepping into doing some stuff with the church digital, it was like, okay, yeah, I'm going to step out. Like you're talking, there was no net. There is no safety net. If it fails, it fails, and you're going to fail with it, and who knows what the consequences will be. is there is there something more specific that you need to step into and you don't have to share if there's not or if you don't want to share if you're still processing it um because sometimes we get the image without knowing all the details but sometimes we know what we're wrestling with and that confirmation goes oh yeah why must yeah so be uncomfy uh exactly

Stratus Live: so um yeah going from that that joke of the patience arc the be still and know that i'm god wait on the lord that has been the motto of 2023 even into 2024 when i took the break and stuff like that um taking out the net like yeah it's great to have the safety net it's great you know when god's going to be there and god's going to be there regardless but if this net is being there for safety it can't be used to toss out to catch more and i think for both in real life with like there's a net that was potentially drawn about with reach of universities to apply to and stuff like that to just send out the applications and see what bites. So especially during next semester, I'm gonna be reaching out to a lot of different, applying to a lot of different universities in different states and stuff. No real certainty behind it, because hey, what if I end up in this state all of a sudden? There's no action plan to prepare for each of them. But then even with streaming, part of... Rewinding to, you know, when Holy Spirit was really moving at that 19th birthday, God had also put a calling of heart for musical worship and a gifting of my voice, which I'm not an amazing singer. God, it's a process that you need to work on and stuff. Like, I'm a novice musician, novice singer, all that stuff. And whether it's I've been inconsistent and not faithful to it or whatever, you could say that. Or you could be like, hey, God had other journeys along the way. But God's like, what ended up happening is I started getting too focused on what other people think about it rather than it only matters to one person. god um so being more abandonment with that reckless abandonment towards music worship and and just being that's part of what's bringing back on streams and stuff um this sunday i just did a small christmas concert where my voice definitely didn't survive the full thing but it was like hey is this for entertaining streaming or is this an offering of worship to god kind of thing so um yeah it's gonna be exciting it's gonna be scary but um know as long as the follower god's leading he's gonna do his thing there's a lot of things that i mean even the flight home uh finally from reach like i feel like god has revealed so many things that aren't yet

Leighton Seys: in fruition but i'm scared that i'm filling in those blanks like i did in 2024 2023 yep yep i totally so that's part of still waiting on it yeah i i totally get that a little bit of a piece and stepping forward ahead of the path of god when he's just saying be prepared get ready and the time to implement is is further further down the road i i will say you know one of the things that when i was doing theater and doing drama ministry for the church i would always encourage people like our message might be for one person who's here and so just with your singing maybe it is going to reach one person and that's it when you go live but is that worth going live because that one person needed to hear you that day uh bring that so just an encouragement there absolutely yeah you're stepping into that and figuring that out i actually oddly enough Um, was just talking with my wife cause we were, I, I mostly make fun of music. I use, I don't usually sing well, like, but. I, for some reason can turn Christmas songs into sea shanties. And so, so I was, I was doing this and I said, you know what? I actually feel like I can carry a tune to a sea shanty. What I need to do is find a group of people that just want to sing sea shanties and I can join that group and, and be a singing sea shanty group. And, and we'll just sing that. So, uh, That's the only way you're getting me probably singing on a regular basis on a stream, other than a few lines here or there. And right now I'm doing a Christmas song challenge, and I try to sing the songs to start with, and half of them are horrible and off-key. And then I'll throw in one or two here and there that are funny and hilarious. i don't have that gift i would love that gift so if god is giving that to you and it's a thing that takes time i i would say be patient with it to to let it develop for whatever purpose god has not just for today but for tomorrow god was um also really more than like you know you can just box it up so easily like that like oh it clearly i must be a singer then right that's my calling right based on that moment but um like even like this last year like um

Stratus Live: ever ever since i joined uh kiori kaito their vtuber ministry and stuff like that like like like once a month i would be like you know preaching a message to them and then my parents had me guess preaching at their church and stuff so like voice doesn't have to be singing voice can be speaking his word yes and bring her so there's there's this is a vessel that can have multiple purposes to it and that's really what God was revealing with um like on the onset before reach this year and it was like oh yeah okay so you know even if say worst case scenario I was you know just not being consistent and I'm supposed to have been a rock star by now let's say right um like god still has grace over that god's still like hey here's another chance let's go for it let's do this and here's other avenues i can show you where i'm still honoring that gifting i've put on you that i want you to walk in obedience for Um, but going back to what you were saying, cause it really funny. You mentioned that, um, the sea shanty Christmas thing. Um, that's a railroaded a little bit, but you know, Aki and, and I think Jay and them did the Christmas carols and our graders and that inspired, um, I don't know if you met, uh, Draco bro at breach. Um, he's getting some people and they're doing Christmas carols in sea of thieves. So I was like, wait a second, we need to get it.

Leighton Seys: we're gonna get you on sea of thieves and doing christmas theme sea shanties that would be perfect oh i haven't i haven't jumped into sea of thieves but yeah it's so funny i have played the assassin's creed you know and okay and did all that did all the sea shanties oh well like here's So half the time, people mumble when they're singing and or they don't fully enunciate, and it sounds like something else that they're singing. So what was it? Black Flag, I think, was the Assassin's Creed that had all the sea shanties. And you could buy the whole album on it. There's one. I do not know what the actual words are, but I started singing it this way, and it's just like one of those inside jokes with my kids and stuff. Stupid tiny falcon. I hate the tiny falcon. Do what tiny falcons do. and so you just start singing that like stupid tiny falcon i hate the tiny falcon do what tiny falcons do i have no idea what they're really singing uh but the other thing was is their school mascot was a falcon so this may be even funnier oh that's so good just throw this out there like somebody's going on about a falcon or the falcon gets mentioned and just like stupid tiny falcon just like you just start to mumble that like brings the whole song back off and it's like Now, if he went and told anybody else playing Assassin's Creed, they're going to go, what song are you talking about? I don't know that song.

Stratus Live: Before, nothing about Falcons. Nothing about Falcons, probably that song whatsoever.

Leighton Seys: But that's what my brain does. It fills in words that aren't there or what it hears. And yeah, which that's why I got kicked out of Sunday school when I was like, you know, six, seven years old. So. That's great. I'm sure my mom loves whenever I start to tell your testimony, tell your life story, and I always start with, I got kicked out of Sunday school when I was six, seven years old. That's the thing every parent is proud of, right?

Stratus Live: And what did you achieve?

Leighton Seys: It's been all uphill since then. God was like, I'm not done with you yet. Yeah, well, not Bible college, but maybe a couple of churches along the way that it was no longer going to be doing ministry there. Yeah, but that's my story. We're not here for that. Well, that's super cool thinking about what, and I love just thinking about what God is going to prepare the good works for us to do in advance before we do those. Oh, that's one of the things I was going to say. You were mentioning, and I'm sure you... You could reach out to anybody and reach if it happened. But yeah, absolutely, dude. If you ended up somewhere in Michigan, man, I've got extra room. I've always kind of done this. During COVID, I think I had... Five or six, you know, my sons and their friends living in my basement because they had no place to go. So I've got plenty of space available for people. If it's just a place to crash for a short term or even long term, I do open up and let people come in.

Stratus Live: it's it's available even if it's you know an hour away or two hours i probably know other people that are closer so so i appreciate that i will see um there was a uh back in 23 i think when some of the initial stuff was happening there was a a school in michigan that was on the radar for sure so We'll see if we end up reaching out there again anyway, just as throwing out the net anyway. Well, that's what I'm just saying.

Leighton Seys: You're throwing out the net. If you hadn't thought about it, I'm just saying, you know, go ahead. I appreciate that, yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, like I say, my daughter is two hours away in another direction, and my mom is five hours away in another direction, and I've got friends that are three hours away, and I know other people that are on Twitch and in TCD scattered across the whole state. They might not all have a place to stay, but there's at least a connection that...

Stratus Live: It won't be like a lone new expedition, solo journey kind of thing, yeah.

Leighton Seys: Well, and I'm not going to say where on stream. I have put my name out there for a church overseas as well. There's a pastor who needs to come back to the States for the summer next year and is looking for someone to fill in. i threw my name out there so i have no idea if that's a thing that would even happen i don't expect to hear anything until after christmas if if it does if i'm even viable candidate for them i don't know but you know that whole throw the throw it out and see what god is up to i can't say yes to it if god doesn't open the door and right they invite me to go so I was actually processing through going there and time zone change and figuring out what time of the day I would have to stream to be able to keep my community at the same time. And it's like, oh, that really wouldn't be that bad. It would be mid-afternoon that I would stream so that... I would be on when my stream would be in the morning. It would make it totally horrible to connect with anybody West Coast at that point, though. That would get even more difficult.

Stratus Live: Yeah, time zones do be that way sometimes, unfortunately.

Leighton Seys: K-Man, no, not Australia, not that far around the globe. I would love it if it was Australia.

Stratus Live: Tropical, just keep me up on TFT, and then I'll be able to make this stream. There we go.

Leighton Seys: Yeah, Australia is definitely one of those places eventually to get to New Zealand as well. Yeah. Asia, Oceania, India. I have not been to, I should say I I've touched an Island or so off the coast of South America. That's technically South America, but otherwise I've been all over asterisk.

Announcer/Intro Voice: Yeah. It's an asterisk there.

Leighton Seys: Yeah. Yeah. I've been to Europe. I've been to Africa. I I've been all over North America, so it's, it's maybe time to go someplace else. Who knows?

Stratus Live: Who knows?

Leighton Seys: just try like trying to think if there's anything else that we, we haven't talked about, uh, things that you've been up to or, or, or maybe something that maybe got like, you have the, Hey, as they're just a word, maybe you have a, a word for somebody that's just come up as we've had this conversation that you don't know who it's for, but maybe God's, uh, just got a word that you have for somebody that's listening to it live, or maybe later on in the podcast when they're listening to the VOD.

Stratus Live: Um, Nothing had really come up in the moment, but I also hadn't been, like, intentionally paying attention for one, to be fair.

Leighton Seys: Oh, I know.

Stratus Live: But, yeah, we can give it a couple minutes and see.

Leighton Seys: Yeah, just thinking through some of those. It's interesting how God weaves and works things and the timing of things. I've said it numerous times. I had no plans to be a Twitch streamer. I had no plans to be a podcaster. So it's like, what has God got planned for me next? I have no idea. I'm at that point where I wouldn't even speculate to know what's next because I didn't know I was going to be here. I didn't know that I was going to be 30-some episodes into podcasting and exploring new things in new ways and having a VTuber on who's sitting next to me. Like, that's cool.

Stratus Live: Don't need to address myself in third person in this dual appearance.

Leighton Seys: Well, K-Man was in here earlier. And when you start talking about, you know, I just remember where K-Man was starting to talk about himself in the third person on Seinfeld when he went to the dentist and he started talking about himself in the third person. Yeah. It's kind of odd to talk about yourself in a third person, you know. As always, tell us your favorite thing that is happening in digital ministry.

Stratus Live: Like as a question or was that chat?

Leighton Seys: Yeah, I think he's asking as a question.

Stratus Live: okay so favorite thing happening in digital ministry that's interesting that's good um so my favorite thing i've seen recently is um you'll see people you'll see content creators who were very in the world i'll just say and then you'll see they found god and you'll see how quickly their content changes and how quickly and not only that though like it's not even like like their viewership doesn't tank like I mean yeah they lose some people but it's not like they go from like triple digit viewers to all of us under like a three viewer Andy like the people stay for them like and now they're hearing God like they're they're getting the gospel message to them now as opposed to just this like being in this worldly place and like I can think of like a few off the top of my head but like those are like always just feel like such powerful and such encouraging moments that like you know god can prepare like you don't have to be the perfect christian for god to be preparing the way for you you just need to be ready to say yes when it's that time for him to give you that invitation and it's not like oh cool i can just mess up till god calls me that's not it at all like the bible talks about sowing the good works in advance part of waiting on the lord so if you're doing if you're doing this walk and you're seeking after god in the meantime Then you get the even better experience where you're getting that, you're encountering God here. And then it's like, oh, hey, by the way, this whole thing three years in advance has already been prepared for you. Here we go kind of thing.

Leighton Seys: Yeah. And there seems to have been quite a number of those this year. Yeah. Of prominent people suddenly coming to faith. Some of them getting questioned if this is, you know, are they really or not? But that's really questions from the Christian community questioning them.

Stratus Live: And and not irony that. Yeah.

Leighton Seys: Yeah. Not not from from the world questioning them. It's the church saying, are you really? But. That should not surprise us because that's exactly what happened to Paul, where the Christian church, the Christians, well, I mean, he was persecuting. So it's maybe a little bit different. I don't know if you're trying to, you know.

Stratus Live: There's a difference between being a murdering merc versus, to your point.

Leighton Seys: But even after he's validated and he proves to not be doing that. Barnabas takes him, and he takes him back home, and he's there for like three years before he jumps into ministry. We forget that part. We read his conversion, and then we read Barnabas goes and grabs him and brings him to Antioch. That's the next story, right after he takes him, and he takes him home, and he leaves him there, and then later he goes back and he gets him. Like, the church wasn't trusting of him yet. The church had low expectations that he was not going to turn back to what he was before, that this was a flash in the pan. It wasn't going to stick. And I think that's some of the response and reaction that we might see around people is not trusting it, not believing that it's real, and not believing they're going to stick. And so are they going to do more harm? Or...

Stratus Live: you get the people that judge everybody within the within the church it's like you're not doing it right you're not doing it our way you know there's there's that avenue too but uh that is an interesting thing many times i've told people hey oh yeah by the way in your journey your greatest opposition is going to be other christians ironically but you know if you think about it who is jesus's greatest opposition the religious people at the time so should we be surprised at that point

Leighton Seys: No, I don't think that we should. We also have warnings from Paul that after he's gone, wolves are going to come in and they're going to try to devour the flock, and that's certainly a thing. Or even Jesus saying he had to separate the sheep from the goats in the end, and people will say, but we did all these things in your name, and he'll say, I never knew you. So there's those aspects of... Just because someone's in the church, just because someone's claiming to be a follower of Jesus doesn't mean they are. But I want to trust the person that says they are and wait and see what they actually do before, you know, I'm ready to say, no, I don't think you are.

Stratus Live: also like if they're a new christian they're not gonna have perfect theology all of a sudden either like it's our opportunity to walk alongside them and help like oh well actually the bible says this about that instead of oh you're fake you're wrong because you've answered that wrong come try again next time like no like okay well here's what the bible says what do you think about it like an alpha approach is still a perfect approach for those moments and those people yeah i was absolutely thinking the same thing the alpha approach to engaging the conversation

Leighton Seys: of exploring it asking more details what is it about that that you that led you to this conclusion oh how did you understand that what do other people think have you looked at explored other other ideas there's so many ways to take that to help a person this is one of the things that i i often say if i attack what you believe what's your for your response defend what you believe If I question what you believe, you are defending what you believe, but you're also questioning what you believe. when you have to explain it. So it's either going to help you understand it better, or it's going to cause you to go and learn more so that your faith can be stronger if it's weak faith. Or if it's not faith in Jesus, it's going to cause you to question the faith that you have and maybe say, I'm willing to explore Jesus. So there's those kinds of things. Yeah, Tropic Turtle saying sanctification is not always instant. Yes.

Stratus Live: and that next one some christians act like they never did the same things they're judging the baby christians for oh that's that's a truth someone needs to hear tonight it's true we all need to hear tonight realistically but yeah i mean we seriously i mean we get blinded of the log in our own eye we get so focused in the plank and other eyes yeah um so often the stereotypical you know pastor's calling out this one sin that is their closeted sin in and of itself lo and behold

Leighton Seys: Yeah, very, very frequently that seems to be the case, is what you rail against is either what you've overcome or what you're hiding. It seems to be one of those two things. I'll say that from other places, like an ex-smoker is the most intolerant person to smokers. True. They have zero tolerance. They have zero regard for them. Because they've overcome... It is the thing that grates on them, and I think for various different reasons. But I think it could be the same, too, is if you've overcome something, if you've come out of it, that very thing you struggled with is the hardest thing for you to give grace to other people in.

Stratus Live: Sometimes when you've seen the beast for it's just raw, pure, damaging desire of like purpose. And then it's like, yeah, like it's, it's the, I mean, in the healthier context, it's the, like, you know, the kids running down the street and you're yelling or you pull the kid away. Like, you know, like, sure. It's, it's rough. It's abrasive. It's harsh sometimes, but like. If you're what you're seeing in the impending threat, the kid's not seeing it. So there's going to be that disconnect. And of course, I mean, obviously, I'm not like saying every person that's incredibly harsh about it is in the right. But, you know, there's a very real like, you know, when when they wrestled with that demon and God's delivered it from them, they know what that damage can be done if you let it fester kind of thing.

Leighton Seys: Yeah. There are many reasons why we choose to get all up in arms about the things we get up in arms about. We either think we're right, we think we'd never do it, or we've overcome it, or we're hiding it. There's an infinite number of reasons why we go in that direction. i i think we're better off on some level trying to be more even-tempered in most most things that we're facing i think we impact and connect with people more but there certainly are those people that need to hear the harsh message i'm not denying that I'm just not good usually with the harsh message giving to people. I want to be more on the side of grace. And maybe that's because if you've ever done the Myers-Briggs, as many times as I've done it, I've never scored even a point on judging. So maybe that says something more about me than anybody else.

Stratus Live: That's good. So earlier you had asked about the word thing. Yeah. taking the leap of faith with it. We'll see. I don't have a person particularly in mind, but I felt like a little bit of like an imagery with it. I do feel like there was a little bit of context, so I hope I'm not interpreting it, but I saw like kind of the context, like almost like, you know, the cartoon version of like a dog house. And then the dog has the leash of the chain and then the chain can only go so far. Right. I feel like there's someone that like, they have their chain that like, it's it feels like it has full control over their life right now kind of thing and the chain only goes so far it doesn't even go in the whole backyard and then there's the whole world and stuff and it's not to invalidate the reality of the weight of that chain but that chain isn't your whole life like there there is first off like the name of jesus will break every chain amen and that chain will be broken god has a promise in that but second like um if you can look past that chain and see so much more, so much in the world. The thing is that God's working that you don't see directly in your life. You might not even believe in God, this person. I don't know. I don't know the details, but I feel like it was, hey, this chain will be cut as a promise first, and second, there is so much more you'll be able to see beyond that chain kind of thing.

Leighton Seys: wow very cool i i hope i hope i hope someone receives that whether that whether that's someone who's here right now and is able to let us know or if that's someone who who watches this later and and god can use that and multiply that i i just love that whole idea of you can speak something now that is truth, but somebody hears it in the future when they need to hear that from God, that God uses that in a mighty way. And that happens in multiple different ways. So it can happen at a podcast. It can happen in a sermon that is, you know, in the old days was written and people would go and read those. It can happen in a devotional. It can happen in so many different ways that God, through the Holy Spirit, can use something said now in the future and multiply the work into someone's life in a way that we don't even have any idea he's doing.

Stratus Live: So good.

Leighton Seys: So thanks for sharing that. I just put it out there. I thought, oh, let me just ask. I don't know if it'll, you know, that's one of those things for myself without having that. It's like the get put on the spot and just say, well, you have to say something now. It's like, well, what if the Holy Spirit's not talking right now?

Stratus Live: Once you asked it, the prompting was like, oh, I guess we got to start seeking for something. Spirit was like, yeah, you better start seeking for something because I want to give something.

Leighton Seys: Oh, man, appreciate that. So thinking back on your overall journey, what are some things that maybe you've had to, because we were talking about being patient and things, what are some things that maybe you had to say no to in order to be able to stay in the things that God's calling you to do? That's good.

Stratus Live: A lot of things I wanted to do. There was a lot of individual routes and routes I wanted to take it. I wanted to really stick with gaming and try and do competitive gaming and stuff like that. And part of God growing that heart for people, not for the outcome of the game. know even took it as far to like hey we're doing this thing called check in tuesday where you're not going to stream a game you're just going to sit there on your just chatting screen and you're going to wait for a chatter to show up and i waited there for like 18 minutes that first time i'm like this is so awkward what am i doing i'm like just give your word and then like four people showed up and and they just you know poured out and like you know it's an opportunity just to meet them where they're at meet and explore unpack that thing with them and stuff and then you know requests popping up and and so i feel like a lot of it has just been like i'm the dog with the tennis ball i just want to run and find where the game is i want to run and find where the next thing is and god's like no like be still and know that i am god and yeah it's uh i i can tell you if i if i did a lot of those things i wanted to do like it would have just ended horribly in heartache and burn and stuff but um only thing on the counter side i want to say was i want to make sure that now with that like potential partial release he's giving to like make sure i'm not saying no to what he's specifically prompting now instead thinking it's just my kooky imagination or my ambition or my pursuits wanting to go for it kind of thing yeah

Leighton Seys: i know it's really vague sorry but i was trying to cover like kind of a couple bases with that on some level it when you when you when you talk about approach to things it it can sound vague but it but when you apply it to a certain specific thing it's really concrete so No, that makes a whole lot of sense of trying to not say no to the things you're supposed to and the things you're supposed to wait, not rushing ahead. It is that both sides of things. One of the things is I think God leads all of us in a slightly different way, and we need to learn how to listen to the voice that he leads us in. So if he leads me differently than you and— The only way he's ever led me is I apply to multiple places. I get one interview. I show up at the one place and I go like I don't ever get one interview, one job offer. And it always happens that way. Well, great. That's how God works in my life. It works that way for you.

Stratus Live: I'm sure there's lots of people who wish God works in that way for them.

Leighton Seys: Which, by the way, I was saying that as an example. That is not true. My example is even more bizarre than that. Please move that way. Yes. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, I'll just give one weird example of getting an interview with a church, sitting down with them, getting a job offer in the interview, and then having the church ghost me.

Announcer/Intro Voice: Hmm.

Leighton Seys: like what what what kind of answer to to god what are you doing here like how do you how do you yeah like yes a church ghosted me after offering me the job they decided that they changed their mind and they didn't have the courage to tell me so yeah it happens to anybody and uh So I still like, okay, God, I'm glad that I didn't end up there because that would have been a really probably problematic circumstance to live in if that's how they treated me after the interview process of, we're just going to not tell you. We're not going to confront things. Probably not a really healthy place to hang out with.

Stratus Live: Oh, hey, I know it's been like nine months, but you didn't get the job.

Leighton Seys: I kept like, you know, replying and sending messages. And finally, I annoyed them so much. They finally replied back to me.

Stratus Live: So those in those moments, it's tough, though. Yeah.

Leighton Seys: Yeah, I was like, I thought you gave me the job. You know, I need to start figuring out what are we doing, when am I starting, all of that stuff. And it's like, you're not. We're changed our mind. Okay, could have told me. That might have been the Christian thing to do.

Stratus Live: Wait, a church being Christ-like, what? That happened?

Leighton Seys: They're all filled with sinful people, and we all make mistakes. So it was more comical to me than anything else within the circumstance of things was, okay. That wasn't on my bingo card list of things. My experiences that I'm going to have with the church, getting ghosted after getting a job offer, was not on the bingo card list. I didn't know it was a thing. I didn't know it could happen. so um maybe it was the first i well i would love it if i was the only one that ever had that happen to him but i got a feeling today it's it's probably more people than just me yeah unfortunately yeah Well, as I'm looking at the time here, we've been going for a good conversation for several hours. And I'm a few hours ahead, so I'm past my bedtime. Oh, yeah, it is post-curfew for you, sir. It's post-post for me. But I knew that going in, so we're all good. but I do want to wrap it up. So I just want to think, is there anything we haven't mentioned that you had thought about bringing up that as we were planning to be here, you're like, Oh, if I get an opportunity, I should share this. Anything like that?

Stratus Live: Nothing off the top of my head. I feel like most of the bases got hit.

Leighton Seys: Okay. Then I'll just ask you this. How can we be praying for you? Um,

Stratus Live: really good question um you can pray yeah that um i guess pray that you know god would continue to help me forgive myself with messing up his word sometimes in my life and to uh give myself another chance with trusting him in what this next chapter entails because um that's kind of the biggest uh like hook or thorn in the side, dare we say, in that moment is there's always a part of me second guessing like, no, that's not God. That's you. That's you making it up. That's your wild imagination. That's clearly not God. And I mean, there were times I did that with people and got burned by people because of it. So I think just fully surrendering that to God kind of thing and forgiving myself for it.

Leighton Seys: Cool, man. Can I pray for you? Absolutely, please. God, I just thank you for Stratus, for his heart seeking after you, for the calling you've given him, both in what he does with his in-person job and how you have knitted him to be a networker in digital space. And as... He's moving into the new year with that vision, that idea that you've given him within his heart to just do it without a net, not be limited by things, and now asking also for grace for himself. It's so hard. Sometimes we are the most critical person. about ourselves we don't give ourselves grace we we would give grace to everyone else who did the exact same thing and we struggle to give grace to ourselves so so may you have your grace abound in him to know that he is worthy of grace your grace and even his own that you love him that you are calling him that he will have clarity over the decisions on applying places where those places are even if it's i don't know if it work to be courageous enough to put it out there and then let you lead in all things in his streaming as he is stepping back and getting more active in that that you will continue to grow him and give him discernment of the places that he's doing that that his voice will be used and multiplied by you, and to not listen to all of the voices taking away from that, but to clearly hear your voice and your leading. And thank you for all of those ways in which he has been faithful, and he shared with us the, well, I'm going to do this on stream, and I don't know how it's going to go, and then sit there, and this is awkward, and yet you blessed it, and you used it, and you're using him. And it's been so evident as we've had this conversation. So I just thank you for him and that you may just bless him, his community, all those places where he is serving in ministry and blessing others. May you multiply that and pray this all in Jesus name. Amen.

Stratus Live: Thank you so much. And thank you for making the accommodation of a time meeting again.

Leighton Seys: I know it's a late night start for your usual morning block. So I appreciate that a lot. Oh, yeah, no problem. And I usually try to schedule these. My wife is not home. so it's a little bit easier to to do all of those things so but it was like no we could we can make this work and uh i love doing that because then i get to get introduced to your community and then as we're we're going out i usually invite the guests to i'll recommend somebody that we can do a double raid out together too so do you have someone that we can go and raid Let me pull someone up then, shall I?

Stratus Live: Oops, don't want to unmute myself. Let's see here. My computer is chugging. Let's send some love to Jeesh. XBC Jeesh, I think should be our raid target. Okay. I'll put his link in the chat.

Announcer/Intro Voice: Starting to be muted.

Stratus Live: It's great. my fellow HP stat leader streaming some Star Wars Old Republic. I figured it's a good opportunity. I usually am not live when he's live or wrapping up when he goes live or vice versa kind of thing. Yeah, absolutely.

Leighton Seys: I think it's a good opportunity. Well, and that's what I love too is, one, let's bless somebody that you already know. And with a double raid, like double raids are just fun. I mean, it doesn't matter how big they are. Yeah, absolutely. A double raid is like, what, two? And to bring everybody over, and it doesn't matter how big or small, I think that's fun. And then it's also sometimes I get introduced to people that I don't know. So it's also, you know, hidden motive to connect with people I don't know yet. I know Jay, so this will be fun. I don't think I've ever. Raided him. I know he started hanging out after reach conference in my stream in the morning every once in a while, which is nice.

Stratus Live: Awesome.

Leighton Seys: All right. So if we count it down, we'll be pretty close to starting this, the raid at the same time. So if you want to hit it in three, two, one, start the raid.

Stratus Live: we'll be raiding out about the same time so if you've got an ending screen or anything else uh thank you thank you everybody but it's probably broken it's probably broken last time i've tried it this song is super digitized from my gpu being overthrottled so we're not going to do it traffic in a test she's heard it twice now break okay so well then well then don't do that i will just thank everybody for being here

Leighton Seys: thank you thank you thank you everyone for hanging out here hanging out with the church digital being here with control alt redeem we will be back next week i would have to check what day it is we've got born again gamer that will be on next week and i don't have any more scheduled after that so i'm working on getting some scheduled for the new year so thank you thank you everybody i hope you enjoyed it i certainly did and we'll see you next time everyone

Stratus Live: Take care y'all. Thank you so much.