Brian:

Welcome to Invested with Purpose, making the most out of your time, talent, and treasure. I’m Brian.

Nathan:

And I’m Nathan.

Brian:

Today, we have one of the most unique and I think very interesting guests you will ever hear on a podcast like this, Pastor Tony. Pastor Tony, welcome to the Invested with Purpose podcast.

Pastor Tony:

Man, it is a pleasure to be here. I have been called unique and interesting before, but I feel like you meant it as a compliment.

Brian:

I certainly do.

Pastor Tony:

Thank you. It’s a treasure to be here. Thank you.

Nathan:

Pastor Tony, I just got to say this before we get started, normally this is a very professional stuffy room that we’re in, but we are so happy to have you here because we get to talk about fun topics and a little bit about you, where you’re from, the church that you serve. Let’s start there. Tell me a little bit about how you became a pastor and when you felt God’s calling on your life.

Pastor Tony:

Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay, so we’re going to have to jump right away in the way back machine.

Brian:

Yes. We’re getting serious first. Totally.

Pastor Tony:

Right into it, the deep stuff right out the gate. I was 13 years old the first time I ever had any exposure to church at all. My family, that wasn’t part of our story growing up. A youth pastor came to visit a couple of his students at lunch when I was in eighth grade and he was having a conversation with them. I was sitting close by. He started talking to me, invited me to a Christian rock concert of all things. I had not heard of such. I didn’t know there was such as Christian rock.

Brian:

Do you remember the band was?

Pastor Tony:

It was Petra, by golly.

Brian:

I love Petra. They were one of my first concerts too. I saw them in Lakeland.

Pastor Tony:

This was in Charleston, South Carolina back in the early 90s. Again, I had not had any exposure to faith at all and just went in and gave my heart to Jesus that night. It was just a powerful experience. Then I followed it up by going to Youth Group. I remember walking into this little youth room. It wasn’t even at a church properly, it was in a small room of above a bait-and-tackle shop in Hilton Head, South Carolina. It was the silliest thing in the world. There was a game that they played. They gave everybody little Dixie cups filled with water, and it was who could gargle the longest? It was just ridiculous.

Youth pastors will do anything to communicate the gospel to teenagers. That night, we were using gargling, but I remember winning the Gargling Game and being given a prize of a bottle of Scope mouthwash. I don’t know if I can name a product on there, and they’re not a sponsor of the what-

Brian:

What are you trying to tell me here with the mouthwash. Right?

Pastor Tony:

It was a silly thing. Right? I won a bottle of mouthwash for winning the Gargling Game. I remember walking out of that Youth Group feeling so accepted and so important for nothing. I mean, for nothing. For gargling. I didn’t know how to call it a calling at that time because again, I’d been a Christian for about five minutes, but I said, “I want to do that. I want to make other people feel as welcome and loved and special as I felt here tonight.”

It just began a process of me staying as close as I could to whatever youth pastor I had, whatever ministry opportunity I had, and a calling turned into opportunity, which turned into grace, which I needed so many times, which just turned into a trajectory of helping other people to find out how special and how wonderful and how important they are.

Nathan:

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Tell me a little bit about, so you’re a pastor at Sanctuary Church, is that right?

Pastor Tony:

Yeah, for the moment. [inaudible 00:03:43].

Nathan:

… employed. All right, so tell me a little bit about the church and how long you’ve been there. Tell me a little bit about that.

Pastor Tony:

Oh, my goodness. I started working at Sanctuary Church, which is formerly the Orange Avenue Church of God in downtown Orlando, right out of high school, 17 years old. Started working there part-time. Went full-time in the year 2000, so many, many years ago. I was the youth pastor for 24 years at that church. Great time. A couple of years ago, we stepped out of that role and filled the associate pastor position. When we got through COVID, we knew that there was something that God had put on our hearts that was next.

We worked with the leadership of the church to start an offshoot campus in Longwood, Florida, just north of Orlando. We started that at the end of 2021 and we’re about two and a half years strong. When I say at the moment, I’m the pastor at Sanctuary Church Longwood because this past week we actually just made the announcement that we are going to be breaking off from the home campus and becoming an independent church-

Nathan:

Oh, wow. That’s awesome.

Pastor Tony:

… at the end of this year.

Brian:

That is exciting.

Nathan:

Congratulations on that.

Pastor Tony:

Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.

Nathan:

I want to switch gears here just a little bit. So now that we have a little bit of background about you and what you do, man, I went on your podcast all right. I’ve watched some things at MegaCon that you’ve done and-

Pastor Tony:

I’m sorry.

Nathan:

Yes. Yes. Did you hear me? Yeah, you got it right.

Pastor Tony:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m just saying I’m sorry that you had to listen to my podcast.

Nathan:

Oh, no, no, it was great. I mean, I thought to myself, man, I didn’t know there was anybody that did this.

Pastor Tony:

I know, right?

Nathan:

Or that does this. It was really cool to see. I’m a pastor’s kid, so I’ve just about seen it all. But for you, I haven’t seen anything like this. Totally different. Let’s talk a little bit about-

Pastor Tony:

Unique.

Nathan:

… Nerd of Godcast. This morning, I just want to tell you something real fast. I was walking around the office and I said, “Man, the Nerd of God, how cool is that title?” They were like, “Dude, you can’t call him the Nerd of God.” I said, “I think that’s what he goes by.” So clear that up for me, me, Tony-

Pastor Tony:

Sometimes.

Nathan:

… and then tell me about the podcast.

Pastor Tony:

Yeah, I guess, I don’t know, does Superman ever call himself Superman? I think he lets other people do it for him.

Nathan:

That’s right.

Pastor Tony:

You can call me the Nerd of God if you want to. Yeah, I’m just Tony. I’m just me. But yeah, the Nerd of Godcast, that’s our podcast, that’s ministry. That’s an outreach that we do. It’s a lot of fun and a lot of crazy.

Nathan:

That’s awesome.

Brian:

Kara, he’s freezing up a little bit on our screen. Is he doing it on yours?

Kara:

The actual recording is recorded in higher quality than what you’re going to see.

Brian:

Okay, good. I just wanted to make a note of that in case there was something wrong.

Pastor Tony:

Sometimes I freeze up in real life. It might just be me.

Nathan:

I didn’t know if that was what’s going on or if it was our camera.

Pastor Tony:

No, I’m kidding.

Nathan:

So Tony, back during COVID days when we were all working on Zoom, there would be times when I would just try to freeze on the camera just to see if I could stay still enough that someone was thinking that my camera froze.

Pastor Tony:

That’s right.

Nathan:

So tell me, before I turn it over to Brian here and we get into some really cool stuff.

Pastor Tony:

Oh, yeah.

Nathan:

The podcast, I was very impressed by your introductions of the people that are on the podcast. Number one, you have the coolest voice ever, and your introductions remind me of something that I see on television. Tell me a little bit about who’s on the show, how did they come about being on the show and where have you met these people?

Pastor Tony:

Yeah, so it really started out with a lot of them were just kind of Youth Group kids. I was the youth pastor. They were Youth Group kids that had grown up in the group. They were young adults. We were having this conversation a few years ago, eight years ago, wow, more than a few years ago, in our Young Adults Group at church. I was leading that and we were hanging out after church and talking about comic books and movies and things like that, and how we saw the gospel play out in those. Those conversations turned into really just sort of, “Wow, these things are more spiritual in the way that they tell these stories and unpack these narratives than sometimes people might think.”

We thought we should be recording these. So, it was really a bunch of Youth Group kids. Now along the way, the podcast started snowballing and attracting other people. We had one great testimony, this young lady, her name’s Alexandria, she’s phenomenal. She lived in Pennsylvania and right around the same time that we started our podcast, she gave her heart to Jesus. She stepped away from a life of serious addiction. I mean, she was just a dumpster fire, just a real tragic situation. She found Christ and turned her life around. And in doing so, she lost everybody, all of her friends that were in her old lifestyle. So she was completely alone.

Right around this same time, coincidentally with the Lord’s help, we kind of became her online friends through this podcast. She would reach out to us on social media, she would say, “Hey friends,” and it was just a fun thing. Well, she went on a missions trip to South America and she had a plane switch in Orlando. She messaged us early in the morning, said, “Oh, I’m so to you guys. I’m in Orlando right now. I’m waiting for a plane.” So I called the whole crew 7:00 in the morning, loaded up the van, and we drove down to the airport and went and met her in the airport.

Nathan:

Oh, wow.

Brian:

That’s so cool.

Pastor Tony:

… in real life. And now all these years later, she’s moved to Tampa and she’s actually part of our podcast crew. People have kind of come in and joined us along the way. We’ve got one girl on the show now that we met at a comic book convention, MegaCon, a few years ago. She said she was looking for people that shared the crossover of these two worlds, her faith and her fandom, and she became part of our church family. She became part of our podcast family. Sometimes it’s the friends you have, sometimes it’s the friends you make along the way.

Nathan:

Exactly.

Kara:

Mr. Tony, we’re going to take a pause just for a moment and I’m going to try to optimize. Your sound is cutting in and out a little bit, so I’m going to do some…

Continue.

Pastor Tony:

Would it be helpful if I recorded on my end as well, so you have a backup audio?

Kara:

Yes, that would be fantastic actually.

Pastor Tony:

Okay. Give me just a moment to make that adjustment. I hope… We’re not going out live, are we? Because this is dead air.

Nathan:

No, we’re not.

Brian:

We’re not live.

Pastor Tony:

All right, give me just a hop, skip and a jump, my friends, and I’ll have you squared away. Thanks for your patience.

Kara:

[inaudible 00:10:10] is glitchy. It’s always glitchy.

Pastor Tony:

All right, I think I am recording here. You don’t hear any echo or feedback at all, do you?

Brian:

No.

Nathan:

No.

Pastor Tony:

Smashing. All right. All right. I’m recording on my end and I can send Kara the audio and I’m just going to clap if you do video to sync up the audio and the video.

All right. I’m green light if you are.

Brian:

Okay. Okay, we ready? All right, all right, all right. Let me get my question here and get ready. Okay. All right.

Pastor Tony-

Pastor Tony:

Yo.

Brian:

You have written, at least there are words that are written about you on some of these websites, you are “unrepentant in your love of nerd culture.” I love the way you phrase that because you know what, if you like it, own it. What was your gateway? What got you into “nerd culture”?

Pastor Tony:

Well, the fun thing about nerd culture is growing up the very things that would get your head put in the toilet in between classes are now cool and acceptable parts of the zeitgeist. I think I grew up just like all kids, liking comic books and liking video games as a child of the 80s. I think that the nerdy part of it was when you held onto those things past the acceptable times. There was a moment where I’m sure all of my friends turned in their comic books and action figures for girls or football or something, but we stuck around the comic shops a little longer than most others did.

And I don’t apologize for that. You make great relationships. You discover wonderful creativity. That’s just who I am. I don’t apologize for it. Some people are one thing, some are the other. I’m an indoor kid. That’s what I am.

Brian:

Look, I try to explain this to my wife all the time because I grew up with the comics and everything. That was my gateway into this, and my dad introducing me to Star Trek when I was really young. I watched all of it all the way through. When he took us to the theaters, it was a special experience to watch the movies in the theaters when it came out. And so I’m trying to explain to her, with the advent of comic book movies that have been now some of the more recent ones have been a let-down.

Pastor Tony:

Yeah, but we don’t talk about the more recent ones. Comic book movies [inaudible 00:12:38].

Brian:

Let’s just talk about the arc from Iron Man up to End Game.

Pastor Tony:

There we go.

Brian:

It was like my dreams come to life. I read this stuff in the comic books, and then I see it on the movie screen and I’m like, “This is amazing. You don’t understand. I never thought this could happen.”

Pastor Tony:

And for a nerdy kid it was like peak nerdom. It was almost like being the only Christian at your school and then walking into a Christian youth camp and you’re like, “Everybody loves Jesus?” It’s like suddenly you see the football team are wearing Avengers shirts and stuff and you’re like, “All right you guys, you made fun of me for this. But I guess we can all like Batman now.”

Brian:

How in the world did Iron Man become the representative of this? Iron Man wasn’t even a major character in comic books compared to Captain America.

Pastor Tony:

Because Sony has Spider-Man. Marvel couldn’t make the Spider-Man movie so they said, “Well, what are we going to do to take what we got?” I remember when Spider-Man III came out, there was an interview with Stan Lee and they were talking about, “Oh, Spider-Man III is going to be great. We’re so excited about it.” And he said, “Yeah, but Iron Man’s also coming out and we’re really excited about that.” No one believed him. They’re like-

Brian:

No.

Pastor Tony:

… Iron Man. And here we are now in a whole new world. Tony Stark’s the coolest man to ever grace the screen.

Brian:

Exactly. Speaking of Tony Stark, I went back, listened to several of your podcasts, which I enjoyed thoroughly.

Pastor Tony:

Thank you.

Brian:

You had an episode, I think it was episode 90 on your podcast where you discussed Endgame and basically were discussing of course, the character arc of Tony Stark as he started in Iron Man I all the way up until Endgame. The way that it progressed in that he was a Christ-like figure, the sacrifice that he made for the world, the sacrifice that he made for his friends and his family. And it was always going to be Tony Stark.

It was always going to be… You see that in the beginning now, and you look back and you see it. All these movies, they draw so much parallels to the life of Christ and his forgiveness and his love for us. How do you go about… You probably look at all these movies. You spend a lot of time drawing that out to the fandom culture. Do they hear this message?

Pastor Tony:

Yeah, absolutely. Because they’re designed to hear it. Tony Stark… And spoiler alert, by the way, if you haven’t seen the Iron Man movies through Endgame, just stop this podcast right now and go watch 20 movies.

Nathan:

Who are you?

Pastor Tony:

Get caught up immediately. I just turned in for investing advice and all of a sudden we’re talking about comic books.

Nathan:

That’s right.

Pastor Tony:

I’m sorry folks. My investment portfolio is a drawer full of Steak and Shake coupons I got. I think people are ready to accept it. People want to accept it and hear the gospel in that way. That’s nothing new because whether it’s Tony Stark or whether it’s Obi, Wan Kenobi, or whether it’s Aslan or Gandalf, or going all the way back, this is a story that’s written in the heart, in the DNA of people to see and appreciate and resonate with the idea of sacrifice and redemption, that there’s something valuable, that there’s no greater love than when someone lays down their life for someone else.

It is no mystery because this is the story that God is telling. This is the story that Christ demonstrates for us. The reason is because we expect rescue. We expect resolution. It’s a hunger that’s in our hearts. When we see it played out on the screen, even if the writers don’t fully understand what they’re representing, even if the audiences don’t really fully articulate what it is that they’re experiencing, there’s something fundamental in the heart of man that expects and desires rescue and redemption.

Brian:

Absolutely. Absolutely. In another episode of your podcast, we’re jumping a little bit around.

Pastor Tony:

Jump around.

Brian:

Jump around. We are literally all the same age. I know we’re all child of the 80s, grew up in the 90s.

Pastor Tony:

That’s right.

Nathan:

That’s right.

Pastor Tony:

We had the best toys, we had the best music, we had the best afternoon snacks.

Nathan:

The best everything.

Pastor Tony:

That’s right.

Brian:

I tell everyone we lived in the best timeline because we grew up analog and now we’re digital, so we got the best of all worlds.

Pastor Tony:

[inaudible 00:16:59] the perfect age, where my teenager years, I didn’t have social media, so none of it can come back to bite me.

Nathan:

That’s right.

Brian:

That is right.

Nathan:

Nobody knows what we truly did.

Pastor Tony:

That’s exactly right.

Nathan:

Did it even happen?

Pastor Tony:

I don’t know what happened.

Nathan:

That’s right.

Brian:

So a much more recent episode, it looks like it was episode 199, it was the one titled Genre Dysphoria, you all were discussing a lot of stuff. At the end I thought you said something… Now again, we talked about Star Trek, my love of Star Trek. I thought that you said something that really, it made so much sense to me. If anyone grew up watching Star Trek, it should make sense to you too. I want to read it here so I don’t get it wrong.

You talked, I quoted it, you said “The Romulans are not going to eat Klingon soup. You have to know how to feed a Romulan. And it’s not the way you feed a Klingon.” I looked at the way you approach this community, and it makes so much sense to me in the way that you’re going about and witnessing to them and not giving them something like, “Well, you’re eternally damned, and I’d love to share Jesus with you.” There’s got to be another way to approach this community, and that’s kind of what you’re doing in this whole ministry and MegaCon and everything else, right?

Pastor Tony:

Well, sure, because we want to speak to people in the voices that they hear. I mean, this is a fundamental thing of the church. Paul says to the Jews, “I became a Jew in order to win Jews. To those under the law, I became one under the law. Though being not myself under the law, that I might win those under the law.” It’s the adaptability and the universality of the gospel. We don’t change the fundamentals of the message, but we definitely can change the flavor of the message so it reaches the palates of the people that need to hear it.

I know a lot of pastors that will make football references, they’ll talk about the sports games, and those were always lost on me. I played football, I’m aware of football, but I don’t follow football. I remember one time a pastor admonishing, a Sunday School teacher for making Star Wars references. Then that same Sunday, he made a football game reference. I thought, I guarantee more people in this church have seen Star Wars than watched the football game on Sunday.

There are certain people that you can’t reach talking sports, and there’s wonderful organizations like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, but there’s a group of kids that are playing Dungeons and Dragons right now that that doesn’t minister to them. There’s a group of kids that are reading anime, manga and watching anime right now that’s not going to minister to. So how do you take the fundamental truth of who Jesus is and present it to them in the language that they understand so that it’s palatable to them without compromising the message?

That’s a difficult thing to do because you can bring the gospel and gussy it up and sparkle it with all of the flavors and miss the essential nature of it. Or you can just bring the gospel and you’re not communicating in a way that the hearer can hear and you’re just beating them with it. Threading that needle is a very tricky thing. You’ve got to have street cred in both worlds to be able to do it, just like any other missionary would.

Brian:

Yeah, that’s a good description. You’re talking about street cred. You have nerd cred, right?

Pastor Tony:

Absolutely. I hope so. I certainly hope so. I’ve spent a lot of money on action figures and video games.

Nathan:

That’s right.

Brian:

That’s right. So both Nathan and I spent a good bit of time. We watched the service that you had at MegaCon-

Nathan:

Oh, yeah. That was incredible.

Brian:

… just a couple of weeks ago here in Orlando. For those that may be listening or watching this that don’t know what MegaCon is, MegaCon is thousands of people descending upon Orlando annually.

Pastor Tony:

100,000 plus people.

Nathan:

Oh, wow.

Brian:

Hundreds of thousands. See, I’m shooting it. Look. All of them are living out this nerd fandom to the extreme. I mean, everything is there. If it’s a comic book, if it’s a movie, if it’s anime, if it’s anything in this realm, it is there and people are dressing up. I mean, it’s incredible. You had a church service [inaudible 00:21:05].

Pastor Tony:

Yeah, absolutely.

Brian:

That is wild. From the video that we were watching, it sounded like it was pretty full.

Pastor Tony:

It was. And we didn’t know what to expect. This was our first crack at it. We’ve been working with the folks at MegaCon for a few years now, trying to build good relationships. They’re not in the ministry business, and that’s not their motivation. That’s ours. But how do we work together? How do we come and build a relationship with these promoters in such a way that they’re benefiting from the relationship as much as we are? It’s been a slow roll.

It actually started by a relationship, if you don’t mind me taking you back in time a little bit. A friend of mine-

Brian:

Yeah, let’s do it.

Pastor Tony:

… from college, he’s not a Christian, he’s not a believer, but he promotes anime conventions across the country. He reached out to me and said, “Have you ever seen this show called Neon Genesis Evangelion?” I said, “I have not seen that. I’ve never heard of such.”

Brian:

I have not either.

Pastor Tony:

He said, “There’s a lot of religious symbolism in it. I’m going to send you the DVDs. I’d love for you to watch it, come up with some ideas, and then come to this conference. We’re having a convention. We’re having the voice actors. It’s the 20th anniversary.” So I said, sure. This is back in 2015. I watched it. I took notes. I was fascinated by it. I went into this room thinking I’m bringing an anime themed gospel presentation to a room full of kids in costumes, and I am going to get pelted with vegetables and eggs and plastic swords. It’s going to be bad for me.

But people heard, and they were so receptive and so interested in what I had to say, and I didn’t think that was going to be the case. There were a bunch of kids there that were not Christians, that had never heard the gospel that came, and they were lined up to talk to me afterwards. They said, “This was interesting. I’d never really thought about things like this.” Then we had other kids that came up that were in full costume that “I’m a Christian, and I didn’t know that it was okay for me to be a Christian in this environment.”

That really was the birth of where this ministry started. Year after year, we would present these different panels or we would try to do a live podcast, but this year they allowed us to do three different panels at MegaCon. I did my Neon Genesis Evangelion talk. We did a live podcast our 200th episode. And then on Sunday morning, we had a church service. We thought, okay, if 10 people show up, we’re going to be fine. This is going to be great. As long as there’s more of them than there are of us.

But what happened was there was, I think over 108 people was the total count that showed up. We had worship, we had ministry, we had prayer, we had devotions that we were able to give people books that we created to hand out. So on their way out, everybody got to walk out with a 70-Day Bible Reading Plan inspired by fandom from Star Trek to Star Wars, to Battlestar Galactica, everything in between.

It really was an amazing experience and one that we never, never would’ve thought would’ve been possible without the Lord’s help.

Brian:

Absolutely. I have to feel like something like this, if you could do it year over year, has the potential to really grow because you’re going to get some word of mouth out of this thing.

Pastor Tony:

Absolutely.

Brian:

I got to be honest, I watched it and I was wondering, how’s he going thread this needle? Because it is going to be tough. But you put that hype video on when bit started, and you’re leaking in Matrix, Terminator, all these Marvel movies. You reference Spaceship Earth and The Message. Of course, Lord of the Rings, because you can’t do anything without Lord of the Rings. I watched that and I’m like, man, I feel hyped. This is exciting. And you come out, you talk about you’re just stepping into the story and you just go. It’s like that message resonates whether you’re a nerd or not, that’s it. That was a phenomenal message.

Pastor Tony:

And I was definitely co-tailing on the creators of all of those movie stories and franchises, building that momentum. Hey, you might not know who I am. You might not care about what I’m about to say, but you’ve seen The Matrix before. You’ve seen Back to the Future before. So get at least a little bit excited and we’ll try to turn it into a Jesus thing.

Nathan:

Real quick, before we go any further, Tony, I want to ask, how do you get these people that are attending into the room? Is this something that you’re advertising that, “Hey, we’re going to have a church service?” Or are you walking a line in between MegaCon and church and somehow you’re… Tell me a little bit about that. How do you get them there?

Pastor Tony:

When we first started, that’s a great question, when we first started, we were very much walking on eggshells because we didn’t know how much we could get away with when we were like, “Hey, listen, we’re just kind of here selling stickers and T-shirts, but we’re also representing the gospel.” We purchase a booth in the artist area where creative types come. There are different artists and content creators, writers, and so we have a booth set up. We’re at a fixed location throughout the four days of the Con.

People will come by and question, “Hey, what is this all about, Nerd of Godcast?” We have people that are saying, “Is this for all religions?” Some people will think, “Are you making fun of religion?” It creates great conversations. I would say 99% of them are all extremely positive. People are very curious about it. We have T-shirts that we try to make them clever and attractive so people will look at them and go, “Oh, that’s funny. I like that.” It creates great moments of interaction.

Throughout the days of the convention, we’re letting people know as we form relationships, “Hey, come on out and check this out.” Honestly, when we had our church service, we were on the official MegaCon app as a promoted event that was happening. People that we’d never met saw “They’re having a Sunday morning service, what is this?” So the curiosity drew them in. Now, the timing that we had it, because we thought Sunday morning would be great, it was the first thing that happened on this Sunday morning.

And parking, when you are going to the Orange County Convention Center with 100,000 of your closest friends, was not exactly the smoothest and most efficient way to get into the building.

Brian:

I can imagine.

Pastor Tony:

We had a lot of people that came in and said, “Oh, we can’t believe we missed it. We were parking.” I think that year after year, if the Lord allows us to continue having this experience, I do think it’s going to continue to grow. We’ve had many people that saw it or experienced it that said, “How can we help next year? What can we do to be a part of it?” It really was, I think, to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi, “Our first step into a larger world.”

Brian:

There you go.

Nathan:

That’s awesome.

Brian:

Never miss a chance to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi. So how do you personally, you’ve kind of talked about it some, but maybe you could flesh it out a little bit more, how do you straddle that line between maintaining your nerd cred, your street cred, and then of course, not diluting the gospel in any way too? Because I know it can be a challenge. Like you said earlier, you don’t want to water this down to a point where it’s just a self-help session and not a come to Jesus session.

So yeah, how do you go about doing this?

Pastor Tony:

Yeah, that’s a tough one to balance because we want to be invitational and attractive to people that are just casually seeking it out, but at the same time, I think it’s just been a consistent commitment to making sure that every episode of our podcast, that everything we put out has a scriptural application to it. We never want to go into any conversation that doesn’t bring it to a Christ-centered resolution because we could talk about these things all day long. We could talk about them just casually and socially.

We want to make sure that we bring it to a spiritual thing, A, because that keeps us accountable to make sure that we’re always making the main thing, the main thing, and B, I think it’s inspirational to keep us looking, to keep our eyes open when we’re watching movies, when we’re reading books or when we’re playing games, to be looking for the spiritual content, to be looking for the application. That keeps us sharp as well. We want to make sure that we’re also not endorsing, and it’s difficult.

I’m a little more old school. I’m the old guy on the show. Most of our crew are in their late 20s, a couple early 30s. I’m getting to late 40s. And so for me, I didn’t grow up in the age of reading Harry Potter. In fact, I was always told that Harry Potter is the way that Satan enters into your gallbladder.

Nathan:

Right.

Brian:

I heard something similar.

Pastor Tony:

Straying verboten on the Harry Potter. But the younger people on our show, they’ve all watched it. For me, I’ve always been, I got to be really careful. I don’t want to be talking about Hogwarts School of Magic and Wizardry and inadvertently send someone to H-E double hockey sticks.

There’s certain things that we do. There’s great masterful things out there that we want to maybe reference that we do have a hard time saying, “Hey, go watch this, you guys.” We always try to create a good buffer of there’s good content out there. There’s life-giving content. Let’s always keep our filters on to make sure that if we’re watching something, we’re watching it in the right context, or that maybe there’s some things that we just give a hard pass to because fandom or not, that doesn’t really mix with the testimony of a believer.

It is, it’s a constant juggling game, especially as the culture gets more, and I hate to use this broad-stroke word, but as the culture gets more woke, as the mainstream deliverers of our fandom continue to try to present a message or force upon us a very worldly message, it does become difficult. It’s harder to avoid. But I think that when you’re creating a conversation where everything comes back to a spiritual standpoint, we don’t have to be afraid of those things because we can always hold it up to the light of God’s word and say, “This is good. This may be not so much.”

Nathan:

Right.

Brian:

Yeah, I mean, there’s so much good that can come out of just Harry Potter alone. If you have your eyes adjusted correctly, if you’re looking at it correctly, yes, there’s a great story there. It’s not all going to send people to H-E double hockey sticks. And maybe we just don’t march right into Game of Thrones. Maybe that one might be off limits.

Pastor Tony:

But then we start playing the game of where do we draw the line? I’m not going to turn my eyes from every wicked thing. And then we say, “Well, now we’re just going to be watching old Veggie Tales VHS and not opening the windows anymore.” It is difficult to be in the world and not of the world, but it’s doable if we’re consistently putting the gospel first, if we’re consistently making sure that everything is looked at through the light of eternity, through the light of honoring God and honoring our hearts minds, our eyes and ears.

Brian:

Absolutely. I also noticed on your website, you’re doing little daily devotionals too, and this is some of your staff as well, that I think that are doing them and not just you?

Pastor Tony:

You’re using the word “staff” and [inaudible 00:31:59]-

Brian:

Staff. I’m sorry. I was going to say staff. I mean your companions.

Pastor Tony:

Yeah, it’s a very loose… Yeah, no, no, it’s really not. This is one of the craziest things about how this thing has blown up, because we have our team. There’s 10 solid people on our team, which is a lot for a podcast crew. Imagining cramming 10 people into your room right there and everybody talking at once. It’s madness and a nightmare to edit. We have a network of people.

There’s a young man who lives in Tennessee who got connected with us through the magic of the internet, and he said, “Hey, I want to help out with this.” He became our DM, our Devo Manager. He has a network of people that we’ve found that we’ve met through the podcast, of pastors, and content creators, and just creative people who love Jesus and love nerdy stuff. There are people. I’ll listen to the Daily Nerd Devo podcast that we produce, and I’ll go, “I don’t even know who that person is. I’ve never met that person in my life.” Not a clue.

We invite him in, we vet him. There’s people from Canada, from all across the country. I think there’s a guy from Germany that gets on there and talks about magic, The Gathering. A lot of that stuff is kind of, I oversee it, I help direct it. But no, our Devo Manager, boy, he’s just got a squad of probably 50 or so people from across the country and beyond that contribute to it. It’s a delight for me to listen to every day. I’m usually surprised and encouraged as well.

Brian:

I got to say, I listened to the most recent one, and this one speaks very close to me and to Nate, because we are both big wrestling guys.

Pastor Tony:

Oh, it was the Sting one, right?

Nathan:

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Brian:

It was the Sting one. Yes. I grew up with Sting and I loved him in the NWO and WCW. I love that stuff. I loved it. Especially with Hulk Hogan [inaudible 00:33:50].

Nathan:

Hold on. Before we go any further, Tony, I’m on a flight. Brian’s sitting across the aisle and I’m sleeping. I look up and what is he watching? He’s watching wrestling.

Brian:

I’m watching wrestling.

Nathan:

He’s watching wrestling, man. Little kids around him. Here is a 40-something year old man watching wrestling, and I realized he was like me. I was keeping it in the closet for a long time.

Brian:

I don’t have it in the closet.

Nathan:

No, no. Go ahead.

Pastor Tony:

I have Sting’s heavyweight championship belt hanging on the wall right behind me.

Brian:

The champion. We do fantasy football, and our championship is a championship belt.

Pastor Tony:

Love it.

Brian:

So anyways, worlds collide. Sports-enders.

Nathan:

That’s right.

Pastor Tony:

I think that’s what wrestling is, right? That is the crossover of superheroes and sports, right?

Nathan:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Brian:

But he took five minutes, or not even, and the parallels that he drew to Sting’s retirement… And then Sting, his personal life, he is a Christian. Then you watch someone grow up with this, and then he drew out the story of Saul, who persecuted Christians ultimately on the road to Damascus, became Paul and became one of the shining lights of Christendom that we’ll ever see. It’s just so cool that you can take something like that and turn it into a little tiny devotional and then hook in somebody that just loves wrestling, and all of a sudden now you’re hearing a Bible story in five minutes.

Nathan:

And they don’t even realize it.

Brian:

They don’t even realize it.

Nathan:

They don’t even realize it. That’s what’s cool about it.

Pastor Tony:

Do you remember when we were kids… It’s hard anymore. These days, you drive home, you pull into your garage, you close your door, you don’t know who the neighbors are like we once did. We are in the most connected time in human history, and yet we’re disconnected from one another. Remember when you’re a kid and you’re out of the playground and you see other kids, and it’s how easy it is to make friends? It’s like, “Oh, you like cherry soda? I like cherry soda. Let’s be friends. You want to watch Transformers? Come over to my house. We’ll watch Transformers and eat Oreos.”

Brian:

Always.

Pastor Tony:

Whatever the thing is, we could find connection and friendship based on those common things, and it didn’t take much for us to relate to one another. If we’re sitting at dinner, we’re out at a restaurant and we overhear a conversation, my wife will always watch my radar, just go ping. If somebody talks or mentions something, that’s something that I like, she’ll be like, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” [inaudible 00:36:24] is to turn and say, “Oh, actually, hey,” and then now I want to be part of that conversation.

Because there’s talking about something I care about. What a wonderful and beautiful way to communicate the gospel is to open the door wide with something somebody actually cares about and then say, “Oh, by the way, it’s kind of like this.” And you say, “Huh, never thought about it that way. Well, thank you so much for that.” Chris Pratt did a speech, I think at some MTV Awards or something.

Brian:

Oh, yes, I saw that. Yes.

Pastor Tony:

And he’s giving this list of rules for life. It’s funny because every other one that he’s talking about, he’s Chris Pratt, he’s charming, he’s disarming, he’s [inaudible 00:37:02]. So every other thing that he gives on this list of things is kind of a goofy one, and then he’ll throw in a really, really serious one. He gave what I would consider a very powerful gospel presentation. But right in the middle of it, he threw one of his silly little rules for life, and he says, “If you want to give medicine to your dog, take the pill and put it in a little bit of hamburger because he’ll eat it up, not realizing that he’s eating medicine.” I thought he just telegraphed exactly what he was doing to America right now.

Brian:

He knew.

Pastor Tony:

He knew exactly what he was doing. Beautiful and powerful, and people ate it up and they cheered for it, as opposed to if he got out there and he just opened his Bible and he said, “The Lord says in…” Then people would be walls up, shields up, not listening. We are not compromising the gospel, but we are just presenting it in a way that makes it appetizing for someone who doesn’t know that it’s good for them.

Nathan:

Right. Right.

Brian:

Tony, I got to say, you’ve got a skill for this. You really do. I am excited to see what God is going to do in this nerd community, especially with events like MegaCon. There are others around the country. I mean, who knows? Maybe you might go elsewhere.

Pastor Tony:

We’d love to, right? We’d love to.

Brian:

Some of these other big events because I mean, if we can bring the Gospel and Jesus to these places, to these people, and I started out on the podcast, it’s a vastly underserved community. They don’t hear anyone talking about this stuff.

Pastor Tony:

We call that a unReached People Group. I mean, they have their own costumes. They have their own language. It’s just like going to Papua New Guinea or something like that. I mean, who knows how to speak the language? Who knows how to fit in with the culture? Very few people. There are others. There are other great ministries out there that do what we’re doing, and some of them are just taking their first steps, some of them do it way better, but we wanted to be a part of the conversation where we were.

We’d love to go all around the country and do all these Cons. It’s just time and money. Time and money. That’s why I’m listening to your podcast, learning how to make the most of my money. [inaudible 00:38:56].

Brian:

There you go. You got to tie it in there somehow, right?

Pastor Tony:

I’d be like scrolling through my episodes going, “All right, how can I take my Steak and Shake coupons and get to San Diego ComicCon with them?”

Nathan:

That’s right.

Brian:

Well, go ahead.

Nathan:

One question about that. Is there any kind of fundraising that you do? Is there any way to get money to do these things that you’re talking about wanting to do?

Pastor Tony:

We check the couch cushions in the church just to see if any money fell out. No, we create products. It’s a simple thing that we do. We have a web store on our website. Am I allowed to say the website name?

Brian:

Yeah, we’re getting to the part where you can start plugging some stuff. People got to know where to find you.

Pastor Tony:

On our website, which will be named at the part where we plug stuff, we have a web store. We make T-shirts and we sell them. We don’t make a whole lot of money on there. We also do sell our Devo books, but we really sell them at cost because we just want to get the word of God out there for people that need it. We do sell stickers and buttons and shirts. When the time comes for MegaCon, we do have a little bit of a giving campaign, a Share-a-Thon, if you will.

But our costs are not exorbitant. They’re high. They’re high for me, but they’re not crazy. God has just always provided just their story after story, which if we had a whole other episode to talk, I could tell you some of the amazing stories about how God provided, but it’s almost ridiculous. It’s almost like, seriously, these are the stories that I’ve heard other people talk about saying, “Well, I only had a dollar to my name and I just sold it. And then a check for $1,000 was in the mail the next day.”

I’ve heard those stories again and again and again. It’s like, well, that’s great for you.

Nathan:

That’s right.

Pastor Tony:

And then God does it. We had a fellow that came to MegaCon last year. We are praying. My wife and I prayed Saturday. We found out we’ve got to renew our application for the next year. We’ve got to register for the next year that day, and it was going to be close to $1,000. We didn’t have $1,000. We didn’t have any money. We spent all of our money just to get where we were. We said, “Well, let’s just pray God’ll provide.” “Okay, all right.”

I’m a faithful person, but I’m also lightly eye rolling a little bit. “Okay. We’re going to just pray and see.” Two hours later, this guy comes over. He is like, “I’m here with my daughter, and I like what you’re doing here. This is really, really interesting.” We just struck up a conversation and something in my heart said, “This might be the guy that’s going to help you pay for it.” How do you make that move? How do you ask, “By the way, did the Lord send you and do you have your checkbook on you?”

I’m like, how do you say that? As I’m talking with him, and I’m thinking this in my mind, he said, “So how much does one of these tables cost anyway?” I’m like, “Well, I’m glad you asked, sir.”

Nathan:

That’s right.