0:00:00 - 0:00:20 About something very important. I probably say that every video uh it's a better way of thinking about preaching the gospel. What I've noticed in watching content produced by other people is that uh I can see that there are ways that their content could be improved that they're not aware of. And so I 0:00:20 - 0:00:44 want to make this video to point some things out and I wanna take it from a specific approach. So I want you to think about how each religious sect, how they view missionary work and how they do it. How do they evangelize and what do they, what do they see their purpose as in, in doing that? So if you're 0:00:44 - 0:01:05 an evangelical, your goal in life is to find people who are going to say the sinner's prayer and then go to church every Sunday for the rest of their lives. That's your goal. That's, that's how they define salvation. And so in a nutshell, right? And this is obviously we're broad brushing and oversimplifying 0:01:04 - 0:01:23 , but that's basically what's going on. Now. How does that work? Almost no one wants to hear that. The there, there are memes about this, that people, people on the street, they hate evangelicals. I mean, they do not want to see these people, they'll move to the other side of the street if they're walking 0:01:23 - 0:01:42 down the street and see people with these signs, you know, love Jesus, whatever. They don't want to interact with these people, they don't wanna work with them, they'll get hr complaints if someone's always talking about this and whatever. Right. Who do they find? So the point is they don't succeed in 0:01:42 - 0:02:02 reaching into the groups that they're trying to reach into. Right. And, and that's not surprising. What are they offering that these people don't already know about nothing. Everyone knows that if, if they're into this love, Jesus, you know, sing and dance at church thing, they know where to find that 0:02:02 - 0:02:19 . They already know it's out there. They already know where to find it. They probably have 10 friends who are involved in this. At least historically, there's a lot of segmentation of the population in, in, in today's world, but regardless, they know where to find it. Right. Easily, they can reach out 0:02:19 - 0:02:38 and grab it. And so if they're not doing that, it's not because they don't know about it. It's not because they haven't been invited. They're not interested. Right. They're not interested. So, who do they find? Well, we'll get to that in a minute but suffice it to say they're not the kinds of people 0:02:37 - 0:03:02 that are all about improvement in their lives. The, the evangelical religion, it offers something to people that, that's, it's almost like a get rich quick scheme. All your problems will be solved if you say this one prayer and check into church, which is basically a party each Sunday for an hour and 0:03:02 - 0:03:19 then you can do whatever you want and you're in, that's the message. Ok. What about other Protestants? Evangelicals are sort of a different breed. Well, it varies. You know, in the traditional Methodist tradition, you have to have this sort of life changing spiritual experience that that's kind of gone 0:03:19 - 0:03:38 by the wayside. And the modern Methodist church is a lot like all the others. But whatever the thing is, you know, with the Baptist, you gotta get baptized. Although that has also sort of come by. So the, the, the, the titles of churches, uh mean a lot less today than they used to, but there's usually 0:03:38 - 0:04:00 something and then the follow on is, is always go to church. That's the, the commonality between all the, these religions, these Protestant religions. So whatever their entry point is, the outcome is the same, you're not gonna find people that hunger and thirst after righteousness, righteousness is how 0:04:00 - 0:04:17 God is. And since he's the best, this is the same as improvement, all good comes from him and it leads to him. Now, I realize that's a jump and I'm not spending time on it. But hopefully, if you're watching this, you already get that uh I can make the case for that elsewhere if you'd like me to put it 0:04:17 - 0:04:41 in a comment. If that, if that's not glaringly obvious, please let me know. Um, what about Catholics and Mormons? They're different because they are, um, we'll say priesthood authority centered. OK. When you get into that, instead of this personal experience with God, it, it, it leans more towards accept 0:04:40 - 0:05:03 the authority of the church and receive ordinances because that's how you get into God's grace. Um Which is funny because Protestants in general would have a big problem with that use of the word grace, but whatever. So the entry point is different, but the continuation is the same. The outcome is you're 0:05:03 - 0:05:23 in when you keep going to church now as Catholics, that's a little less emphasized. You, you can, the most Catholics do not go to church most of the time. OK? But I, and I say what I mean is people who identify, who would say I'm a Catholic on a survey. There's a low probability that they go to church 0:05:22 - 0:05:44 regularly. It's probably just when someone gets baptized or married or whatever. So or holidays, of course. So again though, it's the same problem, the same limit on the kinds of people that are going to be attracted to this. It's not people who are interested in improvement. Why? Because none of these 0:05:44 - 0:06:08 churches offer that none of them do what they offer is a static thing. It's you're done. There's no continuation or growth. It's a claim to have all the answers when any searching person can see pretty quickly that they don't. Right. And that you're not going to find them there. So let's just zoom in 0:06:08 - 0:06:28 to the L DS approach. This is the pattern missionaries go out and first off, we could critique the fact that the youngest least experienced people are sent who have the least to offer because they have no idea what they even believe. They probably haven't even read the scriptures. They claim to believe 0:06:28 - 0:06:44 in and yet you're going out trying to convince other people to believe what you do. That's a really silly thing. You don't send people out who only believe because they were born to parents who believe in order to convert people who are adults who have actually looked into things and had life experiences 0:06:43 - 0:07:05 . There's, there's no clear value there at all. There's no credibility, right? So anyway, the textbook thing to do is to get them to accept the book of Mormon. Then you ask them to read it. Well, guess what? It's not 1830. That's probably the last time that worked. Ok. Now, there are exceptions. I'm 0:07:04 - 0:07:25 one of them and I spent the time in, in the L DS church and I actually read the book, right? I read the verses I was given and I prayed about them having served in L DS mission for two years. I know that no one does that only one person as far as I can remember ever did that. And I talked to something 0:07:25 - 0:07:50 like 20,000 people and I baptized dozens and almost no one actually read the book. These are in, like I said, a lot of them were really interested in the church but they didn't read the book. They wouldn't. Right now, you just have to understand in the modern times when people think they know everything 0:07:49 - 0:08:13 about everything. It's excruciatingly rare to find someone who's willing to believe that there's that much value in a book that frankly isn't that easy to read. That most of the world will really think that you're messed up for reading. There's all this friction against it. Resistance, right? Who is 0:08:13 - 0:00:00 gonna sit there and like Parley p Pratt read the thing overnight and, and, and really understand it. Reading comprehension is just terrible today, people don't do this. If it's not in a tiktok thing or a tweet or something, they're not gonna look at it. That's like 90 way over 99% of the population. 0:00:00 - 0:08:49 But then you're expecting them to read a whole book. And probably more than once, how many times does someone have to get through the book of Mormon to understand the story? Enough to start to see the doctrine and the value of the t the, the message in there? I guess you could say the testimony of Christ 0:08:48 - 0:09:09 in it now. You can assign specific verses. Sure. And they could read those, but most people won't even do that. Plus the whole value response in the world today. It's so jacked up, you can show someone a verse that has the power, the message in it has the power to radically change their life. And exactly 0:09:08 - 0:09:29 the thing that they know is a problem right now. I say a verse, you could show them anything. It doesn't have to be scriptural and it can radically change their life in exactly the way that they need it right now in a really obvious connection and it still won't do it. We live in a faithless world. So 0:09:28 - 0:09:53 of course, it doesn't work. And who does it work on? Well, it works on people who are looking for what the culture provides. And it's so surprised that L DS missionaries are pushed to get people into church because it radically improves the likelihood that they're going to get baptized. Why? What's the 0:09:53 - 0:10:21 selling point? Have you been to an L DS service? Is not the content of the service? They're, they're devoid of anything useful or meaningful. Again, it doesn't feed people who are hungry and thirsting after improvement. So who does it feed? It's people looking for a culture, a family, a belonging. OK 0:10:20 - 0:10:44 . Those are typically not the people looking for improvement. And what's worse than all that is is, well, let's freeze there for a minute because we're gonna zoom back out to everyone else but is no surprise that the people in the L DS church are how they are. What do you expect? You know, if you use 0:10:44 - 0:11:11 rat bait, you're gonna get rats. That's, that's as simple as it is. And, and I had a discussion with another preacher yesterday who like me tends to get traction with, um, L DS former L DS people. That's probably the best way to put it. And he said, keep finding the good faith because people are leaving 0:11:11 - 0:11:31 the L DS church and they're just becoming atheists. And I say, well, what do you expect? What do you expect there? It's a church full of spiritual zombies. Very few people believe hardly any of what they profess to believe in the L DS church. And so of course, when they see cracks, they just go to atheism 0:11:31 - 0:11:53 , they were already basically atheists. They were just wearing the clothing of people who were religious, but it was just the culture and so zooming back out to all Christian churches today. The named ones where do most converts come from? It's mostly people who are crazy. They have serious problems 0:11:53 - 0:12:15 in their life that they're not looking for solutions to. They just want them to go away. They don't want to improve, they just want to be in less pain, they don't want to be better, they just want to need less things. Do you see what I'm saying with that now? Some tiny, tiny fraction amongst all these 0:12:15 - 0:12:40 people, they see the light in the material and look past the darkness in the vehicle. The vehicle is the church. They see the value in the scriptures. And there's some residual ideas that, that have been retained through the years of decay because all Christian churches are decaying rapidly. But those 0:12:40 - 0:13:00 are the absolute minority. And typically, they don't last very long because either in this unfortunate, most of them will turn into the crazy people, the cultural converts, those are overlapping circles. They're not the same. Most of them will turn into cultural converts and the ones that don't get kicked 0:13:00 - 0:13:28 out. That's, that's those are your two possibilities or they leave, I guess there are three. So they convert to cultural converts, they get kicked out or they leave and become atheists. Most converts in all churches come from parents who are converts or grandparents or great grandparents. They're almost 0:13:28 - 0:13:48 all Children. And that was sufficient for decades past. But in the modern world, it's insufficient because the complexity of the world is continue to continuing to increase the problems, the number and intensity of problems is increasing and it's insufficient. And you all see this just as well as I do 0:13:48 - 0:14:14 this part that the youth in churches today, they are not finding value in what they're given. You see, their parents are thoroughly, what's the best word for this, I guess ritualized in the culture that they won't allow themselves to see problems. But the youth come in and they see those problems and 0:14:14 - 0:14:29 so the world has changed. They, they haven't noticed that their religion has decayed, the world has changed and become more difficult. They're clinging to things that don't work today and it's obvious that they don't work today, but they don't have to worry about it. So, let me just give you a really 0:14:29 - 0:14:50 practical example if the principles in your faith do not produce temporal success. But they did 50 years ago. Well, the grandpas and grandmas, they're still ok because they're retired and they got all their money and they're doing great. Their Children aren't doing so well, but they're all right and 0:14:50 - 0:15:08 they're all right enough that they don't pay attention, they refuse to see how much worse off they are at their age than their parents were. But their kids, the grandkids, it's really dang obvious that they're not going anywhere in life because I'm 30 I'm still living in my mom's basement. Right. And 0:15:08 - 0:15:26 so they think, well, I need a new religion now. That's not exactly what they think. But what I'm saying is they're not all in on the religion because they don't have a reason to be, it has nothing to offer them. And so they become less intense, less plugged in and there's an allure to all these other 0:15:25 - 0:15:45 ideas that wouldn't get traction with the parents and grandparents per se. Definitely not the grandparents. But, you know, to a lesser degree with the parents and all of a sudden they start filling their lives with this garbage and no surprise they think it has more to offer them because that's where 0:15:45 - 0:16:13 all their peers are going. Anyway. Churches today are dying and they are, they can't get converts as quickly as people are leaving. They're all shrinking. Why? Because their religions are insufficient for the problems of the modern world. You, if you're watching this, you've come out of a failing religious 0:16:13 - 0:16:39 tradition. Ok. There, there aren't a ton of people on this channel who weren't already religious. There are some, but you're still using the failed tactics for missionary work that came out of that tradition. That's not gonna work. What if I had to sum it up? I'd say what your efforts are doing is you're 0:16:39 - 0:16:58 , you're offering a sheer cliff to people and very, very, very few people are gonna climb that. I have a friend. He's, he's a real deal mountain climber. He could climb a sheer cliff and no surprise he has. Right. I've got another friend who's a professional pilot. If he needed to, he could fly up to 0:16:58 - 0:17:18 a cliff and obviously there's runways and stuff involved. Well, I got another friend who's a helicopter pilot. Isn't this funny? You know, God, I've talked about his sense of humor. One piece of it and it's not so much humor. It's a li, I think it's hilarious. But a thing must be what it is. Truth is 0:17:17 - 0:17:40 what cannot be hidden forever. It's what will eventually be revealed. And God in his wisdom, he's given parallels. He sprinkled them all over the place. So that truth leaves clues and you see these clues in people. You know, the, the a bunch of the apostles were fishermen and, and then that gave Jesus 0:17:40 - 0:17:58 the opportunity to say, follow me and I'll make you fishers of men. That was all preordained. It was all sorted out. So that, that's where those people would end up. Ok. Now I'm not making an argument for predestination. I'm saying, God puts people in places knowing full well what they're gonna do and 0:17:58 - 0:18:21 it's all according to his plan as the agency preserved, but also he knows what's gonna happen. But anyway, uh so I've got a pilot, a helicopter, a plane, pilot, helicopter pilot and a cliff climber. These are not good examples of the general population. Most people cannot fly and cannot scale cliffs 0:18:21 - 0:18:39 and they're not interested in learning how to do it, even if they were given a path to become a professional pilot. Like those two pilots would tell me one of them has the very, very, very, very, very few young people are getting into this because they're not interested in the rigorous training and the 0:18:38 - 0:18:57 whatever, whatever it's, if they see it as too hard, it's undesirable, they don't understand the huge benefits that, that uh being a pilot is one of the very few jobs that, that pay enough today to raise a family on. There aren't that many, but there's not this flood into those, that small set of jobs 0:18:56 - 0:19:17 . Why? Because people aren't interested, they see the cost is higher than the benefit. Anyway, this completely applies to what we're saying here. Yeah, it'd be nice if you could just leave a book of Mormon cracked open on the street or a New Testament or an Old Testament. And people would just rush in 0:19:16 - 0:19:39 and, and you know, like, um like Black Friday mob with the big screen TV and fight over that thing. But guess what? It doesn't happen. Put a big screen TV in the inner city and 10 ft away, put a religious book cracked open and find out which one disappears first. It's not gonna be the book. I, I guarantee 0:19:38 - 0:20:01 you. Ok. So the solution here is what I call finding the feathered edge. And what I mean by that is, uh and I use this analogy elsewhere. When you're finishing drywall, you have to get those drywall seams. You have to put this tape in there and the tape and the mud that covers it, it goes below it too 0:20:01 - 0:20:26 . It, it has thickness and its thickness in addition to the plane of the drywall. So when you finish drywall, it's this intricate process. It's an art where you have to feather that edge down. So gradually and to such a fine point that you can't tell where it starts. That's your task in preaching the 0:20:26 - 0:20:53 gospel. You have to go to people where they are with the needs that they know they already have and do all the work it takes to chop up and reprocess what God has taught you and what God has given you into the value they can see right now from where they stand, stop handing them books and expecting them 0:20:53 - 0:21:21 to climb a cliff or fly up to the top of it. They don't know how to climb. They don't know how to fly and they're not interested in learning, they need value piece by piece to scale up to that. It's a long road. So if someone were to view your content and then from that content, build a model of who 0:21:21 - 0:00:00 they think you're expecting to, to reach with it, what would that person look like? I'm sure you've never thought about this. If someone like me or anyone else was watching the content that you produced and they were building a model of who you were trying to reach, what would that person look like? 0:00:00 - 0:22:07 They would look exactly like you. And that's a huge problem. Why? Because people like you already have what you have, do you get that? How did they get it? Well, the same way you did because they were open to the same things you see historically, an enormous component of what of how much information 0:22:07 - 0:22:30 someone had was there? Access to that information. If you lived in some bog in Ireland and you were a serf, the only source of information you had were the people that you worked with every day. It's gonna be your family and your little village and that's it. No one's, you know, taking a trip to Bali 0:22:29 - 0:22:50 to see what's going on down there when you're a surf in a bog in Ireland today, essentially everyone, even in the poorest parts of the world, people have smartphones and they have the internet. Anyone could Google anything and in two seconds, you can have access to pretty much anything. Although I will 0:22:50 - 0:23:16 make a caveat to that very radically in just the last few years, this is changing because of censorship and you will absolutely find that certain topics are impossible to Google today and that set of topics will expand and also coalesce on the most valuable things very quickly. So we live on the, on 0:23:15 - 0:23:41 the edge, the tailing edge of uh uh an incredibly special time in history where the the bounds of information are absolutely broken. It's never been like this and pretty soon it won't be like this anymore and you can make the argument that it already isn't, but it will get a lot worse. So that limitation 0:23:40 - 0:24:08 doesn't exist. But you're still teaching as if it were the main limitation, what you have to offer other people is not the information, uh the access to the information unless you are getting gobs of revelation from God. Do you see that people who get gobs of revelation from God, they are the informational 0:24:07 - 0:24:35 sources that don't already exist in the world. They do solve the information access problem, but very few people are living that way to be those kinds of folks. For the most part, what you're doing is you're reprocessing and delivering something in a way that's more easily accessible than how you got 0:24:35 - 0:24:59 it. That's the problem you're solving. It's not an access problem. It's a presentation problem. This is vitally important to understand. You should get it tattooed on your arm. It's super important. Don't really get it tattooed on your arm. I saw a lady in the store yesterday with the dumbest tattoo 0:24:59 - 0:25:32 on her arm. Anyway, if people found what I'm saying, interesting enough to put it into practice in the way that I'm saying it, they could just find it here if all you're doing is rehashing that you're not offering any value. Now, if you're presenting it better, if you're chopping it down and we'll get 0:25:31 - 0:25:50 into details here. If you're presenting it differently, then there's the possibility that you're adding value. What about stuff that doesn't overlap with what I'm teaching? Of course, there's an awful lot of that and it's really valuable. OK, fine. But, but go through the same exercise. What are you 0:25:50 - 0:26:12 presenting and what keeps the people fro from hearing it without you. Because if, if it's the, the, the shorter that list, the less likely you're producing something valuable and you ought to be spending your time differently because you'll, you'll generate greater value by doing that. What is unique 0:26:12 - 0:26:33 about what you're presenting, the longer the list, the more valuable it is. What value are you adding? What's better about it and how is it better? And in just a minute, we have to talk about some other things. First, I'm gonna give you a specific list of easy things you can do to boost your value through 0:26:33 - 0:26:55 the ceiling. OK. First, we need to talk about your target audience. I don't know if you thought about it or not, but it's really important that you actually visualize who you're trying to reach. You should be able to tell someone all about them because you need to custom fit your content to those people 0:26:54 - 0:27:14 . If you're just blabbing about whatever you're preaching to yourself, no one cares about that because they already have it. If they're like you, they've already found what you found in the same way as you did. And uh in the odd case that maybe there's one person out there for that for some reason hasn't 0:27:14 - 0:27:36 googled the right thing or whatever. OK. Fine. You're gonna find one person like you or 30 people like you and you'll see that week after week video after video, whatever you produce, you're stuck at the same number of viewers. Why? Because you're making content for you. Not for someone else. Every time 0:27:35 - 0:27:58 you teach, you should think, how do I want the people who hear me teach to change? And now I'm going to design everything I'm gonna say around persuading them to make that change every single time. So every time you make a video before you even hit record, if, if you know Rob Smith popped up on your 0:27:58 - 0:28:13 shoulder, you can choose which one he said, hey, why are you making this video? What's your, what's your intended outcome? How do you want people to change? You should be able to rattle off this, this, this and this. Here's the problem. Here's the solution. Here's how I'm going to present it to them 0:28:13 - 0:28:39 and persuade them that it's worth the effort. If you can't answer those questions, then I'm not gonna say, don't record but record with the intent. A better discovering that not publishing that you don't publish the blabbing. OK. It's more like a journal for yourself. All right. So who is the, the target 0:28:38 - 0:29:01 audience? I'm gonna tell you. It's those who desire improvement. It's not crazy people. It's not lonely people. It's people who desire improvement. When I was, uh I told you I was an L DS missionary. Uh We were supposed to be out basically knocking doors unless we're teaching from sometime in the morning 0:29:01 - 0:29:27 to sometime at night. Well, I figured out really quickly, the only people that are home during the day, uh where I was were mostly just crazy people to get to the people who were pursuing improvement in their lives. We had to knock on doors essentially right after dinner until bedtime. And so what we 0:29:27 - 0:29:47 did was we blocked out that time so that we would do everything possible to never be teaching during that time. Whereas, because it was the most convenient time, almost anyone who found someone that would talk to them ended up booking appointments to be in their house during the evening. And so they 0:29:47 - 0:30:06 were never out meeting the kinds of people they were looking for. And this vastly increased our interaction with the kinds of people we were looking for, worked like a charm. You have to think about who you're looking for and you have to design content that will be useful to them and that they can recognize 0:30:05 - 0:30:23 as valuable without a whole bunch of faith like like just taking your word for it, that some random person on the internet is gonna have something valuable to say. And that that of course, dodges the question of how they're gonna find you in the first place. But we'll talk about that too. So here's some 0:30:23 - 0:30:47 , some scriptures to show that who you're looking for are the people who desire improvement. John 1027 my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me, John 1010 the seas cometh, not but for to steal and to kill and to destroy. I am come that they might have life and that they might have it 0:30:47 - 0:31:16 more abundantly. Just these two scriptures we could talk about for hours, deeply encoded into them are some very big ideas. The idea of life. It's not just your pulse, this word life in Greek, it's the same one used for eternal life and it's not just heaven or some outcome. It's a process. It's a process 0:31:15 - 0:31:40 of growth and improvement. It's the opposite of when you see the word death or perish to perish isn't to die. It's to decay into oblivion. It's the way of life and the way of death. When Moses says, I put before you two ways, the way of life and the way of death, the way of blessing and the way of cursing 0:31:39 - 0:32:00 Jesus says he's the way of the truth in life. It's the way of improvement. It's the highway of righteousness. It's the mountain of the Lord. There's all these phrases that are, they're synonymous in the scriptures and the way of death is everything else is moving out of that in any way. You see the word 0:32:00 - 0:32:26 backsliding. That's what it's talking about. Ok? You're either moving into the way and up or out of the way and down. There's no other option and almost everything is down. You're looking for people who know the Lord's voice and follow him. Does that mean that they profess belief in God, that they have 0:32:26 - 0:32:46 shirts that say I love Jesus. No, it does not. In fact, most people who do that do not fulfill this, this requirement, they're actually in the way of death and they think they're in the way of life. You will find many, many people who say that they're agnostic and even atheists who are actually in the 0:32:46 - 0:33:07 way of life, they do believe in God far more than most Christians. They just don't know it yet because what they have been given as what it means to believe in God is completely wrong or is, or is mostly wrong. At least you're looking for people that have been true and faithful to the light that they 0:33:07 - 0:33:42 have received and it doesn't matter what form that light takes or what level it's on. Those are the people you're looking for. Did you know that some of the most impactful scientists in history were hardcore Christians. Why is that? It's because light cleaves to light goodness begets goodness. And why 0:33:42 - 0:34:10 is it that some of the most others oriented people in the world? They strongly oppose efforts to evangelize them and to overt Christianity, it's because they already have more light than the people trying to evangelize them. They're holding out for something better, something that surpasses what they 0:34:10 - 0:34:36 already have anyway. I don't want to get too deep on that, but you're looking for people who are looking to improve and all of those people will already be doing things in their life that show that they're interested in that. So look at, for example, if you look at Peter and when the Lord told him to 0:34:36 - 0:35:01 follow him, Peter fell down and he said, Lord, I'm a sinful man. It's a touching, it's a touching vision to think about that, to visualize that was Peter, some chump hanging out in his mom's basement, you know, £200 overweight, not getting dressed most days, just playing video games all day. No, he was 0:35:01 - 0:35:21 a successful businessman. He had a thriving fishery. He employed people which was really hard to do back then. I mean, I'm not talking about household servants. I'm saying to have middle class people working for you because your enterprise supports that it, they worked on a lake that was tightly controlled 0:35:20 - 0:35:46 by the governing powers. There were licensing issues. It, it wasn't just uh oh yeah, I got a boat and I'd fish, you know, it was a hopping and popping enterprise. It was not easy to build that thing up or to run it. Peter was not a chump. Ok. So he said I'm a sinful man and he was right. We all start 0:35:46 - 0:36:08 that way. But he was acutely aware of his flaws in ways that the people who supposed, they were righteous who were running the church back then. The synagogues didn't see for the most part because they, they were unaware enough or self deluded enough to think themselves righteous. Peter wasn't under 0:36:08 - 0:36:36 that illusion. Now, why wasn't Peter a hardcore zealot in the existing religion? It was insufficient for him. He knew that he knew it was bogus. So he didn't go for it. Now, were there things in it that were extremely true and valuable? Yes, of course. But we read from what the Lord said that they prioritized 0:36:35 - 0:36:53 the traditions of men far above the actual commandments from God. And so it was corrupted. If you listen to what was being taught and you lived, what was being taught, you'd be worse off. That's exactly what he said. You make him two fold a child of hell when you convert someone to this religion, that's 0:36:53 - 0:37:16 what he told them the Pharisees. So you're looking for people who are doing what they can with what they have to make the best of it. That's exactly what Peter and Andrew and John were doing. That's even what Levi Matthew, what he was doing. He was a tax collector. And if you lived at that time and you 0:37:16 - 0:37:45 believed the things that were evident, that was a really nice job to have. You got paid incredibly well. All right. Now, there was, there was some downside to it, of course. But the point is Jesus didn't call chumps. He called people who are already living the life that they had in their lives. He called 0:37:45 - 0:38:06 everybody. I'm saying as apostles, he didn't choose as his apostles, the people that were just sort of off doing whatever and completely ignoring all the signs that life gives you, that you need to be better than how you are. Ok. So what is the most important change you can make to, to be more effective 0:38:05 - 0:38:26 in attracting those who will hear and follow the Lord's voice. We gotta get this out of the way before we get to the practical changes you can make to your content. The number one change you can make is to submit unconditionally to God. I'm telling you, you can fool all kinds of people in this world 0:38:25 - 0:38:53 and, and every mega church is an example of proof of this and most regular churches too. You can fool anyone hurt almost anyone in the world into thinking that what you have to say is valuable just by saying the right things. But you won't fool the few people who you're actually looking for. You will 0:38:53 - 0:39:17 never ever attract them. This is good dating advice too. You will never ever attract them by being something pretending to be someone other than who you really are. You have to be who you really are. And if you're a piece of garbage, don't pretend to preach the gospel. You have to actually live what 0:39:16 - 0:39:42 you say you believe until you get there. You've got better things to do than try to convert someone to live a gospel that you don't live. It's I'm not saying this flippantly. There is nothing in your life more important than aligning yourself to God completely at all times and in all places and how you 0:39:42 - 0:40:06 see Him to be right now, sincerely what you think he would do in your place. That's what you need to be doing every day, all day until you get there. Nothing else matters. Now, you can make an argument if you are responsible to a family or whoever you have those responsibilities and God wants you to 0:40:06 - 0:40:32 handle that. But any waking moment outside of that, you ought to be on your face begging him to forgive you of your sins and dedicating yourself. That doesn't take much time. By the way, he's very happy to do that. The hard part, you don't ever have to wait on Him for forgiveness. You just have to fix 0:40:32 - 0:40:53 yourself. And that's the part that people will just wrestle and wrestle and wrestle with themselves for the longest time to finally decide that God actually knows better. It's the weirdest thing in the world if, if what you want is what is best for you, the absolute best way to get it. And the only way 0:40:53 - 0:41:13 to get it is to fully submit to God. And it doesn't matter what he asked from you, it doesn't matter how hard it seems, it's, it's all possible because he won't ask you to do things that you're not able to do and he knows better. Than you, what you're capable of. He's the perfect trainer. And until you 0:41:13 - 0:41:39 do that, you love something else, namely the thing you're not willing to let go of more than him and that won't work. Jesus says, uh sorry, I need to read this next point for people who are looking for light. What they're actually looking for is someone who's, who's completely integrated. Now, the world 0:41:39 - 0:42:06 uses over, uses this word authentic thanks to uh clowns who have last names that rhyme with clown, but a clown, not plural. But there is definitely something of incredible worth to true integrity, to truly being sincere to truly living according to what you believe. And when you do that, a light will 0:42:06 - 0:42:26 light in you that can be seen by other people. Now, I've met people who say, and I don't have any reason to disbelieve that they can see that light. I myself have experienced it and do experience it in people. It's so obvious to me. It, it may as well be a light lighting above their head, but that's 0:42:25 - 0:42:52 not how it manifests to me. But it doesn't matter what they recognize or not, they will be attracted to people like a magnet who are like this. They won't understand it. They might not even notice it. They'll just say, I really like that person. They're different and I want to be around them. The wonderful 0:42:51 - 0:43:12 thing about this is, it makes what you say and how you say it a lot less important because there's something there. Now, how much of this works at a distance? I it's, it's at least a little different. Ok. But I'm telling you this is the most important thing is get yourself right with God. Jesus said 0:43:12 - 0:43:35 , I'm come a light into the world that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. That's in John 1246. Then he said in another place, ye are the light of the world. Speaking to his disciples, a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Even if you wanted to, you won't be able to hide. Now 0:43:35 - 0:44:02 , there's some consequences of this given that the world is an evil place and most people are evil. But the positive consequence is that people who love, the light will draw near to you. You can't separate these things, you can't hide it and those who believe in what you do and say they will not abide 0:44:02 - 0:44:30 in the darkness. They will get brighter. Don't fool yourself to think that the consequences of doing anything less than this are worthwhile in Matthew six, starting in verse 21. The Lord says for where your treasure is there will your heart be also? Now how could you put this into plain English? Maybe 0:44:29 - 0:44:51 something like whatever you value the most is what you will desire the most. Now let me ask you if there's a sin in your life, whether it's a sin of omission or commission, whether you're doing something you shouldn't, that the Lord wouldn't do or you're not doing something that the Lord would do. Like 0:44:51 - 0:45:10 you're afraid to talk to your spouse about some things that you really need to talk about or you're afraid of standing up for something or someone at work or whatever. And Jesus would do those things in your place, whatever you value the most you will desire the most. And this is why John in one of his 0:45:10 - 0:45:38 letters, he says it's not grievous to keep the commandments. If we love the Lord, if you see obedience to God in any specific way and anything he could tell you to do or not do. If you see that as grievous, you don't love him, you love something else more namely whatever is keeping you from getting there 0:45:38 - 0:46:06 . You know, you know, you need to lose some weight or to gain some weight. There are people who are too skinny and you just can't let go of not eating enough or eating too much. Well, you love that more than Jesus. If you love Jesus the most, you would fall down before Him in all things. You should look 0:46:06 - 0:46:33 up the the phrase, unconditional surrender. It's a military phrase and that's what we need with God continuing in verse 22. The light of the body is the eye. If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light, what does this mean? The eye is also connected to your desire in ways 0:46:33 - 0:46:53 that would be pretty deep to fully explore. But, you know, you can't actually see something that you're not looking at. So you have to pay attention to something before you can really understand it. The light of the body is the eye. So what you're focused on, that's where your light's going to go and 0:46:52 - 0:47:17 also where it's gonna come from. If your eye is single, if what you want is unified and prioritized and you understand that and you choose it, your whole body will be full of light. This is amazing. He says this in another way in a different place when he says, seek ye first, the kingdom of God and everything 0:47:16 - 0:47:50 else that matters will automatically be yours. If you adopt God's purpose fully in your life, no good thing will be withheld from you. Why? Because that's the path that God. God's way is not some random thing like you're getting put on some test where if you do this arbitrary thing, you'll be rewarded 0:47:49 - 0:48:14 with all these practical things. It's the optimization of all things. If you want the best things and the most good in your life for the longest period of time, the only way to get it is to adopt God's purpose fully in your life as priority number one. And the last priority. It's the, the first and the 0:48:14 - 0:48:34 last. It's the only thing on the list. And now that I don't want to get too much into this, that doesn't mean that you don't care about other things. You only care about other things in, inside of that. It's like a circle and you only care about the stuff in the circle. And the, the priority of the stuff 0:48:34 - 0:48:56 in the circle is fully oriented to the Lord's purpose and he will see to it that all good things are yours. Now, I'll get into that in much greater detail in other places. But this isn't the time or the place. The point is if you want to maximize that light, that other people see here's how you do it 0:48:56 - 0:00:00 , you make God's purpose, your purpose, period. There's no, I'm doing this now so that I can do that later. Nope, you just go all to his purpose, which in a nutshell means you repent and you stop doing anything other than what he would do in your place. You can't serve two masters. You only get one. 0:00:00 - 0:49:42 A lot of people fool themselves into thinking they're serving God and that sin, they won't let go of. Nope, you have one master. It's not God. If you're not in the way of light, you're in the way of darkness. And people who already are living in the way of light will not listen to you. If you're walking 0:49:42 - 0:50:04 in darkness, they can see it from a mile away. It's just as obvious as the people with light to them. Ok. So this is the number one thing you can change to make yourself more effective. All right. Now, what are the practical ways once you get that out of the way? Well, here's one tip realize that religious 0:50:04 - 0:50:29 beliefs in general are going to be repulsive to them. It's going to be something from which they recoil immediately. One thing I've noticed about people who are interested in making content is they don't necessarily realize how offensive what they say is to others. Now, go ahead and have your laugh that 0:50:28 - 0:50:51 you're hearing me say that of all people. OK. I'm not trying to reach those people. This is I'm not, this isn't an example of uh do, as I say and not as I do when you optimize to a certain set of truths, there are consequences that come with that. There's a reason that when Jesus sent out the 70 they 0:50:51 - 0:51:12 were able to reach people who had already rejected him. He was optimized at a higher level to a higher goal. He came to save the people that already had tons of light. He says this in one place that you won't recognize because of the way it's written in the New Testament. But he came to save the sheep 0:51:12 - 0:51:38 who were looking for the best grass and he was the best grass. But he had to send those sheep out to rescue people who are looking for lesser grass So, anyway, religious beliefs in general, they're going to repel your target audience. Why? Because when you look at the pie chart of what religion has to 0:51:38 - 0:51:57 offer, you've extracted out all the good stuff and you've thrown away all the bad stuff. They haven't for them, the religious picture is dominated. If it were pie chart, the biggest slice would be bad and they already know that they've tasted it. They haven't dug in to separate out the baby from the 0:51:57 - 0:52:27 bathwater. You have, they haven't. And so when you say words, phrases or whatever that tie to that baby, they're only seeing the bathwater and the bathwater is nasty. OK? And so that's why that will turn them away. Now people like Jordan B. Peterson have developed an art form of talking about religious 0:52:26 - 0:52:51 things while avoiding all the trip wires. And if you watch one of Jordan B, Peterson's recent interviews, the odds are high that you're going to see him pushing religion hardcore onto self described atheists even and they don't get offended. Now, part of this is if you push back against Jordan B Peterson 0:52:50 - 0:53:15 , you better be ready cause he's gonna slap you with a whole lot of logic and whatever else and probably research papers and you know, lots of hand gestures. But a big part of it is that he doesn't present it in the ways that normal religious people would. And so it doesn't trip the wires, he's presenting 0:53:15 - 0:53:36 it from their, uh, uh, uh, a position that's much closer to their own than he is an overtly religious position. Remember when you teach, you teach from the point of view of the people hearing you, you can't teach from the point of view of yourself and what, you know, and what you want them to know and 0:53:35 - 0:54:01 whatever you have to start where they are, you have to, you have to present things in a way where the value is immediately obvious to them and where you're not violating what I call truth windows, which is the set of constraints a person places on what they're willing to hear and consider. So what's 0:54:01 - 0:54:23 an example of violating the truth window if you're talking to someone who's associated it in any way with the Protestant world view? And you say in the book of Mormon, it says you just lost them. That's all it takes. They're done. You just lost any credibility with them. Why it doesn't matter how logical 0:54:22 - 0:54:48 or, or well presented or obviously valuable. Anything else you say is they're not gonna listen because they have been primed their entire life to associate Mormonism with a cult and it doesn't matter what subset of that you're presenting to them, they're not interested and that's the way it works. The 0:54:48 - 0:55:23 same thing happens with Catholic. Anything associated with Catho Catholicism with a Protestant. These are absolutely not, the only trip wires will say in teaching the gospel to people who are not religious or who are from different religious traditions. The good news is that in general agnostics and 0:55:23 - 0:55:48 atheists are m more willing to consider scriptures that differ from their own interpretation of things than religious people, which is shocking but true. So just be aware of the background of the kinds of people who you want to listen to you and respect the boundaries that they set in their truth windows 0:55:47 - 0:56:13 . Now I say respect, but if you choose not to, that's fine. I'm just saying they will absolutely not listen to you. And so how does this work in practice? If I were to make a video where I wanted to reach people who are not from a Mormon background, such as this video, I would not use scriptures that 0:56:13 - 0:56:36 are from the book of Mormon. And you'll notice there aren't any in this presentation I presented two from John that, that address ideas that could be found in the book of Mormon and that are phrased well there as well. But if you have a choice, you can choose to use the evidence that the people you're 0:56:35 - 0:56:53 teaching to will hopefully receive. Now, I'm not under the illusion that there are tons of people that aren't from an L DS background watching my channel. I just did this for the sake of argument here. I hope that there are, I hope there will be increasing numbers of them, but they're not gonna get here 0:56:53 - 0:57:17 unless you do what you can do. They're not gonna get here from, from things that I can do because I'm already doing them. All right. So think about and explicitly enumerate the kind of person you're trying to reach, think about what they're searching for and go make content that fits what they want and 0:57:17 - 0:57:39 is presented in a way they're willing to receive. Again. Little Rob Smith pops up on your shoulder. He's gonna ask you who's your target audience? What are they looking for? How are they looking for it and what limits do they have and how they're willing to receive it? And how is your content fitting 0:57:38 - 0:58:03 that to the degree? You don't, you haven't thought about this and you don't have good answers for it. Your content is not gonna do the good that it could do. You're leaving people behind essentially. Now, I want to give you an example of this here. I've listed properties in the general population, uh 0:58:03 - 0:58:25 I'm sorry, probabilities in the for certain properties in the general population and quick math review. If you want to know the probability of a set of things happening all at once, you have to multiply those probabilities together. So let's just go through a few of them. These, by the way, these are 0:58:25 - 0:58:50 probabilities that are required to be satisfied for the content you're currently making for the most part. One what lies outside uh the person the hearer is willing to listen to what lies outside of their experience will be generous to say that's about 20% of people are open minded. Right? Then you've 0:58:50 - 0:59:17 got people who are willing to tolerate content that can't be effectively broken down further without losing the joint. Meaning this is something that's prevalent in my own content. It's very difficult to convey the same depth and breadth of ideas while breaking it down any further. There's a reason my 0:59:17 - 0:59:43 videos are not four minutes long, right? So the probability of, of a person being willing to tolerate that, it's probably 5%. It's pretty rare if you're cranking out two hour videos, the odds that anyone's gonna sit through those is really low, it's really low. Then you've got the content presented in 0:59:43 - 1:00:07 a rough way. What do I mean by a rough way, you know, cheesy slideshows instead of videos with nice animations and uh stock footage or whatever. Most people just aren't willing to deal with low sound quality, whatever. Uh I even saw a critique on a Jordan Peterson video the other day where the audio 1:00:06 - 1:00:23 , there was a lag when they switched the mic from Jordan's mic to his guest's mic. And so you could hear an echo is the slightest thing. And there was, there were a few comments, just lighting up the audio person for this presentation should have been fired, that people just will not tolerate it. Now 1:00:23 - 1:00:46 , his content, it generates millions of dollars in revenue. There's a certain expectation of quality, whatever versus some random preacher on the internet. But still I get it that what I'm creating is pretty gorilla level production. Ok. Fine. Who's willing to watch stuff that's crude like this? Probably 1:00:46 - 1:01:14 10%. Now, here's a big one who's willing to tolerate content that has to be presented extemporaneously on the fly. So I hardly ever read from a script. Why is that? There are a lot of reasons but, and, and I don't count slide shows as reading from a script, but I do have videos where I'm just talking 1:01:13 - 1:01:38 on the fly. I don't have any slides. I don't have a script. There are things that can only be produced that way if your content isn't among it, those things you should not be producing content this way because all it is is laziness and you're reducing the quality of what you're producing, which is reducing 1:01:37 - 1:02:06 the size of the audience who will receive it. Don't, don't ever produce things where you're requiring your audience to do more work or have a larger window of truth just because you didn't feel like putting more time into it. Now, there are many situations where that's the best that can be done. Maybe 1:02:06 - 1:02:26 you're so busy in your life doing very high value things that you only have 10 minutes to say whatever comes to your mind and you had a thought and you could envision a set of people that would be benefited from that and a plausible reason to believe that they'll somehow find the content. Great, go for 1:02:25 - 1:02:45 it. But if you spend all day on Sunday watching football and all day on Saturday, take your kids to all these things that are only marginally at best helpful for them in life. And yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda. Well, maybe you can just take a larger chunk of time to make your content a little better 1:02:45 - 1:03:07 , right? And so one easy way to do that is to cycle the videos. Maybe you do best talking extemporaneously. Great for creating the ideas in the first place. Great. So record yourself doing that and then do another take and another take and even better write down what you say and there are easy automatic 1:03:07 - 1:03:24 ways of doing that with technology and then go over the transcript and tweak it and make it better and better. You might split a video into three videos that are each four minutes long and crystal clear and beautiful, right? Whatever, whatever or and maybe you don't even get to the script, you break 1:03:24 - 1:03:43 up the ideas and you just make a bunch of shorts that are focused and now your content is 100 times better and get 100 times more views than the first. I'm just gonna hit record and blab about whatever comes to my mind for, for 30 minutes, right? Remember what changes do you want someone to make? And 1:03:43 - 1:04:13 what reasons are you giving them to do it? That's all it is. All right. What must be presented by a person who has a lot of that should be reputational baggage. Thanks. Auto. Correct. All right. Oh, it's not a word. I beg to differ. Um, so what do I mean by reputational baggage? Uh, this, it's a big 1:04:12 - 1:04:36 topic, right? And I'm, I'm obviously trying to avoid the depths, but this idea of optimization is a really big deal. In order to teach certain things, you have to let go of your ability to church, teach certain other things. Now, the way this works is that you teach higher things and you have to let 1:04:35 - 1:05:01 go of teaching lower things. There, there. Oh, gosh, there's so much to this topic and I'm trying very hard to not dive into it right here. It's not the time or place. But uh just, just we, we mentioned before for an L DS background person. Obviously, they believe in the book of Mormon. If you believe 1:05:00 - 1:05:22 in the book of Mormon, you automatically exclude yourself from being able to teach a whole host of people. That's all there is to it. Now, suppose you believe in the book of Mormon, but you're not from an L DS background or any other Mormon offshoot background. And I uh for anyone who might find that 1:05:21 - 1:05:42 offensive, I realize the L DS church is also a Mormon offshoot, the original church that Joseph founded ceased to exist upon his death. That's controversial. But it's true. So, suppose you grew up a Baptist or a Catholic and you independently got yourself a copy of the book of Mormon and you read it 1:05:42 - 1:06:00 and you find immense value in it. You were never L DS, you were never a UB, you were never any of these things. You're just, you're quote unquote, just a Christian. You have more credibility in the eyes of these people. You can reach some people that someone from an L DS background cannot reach. Just 1:05:59 - 1:06:23 like I wasn't born a Mormon. I became aware of the book of Mormon when I was 18. And so I have a certain deal of credibility that someone who's born into the L DS church say does not have with people who are not L Ds, right? So reputational baggage and I kind of touched on this, but sometimes your reputational 1:06:22 - 1:06:43 baggage will actually open certain doors, but it closes a whole lot of doors. So what percent of people are, are open minded enough that they're willing to listen to somebody who, you know, for example, an L Ds person who's willing to listen to someone who's not L Ds or maybe who was L DS and isn't anymore 1:06:42 - 1:07:05 . Well, it's generously, it's 20% it's probably lower in that specific case. But in general, people will listen to folks with baggage, reputational baggage, maybe 20% of people will do that. So what's the aggregate probability of these qualities. It's something like three and 10,000. That's really small 1:07:04 - 1:07:40 in case you didn't know you are not producing content for these people. I am and I can't avoid that. The things that I teach and the way God has the things that are required for me to live through in order to do what I do limit me to this probability of people. It's not the case for you. You can reach 1:07:40 - 1:08:13 more people than me. How do you do it? Here's how you do it. You speak to things that overlap with their experience, don't use language or experience or religious rights or stories that fall outside of the people you're trying to reach. Jesus didn't go to fishermen and use analogies about calculus. He 1:08:13 - 1:08:47 used analogies about fishing when he was in fishing villages when he was out in the fields. He used analogies about cattle, about sheep, use what they already see value in. Don't invoked things that cross their boundaries of truth. Oh, gosh, I butchered that don't invoke things that will create an automatic 1:08:46 - 1:09:05 rejection in them. You know, keep the rejections focused to the arguments you're making. Not how you're making them. If they choose to reject what you're inviting them to do. That's one thing, but make sure it's not because you're arguing in a really stupid way using things, you know, they don't agree 1:09:04 - 1:09:35 with, use their own beliefs to point them towards what is better. In other words, what they already find value in not what they view as anti value that's not gonna work. It's step by step from wherever they stand to that end, break everything down to the smallest effective pieces. There are reasons that 1:09:35 - 1:10:03 I have to make my videos an hour or two hours long. If you don't have those reasons, don't do it. If, if you're making content for people that can handle tons and tons of ideas packed into a tiny little place, then all you're doing is teaching to yourself and there aren't that many of you. In other words 1:10:02 - 1:10:29 , teach down not laterally. There were way more people downward than on your sides. Make the content short and highly focused. You want a practical way of doing this with your current content, record your video just like you are right now or even better transcribe it. So do text to speech and then re-watch 1:10:28 - 1:10:53 it or read it. If it's a transcript and identify ideas that are independent from everything around it, break those out and make a separate video or if you want to edit the video, you can clip it down. And the, the laziest way of doing this youtube has a clips feature. You don't have to do anything different 1:10:52 - 1:11:10 except click on the clips feature, put in the time stamps of the clip you want to pull out, it will make a short on your channel of that portion. This is the laziest way of doing what I'm saying. And I'm telling you, it will quadruple your views instantly because the set of people who are willing to 1:11:10 - 1:11:34 watch a 25 2nd or one minute clip is enormous compared to the set of people who are willing to watch a 30 minute, uh, video on a bunch of topics and take the time to make clear titles for those shorts. Ok. And you've got some nuggets in your videos that you could do this with. But if you want to go full 1:11:34 - 1:11:54 bore, the way to do it is how I said at the beginning, chop up your videos, then ask the question for that segment of the transcript of the video. What need am I addressing here? Is this the best way to do it? How can I do it better? What reasons am I giving for people to believe what I'm saying? Is 1:11:54 - 1:12:15 there a better reason? What counter arguments can I expect now? Maybe it's because the quality of what I produce is so low. I don't know. But you might think that the time I'm putting into this, what I do is the time it takes to, to from start to finish after I press record or when you read a book, the 1:12:15 - 1:12:37 time it would take for me to type it, I, I might labor for eight hours on one sentence that happens, right? Or 10 years of my life was required for me to write one paragraph, not sitting at the computer, but 10 years of crazy whatever experience. That's all that could have produced. The one paragraph 1:12:36 - 1:13:02 you don't see videos that I delete before publishing. You don't see the time it took to come up with these ideas off camera that, that maybe not directly in producing some script for it, but something I just share is a bullet. Maybe that took me an agonizing year to learn. Maybe I've studied it explicitly 1:13:02 - 1:13:25 for eight hours once or, or 10 days that happens in my life all the time and you don't see those threads into this. So it's understandable to think. Oh, well, this I can do the same thing and it's just hit record and whatever, it's not the same thing. But also you should not be aiming for the same thing 1:13:24 - 1:13:46 . You should be aiming for better because you're trying to reach people that can't be reached with what's already out there. All right, there are a lot of people out there who just won't watch content that's not high quality. So if you want to reach more people, you could think about ways that you could 1:13:46 - 1:14:09 produce at a higher quality. I don't just mean the content. Now, I'm saying how it looks and sounds. So if you have a nice place where you can record and it looks professional, the quality of the video, your background, the sound that all helps, that will all help you reach more people now. It takes 1:14:08 - 1:14:27 a lot more input. Like you need a dedicated space, you need a decent camera. Although most cell phones are good enough these days, you need a decent microphone. Those aren't that expensive these days. Like the whole influencer wave has made the technology quite affordable. I think the hardest thing is 1:14:27 - 1:14:47 the space in the lighting, right? That's why it needs to be dedicated. You can't, as I my videos are plenty to demonstrate the fact that you can't just use a bedroom and turn on the light and expect it to look decent. Right. And use your laptop camera. All right. Now to edit videos. If you want to start 1:14:46 - 1:15:06 editing, you can take out the ums and Os and reshoot different parts. It's gonna take 10 times longer than just recording and publishing whatever you record. So that's something to keep in mind. And again, a shortcut to all this, to getting pretty close to that with way less work is using shorts. By 1:15:06 - 1:15:23 the way, you can clip other people's videos and put them on your channel. You can do that with youtube. I don't think anyone's done that with my stuff, but it can be done. It ought to be done. If you wanna help other people out, maybe you're thinking, well, I'm not gonna record myself teaching stuff 1:15:22 - 1:15:42 because whatever reasons, um I'm too good looking and I don't wanna make them feel bad about who they married or whatever your case may be. I'm just kidding. It's probably something like you don't think you have anything worth saying or why should anyone listen to you or whatever? Whatever. And I'd probably 1:15:42 - 1:16:04 disagree with a whole lot of that. But can you make clips? Can you post clips? That's something that's very easy to do. Right. I've told people a couple of people that I'm shocked that no one has sat down with through faith. I think that's a, a good book this could be done with, you could do it with 1:16:03 - 1:16:22 repentance as well. But through faith and just taking a little chunk of text and made a little video talking about what you think about it or how to implement it in your life or what changes have happened in your life from doing. So there are other books that arguably would be better to do this with 1:16:21 - 1:16:40 , I mean, just doing that with the Bible, just reading a uh one verse out of the out of the Bible and then saying what you think about it and how it could be applied in life. And it's a three minute, four minute clip and the title is the, the verse so that it can be found by people who are searching 1:16:40 - 1:17:03 for. What does this verse, you know, citation mean? What does John 35 mean or whatever? Um or, and, and the title also includes the content that it's about. So people searching for, how do I find more meaning in life would find that. Right. So, using your brain and thinking about it a little, you can 1:17:03 - 1:17:29 vastly increase your audience even if it's the same content just presenting it in smaller chunks. I've talked a little bit about writing a script. Did you know that every major word processor has an included text to speech tool at this point? So I use Mac Pages and it's great. Uh So I haven't used this 1:17:28 - 1:17:48 very often but if I wanted to, I could click it and start talking and I've probably done this for two videos and maybe some more where I ended up actually reserving what I was writing for a book instead of making it into a video. And I always have to make that decision. Priority goes to books for me 1:17:48 - 1:18:06 . Um So you don't have to actually type very much. You could just talk and then edit that and that becomes your script and you can make it really good and take out all the filler and better organize your points and add a little more to it and think of some nice scriptures, even send it to a friend and 1:18:05 - 1:18:26 say, hey, friend, what do you think about this? I'm trying to do this. Am I leaving a good scripture out? You see, and all of a sudden it's 10 times better than it would be. How do you avoid all these pair with the bullets in the last slide? And that might not be obvious. How do you avoid reputational 1:18:25 - 1:18:47 damage when it can be avoided? And we're gonna tell you the more like Jesus, you become, the more people will treat you like they treated Jesus. That is as true for bad people as it is for good people. And that should blow your mind a little bit and I'm not gonna delve into that at the moment, but let's 1:18:47 - 1:19:11 focus on those baddies. The fact is that the world is evil and the better you become, the more the world will turn against you. Ok? However, in all likelihood, there aren't that many things you've done in life to warrant being treated like Jesus. Yet that's gonna change and hopefully the sooner the better 1:19:10 - 1:19:35 . But until then, here's my suggestion for you always act as if everything you were doing or saying is going to be known by everyone because first off, it will be because that time is coming a time when everything will be made, made known and all secrets will be revealed. But long before then eventually 1:19:34 - 1:20:02 in this path, the path the Lord offers everyone. In the end times, everyone is going to face oppression and persecution and it's gonna be bad. But until then, so now we have two until then chained together. Until then you need to strategically choose the hills. You are going to die on. Now, literally 1:20:02 - 1:20:24 speaking, you could only die on one hill, but figuratively speaking, there are multiple hills you die on and each one will cause you to lose credibility with another segment of the population. This is very important to understand. So you need to be conscientious about that and strategize. So what do 1:20:24 - 1:20:45 I mean by this? And again, you might think I'm the worst person in the world to be preaching this. Um First off, I'm sharing some things. I learned the hard way, but second off, I agree with you in certain regards to that, but I won't waste the time to explore that so well, I will, I will waste the time 1:20:45 - 1:21:10 . It's not a waste of time. I thought of uh uh uh an appropriate example here. OK. Years and years ago, the Lord taught me some things about polygamy. I, my position was essentially the same as the current anti polygamists, except that I have never been in the Joseph Smith, never practiced polygamy boat 1:21:09 - 1:21:33 . But my view on polygamy was that it was always a bad idea. And then the Lord taught me some things and he gave me some extremely compelling reasons to think differently than I did before. And so I did think differently than I did before. And sometime after that I saw because of my own change in perspective 1:21:33 - 1:22:01 , I started to understand that there were things that there were sacred cows that people clung to that actually had very little to do with the sacred cow and whether you know the merits or lack thereof of that particular tenant and had much more to do with their own unwillingness to fully submit unconditionally 1:22:00 - 1:22:24 to God. In other words, if you took the set of people who are Christian, the set of them who are willing to fully surrender to God is very, very small. It's very small. And outside of that set, there is a list of things that they absolutely would not do even if God commanded them. Now, some of those 1:22:24 - 1:22:51 things are things like Abraham being commanded to sacrifice his son where they say, um maybe there's an overt moral argument about this to be made or whatever, but a great and they will say things like this publicly like the anti polygamy people. But most of the things that they're not willing to align 1:22:51 - 1:23:12 with God on, even if he told them to are not hypothetical, they're not, maybe one day they're not. What ifs they already know them and they refuse to align with them on that. Those are private sins in their lives and their conscience is killing them over this. It's raking them over the coals constantly 1:23:11 - 1:23:32 because they're professing to be Christian. And so they're looking for something else that by proxy, they can fight and win a battle against their own conscience because if there's something else out there that maybe God wouldn't command, then ever you can take it off the table and God would never ask 1:23:32 - 1:23:53 us to do this, then they're justified in the thing that they're not willing to do. They can find a reason to justify it if that makes sense. And so I had the bright idea, why don't I just ride boldly into the fray and confront people directly on the sacred cow of polygamy, not to convince people to practice 1:23:52 - 1:24:15 it, but to fight the fight of saying, look, this is not something that's abominable before God open to close And it's just never going to be something that anyone should do. And that was an enormous mistake on my part. That was not a hill to die on because those people will never be persuaded of anything 1:24:14 - 1:24:38 . They're already reprobate. And that the only thing that's gonna teach them to draw closer to God and give up their sacred cows is the negative consequence of their rebellion. So essentially this is where all the proverbs about a fool needing to be whipped, come in until life whips them enough and they 1:24:37 - 1:24:55 get sick of kicking against the pricks. They're not gonna turn to God and even then most won't. And so my time would have been better spent avoiding people like that, not avoiding actively, but spending my time actively on people that aren't like that. But I was quite naive about just how evil people 1:24:55 - 1:25:23 are. And um I chose to battle on that hill not knowing that it would radically reduce my um a whole lot of things in my life as far as what, what reach I had in teaching people about Jesus. So be conscientious about the hills that are worth dying on because many of them are not worth dying on. They're 1:25:23 - 1:25:44 more important things. I, I have a whole long list of things that I could teach about that are true and they're important, but they're less important than the things I do teach about. And in some cases they'd be, they'd be even more offensive than the things that I teach about. And the question is, well 1:25:44 - 1:26:02 , what's the point? So I have notes on tons of things that I'll probably never get around to talking about. Because what's the point? There are more important things to talk about and putting those things in front in the priority queue. It's just gonna make me, it's just gonna rob me of the reach that 1:26:02 - 1:26:22 I do have to teach the more important things. Does that make sense? So, and if you're thinking it's some crazy secret juicy stuff, it's not, it's like social issues, whatever, whatever. But like I said, it has way less impact, way less impact than the things we are talking about. So you have to be intentional 1:26:22 - 1:26:40 about that. And as you do these things that we've talked about on this slide, the probability of you getting many more viewers than you have is gonna go through the roof, it's gonna go through the roof. You have ideas that are worth hearing. You have things to say, that need to be said. There are many 1:26:39 - 1:27:03 , many, many people out there who have to hear what you have to say. They have to hear what you have to say and you will face these people in the resurrection and you will know like I know now you will know that you were given the opportunity to reach these people. And if you do what it takes to do it 1:27:02 - 1:27:27 , you will be filled with joy. And if you don't, you will be filled with regret forever. Now, that's pretty negative. So now we'll give you something positive. Here's a good example. There's a gentleman out there. Uh His name is Mark. He's known online as Latter Day Laman Night. What's he doing? That 1:27:27 - 1:27:51 is a great example of, well, he's making a series of videos on um the L DS church, I guess reading guide for Sunday school. And so he's following those chapters and the order and he's making his own videos as if he were teaching very brief classes on this. So it's kind of like Sunday school at home or 1:27:51 - 0:00:00 whatever, but they're overtly targeted to L DS people. He's making the video short and focused. He's taking the time to write a script. He's very obviously thinking about the changes that he can help others to make in their lives for improvement, the improvements that they could make and it's great, 0:00:00 - 1:28:29 right. So you should check that out if you haven't and one of the reasons you should check that out is because he doesn't have a ton of views and he should. There's an enormous audience of L DS people who are looking for a little something more than they're getting at church. Just a little something 1:28:29 - 1:28:53 . Um Mark is an upstanding guy. I don't think he has anything, any skeletons in his closet that, that I know about that would preclude normal L DS people from hearing what he has to say. Um So who knows why these videos aren't being shared? I think it's just because in general Christians don't like sharing 1:28:52 - 1:29:13 things. It's very different than the self-improvement culture where those people will ram a book down your throat. They will buy two copies of everything, right? They're tweeting stuff left and right. They leave a million book reviews. They, they are very evangelical in what they do, but they do it intelligently 1:29:12 - 1:29:34 meaning they have reasons and they share reasons. They say you should read this book because where I read this book and this is the change that happened in my life. I think it would be good for you too. Or they take the time to say, look at this quote, they pulled a quote, a quote out. They're not just 1:29:33 - 1:29:56 handing off a book, they're on Twitter, you know, they're on Instagram, they're putting things out there. So there's, there's definitely reticence to share material and I get the need to calculate what you're sharing, you don't wanna just blast everything out there or not take the time to adapt it to 1:29:55 - 1:30:19 specific people or sets of people. Like I said before handing someone a book is probably not a good idea. If they wanted the book, they probably already have it. There are exceptions, but the subset of things that you find shareable, you should be sharing them. If you're not sharing things with people 1:30:18 - 1:30:40 , you're really not carrying the water here. And that's a problem. It's a really big problem. And I'm gonna talk a lot more about this. God takes very seriously, not, not right now, but at some future date, God takes very seriously the obligation we have to share with others the things that we've received 1:30:39 - 0:00:00 . It's very important. It's, it's a, it's a specific piece of as I have loved, you, love one another. See, the, the value that you receive through the work that other people do. It's not from those other people. They're just carrying the water that they received from God, maybe through someone else, 0:00:00 - 1:31:27 maybe directly. It doesn't matter if it's good, it's his. And if you've received it, you're under the obligation to share it with others. Anything good that you've received came from God and you are under the obligation to share it with others. Should you do it? Because it's an obligation. Of course 1:31:27 - 1:31:51 not, of course not. You should do it because you love God and because you love others. Remember if you love God, his commandments aren't grievous. It's why would you do anything less if it's valuable to you? Why wouldn't you want other people to have that value? Right. It's obvious and the only reason 1:31:51 - 1:32:12 you wouldn't share it is because you care more about being scared about what they might say or do or getting rejected than you do. Then you care about God. That's your thing that you're placing above your love for God is fear of man. And there's a lot said about that in the scriptures and it's not good 1:32:11 - 1:32:43 . So your mission in life is to share the good that you've received with people who don't have it. Recognizing that the reason they don't have it is because it has not yet been presented in the way that they find worth the cost. And so your mission is to present good things in a way that's more accessible 1:32:41 - 1:33:09 than you found them. So um I got off track, giving some general advice there, but back to Mark, one thing that could boost his reach actually has nothing to do with him. It has to do with us. How many times have you shared his content? If he makes a video and you know, a bunch of L DS people and it's 1:33:09 - 1:33:30 on something that you personally think is important and valuable, why not share that video? It's very obvious to folks like Mark and I who are making videos by the way he didn't put me up to making this at all. It's, uh, un unsanctioned. Hopefully it's not offensive to him. I didn't ask his permission 1:33:30 - 1:33:50 . I guess I should have. Um, but when, when we make videos it's really obvious to see when something is shared, just one person sharing a video can double the views. That's how crazy it is because, you know, I don't have access to the people you have access to. If you make a clip of something I've made 1:33:49 - 1:34:11 or you take a quote out of a book I've written or whatever and you post it in your social network. Those, most of those people don't know me and most of them probably don't want to, right? But you can take the good and forward it on and maybe say, look, I don't want to be associated with you, Rob, you're 1:34:11 - 1:34:35 a knucklehead. Ok? Cool. So put it in your own words. I've, I've given you that legal option. All of the things that I've published to date, the copyright on the text says, um that these things can be shared as long as you don't charge for them and as long as they are shared with full attribution, don't 1:34:35 - 1:34:56 take my word on that. You could read the, the print. But I've told you again and again, please put these things into your own words and share them without attribution. If they're your own words, you could take my arguments, right? You can't copyright an argument. But I've also explicitly invited you 1:34:56 - 1:35:16 to do this, take these arguments and share them with other people. It doesn't have to have my name on it. Right? Do you need my name on something if you're plucking scriptures? Oh, once I heard Rob use this scripture to argue this point, go do it, go do the same thing. If you have a need to make that 1:35:16 - 1:35:38 point to somebody, go use it or find a better scripture, whatever, right? But if you just sit there and you don't carry the water to other people, it is bad, Juju. It is really not going to be good uh for a lot of reasons. But the main one you should be concerned about is the accountability that you're 1:35:38 - 1:36:00 getting from God. It's not good. OK? So share mark stuff. The other thing that he could do, but I'm not saying he should do. I'm just pointing this out is that editing, you know, he's got scripture references, he could put them up on the screen. Um He does have some really awesome wood paneling behind 1:35:59 - 1:36:20 him which may or may not be considered professional by others. And look again, I'm not critiquing him. I have vitamins and supplements behind me that I'm not getting sponsored for. Um That's just because I'm using this room and that's part of my routine and I'm not willing to change it. I don't think 1:36:20 - 1:36:38 that it's, it's a, it's like the disciples eating the grain or not washing their hands. It's intentional on my part. Although it might change in the future, the situation of my house currently is that I don't have a dedicated space where I can do this. I was gonna do that and then I got canceled and 1:36:38 - 1:37:01 things had to change. So, um, if it canceled from my professor job at a university. So, um, with Mark that, that could, the, the wood could easily become his brand. There's a lot of podcasters out there where they have um specific backgrounds that may or may not be considered professional, but they become 1:37:00 - 1:37:18 their brand and then that's their thing. So I think Mark should keep rocking the wood. Um I just mentioned it as a type of thing that people could, could think about. Uh what else, what about the scripture references? Again, I don't think that's necessarily a good idea for Mark. Uh If he wants to do 1:37:18 - 1:37:36 that cool, but obviously it would take a lot more time and I think knowing that he works full time and he has a lot of things in his life that are, that are really good uses of his time. Um I think that what he's doing is great and if it's the, the choice between editing and making half as many videos 1:37:36 - 1:37:55 or a third, as many videos and just keep keeping on doing what he's doing, he should do what he's doing, right. Um It, it also seems that he's going for more people that click and listen and don't necessarily look because there aren't slides, there aren't visuals. Um And, and there shouldn't necessarily 1:37:54 - 1:38:17 be unless there's a reason for that, I guess. Um But so there's a question of whether it's needful at all, whether it would benefit at all. I do a whole lot of visual things, right? So um having visuals is a good idea for me most of the time. Uh So there you go. There's an example. Check out Latter day 1:38:16 - 1:38:36 Laman Night, subscribe to that channel. Uh I think share his content. I think a lot of you will find it. I if you're coming from an L DS background, I think you'll find what he says. Interesting, valuable and shareable and the shareable is the big chunk of that. OK. So share it. All right. Summing all 1:38:36 - 1:38:55 this up, the Lord said in Matthew 1016, behold, I send you forth a sheep in the midst of wolves. Be therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves. I think there's one takeaway from this whole presentation. It's be more conscientious about what you're making and why and the second takeaway would be 1:38:55 - 1:39:04 share more, share, more. So go forth with these things that I've shared with you and make better content.