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Join us as we sit Across the Counter from author, entrepreneur, and talented creator Jonathan Malm.
In this ATC Episode:
• Jonathan Malm and Grant Lockridge are rare personality twins. Both Type Seven ENTPs, delve into the labyrinth of Myers-Briggs and Enneagram profiles, uncovering how these frameworks inform our worldview and coping mechanisms.
• The duo navigate the nuances of their personalities, from the allure of positive thinking to the challenges of hedonism, while Jonathan shares his transformative journey into authorship, crafting works aimed at leaving an indelible mark on the church and its creative expression.
• Strap in for an exploration of the evolving landscape of Christian theology, where no stone is left unturned. We discuss the delicate dance between predestination and free will, reexamine the role of the Pharisees through a compassionate lens, and challenge traditional interpretations of scripture.
• This episode is a testament to the necessity of flexible doctrine, allowing our understanding of biblical narratives to be informed by context, history, and an open heart.
• Finally, let's address the elephant in the room – burnout in the Christian industry. With insights from Jonathan’s new book co-authored with Dr. Jason Young, we consider strategies for thriving in ministry through establishing boundaries and cultivating spiritual depth.
Join us for this deep dive into personal growth, theological curiosity, and the pursuit of intentional living!
Connect with Jonathan:
Instagram: @jonathanmalm
Website: www.jonathanmalm.com
Check out his new book:
http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/don-t-burn-out-burn-bright/414720
Beliefs espoused by the guests of ATC are not necessarily the beliefs and convictions of ATC.
That said the intent of our podcast is to listen, remain curious and never fear failure In the discovery life giving truth. Many people we ardently disagree with have been our greatest teachers.
00:00 - Writing Books and Personality Types
06:00 - Interpreting Scripture and Evolving Doctrine
11:58 - Interpretations and Perspectives in Theology
21:31 - Addressing Burnout and the Christian Industry
33:22 - Creating Content for a Specific Audience
39:50 - Intentional Living With Small Goals
Hi, this is Grant Lockridge on the Across the Counter podcast. Today I'm interviewing Jonathan Malm. And Jonathan, I saw on your website that we are the same Enneagram and the same personality type. So are you super into personality types and Enneagrams and all that jazz?
Speaker 2:I am. So Myers-Briggs is the one that I think I know the best, because when I was in college my college pastor was super into that. If you were on the leadership team, every year we would do the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator or whatever, and he would then explain what E versus I means. And then there's a lot of I think there's a lot of misconceptions about Richard's introvert. So it was really interesting from a Myers-Briggs perspective what extroversion or introversion meant. It's just kind of cool to see how people work. That's. I know my Enneagram but like I probably couldn't like talk to someone and figure out what their Enneagram was besides maybe nine and seven of the two I know. But like Myers-Briggs, if I talk to you I could tag you in like 10 minutes. Like I feel like that's where I'm an expert. So I do love Myers-Briggs.
Speaker 1:So you're type seven and ENTP.
Speaker 2:Okay, sweet, entp is Myers-Briggs. Yeah, type sevens are the ones that, like, we don't like bad feelings, we don't like something horrible, like I think. So I got fired from a job, maybe 10 years ago now and like, within five minutes of finding out that I was being fired, I'm like, okay, this is a good thing, this is a good. You know, like I was, like, I have to like just not even think about the negative and be like okay, what's the good of this, what's the positive, what's the exciting? We also tend to, for that reason, become hedonistic if we're not careful, where it's like all about pleasure, all about fun, all about like addiction can be a really big problem for type sevens. So, yeah, that's what you and I apparently are, so good luck with that. It's tough. I tend to get into things even that aren't addictive, like I mean, I know phone games are addicted, but, like, when I'm like in an unhealthy place, I have to be careful with my phone because I can like, just like get addicted to it so little, like a game, like a dumb game or something Like, yeah, it's dumb, but it's real, so you are an author.
Speaker 1:Tell me a little bit about your books, why you wanted to start writing books. What you know, yeah, kind of.
Speaker 2:So you had my brother on a few episodes ago and probably I'm a younger sibling and if you have a younger sibling, you probably realize that, like they just tend to do whatever you do, they just copy you, and that's been my life largely. I think my brother learned how to make websites and I was like I want to learn how to make websites. My brother started writing. I'm like I want to start writing. I do love writing, just because there's something especially I started off in like the blogging world where, like you know, 10 days later, if you're blogging every day, 10 days later, your blog disappears, right. So there's something to the longevity of writing a book where it's like this is a collection of thoughts that are going to persist and that are really well thought of, they're edited, they're collected together, they're a lot of eyes have been on it to see that there's quality content. I love helping churches with creativity, with hospitality, with working with leadership, with volunteers. That's mostly what I write about, but it's just nice to be able to give some something that's not like you know, here are 10 gifts you can give to a volunteer, but it's something like man, if I read this, I can revisit it. I can reread it 10 times and I'm going to get something different from it every time. I love books like that. I feel like how to Win Friends and Influence People is one of those books that you can read that every year for like your whole life and probably still get something new from it and still tweak the way you live your life, and I wanted to write something like that. That's like man. You can revisit this book over and over and still get better by reading it.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, how to win friends and influence people is a book that can be used for good and can be used for evil very easily. So that's a. It's one of those.
Speaker 2:Like the whole premise of it is kind of like how to love people like Jesus did. Of course you can manipulate with it too. The same thing with, like you know, like you can manipulate with religion, or you can help and heal people with the Bible, right. Like you can take good information and use it for evil and use it for good as well, like we've seen people weaponize the Bible. We've seen people weaponize a lot of good things. But hopefully, whenever we have a good motive and we are inspired by the love of Jesus, we're using it well, right? Thanks.
Speaker 1:So what kind of church are you a part of now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's a church called Grace Avenue Church here in San Antonio, texas, I think we're maybe 800 people. We're actually we meet in a Catholic seminary in like one of their buildings, because we're without a building right now. We're not Catholic, we're probably more on the like quasi-charismatic, where, like, we believe in charismatic doctrine, probably closer to like AG, but we're not like actively trying to make that happen, like people aren't, you know, speaking in tongues during the service, like it's. We believe in what we would say the whole gospel. You know, every church believes in the whole gospel, depending on how they see it, the whole council of scripture. But, yeah, just the way we operate is, you know, it's pretty standard for this kind of current model of churches. I feel like of like we're not a megachurch but we kind of operate within that space, even though we're not trying to. You know, we're not trying to grow to 5,000 people, we're not, we're just trying to be faithful with what we got. So, yeah, great worship team. I love my pastor he's. He has a really cool approach to teaching scripture and I always feel like, even as a pastor's kid I grew up with pastor's kid I've always been in church my whole life. I always feel like I see something different whenever he preaches, which is unique. I don't get that a lot. Usually I can like usually I, whenever a pastor's preaching within the first 10 minutes I'm like yeah, I know where he's going, like I kind of I, I get what he's, I get what he's trying to do right here, but my pastor always says something unique which I love.
Speaker 1:So how many snakes are there Like he?
Speaker 2:are you? I mean only like five, only on five on an average Sunday. It's not like it's not like. Because the leg by the. Yeah, you know, as long as you're actually yeah, we're definitely not in that vein. Just kidding, I didn't get it right. Well, cause, like, cause, like I, I worked for a or the church, I mean the, the company I got fired for that. He was very Baptist and so, like he was terrified of charismatic. He's like every charismatic is like Benny-Hen, like, and I'm like no, that's not really like how it is, it's just an interpretation of few scriptures and acts. Really, it's kind of the difference between, you know, charismatic versus Baptist, really, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you're holding snakes or pushing people over with your jacket, whipping it around and slaying 2000 people. That's not, that's not how we roll.
Speaker 1:I just wanted to get on record you saying that because I know that people here you know medic and they think like it's it's worth addressing yeah, so I wanted to get that on record, Cause I I felt like it wasn't one of those scenarios, but you gotta check. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:It's worth checking in. It could have been meant for a really good conversation. To be honest, I kind of regret that I didn't just decide to pretend that we were that way.
Speaker 1:I had a guy that he's the memes for Jesus guy. If you've ever seen like that page, I know him, yeah, yeah. So he like grew up charismatic and his story is pretty, pretty insane. Got some snakes involved, got some things. Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to talk to him about that. Yeah, I had to. Yeah, we've never been so. My dad was a pastor, like I said, and I feel like he was always very reasonable with every, every piece of doctrine he held. He held very loosely, which I think is kind of cool when Christians do that Right, like I feel like anytime you like hold on to something that you believe so tightly, you're not willing to let scripture change your perspective on that. And honestly, every time that I read the Bible I change my opinion on things, like my doctrine shifts quite a bit and it's it's like it's just because things jump out at me that didn't jump out at me, like there are whole stories every now and then I'm like, wait, what, I'd never read that. But I'm like I've read the Bible five times but like it just shocks me that it didn't appear to me before. So hopefully that's how we approach God and how we approach scripture, not that we're flaky or that we're like wishy-washy, but that we hold lightly to the things that maybe are things that we've created and not necessarily things that God wanted for us to believe.
Speaker 1:So one of my favorite questions to ask people, which you brought it up, so now I'm gonna ask you, is what's the most recent thing that you've like changed your mind on that you like believed, you know wholeheartedly, and you read something and you're like you know that's just not right.
Speaker 2:Well, there's maybe two things and this might get me in trouble. The first one's maybe I shouldn't say it, but I'm going to say it anyways. I'll just tell you that it's fine. No, every time I'll say it. Every time I read scripture, I try to approach it with a different lens, I guess. So last time I read through the Bible, I was reading through the Bible as a historical document, right. So the idea that historians were especially Old Testament, probably more than New Testament, really a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff in Judges and Kings, was like historical right. So I'm thinking the people writing it were the people that were like David's boys. You know, they were the historians that were like David's, our king. We're doing this in the service of David. So we're going to approach David in a certain light. And it's interesting because I'm thinking like that, when I was reading the story of if you're not familiar, david wanted to build a temple, tabernacle, I forget the difference between that to God, like he's like I want to build the temple, and God's like no, no, no, you can't do that. There's too much blood on your hands. You know your son after you is going to build it and it I don't know, I kind of realized that, like it probably wasn't supposed to be Solomon that was building the temple, because a lot of times in scripture whenever they talk about the son of David, they're talking about Jesus, because God also said I don't need you to build me a temple. Like he's like I don't need you to build the temple. But David kept like, no, I'm going to build you a temple, no, I'm going to build you a temple. And so it's interesting because, like the, the it doesn't say that, like God said, yeah, build the temple. It says, no, your son's going to do it. And the David's like, cool, solomon's going to do it. And like doesn't say God's like, yes, you're right, it doesn't say that at all. So I'm like maybe Solomon wasn't supposed to build a temple, which is very interesting. Um, to me, I don't know, it's just interesting that a lot of the stuff that happened in the Bible wasn't necessarily that like we think was God's plan, wasn't really God's plan. He worked with it and he, like you know, kind of the same way that they had a king, saw, was chosen as king, and God's like I don't want you to have a king, but since you want a king, here's a guy for you, right, like kind of one of those stories. So it's just interesting reading um through that lens. I guess Um, and then I don't remember what the second one was. So we're going to stick with that.
Speaker 1:I dig it, I dig it. So, yeah, this how do you feel about the sentence Something that I've said that I would like for you to pick apart is you can't ruin God's plan like right. Or is that just nonsense, cause that's something I've said before?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think the when I was in college, my youth pastor had a unique perspective on it, cause there was, um an overall plan of God, and then there's a plan of God for your life. Right, like there's. There's like micro plans and there's macro plans. You can't ruin the macro plan of God. Right, like he's going to find a way to um accomplish his purposes whether you're in it or not. Right Like you can't stand in the way of God. But there are micro purposes that you can ruin. I would say so you know like you can screw up and reject God. I mean, a lot of that sounds like a difference between Calvinism and Arminianism, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like if God is predestined something it's going to happen.
Speaker 2:If he didn't, then it's not going to happen, Right Um so yeah, I mean. I kind of agree with you on that, but I think there's a micro macro element to it that, uh, that does matter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll give you that. I don't. I don't know where I stand on the whole predestination. Free will, nonsense, it's.
Speaker 2:I think, I think that's one of those If you, if you stand one way or another, you probably should stand really close to the middle, because the Bible seems to, really seems to talk about both of those as realities and um but it never says free will.
Speaker 1:No, just kidding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, never says Trinity, it never says a lot of things.
Speaker 1:It's just funny that people like you know hold on. By the way, this is not a debate podcast, so I have no interest in being like dude. I'm so right, I'm like I don't care at all.
Speaker 2:Well if we're, if we're sevens, we're down with, like we're down with, or EMP especially, we love playing devil's advocate, right. So we love, like you're like, oh, let's talk about it. Even if I don't believe it, I'll fight for it.
Speaker 1:Like just for fun. I love fighting both sides of something and it's a super good like learning exercise for me to understand For real.
Speaker 2:You should refine what you believe by challenge. Like even I I frequently will argue against myself, like I'll be like brushing my teeth and I'm arguing two sides of a coin and I'm like I believe both of these and like it's kind of fun I wouldn't maybe tell other people what I'm arguing about because they might not get you know all the logic that went into thinking what I was thinking but yeah, it's fun, yeah. I definitely have a good I did remember what the other one that I changed my mind on recently was oh heck, yeah and this one might give me in trouble too is that I feel bad for the Pharisees. I think they got a bad rep because so the Pharisees were all upset about Jesus working on the Sabbath, right, like they're like how could you do that? And we're like, wow, how could you be against Jesus? But like, if you read the Old Testament, god punished the Israelites brutally for not obeying the Sabbath. Like God was like hardcore about it. He was like you violated the Sabbath, you're going to be sent into exile. And like, so, of course, the Pharisees are going to be like, hey, let's focus on the, on the law here. Like, like there there is a validity to like obeying the law. And I think modern church like hates on the Pharisees a lot and I'm like man, I don't know that they were like the bad, the bad people. We made the knots, we obviously they killed Jesus, but like also, again, you think about it like he was, he was leading people away from the, the structure of scripture, and if he wasn't the Messiah, that was a real problem because that was going to ultimately lead Israel, who was already in a bad place into worse place, and you know, when you read the prophet. So I'm like I kind of have sympathy for the Pharisees a little bit more. That's that's the thing I've changed my mind on recently. Or I'm like man, maybe, maybe that's probably where I would be, not in a, not in a like judgmental, like oh, you're all going to hell, all that thing. But the idea of like you know, if the scriptures are, if God said this in the scripture, we should take it seriously. So that's, that's something that I changed my mind on recently, which is is not a very popular penny as well. I'm a Pharisee yeah, I'm a Pharisee.
Speaker 1:No, I'm just kidding, but no, I, I totally get that because, like you know, for real, you read Old Testament and what they said makes sense. Now, pharisees obviously Pharisees and Sadducees are different, but like the Pharisees had, like that whole you know, the Oracle tradition and also like they added a bunch of stuff to it and so there was a bunch of like nonsense rules in there which which we do.
Speaker 2:I mean we do that in the modern church too. Like there's a whole bunch of stuff that like I mean, okay, so here's something controversial, oh, here we go, let's keep going. So gay marriage the Bible doesn't talk about gay marriage. The Bible talks about homosexuality, depending on how you believe it was translated or whatever. But the marriage thing particularly, we fight against something the marriage portion, just talking about the marriage portion not really addressed in Scripture, right? So like we tend to do the exact same thing where we add stuff, we add rules because we think I mean alcohol. Another one where, like, there's a lot of churches that are very anti-alcohol. There's reason, there's good reason for it to be anti-alcohol because, you know, drunkenness is never a good thing. Drunkenness is talked about badly in the Bible. We add these things, we just that's our tendency as followers of God. We tend to, we tend to try to put our own framework around God's framework so that we can understand it a little bit better. It's kind of putting God in a box, if you will Like. Well, because you didn't talk about this. But I think this will help us get to where you're saying this. You know, like we kind of we add our own things, our own structures around things, and again, I don't know that the Pharisees did all that much worse than what we're doing now.
Speaker 1:I completely agree with that. I mean, if you-.
Speaker 2:And again, that's not me arguing saying legalize gay marriage or you know whatever, gay marriage or not. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just saying we've added something, a little piece and I know people are probably going to get hung up about this and probably get e-mails but just we've added a little piece that isn't in Scripture to help us in what we think will help the cause of the Bible. But it wasn't in there. So that's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's what systematic theology is, basically it is.
Speaker 2:It's adding. It's adding based on but it's based on interpreting Scripture right, and that's, I think, what a lot of Pharisees did, is they? You get this like, okay, we interpret it this way and, based on that interpretation, that we interpret this way, this way, and then you kind of get further and further away from the cortex and hopefully you're still aligned with the cortex, but it is now, you know, built on logical assumptions that get further and further away from what God actually said.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean, I think, the point of the Pharisees in the Bible and you know there's tons of points while they're in there but just so that we don't, you know, repeat their mistakes, even though, like, we're almost doomed to repeat their mistakes because it's like human nature it just makes sense Like we definitely. You know, I probably have more of just like a hardcore center in me than a Pharisee, but also like I have the, you know, pharisee tendencies when I approach the Bible, of, like you know, you read the Old Testament and you want to like get something out of it that you can use and you can like put into practice and you almost like minus like the wisdom bits. You almost have to like take that and use it and read between the lines a little bit to be able to like apply it to your life, so to speak.
Speaker 2:So yeah, if you, if you only relate to the heroes of the Bible, you're probably not getting an accurate picture of yourself. I think often we should relate to the villains of the Bible as well and be like, ooh, I'm like that sometimes. Yeah, that's facts.
Speaker 1:So tell me a little bit about what you're doing now, like you know, with all your entrepreneurship. What is Sunday social, all that stuff, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but I love helping churches with being effective and that's in a lot of capacities. When I worked for a church working for my dad and working for another pastor I just got to do a bunch of everything. I got to do tech ministry, worship, social media, website design, working with volunteers, leading volunteers, a little bit of hospitality. So I love just helping the church whenever I find an opportunity for something that, like you know, man, I wish I would have had this when I worked in a church, or I wish or this is something a lot of people you know don't have that we should make into a product or we should make into something that can help them. So Sunday social is just we were the first ones to do this. We create social media graphics for churches to use. We're a library of like, I think now like 10,000 ideas or something like 10,000 social media posts that like, you subscribe and you get unlimited access to it to post you know those and verse graphics and quotes and interactive questions and all sorts of cool stuff. So I've run that for about seven years with my business partner and, yeah, it's grown kind of crazy. We have, you know a few thousand churches that use us and it's pretty cool. It's cool to see the stuff that I was a part of creating All over the internet. So that's that's probably the main thing that I do. I do a lot of writing, like we talked about. I have a few books. One that just came out earlier this year was called Earlier last year cuz we're in January, oh yeah, as we're recording this that came out last year is called don't burn out, burn bright. It's addressing burnout for people who work at churches. So it's unfortunately like super common for people who work in a church to burn out, especially after COVID. A lot of churches, you know, barely survived through COVID and now they're dealing with the fallout of the stress that was put on their on their lives during that time. So there's a lot of people burning out. So really the premise of the book is how to not only not burn out but to actually Keep doing great things and how to lead effectively and how to actually even thrive in ministry instead of just burning out. So don't burn out, burn bright. That's the most recent one. Pretty happy with it how it came out. I did that with my co-writer, dr Jason young, who he's just a phenomenal leader guy. So, yeah, so a lot of projects that help churches Just be effective. Even my, even my Instagram posts, which is kind of a business. On Instagram I make these kind of silly reels about working at a church and that's all you know it's. It's, yes, to help us laugh, but it's also a form of catharsis, so that we can say like, oh, I'm not in this alone, this is a universal experience. I poke fun at some of the ridiculousness of working at a church, so hopefully we can say, hey, that's a little ridiculous, maybe we should change something about that. So Even that has a purpose of helping churches be effective, even though it's it can be a bit silly sometimes.
Speaker 1:So how do you? How do you not burn out?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's different for each person and Anytime that I post something about burnout on Instagram, people are quick to say, well, you just need to do X or you need to do this. And there's really a host of reasons that people burn out and typically each person has a different cause. Jason and I identified 10 sort of pillars of health that if one of those is not there, that's where you're most likely to burn out. So one of those would be boundaries. If you don't have proper boundaries in your life with your pastor or with you know the people in your church, or with just anyone who has access to you, you can constantly feel like you know last-minute requests are coming in. You're not able to spend time with your family because you're always focused on these emergencies that come up or people needing you. So healthy boundaries is one of those that could help you avoid burnout. Spiritual depth if you're not Engaged in life with Jesus, that can be a source of burnout. Perfectionism is another source. So we actually created this assessment at don't burn out burn bright, calm that you can go through it. You can kind of see where you're most prone to burning out and then it correlates with a chapter in the book that can help you Get that realigned.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a it's, it's, it's a different approach to it, because I think everyone, you know when you, when you go completely from experience, you know, like I burned out because of this and that's not necessarily what everyone is going through. You know, we all, if you work in ministry, you'll have a problem with boundaries that's, that's a normal thing. Or you'll have a problem with overwork, or you know this, this incessant pursuit of excellence that could, like we experience all of that. That's a universal thing for all of us, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna burn out from it. So, understanding that, like there are things that are you're more prone to burning out With, and addressing that, is really key.
Speaker 1:Sweet. So you said before we started recording that you wanted to, you know, get into the podcasting space. So what's kind of, yeah, you know we can flesh out some ideas and but what's kind of your, yeah, thought process on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's. There's this Thing that I'm really interested in. It's the Christian Industry, or the church industry, if you all and it's it's. So, for instance, this is this is a Christian industry, this Christian podcast, or whatever is part of an industry. Right, like it's. The idea of making money in the world of Christianity is a weird thing to me. I'm a part of it because I make money through my Instagram reels, which are the church, I serve the church to Sunday social and I make money from that. I write books and I make money from that. So, like, I'm in the industry, so I'm not like completely negative on it. But there's this. There's this weird thing that happens whenever money is involved in the church space. And I'm not I'm not the guy, that kind of guy who's gonna be like, oh Jesus would flip the tables of all the industries. Now he might, might flip the tables of a few industries, right, but, like, I do believe that a lot of the industries that get started have good motives. You know, the Christian music industry, the Christian television industry. Like we, they, you get into these industries, you create these industries because you're trying to help, you're trying to, you know, give alternative Entertainment. So there's not all the negativity of what's currently on TV and try to give some positive stuff, trying to push people toward Jesus, china. You know, just not have filth. But it can then become this like thing where you're like you're trying to. You know you need people to watch your movie because you spent a lot of money to make that movie, so maybe you do some kind of weird, weird, weird shady marketing practices to get people to watch it. You know, I've seen some, you know seen. A common marketing technique currently for Christian movies is Hollywood. Doesn't you know this, this notion that Hollywood doesn't want you to see this movie. And I'm like Hollywood doesn't care about you seeing the movie, they just want to make money, that's all they care about. But a lot of Christian movies are taking that approach because it gets people all fired up and it gets an us versus them sort of marketing approach and I don't know if that's really a healthy approach. So I would love to do a, a podcast just talking about the Christian industry, talking about different elements of it. I have a lot of friends and Christian music have a lot of friends and you know the Christian meme space. I would be interested in talking about that, even though I'm in that space too. I kind of approaching it and seeing you know that the good, bad and ugly, because there's a lot of good too in it. So the idea is not to just trash the Christian industry but to actually expose, hopefully, the good and then point out some spots where maybe we should would be Moves tweaks and things that'd be awesome. Yeah, I think it'd be interesting. Yeah, I think it'd be fun. I'd love to talk to some old school like Some, some of the CCM, the Christian music people from my, from when I was really into Christian music, talk to some of them who kind of disappeared and just see what it was like in that era. I think that'd be interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, that's something that I'm probably, you know, guilty. We don't make any money off this podcast, so we're not necessarily in the you know monetization anything, because we just don't have ads like we've had like people like reach out or whatever. But, like you know, what are you gonna make?
Speaker 2:like a hundred bucks off of me, I'm maybe 200, depending, like you can make some decent amount of money, which is weird, like especially podcasts. People like sponsoring podcasts. So I'm sorry but again the idea is not. Like you know, I, just because you make money up to something doesn't mean that it's like a travesty or that it's somehow, like some people say, raping the body of Christ. If had friends who run companies like mine and they get emails from pastors saying you're raping the body of Christ, it's like holy cow, we're trying to help the body of Christ. Because we're charging. That allows us to hire really amazing people who can make really amazing content and it can feed the thing right and like a worker is worth his, we need to pay people right. That's actually in the Bible. So the idea of the Christian industry is not inherently negative, but it can easily become negative whenever money's involved, and that's an interesting notion to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. The whole flipping tables bit is something that I've always struggled with, because I'm, like, probably the last guy to flip a table. You know there's some guys that come in hot and heavy and obviously it's in the middle of, like you know, you need to call out injustice, but I'm just I'm probably a little over tolerant as far as, like, just like you know, they're doing their stuff, like at some point they try their best to love Jesus and love others. So it's like you know, that's pretty cool but it does get sticky.
Speaker 2:So a lot of the table flippers are very into questioning motives and the truth is we don't know people's motives and motives slip, you know some. On some days I have great motives, on another other days I have bad motives. And you know I can't have good motives 100% of the time because I'm not God, like my heart is not 100% pure. I ask God to keep purifying my heart and to test my thoughts and test my motives, but they slip. So, understanding that that, like, people aren't all good, all bad. Usually people get into something because they have a real desire to help people and then they get a little taste of power or they get into a survival mode where they have to, like, scramble for survival at all costs, which means then starting to hurt people. And I mean, you know mega churches, all of all of these things in the church world that we love to hate on. Usually they started with really good motives and, you know, maybe somewhere along the lines of motive slipped. But that's not to say that people are inherently evil because this abuse happened or this horrible thing happened, yeah, and not to say that we should allow it to keep happening just because you know, oh, there's a good reason for it. No, like abuse needs to stop right Like, but the idea is that they're not this you know devil with horns on their head just because something bad happened. Like what's understanding, understanding what led to it can hopefully help us keep it from happening again.
Speaker 1:And if we waited till, you know we had 100% pure intentions, then we wouldn't do anything.
Speaker 2:Never do anything. I know and I mean that's. I mean that's the. You know, most people God used mightily in the Bible, david, for instance. He messed up royally. He was a man after God's own heart. He's a hero of the faith. He killed his best friend and took his wife like not his best friend, but you know, he killed his friend like this guy that works for him, and killed, took his wife. That's horrible, like he had bad motives in that time. But at the same time God says he's a man after God's heart. So understanding that the horrible things we do are not necessarily negating the good things that we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's definitely well said. So what would be your style? Just like interview style, podcast, or?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think I'd like to just tell stories of my own experiences. You know there have been times that, like so, I ran this website called church stage design ideas. That was like the first kind of thing that I was able to make money from that. Let me stop working at a church. When my wife went to school, and you know, there was one time a guy called me and he's like dude, I love your website so much, let's work together. Hey, check out my website. He, you know, gave me the URL to his website. I went on it and then, as I was browsing, I'm like, wait a second, there was this whole section of his site where he was systematically copying my website, like like thousands of posts, images, even not even changing Like I was. There was like self-referential points where I was like, hey, you know, make sure and tag church stage design ideas and your whatever. And like that actual post was just copied and pasted in there and I'm like, hey, bro, you're kind of like stealing my site. He's like, no, I'm not stealing it. Like, yeah, you literally are Like that's. So it would just be interesting to talk about those stories of like you know, this person was trying to, you know, make money from stage stages and you know, in his, in his desire to help people, he was hurting someone and and stealing and doing some shady stuff and just interesting to I don't know, interesting to tell those stories. So let people tell their story. I can tell my story and just each, each probably more like story or topical base, you know, is the idea of in Christian music there's this idea that they create for this avatar of this person. They create for this girl named Becky, who was a soccer mom. She has a few kids, she's in her SUV taking them to soccer practice and she just wants something positive, encouraging, she just wants something that just like, makes you smile and happy, like that's the avatar of Christian music nowadays, right, and so they always create for Becky. So I would love to do a podcast about Becky and you know what that means and you know the good, bad and ugly of that, because you know it's not a bad thing creating for an avatar. When I write a book I write for an avatar, but the idea that it can kind of, you know, be a little shady sometimes Be interested in talking about that. I'm talking about people's stories, just all sorts of stuff like that would be probably my approach. So definitely interview, but also just kind of longer form story content as well.
Speaker 1:So you write a book based off of like you write it to a certain market.
Speaker 2:Okay. So more than that, like they say, I mean, this is what my brother does too. He writes books, you add them on. He writes to a specific person, like he pictures one person that he knows in his mind and he says what? What I tell this person? What does this person need to read? And the interesting thing about that is when you do that, you know you're not going to. You actually make a really good quality product, and people are brilliant at contextualizing things for themselves. Like when I read a book, when I read a novel, I put myself in the shoes of the hero, inevitably. I always do that, and so I think, well, what would I do if I was in that situation? How would I approach this? How would I feel about that? We always put ourselves empathetic. We have this just natural ability to empathize as human beings. So when you write a book to a specific person, you're very specific about steps that need to be taken and you find that more people actually read it and see themselves in that book than if you were to just write a book for everyone. It's the old adage of a radio station A radio station that plays rap, country, heavy metal, new age music is going to make nobody happy, because you'll like maybe one out of four songs, one out of five songs, but a station that plays only country music or only Texas country or only old school country, and the people who are in that realm are going to love it because they know exactly what they're going to get and it's exactly what they want. So same thing when you write a book. You definitely in the book proposal process you say who is this book for? What kind of conferences do they go to? What magazines do they read? What other books have they read that are in this topic, that are comparable? So you definitely write for a specific avatar. That's just in general. Same thing with Sunday Social. We create graphics for a specific type of church. Probably a lot of Catholic churches won't use us, and that's OK. And there are a few that do use us, but that's not really who our target is. We'll let other people effectively reach the Catholic churches, but that's just probably not going to be us.
Speaker 1:That's cool. So who specifically did you write, like, what's your avatar for your newest book? Like who'd you write that to?
Speaker 2:Honestly, to be honest, some of it is I write it to myself. I write it for 10 years ago, jonathan Malm, or 15 years ago, jonathan Malm. So, using the experience that I have now, I wrote it to myself. That's what I tend to. That's what I like the best is creating content for me, because I know myself intimately. I know what I was thinking at that time, what I was feeling at that time, and it's just shocking that a lot of people feel the same way that I did 15 years ago. They're still feeling that way now. I'm sorry, I write talking to that person and I find that people see themselves in that.
Speaker 1:That's cool. Yeah, I never really thought about that because I've dabbled writing a book here there. I've never really gotten anything concrete. I just kind of do it for fun. It's tough. Yeah, I've never thought about writing it to a specific person, like I've always written it more for myself, like I'm just having fun with it. But that's a pretty good question. It's fine to do.
Speaker 2:A lot of people do write for themselves. But then they start evaluating oh no, but what about this person? But what about this person? They get off the avatar because they don't realize they're writing it for themselves. They're just writing what they think needs to be said. But then they start picking it apart and like, ok, well, it needs to be for this person too, and it needs to be for this person too, and then they get off topic and then it becomes a mess and then it's not reaching anybody. So it's important to be intentional with it. Like, if you're going to write the book for the avatar version of yourself not avatar the airbender or avatar the blue guy, but the profile of yourself then stick with it.
Speaker 1:I love that. So is there any new things on the horizon other than podcasts? Are you starting any cool businesses or doing anything cool?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a baby coming in 33 days oh man, so that's a new endeavor. So I have a toddler right now at home. He's about to be three, and then we've got a newborn coming, so that's going to be a big project for the next few months. Oh yeah, newborn life is just insane. So that's on the horizon. And then, yeah, I got a few things that I'm brewing for this year. My goal is to probably write two books this year, so have those topics planned. I'd like to do a really new thing with Sunday Social, but that's going to require a lot of development and a lot of work with outside help. So, yeah, I got some fun things that are on the horizon, but then the podcast is probably the big. Those are my three big things on the agenda for this year. It's two books, podcast and a baby.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that's enough to keep you busy for the next five years, yeah it's a lot but it's fun I love.
Speaker 2:I know kids are one of those things. Like man, it took two and a half years to get to the stage with my son, which is my favorite time right now, and every time was my favorite, as it kept growing, growing, growing. So I see that the investment of newborns is rough man. I don't necessarily like the newborn phase but I know that then in three months and six months and a year it's going to really grow into something better. So that's how, generally, how I approach my life is the idea I'm going to put a ton of work in initially, not reap any rewards, but trusting that long term I'm going to reap the benefits from it. And that's just my approach to life in general and I like it. It works out well for me.
Speaker 1:Any New Year's resolutions? Or are you not a New Year's resolution guy?
Speaker 2:I'm not. I always, I tend to and you're probably like this too, because we're impulsive is I just make a decision and I go for it right then I don't like, I don't set a timeline to start, Because I'll probably change my mind by then. So I definitely make my resolutions every week and I change accordingly.
Speaker 1:I love that. My thing on New Year's resolutions is I'll like pick one thing that's incredibly like I'll have like a future goal or something like that, but I'll pick one thing that's like easily done, that I know I will do so. Like my thing is like me and my wife are going to set a budget for this year, like not even like stay to it. Like not even stick to it, just like write it on paper, like we can throw the paper away, but like just write a thing, because we've never done that before.
Speaker 2:That is something that like, so I use the. I'm not a big Dave Ramsey fan, but I really like his app, everydollar. It pulls in all my credit card purchases and I just categorize them. I don't necessarily because, like, the goal of using the app is you set your budget and then you make sure that you stay within it. I don't do that. I adjust my budget to match what I actually spent. But the nice thing is I can start seeing. I'm like holy cow, I spent a bunch of money on restaurants this month and I know where my money's going. So even if I don't, even if I don't stick with the budget, I at least know where the money's going and it helps me make some changes. Or I'm like oh, I spent a lot of money on eating. I should probably change that. So there's huge value in doing that. I don't know if you're going to be using an app, but if you want to, everydollar app is really cool because it just helps you see where your money's going, and that's a valuable thing.
Speaker 1:Well, that's solid. I'll look into it, because that was my next thing of just finding some app or something to use. So that's worth doing.
Speaker 2:It's a great app. It's a great app. Yeah, so the idea is that every single dollar that comes in, you tell it where it's going to go, right, so you have it categorized. So at least the idea is you don't have leftover. Any leftover goes towards saving, and if you regularly have stuff left over, then you probably need to budget that towards savings in general, right, so it just helps. You know it's a really great process, it's a great tool and I approach a lot of things that way. The idea of am I being intentional with my time? Am I being intentional with my money? Am I being intentional with any resource that I have? I try to do that. I'm intentional with my rest time. I don't just rest. Whenever I have a chance, I intentionally put hey, I'm going to rest at this time and enjoy myself and watch TV show and play a game or something Like. Try to be very intentional with that, because then I know where my time is going and I can make the most of it.
Speaker 1:Sweet. So in closing, because we're at that 45 minute, is there anything that you want to share with our audience, that you're like, hey guys, this is on my heart or this is something that I want to tell you guys?
Speaker 2:OK, this is one thing I mean. This is not something so probably what I would encourage people with is to take a goal, especially if you're in the New Year's realm. Take a goal and break it up into small, bite-sized pieces. Whenever I think about writing a book, I don't put on my to-do list to write a book. What I do is I say plan the chapters, decide what I'm going to generally write about for the chapters, and then that's just the overall. So it's something that I can do within 30 minutes or an hour. I can plan a book out, just kind of overall the idea. And then the next thing on my to-do list is really plan chapter one. Then, day two, research what I needed to research for chapter one, and then the next day is write 1,000 words on chapter one. The next day is write another 1,000 words on chapter one. So the idea is, if you have a big goal in mind, don't just put the big goal out there. Really dissect it into small, bite-sized pieces. Maybe you'll knock out 2,000 words, and so you knock out two items in a day. Like make it really easy to accomplish the goal, and it might take a year with the way that you spread it out, but so often people just put the big goal on the to-do list and they never accomplish it. So I would much rather write a book in a year than never write a book ever. So that's what I would encourage people with. It's something that I feel is super valuable in my life. It's just breaking things into small, bite-sized pieces.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I'll end it there. Thanks for listening to the Across the Camera podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate us five stars wherever you got this podcast. Thanks, y'all.
