The Distinct Podcast
The Distinct Podcast
Purpose - Alex and Lokelani Wilson
In this episode, we meet with our new friends Alex and Lokelani Wilson to learn about being one and creating as a couple. We dive into living out your purpose and get the scoop on instachurchlive, intimacy, God & culture and more!
Thank you for listening to the distinct podcast.
Speaker 2:Great.
Speaker 3:[inaudible] from Fresno, California. This is the distinct podcast. Today's guests are a beautiful couple, Alex and Lokelani Wilson. The parents h ave three wonderful children. God's blessings are all around them. Alex is known by many for his famous t en second sermons on Instagram and recently started up i nstant church l ive the first social media church, which compliments his previous experience as a youth pastor. Alex l oves sharing Jesus with well everyone, lokelani and incredible m other being everything Jesus created her to be loving patient, especially with Alex and not timid either in her living or sharing the gospel. Now let's listen in with nick and Andrea and their guests though W ilson's. Wow, that was awesome.
Speaker 2:What an Intro, Michael, welcome guys. Hi, Alex. Look Alani. Hello. Hi. Welcome to our podcast. And we are just on, this is the distinct podcast where we're trying to point people, encourage them to seek out God and hopefully encourage them in their marriage is a little bit perfect. So to our listeners, we finally, finally have Alex Wilson and his wife Lokelani here a four and there we go. Uh, August[inaudible] so you don't forget about me. August. They're a four month old. Yes, baby boys here. So first baby on our podcast, like, like Michael said, you guys have three, which is exciting. And uh, for the listeners that cannot see, Alex is black. Yeah. Black as can be with the blonde hair and he has blonde hair. Local on is Hawaiian and Japanese and Spanish and Spanish. Okay, well welcome. When I, different of races here are lot Asian. They're all over. Yes, I'm a Mutt. Wow.[inaudible] wow, whoa. You guys are cousins. Small world. And it's an island like Hawaii. My grandma's 100% Okinawan yeah. I wish I could here. So Mr Miyagi has like a special place in your heart then. Is he from Vulcan? Hello? Oh yeah. Yes. Oh, that started a restaurant in Las Vegas, but I don't think he died maybe 10 years ago. That sucks. Yeah. Good movie though. He's a potty kid guy. Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay, cool. Wax On. Wax Off. My Dad probably knows that. I think his name was like Pat[inaudible] something. Really? It's like the most American. They're Japanese though from Okinawa. Yeah. But I saw Alex on an Instagram search. I think that's how you just popped up. And I saw black guy, blonde hair. He knows. I mean, I instantly clicked on it, so it worked already. And then I started like, okay, what are these certain, okay, I like this. Yes. Yes. What David? Uh, from Bella and Mike Tyler Moore, couple people that we know from our church, we're in the video, right. Or pictures. I was like, okay, what is going on here? Um, but yeah, so I saw you reached out. You were willing to come on a podcast. You didn't know who we were. Nope. Sitting out there and Starbucks, one day I'm doing my work, uh, selling billboards from starboard, Starbucks and uh, I bumped into this guy. I'm like, that's not Kanye West. That is a, that's Alex right there. So I ran up to him and uh, yeah, I just wanted to say thank you guys for coming on. Totally big honor. Thanks for having this. So initially in seeing you, I did, I, I honestly did get a little bit jealous. I'm like, this guy has a massive following. And uh, it was really cool. And, uh, after I got over that, I started to learn from you pretty quick. It took me a while to get over that cause I was so jealous. I was like, wow. It seems like, it seems like it's more than it is. Well, it's impressive and I mean it's just, uh, it's cool to see you reach out and share God with that many people. Wow. It's awesome. It's fun. I love doing it. It's cool. I, I also like how you're your Creator. I wanted to make some kind of joke about how you are. That's August. Oh, he's okay. You are like a[inaudible] if Kanye west and Tyler the creator and Tim Keller, Whoa. Kind of baby. Here we go. That is the best compliment I've ever had in my life for sure. Yeah. But you're a very creative person, so to watch it,
Speaker 4:that part of the podcast, save it, listen to it every morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That'll be your ringtone. The fading Joan. Good morning. Yes. Remember I am the man-child Tim Keller, Kanye West, and Tyler creator. That's why you're quite in a good way, I character and you're seeming to continue to push out to be the maximum
Speaker 4:version of the character yourself that you already so yeah. And just cause we're talking about marriage today a little bit. I think I had a moment where I realized I couldn't be that person without local Ani and that's when, that's when I asked her to marry me in the airport. I was coming back from Germany on a skate trip. I went the first gate trip and then came back and in the Fresno airport, Aztreonam married me and it was on that trip. I realized like there is something that I'm supposed to be, there's like, like you said, the maximum character of myself, the maximum version of myself. I feel like I wouldn't be be able to be that with anyone else. So I felt like it had to be her for some reason. We're still figuring out, but I felt like it had to be local Ani and stuff. We had
Speaker 2:this layout that we wanted to go into, but it bleeds right into that, which is you're ultra supportive of what he's doing. I can, I can see dre already molding into that and it is less submission of God's design. Yeah. But there's this thriving that's coming from that, uh, where she's also at the same thing, allowing me to do what I'm doing and, and allowing us to do what we're doing kind of by being a leader and by being a helper. Yeah. It's really fun and really cool to see. Oh yeah, I love it. So what's that like kind of being there with him day to day or
Speaker 5:I think, I think it gives me life ultimately because before we met I was like, oh, I don't really want to date. I just want it to become like a full time missionary and to see like God brought Alex into my life and he is like, okay, you're still going to be able to live on mission, but this is how I want you to do it. Um, and so I think just entering in with that, um, is just so fulfilling for me. Um, in my own personal walk with Christ, um, knowing that this is our marriage was, uh, ordained by the Lord and we're meant to do this together. Not separately. I'm trying to like, I don't know, build our own platforms, then it could become like kind of like a competition I think. And so, um, it is just been, I don't know, I feel like everything, anything I could ask for and when it comes to ministry, so he's like the best partner, the best leader. Um, and he pushes and challenges me. I'm like, no one else could. So annoyingly, that's awesome. Are there any, do you find any struggles into when you guys are doing Institu church? And I think I have to,
Speaker 4:Oh, I'm always like trying to find the best way to like include her in, I mean we talk about everything with institutes. Like we plan everything together. Um, but as far as like the service at first with the service, we can find out like where local ani like her fit was because we knew she needed to be a big part of it, like being on camera. Um, because it just shows that like it shows that we are, you know, doing this together, it's not just the Alex show. So we were like, hey, we can do the welcome together. But then at the same time we're like, we don't want to always be doing the welcome like, and like if you walk into a church, like the pastor and his wife don't always do the welcome. There's someone there that's like, you know, on the worship team where someone does the welcome sounds like we can't like always do the welcome together. So what can we do? And then around service like seven or eight, I think we were like, hey, you should like have, do the prayer after the sermon. Um, and so the first, the first time it was Kinda hard, uh, just because you're praying on camera, which is weird, but
Speaker 6:this last week in service number 10, she just like crushed it and it's kind of like she calls out, people would comment their prayer requests in the middle of service. She reads a couple of them like, okay, like I see, uh, you know Alex Wilson, I see that you commented that you want prayer for your job. Awesome. Like any other prayer requests and people comment them in on the service and then she prays for like a minute over it. Um, and it's like, just, it's really powerful just to like know someone on the other side of the world or states wherever they're watching from is praying for a specific prayer requests. Dude, it's, it's huge. So she's really like, hmm. That's like, it took awhile for us to find her role within the church. But that's one of the small roles that continues to be honed or like, yeah. Uncovered. Yeah. Yeah. And it's cool cause we both get to, like I obviously I do the preaching and then she does the prayer. She does this thing called Sunday school also on Sunday mornings. Yeah, I saw that. It's a little game on our Instagram stories but so yeah, it's cool. We both have like our rules dude. It's fun. Yeah. With Institute, have you caught any kind of flack from public or, yeah. Churches. What, what flack have you caught and how we want to give you an opportunity to kind of like address it. Cool. Yeah. Oh for sure. This is awesome. So if you don't know what institute's live is, it's like it's the first ever social media church. We started it like almost three months ago and we do a 10 minute worship service on Instagram and it's a, it has worshiped as a message and has prayer announcement and it's like, just like a regular church service, but it's 10 minutes. And a lot of people think we're trying to pull people away from their church because if you're an older pastor and you struggle to get people, young people in your church, will Instagram the Instagram church guys, we seem like a threat. Cause we're like, what did they think was my service matter anymore? Because they have like a 10 minute version of it and it's on their phone, church in the palm of your hand, you know? Um, but we're not trying to pull people away from churches. If anything, everyone that helps with it, which is about anywhere between eight to 10 people. We all go to different churches. We all go to church on Sunday. But in some churches, our way of like serving the, like the mass community for people who are like really dealing with shame. People who, uh, we know kids whose parents are atheists who don't let'em go to church and they just watch in their bedroom and the door shut. Um, people in the hospital can't get to church or whatever, or like people who work like crazy hours on Sunday, they don't really have a way to like really be a part of a church service. And a big demographic is people who work at Churches Watch into church side because they're always working on Sunday. And so they get to like, and even if they sit in service at their church on Sunday, they still feel like they're working cause they're in their office. Okay. You know, and so there's people who, uh, that work at a church that watch institution and they can kind of just like sit in air quotes in the audience and just get to like be a part in here from a word here, a word from God. Here's some worship music. Um, and it's really interactive. So, but we do get pushed back like a lot. Yeah. I would imagine, uh, that it's like what you said, you're trying to take people away from church. Right. But you're not, I'm not, it's more of a, I hate using this word to describe it, but it's more of like a devotional w I was thinking even supplement supplement or a devotional, like extra little push. Like it's for people who are thinking about going to church. Yeah. And it's for people who already go to church that just want to grow more. I mean biblically, I don't know why I didn't think of it till right now we've only had, you know, two weeks worth of conversation about this, but it's a way to call people back. Yeah. Cause I can think of people in my family that went to a physical church that stopped going or state that they're in where they don't want to go to church, but they would still get on institute's yeah, yeah, yeah. We think what you guys are doing is good at something creative. It's totally outside the box. Uh, so yeah, I want to like affirm, encourage you, man. Yeah. I don't, the more negative I live for it. Dude, I love negative feedback. Yeah. Alex send me the hate mail dude sent it all my weight, like I love it because like I read the gospels and Jesus like always had haters. Like he always had people who were trying to come against what he was doing and it's just, it's affirmation. Like for me, the more negative feedback I get, the more I'm like, yes, I'm heading in the right direction. You are there. There's some, like if I preach, I'm not gonna preach heresy. That's just not how I was raised. But if I were to preach like something stupid and people like Alex like you like really messed up, then I'm like, oh, okay. Like that's negative feedback, but it's true. Right? You know? But we get a lot of people who are like, do you really think this is a church? Do you actually think this is a ministry, like your Christian consumerism and all that type of stuff. I'm like, dude, whatever. I just like block him. You're encouraging people to go to church. You're pointing people to Christ. I'd have to respond to them. Matthew five 11[inaudible]. Blessed are those are blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you. And I'm also, he say all kinds of evil things against you. Come on because of me reach it. And then I have my hermeneutic haters. Yeah, pretty much Hermes. That is awesome. Hermeneutic haters. Yeah, that's a tee shirt right there. Distinct podcast welcomes all hermeneutics haters. I'm always thinking about t-shirts leading in. Are you, are you going to do that? We have a lot of shirt ideas. It's just, unless you have people really ready to buy, it's like, and I guess I do, I, if I put some shirts up in my story people would definitely, we have a website which I would also, while we're talking about it say check out our website. Yeah we have a spot which is hidden right now, but it's a shop which we plan at some point and they go a year or five years to eventually have tee shirts or whatever it is. Since the wag it also takes money to make shirts. Yeah. We learned that lesson cause I've, we've sold some but we're really broke. So shirts are, I think right now shirts would work. Like we'd like to give you guys shirts. People have maybe been on the potter, some strong supporters, but to actually sell it at this point, it doesn't make sense. So I merged Merck, Merck institute to gear. So to switch gears, here you go. I'm working on my transition or when it segues with institu search your target audience. Who would you say? And I did listen to[inaudible] I love you man. Podcast. Shout out to them. Great podcasts. I don't listen to my own, but I do listen to, I love you man. And burn the haystack. Shout out to both of them. Uh, they're doing a great job. But in those episodes that you are on their podcast, you had mentioned, I believe was on, I love you man, Trent Hinkleman and you were kind of explaining how he shaped who you target. And so can you tell us more about who is Trenton Hinkleman? What's the story behind it? As a Trent Hinkle, but he's a man. Sorry. No, it's fine. He won't care if he hears this. He won't care what's up. Train. Um, anyway, Trent was, he was roommates or housemates in the dorm that I would always hang out when I'm, when I was in college and we didn't know each other until we met at the house. And we hung out a lot and he'd never, like, he never hung out with girls. He hung out with a couple of girls, like girls that we hung out with, but most time he would just like really, really, really like be in his books. He's super smart, but he's just the coolest guy. And so he ended up coming out and, uh, I think he assumed, he probably assumed that I w wouldn't wanna be friends with me anymore. Um, because my dad's a pastor. In fact, he was the pastor at the school that we were working at and I was just like, dude, like, no, like, I don't care if you're gay, purple, whatever. Like you love rap. I love rap. You're my boy. You know? And so I think shortly after that is when I realized like, man, I want like whoever is out in the world, I want them to be able to like know that like God is not far away from them. And so when I think about like reaching people, Trans, one of the people I think about just because he means so much to me as a friend. But I think when I think of my audience, I want anybody to be able to come across one of my videos or come to an insert church service and feel like
Speaker 4:a, I'm not judged. And two, I don't feel like this is an ex exclusive for a special type of person. Like we have to bring church to people. So putting church in the palm of your hand, which is what incent church really is about. That's what we're trying to do. Uh, and what will happen is people will come to church because the church came to them first. Um, but that's the whole idea of like what Jesus did to you. Like he came here, you know, he came to Earth to get us. So,
Speaker 2:yeah, I like, uh, when I saw first heard about institution, it made me think of something that Brad and, uh, the, well, he had mentioned how Jesus went to Capernaum and it was like at the tip, it was a special spot on a trade route. And he said, because Jesus is smart. Yeah, he's God. But obviously that, that is where, uh, everybody would go through and kind of all his messages went viral based on the position that he was in. Whoa. I mean, geographically and so I thought, yeah, Instagram was the Copernum to love today. Come on, Bro. Yeah, so totally, you're in the right position. I mean, look at your awesome. Again, you're following. So, and I'm sure it's just gonna continue to grow and blow up. There are people that are in place right now, churches, big churches even where they feel like we are a spot where the message can go viral. Can you speak into that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, they, they definitely, I think churches, there are some churches that will DM us and be like, hey, we want to figure out how to do what you're doing for our church. And that's a dream too. If other insecurities start popping up. Yeah. That's awesome. We don't want to be the only one where the first, so we get that you know metal but we don't want to be the only one. We want other people to do it too because think about if there was like an institution in every state or something like that then or just in different parts of the world. Like we have people in New Zealand, people in Australia and Cape Town, South Africa, people all over the world who watch institutes but they have to like watch it at weird times, like 3:00 AM in the morning. Um, east coast people, they keep asking us to do a earlier service because they're watching on 11:00 PM cause we, we film and everything and did an 8:00 PM so if other churches were out there doing it, it'd be awesome. But the other side of that is we have people who yeah, they really think that we're trying to be a church and that scares them cause they're like, no, like we need community, we need like discipleship. Like, we need like all this stuff. And we're like, dude, yeah, we think people need that too. This is just a little extra way that people can connect. So it's a lot of high school kids who follow our page. Um, a lot of gen Z, a lot of millennials. Um,
Speaker 2:when you think about where, I mean the audience is, and I know a lot of churches even want to focus on the next generation. I think where their eyeballs at, I mean that's what really matters. Cause I could put out like for our church, even a newspaper ad, hey come you come, we're going to give you 1 million bucks. You'd still have your million dollars. No one would ever come. No one ever read the newspaper. Everyone's on Instagram and Facebook, social media. And so even for us, we're three years off and now getting back into it and just seeing how much power there is there.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And I think to answer your question even further and just to like be completely controversial right now, anytime we feel what it ultimately comes down to is um, money and fame. When, when I feel like someone is going to take away from my fame and my money, then mainly what it comes down to is money. That's when things get sticky. That's when things get weird because it's like, man, if, if all my people in my church end up just watching instant church and not coming to church anymore, that's going to effect my tithing. That's going to affect how many people tie it. So that's the type of stuff people don't want to talk about. But it's true.
Speaker 2:No. Yeah. That again, we have a hundred followers and that emotions immediately hits me when I look at your profile and like how I do not like him. It's competition dude. And it, we all have that. Yeah. It's not healthy. Yeah. Not for, not for sharing the gospel. I have to sit there and be like, wow, I'm being my own biggest hurdle right now and doing what I want to do, which is share God's word. Let's invite Alex over. Love on him from what he's doing, which is we're pulling the same cart in the same direction. Totally. And not see it as.
Speaker 4:And when we work together we all get to benefit from what we're doing. And I know that side of it is people in Church they po, they might be thinking well who's this like you know black guy, blonde hair is even though like how to preach and the church is all like exegetical expository preaching and straight from the word of God and it's all rooted in the Gospel. Every single message we preach it always ends up talking about you know the saving grace and the like. So Vivek plan that God has for us through the sacrifice of Jesus, so as resurrection. So we always end up like we don't like change the message to like make it connect to scripture but we just believe that everything in the Bible points to the cross. And so we always do that with our messages. So yeah, but people are like, oh we don't think this guy can preach. He's he leading people away. Is he doing like some like false prophet thing? That might be something that people do cause we are very seeker friendly in nature cause we're on Instagram. But what else it comes down to and people are, people are afraid people are going to walk away from their church and just do this. But yeah, we talked so much about that. We're not a church, we're just being the church.
Speaker 2:I think yeah, if you hit that level of success that you want to hit, I would imagine that the churches that you're pointing them to are going to experience growth in an insane amount. Like our our church, Brad has said that it's a battleship[inaudible] how I like to think of borrower little podcast is like, alright you are and we're the fighter jet taking off of it. You know we've got our distinct logo on it, but we're fighting the same battle that dude, I love that you guys are some kind of mechanism that's bringing people to that battleship.
Speaker 4:That is my both of us. One thing that we love to do is point people to stuff that we really like. So it's, and I think all humans like this, like all this restaurant so that you guys got to go all those rappers so good yet listen to him. If I can, if instant church gets to a million followers and we build a network of like, let's say 200 churches, um, all throughout the world, and we could be like, hey guys, if you're, you know, in the tristate area this Sunday, go check out this church. Like, if we can use that to like really leverage people to like Gospel Preaching Churches, um, and Gospel, you know, podcasts Gospel, like preaching, you know, music or movies or whatever. We would love to do that. Like that's part of the, in the instant church, like vision is like you said, being this like hub that we can point people to like other churches and other ministries, so, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That makes me think so do you guys have a mission or vision statement or, yeah. So what is that?
Speaker 4:Our vision is, uh, doing church anywhere, bringing church everywhere. Um, and then our mission is, um, bringing church to people via Instagram live.[inaudible] very simple cause of vision is like, uh, who you are, but a mission is like what you do. And so, yeah. W who we are is we are a ministry that does church anywhere and brings church everywhere, which is really cool because I can do an entire church service right now, right here in this room. Um, all I need is my phone
Speaker 5:[inaudible] and of the lead worship and my wife can sing, but she's not comfortable seeing it on camera. Yeah, I must say I did have a dream and you were singing and I was like, oh my gosh. She did amazing. It was really weird to me. I hear like[inaudible] dead serious Beyonce voice and everything. Oh, just going to cry right now. Seriously.[inaudible] last night. I don't know if it was last night, probably because I kept thinking about this podcast. Yeah. And we had just met for coffee, tea and she would start to lead worship. Do you know how easy would it be for us? Because I'm already doing a preaching.
Speaker 4:Could we could fly to Cape Town or fly anywhere and as long as is Thursday, we could still do service. Yeah. Because I can't pay for David to come all the time. David's our worst. We'll beat her side too, David.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Okay. Amazing. Amazing. Okay. Some Bella go check him out. His eps coming out under six months at underscore Bella some Bella. Yeah, that's you. Yeah. B e. L a
Speaker 2:when we first we'd been going in the, well for about four or five years now, and David was, uh, one of the first worship leaders that we heard that, uh, for me, I just like got choked up just hearing him. I was like, just the way he was singing. Oh yeah, totally. When I first heard him, I was like, I need to go talk to him. He's four. He's like, yeah, you just have to tell him. Like, you just have to tell him, man, you sound so good. Yeah. So we were listening to his first EAP last night here. It's like blushing. We're like, David, this is amazing. How did you write these words? And then he's like, I don't know. I don't know. I'm like, David, that is a gift. I have him on singing. So to transition a little more, switch gears, uh, marriage, we kind of already talked about what it looks like for you guys being married, working as a team, an institution, but more than that, just on the, like from a personal level, what does Alexson local, Lonnie's marriage look like? Maybe some struggles that you guys are dealing with. High points, low points. Um, yeah. Cool. Yeah, I think
Speaker 4:marriage right now is easier and harder for us. It's easier because we are working together a lot more. Um, cause I was a youth pastor last fall, um, for an, I had been doing youth pastoring for like seven years. So, um, marriage is easier and more fun right now because we are working together a lot more. But it's harder because we, my parents are like a two bedroom apartment connected to their house and we live there. So it's really close quarters with my parents. I mean it's not really close quarters. I mean it's, we have space, but um, just being in the same on the same lot as your parents could be like hard. I think some people are meant to do it. I don't think we're meant to do it, but um, that could be hard. But she like local on, he always like encouraged me to keep doing what I'm doing. And that's why I say instant church in all the growth I've had on Instagram has come from her continuingly telling me like, you got to keep doing it. You gotta keep doing it. Cause I like, like everyone, when we first started it, I sucked at it. I was just weird on video. Um, but now I'm really comfortable because she, she's always been like encouraging me to do it. But it's hard in the sense that like we, I really want to move out and I have a degree. I have a good resume. I could go get a job at a church or a school or something. Like I could get a job and get paid and move out, but it would mean in Citrix would stop. And so every week I think about shutting down into church every single week I'm like, I'm going to quit this and go get a job because I want to have our own space. I want to have our own house, you know. Um, but she is always, she's very vocal about like how weird that might be to live like in her, in laws house. Um, and so she hasn't complained, but like she were very, like, she's very like vocal, like where she's struggling with it. Um, but she's always at any day. She's always like supporting me to stay with it. Even if we're not making any money, which we're not, we're not making a dime. We're helping a lot of people, but we're not making a dime. But, um, yeah, she's, that's where it's Kinda gets hard cause I just want to drop everything and go get a job to help support them. But, but, um, there is a future in this, right. Um, and a financial future, like we're not going to be rich, but there's a financial future in it.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I think that at this point, we've almost been married five years. Um, if you were to like, look at our lives from outside perspective, you might think that we could be struggling. You know, like it, I think we're closer than ever and um, that we're really on the same page now. Um, I think like in the past I've kind of struggled with not knowing where I fit in with ministry. Um, and his previous jobs and just being completely honest, I kind of felt like pushed out, not by him, but um, it could have just been my own insecurities, but that's kind of how it was. And so in being able to do insta church together, I feel like, um, I'm able to like compliment him but still allow him to lead. And so like we were, like we were saying like I do the prayer, which I feel like is complements him, but at the end of the day, like I just have to continue to remember like what he needs more than anything is for me to support and love him and let him lead and to encourage him in his gifts, which he has like a gift to preach in. He has a gift to um, like shepherd souls, like, like, um, and so like I feel like the biggest way I can be helping him is by, um, encouraging him to keep doing that even if we're having to sacrifice a lot of our desires in the season. Um, because I know it's not, it's not going to be like this forever. Yeah. I just have a confidence and I can only say that that's from the Lord because I mean like you said, we're living at my mom's house.
Speaker 4:Marriage is a process of like constantly lifting each other up. I think this is where Christianity and marriage like gets stupid because in the church we think like it's all about the guy. It's about the guy, like the guy who has to lead, the guy has to be on the stage, the guy has to be the center of attention and the girl just like falls in the shadows and raise the kids and cleans up the house. And that's a horrible way to live. And that's a horrible model to show the world. And this is why you have like feminist move like movements and like Beyonce fan base like the beehive, which they're probably gonna like kill me guys, probably gonna kill me. But the reason why stuff like that goes like it gets out of hand is because the church is giving them a bad view of what marriage is like. And Dude, Jesus calls the church the people who believe in him that he calls them his bride. And what did he do? Like he was always lifting them up like where he's always like all about us. Like he's everything. His whole life was about saving us in, about dying on the cross for us. And so I think what Christian men and all men need to understand is that our lives, our job as a husband is to lift up our wife. Um, and you know, show how important she is. And I mean it goes both ways. The wife should do that for the husband too, but it's this constant like thing of like, hey look at how special my wife is. Cause that's what Jesus does for us. Right? We can all see what look what she could do. Look how powerful she is. Like look at all like, um, that God's gifted her with. And I think marriage has to do that a lot too.
Speaker 2:It's funny you make me think of a k o who was our last guest and he made the same point how uh, God has gifted him with his wife's had God's gifted me with Dre of this flower and my job is to garden and water and flower. Totally. Uh, biblically, Adam was given the opportunity to name eve given dominion but not the domineering, yeah, it was dominion meaning to care for. And so yeah, we're like Christ here to art. We're called to serve and care for and make an allow Draya or your wife to be everything she can be. So I totally[inaudible]
Speaker 4:totally even in that scripture, like whatever you name becomes your responsibility. And so if I put a name on something, it becomes my responsibility whether I named my kids when, as soon as I came in with the name institute's live, I had a responsibility to that. Uh, and so when Adam names eve gives her her name, that means like his responsibility is to like make sure she has everything she that she needs. Right. And make sure she becomes all that God intended for her to be. But we need to do a better job in Christianity of, of doing that, of showing that because yes, like she's probably gonna be better with the kids. She might be better at cooking, whatever. That's fine. But we can't like have these, like we can't have these domineering like undertones. Yeah. Because we have to be very careful on what we're teaching the world. The world is literally learning how to live through how the church lives and so we show them, you know, that type of stuff. They're going to do it or they're going to be really turned off by and never want to come to church.
Speaker 5:So when do you guys find the time to be? Look Aillani and Alex, like our date time or without the institute. Do you guys get that and without the kids or, yeah. Like or do you find like struggling or getting angry because that's, you know, something that we've been struggling with too is like, hey, you know, you're, you're still trying to research here and I want some quality time right now. What, what's going on? But then we start to conflict and our quality time was like, Oh look, I think Alex likes Kanye kind of looks like Kanye as a, the person that he, you said you, oh, you had a mustache.
Speaker 6:And so I said, hey Tyler, the creator I, Oh yeah, he's gotten that. I've gotten that
Speaker 5:for when I was clean shaven and I used to wear hats like him a lot. People. Yeah, that's a great question. Um, we always joked that we wouldn't start a podcast. We're not going to do it,
Speaker 6:but don't say the name though. Oh, okay. Nevermind. Don't say the name.[inaudible] I thought about saying it too. Yeah. Oh, I'd say I thought someone's going to steal it if we say it. Oh Man. And you guys went down to do it. That's how you should camera it. Yeah. You have a studio available to you. Wait, let me get it maybe like once a month. Yeah, we'll think about it. But we had a podcast at the end, the end and the name, it was, uh, alluding to like, the time of like day that we really get to connect, right. Um, is, you know, usually the end of the day the kids take a bath, put them in their pajamas, we kind of wind down and then they all go to sleep. And so it's after that time that we, that we usually have like a time to connect, but right now we don't have that because of the[inaudible]
Speaker 5:newborn. Yeah. He goes asleep too. Yeah. Yeah. He goes to sleep. He's in our brown, but, um, we kind of have a rule, which I don't actually follow, but Alex dies. He doesn't bring his phone in our room after we put the kids to bed. Um, so that allows us to connect because that's where he's researching or thinking or creating different posts or whatever, um, for institutes or even his own page. And so that allows us to connect and we're actually being, we're actually able to connect like every night instead of just being like, this is our Degnan designated day where we are like off from work or parenting. Um, and so that's a time that we really fight for. Yeah. And then we're, we kind of got out of this routine, but we're trying to get back to waking up at 4:00 AM our kids wake up at six. And so, um, having those two hours in the morning to first just spend time in the word like separately in alone, and then also have a little bit of time together, um, which does sometimes end up turning into work because the Lord is speaking to us and maybe we're planning things. Um, but the main thing is definitely after, after, yes. Yeah. After we're very regimen, like with putting the kids to bed, they go to bed at seven and I know people are like too,
Speaker 6:no, it's not. Yeah, I love it.[inaudible] 7:00 PM really with multiple kid. Yup. Right. Yeah. They all go down at seven. Close the door. No one's getting up. No one's going to the bathroom. You guys are done. Yeah, I just told somebody this. I give them their water. You've had your water gone to the bathroom, you're laying in bed, we've read up, read the Bible. You have prayed. Yup. Here's your iPad. I hate to say that, but sometimes iPads there. Yeah. But yeah, don't get, sometimes you need it. Yeah. Yeah, please just add that. Yeah. To knock it out of there or take them to the park. To the zoo or watching TV, you know. Yeah. We are doing different things. I'm like, you had a good day. Yeah. You're going to bed. Yeah. Right at seven we're able to like just connect. So being regimen with like what time the kids go to bed is huge and just an extra help is not unless you guys, unless someone is like, yeah, we're going to watch a Netflix movie together, which we do most of the time we just don't bring the phone in there cause I just know I will be on it. Um, and sometimes we want to sit there on Instagram together and like, just scroll and look at funny stuff or like get inspired by different sometimes, sometimes oddly enough, that is how we're connecting. Sometimes it's wrestle because we're just like, yeah, just hanging out. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And we do also take like a Sabbath Day, um, which we've also kind of been not the greatest with more recently, but yeah, we take a day, like where, where we delete the app, the Instagram app, delete it off, we delete it. And so we're not tempted to scroll or anything like that. Um, or even be like, oh, I saw this thing, like, let me show you on Instagram. Like, okay, it can wait. It's just one day. And we've found though, like, through that Sabbath that like we've received so much like clarity about
Speaker 6:the idea for church came after a day.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And so it's, so that is so important and that at that time we are like intentional with our kids as well. So it's not just Alexson[inaudible] any time to like connect, but, um, it still helps, um, strengthen our marriage. Even if we're parenting together.
Speaker 4:But yeah, the resting thing is like God created. And then he said it was good and then he rested. So shout out to creative south and Mike Jones, um, me and him talked about this. Mike Jones is, um, not the rapper, but
Speaker 6:yeah, that's good. The other guy,
Speaker 4:he started this conference, feminist friends or as Congress called creative south, and one of the speakers talked about what I just said. Um, but yeah, God created, he said it was good and he rested. And so for creators, we don't follow that pattern. We create, we say, I don't really like it. And then we don't rest. Yeah. And then you start creating again. And what how it happens is your creation becomes crap because you don't take the time to have a say. It's good. Which everything, a greater crates is good intrinsically because we created it and God said that we're good. Wow. So it's coming from a good place. So even my worst videos, they are good and I need to be able to look back on it and be like, hey, those are good. Even if they are cringy and like stupid and like hard to watch. They're good because I made them and God says I'm good. Um, and they might not be, they might be, they're going to be fallen, they're going to be like, have flaws because I'm mean, I'm not going to be able to make the perfect video. Um, but intrinsically they're good because I made them. And I think as a creator we have be able to say that as creators we need to be able to put out a podcast like you guys and be like, hey, that wasn't our best podcast, but it's good. And then rest, the hardest part is to like stop. So that's hard for me to delete the Instagram app because I'm always like, I'm getting followers, I'm getting comments, I'm getting replies like every hour. Yeah, it's dope. It's dopamine. Honestly, my Ba is in psychology and so it's like each follow each, like it's all dopamine. So like it can become very like addictive. I'm just getting that constant, like, you know, source of it. And so deleting it is hard, but when I do, it's so restful. And that's when I tell Nick you've been smelling too much perfume. Smell some coffee beans.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. I thought I like that. That's good. Her most famous words for the past couple of weeks are you won't stop. It's not turning off and it is, it's like I can just do this one little tweak. I can just fix this and this and, and you're sitting there dude. It's bad. I've been deleting the app. Sounds good. Go taking the phone away. Like you can't come in the bedroom.[inaudible] I want it for us. Yeah. Yeah. It helps. It's cool.
Speaker 4:It's really cool. You can read together. You can talk, you can do other stuff in there too. But yeah, it's good. Normally I'm daddy brain daddy, Brittany mister. The iPhone kills in intimacy. Yeah. iPhone kills intimacy because it's so much dopamine and you get dopamine and when you're being intimate with your, whether it's intimate comment or whatever, or intimate conversation or whatever, you get intimacy from like being one-on-one with like your partner. And so bringing the iPhone and like, that's what we always say is iPhone kills intimacy. Instagram kills intimacy. We say that all the time in our house and it's because it's true. We just, we won't want to be together if like we spend, like if we, right before we go on a date, if we spend two hours on Instagram or an hour on Instagram or even 30 minutes on Instagram before we try to connect, it's gonna actually be harder on the car on the way to the right in the car where like phones in the back of the seat, you know, so that we're already talking before we get to the restaurant. That is like huge hack that's helped us so much. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm going to do that. Something else that you're doing is you're bringing God and culture and faith together. I didn't fully, I don't fully understand that. And so I wanted you to, if you can give me and the listeners a little bit more about what you mean, bringing culture and gotten faith. The church is God's gift to the culture
Speaker 4:and because there's always people being saved, there's always new believers. Um, what's, what's cool is that was God's plan all along that as we share the gospel with our families, New People Become Christians and new Christians find new ways to bring the gospel to a new world. And so that's why I believe the church has God's gift to the culture. And God cannot be from culture. He cannot think things become cultural because they work. So for example, right now if you guys are rap fans, um, a lot of rappers are doing the ad Lib thing where they let they say somebody like Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Woo Duh Duh skirt. Like they do stuff like that. That is stupid. It's dumb. But it works because it makes you laugh and makes you like excited. It pumps you up. And Migos started that. They were a rap group, three guys from um, Atlanta. And they started that. They were the first people to really, really like make those ad lips like really popular. And that become, and they released an album called culture. And the reason why is because what they did with those adlibs is they changed, not just changed culture. They created culture, um, because no one was doing it. And now everyone's doing that. So they created that. And um, I believe that's what God calls us to do as the church. He calls us to not change culture, create culture. Cause I believe you can't change culture. You can either copy it or create it, but you can't change it. So, uh, like, uh, just because we have a water bottle here made by hydroflasks shot at the hydroflask, they're not spawning,
Speaker 6:sorry, you guys are going to sponsor now, but we'd like,
Speaker 4:he just wants his podcasts but she has one. If I make another water bottle, I didn't, I didn't change culture. I can make a water bottle that it's like colder or whatever. It keeps stuff colder longer. But I didn't change culture. I just copied it and did something else. But if I, you know, find a way to like, uh, if I find a way to like make an invisible supply of water, hover over your head every day and you'd never get dehydrated and it's just constantly,
Speaker 6:no one can just not exist before the flood. Is that how the flood happened? I don't know if the vapor can ignore probably this, this, uh, this segment of Nerd Bible.[inaudible] no, but yeah, if I create something like that, then I create a culture culture
Speaker 4:because now we don't need water bottles and that's creating culture. And so God has asked us to do that. No one had ever done a church service on Instagram. And so, um, through God's, you know, just encouraging us to keep on going. The idea was created out of that. And so we created culture. Um, and there's other people too, like, uh, Steph curry, Steph curry has like, created a culture like for like basketball guys. Um, now like a lot of, you know, NFL or NBA players, they want to be good dads and they want to be like faithful to their life. Even though they get a ton of girls like d, I mean them and like go into their hotel rooms and knocking on the door. Like they get a lot of that, but he like has really changed or he has really like created a different culture in NBA. Teebo did that with football. Um, if it, if that wasn't true, we wouldn't know their names. And so we know when people create culture, people start to hear about them. They're like, oh, what, what this guy deal because they created something. Everyone knows Steve jobs because he created culture. Now
Speaker 6:like life, it would be harder for me if I got rid of my iPhone and it's because he created that. And so I really believe God has called the church to create, whether it means you create like, you know, a cool, say you start making cookies and your cookies for some reason they're really, really good. Um, you, you may not have created the cookie, but you created a community because say your cookies have like Bible verses on them and they're like really encouraging to eat, but they're cookies to encourage, encourage cookies, cookies and find me. And it has a message. Yeah. If I'm understanding you correctly. So, um, there's the world and we are called to live distinct to live set apart from it, right? So when you're going against that grain, you're doing something new. That's finally when you're creating. And if you are serving an audience with your creation, then you're creating culture and we are called to bring, Yep. God and hopefully something new to culture. So that's why it's relevant. Am I understanding it right? Yes. Every, and I believe every Christian can create, you may be creating the next iPhone or a weird cookies or some type of community, but every Christian has the ability to create something. Um, I dunno what it is, Joanna Gaines, it's like she didn't set out to like create something, but she created like a community, like style. Like she didn't really come up with the farmhouse style, but she, she came up like she created a community and the style together, like the community that connects with that style. Now everyone who goes anywhere, they're like, oh, that's very Joanna Gaines or yeah, you know, Joanna Gaines, like she does that and it's like she's created this community of people that like want to like have a house like hers or have her decorate the same way. So anyone can do that. Anyone can create something. I feel like, uh, when we're doing that, we're finally serving our purpose, right? If we're doing that, um, what God called us to do. And so like for us, we never thought about doing a podcast that actually would consider herself, uh, anti microphone. And I'm not a social kind of person. It was her idea. She was like, Whoa, let's do a podcast. I was like, yeah, no, let's do it. And we both finally felt like there's this piece, almost like a baby or part of our family that was missing that just arrived with this is like so key that the only way a creativity runs on joy. So if joy's taking out, then the creative process gets horrible. And so the g, uh, and our strength is based on joy too. That's why the Bible says, you know, the joy of the Lord is our strength. Um, and so the devil's plan for anything is to first
Speaker 4:take the creators joy. If you can take the creator from having joy in doing it, then he can stop the creation. Now, the problem with that is, the problem with that is, uh
Speaker 5:Oh shoot. What was I gonna say about joy? Shoot. This is a devil is trying to stop this. I now I'm debating if we should keep it in or not cause I'd still like it. No. Yeah, keep it in. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Okay. Uh, if I sound silly joy. Ah, man. Um, oh, come to you. Oh, I know. I have to remember it. Okay.
Speaker 7:Uh,[inaudible]
Speaker 4:it's almost there. I can see it. Um,
Speaker 5:take your time. Take your time. Cause I'm gonna wait, I'm never sat on the ledge like this. I have this long. I'm waiting now. My brain just went like dead. Well you keep thinking. I'm the thing about that. What do you want a drink of Kombucha? Jumpstart my brain. Yeah, baby. Okay. Creativity is, is a runs on joy.
Speaker 7:Hmm.
Speaker 5:Complete. Yeah. They were always very, this segment of a creativity talk with Alex is sponsored by creative Kombucha joy. Okay. Anyway, no, I think I just lost it again. Shoot.
Speaker 7:Okay.
Speaker 4:I'm taking another sip. No. Okay. Purpose. So the thing about it is people at Christians will not have joy unless they're living out their purpose. So you see a Christian who is joyless, it's because they're not living in their purpose. Right? So this is the tricky thing for the devil and why it's so hard for him to stop Christian creatives because if you take the joy out of creativity, then you'll stop creating. But the more you create, the more joy you'll have. Yeah. Which is why it goes back to resting. You have to rest so that you have a time to just chill. And then when you come back to creating the joy comes back and the joy also fills it at the same time and fuels it at the same time. So it's really, really important because if you're, if you guys find out, which I think you have that distinct podcast and where you want to go with it, it might not be super clear right now. Um, but if you continue to do it, you'll find out. Like, man, I think I'm like, I think we're supposed to do this. I think this is what we're called to do. And once you start to really believe in that, um, you'll be living in your purpose and you'll have more joy. So we love, like, we love what we do, we love doing instant church. It's so much fun. We love connecting with people, um, to God and culture through it. And because we know it's our purpose, we have a lot of joy doing it. Yeah. Um, yeah. And we have to protect that joy cause the devil definitely wants[inaudible]
Speaker 5:get away.[inaudible] and also to go further in what you were saying about rest, I think it's also when we choose to rest, we're choosing to believe that like God isn't control. Cause I didn't choose not to rest. It's because we're trying to control like I can rest because I need to figure x,
Speaker 4:Y and z out for this to work. Yeah. But when we enter into that time of rest, it's like, Jesus, you got this. Yeah. And stopped. And some people on the other side of is some people, all they do is rest
Speaker 2:and they don't create. You don't create it.
Speaker 4:And that can be bad because like w a one of my favorite rappers, what up r g shout out to him. Um, shout out to g he says him this new song, it's called too much. He says, um, I think I prayed enough. I tied my laces up. And what he means by that is like sometimes Christians pray too much and all they do. Yeah, we're supposed to be constantly praying. The Bible says like talking to God in that way through our head and or out loud, whatever. But some Christians prayed too much and they spend all day all I'm gonna pray about, I'm praying about our pray while I pray about it. And they don't ever like Tyler laces up and get to work. And so in-situ is a lot of work. It doesn't look like it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of work. A lot goes into it. And so, um, there came a point where we got the idea, I got the idea, I called my wife, I called, uh, Tyler and David who help out with instant church. Shout to them, Tyler Moore and Davidson Bella. They were like, this is great idea. At 45 minutes later, they came to my office. We started talking about it more that Thursday we did see church. So we didn't even let a week go by. We let two days go by and we did into church because we thought, you know what? This is a good idea. It's needed. It's going to help people. Let's jump on it right now and do it now that the decision, I've started to make that decision after I started making videos, I realized if I got an idea for something, we have to jump on it right away because it can live. An idea can live in limbo for a very long time. If we don't decide to like move on it right away, then it's never going to happen. But after you've moved on it, it's really important. Like local, he was saying to stop and rest and be like, okay, this is good, but I need to take a day to step away from it. Um, and you will come back more creative and more joyful if you rest. That's the whole point. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, it just reminds uh, reminds me about, um, when we began the podcast, I mean, um, we had the idea and then, but I don't think we jumped into it right away or maybe we did, we bought the microphones and everything made it to it, like you said. So it would've been like going and getting the Insta church, the mikes and all that. And then if you notice dust on your mic, it's because we said, okay, now let's set it there. And it goes for residency for a year. So we knew going through residency that cool, one day we're going to pick these mix up and share what we learned. Cool. But we were committed. That's good. Yeah. So we had this huge rest period of like a year to think about logos and whatnot and we didn't, but you can go in a minute. Friday.
Speaker 4:Yes. And for any other couples out there that want to do something together because you couples should do stuff together. You don't have to make something creative or do a podcast or make a movie or you know, do start a church, whatever. But you guys, the reason we love watching the gains is because they do it together. Like everyone likes to see chip and Joanna do stuff together and couples where we're a team like Sperry, specially marriage couples. So whoever's listening go find something to do with your wife, whether it's golf or whatever, do something together. Um, the last big shift we had in culture and communication was the printing press. Um, when no one had books in their house. And then all of a sudden after the printing press, everyone had books. And that's kind of what we're living through right now. It's the biggest communication shift in 500 years where no one had the internet. No one had an iPhone, no one had smart phones. But now we all do. And so there's a lot of people who are older than us who are like, oh, I don't think social media matters. I don't think we need to be like paying attention to it, but it does like big time. And that's because my kids will never live in a world without social media. Right? Everything from the moment they're born to the moment they die is going to be on the Internet. And so we have to like take it very seriously. And as Christians we have a responsibility to get in to the digital land. We need to take the digital land.
Speaker 2:I I, it's so funny, I couldn't agree with you more. The uh, I just remember learning about this in residency, that there were scrolls and you would go and you would read and that was how you would hear God's word. Or You would be, uh, in church or lucky enough to get a page and then came the printing press. Yeah. And there were so many people that were against printing the Bible.
Speaker 4:It is guys, this is fall, insta of is like five days now. Fascinating. And I know it comes back, it all comes back. I don't care if I don't care if anyone disagrees with me with, with this, it all comes back to money. They didn't want the Bible to be in the hands of people because that means, oh, maybe they won't come to church and give their times. Or maybe they'll like, you know, maybe a little how Bible studies at home. Like God forbid they start a house church. Like that's the type of stuff they think through. Like, and it's all about, cause it's all about control and control is controlling. Yeah. It's all about control. But control's always connected to like money. Um, and so I think I'm just now, yeah. Or yeah, maybe, maybe control is it connected to money, but it comes back to this desire to want to control. Um, but they, they wanted to control people and how they thought. And so they thought, okay, we can't give them all bibles. They can't all have bibles. But dude, that's stupid.
Speaker 2:I have two. So there are two things. So first observation is I'm kind of like, I don't understand why I actually institute why somebody would say it's not a church when technically it is a house church. You're just broadcasting on it.
Speaker 4:Do you know what it is? It's, it's uh, it's s it's Saturday night live. It's Jimmy Fallon where Jimmy Felon is talking to a camera the whole time. SNL, they're talking to a camera. But there's also a audience. So you remember like a friends was shot this way on an open set. Um, fresh prince of Bel Air was shot this way there. There's a live audience there and they're just huge fans of the show so they want to see it live, but their main audience is on the other side of that camera. And so incent your church. It has the potential. We don't know quite yet. It's, we're going to become a nonprofit, but we either are going to take it in two different directions, like it'll be a ministry or an actual church plant. But our focus and our preaching will always be looking at that camera because it's highly personal. When you see someone talking right at the camera, it feels like they're talking to you. Um, but yeah, it's, it's a lot like if you come to a behind the scenes, it feels like Saturday night live or Jimmy Fallon cause we were looking at the camera, but there's people in the room too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've still got that[inaudible] oh yeah, yeah. There's cue cards. Silver right by accident. Oh yeah.[inaudible] cameras. And it's like lights and stuff behind, like, whoa, look at that.
Speaker 4:But yeah, totally. So that's what it is. But yeah, dude, people, it's crazy like that. People didn't want bibles in people's houses and that's how it was. And now it's the same way. They don't want us preaching on Instagram. They don't want us to bring in the word that way, but we're,
Speaker 2:we're gonna do it. I think that that is a indicator that you are creating and it's something that is serving when people start saying, you can't do this. Yeah. That's for me, how I measure if we're actually creating something good is when we start to get pushed back. Like, Hey, we've been doing this for a decade and you're changing it. Don't do that. Yup. Okay. I at least know where moving the right direction
Speaker 4:you guys are. You guys are, there is not enough Christian podcasts out there. There's not enough Christian you tubers. There's not enough Christian like artists. There's not enough Christians like open Christians are so scared to be Christian on Instagram. It's like fascinating. I get people like DME me, like saying like, Hey man, I just love what you're doing for the Lord Bro, and all this stuff. I'm like, okay, thank you. But like, this isn't hard. Just like stop being like a sissy and start being a Christian, like open, like openly be a Christian. It's crazy, dude. I just like, I'm, I don't know why people have a hard time with being Christian on the Internet. Conformity. Maybe conformity, they're scared to offend or whatever. But dude, like the Bible is very offensive, but it's also very practical and that's why I always see like, that's why I'm not afraid to talk about it cause I'm like, I don't care if you think I'm a weird spiritual nut. I know this makes sense. Like I know it makes sense. Yes.
Speaker 2:Well, we just want to thank you guys so much for coming on, coming over, bringing August and just, uh, giving us a slice of your heart and Instagram or Instagram, Insta Church, uh, which you guys can follow listeners. I would say Go-to at institute's live or, uh, I've been told that I need to encourage you guys to also go and follow the podcast. Yes,
Speaker 6:yes. Give us a five star review checkout at Alex at Alex Deon Wilson. Yes. That is his personal one where you can find more ten second sermons at local Ronnie Wilson. Yup.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You're like, keep 10 kids and[inaudible]. We just, we appreciate you guys, your support. You're listening. And a thank you. Thank you guys for additional information about distinct ministries, go-to distinct ministries.org you can also follow the distinct podcast on Facebook and Instagram and email your questions and comments to andrea@distinctministries.org
Speaker 7:hm.
Speaker 6:Complete. Yeah, it worked. Oh, it's very good. This segment of a creativity talk with Alex is sponsored by a creative Kombucha joy.