Discipling Gen Z | Ron + Hope: Unfiltered with Guest Matt Jackson

Hey, guys. Welcome to Ron and Hope. Unfiltered, real raw and relevant. And this is not Hope. No. Okay. This is not Hope. As good looking a gentleman as he may be, he doesn't look like Hope. He's not as easy to look at as Hope, but I've invited him here. Now. This is Pastor Matt Jackson. He's our student pastor on our west coast campus and been with me a long time now and got the battle scars to prove it. And a new dad.

Yeah. Just had a second baby two weeks ago as of this recording. Yeah.

I didn't even ask you, is the baby sleeping?

I haven't slept at all. We're super sleepy, super tired. We got a big event this Friday and doing this podcast. Tired, Real Ron Relevance coming out today.

Chaz slept, my second one channeling my daughter. She's like, hope, they ain't got no problem sleeping. You know the stories about Chase, man, he never. He never freaking slept ever. He didn't sleep. And I have never felt. I've never felt the devastation of sleep deprivation like I did then. I remember one time, Hope got mad at me. She said, well, at least you had an office and you could do that. I remember one time literally going in my office and telling my secretary, I said, cancel everything I got. And I went in my office and laid on the floor, just laid on the floor, just to try to get a little bit of sleep. So I don't wish that on anybody. There ain't nothing like that new life. There ain't nothing like what you feel inside. And you'll do anything for that little creature you're holding. But at the same time, it is not for the weak.

Yeah. Honestly, I'm glad you asked me to do this. It gave me an excuse to leave my wife. I said, I have to, Pastor. I want to stay here with you.

Look, I want to be here, but, you know, Pastor asked me. So anyway, I want to go ahead and throw the topic out there because we may kid back and forth for a minute. I don't want you to leave because the prettiest one ain't here, which is Hope. You know, I want you to hang around. I want to talk about something. I've been looking at some contemporary topics and one of the. I don't know. I don't think debate's the right word, but a conversation that's the right word that is out there is, are the millennial and gen zers the most underdeveloped, undiscipled generation ever in American history. Not world history, but in American history. And I brought you in. He's our student pastor, so anything really, from junior high to young adults, that's a big, large graph. But he's with at some time or another and working with all of them. And nobody would have a better 50,000 foot from the ground view because you're in it day in and day out. You're in the grind. And another reason I didn't want to bring the topic up is because I can look like the last generation guy that's always critiquing the heck out of the new generation. And I've said this a hundred times now. I don't want to be that guy. I remember how that felt. I ticked a lot of people off that were in my dad and my granddad's generation with my philosophy of ministry. The way just the fact that I got out of a denomination and went independent was a furor among people, you know, and that's no big deal. Now everybody's independent. But back then, just so many things where I got criticized. And I remember, I'm like, when I'm 50, 60 years old, I don't want to be that guy. So. But there are things which, if I see, you know, there's some real concerns here. I do want a platform where I can talk about it without being that guy. And so I got Pastor Matt in here with me, and I really want you to hang in there, because you either influence the younger generation, you are a part of that generation, or you've got kids who are about to become a part of those generations. You know, you're in some type of place where you influence or you're connected to the people within that generation. But there is no doubt starting, and you're on the cusp of the millennial generation. You guys just changed the game forever, man. You changed the game. You changed the game in the church, you changed the game in the world. You change the way people approach life. You change the way people make money. You change the way people look at jobs and careers. You change the way people go to YouTube instead of college. Social media has changed the way people date and the way people meet. It's no small change. And during the millennial generation of leaders, we had Covid, which even in a more way led to those changes where social media is the run of the day. And I don't. You know, Matt, I'm just going to be honest with you. I don't think all those effects have been positive. Some of those things seem like they're great advancements in Our society, technological advancements and relational advancements. But I don't think all of them are positive. I remember, you know, one of my sons one time was breaking up with a girl by text and I about lost it, man. I about lost. I'm like, you go and you sit down with her and you look her in the eye and you owe her the respect, you know? Yeah. He could not conceive of what I was telling him to do. And I could not conceive that you'd send her a text and call off a two year relationship. Yeah. You see what I'm talking about? Really? The chasm was that big. So already the first four or five minutes, you know, I'm sitting here and I'm flapping my gums and you haven't been able to say a word. I want to jump right in it because we only do this for about a half hour. Hang in here with me because there's some, probably going to be some things you need to know and maybe you'll disagree or agree with some of the things I got to say, but I do have some opinions. But I wanted you to get a chance to just respond to, to that assessment. Are they the most undiscipled generation or is that a myth?

I think that is exactly what we're dealing with with the next generation because the millennials did come in and change the game because the Internet came in and the streaming came in and we could have services. You could be in multiple places at the same time for a church, you know, multi site churches, everything. And so you can have church on.

The beach, you can have church in your pajamas, you can have church anywhere.

And, and it was supposed to be that way.

And I think convenience is the big word here. I'll get back to that. Go ahead.

At your convenience. And so, and also millen part of the fatherless generation, so they rejected the institutions of their fathers as well. And so they were anti institutions, they were anti industry, the way it should be done. And it became a subtle way of dishonoring the older generation.

And so let me ask you a question. Would you consider yourself. You were one of those.

Yeah, so I'm in the middle. I was in the crossover, so I was doing ministry and being raised up as a millennial. But now that I'm working with the next generation Gen Z's and my son is Gen Alpha now, I can see how they're one generation away from generals of the faith, from the older way of doing church and how we've lost a lot of things for example, the youth are definitely ignorant. This is the most ignorant, biblically ignorant generation that we've ever seen.

For example, let me stop you with more information available than ever. Yeah, help me.

Just because there's a lot of information doesn't mean that you're getting the right information and in the right way and from the right perspective. And so they're being what the scripture talks about. Don't be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Right. So the, the, the conforming of the world has been discipling our students by keeping them ignorant in certain ways and making them know other things in the incorrect way. They're being exposed to things they shouldn't be. They're seeing things they shouldn't be. I'll ask them when I prepare a message, when I talk to older adults, I'll study for hours and hours and days and days and cry and cry. But when I prepare for a youth, I, I do one scripture and I do a couple stories and then I'll read the whole passage for the context because they do not know it. I can't refer to Bible stories. When I talk about Noah, they don't know the story of Noah. When I talk about, I did this one thing, I go, the first person that can bring up to me and read First David 3:15, I will give them a hundred dollar bill. And they are rummaging through their phones and rummaging through the two Bibles that they got. And, and after the end of it, I was like, who's going to bring up, who's going to read this? And people are going, and I'm like, no one knew that There is no first day 3:15 in their Bibles. And so they just do not know the Bible. And I think it's because people have re the discipling way of doing church before. And for example, the older generation was so stringent and truth was so like this is true, this is not. And then you got the next generation saying that there isn't truth. It's very relativistic. Moral relativism was in the millennial time. And so if you ever took a hard stand on what is true and what is not, you are known as a bigot, legalistic, old fashioned.

And so that's where you came up with the expression my truth.

Yeah, my truth.

I know my truth. Yeah, yeah, okay.

And so now we have a generation that was raised in that raising the next generation. And that generation has never been forced to go to children's church, Sunday school. They don't know their Bible stories. They don't know the Bible. I think it's actually a dangerous thing that the chosen, which is an awesome thing, that they're getting the message of Jesus out there. But the message of Jesus that they're putting out there should be compared to the actual narrative that's in the gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They're. I have students that are quoting the chosen and that. And those are stories about Jesus that never occurred in the Bible necessarily, or conversations that they're giving a dramatic interpretation to. And they're being raised more by what people are saying about Jesus than what Jesus is actually saying through the word.

Okay, rant number one. I feel like we are coddling culture instead of changing it. Jesus was always contrasting the kingdom and the world. The kingdom and the world. The world is not the earth. I'm not going to go into a teaching. The world is the systems that are run in the earth. It is the governing system. It's called cosmos. God owns the earth. Here's going to trouble some people. But the Word makes it clear that Satan is the God of the world. So the earth is the Lord's, the planet is belongs to God and everything in it but the system, the judicial system, the educational system, the entertainment system, the business systems, the banking systems, the political systems. The Bible makes it clear they are the kingdoms of this world and they are corrupt at their core. And he says he is the light of the world. I am the information that can change all these systems. So for God so loved the world, he sent Jesus, not for God so loved people, not for God so love church because he loves all of it and how it functions. So Jesus would say, you know, you're of the world, I'm not of the world. He always contrasted the two. So to me, the kingdom of God, which is God's laws, God's keys, God's principles, God's ways of doing right and unlocking heavenly results. When you talk about the kingdom, the kingdom was never supposed to to embrace or coddle the world. It was supposed to counter the world. It was in conflict with the world. The world is greedy. God says, give. Jesus said, you have heard in your world an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth. I tell you, love your enemies. In other words, he was countering it. He's saying, this is the way you function in your world. But I'm from heaven. Let me tell you how heaven functions. And so what concerns me is the church will play secular music, okay? All right. When you go to a church, the Holy Spirit and his gifts, his presence, his anointing and his moving and his ministry has all but been xed out of the building. And you'll, you know, I had my guy from my ministerial fellowship just went to a church planters training thing. There were 300 pastors there learning to be trained to plant churches. This is a quote. This is a quote from the person who was lecturing them, said, if you are expressive in your delivery, your church will not grow. That is a quote. Number two, if you want to have a move of the Holy Spirit, do it on a Wednesday night. Do not promote it or announce it, and let all the crazies go there. Those are the two quotes.

Totally wrong.

I told the guy, I said, I'm going to be honest with you. I don't pick fights. I'll respond to them, but I don't pick fights. But it would have been very difficult for me to have sat in that room and heard those two quotes and not somehow or another challenged it. I don't know how. I don't know how I would have done it. So I think one of the reasons we're under development, we can talk about 10 reasons before it's all said and done, is the fact that I think we feel like to win culture, we have to embrace it.

I think that people take that Jesus sat with the sinners, but that doesn't mean that he was sinning with the sinners, that he was infiltrating culture. He was saying that I am here for you, and you don't have to try to act like other things or be like other things. And so actually, I would put this to you, Pastor Ron. What would you say? Because I got. These are my objections that I run into a lot when I talk to people is they say that how can I trust the Scriptures when it shows just a. They. They put the culture lens. They see the God through the lens of a patriarchal God who wants to diminish women, wants to diminish people, is racist. Is. They use all those words to come against. To come against actually reading the Scriptures.

They didn't learn that from the Bible. They learned that from their culture. They learn that from their environment. They learned that from their school. They learned that from their cronies. They learned that from everybody I've been around. So they read the Bible through that.

Lens, through the lens someone else gives them.

See, the Bible is not read through a lens. The Bible is the lens. The Bible is the lens. I read culture through the lens of the Bible, I read what's going on around. I can tell how underdeveloped a generation is when they don't know how to vote. Not going political here, but when I hear what people in church believe on certain issues, I'm like, what? Where in the world did you get that? How do you equate that? I remember sitting here, you know, I'm in the Bay Area as well as Greenville. Greenville, South Carolina, is Bible Belt. Not so much there in the Bay Area here. Most unchurched region in America. So I'm Bible Belt, most unchurched region in America. I was here in the Bay Area, and I remember one Sunday I sat there and said, I wasn't even hitting an issue. I was just reading. And male and female, he made them. I was reading Genesis 1:26, 28, just reading it. That wasn't my topic. I had about 12, 14 people get up and walk out because you read.

That part of the scripture.

Okay, I referred to that scripture. You know how the next week I'll kind of. Okay, let me go back and rewind a little bit where we were, and I'll jump to something new. And I quoted that again. I saw about five or six people get up and walk out. And I just stopped. I just stopped because I got up and walked out right when I said it. And I didn't do it while they were walking. I let them get out the door, and then I just stopped. I said, the last two weeks that I've said this, I've had people get up and walk out of the building. And I said, I understand I'm in the San Francisco Bay area of California. I said, and I'm very aware of the characteristics that define this region. I'm very aware of where I am. I said, but every last one of you in this building, you need to hear me right now when I pick up this microphone. I am not preaching San Francisco Bay culture. I am preaching the word of God. And I basically said it in a nice way. And if that's not what you want, you're probably in the wrong place. I knew you weren't in here because you're having your own services. But after I saw, you know, just a general reading that, you know, there's a male and there's a female, and I saw people in my church, you know, But I'm not going to let this be an underdeveloped church because I don't skip pages and there ain't nothing I won't preach. And there's Not a page that I won't read. And so let me ask you this. If we're underdeveloped, how do you think we got here?

Underdeveloped. That's a great word to use, the not. Because you also define disciple as a disciplined follower of God. So I really appreciate redemption is not afraid to disciple you all the way through you. Not skipping any pages. You got to say for. For the sake of being fully developed, because we're supposed to come into the full measure of Christ. And I feel, with the youth, I feel it when just being in the Bay Area, that I can't say certain things without qualifying it first.

And that's probably wisdom. Some of that's probably wisdom. Like, I wouldn't. If I was in Greenville, South Carolina, I wouldn't have stopped, and there would have been no reason to stop. But here I had to let people know. Now, when I said it, I got to stand in ovation because I think everybody in the room, even if they didn't agree with me, I know where he stands, and he made a statement, and I respect that of him. And I could feel kind of a respect level in the room went up. But here, again, back to my point, these were not outliers who did not know that God made them male and female. These were people sitting on row 3, 7, and 13.

Yeah, that's why.

So that. That tells me where we are.

I think also it shows the courage that's needed for leadership to say these things. But the kids are looking for it. Like, when I. When I say, like, God knows who you are. Stop being in confusion. Come out of that. Like, you can't deliver a generation if they don't know that they're being occupied by demonic forces. You can't pull them out of falsehood and lies if you don't tell them there is a truth. And this is what it. And you can't bring them into another place unless you say that. But you have to have the courage to have people walk out. And I think we're in a generation where the millennials. Again, I'm not trying to hate on the millennials. I am a millennial.

Right.

But I feel that we have tried to make things so shallow and try to get people to come because we care more about the good feelings that get posted on Instagram. We care more about Yelp reviews or Yelp reviews in the form of Instagram reviews, or posting pictures instead of people saying, like, I really got set free because my pastor was brave enough to tell me this disc. This Teach me this and give me the ability to walk in knowledge. You said something during a service one time. I am in your services once in a while.

So I, I, and I listen, I.

Listen to all the messages. But you talked about how if you're going to fully apprehend something, you have to comprehend it first. You have to understand it. And I was, I was thinking about how this generation, you, we need to teach them how to diligently seek God too, and how to seek the things of God because then they can actually apprehend it. I think that it's going to take courage on behalf of a generation of ministers to say, hey, I'm willing to offend you so that you can apprehend and comprehend on your own.

Pastor Matt, when I was growing up, now I'm not going to be hypocritical. I changed a lot. I made a lot of these changes myself. So I'm going to own that. When I was growing up, we went to church midweek service Wednesday night. We went Sunday school at 10 o' clock on Sunday morning for one hour. That's when everybody broke down into their age groups, went into these little classrooms. That's why the building had a steeple, a sanctuary, and classrooms in the back. Two stories of classroom. Every building was built the same. Red brick, white steeple. They all look the same. So I grew up in that. And they taught the Bible and they gave you prizes and stuff. If you knew the Bible, that was the only way you didn't get a prize for bringing two visitors. You got a prize because you memorized First Corinthians 13. That's when you got the prizes. I had a dad, you know, who's an amazing man of God, got down by the bed and I'd be so sleepy. All right, tonight we're going to memorize Psalm 84. And he didn't leave my room until I memorized Psalm 84. I didn't care if I was 15 years old and I was studying for final exams for three hours. We're going to learn Psalm 84 tonight. And man, thank you for that, Lord.

Not everyone had a good dad to do that.

We went to church on Sunday morning at 11, when Sunday school got out. Then we had church on Sunday night. Okay, we cut midweek services out. Nobody has those. Then we went and got Sunday nights out. I did that too. And I did Wednesday night for 25 years. Then I shifted to cell groups. But I did cut out Sunday night. I thought Sunday nights were kind of anti climactic and Honestly, I felt people were there out of obligation, not out of want to. And if you had a blowout on Sunday morning, it's hard to go back and recapture that again on Sunday night. So I never did Sunday nights ever in my church. But you just look right there at four different opportunities for discipleship, not including the home I was raised in and my dad just by the church. Now there's no Sunday school, there's no Wednesday night, there's no Sunday night, and the two hour church services are now 55 minutes. And don't tell me that the life groups are for discipleship. No, they're not. They're for community. They're trying to get everybody connected and friends and meet in group likenesses. I've been to all the training sessions. That's exactly what they're trying to do because they don't trust nobody to disciple because they're scared somebody will teach something crazy. So where's the discipleship?

And that's created a generation that their kids see, they might have had a touch of the older generations where they understand a little bit of the Bible enough to where they can only get the 55 minute service and that's good for them. But their kids never got the initial teaching, the initial Sunday school. So they're being raised further and further away from the biblical truth. And that has produced a generation that does not know who they are. That's why we have in the last five years, going from students that identify with LGBTQ has moved from 1 in.

10, 1 in 4, isn't it?

To 1 in 4. It was 1 in 5, five years ago and now it's 1 in 4. So it's gone from 10% to 25. It is an, it is a social contagion and a spiritual attack on that generation because they have no standard that's being raised to stop this flood that's coming against it. And so I don't want to act like, oh, we, you know, millennials are terrible. I'm not saying that, but hum, where is the word of God? If you can quote more about what a person said at a favorite preacher's service, if you can quote that preacher more than you can quote the word of God, you are not discipling your student.

Well, again, if you spend more time on your outfit than you do your outline, or if you care more about.

An Instagramable moment than you do about hearing the word.

And I don't know that they do because I don't know all of them. So I certainly can't speak about the condition of their heart or their passion for God. But from a distance, that's what it looks like. It looks like I got to posture everything, right? So it'll look good in these clips and in these reels and on TikTok and everything else. And I'm like. I'm so, like, away with all this foolishness. Where are the hearts and minds of people that are being changed? Here's how I know we're undiscipled and undeveloped. I don't think there's a value put on discipleship. I don't think we value it in today's pastors and leaders. And here's how I can tell you. I think the value is put on church building. And so everywhere you go, you don't learn how to make disciples, which was Jesus final command. Right? We now want to build churches, and we've got people building amazing churches. But our American culture is going to hell daily. So we have organizations that meet but do not impact the culture and the people in which we seek to serve. So I can't change it, Matt, if I am it, right?

Amen. That's good.

Jesus said, you are the salt. In other words, if I put you on something and sprinkle you on your high school, sprinkle you on your college campus, sprinkle you in that apartment complex, you ought to be different enough from it to change it.

Change it.

Which means, personally, I'm going to have to be a disciple of Christ, because when I go in an atmosphere, it's not going to change me. I'm going to change it. And I am concerned about, get saved, get a T shirt. We're going to dunk you in water and preach love. Because to me, it sounds almost like an American gospel. Yeah, an American Jesus sounds like an American Jesus. Not Jesus, not the biblical Jesus. It sounds like an American Jesus. It sounds like an American gospel. And the church to me looks like almost like an American concert hall. Here's the one thing where I'm different. You know, cut the. Just black the building out where you can't see anybody, and you got a guy on stage walking around giving a presentation. Apostle Paul said, how will they know unless there's a preacher? The Bible says when Peter preached, they were cut to the heart. There was conviction in the room. There's a difference between presenting and preaching. When you get through preaching, altars are filled. When you get through preaching, there's conviction in the air. When you get through preaching, people want to make changes. Okay? When you give a presentation, people are Entertained, people are motivated, people are inspired. Totally different thing. And what I'm being told is my form of delivery can no longer grow a church. I think we're steadily proving that that's just not the case. That's just not the case. I don't understand. I don't understand what we're doing if we're not trying to change people by the word of God. I'm like, shut the thing down and let's go sell insurance. I mean. I mean, I don't understand why do.

We exist unless we're going to bring the kingdom? The gates of hell are not supposed to prevail. We're supposed to be advancing.

When I look and they're scared to say this, and they're scared to say this, and they're scared to do this, and they won't preach on gifts, and they won't preach on the anointing.

People are scared of. Of being cancelled. There needs to be a courageous generation. You know what I appreciate about Pastor Ron? You need to go back and look for a message called the Greatest Generation. He did a message 12 years ago, and it was. It was the message that actually introduced me to redemption and to Pastor Ron. My mom sent me a dvd, that's how old it is, and said, you need to watch this. Watch this message from a pastor in South Carolina. And I watched. I was a youth pastor in. In Maui, and I watched this message. And you said same words, I am concerned. And you had a message. All the youth came out. You had them all sit in the front.

It was packed out tons of youth. I remember that.

Yeah, ton of youth. And I'm watching this message, and he said, I am concerned that this generation does not know the things of God because they have not experienced the things of God. And you went through all the different eras of time about people who defined the era, all the way back to William Seymour in 1905 with the Azusa Street Revival. I remember that experiencing God, and he's like, where is the next generation? And where are those that are going to define the next generation? And here's the thing. The ones that are defining this generation are not raising people that are changing culture. We're teaching them how to blend in the culture, to be a very timid person. But that's why I appreciate the kingdom of God and being a disciple of God and being raised up to take what's around me, I'm going to change it. How do we get there, though, without just being like, we're just one church trying to change the culture. What would you say to leaders? How can you teach them to be. You're very good at expressing things in ways that you can say it in a way that doesn't offend them, but the word of God will cut them. So what would you say to leaders today to make that shift from I'm raising up people that I don't think will stand in the last days or stand in persecution. I'm raising people that are going to fall away. How do I get people deep, as.

Bad as I want to give you an answer, I don't know how. And here's what I want to tell you. My generation pulled on the previous generation, okay? I pulled from the faith teachers. I wanted to know faith. I pulled on Dr. Miles Monroe. I wanted to know the kingdom. I pulled on Dr. Mike Murdoch. I wanted to know wisdom. I pulled on the rod parsleys. I wanted to know the anointing. I wanted to know how all that stuff happened at the altar like that. I went to Oral Roberts little apartment right before he died and had him lay hands on me at 96 years old, I flew across the nation. I was only there 15 minutes. I flew across the nation for him to touch me. Okay? I saw. I wanted the power of God. I wanted the move of God impart something to me that I may turn around and touch a generation with it. And I would do anything and go to any lengths for something on their life to fall on me. Okay, Your generation is not coming after my generation.

No, we want you to come to us.

Yeah, you're not coming to my generation. I can't even get your generation to call me back.

Yeah, we just want it to be at our convenience.

I can't get them caught, but they don't want what I have. So I'm sitting here now. I'm 55. I'm not old, but I am 55, and I'm turning around, man. I want to give this stuff away because I've had this generation give it to me. I want to turn around and give it away. There's nobody standing in that line. There's nobody standing there with it. Because the millennial generation don't pull on fathers. They pull on each other and they pull on people.

I bet you they'll go to NBC's executive on tell me how to film this, Tell me how to market this. Tell me how to. But they won't go to the source of.

They don't. Fathers. You have many teachers, the Bible said, but you don't have many fathers. And the Fathers right now are looking around and don't see anybody that wants to be a son. I would love to teach people about the presence of God. I would love to teach people the protocols of God coming in a room and then what can happen when God steps in a room, but there's no value. In fact, they would say, I have had one major millennial leader look at me and say, that will never happen in my church. And if I said the name, everybody would fall out. And that's a quote. Look at me. That will never happen in my church. And I'm like, I die for that. I ran all over America chasing that. I drove cars that were breaking down with a cooler filled with Kool Aid. If I could get to somebody that possess that type of authority and power in their life, where they could speak to somebody, and they'd never be the same, much less lay their hands on them, that is not. People chase what they value. Nobody's chasing the anointing. In fact, we don't want them. Let the anointing be there with the crazies.

That's really good.

So I'm sitting here and I want to answer your question, but I'm telling you, I don't know, because somebody has got to want what we have.

I feel very convicted. Does that mean that our churches are. Because, you know, ministries are our big crowds, some of them that we try to build and try to get. But maybe the spirit of God is not drawing that. Maybe something else is, and maybe someone else is building it.

I believe we're building American corporations with American marketing schemes. We're doing no different than what Coca Cola and Verizon and everybody else does. I mean, we're marketers. We're savvy marketers. We're savvy streaming. And you go hear them, and you're right. The people they do seek out, they seek out. They seek out people from the world who built great organizations, who can help them build a great organization. I'm not against systems. We have a lot of them. I'm not against an org flow chart. We've spent hours on our org flow chart. I'm not against, you know, job descriptions. We got 172 job descriptions. I mean, that's not what I'm talking about. You know, just a free for all in an absence of organization. That's not what I'm talking about. But I don't trust. I don't trust my. I don't want to lean on a corporate ability to produce a crowd that is being unaffected by God, just to say, look at my room. My room's full. Look at what's happening on my stage. Ain't it freaking amazing? You know, and I have, you know, the LED boards and I have the intelligent lighting and I have the technicians and all that. And I place value and how millennials and Gen Z see the world through a technological lens.

That's not how you're building this church, though.

But when I open my mouth, all the stuff is wrapping paper. It's not what I lean on.

Yes.

Okay. My Instagram, I have marketing companies. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say this. Contact me weekly telling me I got 262,000 followers on Instagram. I got 2 million on Facebook because it's kind of two different crowds. And I got companies all the time telling me, I can get you to a million followers. I can get you to a million followers. I can give. And so I've engaged a few of them. Tell me what you got. And all of them tell me things. That would be a constant self promotion. When Jesus told me to deny myself. Yeah. People say, you know, yours could be growing so much faster. Yep, it could. But I can't get on there 24 hours a day. I, I I I me, me, me, me, me I I I me, me I I Look at this. Buy my this. Check out my this. Here's my latest this. You need to hear my this. You need to watch my this. It's not in me. It's just not in me to do that. So you know what I do? I put on clips of me preaching the word of God. It grows slow. It grows. I know what it would take to make it, and I'm not willing to go there because what is constant self promotion, which is totally contradictory to the Jesus of the Bible. Take up your cross. Take up and follow. Nobody teaches those scriptures anymore. No. Nobody teaches those Scriptures. No. And so I'm not frustrated, but I am frustrated because I care about the kingdom and I care about my kids, generations. And I care about when the people before me and we are no longer here. Is there going to be a whole generation that has never experienced. I mean, we build our churches now. Seat coming right up to the stake. There is no altar.

No altar.

There is no altar. You know why we don't want that? No.

It will mess up the timeline.

Help me.

It will mess up.

My preaching is to create that.

Yeah.

Because there's the preaching of the Word, then there's the ministry of the Word, and I preach it to you until I can minister it to you. I don't know, man.

It's totally different.

I mean, I don't know. Am I an alien from another planet? Because sometimes I feel like I am. Maybe sometime I feel like I'm. I was in a. You know, we're going over time a little bit, but I don't care. There's probably some people that want to hear what we got to say. I was in an airport a while back. It's actually been around Covid just a few years ago now, and I had a guy, millennial, good guy. I would say he's. I would say I would count him as a friend. Millennial guy, pretty popular. If I said his name, there'd be a lot of familiarity with his name. So I'm in the Dallas airport and hollered up. My name stopped me. We just shared pleasantries. He was headed to a connection flight, I was headed to a connection flight. And he said, where are you going? I said, well, usually when I'm coming through Dallas, I'm headed somewhere to preach at a conference. He said, where are you preaching? I told him. He said, well, you're going to do what you do. I stopped and went, what is that? He said, unleash chaos.

That's what you do.

He gave me insight into how I'm viewed by his generation. I don't think he was not trying to take a swipe at me. I think he was laughing, cutting up. I think he actually meant it in his own way as a compliment. But this generation did not want an unleashing of chaos. And when I walk into a room, I walk in there with a specific desire to break things up and stir it up. Why? To take out of the atmosphere whatever is hindering a move of God. As I come to the Bay Area, our church is filling up for the second time. It started filling up before COVID Covid took a huge blow to us. We've been rebuilding, and it's filling up again since COVID But I tell people, I know I have not been brought here just to build another mega church. I've been brought here to usher a move. And if that don't happen, I will feel as though I failed. I don't care if the building is packed. It's not about a packed building. It's about ushering in a move. And as I'll just look at some of you, I don't want to turn this into ministry and preaching, but I. There's a generation of us. We've seen and experienced God's power. And we want you to know that. We want you to experience that. We want another generation to know that. And I don't know what it's going to take. Now, there are sociologists saying that Gen Z is a little different, that my channeling my daughter would be Gen Z. And I've noticed just in her, she's really not impressed. She's kind of give me God if I got to go meet in a barn to get him. Okay, that's kind of a circling back, kind of to where I was. I would leave a cathedral to go to a storefront if God was in that storefront. You know, there's rumblings that Gen Z is going to kind of. Well, the millennials didn't like what the baby boomers and busters left us, but the Gen Z don't like what the millennials have left us.

The millennials do.

And so then the pendulum always seems to swing too far. Nobody really hits it in the middle. So I'm going to give you the last word on. I didn't answer your question. What do you think we can do to inspire a generation to place value on just knowing the word? Listen a whole other topic for a whole other time. Even guys like you, you know, you're going to be a great church planter. You know the time, you know the way, but you're going to be a great pastor. I hope something. When you're out there and you're on your own, man, and you're going through the weeds of ministry, I hope that there's something that you've gotten from me over the time that, you know, what would Pastor Ron do in this? Or I've seen what Pastor Ron did in this time. If not, I failed in an example. But we're looking at people now that I don't know if they've ever been called. It's a career gig. I hear people. I talk to millennials now. I don't even know if I'm thinking about just quitting. I might move to. I don't know, I might move to Ohio. Just like, I'm going to shut down my firm and I'm going to.

That's the key thing. People aren't called necessarily to the ministry. They just go.

They're like, I don't even know if I want to do this anymore. I'm might quit. When me and my wife were talking about own up, I was talking to the guy and I'm like, wow, you get to do that.

You can turn it off.

Because I don't want to get emotional. I'm. I don't have a choice. I didn't get to pick. I was called. And that calling has kept me in the game when everything in me wanted to leave, but because I was called, there was something that would not let me go. And I'm scared now that you can just get a bunch of guys in a room and tell them how to build one of these things, and they're like, yeah, I think I want to do that. And it's like, cool. I'm like, it wasn't that way for me at all. It was standing before examining committees who examined my life up and down, asked me questions about my past, wanted to know about my character, made me wait and go through several different interviews, and then before they would ever even lay hands on me. And then it was something that you were given that will not ever let you go the rest of your life because you don't do it. You are it. I don't hear any of that language, Matt. I don't hear anybody even say they're called. And I'm like, God, I can't change who I don't influence. So what I do, because I got so much to give and I got so much to say, and I didn't bring you in here and start crying and trying to be all preachy. But, I mean, like, this guy was just talking like, he can choose to pick it up or choose to lay it down whenever he wants to. And I'm like, that would be nice. I. I didn't have that experience. I just.

I know that I'm on your. Your podcast, but who you are to us, the next generation. I. I just want to say thank you, Pastor Ron, because you are one of those leaders that I know that you could have. I know you could have played the game. I know you could have crawled into circles. I know you could have compromised on who you were called to be in order to rise up in this earthly kingdom. I know that there are things that you turned down because it wasn't what you felt. God has right for you, and I just want to thank you for that, because what you've done and what you're doing is affecting the next generation. And the fruit that you're seeing right now, even at the great place that you're at, God is going to give even more, because there is a generation that is seeking the way that you've been seeking. And there is a cost to get an anoint. There is a cost to get an anointing. It is easier to study how to do a program protocol, service than it is to actually get the anointing of God. And the stories that you told me affected me in Maui, and you didn't even know me. You didn't even know I existed. And I was on my face crying because you said, where's the generation that will cry and love the church and do things the way that I love it? The way that I'm seeking, where's that generation? And I got on my knees and I cried out for God so I could experience in God. And you introduced me to discover things that I never would have discovered. And because of that, I got it, too. And there's a generation that's going to get it and it's going to run with it. So I thank you so much. That's what's going to change this generation.

I got to hold on to that. I got to hold on to that because I'm not a hopeless person. I'm a very optimistic person. But sometime when I look at God and I see the need. But I don't know, you know, you know, you have to be pursued. What you have has to be pursued in some way because you can't go and force it down people's throat. And so I am awaiting, and I know I have people like you and others around who are, but I'm talking about the masses to be hungry again for the anointing that one generation can pass to another. Elisha would never have gotten what he would have gotten if it had not fallen off of Elijah. He would not have been affected like he would have been affected. He would not have been effective like he was. And so, you know, I am believing that maybe a taste of revival is going to come from some people that have never experienced it. And I have to hold on to that belief. So thank you for your kind words. Guys, I've been on here 45 minutes and it ain't like I got a rule. I can stay on here four hours if we want to. We don't have have podcast rules, but I know people have attention rules. I think Joe Rogan's about the only one get away with three hour podcast right now. I don't know that Ron Carpenter can get away with it.

They smoke weed, though.

Yeah, when you smoke weed and talk to Elon Musk, keep people's attention, I guess, that long. I'm not sure Ron Carpenter's there yet, but I do appreciate you guys being with me. Hope we'll be back soon. She's on the book tour. We planned this year that when she was releasing her book if you don't fight, you don't win. And there's a lot of things you have to do, you know, to get that out there and let people know that it's available and it's a great resource. I'd like for you to look at it if you haven't. It's available anywhere. But there are a lot of speaking engagements throughout this whole year where they want her to come and speak about that topic and she is doing that this week. So he's not quite as pretty but you get a conversation with me.

Not even close.

All right. Congratulations on the latest. Maybe you got two now. And guys, we appreciate and love you. Sorry for big baby bear crying up here, but you know what? I'm passionate about what I'm saying And until next time, it's Ron and Hope unfiltered, real raw and relevant. Love you guys. We'll see you soon.