Podcast Episode 146: Episode 119: Special Edition with Christopher Lim

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On this special edition of Rockcast, Jon and Emily are joined by Christopher Lim, podcast host and founder of TheoTech, a company dedicated to practicing technological entrepreneurship for the gospel. Chris shares details about his open source app, Ceaseless, which helps people personally pray for everyone on Earth, and spf.io, a platform for creating multilingual experiences through real-time captions and translations. He also challenges listeners with the question, "What if God was your customer?" Find out more about Chris and listen to the thoughtful and incisive TheoTech podcast at https://www.theotech.org.

Transcribed Content

This episode of Rockcast is brought to you by Rock partner Triumph Tech, a full service specialist partner. Rock partners provide crucial support for Spark Development Network and important services for the Rock community. Connect with Triumph Tech today at rockrms.com/partners. Welcome to this special edition of Rockcast, the podcast where we take you behind the scenes with Rock RMS and with our friends in the technical world as we work together with churches. I'm Emily Forman. Of course, I have here with me Jon Edmiston and our special guest today, Christopher Lim, the founder of TheoTech, a consulting company that practices technology entrepreneurship for the gospel. And TheoTech produces Ceaseless, an open source app that helps people pray for everyone on Earth, as well as SpifiO, a platform that empowers people to create accessible, multilingual experiences through real time captions and translations. Chris also co organizes the Seattle Code for the Kingdom Hackathon. Welcome, Chris. Hi. Thanks for having me on the show. Thanks so much for joining us. We're very interested in the work that you're doing for the Kingdom and just are excited to to talk with you. Tell us a little bit about your experience that's brought you to this place where technology and kingdom work intersect. Sure. I got my start in the tech industry actually fresh out of college. Went to the University of Washington. And I started working for Amazon back in the day when it was still focused only on retail on online retail. So at the time, it wasn't the coolest company on the block, but it was something that I felt the Lord actually led me to. And during my time there, I was able to convene a little group of believers where we studied the theology of technology. And the reason why that was so important is because at Amazon, we were not just consumers of technology, we were also its creators. And so being able to see what would it mean to actually, in our work itself, infuse it with the values of the kingdom or be a witness for that in our company context. And so that was a really important time for me because one of the things that we did was compare the Amazon leadership principles with scripture just to see if, , they aligned or where they don't align. And the remarkable thing was that in many ways, I found that God actually implicitly is using companies Amazon to make disciples, implicitly because it's not a Christian company. But those principles in many ways line up with scripture. And one of those principles, the most important one at Amazon was customer obsession. Leaders begin with a customer and work backwards. They pay attention to competition that that they obsess over customers. So one of the questions in that bible study that I prepared for that question was, , hey. If we're not obsessing over our customers, who are we obsessing over? And then for me, the answer is, , myself. Of course, it's myself. My needs, my worries, my goals. And so obsessing over your customers is actually a way to fulfill the great commandment, to love your neighbor as you love yourself. And so that was, , a great insight. But even further than that, I asked the question, what if God is our customer? What if we obsess over what God desires and then work backwards to invent technology that delivers the things that god wants? And what if we apply what if we could apply the rigor that we applied to the customer question at Amazon to god? And that was great fruit for , , great, it was good for discussion. But for me, several months later, maybe it was, , five months later or something, I felt I had the divine tap on the shoulder, figuratively speaking, and it seemed God was calling me to leave my job at Amazon and devote my attention to that purpose of making God my customer and trust in him to provide. And so after a season of, asking for counsel from others and discernment, I ended up telling my manager, yep. I'm gonna leave. And and I my whole team knew I'm gonna do this weird crazy thing. Most of them weren't Christians, but they knew that I was gonna try to do this thing with technology and god and the bible and stuff. And so that's how I ended up on this journey that I'm now on and to to see, can we actually do that? Can we can TheoTech and the products that we build express that value and that principle saying, what if god's our customer and we obsess over what god wants and then deliver that outcome? So I think you already explained two of the products that we have. One of them was Ceaseless, the open source prayer app. That was our example of doing it, where, , if you begin with human centered design, which is a big field in the technology industry today, you might say, okay. What are the what are the tasks and jobs people are trying to do when they're trying to pray? What are the contexts where they're trying to pray? And what makes it hard to do that? But the challenge with that approach is that you probably end up creating a a glorified a spiritualized to do list, where people are trying to manage the to do list and group them by people and stuff that. And that's okay if that's what you wanna build. But for us, beginning with God as a customer meant beginning with scripture, where God expresses what God desires. And there's one text in particular, first Timothy two, where Paul teaches us to pray for all people, that intercessions, Thanksgivings, petitions be made for all people, especially those in power, because God desires all people to be saved. I'm obviously paraphrasing. But there there we have it. There we have it. There we have what God is my customer desires. God desires all people to be saved. And and the mechanism through which god and through the apostle is telling us to to to kind of labor on that desire that god has is through prayer for all people, especially those in power. And so if that is what God my customer desires, then the way that I worked backwards to build the app, was, to say, okay. My natural inclination is to be in my own little world, and that means to pray for the people I care about. If it's in a church context, people at my church, if it's my family, my family, maybe my job, my needs. But there are so many other relationships in my life that I never pray about, majority of which have no connection to Jesus, , directly or anything that. And I never think to pray for them because they never even asked me to pray for them. So can technology help me to do that? Because that's what my customer desires. And that's exactly what what technology is good for. It can't do the praying for you, but it can help us as humans remember these other things that would otherwise be out of sight, out of mind. So for Ceaseless, the first iteration was basically to integrate with Facebook and to show three of your Facebook friends to pray every day. And after about, , four months of doing an initial run with there's, , 70 friends of mine who signed up to do that, I checked the numbers, and we had prayed for more than 20,000 unique people. Doesn't mean we'd actually pray. But Wow. That was so such great scale. Right? A group of Yes. 70 praying for 20,000. That that just shows you that, actually, if you had a church of only 70 people and you were doing something this, you were praying for, , the 20,000 people in your county or who, , who who knows what. So and that was just with that pilot. And then, of course, Facebook has its privacy issues and the way that they control their data and everything. So then we switched for our second iteration to using the contacts the address book on your phone. And we don't store any of that data. We never send it to our cloud. It's all local on your phone. She's supposed to let you add notes and stuff and then also shows you some scriptures. So the flow is, , see some scriptures, see three people to pray for. You can add notes if you want, and then you're done. Really simple, really lightweight. But what happens is that through that habit over time, you end up praying for all the all the contacts in your address book, and that means that you're expanding the breadth of your prayer. And together as a Christian community, we can be praying for everyone on Earth. So using that factor of the 70 to 20,000 or something, I forgot we I had I had a mathematician actually do some modeling, a friend of mine. And it seemed as if with only 1% of the world's Christian population, we could be praying personally for everyone on Earth. And so not just general, , praying for countries, but for individuals, right, that we have that Christians have a relationship. And, of course, if you guys anyone in missions knows about the 10:40 window, there's a lot of people who have no relationship to any Christian. And so if anything, that just shows us the frontier in which we need to have those relationships so that we can pray personally for people. So, yeah, that was kind of ceases as an example of, , that's what happens as the innovation you get when you start with God as the customer rather than starting with humans and just try and solve a spiritualized human task. And then the second example, Spithio, which we might go into some more later, was simply saying, hey. , in scripture, Revelation seven, really, really famous text, it's people from every language that are worshiping God together, every nation, every language. We look at the majority of our churches, at least in America today, and they are segregated by language, by culture. And so there's a gap there in what my customer's vision is, God's vision is, and what we see on on the ground. So can we build technology that helps to bridge that gap by making every church accessible in any language, which is the technology piece? But there's, of course, also the spiritual piece and the and the relationship piece of how can our churches reflect or or bear witness to what god says is gonna happen. And and that's through becoming these, , united, diverse, multilingual, multinational communities that are witnesses that Jesus is lord. So that's what we're trying to do with SpifiO, specifically for churches, is to help them to become inclusive of every language, and as a reflection of the kingdom as fulfilling what our customer desires. So those are some examples. Yeah. Wow. That is a my brain is just, , spinning right now. , you just, , put some truth bombs out there. So I love the fact that it all started with a vision of that came from Amazon, and I think it's really cool how god puts us in these, , places to learn. So you learn that concept from Amazon about, , just caring, emphatically about the customer. You put the customer's God, and now you see everything through that lens, which is giving you vision into these other projects. And, , that's that's amazing. I would I would just say everybody listening to this podcast should should just take some time on the counter to reflect on, If god's my primary customer in my church or in my role, how does that change what I work on? Because I think, wow. That's a huge unlock there for some vision casting. That's that's great. And then and then, also, too, I'd say, hey. Ceaseless, I think all of us need to go out and look at that. CeaselessPrayer.com is the website, I think, to get more information? Yep. Ceaselessprayer.com, and it's just in the App Store, and there's a GitHub repo if anyone wants to make a pull request. Yes. That's awesome. That's that's awesome. Yeah. So that I I mean, just the way you even put the lens again into that project is is really inspiring. And and I was you said, I was listening to a podcast recently too that just said, hey. Really, the seven degrees of Kevin Bacon really now in our culture is really, , three degrees for the whole world. Wow. So which lines up exactly what you just said. That's really cool. So tell us more about Spifi. , you you said it's it's, , bringing the , taking away the language barrier. How do you do that in Spifi. O? Yeah. So some of the backstory behind SpifiO was I was actually doing a business plan course in, , in college, master's degree thing or something. It was one of those, , courses where you get to actually pitch and then do a business plan competition and everything that. And I already had a a heart for language. I didn't share this in earlier in the podcast, but, , basically, I I used to be, , as a kid, more of a gamer type. Right? I wanted technology because I wanted to make games because it's fun. And then later when it was time to get summer internships and stuff that, I was kind of lazy, and I had not applied to any companies for a tech internship. And so my mother was just , hey. What are you gonna do this summer? I'm , I don't know. And that summer, some Woodcliff missionaries came and spoke to my church, and they basically shared about the need for Bible translation, which I'd never really heard of or paid attention to before. And about a week or two later, I got an email from a professor somewhere in my school that was looking for an undergrad researcher to do machine translation. So I kinda put two and two together, prayed about it, shared about my my desire to help with bible translation stuff, and that's how I got my start in this kind of world blending, I guess, technology with scripture and things that. But what happened, basically with, sorry. I think that that little story got me off track. We were talking about how io actually makes a difference. Yes. So, basically, the the first time that we built Spf. The first iteration, it was so simple. It was basically that I had a manuscript of a pastor's sermon. I had a translation, and then I would basically release the lines a PowerPoint slide as the pastor's preaching. And so you'd see the translation up on the slides a subtitle, or you could see it on people's phones, basically. And so people could just come to church, scan a QR code, or type a URL that's specific to the church, and then pick their language in the language picker, and then start getting translation real time during the sermon. Now the reason why I brought that story that other story up was that that was my demo for our pitch was basically I I put a little, , mock up of a smartphone up on the screen and then had it faked out, smoke and mirrors where I spoke in Indonesian. I made my pitch for, , twenty seconds in Indonesian to my audience. I could speak Bahasa Indonesia and then have the English show up on the screen. So, , the crowd went wild, whatever that, but it's just a demo. It's not a real product at that point. But what happened later when I started Spiffy was I realized, , actually, although that seemed it was smoke and mirrors, that tick that original technique worked. It actually worked. People understood exactly what I was saying exactly as I was saying it, and I delivered it live. So that was the first iteration of Spifio. It was basically if any any pastor who prepares a cert a manuscript, there's no reason why they shouldn't be making it accessible in other languages because the quality is so good. You've already put in the effort, and you're just multiplying the, , the impact of your work because you're making it available in so many other languages to people during your actual worship service in real time. Or later, if you wanted to, , post it online on a video or something else, you just increase the reach, and also the witness of your church by doing that. So that was the first iteration of our product. Obviously, we know that, there's a need for real time. There's a need for live. There's a need for other kinds of communication. So then we started integrating automatic speech recognition and a lot of time in the trenches with that technology to make it as workable as possible. We built this ability because it's not perfect. We built a couple capabilities to, one, customize corrections so that these general purpose speech recognition models end up working more and more for your language and way of speaking. We built the ability for a volunteer or a professional to be editing the captions that are produced before they are released for translation so that you get higher quality translation and higher quality captions. And then in the pandemic, we built a bunch of integrations, , with YouTube, StreamYard, Zoom. So because everyone's going virtual and digital for their churches so that you can in Zoom, you can show, , a a caption or subtitle in one other language inside the Zoom closed captioning, or you can just have it side by side with SpifiOS audience view where people can pick many languages and get it. And so that's kind of these are some just examples. I'm it's a bit scattershot, but it's just to show the breadth. We really want Spifio to be an all in one platform for translation and accessibility. And for churches in in particular, our vision is to help every church to be accessible in any language. And we do that through a combination of using your scripts, your slides, as well as speech recognition, as well as automatic translation. There's a whole workflow that you can do inside Spifio so that you can have a team of volunteers. We call it community source translation rather than crowdsource translation. Crowdsourcing implies kind of strangers. Community sourcing to us means that these are people who care about your cause. They are part of your community. You care about them, and they may have these skills. And so Spifio becomes a portal that lets you, kind of, , oversee their labor so that together, they can be, producing a high quality translation every week. So one example of is a church out in, Virginia, that basically is translating their message into nine languages every every Sunday. And for that specific church, the re the way that they've used SpifiO is to have the pass the pastor actually prepares his manuscript and and then has uploads it to SpifiO. It gets automatically translated to those nine languages. And then they actually have people in their congregation who speak those languages who will review that and make any corrections to it. And then on Sunday, the pastor is able to preach from his iPad, basically, and release the lines as he's preaching. And as he's doing so, anyone in person is getting the translation that they need on their phone simultaneously, and anyone online is also able to watch simultaneously with the YouTube stream. But what they do is that that work that he put into it, because he's releasing it as he's preaching, creates a time subtitle file, an SRT file. And so, right after the after that service, as they are uploading their video to YouTube, they're able to download the SRT for all those languages and then up and then upload it to the YouTube video. So their YouTube videos now are are are also accessible in, , nine languages. And what that's done is that, now people, maybe in Pakistan or other places who speak those languages searching on YouTube are finding those messages and getting the subtitles of it and able to actually belong to kind of that church virtually as a result of that work. And what I've heard from this pastor in particular was that he he's finding that in some of these places around the world, people are so , there's such a there's not very much Christian content in their language. And so to have that and to have it fresh every week and stuff that is very, very meaningful for Christians in these places. So that's just one example story. There are others. , my own church here in Seattle, the way that we use it is, the pastors do manuscripts sometimes but often go off and so we actually have to have a human in a loop who's, choosing whether to go off manuscript or to use the speech recognition and releasing the lines from the speech recognition because there are segments that are obviously not scripted. And so Spifio is very flexible and able to adapt that. But I guess the key takeaway, I told a lot of maybe detailed more details than is needed to know near Odysseys know right now, is that we've designed Spifio to be so flexible so that there's a way that it can actually support the way that your church is trying to do things. And there's some adaptation that goes both ways, but, the vision is there. And I think that, any church that has the heart to be a witness to the kingdom by being inclusive of many languages, we can serve you. That's that's amazing technology. So I know the question on everybody's mind is, how do I find out more? , where would you go to to get more information about Spf.io? Our website is spf.io. S p f I o. And just for final a little story behind it. It originally I'm a nerd. I'm a, , an engineer. So I did that. I called it SPF because of synchronous presentation framework. That's what I was originally gonna call it. But my sister who became my cofounder of TheoTech, she she saw and was , what is that? Spf Spf. Io. It's , oh, that's a much better way to say it. Spf. And and then and then we kind of retroactively called it Spf.io in the sense that, , nope, when you look at it, you don't know how to pronounce it. But the moment you hear it, you make sense. You're , oh, okay. Spf. Yeah. I get it. And that kinda moment that you get once you are in the know is kind of the moment you get with learning a language or, , , , hearing another person talking , oh, okay. Now I see what they're saying. So that's a little fun backstory. But, yeah, the URL to get more information is spf.io. And, yeah, there's a lot of content on there. There's a YouTube channel for Spifi that we started. I have a lot of old content on the TheoTech channel actually that we're migrating over to Spifi's YouTube channel. And sometimes I've done some episodes on the TheoTech podcast, which I know we're gonna have invite you on as well. So, but the main place is SPF.io. Yeah. And as if you weren't busy enough working on the prayer app and Spifio, you you the way I, , came to know you was was through your podcast, the TheoTech podcast, which I have to say is a a great podcast. I've just learned and been inspired so much by the guests that you have, and I think you do an amazing job hosting it. You really draw out content well from from the people who are, , joining you on those on those, podcasts. Tell us a little bit about that, how that gets started. What what kind of topics do you usually talk about on on that podcast? Oh, yeah. Well, thank you, John. You're very gracious in saying those things. I I've appreciated sharing on your podcast. I think you've drawn me out pretty well today. The TheoTech podcast began as me and a roommate having late night conversations that we thought were interesting and wanting to record it instead of just letting it go. So at one time, I had a roommate, my friend Alan, who, in some episodes, he's in it, and, we would just talk late into the night. And so he decide he's more of a creative type. So he likes to make video, photography, and audio. So he's , what? Let's record this and make and try to make this to a podcast. So we started to do that with a few episodes, and we just had fun doing it and eventually, discovered that, hey. , this could be a great way to continue to cast vision for what TheoTech was felt what I felt personally called to do in leaving Amazon, cast vision to say, what is God doing in technology, and how can we join God in doing that? And that's, , one iteration of what I've said in the past, technology entrepreneurs for the gospel, things that. But what as I got involved in other other movements Code for the Kingdom, which is a hackathon that we haven't talked about yet, and and things that, I got I got to kind of have a front row seat to to realizing, , what? There there's something bigger. This is not just us as Christians applying technology to purposes that we think are biblical or something. It's actually the conviction, reading from Ephesians chapter one even, that God is uniting heaven and earth in Jesus Christ, the church. The Holy Spirit is the primary agent working all these things, and that includes in the realm of technology. Although there is brokenness and fallenness in our world and corruption of its purposes and every everything else, God fundamentally is actually moving through technology to fulfill what scripture says. And so what I wanted to do with the TheoTech podcast was to be a place to kinda just try to be a witness to some of those stories. So by interviewing different guests in different parts or talking about these technology topics, I'm just trying to get a a view and to share a view, I guess, of, , hey. Maybe, , , is this what god's doing with this technology or with it his this is what god is working through this person in the technology industry or in this particular way. So that's kind of , we call it the theology of technology podcast, but I began to realize, , is that we're not I'm not constantly teaching theological content or, , theological ways of thinking about technology, although that happens sometimes. It really is more of a witness, just trying to bear witness , hey. This is what we see God doing. , here's another story of what God is doing through technology and through people in the technology industry. Yeah. I think what's cool about it is that you as a listener, you get a lot of good content, , for your brain, but then you do a good job linking that to scripture into, , what can God do for it? So it's also I feel it fills your heart too. So it's a good blend of heart and and and kind of and brain type things all in one. And I think that's what I've kind of been encouraged about is, , sometimes the way you link it to theology is , yeah. , I believe in that concept. I never really saw it from a biblicals perspective that way. And it it kind of That's cool. Refreshes your spirit a bit to know that, hey. Yeah. I know this is the right thing to do because it's helping people, but now it's linked to scripture in this way. So it feels even, , more god ordained. Mhmm. Wow. That's a very encouraging feedback on my podcast. Thanks, John. Yeah. , related to that too is, I was talking to Greg Weems. He's a guy we work with. He does a lot of assessments. He has a PhD in this stuff. And he we're talking about digital strategy, and he was saying, , digital strategy is nothing new. , Paul was doing it. He would preach live, and then he'd write a letter, which was the digital strategy. ? Unfortunately, it was on scrolls. But ? So it's nothing new, and it's , oh, well, that's a really good point. ? Mhmm. And then his little scroll would travel across the Internet, which was a Roman road system. So it's , okay. Yeah. This is nothing new exactly. It's just a lot faster and and scales better. ? Yeah. A difference of degree, not kind. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. -huh. So and I think you you did a good job bringing on a diverse set of guests. So you're always hearing something new. And so, again, definitely highly recommend that all people listening to this podcast also listen to that one if you're interested in in in digital content about, , churches and theology. It's it's a great podcast. So how how what do you do for fun? , you you seem to work really hard. Well, I recently got married, and that really changed how you can kind of just burn yourself out. But once you're married, it's , no. You're not allowed to do that anymore. Yeah. And so it was a I think that I don't know if you guys are have ever heard of, , attachment theory, , psychological attachment theory or anything that. It's about relationships and stuff. There's a there's some two Christian counselors, I think, called Kaye and Milan Yerkovich. They wrote a book on how we love, and they go into this different things attachment theory and how it is that different attachment styles that we get since we were younger really affect our relationships, both just generally and romantically and other things that. And and so my wife and I read that book before we were married and stuff, and I I began to discover I have a little bit of a pleaser attachment style, maybe not a little bit, maybe a lot, which means that it's very much focused on pleasing other people. Oftentimes, that's my default. That's my instinct, because I think that that's a good thing. It's the right thing. But me personally, I I forget. I don't even know what I want. I'm not I'm kind of out of touch with what I want. I I know what obligations I need to do. And so that question prior to being married, I think of what do you do for fun scared me. Whenever I would be in a networking event, people would ask me, have no idea what I would say because I I don't think I'm that fun. And it actually wasn't that I'm not fun. It's actually more that I don't know what I really do for enjoyment as an end in itself, not as a towards a greater cause, a purpose, a calling, not , but enjoying life's good gifts as an end in itself. So, , in light of that, I'm I'm still developing an answer, I think, that's authentic for what I really do for fun. But I know that there are some things that I do do enjoy, and being with my wife has helped me to do that. So one example recently, this is gonna sound silly, but, we were raking the leaves together in my yard. And because it was with my wife, it was a date, and it wasn't a tour. And it was fun. , it was actually fun to take care of that responsibility. Another night, I planned a date with my wife, and it was basically were sitting in front of I set up a fireplace, and we were just reading a book together. And, obviously, there's no other purpose there than just to enjoy that time, and that was also very enjoyable. So that was another example of fun. During the pandemic, one thing that really kept my sanity when it was all locked down was this open source real time strategy game called Zero AD. It's free online, and I would play Zero AD with my bros, , probably, , twice a week or stuff that because we were all isolated. And so that was actually fantastic. Zero AD plus Discord so we could talk to each other while we were playing was a really fun kind of relief in the midst of the lockdowns where you can't do anything else and to stay connected and just do this fun strategy game together that you can win. So that was another really fun thing that I did. And I think that now even as lockdowns lift and things that, being married has given me a new perspective. I'm , probably not taking on so many obligations, although that's, , my my it's my instinct still, , that it's still there. But seeing what kinda getting in touch authentically with what I desire, and then in light of that, what is god calling me to do, And then being more probably selective about what I engage in so that there's space for more of the things that I find to be fun. Up here in Seattle, we live in a beautiful in a beautiful Pacific Northwest. And so, , wintertime, we get snow in the mountains, and the mountains are only an hour away. So, , being able to have the space in my life and schedule and stuff to go there, to enjoy that, I think, would be really wonderful for this this coming winter season. That's great. Well and I can I can relate to some of your concerns about having what do you how do you authentically say what you do for fun? I I have that as a challenge too, and I I feel I'm more of a pleaser, personality too. So I definitely wrote down the attachment theory. I'm gonna have to go look that up. But I will say, John, I if I were to make a confession, I do actually have fun with my work, and that's probably one of the reasons why it's hard to separate it. Right? There's ways that work is actually really fun. And in those times, I could just keep going. So yeah. I I totally agree too. And I always say, , if I won the lottery, I'd probably do the same thing. I might buy a more expensive chair, but I, , I I enjoy what I do. So why is that a bad thing? That's really good. Contentment with coffiness. Great gain. Yeah. Well, it's , God puts stuff on your heart, and it's just great to to be able, you, to be able to work on things that your work is, an extension of of extending the kingdom. , we're not necessarily manufacturing sugar water or selling sugar water, as Steve Jobs would say, that we're actually Mhmm. We're actually helping to bring more living water to to to people. So And the concept of work as worship. I think if you're really aligning your skills and, and you can see that you have great purpose in your work, it it is a form of worship, and that is very fulfilling, which I think is also interpreted by by us individually as fun or as enjoyment when we get into that. We have those things lined up. For sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that what's what's interesting for me is that, at least in my journey, right, that connecting of faith and work or work work as worship was something that it wasn't automatic. ? It's it's not enough. It wasn't because the church told me, , oh, your work is worship or whatever that. ? God made work. It's good. It wasn't through teaching so much for me personally as it was actually, unfortunately, maybe, or fortunately, the stepping out in faith. , I was already integrating my faith at work through start , doing the bible study at Amazon, and that was already good. But I have to admit, that's very different than leaving the mothership and being well provided for that way and everything that and and stepping out in faith to do the TheoTech thing. Because I think I don't know if this is the right language to use for it, but it's sort of it was sort of there was actually a sacrifice, and that made everything significant and infused meaning and everything in a way that was was different than when it was still just kind of a little bit more theoretical for me. So I don't know what to make of that, but I just shared it because I I I noticed the difference for me. I always had the impulse. I always had that desire to connect my faith and work deeply that, but it was actually the step of faith that probably drew it out in a way that it wouldn't have otherwise. Yeah. I can really relate to that too. In my life, when I stepped out of the corporate world into, , the church space, it feels such a risk. I I kinda mostly see it though. It's we're taking our first steps as a kid, and and the dad god is saying, just take this step, and it's not a big step. Right? It's just , I got you. I'm gonna catch you. -huh. But to the kid to the baby, you're , I'm gonna die. ? And we looking back, it's , dude, it's the best thing ever happened, and it wasn't that scary of a step, really. But taking the step is Right. Extremely hard. Absolutely. Yeah. God provides. I mean, the fact that you're still doing what you're doing, I'm still doing what I'm doing, is just kind of a a witness and a miracle too. , somehow the Lord provides even in this space that's not as driven by the forces of the market. And so I'm still affected by it, but it's not driven by it. So it's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And even though the finances, , especially in the beginning, were, , terrible, I was never more blessed. , I my I was never happier. I still had everything I needed. I and and I my my wants magically kinda went away. Was honestly, I didn't really want anything. It's not because I had everything. It's just because I didn't want anything. ? It's That that's so cool. And that's what I wanna talk about with you on on on my podcast too is your your journey and how God, , worked in your life that way because I think you have a really, really fascinating story as well. Yeah. I feel richly blessed, , by, , just following his path. I feel , , you can have a amazing journey. So but, , you've you've done a lot. It's amazing. So just to kinda re summarize so people can can write down their notes, definitely gotta check out ceaselessprayer.com. Check out that app and and, , try it out. It helps us to refocus, , guide us the con the ultimate customer and, , fulfilling what he wants. And then also SpifiO, definitely, , how how can that relate to some of the stuff that people in Rock churches or, , how could they apply that? And then the TheoTech podcast, to get your continuing education on some of these topics. Love to have you come back again. I think we could do a whole session on just, , your coding for the kingdom because that's obviously, being an open source project, that's something that our audience is really, , interested in. But really appreciate you coming on and sharing, , what your journey has been and the activities that you've been investing in. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you, John. Thank you, Emily. It was a pleasure to be able to share with your audience, so I really appreciate it. And I also I feel refreshed and encouraged just connecting with you guys and, , having minded believers in this space is really great. Yeah. Well, we'll have you back. Alright. Thank you. Thanks, Chris. Do a church that loves the sure we're able to we're going blocks that might stop a church from switching to Rock by making the process simple. Churches get the ease of a SaaS church management system without losing any of Rock's powerful features. Are you ready to take the next step or share with another local church? Visit rockrms.com/hosting today.