I played on the British Columbia Provincial Basketball team,
which is like the top 12 high school basketball players in the province of BC.
And so all these NCAA Division I scouts were all ready to meet me.
They had seen my game tape, they had seen my highlight reel,
and they're like, we're so excited, like we can't wait to meet you.
We were doing a rebounding drill in practice.
One of my teammates came prematurely underneath me and I landed on their ankle.
And I tore all the ligaments in my ankle.
And my ankle was just like huge.
It just ballooned.
And I remember just feeling so defeated.
Just so like anxious, worried,
not sure what the future was gonna hold.
And I remember just looking through the channels
as I was icing my ankle.
And I came across the animation, Joseph King of Dreams.
Hearing, seeing up close and personal Joseph's story
about how he was betrayed by his brothers,
thrown into a pit, sold into slavery.
And then at that point, when Joseph is at the low of lows,
God redeems his story.
And I remember thinking, wow,
if God can redeem Joseph's story,
I'm sure he can redeem my story as well.
Like, come on.
So do you go by pastor?
Because on here it just says Colby Mayer.
Mayer, not Mayer.
Golly.
It's the spelling, the M-A-I-E-R, that's throwing my brain off.
Yeah, yeah.
But do you go by pastor?
I just, I don't, I'm pretty chill.
Like at church, I'm pastor.
Yeah.
Outside, if I'm, you know, if you're part of my community at church,
yeah, pastor probably, but I'm just, Colby's fine.
I like the chill vibe.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, I want to get into your story because you kind of...
God took a situation in your life that seemed horrible and almost like the end and he...
pivoted your whole life into this incredible calling that you're living out. So talk about
growing up, what that was like, and then we'll lead up to that moment where I think your whole
life kind of shifted. Yeah. Yeah. So like I say that from the youngest age possible, I had a
basketball in my hands. So I was four years old. I remember my mom, she was looking for different
extracurricular activities to get me involved in in the community yeah and so your mom moms you
know moms the moms are amazing yeah so my mom was super invested in just getting me into like
you know singing and and piano and just whatever she wanted me to try everything just try as many
things as possible and see what sticks see what you love so basketball was one of those things
And she put me in Little Dribblers.
And I remember the moment.
Little Dribblers, everyone's like, you know, under four or whatever.
Four years under.
And I remember the first time I got the ball, I was just like, I freaked out and just gave it to the opposing team.
I had no idea what I was doing.
But then one of the coaches told me, he's like, hey, have you heard of Kobe Bryant?
Like, your name is very similar.
Have you heard of Kobe?
And I was like, no.
Like, show me like a little picture of him.
And I was like, oh, wow.
Like, I was like, I want to be just like Kobe.
Yeah.
I want to play basketball like him.
And he's like, yeah, dude, like do it.
And so that for me was kind of the birthing place of my basketball passion and desire.
So you just stuck with it all the way through?
Yeah.
How far did you go?
So I played on the British Columbia Provincial Basketball Team, which is like the top 12 high school basketball players in the province of BC.
Wow.
So there's like very strict...
like filtering process for that.
There's like, I think there's like four
layers of different tryouts and it goes
from like the entire province and it's
like regionally and then it's like larger
and larger until you have like the top of
the top trying out against each other and
competing against one another.
And so.
There was, yeah, so I did that from U15 to U17.
And so I played on the U17 provincial basketball team.
And I got to play with some pretty high-level athletes, guys who went on to play in the NBA or play professionally overseas, which is amazing to see kind of their story and where, you know, they were led to.
but I had an injury in my senior year and we had like,
my,
my dream was obviously to play professionally,
but my parents' dream was for me to get a full ride basketball scholarship.
Yeah.
Like that's,
you know,
as a parent,
like,
you know,
your kid can have ambitions to like go to the big leagues or whatever,
but like,
you're just like,
I want them to have an education.
I want them to have like that security,
that stability.
That was my kind of my parents' big push.
They were like,
we just want you to get your education paid for.
And so they had invested a lot too into me kind of being the best player that I could be.
So we had a big tournament that was happening in my senior year with the provincial basketball team in Las Vegas.
And it was called the main event.
And so all these NCAA Division I scouts were all ready to meet me.
They had seen my game tape.
They had seen my highlight reel.
And they're like, we're so excited.
Like, we can't wait to meet you.
Wow.
And it was the week before that event where we were doing a rebounding drill in practice.
And one of my teammates came prematurely underneath me and I landed on their ankle.
And I tore all the ligaments in my ankle.
And my ankle was just like huge.
It just ballooned.
And I remember being so frustrated, so angry, you know, all my eggs were in the game of basketball.
So that was it.
Like everything, all my identity, my hope, my security, stability, emotions, passion, everything was invested in the game.
So when that injury happened, I was so angry.
Yeah, understandably so.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. You invest all this energy for how many years and you're at the pinnacle of that, what feels like, and you're ready to take the next step, the next big leap into university, which is huge. That's a huge moment as an athlete. As a high school athlete, you know that that next step is huge. The university you go to is everything.
And so having this injury, I went back to my teammates place that I was staying at.
The team went on to go to Las Vegas and play.
And I remember just feeling so defeated, just so like anxious, worried, not sure what the future was going to hold.
And I remember just flicking through the channels as I was icing my ankle.
And I came across the animation Joseph King of Dreams.
Oh, wait, I think I've seen that.
The DreamWorks animation.
That's such a good movie.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Prince of Egypt.
Have you seen that King Prince of Egypt?
Yes, but I've seen the Joseph.
I grew up watching the Joseph one too.
Yeah.
Such a good movie.
Yeah, it's the best.
Yeah.
It's the best.
So I'm like a Prince of Egypt guy, Joseph, King of Dreams guy.
So it's like back and forth.
Any 90s kid.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They were good.
They were really good.
And they had songs with it.
It was a musical too.
And so I can sing all the songs.
Anyways, that's a different story.
There can be miracles.
No, I'm just kidding.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, no, I'm just kidding.
But actually, okay, so about that.
So I watched the story of Joseph and like hearing, seeing up close and personal Joseph's story about how he was betrayed by his brothers, you know, thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, into Potiphar's household, falsely accused, thrown into prison.
And you're like, Joseph's story can't get any worse at this point.
You're like, it's pretty bad.
Like, I don't know how much worse it can possibly get.
And then at that point, when Joseph is at the low of lows,
God redeems his story.
It doesn't just redeem his story,
but like puts him second in command in all of Egypt.
Like, can you imagine that?
Like going, being on this narrative arc
and you're like, the story is progressively getting worse
and worse and worse.
And it gets so bad.
And then just straight up second in command
in all Egypt next to Pharaoh himself.
And I remember thinking, wow, if God can redeem Joseph's story,
I'm sure he can redeem my story as well.
Like, come on, this ankle thing.
Like, what is this?
And I remember that summer, I was prompted to read the Bible from front to cover,
from Genesis all the way to Revelation.
I read the gospels, the accounts, the biographies of Jesus' life.
And I was convinced that Jesus lived the life I couldn't live.
And he died the death that I deserved to die.
And he rose again.
I was convinced the Holy Spirit spoke to me.
The text, like I always say, I didn't read the text as much as the text was reading me.
And like reading my heart and my desires and everything that was inside of me.
I was like, man, there's something here.
And that for me was the, you know, I gave my life to the Lord and I've never looked back since.
So what was Jesus like before that moment?
Did you ever have like, were you raised in church at all?
Or was that like your first encounter with God?
Before that, it was like my home.
My parents wanted to teach us religion and like this,
like kind of like a nominal Christianity.
So I knew who Jesus was, but he wasn't Lord.
Yeah.
Like I knew I could tell you some, maybe some truths of scripture,
but they didn't mean anything to me.
You knew of him, but you didn't know him personally.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
So for me, the Bible used to be just an ancient artifact
and now it became the breath of life.
Like it became living.
It became something that was like tangible,
that was like moving, living and active,
you know, as the scripture says.
And that for me became like such a source of life for me
in that dark season.
And emerging from that, I was baptized.
I got into a Bible living church.
I always joke about this,
but my grandparents were going to this.
They were very avid church goers
and they were going to a church in rural Canada.
It was like 30 minutes outside of where my parents lived
and they lived on the outskirts of the city.
So they were like way out in the kind of the boonies
and small church in the middle of nowhere.
And my grandparents went there and everybody there was over the age of 75.
Oh my goodness.
So I was the youth of the church.
I was like, they're like, he's the hope of it.
He's the church is gonna, you know what I mean?
He's gonna bring the youth.
I try to bring the youth.
So, but that church, in all honesty, they just loved me.
And they were so loving.
They showed me the love of Jesus.
The pastor there, Pastor Jim, I still have a relationship with him to this day.
He was the most God-fearing person.
most surrendered, authentic man I've ever seen. Like to this day, I can still say that he, he,
he had no big platform, no following, no, all these metrics or whatever today that we,
we think that, you know, that's a leader. He didn't have any of that.
He served in this church in the middle of Canada,
in the middle of nowhere, and he was so faithful.
And I'm like, that's the Christianity that I want.
Like that's it.
Like what he's got, like he's, you know what I mean?
And that was so attractive to me as a young man,
17 years old, 18 years old.
And I'm like, I want that.
And he took me under his wing.
He mentored me.
He just, he taught me, you know,
he empowered me to actually teach,
do Bible studies with the 70 and 80 year olds,
which is really cool.
He's like, I want you to lead out.
And I was like, oh, you sure?
Like, okay.
And so he just gave me every opportunity
to get involved in ministry.
He activated me.
He always told me that the church can do,
has one of two choices.
You can either entertain people
or you can activate and equip people.
People are, they're gonna stay when you activate and equip,
when you empower them, right?
Not by entertaining them, the world does a good job of that.
But if you can like activate, equip, train, disciple,
that's what keeps people.
And that's what kept me.
And so he allowed me to preach my first sermon ever.
It was on accepting the unaccepted.
And he helped me craft it.
And he helped me like, he helped me put it together.
He's like, this is good.
This is a good, he's like, now he's like,
you've done all this work.
Now you need to spend X amount of time in prayer.
Like bathe it in prayer.
Like the power comes from prayer, right?
It doesn't come from, you know,
the words on the page or your manuscript
or what you've doctored together.
He's like, the power comes from prayer.
Bathe this in prayer.
So I remember I prayed for like 10, 12 hours
over this sermon.
Really?
I just, yeah, I just poured everything into it.
And it was like, honestly,
one of the best sermons I've ever preached.
Really?
Yeah, I think it was.
It was like my first sermon.
How old were you?
I was like 17.
Oh my gosh.
You were so young too.
I was a little baby.
Yeah.
But it was a good sermon.
My grandfather, my opa, my late grandfather, he was on the front pew of the church.
And there's like 35, 40 people here in the church.
And he was like, he was crying.
Like I could just see the tears coming down his face.
And that just moved me so deeply.
I was like just seeing him there and he had been praying his whole life that his son would be a preacher.
And, you know, his son didn't, but my dad didn't become a preacher.
For him to see that prayer answered in his grandson's life was kind of crazy.
I mean, that's just kind of crazy.
But anyway, so that's kind of how I got started and how I got involved.
It's such a wild thing that you like had this injury and you see this movie.
I love hearing that.
I know God uses stuff like that to speak to people in such a powerful way.
And then God moved on your heart.
You read through the whole Bible.
That's wild.
Were you saved then or did you give your life after the reading through the Bible?
It was like when I read the gospels.
Yeah.
When I read the gospels and the Holy Spirit was prompting me that Jesus is not entombed.
He is living and alive and well.
And that was for me, it was like the convicting point where I was like, yeah, like Jesus rose from the dead.
Yeah.
And I believed it right there.
Yeah.
So you weren't just reading the Bible like with your mind.
It was like a conversation with the Holy Spirit.
Yeah.
He was leading you.
He was like illuminating the word to you.
Yeah.
And it was conviction that like these biographies on his life were true.
These eyewitness accounts, right?
These are eyewitness accounts in the ancient world.
Just like we have eyewitness accounts in court today.
These were eyewitness accounts that were written back then.
And these are authentic.
words from a person who lived and saw and was under Jesus' teaching. And for me to see and
correlate and read the gospels together in context and how they're different, but different
perspectives, but the same story, the same person is central. I was just convicted that
this thing is, this thing's true. And that's the Holy Spirit's work.
When did you feel the call to ministry?
I think that took place.
There was actually another youth pastor who first like planted the seed seed.
He asked me a question.
He's like, have you ever thought about ministry, like pastoring?
I had gone on a trip to the Dreamland in Southern California.
I don't know if you know.
Dream Center.
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Dream Center.
I know what that is.
Angelus Temple.
It's associated with them.
But there was a bunch of high school kids who went on a,
like we took like,
I think there was like 30 or 40 high school kids
who came down.
There was like a local church that was doing this.
And they brought all these high school kids
to the Dream Center to serve and to minister
and to help with whatever the city needed.
And the pastor there, he's like,
hey, have you ever thought about ministry before?
And that for me kind of planted a seed.
He's like, you love serving people.
You love the word.
He's like, have you ever thought about that?
I was like, not really.
I kind of thought about, you know,
either playing professionally, if that doesn't work,
I want to do kinesiology or sports medicine,
work with athletes.
That was like the backup.
So he kind of planted that seed to do something in ministry.
And then the other pastor,
From the rural church.
From Canada.
Yeah.
He started discipling you.
And then that's when you felt the call.
Yeah.
And then after preaching that sermon, it was like, okay, like I think this, he can preach a little bit and I think he can communicate.
And I think there might be something here.
And it was like kind of confirmation.
So a lot of people were confirming that.
And then I just kept running with it and just felt led to continue with it.
And so what was the after parts?
How long were you at that church for in the rural Canada?
I was at that church, I was in my senior year, so probably like a year.
And then I graduated from high school.
And then I found, I got a full ride basketball scholarship to a Bible college in Alberta, Canada.
Oh my goodness. Wow.
So it took one thing you loved basketball,
you got a full ride, but it was through, but also ministry.
Yeah. So it was to study theology.
And the coach of the basketball team was a pastor of a church
just outside of the university campus.
So he had his own church there.
And so he gave me two assignments.
He's like, you're gonna play basketball for me.
But a part of your scholarship is also,
I'm gonna mentor you and you're gonna help me
in the ministry at the church.
So it was like a two in one type thing.
So God really was just setting you up from one thing to the next to take you on the path to where you are now.
Yeah.
Mentorship and discipleship and learning.
Yeah.
And honestly, looking back, I'm like, I am so like, I feel so fortunate.
And so like, just so blessed by the Lord because all of those different opportunities, you know, even playing basketball at a high level in high school.
And then I went on to play collegiate university.
Like all those things were just God's way of using my past to kind of set me up for future leadership and future ministry and all those other things.
So I just feel like just so honored and just humbled that the Lord did all those things.
And just to see where it all led, just so grateful for all those things.
So when you were in college, was that when you were like, okay, I am going to go into ministry and you're kind of veered away from basketball?
Like how was that transition like?
Yeah, I think the transition had already taken place in my heart.
I think basketball was not on the pedestal that it was in high school.
Like I did not want it to be an idol and I was very mindful of that.
I'm still going to use the game as a tool to advance my studies in theology, but I'm not going to put it.
The temptation is always even competing in college.
it was like the flesh was coming out sometimes.
I'm like trying to beat down the,
like that competitive,
you know,
cutthroat,
do whatever it takes,
you know,
at the expense of,
you know what I mean?
Like that for me is like,
that's the old man.
Like he died,
you know?
And so we often revert back to the patterns of our former ignorance,
I say.
So the,
the,
the spirit has always convicted me as I'm playing,
but like it wasn't basketball,
wasn't on the pedestal that it was in high school.
It had its different place in my life.
as a launching pad for ministry and for what that looked like.
But that for me was like, yeah, I want to run with this
and I want to see where the ministry leads
and whatever God has for me, I'm open to it.
Yeah.
So what happened after college?
So after college, I had my first call to ministry
in a church in Southeast Portland.
So this was in 2015.
Wow.
I got a call from a small church in Portland for a youth internship.
It's like a youth pastor position in Portland.
And I'm like, oh, Portland sounds cool.
Like I heard it's kind of different, you know,
maybe it's close to British Columbia.
It's like five hours from the border.
So I'm like, okay, maybe, you know, I can be close to family.
I can do ministry.
Okay, let's check it out.
So I get there and the city of Portland is just, it's just weird.
Yeah.
That's like the only way to put it.
It's just a really weird, weird place.
Yeah.
I mean, the slogan is keep Portland weird.
It's just a weird place.
We got good coffee.
Yeah.
Really good coffee.
World-class coffee.
We have that going for us.
But it's just a weird place.
Like you see people doing weird.
Like I just came out of my house the other day and I'm in Southeast Portland and I come
out of my house and I see this guy in a unicorn suit driving a motorcycle around the corner.
And I'm just like, it doesn't phase me anymore.
I'm like used to it, which is crazy.
And I shouldn't be used to this stuff, right?
No, but you've lived there now for how long?
Seven years.
Yeah, seven years.
So I've been in that same place for seven years.
So for me, it's just kind of, okay, I'm used to it.
My parents, the first time they came to kind of move me in, settle me,
they came, parents are amazing.
They came there and this is kind of crazy.
So Portland has a naked bike ride parade.
Oh my, ew.
Thank you.
Yes, this is, I know, right?
This is crazy.
So they didn't know this.
And my parents are like, now they're very conservative, right?
Like they've come back to the Lord, like they're like following their tracking.
And so their values are very, you know.
Biblically aligned.
Yes, yes.
And so we go to get ice cream together one summer evening and we come out of the ice cream parlor and there's this bike parade.
And my mom and dad, they're just like,
their jaws just drop.
Like they can't believe what they're seeing.
They're like appalled.
And they're like, they look at me and they're like,
"'You're not staying here.
"'You're not doing ministry here.
"'Like this is crazy.
"'Like you need to get out of here.'"
And I'm like, this is why I'm here.
You felt called there.
Yeah.
I mean, 96% of the city is unchurched.
I mean, they're part of the nuns
or they're atheist agnostic spirituality is there,
but it's the occult, witchcraft, sorcery.
Yeah, yeah. You know, I've had conversations with warlocks and people have told me that there's a group of witches casting curses on you.
Like, there's spiritual warfare.
Yeah, you're in a high spiritual warfare place.
Yeah.
So what has it been like navigating a city that's very unchurched with a lot of spiritual warfare since there is probably a stronghold in that city?
Totally. I mean, there's massive strongholds and there's—
But you don't seem fearful at all, which seems like a key.
Yeah, I think to pastor in Portland, actually in the Pacific Northwest, because Seattle is actually very akin to this.
You know, I came in as a church planter.
So like, I think as a church planter, you're very, you got to be gritty and you got to be like entrepreneurial and you got to be like stuff is going to be thrown at you.
And you just got to kind of like work through it and you got to, you know, be prayed up and you have to have a good team behind you.
Yeah.
All those things are so important because if you're not prioritizing prayer, you will get destroyed.
Like prayer is how you're going to overcome these hurdles, these obstacles and fasting.
And there's so much that's thrown at you.
Like we had a guy in the middle of service, had a guest speaker from Bridgetown Church come to Bloom and...
Pastor Gerald, he's a great, great speaker.
He has been serving in Portland for many, many years
with Bridgetown.
And he came and he preached a sermon on identity
and on Jesus Christ.
He had a line where he says,
"'Jesus is the son of God' in his sermon."
And there was some dude who got up in the middle.
I was probably, we had like maybe 80 people at the time.
And this dude got up in the middle of the service
and he says, liar.
And he just starts manifesting in the middle of the service.
And Gerald's like, everyone's kind of like on edge,
like what's going on here?
And then Gerald's just like, guys, just extend your arms.
We're going to pray.
Everyone's going to pray.
And we just start praying.
And the guy just starts manifesting
and he eventually leaves.
And like that for me was like, this is a wake up call.
And this is stuff that happens regularly.
Like, yeah, like people come,
like people come and not just to our church,
people come, I've been to other services
where people just start manifesting.
What do you do?
I think just that, we pray.
Yeah.
Yeah, we pray.
We ask for deliverance.
We ask, you know, we just extend our arms.
Like it's, you cannot come there and not feel it.
So it's a completely different thing than being where we are here,
where it's very cultural church.
But I kind of feel like it's like church almost like in the Wild West, you know?
It's like you got to be prayed up, like you said, spiritually alert
and just kind of be willing to whatever –
But I almost think at the same time, there's a great way for God to move because in a spiritually desolate place, there's going to be people that are very hungry.
So you can really see things happen because it's almost like you're on the front lines.
Yeah, yeah.
And the one thing to that end, when you're a Christian in Portland, you're probably not a nominal Christian.
No, yeah.
Like you probably actually believe this thing and live it.
You have to be committed.
Yeah, exactly.
Whereas the disadvantage to being somewhere in the South may be that it's cultural.
It's like something that we have the language of faith,
but we're not living the behaviors of the faith or the practices of the faith.
In Portland or in the Pacific Northwest,
there's so much antagonism towards the church, towards Christianity.
There's an open receptivity to spiritual things,
but there's an antagonism towards the institutional church.
Yeah.
And so because of that, there's a lot of things that you have to know going in.
It's going to be a battle.
It's going to be a war zone.
And you just have to be ready for those things.
Yeah. That is one thing I feel here is that I think it's very easy for people to become kind of apathetic because they feel comfortable.
And so you have to be mindful here to keep up your spiritual disciplines and not to get comfortable basically.
Right.
But where you are in Portland, you're going to be more challenged.
Yeah.
So if you do choose to follow Christ, you can rise in his grace to the occasion.
Yeah.
And kind of stay more, I think, spiritually sharp.
Yeah, I would argue that actually, I think from the churches that I've witnessed and seen their discipleship pathways,
I would actually argue that the discipleship is strong in Portland.
That's awesome.
Yeah, discipleship is strong.
Evangelism is challenging because that's where we're trying to connect the gospel to the city,
like make it make sense to Portlanders.
So how we do that, right, is contextualizing the gospel.
How do we communicate the gospel in a way that will be comprehensible to people in the city?
So for example, one value of the city is justice.
What does that look like?
Let's talk about it.
What does biblical justice look like?
Let's unravel that.
Can we connect that somehow?
Is there a connection or intersection
to convey what biblical justice is in that context
or where people might be more open to it?
So that's kind of the things that we're looking at
is how do we connect or how do we find these intersections
between biblical truth and doctrine
and the values of the city,
but not compromising, but contextualizing.
What is your, what do you feel like the vision God
has given you for the city and for the church?
I think for the city, I think it's that we want to strengthen the disciples that are always there.
Like I would, even our church, our church is not large.
We're a hundred.
That's still amazing though.
I don't think, it's not about, for me, it's not about how many people.
It's about actually the discipleship and the people that are there.
Because you can have a church with thousands of people and if they're not discipled,
what are they even doing?
You know what I mean?
Yeah, 100%, 100%.
So we want to like really make disciples
who can then make disciples.
Exactly.
Even if they don't come on Sunday,
okay, like I hope they would, right?
But like, that's not the ethos of our culture.
Like Portland is more like,
we wanna get into the cracks and crevices of Portland,
have table fellowship in people's homes
with our neighbors, break bread together.
We want to build relationships,
like relational evangelism is huge.
I love that.
Yeah, because truth propositions are not valued, right?
Your truth is your truth.
My truth is my truth.
Post-modernism at its finest, right?
So we're having to then, okay, like people see truth and friendship in relationships.
So how can we use those as bridging on boards to sharing the gospel with somebody?
Yeah. So your goal is to disciple the church and is to reach the city of Portland.
Yeah. Yeah. With stronger discipleship, I think is how it's going to be made done.
I don't think it'll be by like obviously proclamation. Absolutely. Proclamation of the gospel.
But in building disciples who then make disciples.
Yeah.
And those disciples have to be strong and there needs to be a pathway.
Yeah, it's like strategic.
Yeah.
Yeah, I like that.
And I kind of feel like that's kind of how the early church was anyways.
Because they were in very persecuted cities that were very close to the gospel.
And yet the gospel spread like wildfire.
Yes.
Because under persecution, Christianity does flourish.
It does flourish.
Yeah, look in China.
Look in Iran.
Look in some of the places where it's outlawed.
Right?
And it's like, what are they doing?
How can we like get on track with what the Eastern church is doing where it's like Christianity is not wanted or welcome.
Well, what is it that's causing it to be on fire in these regions?
So like I think that's some of what like when you're in those regions that it's not that welcome to be a Christian.
You have to be firm in it and like you have to know what you believe in and why you believe in it and be willing to die for it.
Exactly.
I think that's the difference.
I know that we have to wrap.
I want to have you come back so we can talk more.
But on your final note,
what would your message be to the people who are listening,
especially the younger generation?
Yeah, I would say seek an authentic Christianity.
Don't live out your faith through your parents
or your grandparents.
Their faith won't save you.
Seek to follow Jesus with all of your heart for yourself
and find out what you believe and why you believe in it.
And don't take someone's word for it
or what the preacher said on Sunday,
like get to the word, like figure it,
like find it the words for yourself,
like seek it out yourself, like what the scripture teaches.
and ignore all the other voices that tell you
that you have to do this or do that.
Like just seek the Holy Spirit, chase God,
and God will do all the rest of it in your life.
That's awesome.
Well, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you.