Telling Stories Well, with Chris Staron

Chris Staron is an award-winning filmmaker, an author, comedian, and podcaster. As host of the Truce Podcast, Chris uses journalistic tools to provide history and context to better understand the Christian church today. He gives us an inside look into his storytelling process, and why the stories we tell are so important.

Connect with Chris at trucepodcast.com

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Transcript

Kay: 0:00

Welcome to Episode 60 of the life admission podcast. My name is Kay Helm. And today My guest is Chris Staron, host of the Truce Podcast. Chris is an exceptional storyteller, and we're going to talk about why he does what he does and how he does what he does. My guest today is Chris Staron, an award winning filmmaker, author, comedian, and podcaster. His heart is for people who are on the outside edges of popular Christianity. Hi, Chris, how you doing?

Chris: 0:33

All right, Kay. Yourself?

Unknown: 0:35

Wonderful. It's a nice sunny day here in Virginia.

Chris: 0:38

Well, it's it's a nice clear day here in Wyoming.

Kay: 0:41

Want to get started? We would love to hear a little about you. I know that obviously, you're a storyteller. But tell us a little more.

Chris: 0:49

Yeah, so I'm an identical twins. So you'll sometimes hear me refer to myself as we, because my brother and I end up doing things all the time. And I just lump it all together, because I'm always with him. That's cool. Like, really great guy. And yeah, so I produced Ron directed and produced two feature length films, two DVDs of shorts, one of which was animated, one of which was live action. I wrote Christian novels. And I've now I'm doing this podcast called truce, which is a history show, about how the Christian Church has interacted with the world and how history impacts us and how we impact history. So I'm just wrapping up a series about how the rise of communism in Russia impacted the American Christian church, which sounds like a snooze fest, but actually is really fascinating when you get into it all the ways that modern Christianity and in the United States has come out of our fear of communism. And when I'm not doing that, I also have, I have to sell fund all of those things. So I almost have always had a second job. And so now I am a school bus driver as well, to help finance the podcast. It's obviously a passion of yours. I don't think I could stop if I wanted to, as far as truus. Because there's, every time I think I'm done with a story, there's there's like four other stories behind that, like, it inspires for more stories. And so I just keep going and going and going, Oh, man. Yeah, that's how it works. Yeah. And even I, I had scheduled out how I was going to end season three, which is about communism, and I now have over a year's worth of topics coming up already listed out. So it's like, yep, I guess I'm gonna keep doing this for a while. Wow. Yeah, storytelling is obviously a big part of who you are, is, yeah, well, I find that it helps me understand how we work as people, which is really important if you have a sort of missions heart and your desire to see people grow in the Lord. But it's also important if you want to understand this kind of wacky time that we're in right now. how we got to where we are, and how we can do better. And it helps if you can understand why we are the way we are and those steps that came in. So I found myself a lot in. I was teaching high school boy, Sunday school, I was involved in adult ministries and stuff, constantly explaining things to folks. And they're like, yeah, nobody's ever told me about the curse of Ham or something like that. And I'm like, what, how am I the only person you know, who knows about this? And I'm, I'm medium intelligence. But I can be a real Dumb Dumb about a lot of stuff. And so it's been a joy for me to learn these things. And they come back and teach them and it's like, oh, I guess maybe I should do a podcast, taking those stories and and trying to tell them to people.

Kay: 3:42

Exactly. And God is good. He had prepared me for this. He And this stories, even those stories, like you said that we don't really think about a lot you gave the example of did actually He'd really drawn e into that whole story and I h the curse of Ham. Yeah. So a little story about when we first d studied it and that's exact y what my response was. It do started the nonprofit that I'm a part of. And so this would be s not exist. Ham was never curs d. In fact, he was blessed! Cana 2006. And I became the leader of this organization that was n was the one cursed. Yeah, tha was gonna impact everything t at we did. What she was really a king is Do you believe that we taking care of education for some kids in Uganda. And Sara, the woman in charge of that program there. She said, I have one question for you. And this was her question to see if she wanted to work with me. And she said, What do you believe about the curse of Ham?

Chris: 4:19

Yeah, and hopefully you said it doesn't exist. You know, when somebody has to ask you that. It's really a wake up moment. It is it's it's sad. But for those of those listening who don't know what the curse of Ham is, when Noah goes through the whole flood and the flood recedes. And they go on to dry land. He has three sons, one of which is named Ham. And there's that whole weird story that everybody skips over in the Bible about him being covered up with his nakedness and then placing a curse. And he's like, we'll just skip that we don't know what that's about. It's actually a very important story, not just in the Bible, but also in real life. So Noah gets up and he curses somebody and says, Your people will be the servants of your brothers. And so then those sons of Noah go in different directions. And Ham is not cursed, his I think it's his son, Canaan that's cursed. And so Canaan ends up being cursed, which is why later in the Bible, the Canaanites are the ones who are killed when the people of Israel come back into Israel, right? everybody's like, Well, why did that happen? It's because of the curse of Canaan. But what got turned into was people pretended, because it's not in the text. It's not there in the text that Ham was cursed. But people pretended that Ham was cursed. And therefore, Ham went down to Africa, and he his people, became Africans, who would then quote, you know, as the theory would go, would then become the servant of all people. And so it was a justification for slavery, especially in the United States, was the story that was, quote unquote, biblical, but is actually not in the Bible and goes a completely different direction if you read the text. So I ended up doing several stories about this and untruths and I, every time I thought I was done, it would come back. I'm like, Okay, fine. We'll talk about the curse of Ham again. But it's one of those little weird stories in the Bible that has a tremendous amount of impact, and apparently is still felt today that it has so many repercussions when that one little twist of God's Word. And I think it really demonstrates a lot. And one of my desires in life is always to say, read the Bible, like yes, and read it for yourself. And it's great to get good teaching and stuff, but always read before the story, read after the story, actually read the whole thing, read the whole Bible, because there's all sorts of stuff like this, that we get taught in popular Christianity that is just not there. It's a real shame that something is so easily disproven comes up time and time and time again. Yeah, and it drives just some really important bad behavior. It really does. It's just it's done a lot of harm and and that's what happens, right? I mean, it's it was the original lie in the garden with the snake asked that question and Eve twisted what God had said, just a little bit, just a little bit off. Did God really say this, that Yeah. Are you find Satan in the New Testament talking to Jesus as being tempted? Did you through using the scripture out of context to try to back his positions? It happens, it really does. So it's one of those things that I found myself actually telling the curse of Ham over and over again, before I started the podcast. And I was like, okay, fine, I guess I need to talk about this on the show. Because we, there's so much freedom and getting around those things and understanding what's going on and where our little hang ups come from. And if you can understand the history behind it, you can make a much more informed decision, and I think be much better equipped in your ministry. The truth is, is so true, and and, you know, when we have these things that we've kind of just heard and absorbed, all our lives, there's doctrine, but then there's culture.

Kay: 8:41

And we call it doctrine. Sometimes we sometimes we will say we justify our culture, by our doctrine when it's actually not. Or it may even be contrary to the actual doctrine, but we won't examine is close enough.

Chris: 8:56

When if you want proof of that, just go into the Sermon on the Mount. And Jesus is saying, you know, love your enemy has turned the other cheek and how many of us in that church we hear our pastors actually not saying turn the other cheek, but get what's yours. And it's all over Christian media and culture, that you're supposed to thrive and all that kind of stuff. But when Jesus is constantly saying, No, no, give give your brother your cloak. Get give your stuff away. If you want even want a subversive message, just just read the Bible for yourself read read the books about Jesus and probably be surprised.

Kay: 9:33

Yes, yes. Yeah, sticking with what he actually says and does is, I think the best policy but not always the easiest way for you.

Chris: 9:43

Of course not. I mean, especially turn the other cheek and we, anytime I'm wrong, I get really angry and you know, I drive a school bus. I am constantly in traffic with people doing ridiculous things because nobody wants to be behind a school bus. Right and the things that people do to get around a school bus unbelievable. So it's been a constant challenge for me just to try to love people from the bus.

Kay: 10:07

Wow, love people from the bus. That sounds like a great book, does it? Yeah.

Chris: 10:15

I've got too many things to do something else to do now, I don't know.

Kay: 10:21

Well, on this show on this podcast, we say find your voice, tell your story, change the world. And one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on is that in your podcast, we've talked a little bit about the subject matter. And I do want to come back to talking about expectations, kind of in Christian media, there's almost a formulaic thing that we expect, and what you don't really do. And that's one of the reasons that I love your show. Oh, praise God. But But the other reason is that your podcast is really more produced than the average podcast mean, my show I have a guest on, we just have a conversation, and I record it. And so that's a really simple production process. still a lot of work. It is but not nearly what in what you do. And so if you've never heard the Truce podcast, what Chris does his he crafts, these stories, I mean, you you do research, and then you might have other people come do voiceovers and play parts, as you kind of recreate some things you may I've seen heard you use recordings of actual historical things. Yeah, you bring all in a sound effects and some music. I mean, it's really highly produced and done with excellence, too. And you could just sit down and riff on these topics, right? You could search and just sit down and talk about it. But how did you make that decision to produce truce the way that you do?

Chris: 11:53

Yeah, well, I have done some episodes that are just interviews. And I'm totally fine with that when it's appropriate. That part of the hard thing in the market that we're in is that we're not used to getting context. It's usually, you know, this is good, this is bad. follow what's good, don't do this. But you don't often find context in the Christian media, or in media in general. And so part of that is I don't want to put people to sleep if I'm talking about the Ad Council, which is actually a profoundly important organization in the United States and in the world. But none of us know who they are, except Oh, well, they created Smokey Bear, or mcgruff, the crime dog. But the goal is always to be like, I need you to be interested long enough that you understand why this thing is important. And so as part of a storyteller, the goal is always to find a way to make it interesting. I think it was Albert Einstein, I may, I may be misquoting this completely, but said that basically, anybody, any average person can understand pretty much anything as long as they have a good teacher. I really do believe that it's true that most any topic can be explained to a person of average intelligence, if they just have somebody who's willing to explain it to them well. And so my goal is always to take this information and a story that generally I think is very exciting, and make it interesting to other people. Like I even did a little bit about the importance of shipping containers.

Kay: 13:20

I heard that one.

Chris: 13:21

Yeah. And we don't think of them as being really important, but they're super important. And they played this huge role in history and in the way that our economics work in this country. So I had to devise a way to make people get interested in shipping containers.

Kay: 13:36

Wow. Yeah. The thoughts that run through my head when I'm listening to the truce podcast are things like, wow, I never thought of that, or I never saw it that way. Those are constant. That's my response all the time.

Chris: 13:52

Yeah. That's the hope. And that's, I mean, it's a tough way to go. In the Christian market, especially I find that people search for topics that they're interested in, they don't really want to be surprised by Oh, wow, this is really interesting. We're just not used to that. And so that's one of the battles I've been facing, as I titled an episode, the Ad Council, the CIA and Christian America, it's like when people may not want to listen to that. It might not be interesting, or the American coup in Guatemala, a very important episode, one of my favorites, but it's hard to get people interested if that's not what they're already looking for. But the shows that I love the most are the ones that you walk away, like, I had no idea that the shipping container was so important, you know, or that 10 commandments, monuments haven't been around forever. I'd like a sense of wonder. I just think it's such a vital way to learn, you know, you continue to learn you got your masters and stuff. You know how important it is as an adult to continue to learn things. And wonder is a great way to do that. To keep people focused. Learning.

Kay: 14:54

Yeah, that's good. You know, like we say, storytelling, it's that you have developed these skills. Have storytelling, you're going through a lot of work to produce something to hold our interest.

Chris: 15:06

Yeah.

Kay: 15:06

What's the process for you to produce a typical episode?

Chris: 15:11

Yeah, well, I generally come up with the idea months and months and months in advance. So I've just got lists of, of ideas, and I try to order them in a spreadsheet. So I get kind of an idea of a logical progression of this leads to that, that leads to that, that leads to that, which can be confusing for the audience, because they'll see me covering things like the New Deal. And they'll be like, Why in the world? Would you talk about the New Deal? Well, in three or four episodes, it's gonna like start featuring and every single thing we talk about, so you really need to understand what it is, or why did we talk about Russia for like six episodes, what's because I don't want you to just judge those people and be like, those ridiculous Russians fell into communism, and there's no logic to how they got there. It's faulty logic. But there is logic. And so it helps us have compassion to see like, Oh, this is how they got there. These are the circumstances and things. And so I'm always kind of looking for a progression in stories so that they try to build on each other. And so once I've gotten that, I just start reading books and listening to podcasts and watching documentaries, get some ideas. And oftentimes, it's too much to give people a lot of what things to walk away with. So I'm trying to generally start the episode with the takeaway, then I work through the story. And about halfway through you reencounter, the thing we talked at the beginning that you thought had nothing to do with the show, at the topic at all, yeah, that comes that comes back up. And then I kind of end with that same takeaway idea. So that during countering that a few different times, and a lot of times I'm interviewing experts in the field who aren't may not even be Christians. And then that, to me is really fascinating and has been exciting, it does impact the download numbers, because a lot of people go like, Oh, you know, my favorite Christian celebrity is on this podcast, I'm gonna go listen to it, you don't get that on my show very. There was an episode I released over Thanksgiving that I released two weeks early, and I had to write the audience like I'm sorry, I've got nothing to put in its place in two weeks. Let's just pretend this is coming out when it's supposed this because you know it's funny because even a simple podcast has a lot of backend stuff that nobody knows about. That's right writing the show notes and uploading it and making graphics and those kinds of things building your website. And so that all that other stuff goes in and I make mistakes, but I i it gives me a lot of hope. I'm so excited for the day that God willing, I can have a staff that would be so great to be able to say you go research this thing. That would be the greatest but I'm kind of a long ways away from that right now.

Kay: 20:02

I for one will be cheering you on. Because I think of truce. I mean, so if you haven't heard Truce, and I know I've tried to describe it, but if you have heard like an NPR podcast, you know, the way they produce things BBC kind of does the same. The there. I mean, there's so like, they have a whole newsroom doing that. So you're doing that solo? Right?

Chris: 20:26

Yeah. Yeah. So they're gonna, you know, that's why the show comes out only every two weeks. And there are some times where I have to have an interview with somebody. I just had an interview with Skye Jethani that came out and I have a few coming up to try and buy myself time. Yeah, yeah, the nice thing about him is he just let him go. I didn't have to be brilliant. He just kind of went and it was great. So it was actually kind of easy. But I do kind of buffer sometimes when I need to buy time. And I'll have to replace them episodes coming up, as well to buy myself some time, because it does take a tremendous amount of time for me to make these episodes. It's hard for me not to do a story in this manner. Because I really love the shows I love to listen to are generally told in this sort of public radio style. And I find them to be really engaging. And it's something that not many people are doing in the Christian market. So there's kind of this, this great opportunity to fill that need.

Kay: 21:20

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What you just mentioned the Christian market. And before we started recording, we talked we were talking a little bit about there are all these expectations. There's kind of when you say, Christian radio, christian movie, Christian TV, right. There's a there's a particular type of program that comes to mind.

Chris: 21:45

Yeah, yeah, for each of those. Yeah. And they're all kind of run by different folks. And the top thing, I did some episodes on this in season two on the Christian film market, and why it is the way it is. And once you kind of understand the back end, the front end makes total sense. For the Christian film world specifically. What's interesting about it is that it is very underfunded, and it has been underfunded basically forever. All of its existence, even though some of them the very first films ever made at all moving pictures were Christian films, going back to the Lumiere brothers, but they've always been underfunded. So part of the problem is how do I make money on this underfunded thing? And movies? Unlike podcasts, a movie is incredibly expensive. No matter what level you make it at. You can't make a cheap film that looks good. And right or sounds good. So how do you pay that back? And the trouble is that in the Christian market, especially now in the world of streaming, it's really really hard to make money because like Amazon Prime, which my films run, we get six cents per hour watched. So if somebody watches my films all the way through, I get nine cents. Wow. Which is terrible. You can't do anything with Wow, do the math and do the math and figure out how many views it would take me to make a one day living wage. And also remember, I had to split that again, across me and my brother. It would be an insane number, like every single person in my state would have to watch the film for me. All right, people get on it. Well, yeah, or to send me 10 cents. So you got that issue, especially now. But in the DVD world back when no Hollywood video or blockbuster were going, I think it was Hollywood video paid you per download hour per viewing when somebody would take the DVD out of the store. Got basically$1 it was a little less than that. But we'll just say it was$1. And so here we are 20 years later, and we're getting nine cents. Wow. Despite all the inflation and the growth. So the market is changing to where are the people who are actually paying money because the streaming, we can't make the money on streaming. So the money is made in rentals. And it was before but now it is becoming more important. Well, it was before COVID Yeah, but the problem with theater rentals is you need a film that will grab bull T and get them in the seats. So I can't remember the one that was about Abby Johnson and oh, unplanned that one was about a pro life movie that came out like two or three years ago, that one got butts in the seats, because it was a pro life film, and it wasn't getting get mainstream stuff. And Fox news was pushing it pretty hard as well. It still did really poorly compared to a normal film, you know, like a Hollywood film. But that kind of sensationalism got it out there. Because it was controversial. They could get the butts in the seats, and they could pay for the thing. If you get a film that's just a nice romantic comedy or something, it's much harder to market. So they're almost there is a there's a temptation to build something that is going to make people angry, so that they will show up. Or the other thing is that you're seeing a lot more building on existing properties. So they'll take an existing book or a movie or song even and they'll make a whole movie based on that existing property. So by So that that person's existing audience will come in and support it. And that sounds like it's really benign, but it actually is to a creative market. It is kind of a death knell. Because if you're being incentivized to only tell stories based on a true story, you're seeing the end of creative stories, original thought. And so yeah, I can go on and on about that. But like the Christian book world is written in a very similar way, it operates off of who is buying stuff. And the people who buy books are generally people who want to be angry, or you're looking at very conservative people, or very charismatic people. Those are your markets. And if you're not angry, charismatic, or conservative, and exactly like they want, people aren't buying the book, so you won't find a publisher. And and that's, that's just sort of the realities of the market. If we wanted to change things, as consumers, we would support the people who are making different materials. But those people are often lower budget. Yeah, because they don't have the big publishing houses and things behind them.

Kay: 26:03

Yeah. So that we there's, you know, at the same time, all that's happening, we got self publishing, is exploding, but then that's kind of like, you never really know what you're going to get.

Chris: 26:12

Yeah, you don't Yeah, and yeah, there's a there's a beauty of the gatekeepers is they kind of thinned the hurt a little bit. Now anybody can get out there. But it also, as an author, having done this myself, part of the problem is that I not only have to be a good writer, and I'm okay. I also have to be a really good graphic designer for the cover. And I have to be a really great proofreader. Because I've got nobody overseeing the the, there's no editorial staff looking at this stuff to it is yeah, and then then you also have to be amazing at marketing your book, which you know, you can't be amazing at all those things. It was kind of the same in the Christian film world. Like I could be a pretty good writer, director, but I'm a terrible marketer. Because I feel like marketing is sleazy. I just don't like doing it. And I shouldn't say all marketers is sleazy. That does, that's not what I meant to say, but I feel sleazy doing it. But we as like independent creators are called on to be all those things, and we're not going to be able to be all of them. Well,

Kay: 27:14

yeah, you can't wear all the hats. You don't get that one thing if we could work in our gifts and bring the people around. And of course, bringing people around to be a part of your project often requires a budget.

Chris: 27:29

It does. Yeah, cuz we got to eat, you know,

Kay: 27:31

exactly.

Chris: 27:34

You know, people have contacted me about being a part of their shows, but I can't, I can't take on yet another. I have three jobs right now. I can't take on another one. So

Kay: 27:44

yeah, we talked a little bit about the expectations of the Christian market and the content that you explore on truce and the way that you give context to things that we don't always think all the way through that really affect our Christian culture. Yeah. And and then you're talking about the gatekeepers, and all these different influences that affect who we're hearing and, and you touched on something I want to go back to where you said, you have to be angry, to get your book published, or your piece out there. When I first started working in the nonprofit world. I had subscribed to a magazine, I don't know if anybody remembers print magazines, but magazine on fundraising. And there's this one episode, this one episode, see, this one issue of this magazine that came in in the cover was about how to raise funds from religious people. And by religious they really meant Christian, it was pretty obvious. And they said that the way to raise money was polarize the issue and to push people toward whatever end, and that that's how you would motivate them to part with their money. And it and like you were talking about marketing, feeling sleazy. That felt really sleazy. I thought, Oh, my gosh, that's not like, that's not what we are called to as Christians is not to go be polarized and angry all the time. And all of these these things, and I really grieved that.

Chris: 29:21

Yeah. Yeah, I do, too. Our greatest inhibitors for sharing the gospel right now is that we're so focused on creating an enemy. What I like to say is those people, if those people didn't exist, then this whole country would be great, and the church would be wonderful. And that's not true. The reality is that Jesus died for us, and then died for them as well. So I had a guest on a few years ago, who said, even if you believe that Muslims are your enemy, Jesus commanded you to love your enemy. So there's no way that you can get out of saying, Oh, well, I don't have to pay attention to those people. I don't have to share the gospel. There's no secret door, there's no loophole out of this. You are to love all of the people. And you are to share the gospel to all nations, regardless of who you think those people are. Fact I would say, be if you have those people in your life, maybe that's who you need to be focusing on. Maybe that's who God has called you to minister to? I don't know. I'll get off that soapbox. But I think that's, that's really valuable in this time, when so many people, I'm not a great evangelist, I'm actually pretty bad at it. But I try. And when I do end up talking to non Christians, a lot of the times it ends up coming around to politics and economics and those kinds of things and not having to do with Jesus at all. And my goal is generally to be exception to what they think a Christian is, because they think of Christians as being these bullies and these jerks. And if I can be the exception and be like, No, I'm, I'm a human being. I'm a flawed human being, by I'm a human being who has a relationship with the Creator. And that's a pretty cool thing. I think that's way better than me just listing all of their sins. I don't think that's as effective.

Kay: 31:52

Yeah, it's, I don't think it's ever helpful to get into those they conversations. I mean, when we turn somebody into the other, or into they know that other group, have spent time with genocide survivors, I've studied it a bit, not not an expert, but I've been around it in the end the work that we do, and it always starts with making those divisions and polarizing people and scapegoating. And the name, just the dehumanization, in the language that we use. When we start calling names. When we don't refer we don't have a real relationship. And we teach it's not ours, but it's used in reconciliation programs around the world is this journey of journey of healed trauma journey of unhealed trauma, the only the The main difference between the two models is the storytelling. Yeah, that just tells you how important that is, like literally people live and die on our stories that we tell, really do.

Chris: 33:01

They really do. And that's a scary thing. I mean, you look at our political situation. Now, people believe the story that the election was stolen in the United States, and it was clearly disproven, easily, easily disproven. And what it did on January 6, will storming the Capitol was based on the power of a story. Not backed by facts, but it aligned with what they wanted to believe and created a day that those people, those democrats or whatever, are, are bringing this country down and there and the reason I am I No, don't have the job I want or I'm not as wealthy as I want to be, or the world doesn't look like it did when my grandparents were alive is because of those people. And so I'm going to go storm and capital stories have a real impact, which is, again, it's one of the reasons I think that teachers are going to be judged harsher. Because what we do, has a huge impact on people. So I think it's, it's vitally important that we as teachers, encourage folks to look deep. Like what I like to say is, oftentimes the problem that you're having with somebody is not the real problem. So it's like, if you get an argument with a loved one, we argue with our loved ones the most, because we love them, and they're close to us. So you may be upset that somebody didn't, you know, do the dishes. But what in reality, what's behind that is you're upset that they forgot your birthday, you know, and so maybe your reaction about the dishes is way over the top, because it's not really the main issue. There's something behind that. But I think what we, as Christian teachers can do is try to encourage people to look for that issue that's behind something, rather than seeing the symptoms of that thing. So, you know, if you're, you know, the Bible does call homosexuality a sin, for example, but in the Christian world, that that sin, and there's a lot of sins that all of us fall into, that sin has been elevated above all the other ones to be like the mark of the beast and that when it's not, you know, and so we should be doing is seeing what's behind that, that thing that sin and trying to minister the people, rather than to just be able to write them off as like, Oh, I can't talk to you because you have this one sin that I don't struggle with that.

Kay: 35:23

Oh, yeah, you know gossip isn't that same list?

Chris: 35:25

I think it is. Yeah. When you look at you look at the words of Jesus and and then the Pharisees are all proud of themselves because they they haven't committed adultery. And what does Jesus say? Well, if you have lusted after a woman in your heart, then you have committed adultery with her and honest to goodness, that's going to put all of us into those categories. All of us are adulterers, if you've ever seen somebody who's good looking, probably committed adultery in your heart. And so we, we forget that that levels, the playing field, and that's a scary thing to think that I am on the same level as every other sinner. But it's also very freeing as a believer to be like, Okay, well, now I no longer have to be all judgy I can just go out there and be Christ to people. And there's so much freedom. I don't know, I got the soapbox in a second. But I feel like one of the things that should bind us together as Christians is that we have all admitted that we are sinners, that we we pray, but then we pretend like we aren't, or we haven't been centered. And that's really dangerous. You know, we have to remember that Christ has saved all of us. And if but for the grace of God, we would all be lost in our sin. So we have no reason to be as high and mighty as we are. So anyway, end up end of soapbox.

Kay: 36:49

Well, it's it's truth, right? And that's, that's what we're responsible to do is to tell the truth, and people don't always want to hear that. But like you said, as teacher that's, that's our responsibility. And so thank you for doing that. I want to encourage people check out truce, sit down and enjoy a few. It's, it's great for binge listening. You don't have binge Listen, I mean, the episodes are, what, 20-30 minutes.

Chris: 37:15

They're between 20 and 40 minutes.

Kay: 37:17

Yeah, okay. They're not so long and heavy that you know, and there's they're really interesting, but go in with it with an open mind and ready to learn something. And context and context is so important, especially in this day and age, it's hard to find. So thank you for doing that hard work. There's one episode that I recently listened to, that I loved that you were using material from a book that you'd use to research the topic. But in rather than just quoting the book, or even reading from the book, or having somebody voice over what the author had said, you went and found the author and interviewed him. And so we got to hear what he had to say, and just those extra steps in a lot. I know, I'm thankful for that effort. And I hope that that does pay off for you sooner rather than later. It's so good quality work like this good quality storytelling, and I'm talking to all yell, all you content creators out there, do the good work, and also realize that it that that is work that you should be getting paid for. And it's okay to get paid.

Chris: 38:28

And it's Yeah, it's important because as we were talking in the pre interview, I recently realized that I'm kind of poor, and it can be a really scary thing. I think a lot of content creators live in that space. And we all know what it's like to have somebody come up and say, oh, would you do this thing for me for free, and they try to guilt you into it, but you deserve to be paid. And I think there's a lot of backup in Scripture for that. Yeah. You know, the ox should not be muzzled while it reaps, you know, yeah.

Kay: 38:56

in ministry and nonprofit we get the it's kind of the same. Same type of thing. I'm right there with you.

Chris: 39:01

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it's thing that's so unfortunate, because we like, we like to have missionaries look sufficiently happy and also sufficiently poor. And like, the worst possible thing we can imagine is a is a missionary who's well funded, because we love those stories of like, Oh, I got down to my last dollar, and then God sent a check. Well, I think those stories are actually really sad. Because it's like, well, imagine what they could do if they didn't have to go from check to check. It's kind of a dehumanizing thing.

Kay: 39:30

I love the stories where the missionary has, what they need to get where they're going and do what God's called them to do. And then we get to see God moving and providing in somebody else's life, you know, and think that the stories we get then.

Chris: 39:44

Yeah, I know, they're not as dramatic. But, you know, it's what we could do if our missionaries were well funded. I guess we could talk about that forever.

Kay: 39:52

But yeah, well, for those of you interested in that conversation, the show before this one is my interview with Mary Valloni who is a fundraising coach for missionaries,

Chris: 40:03

That's it. Yeah. Good plug. Good cross promotion there.

Kay: 40:07

That's right. Chris, thank you so much for being on all the links are gonna be in the show notes. And so you'll be able to find the truce podcast and connect with Chris on the different social media areas and do go give that a listen. And let us both know what you think.

Chris: 40:24

Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. Kay, this has been great.

Kay: 40:28

As always, the show notes are at lifeandmission.com This is Episode 60. So you'll find the notes at lifeandmission.com/60. Hey, if you enjoyed this show, and if especially if you check out Chris's podcast, why don't you go on and review both of them? That would really be awesome. And it would help us both out. That's how podcasts grow is when you share it with your friends and when you write a review. So that's why we talk about this thing so much. And that wraps it up until two weeks from now when we'll be back with another episode. This has been the life and mission podcast I'm Kay Helm. Find your voice. Tell your story. Chang the world.