My first viral video (if you can call 280 views viral…)

Just a while back, I posted a video talking about Mark Driscoll’s banned church planting video, and how after I watched it, the Lord convicted me to stop wasting my time playing World of Warcraft, and I started focusing my attention on reading some good theology books, encouraging Pat to take up the mantle of Pastor, spending lots of time with the home group I’ve been a part of since I moved back to Chico (which I was also a part of before I left!), and learning some old hymns on the guitar; all of this working towards planting our new church, Sovereign Joy Christian Fellowship.

Last Friday I started noting a rapid increase in the number of views my video was getting. Now, I know it’s only like one-tenth of a percent of the kind of exposure that people like Nalts or Perez Hilton get, but still—it’s a lot for me!

A handful of people from the Mars Hill community in Seattle e-mailed me to thank me for the video, saying it was a great encouragement to them. Scott Thomas, director of the Acts 29 Network, was the one who actually journeyed to Florida to bring the ill-fated DVDs to the conference, and he dropped me a short note to tell me my testimony made the whole fiasco worthwhile!

Then I got another comment from someone on the video team, who was also very encouraged to hear that the video was actually making an impact somehow. From this, I figured someone up in Seattle must have been passing my video around, and that must by why I got so many views… Turns out, Mark Driscoll himself apparently watched it and got a kick out of it, and then he posted a link on their church’s private member-only forum!

Awesome! Although I am a little embarrassed now that I know he’s seen it, because of all those times I leaned into the camera and said, “This guy’s hardcore!” But it’s super encouraging to learn that I’m being an encouragement to them, you know? It’s like a special kind of encouragement that goes both ways, because when they express how encouraged they are, it reciprocates and I am encouraged right back! This is like a super-cool trick that Jesus designed into the body of Christ that somehow is much too rare these days!

You can watch it here if you haven’t already, and make sure you rate it 5 stars!!!

It sure would be nice if the Resurgence would approve it on YouTube page as a video response to the original Driscoll video. That’s probably how they found out about it in the first place, because I submitted the video as a comment. But it’s not showing up on their page… Oh well. God is sovereign! And it’s not about us anyway!