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Yes Catholic
Yes Catholic is focused on highlighting stories of people who rose up and started truly living as a Catholic. Stories are powerful. You really never know who could be inspired through listening to someone's personal story of conversion. As St. John Paul II said, "Remember that you are never alone, Christ is with you on your journey every day of your lives!" Join us every week as we invite a new guest to share their story. Real People. Real Stories. All Grace.
Yes Catholic
Truth Charting the Digital Frontier with John Donahue
Today's episode is more than a conversation; it's an expedition into the heart of a movement driven by faith and innovation. We navigate the digital landscape through the eyes of our guest, a filmmaker and youth minister who found their calling in the beatification of Blessed Carlo Acutis and their passion for storytelling.
John recounts his faith journey, from playful explorations of green screen technology to profound moments of prayer in the most unexpected places, like a dusty cave. Witness the transformation from a production assistant navigating the challenges of secular film sets to a visionary embracing the role of a 'digital missionary,' aiming to chart uncharted territories in the pursuit of truth alongside today's youth.
Join us as we gather insights on adapting ministry to the pulse of Gen Z, acknowledging the necessity to meet them where they are — online. We probe the essence of impactful digital evangelization, where success isn't measured by numbers, but by the depth of connections made and lives touched. As we conclude, our hearts unite in prayer for the youth, and an invitation to explore the resources at truthcharting.com.
Welcome to yes Catholic, the place where real people share their real stories and realize that it is all God's grace on the move. I'm your host, david Patterson, and every week we hear new guests share their story of how they came to give their guests to Jesus and his church. So let's get started.
Speaker 2:Sure, absolutely. So. Right now, I run an Instagram account called Truthcharting. Its main mission is to show young people that being Catholic isn't boring. So that's the current mission right now. What we do is we try to make content that is comparable to secular media. So what I do is I go out and I find the most compelling and most successful content creators in the secular realm and I try to catholophize it, just make it interesting, and try to find cool things happening within the Catholic church that are very exciting and highlight those for young people, and spend an absolute blast just the past two years because I get to just do. I've always wanted to be a YouTuber since I was a middle schooler, so it was an absolute joy. But, yeah, that's the main mission right now and it's really starting to. It just started being my full time job last year, so, yeah, it's a joy.
Speaker 1:Let's get to know you a little more. With the rapid fire youth ministry, you're probably you're ready for this. Yeah, all right. Describe yourself as a kid in three words.
Speaker 2:Okay, fun, happy and hyper.
Speaker 1:Hyper. Okay, would you say you're a morning person or a night owl?
Speaker 2:Morning person.
Speaker 1:Morning person Like to wake up early. Okay, if you could have any superpower, what would it be? Teleportation. It's funny, it's a common response, it's good yeah. I just want to be on the plane for hours and hours to get to a different country Travel is the best.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like traveling, but I don't like flying that much.
Speaker 1:Understood. Okay, go to order at a coffee shop Iced vanilla latte. Could it be seasonal? Do you switch it up based on?
Speaker 2:season. I do, I do. I do subscribe to the pumpkin spice latte when it's in season. That is my yeah and I'm proud to say it.
Speaker 1:No judgment here tonight. It's all good, go to shore prayer Maybe the Anna McCrissy, anna McCrissy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, soul of Christ, sanctify me that one.
Speaker 1:Do you ever have a prayer as you're editing Just?
Speaker 2:curious. Oh, great question. No, not usually. Not like a rote one. Very often before I film I will ask the Holy Spirit to come in, but it'll usually just be kind of like a freestyle.
Speaker 1:Come Holy Spirit kind of deal. Yeah, that's cool man. Do you have a favorite book of all time or one of oh, great question.
Speaker 2:The Bronze Bow was one that I read pretty early on. That was one of the first books I ever read. Was the Bronze Bow? Do you know about it? I don't, no, okay, it was pretty cool. It's like a historical fiction about a kid who grew up at the same time as Jesus was like walking around. So like Jesus has a cameo in the story, but it's not about him, it's about this kid.
Speaker 1:Interesting, so it's a kid's book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's like a young adult situation, okay.
Speaker 1:I'll have to check it out. All right, if you could have coffee with any saint, who would it be Blessed?
Speaker 2:Carlo Acudis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was your quote, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, big, big like devotion to Blessed Carlo Acudis. He's kind of one of the main motivators behind what I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and do you ask for his intercession as you go about your day as well?
Speaker 2:Not on my day to day I wish I did. I should more. But the main story there was when he got beatified. I was watching his live stream and I was just like bawling my eyes out because he was. There was a sense of like he was just an ordinary kid who, just like, accepted God's grace at every moment he could, and then he was inspiring tons and tons of millions of people around the world and me, just another kid around the world in America a couple years after he passed away Right. And then I had an opportunity to go to Italy and sit next to his grave and just a very, very beautiful moment in prayer there regarding truth charting and the mission that I feel called to and what he did with creating his website on Eucharistic Miracles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I believe he is a powerful intercessor for our generation. Right, yeah, okay. Last one If you could ask God one question, what would it be?
Speaker 2:Why did you make mosquitoes Right Get?
Speaker 1:that yeah, especially up here in Canada, man, it's next level, or are they bad up there? I mean, it depends where you are.
Speaker 2:But you know they're slower up north. The mosquitoes down here in Florida they're like they zip, they go really fast and they're a little bit smaller. But whenever I go up to Ohio those things are huge. It's fun, fun little fact for you yeah, tuesday night.
Speaker 1:Little fun fact of the day. All right, man. Well, you flew through the rapid fire. Let's kick things off with an open prayer, yeah, and then we'll have you share your story in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen, come Holy Spirit, come Holy Spirit, come Holy Spirit, amen. The name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen. All right, man, let's dive right in. Where's your story begin?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I grew up in a really pretty devout Catholic family here in Orlando, florida, and it was homeschooled grown up, so I had a lot of free time. I would finish my schoolwork usually around like 10 or 11 or something like that.
Speaker 1:So I would have a lot of free time.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, man, homeschooling is goaded Loki. Everyone should look into it. Well, not everyone should do it, but it's it worked out very well for me. I can always vouch for it.
Speaker 1:This is not paid sponsorship, but go on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so really beautiful family, really wonderful parents. And then I have three siblings. I'm the youngest and we would go to this camp every year since I was one. This camp up in Ohio called the Apostolate for Family Consecration and this camp was just like a Catholic campground, where you could go on retreat with your family for a whole week, and so everyone who's there is like this is their vacation for the year. And it was just a beautiful, beautiful place. It was my favorite place in the world. I mean, these people were wonderful people. It was always a blast and everyone's always in a good mood because, like they're on vacation, we're here to to have a good time, to go to Daily Mass, to pray together, to, you know, be as a family and to hang out with your friends, right. And I had this wonderful view growing up of this extraordinary goodness that existed within Catholicism, this extraordinary beauty within Catholic community as well. So I I got to see that growing up, and then I would come home to Orlando, and Orlando is a pretty like new diocese. There's not a whole lot of Catholic history in Orlando just because it's a new city period. So there is like there was wonderful, wonderful people down here as well that we were really good friends with.
Speaker 2:But I always would point to that camp as being the place where I really was introduced to like dedicated devout Catholic community and just like I was able to see so much vibrance and life in the spirit up at that camp. So I was. I was involved with my youth group as well. It was pretty typical like Catholic youth group kid and then when I was 17, I went up and I volunteered at that camp and this is like when stuff really started to to like start a fire in me was I got to experience the Holy Spirit doing beautiful things in the lives of these young people at the camp and the lives of the whole family. Is, you know, watching people really just healed from like stuff that they were dealing with with their parents on on adoration night? Their parents would like write them letters and stuff and we would get to see just a lot of young people have wonderful experiences with the Lord there. So I came home from volunteering at that camp, which was a life changing experience, and I, yeah, that was probably the best summer of my life, even the most, even though we were high.
Speaker 2:I was high school missionary, so like we had a pretty like, pretty strict chaperone system or you know, like camp counselor system. Like we, it was strict Basically, we weren't like we weren't considered to like have a whole lot of freedom, but that was for me. That was my first time spending anything over a week away from home without my parents, so for me it was a very freeing experience. And so that's like my first thing that I point to is like me making my faith my own and like choosing it and being like, yep, this is, this is for me. Yeah, making it personal, exactly, yeah. And I continued helping out at retreats with my local parish and I had known from the age of eight that I wanted to go into filmmaking because I was homeschooled and when I was done with school I would watch YouTube tutorials on how to film and how to edit and how to do visual effects. So, but how did that?
Speaker 1:start Like what inspired you to actually just decide to go on YouTube and start looking that up.
Speaker 2:Well, there was a movie called the Crocodile Hunter with Steve Irwin yeah, and I watched the behind. We had the DVD with the special features on it and I would watch the behind the scenes and I saw a green screen and I was fascinated by the fact that they could just replace the background. So my entire filmmaking journey started with me trying to do green screen work on my oh yeah, gateway 4GB RAM PC at home, which was just like yeah, it was a blast, it was very slow, but I did learn how to do it. So that's how it began and that's where my interest began in it.
Speaker 2:And it just all took off from there. By the time it was time for me to graduate high school. I was really dead set on doing film, but I wasn't sure if film school was going to be the vibe, and my mother was a incredible intercessor for us. My mother was constantly praying for us, as was my father Really good parents, I can't stress that enough. And so one day and I knew that she had been praying about this I was visiting film schools. I had flown out to California to check one out, but it wasn't like. I was like it's okay, I guess, but I feel like I wouldn't. Yeah, I just wasn't vibing with it.
Speaker 2:I guess we get a letter in the mail and it wasn't in an envelope, it had just been put in there, it was just like a no stamp, nothing, just like a piece of paper. And it was a letter that said I'm a location scout for TV shows and commercials, we're filming something nearby and we would like to use your property to park our catering trucks on. We're going to have a crew of 50 here. And so it was a letter that I basically asking my parents to rent their property out to have as a base camp for a nearby television show, and so my mother contacted them and basically said if you let my son intern on your set next in the coming weeks, I will let you guys use our property. And so they rented our property. I was invited to be an intern on the shoot, and after that they invited me to come back for their shoot. That was at a different location, and then after that they started hiring me as a production assistant to just work on commercials.
Speaker 1:Mama knows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was like a really, really big deal, because people are going to film school just to get an opportunity like that and it just was quite literally handed to me. So that's one thing that I'm very grateful and really attribute to the intercession of my mom. Yeah, so I started working freelance film gigs, commercials, tv shows, movies, stuff like that here in Orlando, decided not to go to film school because I was already working my way up in it.
Speaker 2:And I was like, oh, it was scary, it's pretty cutthroat of the film industry. So if you like, yeah, it can be cutthroat, especially in LA. The Orlando film industry is a little bit more chill. But yeah, it was a little bit interesting because I was homeschooled and Catholic growing up, so not necessarily like used to the secular way of life, so there was a little bit of like getting used to just getting used to secular workforce stuff and the language on film sets can be pretty like you know it's film, there's not a whole lot of morals going on there. And actually one day we were working on a commercial for an insurance company and there was like a Ouija board on set and it was after like an 18 hour day that I had been there and I had gotten there at 5 AM and it was nearing like 1 AM.
Speaker 2:Now I don't know if I did that math right, but I realized that I was putting my heart and soul, blood, sweat and tears into this, the film industry, trying to work my way up and like I just can't get behind the stuff that we're making. Like the stuff we're making like I have no say over A lot of it's just like corny commercials. And yeah, the experience was really cool. I loved getting to see you know 50 person sets with super duper expensive equipment and lights and stuff like that, but I just couldn't get behind the content we were making. So I decided to kind of like take a step back and just try to be more selective with the jobs that I took in film and began working for my.
Speaker 2:I got it. My pastor offered me a job at our parish as a communications coordinator. Okay yeah. That was a wonderful season. I actually really, really enjoyed working for the parish, so I would make the bulletin run, the website, social media videos, all that stuff. Yeah, really good stuff. So I worked there for three years. By the third year I had started going full time there and was also added as a youth minister at the church, so it was like a co-youth coordinator.
Speaker 1:Well, you're doing communications and youth ministry at the same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I was like the parish resident young person, so I was just kind of like yeah all the tech stuff I would take care of, and then also all of like some of the youth ministry stuff that I had like a. Basically the way that the youth ministry thing worked was I would kind of like plan the youth nights and emcee them, and then I had a co-youth minister that would take care of like all of the logistics of it, which was like, honestly, it was a blast. I didn't have to worry about how the food got there or like how the permission slips got signed. I just got to show up and make the content for the night.
Speaker 1:But yeah, that was juggling all that. I mean, I was a youth minister for like close to seven years. That's a lot right there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, it was a lot. It was a pretty small youth group. It wasn't like a huge deal, and I also had some help in the communications department by the time that I started doing youth ministry as well. That's good, yeah.
Speaker 2:So one day I got a call while I was working at the church. It was from a family friend that we knew from that camp that I had grown up going to. His name is John Andrew Orwork. He owns a production company and he had ran across some TikTok that I had made in 2020. And it was.
Speaker 2:It had nothing to do with the faith, it was just like a funny TikTok where I bought a billboard in the TikTok just for a meme and it showed up on his For you page and it was like he was just really impressed by the creativity and the fact that it was very outside the box. And I hadn't talked to him in years but he knew I was in the film, so he called me and he just asked what I was up to. He told me he was really impressed with the fact that he saw my video on TikTok and we began conversations over the next few weeks about basically, he just saw potential in me and really encouraged me to take a leap of faith and to just really get back into film in a very dedicated way. So I expressed my desire to him, like my main desire, like if I could be doing whatever I wanted right now, I would start a YouTube channel that was a Catholic YouTube channel that showed people that being Catholic isn't boring, and I would do. You know the YouTube channel yes Theory Not familiar man. No, okay, there's a.
Speaker 2:There's a YouTube channel called yes theory and it's a group of guys who just travel around the world and do really crazy stuff. They'll do like 24 hours in Paris with no wallet and they just get like sent there. All they have is their passport and they like don't have anything and they have to like find a place to stay and have to ask strangers to buy food for them, things like that. So they do these really interesting things and they were getting very successful at the time. So I was like okay, so there's a, there's a market for it. Their format of video works, people watch it, it gets views and they're secular, but they're encouraging people to get outside their comfort zone.
Speaker 2:Their entire like motto was seek discomfort. So and I was like I love that If I could steal it I would. So the that's when I told John Andrew that, yeah, if I could be doing anything I wanted, that's what I would be doing. And John Andrew encouraged me to take the leap of faith. He said, john, I'm 30 now and you're 21. And if I could tell myself at 21 anything, I would say take more risks. Take the risk now, take it early on, because if you're 21 and you go broke and you go live with your parents, again nobody cares. You're 21. That's expected. But if you're 30 and you go broke and you go live with your parents, then then it's a little bit different. So I it was scary, but I went for it. I quit my job at the parish, which I loved, but I just felt like a fire and I felt like I could do more.
Speaker 1:So I started working on the piece when you made that decision to take that leap. Like what was that like for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there. It was also like I did love my job at the parish. It was also stressful and in some ways it was hard to see and this is where truth charting like came out of was I would see 80 90 kids a year go through confirmation class and that was their only view of Catholicism was the classroom. And that's like that's not the catechist's fault, that's not the DRE's fault, that's not necessarily, that's not necessarily even the parish's fault. You know, you could, you could look at the parents. You could say like, why, why do we not see these kids at Sunday Mass? But what I realized is like the kids live on their, on the phone and the statistics show that the kids in that age range and that age range are spending seven to eight hours a day on their phone. So my, my brain started like turning and I was like, ok, how can I show them the vibrant view of Catholicism that I had growing up? How can I show them this like exciting and not boring and really fun way of life? Like how can I bring that to them? And there was amazing opportunity there with with YouTube, with online content, for me to be able to tell a really good story and put it in front of them. So I I thought about it as like, ok, like when you, when you start any business, you think about what's going on in your life. And when you start any business, you think about where is my target audience? Like, where does my target audience live? If you're going to sell military surplus, it makes sense to go near military base For me. If I'm going to mission to young people, they live on the Internet, so it makes sense to start start the business there. So I started truth charting based off of yes Theory and we I think I'm trying to remember what our first video was so John Andrew basically kind of joined the team and just he was like a mentor for me and he got me a lot of film work to pay the bills, basically while I was trying to build truth charting up.
Speaker 2:So for the past two years I've been doing freelance film work, camera operation in the Catholic promotional film sector. So I left secular film and went into just Catholic stuff, which is like travel shoots, maybe like five to 10 people cruise at most. But and that was also a blast I love that too. So we we just started making these fun YouTube videos. I would go out to these caves with my friends and we would do a worship session inside the cave and film and record it. And then we would go make our own retreat out in the woods and record that. And then one time on the way to the retreat, we got caught in a flash flood and the Lord just started like offering story lines to me as I would be out on these, like these fun little adventures that I was filming, the Lord just began to confirm that what I was doing was, you know, probably as well, because of the story lines that he was like offering me for for what I was doing and it was just like a little bit too convenient. So I was like, ok, I will, I will continue if this is what you want. And let's see, I went.
Speaker 2:I had an opportunity to go to Peru a couple years ago and that was a really big like turning point in my life. Basically, I didn't have a passport and I didn't have the money to go and I told my mom about this opportunity and my mom is like, kind of she was the worry type. She would be like you know, john, maybe you should like, maybe you should just stay in the country. That was kind of like my mom's main like function was like she would worry about her children and she like didn't really want us to go do dangerous things. But when I told her about this mission trip she was like I think you should go. And I was like, okay, if mom, if, like my mom, the worrier, is telling me to go on this mission trip, like there must be something spiritual going on that I should really read into.
Speaker 2:So I looked into how I could get a passport in two weeks and that's like pretty miraculous, that's like that's a tough thing to do to get a passport that quickly. And I was able to just like pull some strings and like buy a plane ticket, like I just bought the cheapest international plane ticket I could buy. And I showed up in Miami at the passport office with a plane ticket and I was like I have a plane that leaves in 72 hours. Can I get a passport? And that worked. So, yeah, you have to make an appointment and there's some other things, but it did work. Yeah, I got it at my passport. And then a very generous couple that we know from our parish, just like they found out that I was going and they're like oh yeah, we'll sponsor you, like we'll pay for you. Wow, yeah, it was an absolute joy.
Speaker 2:So I went on that trip and the trips on my YouTube channel. It was really fun and adventurous and beautiful and spiritual, and when I came home, I ended up moving in into a house with all of the guys that I went on that mission trip with Like all of the guys that were on that trip. We all moved into the same house when we came back to Orlando and that's where I live now. That's where I'm recording. It's this men's house. I live with seven other guys. I think if they're still here, they're downstairs watching this live on the TV. What's up, boys? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Shout out to Jeff. Shout out to Jeff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of the story and that's kind of where I am now. And then just recently, about a year ago, I had an opportunity. One of my roommates got married and moved out and he went to Italy and they were planning to meet the Pope. So they also flew me out to take photos with them, take photos for them, and so I made some truth-joining content while I was out there.
Speaker 2:And that's when I got to sit next to Blessed Carlo Acutis' tomb, and this was another really big turning point, for truth-jarding was basically I sat there and I had such a beautiful experience while I was in Italy because I didn't get a SIM card on purpose. I just didn't want to use my phone. So the only time I could use my phone is if I could find Wi-Fi up there. And so I just had this beautiful experience off of my phone and I was walking around Italy in the beautiful countryside in a CC. So I was just sitting there next to Carlo Acutis' tomb, like praying about, like, is what I'm doing actually good for humanity?
Speaker 2:Like, is what I'm doing with online content actually encouraging people to use their phones more? Is this bad? Is this like? Is what I'm doing like, ultimately, just what I want? Is it just for the fame? Is it just for the cloud? Is it just because I always wanted to be a YouTuber? And I just asked that question and I just got answers immediately and I was like no, it was like I looked at a beatified saint soon to be saint right in front of me, who had created a website documenting Eucharistic miracles to try to show people that the Eucharist is real and that Jesus was serious when he was talking about it in the Bible, and it was just a justification. It was like it was a permission slip for me to be doing what I'm doing and I definitely I wept in a really big way once again and that just really solidified that connection with blessed Carlo Acutis that I had already felt during his beatification about a year prior.
Speaker 1:And was there a word that you received during that time that led you to tears?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it was just like the permission, Because until that point I had always been wrestling with this. This doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of support or encouragement in this area because there's so much pushback on social media in the Catholic world. You'll tell somebody you run a social media ministry and usually they'll be like oh yeah, I don't use social media and that's good, Don't. But there's a certain calling and there's people there, and where there are people, there are often people called to be missionaries to those people. And so that was just a huge permission slip and justification that what I'm doing is OK. And not only is it OK, but it is in fact what I'm called to do.
Speaker 2:So that's why I cried was because I was kind of unsure about that until that moment when it was really just confirmed and the Lord asked me to go about it in a radical way, in a totally surrendered way and in a all in. It was about going all in, and so I think in that moment I was just kind of like, yeah, I was looking for something radical to do, and my hair was about as long as it is now when I was there. So I just like, as soon as I was done with Blessed Carlo Cudas. I went up to the balcony in the Airbnb that I was staying in. I just like shaved I didn't shave my head, but I like cut my hair. I cut a bunch of my hair off just as like a radical step to remind myself that that happened. So that was a really cool and it was also just super dramatic and I'm kind of like that I like to just make dramatic moves to remind myself and also just as like symbolic gestures I think are really important.
Speaker 1:So, being all in, I love that image that you used in the recent video about the island. You kind of want to speak to that a little bit. Yeah, absolutely Love that image that you used. Man, it was fire.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you, yeah, the image is basically Gen Z uses the internet as if it's a place that they go. It's no longer like a tool that you use every once in a while, but this is really a place that we live, for better or for worse. We're doing business here, we're playing here, we're entertained here, we're connecting with people here. We're talking to people. Basically, almost everything that you do in the real world. They're making ways for you to do it online, and so more and more people are going to live there. Is that a good thing? Is a great question, and the answer is pretty obvious probably not, but the fact of the matter is there's people there, and even if there's an island that's going to sink and it has thousands and thousands of people on it, it seems consistent with the Lord's heart that he would send missionaries to that island to make sure that those people know the Lord. Yeah, I remember, yeah.
Speaker 2:So basically, the question that was raised to me a couple of years ago from a friend was do we sanctify the island or do we evacuate it? Do we try to make this island like a Catholic place? Do we try to baptize it and make it beautiful and try to push down all the sin and the crap that's on the internet and try to uphold the goodness, or do we just try to get everyone off of it? Are we just there? Are we only on the island to try to ship people off of it?
Speaker 2:And then when you read some of the church documents on New Evangelization, it's not really saying that this is a bad thing. It's saying that actually we have a great opportunity here with the internet. And so I think the answer to the question is both. I think we're trying to sanctify the island and we're also trying to make sure that people realize that this isn't real life. This is like you shouldn't live here, because it's not the life that God gave you. This is a man-made, virtual reality and it can be used in a good way, and that's what we try to do, you and I and a bunch of other really awesome Catholic creators that we get to work with here. But I think the answer to the question is both. We need to try to make this a better place and also get people to go live a life.
Speaker 1:I love that. And how did you come up with the? I don't know if you shared already, but you came up with the name of Truth Charting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the name came to be in conversations with my older brother, jim, and my confirmation sponsor, joseph. Originally we were going to start like a trio with it. Eventually it ended up just being me, because they both got jobs and did what they had to do. We made a couple pillars of what we wanted this to be like, and Truth Charting really resonated with me because of the word. Charting is like discovering. You get to go adventure and make a map. That's what charting means is to go uncharted territory. You're making a map of an area that is already there, but you're going to discover it. And then what are we charting? It's truth. We want to bring people to the truth of the matter, and the truth of the matter is that life with Christ is an absolute bonkers adventure and it's not boring.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, that's amazing. Sorry, I didn't know that part. That's fire. Yeah, thank you. The uncharted territory as a digital missionary? Yeah, I did not realize that. I love that explanation. One of the questions that came in earlier in the week was how do you edit your videos? What inspires your storytelling style? Nice, want to speak to that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I edit my videos. What I do when I'm searching for editing techniques is I will try to find the best of the best in the secular realm of social media Instagram, youtube. One of the things I didn't mention was that somewhere along the lines it was right around where I had visited Blessed Carlo as a tomb I switched from making long form YouTube videos to making short, torn short form videos on Instagram and TikTok. That is when Truth Charting actually gained popularity and became my full-time job. A few months later was because of that pivot from long form to short form. We hope to get back to long form eventually, but right now, the short form is working really good. Basically. There's a point where I realized that the Gen Z as a whole watches short form way more. That's when the pivot was made.
Speaker 2:I started looking for editors and content creators that were making short form content really, really well and really really high quality and made their viewers feel invested into. That was what I was looking for. When I was looking for reference creators. I basically just gathered a bunch of techniques from some of the high quality creators that I had found in the secular world. I started implementing them in my own talking head videos.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite ones that I actually really want to touch on is all of my talking head videos. They have an AI-generated ceiling and an AI-generated desk. The only part of the video that is actually filmed on my camera is this section that you see right here, then everything above. That's why, if you go by and you look through all of my talking head videos on my channel, on my Instagram account, you'll see that the ceiling is going to be different in pretty much every one. That's just a fun little Easter egg that a few people have noticed, but it's a really fun technique that I like to use. Basically, what that enables me to do is, if I ever did want to upload this video to YouTube as well as Instagram, I have it filmed horizontally on my camera so I can upload it to YouTube horizontally and then AI create the top and bottom to make it portrait mode for Instagram TikTok stuff like that you were at C24.
Speaker 1:I was what was that? Like man, you want to speak to that? Yeah, you got an iconic photo that we shared on YesCatholic. It's been shared everywhere. Let's be honest, but, yeah, speak in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, A couple of weeks leading up to seek I knew I was going and I was trying to think of content ideas and my friend Kuba had called me and basically offered to come film for me just because he wanted to really be a part of it and I was really honored by that. Kuba and I had some conversations leading up to it Kuba's also really into the YouTube space and social media and we were thinking of, like, what can we do so we can make a daily video at seek and keep people invested in some kind of overarching storyline? Somewhere along the lines we landed on, what if we broke the world record for the most amount of daps ever given in a week? I started searching Google has this ever been done before? Has anyone ever actually dapped? The closest thing I could find was the most amount of handshakes ever given in a day, and I think it was Teddy Roosevelt or something with 8,000. But that's not a dap. We were all clear to go for it.
Speaker 2:I sent an application to Guinness World Records and then we flew out to St Louis and I was pretty nervous, just because if that doesn't land, then it's just kind of cringe. If this doesn't land, then it's just going to be me making a fool of myself holding a sign that says world record daps and then maybe I have like 300. I'm like, oh, that could be bad, that could be really embarrassing. But the first video that I posted the day before seek, it performed all right. I think a lot of people that went to seek did see that video. Day one came around and just by the time that I walked into Mission Way there was already about 10 people who had recognized me from the video and just lined up to dap me up, and just within the first few seconds of starting the world record we were already really racking them up Crazy.
Speaker 1:How did you keep track of all the daps? You had a counter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually I don't Do you have it. Yeah, I do have it. Right now it's at 5,000. You had 6,200. It must have got reset at some point. But yeah, this is a clicker that I had in my left hand.
Speaker 1:Are you still keeping that thing going? What's happening here?
Speaker 2:I should have, but no, at some point it got messed up. So I guess not. I could have just counted every single dap that I've made this year. Yeah, but yeah, by date. Oh man, was it day two? Yeah, it must have just been on day two. I got a call from Focus and Father Mike had been following Truth Charting for a couple months before, so he knew about Truth Charting. When, the moment that I found out, father Mike followed my account, I threw my phone across the room and told everyone I knew it was like a mom I made at the moment. And then here I was, day two at Seek and got a call from Focus and the lady on the phone said John, we received a request. And I started to fill in the dots and I was like they're going to ask me to stop doing the dap thing. It's causing too much of a ruckus. They're going to ask me to stop, I bet.
Speaker 2:And she's like we received a request from Father Mike and his team. He would like to meet you and maybe make some content or something. Is that something that you'd be open for? And I was like, sorry, what? Yes, yeah, absolutely. And then the next day we set a time and I met Father Mike Schmitz and he was the 5,000th dap, which was our goal. That's what we were going for.
Speaker 1:And that was the 5,000th dap. Yeah yeah, Father Mike Schmitz was the 5,000th dap. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was an absolute blast. He shared it on his Instagram account and so that video got. Just like, a lot of people saw that video. And so day three, day four and day five basically, like a good portion of people at Seek knew about the dap world record and we just racked up a whole lot of daps and we overshot our goal by a good bit. So Seek 24 was like a really awesome moment in very humbling Like man, like I got to experience meeting people who had known about my work. Like these people knew what I did.
Speaker 2:There was a guy I met there I think his name was Ian. He said, like bro, you're the reason I'm here at Seek. Like I saw one of your videos, you're the reason I'm Catholic. He said, like I saw one of your videos and went to my Newman Center and got involved and now, like I'm involved with my Newman Center and I'm here and that was just like another one of those moments that that was like just a permissions, that that, like the Lord is working through what I'm doing, and that is really humbling because, like I, the only thing that I have to do with it is the surrender. The only thing that I have to do with. It is allowing God's grace to to work through me if I can, and so that's. Yeah, that was just really beautiful.
Speaker 1:And it was a really really great experience at seek. Yeah, speaking of adventure, right, Life of Christ is truly a wonderful adventure. Advice for someone who wants to start being a digital missionary Thoughts.
Speaker 2:The most realistic and hard piece of advice that I got from John Andrew early on when I first started Truthreading, was commit to it for two years. It's so easy for you to have fire in the beginning, make content for three months and not get anywhere, get two views on you on your content, and then for you to just be like, well, it didn't work, I tried and then give up and that's just not the name of the game when you're working with social media and YouTube. It's its commitment, its consistency, it's like that's the reason that Truthreading is is is like my full time job right now is because I committed to doing it for two years before I was allowed to give up on it and like giving up was not necessarily an option because the calling was was pretty confirmed, but that really helped on just the mind, on the mental aspect of it, knowing that even though I was six months in and I think a year in and really not getting a whole lot of traction, not making like not making any money from it, so not it being my full time job, you know I wasn't able to dedicate as much time because there wasn't a whole bunch of money coming in just a year in, and then that second year rolled around and then the growth came with that and I think we're on the third year now and now things are just like we're really picking up. So my, my advice to someone who wants to get into being a digital missionary would be commit to two years about like commit to doing it for two years and don't give up until you year two years. And then my second piece of advice is be ready to pivot.
Speaker 2:The social media landscape changes like every three months, so just be ready to pivot. There could be a new it could be a new social media platform that it gets created next year, and then you have to figure out how to make content in that format and how you how you navigate that. That's what happened with me was I was trying to make a YouTube channel, but then all of my target audience stopped watching YouTube and started watching short form stuff content on Instagram. So I had to pivot. So those are my two main pieces of advice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was shaking my head because that algorithm you just got a top stuff you got a roll with that right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here's a fun. Here's a fun, really fun thing that that helped me out to was realizing that when you when you, instead of trying to hit the algorithm right especially with Catholic content, because algorithms don't tend to favor religious content I would say focus on shareability instead. So, with Instagram particularly, you can share any post to any story, so try to focus on what can I, what message can I bring forward that young Catholics really, really, really want to share with their friends? And so the message that being Catholic actually is not boring and cringe and corny, like that message is something that young Catholics really want to bring forward. And so when I started trying to focus on that, like, what kind of shareable message can I give here, then stories like those reels basically would get posted to more people's stories and, and that helped with, just like the numbers.
Speaker 2:And it's also important to realize that not everyone is called to the numbers game like not everyone is is called to to try to like rack up a lot of numbers. Some people are called to different ways of evangelism on the internet and some of that is like, maybe your account isn't even public. Maybe you're evangelizing to your friends on the internet on your private Instagram account just through your story, sharing the gospel with them. So when I talk about numbers and I talk about the business side of being a social media influencer and stuff like that, I feel very called to do that. I feel very called to pursue excellence in business and in ministry and in social media influencing like that's. That's something that, like I think is a, is a call that I have and a lot of other people have, but it might not be like the goal for everyone and it certainly doesn't have to be. Likes don't equal like how effective your ministry is.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, it's just different people being part of the body of Christ, different gifts, different talents and yeah, absolutely Alright. Last question of the night what is your hope for the future of our church?
Speaker 2:Yeah, my hope for the future of our church is that our young people are filled with so much fire and joy that people in the secular world just start seeing us and maybe it maybe it's not through like how how unique and like awesome our theology is. Maybe it's just like they see how much we love life and how much we love each other and maybe they see the fire in us and maybe they see the hope that we have in our hearts and maybe they see the ways that we love them, even though they don't agree with us. My hope for the future of the church is that, like the secular world starts looking at Catholics and just seeing, like what, what are they doing right? And so I guess maybe, yeah, just like, how can, how can we as a church dive into that hope and joy and put our money where our mouth is and really and really dive into ministry to one another too?
Speaker 1:Hmm, I meant to that. Well, I know, brother, just want to thank you so much for your yes to Jesus and his church is just a gift. I mean, I learned stuff tonight Truth charting and the significance of that. Your stories, man, we're just incredible. So thank you for taking the time to to share tonight. If people want to connect and learn more, how can they go about doing that man?
Speaker 2:Yeah, truth chartingcom is the website and you can find the YouTube channel. That's just truth charting, and then Instagram and TikTok at truth charting. That's all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, I'm not going to lie, man. I've, I've totally watched your videos and I thought, as I'm watching them, like teach me your ways. I don't know if, down the road, you can do some kind of online course teaching how to go to the next level of social media, whatnot, but man, you've got the skills down.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely so well, thanks again. Would you be able to willing to close us in prayer tonight?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Awesome. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen, come Holy Spirit. Lord Jesus, I just pray for our young people within your church and I pray that you would instill in the hearts of all within your church, particularly the youth, so, a unique love for you and a unique love for your plan for them, a unique love for the journey that you have for them, the adventure that you're calling them to. Lord, I pray over our entire generation, our entire world, christian or not, that you would just break into their lives in a way that would make them realize that that what you are calling them to is not boring and that what you are calling them to is a beautiful, adventurous journey that is unto, ultimately, a life lived, loving you forever. And we ask you this through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.
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