UNFIT FOR RADIO with JAYKERS
UNFIT FOR RADIO with JAYKERS is an independent comedy podcast where unfiltered conversations, unpredictable humor, authentic storytelling, and real-life moments collide. Hosted by JAYKERS alongside recurring co-host RAY, special guests, and the extended UFR family, every episode delivers a unique mix of comedy, candid discussions, spontaneous conversations, and the kind of entertainment traditional radio simply can’t offer.
From laugh-out-loud stories and outrageous debates to meaningful interviews and honest conversations, no topic is off limits. Episodes explore relationships, faith, mental health, music, pop culture, health and wellness, internet culture, paranormal experiences, current events, creativity, personal growth, and the unexpected moments that turn into unforgettable conversations. Whether it’s a hilarious game of Would You Rather, a controversial hot take, or an emotional personal story, listeners never know where the conversation will go next.
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UNFIT FOR RADIO with JAYKERS
“Reminiscing”
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EP.42: “Reminiscing” (FEAT. REGGIE HOLMES)
Fan-favorite guest Reggie Holmes (RBernard Music) returns to the studio for an intimate, completely unscripted catch-up with JAYKERS. Bringing his signature energy back to the mic, REG, shares hilarious stories like trading a pair of headphones for a Mac at a local pawn shop and breaks down his major move from Arizona to Texas.
The highlight of the episode comes when REG sits down at the studio piano for an exclusive, impromptu live performance. Between songs, the pair dive deep into life’s big transitions, future aspirations, a shared fascination with marine biology, and the essential role faith plays through every chapter.
In This Episode:
- Pawn Shop Swap: REG recounts a hilarious pawn shop story and while settling into Texas life.
- Live Studio Session: An unplanned piano and vocal performance straight from the UFR studio.
- Deep Dives & Big Dreams: Ocean wildlife, marine biology, and planning for the future.
- Faith & Next Chapters: Reflecting on personal growth, upcoming music projects, and staying grounded.
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Yeah, we obviously were moving. And you know, when you move, you find things, and then you realize that you have six of everything. So, yeah, we're we're just trying to box up everything, and I uh I'm packing up my studio. I have a really bad habit of traveling, obviously, and not being prepared. So, over the course of the last couple years, I have left the house, gone to the airport, and forgotten one thing in particular was uh headphones.
SPEAKER_00Always headphones. You don't have a backup pair of yours.
SPEAKER_03You would think that I would just like leave one in the bag, right? So I we're we're packing up the studio. I found um a pair of Sony MX100s, then I found uh these uh MX5s, because you know the sixes just came out. Um so that I have a pair of five headphones and earbuds. I've got three pairs of beats studios. Um I've got two pairs of beat earbuds. Um in all, it was like 11 pairs of either headphones or or in or an earbuds. Okay. And I was like, I don't need all of these. I only have like two ears, and I've already blessed the rest of my family with some too, just out of the stash, right? And so I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna take some of these over to the pawn shop because offer up takes forever and they lowball you, and you just don't want to pick somebody. Yeah, you're taking your life in your hands. So you went to the pawn shop. I went to the pawn shop this morning with the Sonys, all of the Sonys. Alright. I was like, let's do it a package deal. And so I get there and I was I was just gonna like sell them and walk away. I walk in and they have a um, they have a MacBook, a MacBook Pro. It doesn't have a charger and it's been wiped clean. Now I have a MacBook Pro. It's the same year as mine. And um my wife has been borrowing mine forever. Oh boy. And so I was like, here's a perfect moment. So I stole all of these headphones. I sold five pairs of Sony headphones in ear, but you invested. Right, right. And he was like, all right, well, I can get to this. I was like, I tell you what, take all these headphones. I don't even care if this is worth more. Give me the MacBook and we'll call it even. He was like, oh, that's fair. And I'm walking out, like, I probably like undersold myself by four or five hundred bucks because the Sony MXX is like 400 by themselves. Yeah. I was like, just take these damn headphones and then I will I'll walk out with MacBook and we'll shake hands and call it even. And I walked out of there and he's like, Yeah, we really got over on him. And they have no idea. I was like, no, I finally get my own computer back. That's an investment worth doing every single time. That's hilarious. Oh my god. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You can lead with that. Welcome to Unfit for Radio with Jake. I'm that guy. That guy. This episode is a special one. If you couldn't tell already, I can't wait. Let's get into it. Let's get it. On this episode, we got my brother, Reggie Holmes, whom you've heard on episodes eight, nine, thirty-eight, and now forty two. Hopefully, this won't be the last appearance. Uh, whenever you're in town, whenever you're in the Phoenix area, Reg, you always have a mic waiting for you in the on this program. Thanks for being here with us. It is my pleasure. So, uh, how's Texas been?
SPEAKER_03Texas in the summer is uh it's a different kind of heat. It's not, oh my god, hot like here, uh where it's 118 and in the 90s at night. Melting. Right.
SPEAKER_00Um but you got that humidity, don't you?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and it's it's like you step outside and you just immediately start sweating. And it is it's gross. But the evenings are really, really nice. I bet. Um, the one thing I'm getting used to is that they have an abundance of bugs. Um not the kind that will kill you like here, but they're still, you know. Gross. Yeah. Yeah. And they're everywhere. There's a June bug infestation um that happens late spring. Well, that's off.
SPEAKER_00It should be a June. Right. I said the same thing.
SPEAKER_03I was like, these bugs are they're they're not bright. Um, yeah, they call them June bugs, but they come around April-ish this year. I don't know why. It was early. And I was told that uh September will be like a cricket locust grasshopper type deal infestation. Oh wow. Looking forward to that. But the June bugs are attracted to light. So apparently, if you put a light like at the curb and turn your lights off at your house, then they will gather out there. No way. And they won't bother your house.
SPEAKER_00That's a trick.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they're a big hit with my schools, though, because uh since I've been working in Texas, the kids they always pick them up and they throw them around and the cicadas or something like that? Or the the June bugs. Oh, the june bugs. Yeah, they'll just they'll pick them up. They they're slow and they're not very bright. They they tend to fall over on their back, and that's it for them. It's just wraps.
SPEAKER_00Um that's their defense mechanism. I guess so.
SPEAKER_03Like I know roaches do it as like a I think you say like a defense mechanism or uh as a like a decoy. Yeah, but they do it on purpose and they can flip back over. These bugs, once they're on their back, it's wraps. That's it. That's not and they move very, very slow.
unknownAwesome.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that is that is really cool.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we're looking at a jellyfish for those who can't see what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00A big huge aquarium. No, this is the ocean, ain't it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's dope.
SPEAKER_00Is that that is a jellyfish, huh?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So, um little since we're going there. Right, uh little thing that many don't know about me. I grew up in San Diego uh after I left here. Um junior high high school was all in San Diego. Uh went to school at Mount Carmel High School, um, North County, San Diego. And when I was younger, I wanted to be a uh marine biologist.
SPEAKER_00No way.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I had seasoned passes to SeaWorld for years when I was a kid until all that got exposed. And blackfish.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Back then, uh I remember going there and I can like actually uh sit on the whale and the whale. All of that.
SPEAKER_03I got all those pictures. Yeah, squids in my pocket and petting the dolphin.
SPEAKER_00I wanted to be a marine biologist because of that too. Oh yeah. Yeah, the blackfish and all those terrible movies.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, until you watch it, and I think Michelle Wolf was like, Yeah, did you know whales shouldn't live in a sink? And then it's like, Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, and then I forgot. Right. I mean, now we go because they have really good roller coasters. And um, my dad gets in for free because he's a vet. But yeah, when I was younger, um, I was a big, big, big ocean person, and I wanted to be a marine biologist. And so um, lesser known fact about me, I have been to over a hundred aquariums in probably five continents.
SPEAKER_00That's your thing. Yeah, I didn't know this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, a roller coaster. It's so funny. I got the aquariums out. That's that's why I'm enamored. I can't, I'm over here distracted by hey, what'd you say? What'd you say? Yeah, I love aquariums. Um, big and small. I've been to little tiny hole-in-the-wall ones, and I've been to the biggest ones. Um, the Georgia one, the there's one in China, it's the biggest one in the world. It's absolutely massive.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, describe that huge what'd you say?
SPEAKER_03So uh the Chimalong Ocean Kingdom, it's um it's actually two parks in one. So to the left is this big uh spaceship looking thing. It's like a spaceship slash cruise ship type of design. Um, it's incredible. Uh it takes a day just to see that. And then across the street, it's a it's a whole nother thing where they've got um rides, roller coasters, uh Orca Stadium, the largest um like single tank aquarium where they have whale sharks and uh big manta rays and stuff like that. Um but they have very exotic animals that I've never seen anywhere else. Um, like the albino dolphin, the pink one.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they got one there.
SPEAKER_00What?
SPEAKER_03I've never seen one in person until we went to China. Um I've seen whale sharks because they have them in Atlanta, but uh it was cool to see them there. Um the Georgia aquarium is massive, it's absolutely huge. The one in China makes it look like the one here, and not the the big one, like the one in the mall at Arizona. But yeah, I'm a huge aquarium guy. I just went to one in Destin, Florida, um, two weeks ago just because I was driving and went to dinner with a friend and saw it across the street. It was like, oh, I guess I know what I'm doing tomorrow morning.
SPEAKER_00So what's your uh what's your favorite sea creature?
SPEAKER_03Ooh. Ah, that's a good question. Um, when I was younger, I loved Pacific white-sided dolphins. I know that's oddly specific. White-sided dolphins? Yeah, they're um no, they're called, I'm sorry, Commerson's dolphins. They're they're the black and white dolphins.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I've seen those.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um they almost look like they were a tuxedo something.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yeah, yeah. They look like dolphin-sized penguins or whatever. I love they're so fast, they're so curious. Um we would see dolphins all the time in San Diego. Um, we could see them. Um, you could see the ocean from like my backyard had an incline. And so if you go to the top, you could see the ocean a few miles away. Um, and then all the times we went to Catalina or whale watching, we see dolphins all the time. So seeing dolphins in the wild was not that big of a thing, but it was always the same type of dolphin. It was just the regular bottlenose or the spotted, like the common dolphin. So all the exotic, different dolphins you don't see is what really got my attention. And I love Converse in dolphins, the yeah, the black and white ones.
SPEAKER_00That's really cool. Yeah, I'm a nervous. Um, so uh being in Texas now, you're a lot closer to the water. You can see uh some of those things more than living in the desert, and uh you can also go on more cruises because you what you got Galveston and everything right there, you got the ports.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, if we trust it.
SPEAKER_03I thought you were going on a cruise soon. I am, but and it's the it's the line that I shouldn't say. It's the same one that I'm afraid of. Oh yeah. Um it's not a not a fair, but a anyway.
SPEAKER_00It's it's it's the it's the Walmart cruise.
SPEAKER_03Right, yeah, exactly. Um that's the one, wasn't that the poop cruise from Galveston where the like the septic line backed up and they had like feces in the water floating up and down the floors and stuff? They did a documentary on that. I can't watch it. I can't I refuse to watch it.
SPEAKER_00A floating septic table.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was like something happened and the toilets backed up and the toilet water was just like flowing up and down the decks, and I can't watch it. I just I can't do it. I I can't.
SPEAKER_00Jesus.
SPEAKER_03Nope. I still can't watch people get like IVs and needles. I've I've got quirks, and that's I I there's no way I could just watch a whole six-part documentary on a poop cruise.
SPEAKER_00My wife is a flipotomist, so anytime I need my labs or anything, I just I I feel good because I know where I'm going, you know.
SPEAKER_03I got you.
SPEAKER_00Where other people, you know, I was just talking to somebody the other day and they they get so paranoid and nervous when they have to go and get their get stuck by somebody that they don't even know, and you know, sometimes they don't do it right, leave a bruise or whatnot.
SPEAKER_03I always get women, they're always very gentle. Um my wife and I are polar opposites. She has to stare. I think it's because she's gonna kill me when she hears this. She's more um I don't want to use the word controlling, but I can't think of another word. She's more uh imputative. She likes to be aware of the situation. Yeah, and and and vocalize her her opinion. Right. She's a commentator, right? That part. Uh it's because now we're getting way off uh subject, but um, I'm an only child. She is the eldest child. Her and my mother are both eldest children.
SPEAKER_00So I didn't know you're the only child.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_03So we have spent our entire lives um living differently. Yeah. She's used to telling people what to do. I'm used to living life alone, being not told by anyone what to do. Sorita. Yeah, right. Which has made for some very interesting moments. And we'll be we'll meet 20 years in November.
SPEAKER_00Oh, congratulations.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. Um, so with that, yeah, she is like have to stare at the needle, watch it go in, all that stuff. I am just like, turn my head and give me, give me the one, two, three, and I'm fine.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Sometimes I'm like, don't even count, just do it. Right. Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's either turn my head and yeah, one, two, three, or sometimes the the real nice ones are like big poke. I have noticed this though. The cuter the girl is, the less it hurts because it makes your veins bigger, I guess. It's there's something inherent where you just don't want to have to like not macho up when the the cute girl is there. And so like if the nurse comes and she's decent looking and she's like, all right, I'm gonna fine. Go ahead. Just stick it in my neck for all I care. Yeah, and it it's always that thing. Right. It's always that. But if it's like this hairy guy named John, then it hurts so bad.
SPEAKER_05Don't touch me. Right.
SPEAKER_03This is gonna be the craziest episode ever. We've gone from like giving blood to to aquariums to only children.
SPEAKER_00You want to go back to Texas or where you want to go?
SPEAKER_03Uh so yeah, Texas. Um Texas has been an experience. Most people who did not know um before we left, uh the why, um, I had been working in Texas since February.
SPEAKER_00Undercover?
SPEAKER_03That's funny. No, I'm playing. That's hilarious. Um so after everything happened with the church, and I um I had uh split ties with the church, um I I've always been bivocational. I've always had multiple jobs. Um, and so I was working this job when I was with the church, and when we uh we separated ways, the the other job I had was like, oh, you're free now. And so they put me to work. Here is the problem. Uh I work for a company that does custom school assemblies, and the um the mantra is that we bring the field trip to you. So the basis of it is to um bring these assemblies to rather remote uh locations sometimes and um and help them experience a field tri uh field trip-like experience without having to gather up all their students and go somewhere else. That said, um my region was Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Wow. Um and they were banking on uh expanding that region. We got a lot of success with the reservation and the Native Americans, but uh Arizona just does not invest in education. I I don't know how else to put it. We we just don't invest in education. So um I was ranking consistently number two in retention with the company. No way. So most of the time, almost every time where I did a show, the school re-signed, and sometimes immediately. And so they're like, Well, you know, this kid's coming in here, he's knocking, knocking these assemblies out. Yeah, we don't want a guy who is like leading the company in retention to be sitting on the bench. So right after we cut ties with the church, my job was just like all right, well, then let's utilize you in other regions. And so from October on, I was covering like 16 states.
SPEAKER_04That's right.
SPEAKER_03Just flying in. Um, so they strategically have gear different places, and uh I would fly in, grab the gear, and do the shows and come home. And so from October on, I was consistently like getting on a plane Sunday or Monday and coming home Friday.
SPEAKER_00I saw your Instagram, like every day you're in every state.
SPEAKER_03Right. Um yeah, because uh you'll hear it in in uh the episode with uh Christine and I, she's probably gonna give me hell because at the top of the year, um, I started to like number my flights. And it was like 2026, flight number five and flight number six. What I wasn't saying was that was just the outbound flight. I never actually numbered the return. So take that number and double it because I was coming home for each one. Exactly. And so I think by the time we hit to maybe June or so, it was in the mid-20s, 24, 25. Um and so when we got uh I was I had been working in in Texas since February and kept going back and forth, leaving Sunday, coming back Friday, and it was cool, but it was starting to get old. And so I went to my company and said, Hey, if this is gonna be consistent, then it would be very, very helpful if we just go ahead and relocate and that way I could at least try to come home every night or uh more often um than this whole fly out Sunday, come home Friday.
SPEAKER_00So that's the m reason for the move to Texas?
SPEAKER_03That's the number one reason. The number one reason, um, a very close second, I would say one A was while I was covering the schools in Texas, I was like, they get it. And so I'm looking around at these schools that I'm doing these shows in, and I'm like, man, Texas and education is a whole different that's a whole different ballgame, man. And so um we got to the North Dallas area, uh area named Prosper, uh right around McKinney, um, just north of Dallas. And I had a show there. I was talking to the PTA mom and I was like, I'm really considering this now. Like it's really, really um something I'm really considering. And she said, Yeah, yeah. And she gave me some uh websites and some research that I could do. And I took it home and started to do some research. I was like, whoa, and brought it to the family. And here's where the timing became perfect. Uh my daughter, she uh she just finished eighth grade this year, and so the transition was going to be organic. She had to leave uh elementary school and she was going to high school anyway, but the district that we were in in uh Littleton in Avondale, not all of the friends that she had at her school were going to the same school. Many of them were going to different schools, so she was gonna get a clean break anyway. Some of her friends are going to this one, and someone were going to La Jolla, some of them. So not everybody's going to the same place. Exactly. So she's getting ready to to like the band's breaking up.
SPEAKER_00Better transition that way.
SPEAKER_03And I'm like, well, well, shoot. I mean, if if we're going to have to not deal with the whole social construct in this moment anyway, then why not? So the day after her promotion, um, we went out to Dallas to see the city um and to check out the area. Uh and we went north and we were looking at different properties. And I was driving, looking at a couple things I had researched, and ran into a school that was not on my list, but the district was, and it was Walnut Grove High School. And when I tell you, this high school looks like a it looks like a mall. It looks like Charles Xavier's school for the gifted. And I and that's not an exaggeration.
SPEAKER_00That sounds nice.
SPEAKER_03It's not it's a $200 million public school. What public? Public school. Prosper ISD is built different. It's top 500 in the country, top 100 in Texas. That's amazing. It was rated the most diverse school in Texas two years in a row. Awesome. You walk in and it's got this double spiraled staircase, just like Charles Xavier. No way. And get this, man, you're gonna flip out. Um, I went in, I met the registrar. I didn't know the high schools had registrars. I met the registrar. She takes me on a very brief tour. The food court, we had a cafeteria with a hair, uh little lady with a hairnet and a mole. They have a food court, a real food court with no heat lamps? No. They have a food court with a pizza hut, a sonic, a mad greens, a Jimmy John's. The school has a culinary program where the classes have a private restaurant inside the school. So like you can go into like culinary studies in school. They have a private restaurant where they cook meals and they sell them to the kids for lunch.
SPEAKER_00What age do they tap out? We can't go, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because I'll do high school again. It's like this. My God.
SPEAKER_00This sounds nice. Fresh Prince Ray.
SPEAKER_03Right. It's crazy. The cafeteria, the food court, there's this big LED screen where they have like programming during lunch. It is, it's insane. That is nuts. It is every bit the private school that any other state would spend a whole lot of money uh sending their kids to. And I was like, so how does this work with registration? She said, Oh, we're open registration by zoning. So as long as you live within the district zoning, then qualify. She's like, we just need to see like uh a utility bill. And um, if your daughter's coming in from the previous school, we just need to see it like her records from the other school.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I was like, that's it? Like, I don't need to cut you a check or like give you my firstborn, and she's no, that's how it works here.
SPEAKER_00I'm looking at her like that's not that's that's outlandish.
SPEAKER_03You don't get that here. Their football stadium, they have a sixty million dollar football stadium that seats like twenty three. I've never seen a high school football stadium that has an upper deck.
SPEAKER_00That is that is large. That's huge.
SPEAKER_03For a high school. For a high school. A lot of colleges don't even get that. Absolutely. I I went to Kent State. Our uh college stadium, I think, seeded 25,000. Oh my. And it was a D1 program. Yeah. They weren't good, but it was still D1. Um yeah, their stadium holds 23,000 and some change. Um they've got one of the biggest, biggest video boards for a high school stadium in the country. But yeah, there's a Chick-fil-A inside the stadium, like for concessions, not nachos and hot dogs. Like they have actual restaurants for concessions. Yeah. Um yeah, state of the art stuff. And um yeah, they don't call their their gym a gym. It's called an arena. Uh and it has arenas, like it seats all all four sides, not just the two stands on. No, it seats all four sides and it holds like three or four thousand. It's crazy. Yeah. You can have a little mini concert there. Absolutely. I thought about that as soon as I walked in. I was like, okay, well, I know what I'm doing when I get here. So that's why I say it was like one A, because yeah, I could have kept doing the traveling thing. I wanted to be present more, and I'm really, really glad that um this worked out. But when I saw the school, and then we got into the logistics and the school was free, it was a public school. I was like, oh wow. And so that was really the settling point. Yeah, that was it for us.
SPEAKER_00That's really cool. And you're gonna be closer to your family.
SPEAKER_03Uh yes and no. Um we have a little mini village there. Um our big village is here. Like my whole family is here. Um, but we have a lot of friends and family in that area, so it's not like we're leaving and starting fresh. We will already have boots on the ground. Um and the funny thing is I used to minister in Dallas um pretty frequently. My high school excuse me, my college best friend, he lives in uh Dallas and he would fly me out quite often to sing at his church. And so we had been to Dallas a few times, and one time while we were there, um we were like, hey, this this town is pretty cool. And we had already said if we ever left Arizona, it would be probably here or maybe somewhere back east, uh, closer to my in-laws. But see, the biggest city closer back east to uh to my in-laws was Atlanta and Charlotte. And is this thing on? If Jesus himself told me to move to Atlanta, I would still say no.
SPEAKER_00Okay, Jonah.
SPEAKER_03Just being honest, there's not a scenario on on earth that would allow I've Texas is almost there, so I know. I just I can't. Atlanta is just a different place.
SPEAKER_00Isn't your parents in Texas?
SPEAKER_03No, my parents are here, but they just put the house up for sale. They're going back. They're going to, as soon as we get settled, my parents have just put the house up for sale and they're going to move to Texas with us. Because of this one reason. My parents live in Goodyear, about 10 minutes away from where we used to live. And uh their house is listed at just under a million. That's crazy. Um, just under a million. And my father was like, if we sell the house for a million, then I can go to Texas and pay cash for half. And still have like the same on an acre, yeah. Right, with land and stuff. He's like, you know what? I could sell our house and buy us both houses in Texas.
SPEAKER_00That's true.
SPEAKER_03And he's not wrong. No, and the insurance would be cheaper, and there's no state taxes.
unknownOh my god.
SPEAKER_00What about uh what about income tax? Not in yeah, income taxes.
SPEAKER_03Federal taxes apply uh elsewhere, but um because I'm a contractor, I probably shouldn't say this on the podcast, but because I'm a contractor, um You qualify for different things. I do. I can write off quite a bit because of what I do and how I do it. Yep. Um and I don't mind saying this on the air. Uh I know it's gonna kind of shift us. I won't say left or right because I'm registered independent. But the way that our government is going and how they're spending their money, I actually don't mind not paying a lot in taxes right now. Until they get their lives together, I have I have no issue just keeping my money elsewhere or writing it off by controversial uh what is it called? Uh uh contributions to charitable, uh charitable bodies.
SPEAKER_00Loopholes. Right, that stuff.
SPEAKER_03I mean, hey, if if our administration can only pay $750 in taxes, then I figure maybe I can do the same because I don't really trust the way they're spending my money right now.
SPEAKER_00Hey, yeah, even even our president has found a couple loopholes. So I mean, we're supposed to, you know, follow suit of the leaders.
SPEAKER_03So that's yeah, those who know me know that I'm I'm pretty vocal when it comes to uh politics. It's really, really funny since we're here. Um, being a registered independent, I usually catch heat from everyone because I am not a Democrat for some obvious reasons and for not some obvious reasons, and then I am by far not a Republican either for some other reasons, but it's the hypocrisy of both sides that has bothered me. I'll give you one example so it's not super controversial. Um, Republicans, by historical definition, are typically pro-life. Um, and I find it very funny that Republicans being pro-life and Democrats being pro-choice, when it came to COVID, they swapped. And Republicans being pro-life were very much anti-vax, and Democrats, Democrats were pro-vax and pro-choice. And so it's like, wait a second, I reserve the right to govern my body when it came to babies, but not when it came to vaccinations. And I found that very interesting. Another talking point for me is I found it very interesting that pro-lifers that are historical evangelical Christians are also, for the most part, are very, very much pro-capital punishment. So it's like, don't kill the baby.
SPEAKER_00I knew you were gonna go there. I thought you were gonna go there first.
SPEAKER_03Don't kill the baby before it gets here. But if that baby steals a candy bar from Walmart, then it's off with his head. So I am uh very much preserved life um at most, if not all costs. And I just feel like we have we have strayed away from our actual moral compass for the sake of party loyalty and the extremes on both sides, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And see, the thing is there's extremes on both sides. 100%. And the funny thing is, the extremes on both sides are so busy finger pointing at the other extremes that they're not willing to take accountability for their own extreme.
SPEAKER_00But that's what it's built for. Exactly. Because while these two people are going more and more and more extreme, pointing the finger and doing fighting and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, the real people that has the power making the choices are behind the scenes doing things without these idiots getting in the way because they just distracted them.
SPEAKER_03Yep. Do you know that we have never, ever, ever had a nominee for a president that was under the age of 50 at the time of the presidency?
SPEAKER_00And so I thought Barack Obama was.
SPEAKER_03During the presidency, when he was nominated, um, he was. He was younger.
SPEAKER_00And Kennedy, wasn't Kennedy a young one?
SPEAKER_03But when he became president, there's that's the caveat. But here's the funny thing about that. We've got 47 presidents, all but one looked exactly the same. And at what point do we not say that it's not a reflection of our natural body? Or I'll put it to you like this this is probably a better example. This last election, no, the one before that, the 2020, we had two soon-to-be 80-year-olds running running against each other. Trump's calling uh Biden sleepy, and he's falling asleep at basketball games himself. Um, and I just find it funny because it's no matter what.
SPEAKER_00Nobody's perfect. That's the funny part. I get that.
SPEAKER_03But here's the part that bothers me is party loyalty has now made us apologetics while we're actively pursuing righteousness for other people. And that's why I'm a registered independent because I can't sit here and say, but you, but you, if the party that I represent, like you said, has its own flaws. I would much rather sit back and have the ability to hold everybody accountable. And here's the funny thing: while this current administration is in office and I've been vocal about the things that I've been vocal about, and I'll leave it at that. Uh, a lot of the response is um like, but the last. And if you go backwards a few years, you'll understand I was just as vocal as the last one. I'll give you some historical examples so that way it doesn't piss off your uh your your listening base. Um, I got both.
SPEAKER_00I got Republicans and Democrats. I I love it both. That's why I can have the conversation with everybody because I I don't shut anybody up. I love I love the conversation. I don't, you have to believe like this, or you don't get a talk. Like, no, I we we love the conversation, we love the community.
SPEAKER_03I'll give you a historical example. Um, when Clinton privatized prisons, that may have been the single biggest detriment to my culture since Jim Crow, because you have now taken a legalized standard of our judicial system and put it in the hands of a private corporation.
SPEAKER_00There is no only job is to make profits.
SPEAKER_03That's it. So there's no coincidence that we are my people are now disproportionately incarcerated with longer sentences, not from the judicial system, but impose penalties once they get into the system. There's a big difference.
SPEAKER_00Like I say, people in general. I I mean I totally just uh it I know that it does affect some people more than others, but regardless of your skin, I think if you're you know doing if if you're in prison and somebody's making money off of you instead of giving you the proper help and resources, that's terrible. Bingo, it doesn't matter who you are, that's it.
SPEAKER_03Your motives are not pure anymore.
SPEAKER_00Somebody should be trying to help you educate you, getting you assistance to help you not make those decisions.
SPEAKER_03Your motives are no longer pure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And when we got to a place in the last what is this 26? So I'll say six years. So that covers both of the last two administrations. When we got to a place where our healthcare system at points in the last six years, um being incarcerated entitled you to better health care services than being free, where you have now incentivized people to commit crime so that they have access to healthcare.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh. And some of the healthcare services, I mean, it's very controversial, but it's things that you and I wouldn't even have access to.
SPEAKER_03We have a problem.
SPEAKER_00That is nuts.
SPEAKER_03We have a problem when you have people who are willingly saying, I'm going to go commit crime so that I can have access to better health care.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I can go get a sex change.
SPEAKER_03Or cancer treatment.
SPEAKER_00Or cancer treatment. Yeah. Yeah, because all of their they have a lot of resources in there.
SPEAKER_03They do. They do. And that's the thing. It's like, wait a second, have we really gotten to a place where these are our options now where I can go stab a man? Well, that's probably a little too sensitive right now. But can I go commit a crime so that I can get chemo? Or like you said, or like a sex change. I I I think that we need reformity, and reformity is it's going to be bigger than this repetitious conversation of who broke it. We need to stop complaining about who broke it, stop blaming people, just fix it and just fix it. Yeah. One of my last sermons said that was like, hey, when you identify a problem, you don't just walk away and say there's the problem. If you have a leaky faucet, you have a beautiful home. If you have a leasey leaky faucet, you're not going to say, hey, I found the leak, and then just go about your day. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Or screw this home, go buy another one.
SPEAKER_03Like, it's like, hey, there's where the water's coming from.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you have to fix the problem. You have to fix the problem. And so many people don't. They just put a bucket underneath and be like, it'll be good for a little bit longer.
SPEAKER_03We have spent so much time wandering around in circles trying to figure out who caused the problem. And we have done very little to fix it. And until we can get out of who broke it and work together and start to fix it, then I and for that reason alone. I love everybody who is who prescribes to a party for their own reasons. Um, I know personal conviction is a very strong thing, and I will never tell anybody what to do, uh, not just with voting or with anything else, but those are my personal convictions. Um right now, I feel like we we gotta get away from the but you, but you. I and I find it funny because I know a lot of people on the right who are saying but Biden, but Biden. And the funny thing is, for the first time in American history, you had a president, a successor, and then the pre-successor. So we've been playing this but you game for the last 12 or eight years.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Because uh, we spent a lot of time blaming the last guy for the last three terms.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00They blamed Obama, and then we got Biden, so you know, and then they're blaming Trump, but Trump was already here again. So it's just like a recycled program. I know what you mean.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and there was one point where um for the both of them playing the finger point and blame game where they didn't realize your time frame is off, buddy. Yeah, like you do realize that the 2020 election hit in the middle of COVID. So, and I know a lot of people on the left are gonna really be mad at me. I think that when it came time to finger pointing how COVID was mishandled under like our political scope, they both shared accountability because we had two presidents during the pandemic. People forget that. Yeah, like COVID hit during 2020. We voted in 2020. Yeah, we had two different presidents of COVID and Biden for the end of COVID. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how it was quote unquote mishandled does not fall on one person's shoulders because they both have the power to make choices and they made their choices.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so if you like the outcome or if you didn't, then you can thank or blame two different guys. Because we voted right in the middle of that process. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But I'm good friends, I am very good friends with Democrats, I'm very good friends with Republicans. I just I love the people in general, and that's why I like the the conversation point of it. I like to, you know, even though we may not agree at the end of the day, let's still have the conversation instead of you don't agree like me, I don't even want to talk to you. Yeah, I got family like that. That I mean, no offense to certain people, but that's not a good way of living on a you know, we don't we don't see eye to eye, so I'm gonna shut you up and you don't exist to me no more. Like there is something wrong with that. And I was never raised like that. I was never raised to go to you know a certain church or certain place where everybody has to think like each other for me to feel comfortable. I like the challenging, I like the you know, iron sharpeneth iron, and you know, they're different, and I'm different, and we're different. And I I love that. That is that is what makes the rainbow. Like, you don't look at the rainbow and be like, it's all it's all pink.
SPEAKER_03No, I'm only laughing because uh the other day uh my daughter and I were driving somewhere and I got so comically incensed. Um, I said, I remember when rainbows just meant rainbows.
SPEAKER_00And now it means something a whole political party practically. Right.
SPEAKER_03And I'm just like, you know what? One day I'm just gonna wake up and I'm just gonna claim the sun on behalf of whatever group I think I represent.
SPEAKER_00I claim your son. It's a the rainbow is a promise based on love.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that's all it is. And some people take the love and the promise and twist it and make you think other things, but it's a promise based on love from our father.
SPEAKER_03If anybody listening ever wants to know uh about the quote unquote ambiguity of love meaning love, I will encourage you to read the book of Romans, the first chapter.
SPEAKER_00The first chapter.
SPEAKER_03You gotta bring it to us? The first chapter of the book of Romans. Give us a sample, and it will answer every question that anybody has. Now, whether or not you choose to be obedient, Pastor Ar Bernard's gonna break it down. Whether or not you choose to be obedient is one thing, and that's fine. We all make choices. We all make choices. Matter of fact, it says that in Romans. Um, I will start Romans, I will start at the very last verse of the first chapter of Romans. I love this. Um, actually, no, I'm gonna say, let's start with Romans 1 and 20. Romans 1 and 20 in the New Living Translation says, for ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky through everything God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities. That's a bar in itself. They can clearly see his invisible qualities. That's a bar.
SPEAKER_00I like that translation.
SPEAKER_03Right, that's deep. His eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.
SPEAKER_00Well, every needle bow, every tongue will confess.
SPEAKER_03Period.
SPEAKER_00It'll happen.
SPEAKER_03You can claim the ambiguity, you can claim, oh, I didn't know. But the bottom line is this book right here says, you have no excuse for not knowing God. Science aside, there are certain things that are only explainable by God. Period. And I preached this once. It's so funny. To this day, 9-11, I use this example a lot. So if you ever see my friend's sermons, you're gonna see this like several times. 9-11 to this day in America is the most attended church service in American history.
SPEAKER_00Really?
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00Not Christmas, not Easter. Nope.
SPEAKER_03Statistically.
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_00You know why? I never heard this.
SPEAKER_03Because for the first time in our documented history outside of maybe Pearl Harbor, which still wasn't continental U.S., for the first time, a generation of people saw an attack on our country's soil. Something we've never understood before. Yeah. Never. And we saw it live. Yeah. We saw it happen right before our eyes. Yeah. We saw planes crash, we saw buildings fall, we saw people die in real time. And it wasn't a movie. It was real time.
SPEAKER_00Real.
SPEAKER_03And we were afraid.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03For the first time in American history.
SPEAKER_00I remember being in that time.
SPEAKER_03Everyone who's alive during that time knows exactly where they were when this happened.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And they all have stories.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so for the first time, we were terrified, not as Christians, not as Buddhists, not as Muslims. We were terrified as Americans because we did not know if this was the end of this, if there was going to be more. We did not know the complexity of this attack. And so on Sunday, everyone on earth who was in America went to church. No matter who their deity was, no matter who they prayed to, they all went to church because they were like, I need to talk to somebody about this.
SPEAKER_00Bro, you are so right. I didn't even think about it.
SPEAKER_03And it wasn't my brother, my sister. Did you go to church that Sunday? Yeah. And wasn't it packed?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Dude, that's what looking back, I'm like, dude, that that was that was amazing, profound thought because I know Standing Room only.
SPEAKER_03Yep, you put out chairs of the whole nine. We were terrified.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so what happens is our instinctive notion when we are afraid is to succumb or submit to a force, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, a force that we believe is greater than us. And so all the times when we say there isn't a God, that's not true. We're just saying I'm mad at him to the point where I'm punishing him because he's not doing what I want.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's like it's like ghosting a friend. Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03My friends still exist. Our friendship is in turmoil, but the person that I have a friendship with still exists. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But I'm going to let them know that I'm mad.
SPEAKER_03100%. See, with the with our vertical relationship, we want to make it seem like God doesn't exist when in actuality, it's not God that doesn't exist. It's our relationship with him that is tainted.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Wow, that's deep. And so, because of that, we have that that has been placed in our culture that allowed us to take a big step back and look at everything that happened and reevaluate our vertical relationship. We because we had to go back to daddy and say, Daddy, I'm scared.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And everybody did.
SPEAKER_04No matter who your daddy was. Fix this. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Daddy, I'm scared. Muslim daddy, Christian daddy, Buddhist daddy, Confucius daddy. We were like, Daddy, I'm scared. Please let me know everything's going to be okay. Comfort me, hold me, protect me, do something. Because I'm scared.
SPEAKER_00All face.
SPEAKER_03And 330 million people, no matter who their God was, was like, I'm scared. And that was where we got unified. And that's where, because our common cause was not who we prayed to, but that we prayed together. That's when we got unified. And I always tell this too. Um, my my uncle, um, he had just passed away in July of last year. And um, they back in um in June of 2026 this year, we had a ceremony. He um he was a teacher, he was my godfather, he was um he was security for Derek, the GM for the Diamondbacks. Okay. And so they they did this big ceremony for him. Well, I shouldn't say big. It was a private ceremony, but he was a big deal there. And so um they have a plaque of him embedded into the building now at the gate that he uh he manned. And then um we met most of the players and all the upper level well uh upper level management and everything. And um it was really, really cool, but I was teasing um Luis Gonzalez. I was teasing Gonzo. Okay. I had never met him before, and I and uh we were talking, we cried together, we hugged, and we had this moment. And so we were in the elevator coming back down from his uh his skybox, and I was like, you know what? I've been telling this joke about you for 25 years now. No way. And he was like, what's going on? I said, um, you know that obviously you guys have the only championship of the four major sports in Arizona history. Oh, yeah. Cardinals don't have a ring, they broke the curse, Suns don't have a ring, the hockey team left and banded. Right. I said, so the Diamondbacks have the only ring. Obviously, Mercury got a few, and the the soccer team, I think, has one, and then um the arena football teams got several. But of the four major sports, the Diamondbacks have the only ring. And they got a ring by beating New York a month after 9-11.
SPEAKER_04Ouch.
SPEAKER_03When the entire world would have been like, just let them have it.
SPEAKER_00They've been through enough. But we were a brand new team at the exactly. We weren't having that.
SPEAKER_03And Guns was like, no. Jeez. I told him that and he laughed till he choked. He's like, Yeah, do you know how much hell we got after that that whole championship was over? We got calls from like other players in the league, like, bro, you couldn't have just let them have it. Like, they're still pulling bodies out of the rebel. You couldn't, he's like, no. And now here we are 25 years later, and that's the only championship we ever did.
SPEAKER_00We caught somebody with their pants down.
SPEAKER_03He DM'd me on uh on Instagram back in June, and he was like, bro, I'm still laughing at that. He's like, You're so right. And um that is hilarious.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that was clever. That's very original. I haven't heard that.
SPEAKER_03It's the truth. The the one time that we really could have just bowed out and let New York, I mean, any other year, people like F the Yankees. Like they bought themselves a team, no one cares, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the buildings had literally just fallen. The World Series started at the end of November. They call it the October Classic. Like it was less than a month later. It was. It was still ground zero. Right. There were still like nightly updates on the rubble and stuff. And Arizona's like, I don't give a rat. This is our ring. Yeah. Time to play. Yeah, he was crying, laughing. And that is that's Arizona's legacy. That is Arizona's legacy. Yep. We went through over the river and through the woods there. It was a lot to to take in.
SPEAKER_00Right. Well, that's that's what we do. We like to cover, we like to cover our ground.
SPEAKER_03Right. I want to get back to Romans real quick. Yes. Um, so when it comes to Romans and when it comes to um certain beliefs and certain uh practices, certain lifestyles that we try to justify. Um we have a really bad habit of placing uh strategic severity marks on certain sins. And we do that. Explain, explain that. We do that to justify our own actions. Um, you know what? I love you, and it is what it is. So we're gonna peel the curtain back. It's funny how we have talked about how the lifestyle of, let's just say, the acronym community, or we just talked about earlier about the the pro-life pro uh pro-choice argument. Um, it's funny how we um as a people, we can we can have very strong convictions about those two types of arguments, but we miss certain sins like vanity. We miss certain sins like dishonesty, we miss certain sins like the lack of charity, disobedience. We miss, you know, the Torah has 613 commandments, right? It's not just the 10. There's 613 commandments. Do we miss it or do we intentionally avoid it? Bingo. We emphasize the ones and we make them greater. Yeah. And then we have a visceral reaction to the thing.
SPEAKER_00We have a big rug that we sweep a few things out of the room.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. And that is where getting back to Romans, that's where my biggest beef, because you said something very, very telling, talking about walking into church and having the expectation that everyone's just supposed to have the same philosophy. I don't like that. The doctrine can be the same, but how you got there it's got to be different because it's a neglected group of people. You have a very diverse church. Yeah, God's church is very diverse.
SPEAKER_00I don't like a social club where everybody has to fit a certain box, or otherwise we're gonna ghost them and we don't want them on our membership. And you know, and that's something about churches recently I've noticed is big churches in general, they do a lot to get the new people in the door and to sit them down. They entertain them, they give them the free donut, they do they they do everything to woo them at the front door. But once they sign up on the membership card, crickets, you're done. Crickets. We're not here to help you no more.
SPEAKER_04We call them.
SPEAKER_00Unless you're a big, huge part of some sort of leadership team or you know somebody, or you have deep pockets, you get forgotten about because it's like, oh, we got them. They got baptized, they're in the door, we gotta focus on the next one.
SPEAKER_03We call that shiny new toy syndrome.
SPEAKER_00I don't like that right now. I've seen that so much. I've seen so many families get hurt by that, and then when you go to like some people in the leadership, they ghost you. They don't know how to deal with the problem, so they just ignore it.
SPEAKER_0379% of church membership right now is transplant membership.
SPEAKER_00Tran Wow, like they're just uh church hopped.
SPEAKER_03Bingo. You can look it up. Whoever's listening to this, I'm sure the percentage may change by the time you you hear this, but 79% of new membership at churches are people who have come from other churches. New converts represent only 10%. You know, nine out of ten people in the Arizona uh community in the valley, especially are unchurched and unsafe. That is nine out of ten. That's crazy. And Arizona, I think, is I want to say they're top ten in churches per capita.
SPEAKER_04No way.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Vegas is number one, but it doesn't count because they count chapels, like wedding chapels, as churches, and they're not real.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's just like a place to hurry up, get married, get out of.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um, yeah, the valley at one point, uh, it may have changed now, but at one point, Arizona, uh Phoenix, the Metropolitan Valley, was top ten in churches per capita, but nine out of ten, that's a really weird stat. Yeah. Top ten in churches per capita, but 90% of the people who live in the valley are unchurched.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's weird. That's a lot of churches and not a lot of people going. That means that you're probably your average uh population, congregation attendance or membership, because they're all different terms now, is probably very, very low. Yeah. And I've always wondered why certain churches say that our average weekly attendance is this number. And then other churches are like, this is our membership number.
unknownHuh.
SPEAKER_03You ever notice that? Yeah. Go to certain churches and to their website?
SPEAKER_00Because their membership number is the people who they already got to sign. And then their average attendance is just the heads that counting in the door.
SPEAKER_03Bingo. Like you could have an average weekly attendance of 50, 50,000.
SPEAKER_00But how do you how do you manage that? Because, say, if my church had three services on the weekend and I went to all three services, does that mean that I'm now three members?
SPEAKER_03Very good question. Or I just told you, nine out of ten people in the valley are unchurched and unsaved. So if you got 50,000 people in in your church and your average weekly attendance. The numbers aren't adding up. That means that probably 60%, if not higher, are people who have just come to your church for the first time.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03What happens if uh I don't want to talk about them because I love the church, but and I use them a lot. But what happens for people like CCV where they have multiple campuses? So say you show up at one campus one week, yeah, and then you show up at another campus the following week. Are you now counted in both of those weekly attendance numbers?
SPEAKER_00I think for the average big number in uh larger churches, I believe that's how it works.
SPEAKER_03But now I will give CCV credit for this. Um, hands down, and it's not because I'm biased, because I love those people. Um and I love from Ashley all the way down, Mark and Ben, all of those people. I love them like brothers. They're really, really good people.
SPEAKER_00Ashley seems like a good guy. He is, he's I've met through you and stuff like that. Ashley seems like a really good guy.
SPEAKER_03Ashley is he's a very good guy. He's very sensitive. I'm gonna tell you a story about Ashley real quick. All right. So several years ago, um, they I wanna say, yeah, it was right during COVID, during 2020. It was right after the George Floyd situation.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_03Um Ben Gow, who is the executive pastor of, and I know he doesn't mind me saying his full name, he's one of the executive pastors there. He lost his brother to COVID. Um, I met him at one of the campuses at like three o'clock in the morning. Oh, wow. And we prayed and cried. Swear. The two of us. We just we were at one of the remote campuses. We got together in the middle of the night, and we just prayed and cried. And I felt like because of the opportunity that they had given me to join the family, to play and to be exposed to church at that level, because I had never been exposed to church at CCV's level. I had gone straight from black church to C C V. Um, and it was way different. I didn't know anything about Planning Center and Multitracks. And I was, I grew up in black church, B3 Oregon shout, all that stuff. So the level of organization.
SPEAKER_00I've been in there too. That I've been to black church. Black churches are cool. Oh, yeah. But yeah, they're different, they're very different.
SPEAKER_03And so the exposure to the level of excellence and everything from a different scale. Um, and I'm not saying one's better or one's worth, I'm saying it's different. And to be well-rounded, to have both of those arrows in your quiver was amazing. And um, so I was I was indebted that one of the higher-ups for a church this big thought enough of me to join him in a very private moment. So I went out.
SPEAKER_00You usually get shut out of those moments.
SPEAKER_03Right, exactly. Yeah, um, and I will give all of them credit because I know you said something earlier about that. When it comes to CCV, the higher ups from Ashley on down, they are not inaccessible at all. And this here's a story I want to tell you about that. So um we went and prayed three, three o'clock in the morning. Um, and then I went to another campus to pray with a couple of other guys from the church. Um, a couple of musicians and one of my closest friends, Onaje. You know Onaje. Yeah. Um wow. Yeah, Onaje.
SPEAKER_00I haven't heard of him in a minute.
SPEAKER_03We just had uh we had lunch not too long ago. Okay. Um, so we went to another campus and we were praying. And then after we finished praying, because it was me, Onaje, uh a powerful musician, Steve Gould, drummer. Uh he was actually the guy that hired me. Okay. Um we we're sitting here praying, but Steve is from Minnesota.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_03And so it's different for him. Yeah. Because he's he's from Minnesota and Minneapolis, and so this is like backyard for him. And so now you have now you have this color situation in a conversation post-prayer. Now they had built duplicates of the Western Wall at every campus, and they had opened up all their campuses for 24 hours for I think like three weeks for people to come and pray. It was a massive ordeal to do because they had so many campuses and they needed the staffing to volunteer to make sure everything was safe. So we went over there, we prayed, and now we're in this conversation, but we had not left the place where people were praying to have this conversation. Me, Steve, Onaje, um, somebody else was there. Um, but we're having this color conversation about George Floyd and stuff. Ashley comes over, lead pastor of one of the biggest churches in the country. He comes over and he admitted he came over to shush us because we were loud in our conversation and that we were distracting the people who were praying in the same area at the Western Wall. He walks up and he was like, I'm gonna be honest, I came over here to tell you guys to keep it down because I could hear you talking when I was over there praying. He said, But as I got closer, I realized what you guys were talking about. The magnitude of the conversation. And then he was like, just let you know I love what you guys are talking about. I just want to let you know that, like, we just know that you can be heard from over there and do what you will, if you want to go somewhere else or just keep it down or whatever. But he said, But my heart posture just changed when I heard what you guys were talking about. Yeah, he came over and gave me the biggest hug. Um, he and I had gotten really cool anyway, um, just from playing to different places, and he visits different campuses when he's not preaching. Yeah. And so I had bumped into him multiple times, and so we had just gotten to know each other and started talking. And um, and so uh we started following each other on Instagram and sending each other messages and stuff and um all that stuff. So uh it wasn't that he wasn't unfamiliar, he knew who I was, yeah. And so from that conversation was when they decided the same day to have this broadcasted him, I think Onaje and his head of security's name is Rich. He came from the NFL, another black guy. Okay, and have that very difficult color conversation from the senior pastor to other people on staff of people of color, they did it that night. Like they didn't plan it out, they didn't like wait and they didn't go strategic and talk to their lawyers first. No, they went and got cameras and they that night they broadcasted it. And I was like, I respect this dude.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because a lot of big churches stay away from those hard political topics, and it's like the church is supposed to be there to help get us through things. But yet whenever there's you know something big that's going on, the church hides and and doesn't, you know, assist.
SPEAKER_03Mark Moore, the teaching pastor, uh, the other face of the franchise over there, um he reached out to me, I think through his secretary, and was like, Hey, uh, I'm so-and-so. Uh Mark wants to have coffee with you um to continue this conversation. Yeah. And um, she was like, Here's his personal cell phone. Not his church, his personal cell phone number. You guys can work out the details, get it on paper. We met for coffee. To this day, Mark and I um we talk, we text pretty often. We don't meet in person as much as I would like to. We're both super busy. Um, but I consider him a friend, a mentor. He asked me some of the questions that he feels like you probably should not ask publicly because he trusts me enough as his friend. Yeah. Um, that relationship. But these are the two faces of the franchise for a very big church that in other situations would be completely inaccessible, yeah, who have made themselves accessible. This is what Mark did. That's a really good perspective. Smile like you would not believe. There was one time we met for coffee, and he told me this story, and I hollered. He was at the gym, and this guy came in, uh, black eyed dreads, uh, stereotypical uh imagery of that, right? They got to talking, and somehow or another, Mark told him, Hey, I'm a pastor, blah, blah, blah, blah. He said, I tell you what, uh, don't really have a lot of time, but come to the church, bring your buddies, come to the church, we can finish this conversation. So they get to the church on a Saturday at the main campus, and Mark has invited them. So now this guy, yoked up, dreads, everything, him and like four or five other big burly black guys looking that way, they walk on to CCV's campus. Oh boy. Right, exactly. And Mark says, they're with me.
SPEAKER_00Oh, no.
SPEAKER_03Tell security, everything. No, no, no. They're with me. Like I invited them, they're with me. The whole nine. That's and I was like, that's what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03When I tell you I love those guys on a personal level, I love those guys on a personal level.
SPEAKER_00That is that's great.
SPEAKER_03They are my friends and great stories. I know that they have had their share of I don't want to use the word controversy, but opinions, um, especially this year with some things that have come out.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, I saw them in the news. Yeah. But but that's what churches are supposed to do at some point. They're supposed to stand with people who I don't know the whole situation, but it seemed to me that somebody was making a change in their life and the pastor was standing by him. And the fact that the pastor was standing by him, now the pastor got judged because they're like, but this guy did this, this, this, this, and this. And it's like, but our religion tells us that if somebody went to God with those things and is making efforts to change, we're supposed to also forgive. And yeah, it just, I don't think the the world understands things like we do. I totally get it.
SPEAKER_03Um when I when I heard about everything that went hap that went down, um, I will say this. I understand uh both sides of the coin, but I'm gonna say this very diplomatically. When you get to be a well-oiled machine of that size, then at what point do you have to determine where your ministerial ability and your overreach becomes a problem? And I mean that, let's bring that down to the molecular level real quick. If I am a pastor of a really big church, do I Someday Someday I see it. That's been prophesied. Um at what point do I I never take the mantle off. I never take the mantle off. But at what point am I not representing the little seed church? At what point am I not representing uh representing the brand when I go out to eat with my family? Yeah. The friends that I choose to keep in my company.
SPEAKER_00You're being judged at all times. Even people that you don't recognize are judging you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but how fair is it when you judge both the brand and the doctrine based off of the representation that you see before you? I preach this a lot, and I'm gonna use this example again. When people fall, they don't just speculate on the person who has fallen, the church who has quote unquote allowed it, and sometimes all the way up to the religion itself. Do you know how many people right now are really, really judging evangelical Christians as a whole for being complicit in this political scope? Yep. I'm like, wait a second, this administration is making their own decisions. If you want to blame somebody, if that if they do something you don't like, blame them. Stop blaming God for someone that you have encountered that you have placed a stigma on that they're supposed to walk, talk, and act a certain way because they have um not even told you that they represent the clock. And I say this in all sensitivity as a pastor, I get tired of being held responsible for what other pastors do. I get sick of that. Yeah. Like if you want to see me get really emotional, like you're looking at my face right now. I get tired of that. No, I didn't know. Because I get phone calls like, hey, this pastor did something. Like, how could y'all do that? Yeah, no, y'all, he did that. Yeah, and even though we're the body of Christ, what's that got to do with me? Exactly. If you want to be upset, I will gladly give you his IG handle. Go off on him. Yeah, I didn't do that. I didn't do that at all. When I fall, please call me on what I did. Yeah, but stop making me accountable for what someone else did because we're quote unquote all pastors, because that's not how the world works. You don't see me going up to the McDonald's on 51st Avenue and saying the people in Avondale are trash. So basically, all McDonald's sucks. Yeah. People have done that for years. But that's how churches get judged. I mean, that's how Frontier Airlines gets judged, or Spirit. That's how Spirit Airlines gets judged. Because you saw one fight at one airport where one person didn't care about their job and now the entire airline is trash. This is why when I uh am choosing to stay somewhere or go someplace and have to look at the reviews, I will specifically go to the molecular level of the reviews because sometimes I like reading the bad ones. You you have to. I do, because that's where you get some of the honesty. But that's also where you understand that sometimes the problems that people have with certain brands and certain businesses are not your problem. I've seen certain hotels that have gotten like three out of five stars, or their ratings like six out of ten, and then you get into it and you're like, uh, it has nothing to do with roaches or being unclean or old. It was like, well, yeah. They give me a dirty look. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It was like, so I'm gonna write a 10 page review. It's like the guy who checked me in was on his cell phone. Yeah, you could check me in. They didn't say hi and pull and address me like I'm some sort of a king.
SPEAKER_03Like, what it's like you're in a five star hotel and you rated it two out of ten because the guy who checked you in was on the on the cell phone. It was mediocre. Right. Never mind the fact. That he could be on the phone with his wife because his daughter is sick or something. Yeah. It's just like, no, I expect better.
SPEAKER_00Common sense.
SPEAKER_03Right. Like if I'm gonna read the reviews and and you tell me that the place has roaches, okay, that's a that's a fair point.
SPEAKER_01I'm not gonna break it at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. But because your inner personal uh experience, um, to your own preferences was not to your liking. Your toast came out a little late. Yeah, it doesn't affect me. The breakfast doesn't have uh waffles, it has pancakes. I like waffles. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00Well, you should have looked at that before you checked in. They had Tabasco instead of Taheen. Like what? Who cares? All right, I've never done this before on the program, but knowing how incredible and how incredibly gifted you are, I think you can absolutely pull this off. We got a piano and a microphone set up. Would you be uh willing to demonstrate and share some of your talents with us today?
SPEAKER_03I mean, do I have a choice?
SPEAKER_00You do. No, I'd love to. You do. That's so funny. All right, so let's get into that.
SPEAKER_03Um, a lot of people don't know this because I try to sneak it in, but uh my call-in card, no matter where I'm playing, uh, especially in church, is uh I will sneak in the Jurassic Park theme song into like any worship set I'm doing. Those who know me know, like they expect it, and then they're like, Sometimes if I know uh that someone's expecting it and they're looking, like I'll make them wait until like close to the very end and then I'll throw it in, like, ah, there it is. I thought he was gonna do it.
SPEAKER_02I forgot that the first is some of the gym that you said it was a whole bunch. Oh my god, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I forgot the words of it. Is it when I say what is it? Here we go. Then say my song didn't say my soul Thank you for the words.
SPEAKER_03I mean, that was cool because that's really me. Because if I was like leading worship and I didn't know the words, I would literally say, Yeah, I don't know the words, and you just go straight to the chorus. And they would laugh and then they'd go into worship. I don't know why God likes me. I really don't. I do want to uh play this real quick. I've been working on this chord progression. Um, it is uh do you know the natural number system?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so this is all one chords. So I'll go from E flat to A flat, and I'm gonna go from A flat to B. B natural in all one chords. That's A flat. I didn't play that right. Try it again. That's F sharp. This is E. This is E flat. And I'll switch over to B six. So I'm playing all of one chord to E flat to A flat. To F sharp, to E, to E flat. And then I walk it back up to B. B six. So in context, it could be something like if I was uh coming out of a song where I was in A no, if I if I was in like A flat and walking up to A flat and then coming out of A flat to go to B, uh I would go.
SPEAKER_01Tell me about the the family. You talk.
SPEAKER_00Me talk?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, meet the kids.
SPEAKER_00The kids are getting big.
SPEAKER_01Right, the baby's not a baby anymore.
SPEAKER_00I got a 17-year-old, I've got a three-year-old, and I've got a one-year-old.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00My one-year-old was born on Father's Day last year.
SPEAKER_01That's really cool.
SPEAKER_00She is the baby of the family. She's the last one. We're we were told we're not allowed to have any more.
SPEAKER_03So she's she agrees with that.
SPEAKER_00We were being Sarah and Abraham over here. So I mean, we we were really playing with our ages and uh asking God for some miracles. And uh he provided. I didn't have to go and find me uh uh maidservant or anything like that. I'm just playing. No, uh no, it was great. Uh my wife, my wife is amazing, and she uh she delivered both of our all three of our children, but uh she delivered um our baby, our baby girl. We have two older boys, but uh yeah, the girl I have you seen her yet? I haven't. Her name is Eleanora America. Oh, that's pretty. She is I'm telling you. My wife is Mexican, and I'm a white boy. She is the most she is the most beautiful princess peanut I've ever seen. I love it.
SPEAKER_03And she's the baby girl. You guys are all doomed.
SPEAKER_00Oh, and she has all this protection. She has a mommy, she has a daddy, she has a big 17-year-old brother out there. Trust me, I know. I'm a baby girl, I get it. And then she has a a little bro, bro who she plays with, who, you know, is like a couple years older than her, but yeah, she uh she tries to be so much like Asher. And uh Asher's getting big, he's talking, he's been in a couple of episodes. Um my bonus episode specifically was the last one he was in, and uh it came out on Father's Day of uh this year, 2026. I love it. And uh he he said, Happy Father's Day, Dad, dad, I love you, and all this and that. It was sweet.
SPEAKER_03Wonderful.
SPEAKER_00I got so some of that inspired me, and I'm gonna give a shout out to him. Some of that honestly inspired me from Ronnie Jones. Ronnie Jones is a man's man. Ronnie Jones, he had his son who also works on this podcast, Ronnie Cash, who does great things. Yeah. And uh Ronnie Cash um apparently was coughing on on some sort of track at like three months old. And that was his first time being, you know, physically recorded. And I was like, I was listening to them and their family history and their stories, and I was like, that is amazing how something as simple as a cough, you know, that's something that he'll have his whole life. Like, you know, he'll never sound like a three-month-old coughing on a track no more. That's just so amazing to capture that. And so that inspired me. I'm like, you know, if Asher wants to ever, I don't force him, but if Asher ever wants to, you know, be a part of this, I let him say his little messages. I recorded and I I put it in there, and it it makes it it, it's very um, it's very amazing. You know, coming from me, the host, the dad of uh Asher, it's just yeah, it's very sweet. Yeah, I get it. But uh yeah, everybody's good. My wife is doing great. We are all we're not hitting 20 years in marriage like you, even though I've known my wife over 20 years, but we haven't been married that long, so congratulations to you. 20 years November. That's right around the corner.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, pray for us.
SPEAKER_00Any special uh I don't wanna I don't wanna give away your secrets. You probably have some special things planned.
SPEAKER_03I well, I don't, but there is. Um I I'm not planning it, but someone else is doing it for us.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, I forgot. You're you're fancy, you got those planners and stuff. No, we're going away party, you rented out a whole arena, man.
SPEAKER_03That's hilarious. Free drinks and everything.
SPEAKER_00Like, woo!
SPEAKER_03That's so funny. So I met my wife um in a recording group called Las Vegas Mass Choir.
SPEAKER_00I never heard this. This is awesome.
SPEAKER_03Yes, L L VM. Uh I met her in that group. She was previously married to uh a gentleman that was in the Air Force, and then when they decided to part ways, uh I was working in property management at the time. And so because we were in the same group, she approached me about um getting a place to stay because he was moving off base and they were going their separate ways. So it just so happened that the place next door to where I was living was open. And I secured that for uh for her and our son and the rest is so um the group that we met in is also celebrating uh 20 years of being a group, a recording group. And they're having this big reunion concert. Um and I think it's next month, matter of fact, in October. And so um they reached out to us about uh incorporating our 20th anniversary celebration in um in their reunion. No way. So it was that was a no-brainer. It was like, oh yeah, y'all y'all can cover all the expenses and all the logistics and be nice. Yes, yeah, very nice. So yeah, we'll be celebrating 20 back in Las Vegas um in the middle of celebrating the place that we met as well.
SPEAKER_00That is amazing. That's sweet. Congratulations to you guys. I wish all the best and I hope you guys have an amazing time and uh to another 20 years, uh twenty happiest twenty twenty more years of everybody's alive.
SPEAKER_03I appreciate it. Hopefully I can get to October.
SPEAKER_00You or your bank account both.
SPEAKER_03Both yeah. Um, it's been a blessing. And um we were because of the move and everything, we were considering just uh scaling everything back. So this has uh been a huge, huge gift um because now we don't have to look at like a destination thing or go on a vacation and all that stuff. But uh we can basically just go where we were planning to go and attend anywhere because we're gonna be part of this concert, this reunion thing. So for us, there's really not a a lot of extra expense. You just focus on YouTube now. Right, because we were already planning to be there anyway. That's really cool. And we have a place in Vegas, so even that part's not gonna cost because we still have a a residence out there. Oh simple as a pie.
SPEAKER_01Nice pie simple as I cherry pie.
SPEAKER_033.14 When I was in high school, there was a guy who knew. Oh, you're talking about the other pie.
SPEAKER_00I'm I'm food. I'm a food.
SPEAKER_03I'm like, I'm a pie simple. That's so funny. That's so funny. There was a guy uh in my high school, he got a perfect sixteen hundred back when SATs were sixteen hundred. He got a perfect sixteen hundred on his SAT. There were three kids in my school that got a perfect sixteen hundred on SATs, and he figured out pie to a hundred places because he was bored. Oh my good gosh, really? Yeah. Genius. Yeah. My high school's actually pretty well known. Um there's some pseudo famous people that came from my school. I went to Mount Carmel High School in San Diego, California. Uh people who have come from my high school include uh, I guess in reverse order, the current second lady of the United States of America, who Chavez. She went to my high school.
SPEAKER_00Oh, uh JD Vance's wife.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, JD Vance's wife.
SPEAKER_00She seems interesting.
SPEAKER_03She is interesting. Um who else? Eric Chavez, uh formerly the Diamondbacks, I think Yankees. I think he had a ring with the Yankees. Eric Munton. Steve Sharendolo, the current uh coach for the LA Galaxy with the soccer game. No way. Yeah, and he is uh I think a gold medal Olympian as well. Oh that's cool. Um yeah, there's a few people. Uh a couple of wrestlers, just into Jupiter. She was on American Gladiators. Remember that show? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, she was on the American Gladiators.
SPEAKER_00Dude, that was cool. And they had the big old big knock each other over.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Adam Lambert uh went to my school. So you're famous. You really are famous.
SPEAKER_00My school is famous.
SPEAKER_03You came from the famous factory. No, my school is famous. I'm not even on the Wikipedia page. I feel a way about that, too. I'll I'll get you there.
SPEAKER_00I know you can make those yourself now. I know, right?
SPEAKER_03I I keep adding myself, they keep deleting me off. Like you're not famous enough.
SPEAKER_00Did you hear I heard something about that recently? So somebody went to like that's funny. They keep deleting you off. Somebody recently um went to like this this well-known band. Like, I don't know who it is, but let's just pick somebody. Some let's say Taylor Swift. It's not Taylor Swift, but let's just say Taylor Swift. And so then they went to the Taylor Swift page while they were at the band and they say, Yeah, uh such and such, their name, let's just say John Smith. John Smith is a a cousin of Taylor Swift and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They put that on the Wikipedia page and then they went over to the security and they're like, Look, look at my ID. I'm John Smith and I'm related to Taylor Swift. And they got past the security. But when the band, it wasn't Taylor Swift, when the band saw the guy come up to them, they questioned it. And he immediately was like, All honesty, this is what I did. I went on Wikipedia. I I lied to security. They thought it was so cool, so interesting. They let them stay, they were taking pictures with them. They were so intrigued by wow, you cheated the system that much. You're good to go now. Like, I don't know if I would do that. Yeah, like I'd be so creeped out by it. Like if you did that, and even though you're honest, what else? Anyways, um that's a fair point.
SPEAKER_03Not only that, but that's dangerous because if you get exposed while you're back there, depending on whose team is there and that security, that's not gonna end well for you. Yeah. Because there's security that will just like escort you out, and then there's security that will that will pound you or escort you out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, with a uh uh what's that called a pillowcase. You won't see where you're where you're coming or where you're going.
SPEAKER_03No, I've been backstage in some pretty big, big venues, and I have seen where it's like, all right, get out of here. I've seen the escort out, and I've seen like carried out because you are barely conscious.
SPEAKER_00I've seen that in churches. All right, Rage. Well, thank you for being here. And before you go, this is your spotlight time. You can take 30 seconds to plug whatever you want, your projects, your links, your fam, your shout-outs. Go for it.
SPEAKER_03I don't have anything new going, uh just trying to get settled in Texas. But I do have something to consider since this is our parting note. Um, I watched the Michael Jackson movie over the summer, and I was reminded of um how big he was when he was with us. And I've always wondered this comically. Can you imagine when he was doing those like 150,020,000 stadium, like soccer stadiums overseas and stuff? Can you imagine being that person that like camped out for three days? Oh my god, tickets to the front row, and the first song comes out and you pass out and they carry you out.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, I'd be mad at myself. I'd be so mad at myself.
SPEAKER_03Those are my parting words. Just imagine, like, you spend three days just camped out trying to get front row standing only to see Michael, and as soon as he comes out, if you stay ready, you don't gotta get ready.
SPEAKER_00That's what they tell me, right?
SPEAKER_03That's amazing.
SPEAKER_00Love you, man. Love you, buddy. Glad you're here.
SPEAKER_03We'll see you soon.
SPEAKER_00All right, all right. Well, folks, that's a wrap on episode 42, reminiscing. Big thanks to Big dropping by in Phoenix to join us. Stay tuned next week. We have another exciting episode coming your way. You can find Unfit for Radio with Jakers on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcast. If you're enjoying the show, please leave a review. It helps more people discover us. We truly appreciate it. UnfitForRadio is independently produced and listener support. If you'd like to support the show, visit unfitforradio show.buzzprof.com and click the donation link. Got a question, comment, suggestion, or a guest recommendation, email us at unfitforradio show at gmail.com. Or you can text us at 602-767-3390, and we may feature it on a future episode. Remember, we're on Instagram, unfit for radio. The credits for this episode belong to executive producer Jacks, recorded by Jakers producer Ray G. I know that guy. UFR music and mastering by Ronald L. Jones on Instagram IG at Ronnie Cash Life. Remember, if you can't find the good, then be the good. Dang it. Until next time.