The Power of Presence—Claiming a Healthy Relationship with Technology

0:13 It's been awesome these last few weeks. I don't know about you, but I've been loving this collection that we've been in on relationships and I really have needed it. Going all the way back to Dr. Crawford talking about parenting and Pastor Louis talking about our relationships with ourselves and dating and friendships and marriage. And today we're gonna close that collection and we're gonna be talking about our relationship with technology. I know you all saw that coming, and it's going to be really powerful. I'm going to have a conversation with two of my friends, and I want you to help me welcome them to the stage. These are my friends, Hannah Brinscher and Joey Odom. They're going to come and help us today as we have a conversation about navigating our... Now, come on, let's give them a Passion City welcome at all locations. Grateful for you. Thanks for being here. Love you.

1:09 These guys are amazing. We had the 930 was so powerful and I'm so excited for the 1145 to get to hear from them. Joey and I are newer friends. We just met each other a few months ago. He came to our church to invest in a parent night where all of our parents from different locations came together. It was so powerful. We're like, we got to have this guy back. This is not a parenting message. This is a message for everybody. So pumped you're here. Tell us, give everybody just a little bit more about you, your family, what you're doing in life. Yeah, first thing, I wouldn't talk bad about my dad's golf game on stage. I wouldn't do that on Father's Day. You've never seen my dad play golf.

1:47 Sorry, Tom. Well, I live in Knoxville, Tennessee. My wife, nothing, huh? Crickets. There's two gatherings. I'm very proud of our church. Have you all heard of Knoxville? Do you know what Knoxville is? It's the less cool ville of Tennessee, by the way. Nashville does take the cake. But my wife, Kristen, and I have been married for 21 years. You can see I'm a little bit on the taller side, 6'5". Kristen's on the shorter side at 5 feet tall. We have made two beautiful children, though, one of which is here today. Our 15-year-old daughter, Gianna, 17-year-old son, Harrison, is playing in a tennis tournament right now. He has not wished me Happy Father's Day, but he has told me his score from his first match. And he just said, I'm locked in. Literally, he said locked in, and that's all he said to me today. But I'm a co-founder of a tech company called RO, which is for families, and then Reclaim Well, which is for church staffs. And it's all around our relationship with our phones. My co-founder, Heath Wilson, he and his wife, Missy, are here with us today as well.

2:42 And we just set out on a mission years ago to say, could this look different in our lives? Our relationship with technology, could it look different for us? And I'm super excited to be here. I've been a fan of Hannah Brancher before we were friends and have loved her book, The Unplugged Hours that Everybody Needs to Buy. But so honored to be here with you all today. Love it. Thanks for being here. Hannah is part of our family. she's not a guest and she's definitely not from Knoxville. She normally is on the second row right up here in the balcony at the 930. Her and her husband Lane over there. And these guys are amazing. A part of our house. They've been part of our house for a long time. Tell everybody, just give everybody a little bit about what you do in life, about who you are. I know a lot of people have heard you, whether at the Grove or young adults, but for everybody else, catch us up to speed on what you're doing in life. Yeah. So my name is Hannah. If we have not met yet, I'm from New England, Connecticut Any New Englanders? No? Okay, a few, more than Knoxville We got Connecticut but no Knoxville I knew I loved this church You know, I packed up my life 10 years ago and moved down south Having no idea what I was doing Everybody was like, this is a phase And 10 years later, it's not a phase But I'm married to my husband Lane We have a daughter, Nova Lee She's 5 years old And I am an author and a writer and an online educator.

4:00 I love helping people establish healthy rhythms and routines in their daily life, especially in this realm of mental health. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for being here. Thanks for jumping in today. When we were kind of praying about this collection of talks, you know, it was interesting to say the least that we're going, okay, what relationships do we want to talk about? We want to talk about parenting. We want to talk about dating. We want to cultivate meaningful friendships. and we want to talk about our relationship with ourself and we want to talk about all these relationships. And then at the end, we're like, and let's talk about our relationship with technology. I don't think, I don't know there's ever been another church that ended their relationships collection with a talk on technology. But as we were really thinking about it, we knew it was the right thing to end this collection with. Number one, because our relationship with our phones mostly is impacting all of the other relationships that we've talked about.

4:56 And we know, we've been talking about, we know that we're wired for connection. We're wired for community. We're wired to have deep, meaningful friendships, community connections with one another. And in order to do that, a lot of us are distracted from the people that are right across the table from us because we're so busy checking our phones. Me, you know, I'm at the top of that list. And so I would love for the two of you, these guys are leading voices really across the nation, not just in the Christian community, but in the broader community of helping us not figure out, do we just throw our phones away, you know, and all go live out in the woods somewhere, but how do we reclaim a healthy approach in view to technology? And so that's what our prayer for all of you will be. And that the downstream of that will be, you will have space and margin to really cultivate meaningful relationships. So I would love for the two of you to just talk a little bit about how you came to being passionate about this topic, what your own personal journey was to go, man, I need to really think about this. I want to alter course here a little bit. What does that journey look like for the two of you to kind of get into this space and to really spend your lives helping the church and the broader community navigate technology? Yeah, I will say I'm a little bit newer to the space. You've been on this for a while. I've always cared very deeply about the power and the importance of presence.

6:21 And I think that's what's underlying the conversation about technology. It's like, what are we standing to lose? And that's presence with one another. And I grew up with a mom who was so present that I don't think I knew until I got into adulthood how rare that was. A mom that refused to get a cell phone. All of my friends in college were getting texts and my mom would write me letters when I was in college. but if you ever spend time with her she will make you feel like you are just the center of the universe and if you've ever spent time with a person like that you know that makes you feel so capable and so strong but you also know the adverse if you've ever been out to dinner with somebody that can't look away from their phone or can't even pay attention and you're like why am I even here? and so for me that was always important but it wasn't until a few years ago in the midst of COVID, I had just become a mom myself. It was my birthday and I was doing my quiet time. And I don't know if I'm the only one or if other people are like, my birthday is like a second new year. I'm going to like become a completely different person in the next 365 days.

7:32 And I was planning out what I wanted to do. And then I just heard so deeply in my spirit, turn off your phone. And I knew in that moment, it wasn't like turn off your phone once it was no, turn off, that's what this year is about, turning off your phone. And I knew something was waiting for me on the other side. And so for me being like a planner, I went home, I made kind of a challenge for myself of like, could I unplug for a thousand hours in one year? Because I didn't want to throw out the phone or get rid of the tech. I think the tech can be such a blessing, like having grandparents that live thousands of miles away. It's like amazing that my daughter can have a FaceTime day. And like tech has given us so many wonderful things, but I wanted to know, could I strike a balance? Could I find a way to be able to be present, but then also like use tech and put it in its rightful place? And so that was in 2021.

8:26 And I can look now and be like, it's been thousands of unplugged hours later. It's by far the best discipline that I've ever cultivated for myself. That's awesome. Amazing. One thing I love that you said that about discipline, and this is where, when it comes to this topic, I think, especially, and maybe in anyone, we want things to come so naturally to us, and you think that's almost like the hallmark of a good relationship is when it comes naturally, but I think that's completely wrong. You have to form disciplines to form good relationships. And what's interesting about technology, too, this is fascinating to me, that here you've had five messages all about embodied relationships, and friendships, or relationships with God, or with yourself. and now, and this is, I love that you're addressing it as a relationship, but I think we need to all acknowledge that it's a little weird we're talking about a relationship with an object, right? I mean, that's a little bit, I mean, think about any other object in your life. Do we have relationships with objects, right? I see my lawnmower once a week, nine months out of the year, right? We don't chat throughout the week, right? If I find myself in a boring conversation, I don't sneak out for a mow, right? You know what I mean? So we're not, we don't, by the way, there are men in this room, I promise you who sneak out to mow during boring conversations. But this is a weird thing that we have a relationship with an object, but I think this is the way we have to frame it because it's getting in the way of our other relationships. But when you think about kids, think about infants and toddlers, they do have relationships with objects. These objects, they're called transitional objects or comfort objects. They're things like blankies and binkies and teddy bears, right? These are things that a child clings to in the absence of relationships to give them a sense of security.

10:06 So after a while, they realize, I don't need this. I can do it on my own. So it helps transition them from dependence to independence. So what's interesting about our phones is that they've reverted us back to a childlike state of relationship with an object. They have turned us into kids again. But it's a little bit different. You see, when kids, they cling to an object in the absence of relationships, and we cling to this object in the presence of relationships. We cling to the, we're looking at this. we get dressed up for dinner, right, on date nights, and then we go like this until the food comes out. There's something wrong with that. So for me, I think about the journey, to your question, the journey for me, when my son Harrison was five years old, who's 17 now, who hasn't wished me Happy Father's Day. So you can throw your dad under the bus. I'll just throw my son under the bus, right? So he's five years old. He's playing his very first soccer season. We lived in Atlanta at the time. We were in East Cobb. And Harrison, by the way, sweetest kid in the world, kind, considerate to others, which is just amazing life skills and terrible five-year-old soccer skills, right? I mean, so all the kids, you know, the kids who score the goals are the aggressive kids, the kids who appear to be in a work release program, right? They're the really aggressive kids. So they're scoring the goals, not Harrison.

11:20 Everybody on the team had scored a goal except for Harrison. So we lug out our lawn chairs, go to the sidelines again for another soccer game. But then late in the first half, something really magical happened. And then Harrison found himself standing in front of the ball, the goal in his sights, and he reared back his little leg and he kicked. And this moment replays in my head, almost like a slow motion movie. Dramatic James Horner music in the background, right? The ball gliding over the grass into the back of the net for Harrison's first soccer goal. And the crowd, these sweet parents went wild. They knew what had just happened. And his coach ran out on the field, lifted Harrison up. But there was this moment, this little split second in between the ball hitting the back of the net and his coach picking him up when Harrison did something that five-year-old boys do. He turned to the sidelines to lock eyes with dad, right? To see the pride on my face and the smile on my face. And it was this amazing, magical moment, except for one small detail. You probably guess it, is that I missed it. Every bit of what I just described. You see, when Harrison turned to the sidelines, all he saw was the top of my head as I looked down at my phone. So, I missed every bit of what I just described to you. And I had this feeling at the moment. And I don't think I had the words for it at the time, but I have the words for it now. And it's this, it's very simple is that something's wrong.

12:31 That I didn't, I didn't convince Kristen to marry me after years of trying. I didn't, we didn't try to have kids to, to end up like this for me to miss out on these moments, his very first soccer goal. So something was wrong. And in framing it as a relationship, we realized that something's quite not quite right. I mean, some of you may feel this, you may feel in your friendships and your dating relationships, or every guy I go out with is always on his phone. Every girl I go with is always on their phone. You probably feel that just tension inside. And the thing that I can tell this group of people, and Hannah knows it, and I know it, because we're on a journey, and a lot of you are on a journey, is that it doesn't have to be that way. It really doesn't. This is a message of hope. And we're going to talk about the stakes, and I think that's really important to do. But the thing you need to know is that there is hope here. And this is something, the great news is that we can do something about it because we know what the problem is. So that began my journey. And so then Heath Wilson and I found a business. Heath had a business in town called eVestment. I was in commercial real estate in Atlanta at the time. And we said, hey, what if, what if the world could look different for our families, for other families in the church? And so we set it on the journey from there.

13:34 Yeah, it's awesome. I'm so grateful that the two of you listened to that moment. You know, I think we have, everybody has those moments every day almost, where you feel the spirit leading you, that little nudge in your heart. Hey, this isn't, you know, we should alter course here. And now for a lot of us to get to be the beneficiaries of, I think, you listening to that. So thank you for that. Talk a little bit about how you saw this impacting. I know you talk about with your children, but how you saw in this, we're wired for connection. We're wired for community. We're meant to be doing life with one another. That's the beauty of the church. That's why we say the church isn't an organization that you join. It's a family to which you belong. It's brothers and sisters on mission to go, this is what matters in life. Let's run together. but this technology which promised us and in some ways is a blessing but also can steal more from us than we know it was taking how have the two of you like in terms of just relationships friendships relationships in work relationships with your spot like as you you guys have studied this and you're trying to figure out how do we alter course here what have you noticed about what this is doing to our relationships? Yeah, I would say that like the first prompter for me, like being in early motherhood was my daughter because, you know, she was a little over the age of one and I noticed that she would just continually be trying to grab my phone. And that makes sense because I was grabbing my phone all throughout the pockets of the day, but I started to step back and question like, what message am I sending her if this is all it takes to pull me away from her?

15:16 And I think like, you know, it started with that, but it sent me on this journey of realizing like there is so much power in our presence. You know, all throughout the scripture, we see God's presence going with people. One of my favorite references is when he's commissioning Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. And Moses is like coming back being like, okay, but like this, or like I stutter. And like he's got all these reasons why God shouldn't choose him. And God's rebuttal is, I will be with you. Like my presence is going with you. And when I discovered that, I had this moment of realizing, okay, but like, if we are made in the likeness and image of God and God's presence is the most powerful thing he extends to us, could that mean that our presence holds power too for our friends, for our family?

16:15 And could that then be like, to take it a level deeper, like this is a form of spiritual warfare to take our presence away, to convince us that whatever is happening on those devices is better than what's happening in our everyday lives, which is just a lie from the enemy. And so it's that realization of like, yes, it's harder to be present at the dinner table or with friends or having a conversation, but it's the most powerful thing we can give to somebody is our presence, is our willingness to say, I'm here, nothing is pulling me away from you. That's right. Darren Whitehead, who's pastor of Church of the City in Nashville, I've heard him talk about this and I love playing on that. He talks about this idea that our phones make us believe we have God-like powers. And Andy Crouch also talks about kind of the magic of your phones. But think about the idea of how powerful presence is. And then our phones give us this ability to be omnipresent everywhere but here.

17:12 And so it's just so close, right? But it's such a mirage. And it's just not true. And so we're forsaking the here for the everywhere. And in reality, we're not anywhere. Yeah. So it's an unbelievable dynamic. And it's what a beautiful, I remember a friend of mine, when I told him we were launching the business, he goes, I'll tell you what. He goes, if I were the devil, he goes, I'd make an iPhone. That's what he said. And it's, again, this is no demonization. Truly, I have an iPhone. I think it's great. I think it does a lot of amazing things. But we have to recognize when it starts getting in the way of embodiment, that's when we have to be really, really careful. So for us, I mean, the thing for us that we think about when it gets in the way of relationships, I think about my kids and dating. I think about what that will look like for them. And I think maybe there are people here in the dating scene and probably settling and just expecting that that person is not really going to fully be with you. And I think that we have an opportunity right now to reset what's normal.

18:06 I think if we start to begin to, in a way, just put our foot down and say, hey, when I go on a date, so maybe let's talk to the fellas here. If a guy is going on a date, I just want to encourage you at the beginning of that date, hand your phone to that person you're going on a date with. You may not marry that person. That's okay. but what you're telling them is they're valuable. You're telling them, hey, I'm going to sit here and I'm going to be with you. I encourage my daughter Gianna, 15 years old here, I encourage her when she goes on a date in a few decades that she needs to that if she finds herself at a dinner table, some guy's taking her out and he just sits on his phone, she knows exactly what to do. It's surf and turf, right? And then let him pay the bill and then don't see him again, right? So you start expecting these high things for yourself, but that's going to become from us modeling the way for her, for Gianna, for it to be normal for someone to do that. When we launched our business, we set out, Heath and I said, let's see if this is actually a problem. Let's see if this is a problem worth solving. So we commissioned a research team to go do a bunch of market research studies. And they came back and they had stat after stat and it was all the realities of what's happening. But then they had one line at the very end, and this was the last thing. And they said, you have to do something. I said, okay, we'll dig into that a little more. They said, here's what we found. We know it's affecting us, but it's affecting the next generation. And they said, if we, we don't do something, then this generation of kids, doom scrolling on their phones, could be the very first generation of kids who will someday die with more of other people's memories than memories they create on their own. Wow. One more time. Come on, let's hear it.

19:46 I'm going to say it another time. So I want you, I want this to sink in. If we don't do something, this is not inevitable. So if we don't do something, this could be the very first generation of kids who will someday die with more of other people's memories, more of other people's memories and memories they create on their own. And that begins with us. There's actually hope in that message is that we can stop it. We can do something about it. Yeah. I know we're, I know none of us are okay, but, but we want, we were looking. And again, I love all the norms we're asking for Congress and the Surgeon General and all these people to do. Hold on one second. We can do it. It starts with us individually. It starts with you and Novali doing puzzles together. It starts with us being president on a date night at a dinner table. There is unbelievable power in doing that because you begin back to Andy Crouch. Andy Crouch says real change happens over three generations. So today, in the next 20 minutes, what I'm hopeful for everybody here is they're going to walk away with some steps.

20:41 And what they're going to do is some steps that they can walk away with, practical things that if you implement them today, and I mean this again, real change over three generations that will reverberate in your grandchildren because of the things, because what you're doing will do that. It will reverberate in your grandchildren by you doing this small step, not for the sake of getting better at your phone, but being fruitful in your relationships all around you. So powerful. I, um, I think the beauty of it is kind of what you're saying is that, um, it, what is doesn't have to be what will be, is we can change this. And praise God for that. We're not victims of what this is doing to us. We get to decide who we want to be and how we want to live and what we want to model to the next generation. And I'm really grateful for that. You guys have both talked a lot about how important what we're modeling is. Yes, to the next generation, but also even like in all of our relationships. I mean, we're modeling in every direction everywhere we go.

21:37 So talk a little bit about the power of that. Yeah, I think I learned early on in this journey, like, okay, because I think especially, you know, becoming a mother, all of a sudden, the conversation everywhere was screen time and screen time and screen time. And I remember standing with this group of mom talking about screen time. And I'm like, this only makes me look at myself harder. Like, if I'm not looking at my own screen time, there's something wrong. so we're either going to like manage this situation or we're going to model this situation better and I think that extends to even people that in the room are not parents it's a matter of parenting ourselves of like saying you know what I know that I could watch this whole season of Netflix today but what would be better probably going outside moving my body reading a book like all these things I've said I've wanted to do but all of a sudden feel like distraction is pulling me from it. And I want to say like this conversation I think is so coded in grace because it's hard.

22:40 It's not easy. It's not our fault. So we've been given these tools that have been designed to make us addicted to them. There are days where we get it wrong. I'm sure Joey feels the same way. I was sharing with them a story about like there was one day and this has happened multiple times where like I just felt like I was all over the place. I was distracted. I kept pulling at my phone. And when I put my daughter to bed that night, I apologized to her. I said, I'm sorry, like, I don't feel like I was very present with you. That's not the mom that I want to be. And I said, if you could do anything in the world with mommy tomorrow, what would it be? And her eyes lit up. And I'm like, we're going to Disney, I guess, you know? And she was like, a puzzle. And I'm like, a puzzle? Like, a 15-minute sit-on-the-floor puzzle. and I realized in that moment, it's like, it's not the big flashy things.

23:34 It's not the things we're all seeing on the screens that matter. It's the puzzles and it's the letters that we write and it's the conversations that we have and we've been duped into thinking that stuff is boring or that stuff is ordinary and I think we're going to look back and be like, no, that was life. Like, did I treasure it? Did I savor it? Because like a lot of life is just doing puzzles on the floor or like date nights where you're trying to be present with one another. And the more that you start to put the phone down and like adjust your palette, the more you realize like, oh, this is the stuff. I've been convinced to believe that the stuff was elsewhere. But really, my life is right here and I get to build it. And what a privilege. And I think it's so, I think it's easy for us too, Hannah, in that. I don't know if this is because, maybe this is just like being, trying to be grandiose. I don't know if you relate to this.

24:28 but I would much rather, it feels like a much more heroic, loving act to plan a big Disney World trip, right? And we really do undervalue those little things that we're doing, but it's so much easier, maybe as fellas too, that we want to do these big, massive gestures, and as a result, we just completely ignore those little things in the way. And it's so important for us to focus on those little things and see the power in doing that and just how much that makes a difference to the people around us. I also think, back to the modeling, and I think modeling is such an important thing because when we all hear these discussions, by the way, first service, there were a lot of elbows being thrown to spouses next to them because it's so easy to see this in somebody else. It's so easy to see this as like, oh yeah, I wish my wife were here to hear this type of thing. But this has to start with ourselves. And as parents, but not only as parents, I think just in any relationship, we begin to normalize behavior on our own and realizing that if we start with ourselves, things will change.

25:22 And as parents, we call this the 3M parent trap. As parents, we have a tendency over the last 18 years to model a bad relationship with our phones. So a bad relationship could look like you phone snubbing your kids when they're trying to talk to you in the middle of a conversation. It could look like you having your phone at the dinner table. So modeling this bad relationship with our phones, but then we give our kids a phone someday and they do something very unsurprising. They mimic what we have modeled to them, right? So they have their phones at the dinner table. They phone snub us in the middle of a conversation, but then we have the audacity to do something absolutely crazy. I think this is true lunacy, what we do, is that we have the audacity to get mad at our kids for mimicking what we have modeled to them. This is crazy. We do this all the time. Now, here's the good and the bad news in that, is our kids are going to mimic what we model. And by the way, I don't care if your kids are 2 or 12 or 20. I think you can begin to make changes right now. So, let's not, don't go down a shame route here if you've not gotten this quite right.

26:21 But our kids are going to mimic what we model. So, we have to ask ourselves a question, am I modeling a relationship that I want others around me to mimic. Because statistically, it shows this, the number one predictor of how your child will use a phone someday is how you use your phone today. So we just have to start with ourselves. We can do that. And then get other people involved in it. You said this, Hannah, and I love this. There's no accountability like accountability with your kids on being open with them and sharing with them, hey, I'm struggling with this. Hey, if you see me on my phone at the dinner table, will you say something to me? That's powerful. That's good. That's humility. That's okay to do that. That's a good thing for you to do that and bringing them into the conversation. So I think that modeling side, let's just make sure we're modeling a relationship we want our kids to mimic. Well, I love what you said, too, about the shame component. Because I feel like every time we talk about the phones these days, there's all this shame. And I don't know if any, I have never looked at screen time and felt good about my life. I think that if we got into the science of it, I think it's actually very shame-based.

27:19 And so I flipped it on its head to be like, okay, by choosing to unplug and be present hour by hour, what do I stand to gain? What do I want more of? Do I want to read more books? Do I want to spend more time with my friends? Do I want to pick up that hobby I've been talking about forever, you know? And so I think, like, we have to flip the conversation to say it's not bad. It's not a thing that we need to feel shame about. But right when I started unplugging, I remember coming across John 10, 10, a verse I had read dozens of times. You know, the enemy came to steal, kill, and destroy. And I came that you might have life and have it abundantly. And when I dug into that word abundantly, like I remember it was like above and beyond, exceedingly more. And I wrote in my journal, I was sitting in my journal, is this the exceedingly more? And it's not that like, I can't look around my life today and say like, this is the exceedingly more, but what it was missing was my presence.

28:20 It was like, God had so much more for me, but he didn't need to yell or scream. Like he didn't have to turn up his volume. I had to learn to turn down the noise so that I could pay attention to what was right in front of me. Because right there in the beginning of that passage where the enemy came to steal, kill and destroy, we know the kill and destroy part, but what is he stealing? Well, he's stealing presents and he's stealing life and he's stealing our time. And we've been trained to believe that money is the most valuable resource, but I think it's time. And so do you want to spend that time scrolling or do you want to spend it on other things? Because that's in your power. Yeah, one of the things that is so inspiring, even as you're talking about this, is, you know, anytime we're talking about, we talked about this in the week on friendship, is anytime we're talking about relationships, we're quick to evaluate everybody else in their relationship to us and we're slow to evaluate our relationship to them.

29:15 One of the things I'm convinced that the enemy is stealing, though he can't take it from us, but he wants to fog our vision of it is our identity in Christ. And so many people I think are convinced they don't have anything to offer. Meaning we scroll on our phones, particularly social media has become this constant scoreboard. Nobody's ever looked at it and felt good about themselves. Or if you have felt good about yourself, it's at the expense of somebody else feeling bad. So that's not good either. But for the most part, we feel like, oh, if I just could get better in this area, if I could just do this, then I would have something to offer. Meanwhile, the people in our presence aren't really even, they don't want the future version of us. They just want us. They just want us now. Your kids want you. They don't need you to be perfect. They just need you to be present. And I'm convinced that's been such an attack from the enemy is to convince us via the scoreboard constantly scrolling across our feed.

30:14 You're not good enough. You don't have anything to offer. Meanwhile, we're sealed in Christ. We're loved sons and daughters. We have something to offer because we're in him, which is powerful. Talk a little bit about, we've talked about our horizontal relationships. I think one of the really powerful thing is how technology has impacted our vertical relationship. And really, if that's off, we don't have anything to offer anybody anyways, because we don't have a source to be filled up with. So talk about how technology is impacting our vertical relationship. Yeah, to me, this is, I don't think there is a greater picture of technology in our lives than the parable of the sower, when Jesus talked in three of the gospels, the parable of the sower. And it talks about seed falling in different types of soils. And he refers to one soil, and he refers to the thorns. And the thorns, what do they do? The thorns choke out the seed, making it unfruitful. And he says the thorns represent three things.

31:10 They represent the deceitfulness of wealth, represent the worries of life, and they represent the pleasures of life. And again, this is 2,000 years ago. This is why we need to all read our Bibles, because of how applicable it is, no matter where you are. But if we break down those three things, the first one, the deceitfulness of wealth. So let's just imagine you're on a vacation with your family in Tampa, and you're having a great time, and you're enjoying each other's presence, then you take a quick scan through your Instagram feed and you see some friends on a vacation in Tahiti. And all of a sudden, your vacation in Tampa isn't quite as fun as you thought it was, right? Can anybody relate to that? And you just think, if I had that Tahiti money, man, I'd be happy, right? So it's not just the wealth, it's the deceitfulness. It's the lies that it's telling you. It's the narrative that it's telling you. Then that lives, that deceitfulness of wealth living in our constant Instagram feed. Then the worries of life, worries of life hitting us, whether it's in emails or our news feeds or our ex-feeds or whatever that is, is that deluge of information coming in our brains, making us worried, bringing us down.

32:07 By the way, most of which is inactionable. I can't do anything about what's happening in the Middle East right now. So it is completely taking our minds and these worries are filling us up, living in our phones. And the third one are the pleasures of life. And we all know whether it's Netflix or gambling or gaming or pornography or whatever it is that's pulling us away from the present, back to presence, pulling us away into escapism. And so they're living in there. And so what it does, those are making us, it's not that those things, those things are bad, but it's the downstream effects. It's making us unfruitful in all the areas that we care about. And so what's interesting about that is Jesus said at the very beginning of that, he said, a seed fell among the thorns. So let's think about that for a second. I bet everybody in this room right now has a thorn in their pocket, right? We're all carrying this. We live today among the thorns. We are living right now among the thorns. and that has the possibility to choke out the word, making us unfruitful.

33:02 Grant, you're a great communicator. You could preach the best sermon on a Sunday and then all of a sudden, just that can choke out the seed. So that's the reality of the world we live in. That is not necessarily what has to happen, but that's the reality. We have to recognize we live among the thorns and we have to be intentional, taking self-disciplined steps. By the way, back to shame, in Titus it says, the grace of God teaches us to live self-controlled lives. Shame doesn't change behavior. The grace of God, living in his grace, that then teaches us to live in self-control. Great. I think for me, especially like in my quiet time, like the first thing that I had to do was I had to eliminate my phone from the quiet time, which I don't like to me. I'm like, oh, I was doing that for so long. And then I wondered why it felt so scattered or disconnected, but just in the way that I wouldn't feel valued if I was out to dinner with my husband and he was on the phone the whole time.

33:57 What does that say about my relationship with God? If I'm over here being like, I want to receive from you, God, but also like I got to check the weather and this person's texting me and I got to email this person back. And then the other thing that I had to do was I realized that I had let in a lot of noise about Jesus, but I wasn't going directly to the source anymore. And that's the age that we're living in is the information age where like you can have sermons and you have podcasts and you have commentary. And there's nothing wrong with those things. I think those things should be supplementary. But I think first and foremost, like you need to learn to read the word of God. That is the living word of God. That is like the stake of our lives, you know? And even if that looks like opening up the word and being like, I'm really confused about that battle that just happened or what that was like, that is how you grow your intimacy with God is in the confusion or in the doubt or in the worry or in the, you know, the curiosity of it all.

34:55 And so I just started going line by line through the gospels. And I started to just like learn firsthand about Jesus, which I was surprised that I hadn't done before. I think I always say like, you know, I think I knew the daily rituals and routines of some Instagram influencers I had never met more than I knew the rhythms and routines of my savior. And I learned in that, like if I wanted an example of presence, it's right here. and the first thing and the most powerful thing about that I said was that I had been confusing for a really long time accessibility with availability what Jesus modeled was availability he was highly available to people but that's not the same as being accessible that's not the same as remembering to wish somebody happy birthday on Facebook like it's this I'm gonna put my phone down and choose to not be accessible to the 24-7 text stream.

35:53 Because that means I'm actually going to hear from God about the people that I need to pray for and the people I need to show up for and the wisdom that I need to give them that is not my own. And so that set me on a journey of just like, I want to get to the source as much as I can undistracted. Yeah, so good. It's interesting too, you know, we've so overcomplicated a lot in life. But when Jesus is asked, what's the greatest commandment? The answer is pretty simple. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. It was pretty hard to do that if the culture primarily celebrates multitasking as much as I can accomplish. And the beauty is, man, still all the noise and be alone with him. And we'll get a lot more of them that way, you know? One of the things Paul says to Timothy, he says, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness, which I love.

36:47 He's saying you're not going to arrive at godly on accident. If you want to be godly, it's going to take some discipline. And we're saying that even in a horizontal relationships that I love. I heard, I think it was Andy say this one time. He said, direction, not intention, determines destination. So he's saying it's not enough to want to go a different way. If all you want is want to go a different way, desire without discipline remains simply desire. So for anybody that's here that's going, yeah, I want that. I don't want to miss these moments. I want to claim my life back. I want deep, meaningful. Let's just spend a few times like, where do we start? How do you start? Because I personally have been, you were here a few months ago, and I left that going, babe, we're getting rid of the phones. We're going to be present. And it was only a matter of days until I'm scrolling until I see somebody's pet on my Instagram for a couple hours.

37:39 And so it's like, man, there is a desire in so many people right now to go, I want to move that way. But where do I even start? how do I implement this discipline? So how would you guys encourage us? Where to start? How do we start walking a different path? We walk through some very, again, I think this is very practical. I think we use the term, by the way, our phones, there's addictive characteristics to our phones that have pulled us in. But I actually think if we look at this as a habit versus an addiction, just as the way we're approaching it, I think it actually works a little bit better because all of a sudden you have some agency over habit where with an addiction, you may feel like you're powerless. So I think it's important to recognize their addictive characteristics, but we can treat this like a habit and we can begin to build a muscle. And I want to encourage everybody, especially the guys here, this is a lifelong journey. You're embarking on a lifelong journey just in the same way like any other relationship. This is something you have to continue. You have to feed. So we have five different S's we walk through. I want to give you two S's to reclaim your relationship with your phone. And the first one is super practical. When everybody in this room, everybody watching, I want you to spend time away from your phone today. Physical distance from your phone. Statistics tell us that 91% of us have our phones with us 24 hours a day. So I want you to break that physical distance. Again, 91% of us have our phones with us 24 hours a day. So I want you to spend five minutes physically distant from your phone today. Five minutes. And tomorrow, I want you to spend 10 minutes physically distant from your phone. It may sound small, it may sound silly, but it begins to unlock something magical. Over time, if you build up to just two hours of distance from your phone per day, and that's aggregated throughout the day. You could be working, you could be doing know, quiet time, spending time with family. If you spend two hours physically distant from your phone per day, you will reclaim one month out of your year. You will experience a 13-month year by spending two hours physically distant from your phone. So that's one, spend some time apart from your phone. Second one, it's a little bit more ethereal, and I want you to search for moments of connection all throughout your day. Potential thing, the Gottman Institute refers to these things as bids. It's like if my daughter, if I hear an anxious breath from her, or if my son says, dad had a rough day at school. Those are bids that they're putting out to us. And they're asking,

39:46 will you connect with me? And when you detect a bid that somebody else is trying to connect you, even if you're, even if you're, you know, it was just, hey, what are we going to get for dinner? I want you to say six words. And these are the six most powerful words in the English language in a relationship in 2025. And they sound so silly and so simple, but I promise you they're powerful. I just want you to say, let me put down my phone. Immediately respond to that bid. Say, let me put down my phone, and then physically remove your phone from the situation. Remove your phone from the situation, then lock eyes with that person. And what you're doing is telling them that they're valuable. What you're actually telling them is, hey, there are eight billion people who can theoretically reach me on my phone, and you are more important than every single one of them. So what does that do to solve this intimacy crisis? What does that do for Gianna, for my daughter? What does that do for her the next time she's faced with a difficult situation at school. That's still going to be difficult, but she's going to know I have value and I know that because dad's eyes have been locked on mine, because mom's eyes have been locked on mine.

40:45 That will instill value, bestow value, and it will build intimacy in relationships by doing that small thing. Detect it, search for those moments of connection, detect the bid, say those six magic words, let me put it on my phone, and then physically remove your phone from the situation. By the way, does that sound as simple and dumb as you've ever heard? But it is, I'm telling you, This is somebody who failed a million times. And it's these small things that James Clear would call the atomic habits that make all the difference. Well, and I think that's the key, that it's all small things, right? Like in our minds, they're so big. But it's like for me, I would say like I break everything down into the currency of an hour. If something feels overwhelming, okay, but could I spend an hour on it? If an hour is too big, start with 15 minutes. There's immense power in that. And I would look at your life, I would take inventory and I would ask, what are the areas of my life that I want to be relentlessly present for? Is that dinner at the table a few times a week?

41:40 Is that my morning quiet time? Is that when I'm out to dinner with a friend or when I have a date night? Pick those areas and then find a way to track it, to measure it. I am all about collecting evidence because I think a lot of times, like, if we don't collect the evidence, we'll believe the opposite of it at any time. You can't really manage what you don't measure. And so whether that's tracking, whether that's an RO box, whether that's a piece of paper, whatever you have, finding a way to say, okay, you know what? Like I did great this week. Like I unplugged for an hour this week and that was better than unplugging for no hours the week before. It's those little things that stack up that lead to that transformation. It won't be overnight. It won't be instant. It will probably come with a lot of resistance, but standing on the other side of thousands of unplugged hours later, I'm like, I like this version of myself so much better than who was here a few years ago. So good. I love it. Tell, um, for both of you, I know this isn't, it doesn't change overnight. It's a long arc. It's a discipline to be implemented over time. Uh, tell everybody, um, both of you have amazing, uh, resources that you've worked really hard on to help people navigate reclaiming our time, a healthier view and approach to technology. So just tell everybody, how can they get more? Because we had 40 minutes, but everybody wants more. How can they get more? How can we implement some of these things that you've worked on to help us? I mean, I would love people if you want to go to our website, goro.com, G-O-A-R-O.com. And you can join. We have a, you mentioned an RO box. We have a place to put your phone that charges it, connects to an app and measures the amount of time, collect evidence.

43:24 I love that. I'm totally stealing it. But it will collect the evidence of how you've been living your life. So you can go there if you're interested in that for your family at goro.com. And the other encouragement is just, the last S we always tell people is just stop at nothing to get it right. Just keep going. You're gonna, I mean, you're talking to a guy that's been thinking about this virtually nonstop and still weekly falls on his face and you gotta get up and you gotta keep going. So just stop at nothing to keep going. That's awesome. yeah um i recently wrote a book on this topic the unplugged hours and i believe it's here available um at all the locations but um and i always say you know it's not like it's not a how to i'm gonna give you every tool in the world like let's fix yourself i personally get exhausted sometimes by those books what i wanted it to be was a grace-filled journey and i wanted it to be reflections and stories and like you were enjoying the book that you were reading because i think that's the purpose of books is to get back to a place of enjoyment in all areas of our lives.

44:24 Yeah. I think what the book does really well, this is Hannah's new book and we have it at all of our locations, is it reminds us of the why almost every chapter. And not doing something is not a good motivation. When you think of what you gain by making a change, that's good motivation. And so I'd encourage you to grab this book on your way out today. And as we close, I just, I'm gonna have, Hannah, I'm gonna have you pray over us as we end this gathering. But as we close, I just wanna remind you why we're doing this. Why we're doing this is not to get you off your phone. Why we're doing this is not so that you'll go home and throw your iPad in the backyard. Why we're doing this is because we believe you were created for community and for connection. Why we are doing this is because we wanna shepherd you well and we know that you were created to not be isolated. You were created to be in community. And there are, if I can be honest, there are marriages in this room and at all of our locations. And the marriage feels like it's gone cold, but you wake up every single morning or you go to bed every single night with your backs turned toward each other and your phones are on your nightstand and you're just, you're investing more into your phone than turning towards each other. There are people in here who are lonely and can't find any friends.

45:48 And yet you're just scrolling, looking for a device which you can only get from people. And so our hope and our desire is not necessarily even has to do with technology. It's to remind you of the opportunity cost. If we don't make a change, we're robbing ourselves from what we were created for, which is a deep, meaningful relationship with God and a deep, meaningful relationship with God's people. And we want that for you. And so just as we close, I would love, Hannah, if you would pray for us, just pray for our church, pray for everybody linking in today, pray for the people who are like, man, today there's a seed went into my heart. Maybe just like it was on your birthday, I wanna make some change. And pray that God would give us the courage, the discipline, the grace to alter course so that we can have what we really were created for,