 I just had a great interview with a good friend of mine called Sidney Mohid. Sid is the worship pastor, creative director for the mighty JPCC church in Jakarta, Indonesia. I love that church. Pastor Jeffrey Rashmat is one of my favorite people in the world, as is Sid. And we spoke about Sid's journey to date in his life and dug into some of the aspects of that fascinating, his creative process. Sid is a prolific singer, songwriter, music producer for the church albums that he does and his own projects. He's an interesting guy. We dug into some of his interests outside the church. Some of the hobbies that he have that keep him flourishing and grounded as a person in his love of comics and video games. We spoke about some of the challenges we both feel the church face in reaching the emerging generation. And some of the challenges of the emerging generation too with regard to faith and spirituality and so on. I think you're going to love this interview. I hope you do. I'd love you to subscribe to my podcast channel. I hope you enjoy. Thank you. Before you get started on today's podcast with Paul Scanlon, we just wanted to let you know that he now has a free course available to you. If you head over to PaulScanlon.com forward slash free course, you'll be able to sign up to his video series called The Five Behaviors of Successful People. We hope that this course adds value to your life. Now enjoy the podcast. Pluses and minuses, Sid, are the lockdown. What have you felt about it in terms of things you've missed, things you haven't missed and so on? Has it been predictable for you how it's affected you or not? I'm naturally an introvert as you probably know. So this have been a blessing and disguise for me. I mean, as someone who just love being by himself and has no problem being by himself in what I do, I think this is alright. You know, there are some things that I miss, you know, just getting coffee in my favorite coffee shops or things like that. But other than that, things have just shifted geographically, I mean, from the studio in my office to studio here. This is actually my children's study room that I just kind of converted temporarily as my little studio. So, yeah, I mean, but one thing that pandemic have shown us and even in our family, I was talking about this, that it really filters out all the non-essential things in life. Right. That it just kind of focuses on what's the priority. That at the end of the day, what this lockdown and quarantine season have taught us is that there's so many fillers in our lives to keep us occupied, to keep us interested about life when actually they're not that important. They're not that essential. You can have everything you have here already at home. And it's been shown, yeah. Do you think people wired like you and I said the art more introvert? Obviously all the fillers, we never relied on them anyway to be happy and to function well and to be fruitful in what we do. But people that are wired more for to be extrovert or more like social animals, party people and so on and so on and recharge through social settings and we don't. How are they finding all this, you think? My wife is the exact opposite of me. There you go, okay. She loves going out. She loves being with friends. So that's one of the things that early on she was very stressed out about was actually, when can I go and hang out with my friends? The girls, you know, doing things in the mall and things like that. You've been to Jakarta where the mall is everything. So yeah, for them, this is a big deal. And she was always kind of like upset. It's like, how come you're not stressed out? You know, how come you're not upset in the season? I'm like, I'm actually happy. This is something that I've prayed for for a long time. God, can I just stay at home a bit more instead of traveling just like you are? And so yeah, I think it depends on the spectrum of the things that kind of lifts you up. And for my wife is being with friends and hanging out. So for them, it is a big deal. Freedom is a strange thing, isn't it? Because the things I miss are the things I don't miss. So it becomes down to, it's not having the option, I suppose, that is the frustrating thing. I don't have the option to travel or to go anywhere. And yeah, I'm loving not going anywhere. And I think that must be part of the complexity for people that finish up in jail or people that lose their freedom at some point in life after they've had options. I think it's that psychologically is the torment of long-term incarceration in any form. Don't you think it's just, it's like you don't know what you had till you've not got it, you know, kind of thing? Yeah, yeah, I absolutely agree. It's just the fact that we don't have that option go anywhere. I think that's the frustration even for introvert people like us, you know, that there's not that much. I mean, but you have, you know, the things that interest you, whether it's, for me, it's always music, it's always the studio has always been an interesting part of my life where I get, that's where my gasoline comes. You know, it lifts me up, it sparks me up. So I have that option and for me, I'm just going to jump into this and be okay with it. What is it about what you do said, you know, in light of what you just said, what is it about what you do that you do feel, feels you and lights you up? Because that seems to me that you are alluding to the enjoyment of the process of what you do rather than the outcome of what you do. In other words, you write a song and perform the song, but almost that's less important than your passion for the process that leads towards that. Would that be fair to say about your creative flow? Very. And I've learned this, I mean, again, I've been doing this now 30 years. I'm 47 this year. So I started this journey of music and praise and worship, you know, at the age of 17, 30 years. So I've been doing this for a long time. I've produced countless albums. So and I realized along the way and I think halfway through it that I actually enjoy the process of making an album much more than actually having the product in my hand or even on tour. Maybe that's introvert side of me speaking that that I kind of dread, you know, having to fly, bringing all the gears and quote unquote performing in front of people. I like this process even more just being in, you know, in front of my keyboard or guitar and writing. And I think what it is that discovery kind of thing, you know, as creatives, that's what we always long for. And that's what we always strive for to understand ourselves with with each song that we create with each dance that we choreograph or or writings that we we understand more about ourselves. And I think that's why it always interests me with every piece of music with every song that I've written in the past 30 years. I've gained more understanding about myself and the God who created me. And I think that's the joy of it, you know. I think the loving of the process has made me more aware of the need to say to the emerging generation who are wondering how they find their, how they find their sweet spot, their passion, their gift, their calling. And usually that's often been answered with regard to them paying attention to who's getting great results in some area and they want to have that for their own lives. So they tend to pursue outcomes and results rather than start with what do you love to do? What process do you love? How are you wired as a person? And no one ever told me that as a younger person that my love of study, my love of books, my love of learning like you talked about for you. No one said to me that that counter for anything because that that couldn't possibly pay the bills or be enough to live from that that would always only ever be a hobby. So for years I felt I was separated from the essential nature of the process. I was kept away from it by doing my job and raising my family. And almost this process that I was drawn to magnetically was seen as an interference. Right. Well, especially Asians, Asian family, especially where the things that we do is when it comes to art, when it comes to dance or performing arts, whether it's music or painting, drawing and things like that are kind of frowned upon in the Asian culture. Because, you know, you're not, you know, what are you going to do with the rest of your lives doing that art? You know, it's always towards you got to be a businessman, you got to be an entrepreneur or something like that that produces money and income. And I think that's the generation that before us that taught us that that at the end of the day, it's always about can it feed your family? Can it, can it be, are you going to be financially stable doing what you do? And I think that's why the soul is being overlooked. You know, as long as you do things with your mind being, you know, that's why we are always so bombarded with having, having that success in school and college. Because, you know, as long as your mind is smart, as long as you're the smartest in the family, doesn't really matter what your soul needs and lack. And it's hurting a lot of people, hurting a lot of people in my age, in my age group that, you know, by now they're in their forties or, you know, early fifties and they're like, I wish I could have pursued my passion when I was at an early age instead of doing what my family told me to do. And I see a lot of that. When I first came to Jakarta years ago, I came straight after I've been in Singapore. And I think I spoke to you, or certainly to the group of your business people I was with, contrasting Singapore to Jakarta just as a first time comparison. And the sense of uniformity and compliance, as you know, in the Singaporean culture. And when I first landed at Jakarta Airport, it felt like a coup was taking place. It was, it was loud, it was chaotic, there seemed to be no organization compared to the, compared to the clinical nature of the behavior in Singapore. And then when, then when you're driver from JPCC picked us up and drove us into town to the hotel, suddenly all the three four lane freeway came down to one or two and everything just gridlocked. And I said to the driver, you know, is there a problem? Is there a road accident? And he said, no, you'll see what the problem is in a moment. And what happened was as we got further down the freeway, it had started to rain and everybody on motorcycles had stopped under bridges. And it gridlocked the whole city and there were even cops on the motorcycles under the bridges. But in Singapore, as you know, they'd all be in jail and nobody cared in Indonesia. And I asked one of your entrepreneurs about this and he said to me, I think the difference between here and Singapore is that in business we would not choose a Singaporean for anything beyond middle management because of their tendency to be compliant and want to be told what to do. We're looking for people with initiative and he felt that the culture of Indonesia had fostered in them from childhood this sense of self-sufficiency because you don't know whether tomorrow you'll be alive because of the numerous fires or floods or earthquakes, as well as terrorism and so on and so on. He spoke about it more recent years. So this sense of self-sufficiency and the government doesn't provide for your families in the same way Singaporean government does in terms of welfare system. I say all about to say, do you think that has handed you the entrepreneurial flair that I know you also have seen? Absolutely. I mean, I guess for me, there's a bit of a difference. I grew up in the States. I moved to America. So I do have that Western mindset that kind of helped me along the way as well of, you know, being able to speak my own thoughts, you know, where especially in Indonesia, that's not something that's being encouraged. But yeah, I really do believe that there's a big difference. Singaporean were British colonies. Right. So I think the way the British have raised up the generation during the time was very different than Indonesia, which was colonized by the Dutch. You know, and the Dutch were not very keen on educating the indigenous people of our nation. So for the longest time, we were not as smart or intellectual as some of the British colonies, you know. So I think that's our advantage that we were always looked at as the underdogs in the Southeast Asian countries back from the 50s, 60s, 70s. But because of that, which it just kind of push our people to literally say, we got nothing to lose. Like, we absolutely have nothing to lose. If no one's going to care for us or think about the future of our family or our livelihood, we're just going to have to fight our own way. And I really do see a lot of that in the Indonesian, especially in the businessman and create side of things where the people, most of the amazing creative people that I learn and get to know they're mostly self-taught. They're mostly self-taught. They never go overseas to study. Everything they know is self-taught. And I love that about our people. It's just that grit, it's that perseverance of, again, I got nothing to lose. I'm doing this for my own and I'm doing this for the future. How old were you when you went to Jakarta from America? I was 22. This was back in 1995. So moved to America back in the early 80s. I was still in elementary school, as the Americans would say it, and moved back to Indonesia when I was 22. So at that right age of being obnoxious and think that I could change the world with what I know from America. But at the same time, I was young enough to learn that I don't know everything. I've always felt about you, Sid, that you have an unusual sense of confidence. And I don't mean confidence in what you do or stage confidence. But I mean, as a person, and now I'm hearing about your beginnings in America, which of course is a very confident sort of culture there. Do you feel that that's been part of the confidence that you now have in your midlife because your beginnings in America? Well, when we moved to America, it was just my mom and two sisters and me. So the four of us moved because of the divorce. So my parents divorced in the early 80s, which Southeast Asia, I mean, especially Indonesia, it was unheard of divorce. I was in third grade or fourth grade. And in my whole entire school, I was the only boy with divorced parents. And that was one of the reasons, I think if not the main reasons why my mom, our mom decided to move to America and just start over and start from the beginning. And it wasn't like it was pretty much like an immigrant story where literally we had nothing and we had to work from the ground up. But I think it does. I mean, growing up there as a teenager, learning the dos and don'ts, trying to be street smart because we were raised in a very good neighborhood. And it did give me that confidence of being the only man in the family at that time. Right. So I had to work from a very early age, earn my own money, supported my own self, paid my own college back in the day. So it gave me that sense of, all right, I can do this. I can do this life thing. And then when God told me to go to Indonesia at the age of 22, you know, being naively thinking that I'm here to save Indonesia. I'm here to change praise and worship and all that kind of stuff. And then later on I found out that that wasn't the case. When you say God told you, what do you mean by that? How do you know God told you something? How do you locate that in your life and journey? When you use that phrase about things in your life and you don't use it about other things in your life, what's the difference? Yeah, I knew when I said that I was like, ah, okay, I shouldn't have said that. No, no, you should have said that. I'm just, I'm just, I'm picking you up on it because I think in the church world, we use that phrase a lot and no one ever asks anybody, what do you mean? And I think our listeners that are not just church people, our listeners would be helped by me and you breaking that down a wee bit as to what do you mean by that? Because I think it's incumbent on us when we use that phrase to be able to say what that means as if we're explaining it to a stranger. Right. So the way I would explain it to people who go to church and don't know the lingo, which that's why I shouldn't have said that. Because that's a very Christianese lingo God spoke to me. That's good. I'm glad it came up. It's good. If I'm honest in the 47 years of my life, I've never heard an audible voice of God. I've never heard that God would say, wake me up in the middle of the night, Sydney, you know, with that echo and delay. I never have that. But as I said, I've been very good in terms of listening instinctively to whatever that sound is, whether, you know, in the spirituality, whether it's, it's, it's, you know, that inner voice. But I really do believe that it's different. So what happened was I had several people that I really respected in my life, spoke to me and said that, hey, you know, I was, I was praying and this is the word that I got for you. And I remember this was back in 1995, end of 1994, I had people that I really respected. Some of my mentors would come up to me and said, I don't know why, but God said Indonesian. I'm like, and you have to understand that growing up in America, I thought I was gonna, I was gonna stay in America for the rest of my life. You know, I was, I was, I was already in that mindset and season of my life. So when, when that man told me that God wants you to go to Indonesia or think about Indonesia, I'm like, no, get away from me. This must not be from the Lord, you know, because I really believe I'm going to stay in America for the rest of my life. But then the second person came up to me and pretty much said the same thing a month afterwards. And then a third guy that I really respected said the same thing. And I began to like, okay, the earth and the moon and the stars are lining up to tell me something. Right, right. There's serendipity or whatever you want to call it. There's just this something that's happening. It's just kind of telling me to do something. And, and I've been very instinctive in my life that whatever that is, I have to listen to it. You know, either I have to research it, either I have to kind of surrender to it or whatever it is. And that's exactly what I did. So I basically told my family and my friends and said, I'm kind of, I think I want to go to Indonesia and just kind of check it out what this voice is telling me to do. Kind of like those Disney movies where they always say, if you don't know what to do, just take the next step, you know, of the next best thing or the right thing that you need to do. Right. So my decision was I bought a, I bought a one way ticket to Indonesia. Now you have to understand, I haven't seen Indonesia just since I was a little boy. And I had no friends, no family. I had to literally search for my dad again when I get into Indonesia because we lost contact for those many years. And but I followed and I listened, I obeyed and I just told my family that give me a year. I think I want to give it a try. I was 22. Again, I had nothing to lose. You know, if it didn't work, if I didn't find what I was looking for, I could always go back. You know, I was handing the car keys to my sister in America. I said, keep it. You know, all my stuff, my comic book collection. Can you keep it? Save it for me until I get back. And I went to Indonesia on that journey just to see what that voice was telling me. And May 1st 1995. So this is like my 20, this month is my 25th anniversary of stepping into Jakarta for the first time since I was a little boy. Yeah, I was interested in what aligned for you once you physically got to Jakarta said, because I think did someone say to you go and check it out? Or did you decide to do that for yourself? I mean, rather than buy one way ticket and decide this has got to be God, I can't go back. What was your frame of mind in going? I'll check it out. Yeah, it was it was more me being 22. You know, I think if I was 37, I don't think I would have done it. But since I was there, it was it was the age played a big factor of it of, you know, I got nothing to lose that if it didn't work out, I could always go back to my comfortable life of going to Target and Costco and being in America. It was it was more of that because I hear people, I mean, these were not just strangers, but people that I really respected and admired and that that spoke into my life. So I said, um, yeah, I kind of want to just check it out and it didn't work out like in the beginning. I mean, you know, I enrolled myself in a in a Bible school in Jakarta, Indonesia. It was a very tiny Bible school in Indonesia and and but right from the beginning, God just kind of a place me to meet different people in my life, which are now the people that that I am with in in building our church in JPS. Yes. Wow. So it was just one of those things that that over time I remember the first year came and went and I decided, you know what, I'm okay. I mean, financially, I remember only had like $1000 in my pocket for like a whole year. Right. You know, but I think and this is what I always teach people. How do you know it's from the Lord? Number one, I had peace. It wasn't something that I was forced. It wasn't something that I was like, oh, God, I'm so miserable. But let's do this. But it was more like I absolutely genuinely had peace that, oh, this is all right. The floods were taking all my possessions, you know, money wise. It was kind of terrible. It wasn't kind of it was very terrible during that time. But I had that peace beyond understanding that I just simply couldn't explain to people that I just knew that this is, this is, this is it. This is what I'm supposed, this is where I'm supposed to be. And again, I think it's because I'm very instinctive in the way I do things creatively or the way I run my life. So I decided just to stick with it. And, and when I met all these people from, from Jeffrey and, and, you know, my band mates and all these people, it was as if the stars were lining up, you know, if lack for better expression. I think that's a good response because I think in all the things that people say are essential to the guidance process. I think that sense of peace that is, that is consistent, that doesn't budge is the most reliable way I think of, you know, making decisions across roads. And I think because people cannot understand an individual sense of intuitive peace, they often feel you made a wrong move and try to convince you it was wrong. But your overwhelming sense of consistent peace ultimately becomes your go to place for, as you said, knowing it's kind of God or not God for my life. And I think of all the things that the enemy can counterfeit. He can't counterfeit that piece that you have. He can fool you by a lot of dodgy external stuff, but that in a piece, I think is absolutely right. You mentioned Sid a moment ago and just while it's come up and you mentioned that I wrote it down about your comics. Tell us about that because people, I think, will be surprised to know about your passion and interest in comics since early in your life, right? Well, what people don't know about me was that I was, I was actually, I went to school pursuing art, not music. I was, I had a, I received a scholarship back in high school for my art for illustration and painting from Walt Disney Company. And I was one of the 12 students that was chosen in Los Angeles County to receive the scholarship. So all throughout, all throughout my teenage years, all the way until I left for Indonesia, I was, I was heavily invested in my visual arts, which, which was painting, comics and illustration. It was one of my, one of my dreams was actually to become a comic artist, comic pencil. And that's just something that, that I love. Even before I moved to America, since I was a little boy, I remember reading Spider-Man comics or Thor or X-Men when I was a kid. And it just stayed with me until now. I'm 47 and still love it, you know, but yeah, it's because of those backgrounds of being in the, in the illustration and visual arts. I love that. How do you, how do you sum up what you do now, Sid? How do you describe what you do if you talk to a stranger on a plane? Because I find this quite a challenge with people. So what do you do? I found a short way to answer it. And when I answer it in a short way, I leave it then as to whether or not they want to take it further. In this country, my go-to response when I didn't want to get in conversation about what I did was to tell them I work in the church, which is a killer for conversation across Europe, as you know. In America, if you mentioned you work in the church, they feel like you're a public servant. It's that telling you their problems. But, but for you, what you do is quite led now. So how do you answer what you do? So when people ask me, especially now in the season of my life, where I'm more creating and producing and writing, I just tell them that I make songs for churches of our nation, and hopefully for the region of Asia as well. Yeah, I mean, I think that would be the easiest way to tell people I make sounds and melodies and songs for churches to sing. But yeah, I think, but if that's not what they're interested in, usually I would just say I'm a producer, I'm a music producer and a songwriter, which is kind of like the easiest way to say it. And your approach to your creative process, because I know you also have an entrepreneurial side to you and have businesses that you're interested in and so on throughout the years. Is your creative process like how do you start creatively? Are you always on in your head a bit like me in terms of scouting for ideas or things that inspire you that you write right down and then you go and dig into it deeper, especially in the lockdown, I guess that creative process has been able to shrink down a bit condensed every day now because you're doing nothing else. Right, right. For me, as I said, the way I run my life has been very intuitive, instinctive. So I was not taught the basics and the fundamental of music. Everything I know about music and producing and writing is pretty much self taught and self research. So I am, like I said, I love research, because music is my passion. I'm always searching for new songs, for new sounds. So my go tos, especially nowadays is always YouTube. I'm constantly on YouTube, just scouring different things that, you know, what other people are doing around the world. Yeah, not just the mainstream music. A lot of the things that songs that I play to people, they always ask me this question, how do you, how do you get to know these music? I mean, where'd you find these, you know, because they call me like the king of unheard of music, because I always have this playlist of indie bands or indie singers, singer songwriters that nobody have heard of, but I found them and they're absolutely fantastic. So that's the kind of person I am in terms of what inspires me and what sparks my interest in music. And another thing is I just keep learning. I'm on YouTube, most of the time is for the tutorials. I learn a lot about sounds and designing sounds and mixing and things like that. And at the age of 47, I still learn something new every single day. I think I read a book years ago called Steel Like an Artist. And the idea being that we should all be stealing from each other and going back through history, especially studying the masters Picasso and Renoir and so on Picasso famously spoke about he stole from everybody. And the difference between stealing and copying being the copying is kind of just karaoke version of what it is that you picked up. But stealing is that you were inspired by others and then you put your own unique take on it. Absolutely. So you are influenced rather than you are imitating. And I think what you just said there Sid, of your influence from the indie world and so on. I was going to ask you too, what are some of your sort of go to bands in your playlists that you love listening to regularly? What are any particular bands that you're drawn to sounds? I've always, I mean, for me, you too have always been the kind of. Yeah, I love you too. And that, you know, I checked off my bucket list that my wife, my wife surprised me with two U2 tickets to see them in Singapore last year. I've always thought I would never see them because I've heard that they refuse to play in Indonesia for so many years now. Okay. And because of the human rights issues and things like that. But, and then, and then my wife says, well, you know, we're going to go see you too. And I was like, literally in tears last year doing that. Watching it. So yeah, I mean, if you ask me if there's a band because I remember as early as year four in my elementary school, I had this little notebook that had you too. As the cover, it was one of those cheap. And it was you too. And I've passionately have listened to them since I was, I guess, what, seven? That must be like 40, 39 years ago. So it's, it's, yeah, melodically, philosophically, lyrically, I think Bono is a genius. So, and I always ask people, you know, especially if they come from Europe, any one of you knows Bono. Because if somebody can connect me to the right direction to speak with Bono, that would be, that would be a tick on my bucket list. That's amazing. Yeah, very cool. Let me ask you a couple of things that I don't take much more of your time regarding church, any, any observations, concerns, and hopes for the emerging generation of the church. Do you feel that there are particular challenges they are facing and are going to face that perhaps my generation or even yours didn't in good or in challenging ways in terms of what you do, what you see in the emerging generation, how they're wired, how they think. I was a part of, there was this in an American institution called the Barnard Group. Yes, the Barnard Group, yeah. And they were doing research about, you know, of course, as what we're talking about the generations. And they came to Jakarta in January, I think either January or early February, and had a talk with them. And during our conversation, they said something that just kind of stuck with me until today. And they said that from their research, from their interviews and polls, they've found that back in the day, in the past, the older generation believe that truth is objective, but good is subjective. That's in the past. But the emerging generation believe it's actually the opposite now, that truth can be subjective. But the moral good is always absolute. What they're saying is that they found this generation believe more in the kindness of people, more in that the truth that all these pastors or churches kept on saying. So from what I gathered from that conversation was that, I think this is the generation where the church should live out what they preach and speak and sing, especially as a songwriter. Every time, you know, the younger generation come up to me and said, I'm making an album. Do you have any tips or tricks or what's your big advice for me? And I always tell them, you have to live what you sing. You have to live what you sing. Or you have to live what you write. And I think this is the challenge for today's churches that the age of, you know, the holier than thou kind of generation where we look and act the part, but don't live the part is no longer you know, that we look like a pastor, we talk like a pastor, we preach like a pastor, but we don't live like one. And I think that was an eye opening thing for me and something that is instinctively I've been doing in the last 30 years in my ministry that I couldn't care less about what people think about me as, you know, or my titles or whether people consider me as a, as a pastor or not, those things are so irrelevant for me. But I'm more about how is my life doing is what I'm saying and what I'm singing reflecting my life. And yeah, I think that's the biggest challenge because for the older generation, especially now, and we're seeing it now in this doing this whole lockdown and pandemic where everyone has to go online. In the past two months, I've seen churches struggling, you know, to appear as a pastor, speaking to a camera, speaking to people, and they don't have that luxury of being in that church anymore. And the thing with our generation is they can see authenticity from a mile off, you know, whether whether you're actually living what you're saying what you're preaching and I think that's such a big challenge from the last generation to the next generation. I felt for a long time that the Western Church is buildings and campus centric. And so when we don't have buildings and campuses anymore, we don't quite know what to do because our definition of words, like attendance and community and engagement and involvement and volunteering are all attached to the campus and the building and a property somewhere rather than to a community rather than to a community. And so I do wonder whether or not when this is all over one of the opportunities that we have in the West is to redefine and repurpose our properties and our campuses more towards community rather than towards Sundays. Right. Because I do think a lot of people who have never ever thought they could possibly engage through online have discovered they can and they prefer it. Right. And that that genie may never go back in the lamp in terms of people going back to an attachment to a property and to a Sunday service. And I wonder whether or not that's been thought ahead by people who are just thinking the group when we get back to normal. I'm not sure that we're going to get back to that version of normal. Don't you think. Yeah, absolutely. And I've been I've been telling people this that what we considered as normal is no more. This is right. This is a emerging normal. This is a very different kind of normal, especially for an institution like the church. What we've done in our church for the past 20 years have because our leadership is always not about the Sunday service, which I think was done right and correctly right from the beginning. That we were not interested in just making a church on Sundays, but we're we're interested in building a generation that was our mission statement right from the beginning was that to build a generation of stars with the message of truth that was right from the beginning of our church J PCC. Yes. So the goal was always building people. It was never about building a service. Absolutely. When we started 20 years ago back in 1999 there was only 50 of us 60 of us and it has grown to tremendous numbers in the past 20 years. But what we've successfully was that we built our church based on community. We have, I think one of the largest if not the largest in terms of small groups in churches in our nation. And and because we've had several seasons in our church where back in 2001 we had a bombing. This was when our church was about I think about 5000 or 6000 people. We had a bombing of the Australian Embassy right next to our campus right next to our venue and and it forced us to really rely on small groups because there was a chance there was a possibility doing that time that we couldn't meet on Sundays. Right. And yet during that time our community our small groups were so strong that we realized that we would be okay even if we don't meet on Sundays we'd still be okay. Now fast forward to 2020 when the government says okay no more large gatherings we're like cool let's just switch it and go straight online because we've been doing it in the past two years anyway. And I remember we started our online service putting it on YouTube because of a fire. There's a fire that happened in one of our campus in in upper room. Right. It forced yeah you remember that and it forced our Sunday service on that campus to close down for I think for a good four or five months. And we decided okay well you know what why don't we just start the online service and see if it works. So we've started that two years ago. So when it comes time to to isolation and quarantine we're like okay cool to switch it back on and and let's just go with that. And now every week I have I have people in in our small groups that were sending pictures that they would do they would go to they would watch their online service in the zoom like just like here they would share the screen. Like with all their small group members in the zoom watching it together sharing notes. And I thought that's it you know like we have nothing to worry about as a church because the community is still there you know even if we don't meet on Sundays. Right very cool. I think I've always loved that once the many things I love about your church. I think that sense of growing people rather than things would be my way of saying where I teach around the world. I think you guys have captured that so well ever since I've come to you guys that sense of investing in people and that sense of having this fluid relationship with a building on a campus. I didn't I wasn't aware of the history that's contributed to that but it makes so much sense now which to me gives the Eastern church the edge over the Western church that is very attached to buildings at this time the way that you've quickly diversified into online. No big deal is not what I'm finding in the West. Many pastors in the West are panicking that they're trying to pay for these buildings and the whole people will come back to these buildings. What do we do with these buildings and everything becomes about sustaining a property and paying for a mortgage and paying for a campus. Wondering now whether or not there's ever going to be a way to continue to finance that if the people don't come back in the way that they were there in the first place. And I think there's a lot of game changing serendipitous things going to happen that I'm framing as a positive thing. I'm sure many are not framing it as that. Sid let me ask you just finally a couple of things. Hobbies interest. I know the comic I know the comics and things but what are you what lights you up as a person because you were very whenever I've been with you. You strike me as a very happy person. You're very conversational. You're very interested in other people and you've consistently kept that which I think in ministry in what we have done in ministry and I passed it for 30 years. I think keeping that happy outgoing interesting persona is not easy. So you must have been intentional about it with other things other than church roles. Right. So I people always ask me this that how do you not burn out even after all these years and still have this positive energy and life. So I remember I think in the early years of JPCC I was hosting a pastor just like you because I always host you whenever you're around. Sure. Yes. And I remember I was I was in the car with him and he was an older gentleman. He was already in the ministry for a long time. And I ask him hey what's what's your if there's any advice how would you tell somebody who is young in the ministry like me to be to have that longevity in terms of ministry. And I remember he said something that it's it's stuck with me throughout the years which kind of made me who I am today. He said get a hobby that is so different than your ministry and keep it. Right. And and you know I was I was waiting for a verse. I was waiting for pray for five hours a day. Yeah. Read the Bible six times a year. But but he said get a hobby that is so different than ministry because he was asking me so what do you do. I mean the music ministry is I find something that interests you that has nothing to do with music. Right. I was like but that's counterproductive of what I've always thought about you know. Yeah. And then he asked me so what is it that you want to do that you haven't been able to do because of quote unquote your ministry. And I said I think playing games I love playing video games but for some reason I always have this guilty feeling that if I play video games. I'm not being a man of the ministry. You know what I mean. Yes. No no no no no no. Keep doing that. Go find a game that you love and just play whenever you have time. Even if you don't have time. Find the time to play your games. Your video games and I remember that just change. You know everything that I thought about about ministry school. Yeah. And from that moment on I I'm like literally I have from Xbox PS all the playstations. Now I'm playing my Nintendo switch. I play my games whenever possible because it lights me up and has nothing to do with church nothing to do with praise and words. Nothing to do with all these Christian songs. I just want to play Star Wars or I just want to play some Japanese RPG and I'm happy and this is something that I've always taught our team. You know that I think find something that that you know it it lights you up whatever that is it could be cooking it could be it could be playing bowling. Whatever it is that is so different than what you do as ministry because I think for for the longest time we've always been taught. You know all you know if you want to be in the ministry you got you got to submerge yourself into whatever it is that you do and forget everything. You know I remember posting me playing a video game one time on Instagram many years ago. And somebody literally put a comment it's like wow can pastors play video games. Because that's the mindset that a lot of us are are being taught so if you ask me those are some of the cool watching movies. Yeah I love that too I think one of the reasons I didn't find it difficult to step away from pastoring after 30 years was that I knew my identity was not attached to it. And I think a lot of people in ministry struggle to transition to some other expression of life because they're over identified with a role and a job and a title rather than being it being attached to their fundamental skill and calling which could serve in multiple ways. And I think what you just described of having this of seeing what you do as what you do but your identity isn't completely tied up with that because you are good at a range of things that you could transfer which you have into other expressions of creativity. Absolutely. What are you working on at the moment said what are you working on now future projects coming up and so on. Well project is always on because I'm the creative pastor of our church JPCC and I oversee the JPCC worship and all the productions of it. So we're writing songs we're still coming up I'm in the middle of producing the Children's EP and also the youth EP that's coming out. But at the moment I think the way we do music is different as well the way we listen to music is different than than what we always used to back in the day we had to listen to albums we have to go to a music store by the CD or the cassette and go home and start listening to it. But nowadays it's everything is on our phone and we don't usually listen to full albums anymore. You know, we just pick and choose and make our own playlist that's the emerging generation we make what we love we make our own playlist and your playlist different than my playlist. Yes. So the way we produce things are different as well. Nowadays I'm not really concerned about strategic marketing and the timing of when to release if we have a song release it straight away spotify. Okay, interesting. We just wrote something about a couple weeks back produced it and I think by next week it's already going to be out on the on spotify so. Well, yeah. Yeah, everything is changing. Everything is changing. So nowadays it's if it's timely release it and even if it's just a single we don't have to wait like for a full album. So yeah. So we do have a lot of play right now. I like that. That's very true. I'm said how can our listeners find you and track with what you do. Well, I'm, I'm pretty much active on Instagram. It's under at Sid Mojiti on my Instagram and also on YouTube. I have a YouTube channel. But I do have a Twitter, Facebook and all that but usually it's just kind of tangent with my with my Instagram. You have a massive social media following. Do you do you enjoy that? Do you like that? How much of your data is that take up social media? Frankly, I really couldn't care less about my social media. That's the funny thing about me. I think I'm not. I remember my son came up to me one time. There's many years ago. He said, dad, did you know that you have one million followers on Twitter? I had no clue. Like I had a million people on my Twitter. I'm like one million. And then I saw it. I was like, and then he's like, that is the best thing dad. And then I remember I told him, hey, you know what leads right now and I wouldn't regret it. Why dad? Because for me, this is not the most thing. And it's just a lesson for the next generation because that's what the next generation wants is their number one goal is to be famous. That's like the number one thing that right, you know, the emerging generation wants. So I know I have a lot of people following me on social media. But I don't care much about it. But I am very intentional in my social media. I'm very intentional in the way I interact with people and what I post. So that's something that I am very much aware of that I don't post a lot. Actually, I'm not I'm not a very I don't plan myself very well. But but I'm very intentional about it that inspire or influence or encourage. I don't think I will post anything. So yeah. Interesting. Well, listen, I want to thank you for your time that you've given me today. And just say again that you're one of my favorite people in the world and certainly in the church world. And I think you are a genius. I think you are a creative genius and you are a joy to be around as a person, which is not always true of creative geniuses. But you are both of those things. And I appreciate that about you. You have a beautiful family and I love your church to bits. And of course, Jeffrey and the team that you guys are legends can't wait to spend some time with you again. I was due to be with you in June, of course, but we'll have to reschedule all that I hope for some time maybe next year. Thank you for taking the time to listen to Paul Scanlon's podcast channel. We just wanted to remind you about the free course that's available to you on the five behaviors of successful people. So go and head over to PaulScanlon.com forward slash free course to sign up for that today. And please do subscribe, share and review this podcast channel.