#32 - The importance of scheduled time away from screens with Jay Kim

Joey Odom (00:00):

Gang, I have a huge favor to ask. Will you press pause right now and leave us a five star rating wherever you're listening to The Aro Podcast. It may sound small, but it is a huge deal for a lot of reasons for us. And if you're feeling extra generous, if you want to type out a nice review, that'd be great as well. But no matter what, will you please drop us five stars wherever you're listening to The Aro Podcast. Thank you so, so much.

Jay Kim (00:25):

People have talked at length in recent years about outrage culture. We just live in such a culture of everyone is angry about something. I think it's leading to a sort of recklessness in us as individuals, but in particular as a society that's utterly foolish.

Joey Odom (00:53):

Welcome back to The Aro Podcast. It's Joey Odom, co-founder of Aro. Hey, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for being with us. You're going to like Jay Kim. Jay Kim is a pastor at Westgate Church in Silicon Valley. His two most recent books are called Analog Church and Analog Christian. And yes, I get the irony of being analog in Silicon Valley, but he's not anti-tech. He's just talking about the value of having analog experiences and not being formed by technology is very, very smart, very insightful. You're going to like the conversation. And as I was thinking about it, I thought about an experience I had a couple of years ago where I was in a grocery store in New York City and things were going crazy all around me. And instead of looking at my phone, I almost did, I was having a little bit of sensory overload.

(01:36)
I decided to observe around me and I saw this beautiful interaction of a gentleman who appeared to be homeless and he was screaming at the employees asking for something and they were all ignoring him except for one guy named Dylan. And Dylan looked him in the eye, asked him what he wanted, and he realized all he wanted was a tray for his food. And when he did, the man, his whole countenance changed. He walked with him. It was this beautiful moment of humanity, Dylan walking with him, the man smiling and talking with him. And I thought to myself as I was talking with Jay, what if all of us, sometime this week in the moment where we're about to pull out our phone, maybe it's on an elevator, maybe it's in an uncomfortable social situation, whatever that is, maybe it's at an event for our kids instead of pulling out our phones, what if we said, I'm going to have a face-to-face conversation with somebody.

(02:29)
Go initiate a conversation with somebody else. It could be somebody who maybe they appear that they are in trouble or having an issue, or it could just be somebody. It could be your spouses, it could be somebody instead of picking up our phones, what if we look somebody in the eye? So that's my challenge going into this interview with j Kim. That's my challenge for me. That's my challenge for you, for all of us. Find one moment this week where instead of picking up your phone, you look somebody in the eyes and have a conversation. You can do all that after you listen to this great conversation. Jay Kim gang. Our guest today is doing something pretty drastic that might seem a little bit out of place. It would kind of be like being a vegan on a dairy farm or wearing a to a Warrior's game or being caffeine-free in Seattle or gluten-free in Italy. But all those things seem very trivial compared to what he's doing. Our guest, Jay Kim, is going analog in Silicon Valley. Jay, you're a brave man.

Jay Kim (03:32):

Well, thank you. I don't think I'm that brave. I just think I'm not alone here, to be honest with you. I'm surprised how many folks in Silicon Valley. Well, I think when people peek behind the curtain and they get a sense for what some of the technologies of our day are doing to us, but thank you being gluten-free in Italy, that would be brutal.

Joey Odom (03:54):

That would be tough. That would be very, very tough. So I'm curious, you mentioned that, and I'm curious, you hear about that with your message about going in and we're going to talk about both of your books, the most recent witch analog Christian. How is that message being received in Silicon Valley? You grew up in Silicon Valley, the area really well. What's the reception you've gotten and certainly your church, Westgate church, but even when people see people at a coffee shop, what's the reception been to that message?

Jay Kim (04:21):

Yeah, honestly, it's been almost, it's been overwhelmingly positive. And I think a part of it is because I'm not arguing that we should become Luddites and everyone should throw away technology. Obviously we're having this conversation via digital technology. I've got my AirPod here and a microphone there. So I'm not anti-technology, just sort of anti what a reckless sort of leaning into technology does. I'm not so interested in what technology does for us. I think that's obvious. I'm much more interested in what technology is doing to form us. And that question, I think there's really strong receptivity and openness and people far smarter than me who in Silicon Valley who are already beginning to do that work both within the church and outside of the church as well.

Joey Odom (05:17):

Absolutely. And you have two kids, right? How old are they?

Jay Kim (05:23):

My daughter's almost eight, and then my son turns five this summer. Got

Joey Odom (05:27):

It. Eight and five. So when you envision a future for them with technology, and a lot of people listen to the RO podcast or families with questions like, what the heck do I do and how do I manage this? And I love how you say what it's doing to form us and it's not easy, but you think about what that future looks like. But what is the future you envision for your kids, for your daughter who's eight in a few years, she'll get a phone. How are you envisioning when she'll get a phone or how do you introduce her to technology? And then how do you fight that battle of what it's doing to form us when she says, Hey dad, everybody has be real. Everybody has Snapchat, and hey, this is how they communicate. What do you envision for that future for her?

Jay Kim (06:07):

Yeah, it's hard. I think the thing that Jenny and I, my wife and I focus on most is trying to cultivate a particular, gosh appetite for things rather than just harp on all of the dangers of digital technology. Our approach, at least right now while they're young, is to try and cultivate a particular aptitude and appetite for analog experiences. So we practice Digital Sabbath in our home where once a week we try to have a full sort of day where we're completely unplugged. Typically, that's a Saturday. And typically when the weather is good, which it typically is in California, we're outside. We're hiking, we're cooking in the backyard and eating back there and try to be a front yard family and spend time with our neighbors and go to the park and take trips. And so we're trying to really cultivate that. We're trying to emphasize that we minimize digital experiences at home.

(07:15)
And at the same time, I'm cognizant of the fact that she lives in a very digitized world and my son does too. In some ways, I think pre-planning specifics, I mean, we do have some plans. We don't plan on allowing them to jump on social media, particularly like Instagram. I think the research and the data, particularly from people like Jonathan Haight and Jean Twenge, it's becoming really clear that I might as well give my kids a pack of cigarettes to smoke. Giving them Instagram is basically as detrimental to their health at age 12 as if I were to give them a pack of cigarettes. That's what data is showing us. So I would never do that. I would never buy a pack of Marlboros for my kids, so why would I give them Instagram? So yeah, we'll fight about it. I'm sure, I hope not, but I'm sure. But I think that the strategy for us, at least at this point, I don't know if this is right or wrong, is to just help them develop an appetite for things that are different and for them to long for those things. But again, my kids are only eight and five, so we'll see how it goes. You got to check back with me in about four years.

Joey Odom (08:32):

I almost lost my coffee when you said, I might as well buy a pack of cigarettes. I almost left my coffee everywhere. I can tell you from experience, just in my experience and my kids, they may say they don't like it, but we've been really careful with them and they understand. I think when you're building that healthy relationship with technology, I think they understand that. They see in their other friends the ones who are looking down all the time and not really present. I think they do notice that that doesn't feel good. And so when you're normalizing something, it sounds like you are, you're just normalizing for them healthy relationships with technology. We haven't gotten the pushback we thought we would. We really haven't. Again, my daughter's 13 that day may be coming. She did put together a 14 page PowerPoint presentation on why she should have social media, but that's a true story.

(09:24)
I hear something from pastors a lot, and I think part of it is rationalization, but part of it is a legitimate question. I'd love to get your take on this. For any pastors who are listening, they say, Hey, listen, I have to have it. I have to have it with me all the time. The congregation needs me. They need to reach me. How do you counter that as a pastor who you are there for the people in your church, how do you manage that for yourself in taking a digital Sabbath or having a phone free family dinner or whatever those things may be?

Jay Kim (09:57):

Yeah, I mean, one, as a pastor myself, I can empathize with that desire. I actually think there's a very healthy side to that to be available. I think in essence, this is a different conversation, but that is the essence of pastoring. Pastoring is not creating great content, and I think digital technologies have sort of perpetuated a myth that pastoring and being a pastor is about having great Christian content. I'm not against great Christian content. I just don't think that's the crux of pastoring. So when a church leader says, well, how do I do this? I want to be offline, but my people can't reach me, I want to make sure that you hear that's a beautiful sentiment, the desire to be reachable. Now, where it gets dangerous, I think, and I see this part of it more often than the healthy side, is rather than leveraging digital technology to be reachable by your people in a local context, I see dangerously so many church leaders and pastors these days using and leveraging digital technology, not to be reachable, but to expand their reach, which is a very one way sort of monologue driven exchange.

(11:21)
It's like, I'm the spiritual guy. I am the spiritual leader. I'm your spiritual guide, and here's my content and I'm just going to reach the masses with it. Well, that's great, I guess, but it's not pastoring. That's something else. And I think that there can be benefits to Christian content for sure. I create Christian, I've written books. So that's a one way exchange in many ways. But I do not think I am necessarily pastoring the people through my book writing, just writing books to try to provoke thought and help. But in terms of my pastoring life, that happens right here with people in our congregation that I see and know and share life with. I was in somebody in our church, a young couple in our church, I was in their home yesterday because they're getting some tests done today because she thinks she may have miscarried a child that she's had in her womb for a little while.

(12:21)
So that's pastoring. I would never ever imagine that, oh my gosh, this couple's going through this pain. Let me film a quick Instagram story and just share it with them and I'll give some pithy little thing about what, I'm not saying that content would be bad. I'm just saying that's not pastoring, it's misplaced. Pastoring is stepping into the pain and into the lives of real people. So those are two different things. So I would say there is a good thing in your desire to be reachable, but I would also say without having to throw digital technologies away, I think it's really important that we get really brutally honest with ourselves and have a sober, sober assessment of why it is we feel such a deep intrinsic need to have the platforms that we have, the digital mediums that we have. If it truly is so that people can reach you, great.

(13:18)
Then put the appropriate limits there so that it's your people who access it to be able to easily reach you. Interesting. I would also say even if you want to be reachable by people, you will not be able to offer anything of real substance and love unless you have limits on when you are reachable. If you don't have some sort of Sabbath where you can recharge and be with the Lord and experience the joy and celebration of just being with God, then you really won't have much to give even if you can be reached. So no matter what, I think even in terms of what you as a church leader or pastor or offering your people, having limits is the best thing you could do. So anyways, I can go on and on about that, but those are some

Joey Odom (14:08):

Thoughts. I love that concept of a real genuine act of love to the people in your church and your family is setting limits. That's real genuine love. Surely you didn't just come up with that line on the fly where you said it's not to be reachable, but to expand their reach. That is really good. Is that an original line that you just came up with off the cuff, or is that one that you've had for a while? Because that's

Jay Kim (14:32):

Really Yeah, yeah. No, I've thought a lot about reach and how digital mediums are used to expand reach. But yeah, I've never said that line before. I just thought of it when you talked about desiring to be reachable. And again, I think there's a ying and a yang there a little bit.

Joey Odom (14:53):

Yeah, that's really good. That should be the subtitle of your next book. That's really strong. My brother John, who is a pastor, he pastors in Tulsa, Oklahoma, cornerstone Church. Check it out if you're in T town. So he talks about whenever pastors start straying from the local church and the danger of straying away from that, and you really have to, your warning signals need to go up. If they are, to your point, if they are saying, I'm a pastor, if you're pastoring, when you start expanding beyond the local church, you got to be a little bit wary of that because to your point, it is who's your real flock, who you're really shepherding. So that falls very much in line with what you just said. Jay, I want to talk just real briefly about analog church, and I'm very interested in talking about analog Christian, your first book Analog Church within these two-part series, which I know they were meant to be coupled, which I believe you wanted analog Christian first. Was that correct before and your publisher said, no, an analog church needs to be the one. Is that right?

Jay Kim (15:50):

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And I'm grateful. I think that was the right move. I just had it sort of backwards in my head early on.

Joey Odom (15:57):

So the timeline is fascinating to me as I was looking at this, because an analog church, it's why we need real people, places and things in the digital age that released 16 days after the world shut down. And so in some ways it was such, it was so to the heart of what everybody needed at that moment, but at the same time, it was at the heart of what we really couldn't get right then. So can you talk a little bit about that dichotomy in that moment of you were talking about what everybody needed but couldn't access at that time?

Jay Kim (16:32):

Yeah, it was strange. It was a strange experience for sure. I remember going through, I remember calling my publisher and asking the question, should we delay releasing this book? This doesn't feel right. Basically, we're releasing a book arguing for the importance of being embodied when the best thing we can do for the common good is to not be embodied. This feels really backwards, but in hindsight, I'm really grateful. I'm really, really grateful because if there was anything I would've wanted to have said in that strange season that was, and in some ways still is the pandemic and post pandemic world, it was that book. It was that book. It was a strange experience. But coming out of Covid a little bit, one of the things I'm really grateful for is that I think that season, that strange, difficult, painful season gave us a much deeper awareness collectively and individually of the longing that is in our body and bones to be with one another, that it is quite inhumane to be isolated in that way. So one, I'm most grateful that we can be together now again, but two, I think that season, one of the gifts, one the strange gifts, was that we felt it. We really felt it to be isolated in that way and separated in that way. It's just not the way God designed this to be.

Joey Odom (17:59):

Aros built all around the science of habit formation. So we believe that we're not actually addicted to our phones. Most of us. We actually have a bad set of habits that we've developed around our phones. We got an email from Becky in Georgia the other day. Becky kind of emphasized this to me in her email. She said, having the reminders from the app in the box simply sitting on our kitchen counter this week, it has reminded me to be more intentional to keep a notepad next to the r o box that jot down thoughts or things to add to my grocery list really quickly as I walk by, as opposed to my six year old seeing me pick up my phone over and over to get those things done. I normally would. I'm already noticing changes for myself, more undistracted, time to read my devotional book, A new fun cookbook and play, of course, with kiddos, new Barbie House, Becky, thank you for that.

(18:45)
And that is what R is about. We're about that visual cue of the box being there, and then the cues from the app to remind you to put your phone down, spend some quality time just like Becky said, reading it, devotional or playing with a new Barbie house. So thanks to Becky. If you're interested in ro, if that's something that you can relate to, just go to goro.com to learn more or follow us on Instagram at goro. Now, analog Christian, I'd love to spend some time on this. So analog Christian is cultivating contentment, resilience and wisdom in the digital age. And what I like about that you, so the three parts, cultivating contentment, cultivating resilience, cultivating wisdom, that comes with the other side of it. Because you say that the digital age is inclining us towards discontent, fragility, and foolishness. Will you talk about, before we go into what we need to cultivate, will you talk about those inclinations, the digital age is leading us towards that discontent made that the fragility and the foolishness?

Jay Kim (19:45):

Yeah, a lot of that thinking sort of accelerated for me during the pandemic. So I was in the middle of writing analog Christian when we sort of went on lockdown, and I'm an introvert, my nature. So when I realized, oh, I'm just going to work and ministry life is going to be me at home, sitting in my room looking at a laptop in the quiet and stillness of my home, I thought it was going to be great. I'm going to love this. But pretty quickly into it, like two, three weeks into it or something like that, even for me, an introvert, I was like, I cannot do this. This is nuts. And what I felt bubbling up to the surface was discontent, fragility, and foolishness. I just found myself with this sort of constant buzzing, nagging sense of ill will toward my situation, toward myself, toward the people I care about most, my wife, my kids.

(20:44)
There was just something about the experience that began really sort of undoing me. And what I realized was the pandemic wasn't the cause of those things. It was just a great revealer. This was all stuff that was already inside of me in large part because of my own sort of digital addictions and digital proclivities that I was living and experiencing my life, not only so much online, but that my online experiences were forming me. Something we mentioned earlier, they were forming me into a type of a very certain specific type of person, which we can talk about that more in a moment. But there were all of these consequences of my own sort of the formative power of digital technology in my life that for me felt like the best way for me to summarize it was, man, I was just a really discontent, very fragile, easily offended and foolish, just unwise in the way I was spending my time and my energy. So yeah, again, for me as a follower of Jesus and as a pastor, it all sort of circles back always back to the scriptures and what God has to say. I think the answers to life that we're really longing for, God has already spoken and given. And so yeah, that was the sort of initial journey towards seeking a resolution to so much of the angst I was feeling because of my digital addictions.

Joey Odom (22:18):

And then the antithesis of those. And the first one on Discontentment is cultivating contentment. And I love what you say in the book. You talk about cultivating love instead of self-centric despair. And I read self-centric initially as self-centeredness, but there are two different things. Well, you talk about that really kind of the gray area between self-centric and self-centered.

Jay Kim (22:42):

Yeah, I mean, some of it is semantics, but the way I explain it in the book, I didn't say self-centered despair because self-centeredness I think implies a sort of elevating of the self, maybe a sort of narcissism or ego. And I think those things can be a part of self-centric despair. But I think for me, by self-centric rather than self-centered, what I do not mean by self-centric is we all think so highly of ourselves. Some of us do self-centric despair in comparison to self-centeredness. Self-centeredness is, Hey, I'm awesome. No one can tell me otherwise. Even though that's kind of a fragile shell, that covers usually a very deep insecurity. I think what most of us experience in the digital age, beyond self-centeredness, something that's more universal is self-centric despair, which is not necessarily I'm awesome, it's just an inability to lift our eyes beyond anything outside of the self.

(23:45)
So it's despair because it's not necessarily that I think I'm awesome, it's just that I can't really seem to focus on anything outside of what I'm feeling, what I'm experiencing, how life is sort of orbiting around me. And usually it leads to despair. It's this deep dark vortex that you can't quite get out of, and it's all wrapped up. I mean, the digital age isn't the only cause of it, but it certainly has accelerated it in significant ways, and it's connected to some other symptoms as well that I get it to in the book comparison, which leads to contempt. These, they all swirl around one another leading to incredible discontent because we can't seem to fix our gaze above and outside of just the self. And it is despair. Despair is truly the word. It's just this never ending vortex. You just keep falling down this pit, but there is a path out.

Joey Odom (24:51):

Well, you're right. If I were to learn that, if I were to believe that the world was all about me, if I were in my own, that would be a desperate place to think that this is it. This is knowing my own. Not only do we have ambitions and knowing there's a greater world outside of us is so comforting, but also just knowing our own insecurities and failures and shortcomings and all of that, if we thought that were it, and that's all we're thinking about, that really does it, is pretty does collapse. And which leads into the next one, it would lead us to fragility. And the antithesis of that is resilience, which resilience is such a great word. Rebecca Lyons, our friend, is releasing a book on resilience, and I think that people are recognizing that need for resilience coming out of Covid. So this is perfectly timed here. Will you talk about that concept of cultivating resilience?

Jay Kim (25:38):

Yeah, I mean, in the digital age, I mean, one thought that immediately comes to mind is we've just become so impatient. You just think about your digital experiences on a daily basis. You push a couple of buttons on your phone and two days later you've got a box from Amazon with whatever it is you wanted. You push a couple buttons on your phone and an hour later there's a full meal delivered to your door. I mean, so you think about the way digital technologies have added convenience and comfort to our lives. I mean, that's all well and good, but it's also, again, it's not just what it's doing for us, that's clear. It's about how it's forming us and what it's doing. I think it's forming us into a deeply impatient people. We no longer have the aptitude to wait or to linger or to hold slow and steady in any one particular direction because there are an endless array of options at all times.

(26:36)
So in some ways, to live such a life is to become so intensely comfortable and to lean so intensely into convenience that any sort of challenge, any sort of obstacle becomes almost unbearable. And thus we lose all resilience. I mean, you see this in, my wife is a high school teacher, and she talks about all the time how she sees this in her students that there is just, and she's been a high school teacher for almost 10 years, and she's seen sort of the shift generationally. Obviously 10 years ago, those students were still a very digitally native population. But it's even more so today, especially coming out of the pandemic where for two years these teenagers lives were just mediated online. There is such an utter lack of resilience, and that's problematic because at certain points, I mean, it is inevitable in life. We will face challenges and obstacles, and some of the most important challenges and obstacles we face are going to be challenges and obstacles that digital technologies will not be able to mediate for us, their human experiences that you as an embodied person need to engage and overcome. And my concern is that we are losing our ability to do that. We're losing our ability to resiliently with courage, move forward in the face of challenge. And that's going to have, it's already having, and we'll continue to have, unless we begin to do something differently, it will continue to have significantly detrimental effects on entire generations of people.

Joey Odom (28:25):

That line, almost any obstacle becomes unbearable. It's so true. It really is. And I, I was just thinking, I wish someone would follow me around one day and just write down all of my complaints so that I could make fun of myself at the end of the day. You know what I mean? It would have to be all of this, just these minor obstacles. So how are you building that resilience in your kids? I'm curious the two of them, not just digitally, but otherwise, how do you, I mean, it creates a real challenge for us as parents. How the heck do we build resilience in our kids when we also want convenience?

Jay Kim (28:55):

Yeah. Gosh, I don't know. We're trying hard to cultivate patients in them. We try hard to cultivate moderation in all things. We try to make sure that we push them as much as we can. I was telling you earlier about digital Sabbath that we take, and on most Saturdays when the weather is good, we go on hikes with them. And we do that intentionally, and we try to push it a little bit, not to the extreme, but we want to make sure it's not just a leisurely stroll, that there is a little bit of Jenny and I feel like we've done our job on a hike, and when there's a little bit of complaining, that starts to creep in toward the end. It's like, okay, good. At that point, this is what we want. And then we push 'em. We say, you could do it.

(29:46)
I know it's tiring. I'm tired too. Let's keep going. And there'll be a payoff at the end when we eat lunch together afterwards, if we're a little more tired, that food's going to taste a little bit better and have that, we will grab an ice cream after lunch and we'll do it if we can finish this last trek of the hike. So that's what we try to do. We try to instill a little bit of fortitude in our kids, and that applies not just to hikes, but work that they do at home and chores and things like that. Relationships when things get hard. So again, our kids are young, so I'm sort of all years at this point in terms of learning.

Joey Odom (30:29):

Well, I'd love those metaphors, the hikes to where you do go remind them, Hey, you climbed when something else comes. Will you climb that mountain when we did the doom? Do you remember when we did that? And so then they start to believe that they are able, they know that they're capable of doing that. I don't think as parents, we give our kids enough credit for what they actually can do. And then when they recognize themselves, and I have a friend, Chris Hart, who says their family motto. They say, we do hard things. And just by identifying yourself as someone who does hard things, you'll naturally begin to do hard things, which I love. The third point is cultivating wisdom, which I think everybody wants that, but we are being inclined towards foolishness. We expand on the cultivating wisdom.

Jay Kim (31:11):

People have talked at length in recent years about outrage culture. We just live in such a culture of everyone is angry about something. And I think it's leading to a sort of recklessness in us as individuals, but in particular as a society that utterly foolish outrage is not possible. I don't think outrage, at least there's a healthy form of outrage when there's a grave injustice and we rage against the injustice. But today what's happening is we're just outraged at each other. Anybody who doesn't agree to the T on every particular idea or point political or otherwise, we're outraged and jumping the gun, so to speak, against one another in such sort of vitriolic and violent ways. Maybe it's making us an utterly foolish people. It's very primal and animalistic. You go on Twitter or something, you just follow the thread for a while and you realize everybody's just screaming and shouting at each other for no good reason.

(32:28)
And what's so foolish about it is we're doing it digitally where nothing really ever changes. We're just screaming at each other almost into the ether, when really the wise thing to do is to live a slow, steady tempered, localized, embodied life. And in our foolishness, we're failing to do that, and we're failing to make a difference in real ways in the sort of localized communities we belong to because we're spending so much of our time and our energy just sort of screaming at our digital devices. And that's one example of so many examples that I think we need to snap out of that and begin seeking much more localized, contextualized face-to-face interactions. It's really hard to scream at one another. It's not impossible, but it's much more challenging to scream at someone when they're an actual human person in front of you versus when they're just a bot or an emoji on a screen. And so, again, I think embodied analog experiences or the path that can lead to wisdom in ways, and they don't always, but your chances are just much higher in embodied realities of living a wise life than it is when your life is mediated on digital devices.

Joey Odom (33:50):

Man, it is so true. The face-to-face, how that changes things, it changes context. Everything's different. I have a parting question for you. This requires a, I didn't prep you for this, so excuse me, but requires a little bit of vulnerability, a little bit of openness. I'm just curious, what's the piece of advice If you were a bystander to yourself right now, what's the piece of advice that you need right now that you would tell J Kim right now? What's the piece of advice you would give yourself right now?

Jay Kim (34:19):

Oh my goodness. There's so much. I mean, I just said it again, but I would probably remind myself, Hey, slow and steady wins the race, Aesop's famous tale. I think like many people today, I feel such an urgency, this sort of buzzing anxiety to move on to the next thing, to accomplish more, to do more, to be more. And I just don't think that that's what God looks for. I don't think that that's what God expects of me. I don't think God is interested in flashiness. I think he's interested in faithfulness, and faithfulness is often quiet and hidden, and it's often subtle and unnoticeable, and it often takes place in unseen, unseen places, in unseen ways. So I am often tempted to the big and the grand, and I think I would remind myself that's not where the best things in life happen. That's not where the spirit of God most consistently moves. So yeah, there you go. That's really

Joey Odom (35:33):

Good. That's really, really good. Jay, where can people buy the book, I'm sure in all places. And then what's your personal website, Westgate's website? We'll put all this in the show notes as well, but where can people track you down if they want to?

Jay Kim (35:48):

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for asking. Yeah, I just have a little website, J kim thinks.com, and all my work is there and my books are on wherever it is. You buy books online. And then our church, if you're ever in Silicon Valley, would love to meet you. It's just westgate church.org. And yeah, we're in the heart of Silicon Valley, right in San Jose, California. And yeah, would love to meet you if you're ever around.

Joey Odom (36:15):

Jay, thank you for your work. Thank you for slowing down for encouraging analog experiences. Everybody that's listening, please do go buy a copy of Analog Christian and Analog Church, both very enriching, encouraging you to slow down, do things a little bit differently, seek out those analog experiences. So Jay, thank you so much, brother. Many thanks to Jay Kim for joining us on The Aro Podcast. And hey, let's remember the challenge on the heels of that conversation with Jay sometime this week. When you feel that urge, that itch to pull out your phone and you're with people, instead of doing that, and just one time, instead of doing that, keep your phone where it is and have a conversation with somebody near you. Look them in the eyes and connect with them. That's my challenge to you. Thank you so much for joining us. We can't wait to see you next time. The Aro Podcast is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co. Special thanks to Emily Miles for video and digital support, and to our executive producer Aro's own, Katelyn Farley.