Be Part of the Movement: Impacting a Billion People @EncounterTodayTV

0:00 Hello everyone, I'm Stephen Strang. Today on The Strang Report, we're going to hear from a very popular YouTuber, Alan DiDio, who uses social media to minister to millions. He has an amazing testimony of how, after being an atheist, he became a passionate follower of Jesus. He is the founder of Encounter Ministries and is a bestselling author and host of the Encounter Underground podcast and Encounter Today on YouTube. His media ministry alone reaches millions of people around the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now he's sharing what he has learned on how to use new technology to reach others.

0:42 Stay tuned to see my interview with YouTube phenomenon, Alan DiDio. Alan DiDio, tell me how you became a podcaster and what is your vision for the future? Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. What a beautiful office space you have here. The staff is amazing. We wanted to come out here, particularly because we have such a passion for media that was birthed in 2019. In the winter of 2019, in November, I received an urgent word from the Lord in a visitation in my office where he asked me this question.

1:26 He said, what would you do if church was entirely online? This was in November of 2019 and it was so urgent, so strong. I got some of our key staff together and I said, I don't know what this means, but we need to figure out what would it look like if church was entirely online? How would we reach those people? Not just for views and clicks, but how would we actually make contact, bless them, have accountability for them? We started digging into that as well as the media side of it, how to do that well. You know the story history has been made already that January we began to implement, February and then March the world shut down. We were strategically in the right place to reach people to minister to them because we obeyed the word of the Lord.

2:10 That is amazing story. Of course, eventually we worked through COVID. So what is your vision now? Well now we want to go beyond this because what we discovered during that time is that media had become such a low priority for us and it should not have been. Media should have been a high priority. And we realized that there's simple, free, easy things that we could do to reach millions of people. So now we're reaching millions of people every single month. And it's not because we're a mega ministries because we're implementing key strategies that we learned during that time. So now we want to teach other pastors, church leaders, Christian business owners to do the same thing. So our vision now is to teach 1000 believers to reach 1 million people a month, which would be the equivalent of a billion people a month with the gospel.

3:00 How did you get that vision? I mean that is so huge. It's hard to get your mind around. It started two years ago when we realized that churches didn't have access to the resources necessary to learn this. So we had our first Christian media conference. I think it's the first of its kind. Training ministers how to do media with an anointing. Again, not after views, not after clicks, but how do you do it with excellence and with an anointing? And it was such a success. We did it again and attendance grew and we realized we want to now that we can, we can do this. We can build a community of pastors and church leaders. But Steve, we had people in that first media conference who have come to us afterwards and now they've broken 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, reaching millions of people now.

3:46 And we realized this is an achievable goal to train believers how to reach a million people a month, at least through social media. Well, forgive me if I sound a little skeptical, but you know, over the years I've heard some very enthusiastic Christian leaders say if we, you know, there's X number of Christians in the world and of course they claim everybody who's Roman Catholic or grew up Christian. Each one wins one. If each one wins one, the world is won by Christmas. It never works that way. So, and I realized that a goal is something that kind of pulls you that you can move toward. But let me ask you two questions.

4:28 Have you figured out where you are right now? Because you're not at zero. You just described that some people are already doing this. And what are you going to do to get around this tendency that, you know, somebody's not going to, everyone's not going to win a million. Maybe some will do several million, some will do nothing. Just talk to me about that. So we realized after these conferences and people kept showing up, kept coming back that there is a hunger for it. We know that we have a couple hundred who are willing to take up this challenge. And so we've put that a thousand ministers goal in front of us. And it is going to be a challenge because the challenge is getting believers to understand the urgency of it, the need for it, and that they can do it.

5:11 And so we've brought on board some amazing ministry gifts to help us get that message out. David Diga Hernandez, Mike Signorelli, John Maxwell is going to be joining us to help us get this message out. And Joseph Z, Todd Coconado, a whole host of ministry gifts are going to be joining us to help this vision come to pass. I truly believe we can do it. It might take some time, but we'll get there. I love the vision. Tell us about the conference. Where is it going to be and when? And I'm also interested in what people are going to learn. Well, it's called the Armed Media Conference and it's going to be in Charlotte, North Carolina, August 1st, 2nd and 3rd, and the Refuge Church, which seats about a thousand people, is hosting it for us.

5:55 It's a beautiful, beautiful facility. And people can expect to get the practicals how to, whether you're in front of the camera or behind the camera. You should send your media team, but if you're in front of the camera, you need to be there too. You're going to actually learn how to apply these principles from simple camera setup to lighting to AI, artificial intelligence, how to incorporate that monetization, how you can monetize your content on social media and how to do it in a way that can reach more than the biggest mega ministry out there. Because social media has leveled the playing field. Anyone has an opportunity now to have a voice. If they just do these small, simple things that we've learned over the last few years, then they can reach as many people as the Lord puts in front of them.

6:41 What are those simple things that people need to learn? Well, a picture is worth a thousand words and most churches pay no attention to their thumbnail and there is an art behind it. Our son, Evan, is sitting off set here and there are simple strategies and templates you can use because if people see a thumbnail they're interested in, they're going to click on it. Titling is important. Most churches title their church message October the 2nd, 2023. That's not going to get you any views. So there are certain things, certain key principles and templates that we can lay out for you to show you how to do that and then how you present your content. You got to dive right in. You got to dive right in.

7:21 You got to get right to the point and you have to answer specific questions. Simple things like that are going to help people reach 10x their current reach on social media. And give me some examples of people that have come to your conference and actually done this. There was a pastor who we actually sat down with with his ministry and there was one video that wasn't performing well. We changed the thumbnail, we changed the title and within a few days that broke a hundred thousand views and then television companies like Daystar and others started calling him to ask him to interview about that content. So it just shows the power, the power of that, the power of that kind of reach.

8:05 If you just make a few small tweaks, small tweaks lead to great peaks. If you just make a few small tweaks, titling, thumbnail, description, your presentation, then it can magnify your reach beyond anything you could imagine. Well that's exciting and you talk about social media and of course that's a new medium, a medium that's happened in our lifetime. And you know there's a lot that's bad about social media but there's a lot that's bad about all media. You know I think of the printing press, think of all the bad things that have been printed on the printing press. But the printing press, if it hadn't been for that the Protestant Reformation would not have happened.

8:48 The Bible would not have been printed and made available to the public instead of just the priest before they were hand copied which took a year probably for someone to do it and then they would chain them to the pulpit in the church. So no one can run off with it. That's exactly right. But the printing press made the difference. Then you have media that came later, radio and TV. Think of all the bad things on TV but think of the way that TV has helped spread the gospel. So it is with these new media and especially AI which is very, very new, so new most of us don't even really understand it.

9:30 What do you think, give me your evaluation of AI, what are the potentials for good, what are the potentials for bad, how can we fight the bad? And I guess here I'm asking you all the questions right in a row but you're going to deal with AI at your conference. What could people learn from your conference? When Elon Musk was asked about artificial intelligence he said with AI we are summoning the demon and he compared it to a movie where you watch this guy, he draws a pentagram on the floor, summoning a demon thinking he can control it when in the end he's not going to be able to control it. He said it didn't work out too well for that guy. And so there's a lot of risks. 3,000 AI researchers were recently surveyed.

10:12 48% of them said that they believe there's a 10% chance AI will destroy humanity. How would you like to get on an airplane where 48% of the people who worked on it said yeah, there's a 10% chance you're not going to make it. So there are certainly threats and it fits right into the Antichrist agenda but at the same time it's just a tool. It's just a simple tool and it can be used for good, it can be used for bad. And I believe AI is going to be one of the great force multipliers for the advancement of the gospel. Churches have got to get on board for as long as we can to utilize it to take the gospel to the whole wide world. Otherwise the enemy will have a field day with it. So you're going to talk about AI at your conference.

10:54 Is that right? Yes. You can essentially have added staff for no extra money by using AI properly and it can help you with your media, it can help you with script writing, it can help you with titling ideas, thumbnail ideas, it can help you with emails. There's a lot of things AI is going to be able to help you with without having to hire another personal assistant. You know, it's exciting about the conference. I know that we're going to send some people. That's one reason why I wanted to help promote it because I think that these things, you know, there's a lot of conferences, but there's some that you really need to go to. And I think that yours is one of them. But talk to me about your ministry encounter today and about yourself.

11:36 Your ministry is here before the conference. It'll be here after the conference. What can we expect from encounter today and what are you really, really excited about? Well, at 17 years of age, I was an atheist and I had an encounter that changed my life. And so our ministry is all about creating an atmosphere, creating a place where people can encounter Jesus and encounter the gospel of Jesus Christ. And in these last few years, there's really been a heavy emphasis by the Holy Spirit for us to begin to focus on end time, training end time believers for the next great awakening, preparing them for what's coming so they can be equipped and engaged. They don't have their head in the sand or their head in the clouds.

12:16 They've got their mind renewed by the washing of the water of the word. And so what you can expect to see is we're going to lean into eschatology. We're going to lean into end time preparation of believers so that we can take this gospel to the whole wide world. That's important. And as we wrap up this short interview, I want to give you the last word. Why is it that you need to say to my viewers and listeners about AI, about YouTubing, about your conference? I want to say this. It feels like that a lot of believers are trepidatious about what they see happening in the same way the children of Israel were intimidated when they saw Goliath, the giant, their first encounter with a Nephilim-like creature.

13:00 They were intimidated by that type of supernatural opposition. But David, just a young boy, was able to take on that opposition in obedience to the word of the Lord. And we can do the same thing. We can overcome. And I think many of you have that spirit within you that when you see that kind of opposition, you say, who is this uncircumcised Philistine? She should defy the armies of the living God. This is our moment. This is our time to rise up. Don't be intimidated. Greater is he that is in you than he is in the world. And you can do it. You can reach a million people a month. It doesn't matter if you're a single mom. I know of a woman who was 60 years of age who started a YouTube channel, now has a million subscribers and knew nothing about YouTube. Now she has a million subscribers.

13:40 You can do it. All you have to do is get around people who are already doing it, and it could transform everything. 45% of Americans have watched an online church service in the last year. They're tuning in, but what are they finding? We have a church. 2020 showed us this. Holy unprepared for this war. 33% of those attending church in person founded online. What does that mean? Online ministry is a slippery slope. If we'll get them on there, we'll get them in here. This is the missions event of our hour. This is what we need to be focused on evangelism through technology.

14:22 Somebody say an N. Get your tickets now at arm.media.