Josh Kuipers: The Inferno at the SBC: New Documentary "The Fires Are Still Burning" #175

Exploring theology, doctrine, and all of the fascinating subjects in between.

Broadcasting from an undisclosed location.

Dead Men Walking starts now.

Well hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking podcast.

Just adjusting my microphone here because it's about to fall off.

We wouldn't want that in the middle of the interview.

Josh, what's going on brother?

Oh man, a lot has been happening this week, honestly, and like the past three months actually.

Yeah, and like like editing and like a channel and like going going to

places and stuff like that.

So yeah, it's been great.

Yeah, so the guy here on the other side of the microphone is Josh, and let me say it right, Kuypers?

Yes.

Yes, I finally got it right.

Last time he was on I think I said it incorrectly.

Runs a pretty popular YouTube channel where he formed Funny Moments.

And he's from out of state and he just happened to be in the area about 20 miles south of me.

And I said, dude, you got to come in studio and let's talk about this new documentary that you just dropped.

Extremely interesting.

I'm about three quarters of the way through it and it's picking up a lot of traction.

Tell me a little bit about it.

Give the listeners a little overview of what it's about.

So overall, it's about the mishandling of Jennifer's rough draft that to

smear Pastor Tom in 2022.

It's a documentary that chronologically tells what happened, how

Karen Pryor received the draft, and the series of events that eventually led it to be leaked to smear

Pastor Tom politically.

That's what overall is what it's supposed to be.

The finer details, however, can be kind of difficult in the weeds

and such.

Well, I was telling you just before we started recording that I had kind of been watching it from afar, the

whole issue.

And I'm not in the SBC.

I don't believe you are either.

But just kind of watching it on Twitter and then trying to find some blogs.

And it was so hard to figure out, well, what's going on?

Because this person said this and then this person said that.

And what you did in yours, first of all, I will tell you and anyone listening, you released it on YouTube on your

channel.

What's the official name of your channel where they can find it?

Kuiper Belt Productions.

And we'll link that up on this episode.

And I'm not just saying this because you're sitting here in the studio and you're a friend, but I'm watching it.

And one, anyone who does any type of audio or video editing, you're like, okay, this guy's got hundreds of hours into this because it looks

extremely professional.

Two, this is something at the quality level.

I'm watching it on YouTube and I go, man, this could be on like a Netflix or a Prime or Hulu or something like that.

So one, how it was shot and how you edited it, I think was very, very good.

It kept my attention.

And I got a touch of 80 HD.

So if you can keep my attention for 50 minutes, you're doing good.

And then two, you really laid out the timeline very well of what was going on.

And I finally understood, oh, okay, this was all the stuff that was going on behind the scenes.

Very, very interesting documentary.

What made you go, yeah, I want to spend some time on this?

Well, there's the funny thing.

So do you want me to describe like how I got acquainted with Pastor Tom?

Sure, yeah, give us a full story.

So I knew him because of his work with the G3.

And we're talking about Tom Buck, just so everyone knows.

Pastor Tom Buck.

He's a senior pastor of First Lindale Baptist Church.

I think I got that right.

Wait, First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas.

There's so many Baptist churches.

First Baptist, second Baptist, third Baptist, fourth Baptist.

But point being, I knew him because of his G3 workshop stuff.

And he probably knew me because of the Reform Funding Moment stuff.

And I actually last year, I was visiting some friends in Texas.

And I actually got to interview him for my channel.

Kind of how I did with you a year last year.

Sure.

I also did that with Pastor Tom.

And that's how we got acquainted.

But if you actually watch the interview, I actually did ask him some questions about his draft.

Wife's rough draft being leaked.

If you watch the interview, it was very surface.

It didn't get in much detail.

And I did watch it, yeah.

Yeah, well, thank you.

And then I posted the interview.

Nothing happened.

And then in January of this year, Tom texted me out of the blue

saying, Hey, can you give me a quick call?

I was wondering if you could put a couple clips together.

Notice a couple clips.

Yeah, more than a couple.

No, it's not his fault.

It's actually mine, actually.

But he wanted – so I quick called him.

It was five minutes.

And he said, Can you put together like just simply like intersplice

the inconsistent testimonies between Karen Pryor and Keith Whitfield of Southeastern University?

But at the time, I didn't know what he was talking about.

I didn't.

Right.

I did not know who Karen Pryor was.

I didn't know who Keith Whitfield was.

I didn't know who Danny Akin.

I didn't know what Southeastern.

I had no reference whatsoever.

All I knew was Jennifer's rough draft, his wife's rough draft got leaked.

And I can talk a little bit about the draft in a bit about why that's important.

And so I was like – I said yes regardless.

I said yes without thinking about it because I like helping people do videos and

putting stuff together for people.

But two weeks later, I managed to get around to watching the May 6th and May 11th meetings.

So that's when Tom Buck and Jennifer Buck, they had Zoom recorded meetings.

They went to Southeastern and May 6th, they were interviewing Karen and trying to figure out like what was her account as to

what happened.

And then the May 11th one was the Bucks calling for Southeastern to do an independent

investigation into what happened in the mishandling of her draft.

And I watched it multiple times.

I took a bunch of notes, and I was both confused and saddened at the same time.

I was just going to bring that up.

I feel the same way watching it, like a little sad.

I was confused because like I'm a context guy.

I want to understand like the context of it all so that way I can understand like what I'm watching.

Sure.

But like I didn't know who any of these people were.

I didn't know who Karen Pryor was, like I said.

Apparently, she's a very well -known figure in Southern Baptist life.

And she kept bringing up like old interactions with Pastor Tom that I was like, like Pastor Tom called

her termination from the EROC.

Like what was happening going on?

So like there was like no context, no framework that I had in watching this.

That's why I was so confused.

Yeah.

And I was also saddened because I knew

the Bucks were mistreated, but when you're actually seeing the mistreatment, and you're seeing like

Karen being like snidey and angry against Tom, and Keith Whitfield being deceivious, and

Danny Aitken doing nothing, it's just like what could I do?

Yeah.

Like is there something I could do for the Bucks and stuff like that?

And so that's when I began doing my own personal research.

I read some articles and went to the deep, dark hellhole of Twitter and just, you know, read Twitter

threads.

And I created a Word document of bullet point list of events, the days of like.

So on May 23, 2018, this is when Karen's accident happened.

And then I just kept going through the list.

And I kind of worked my way, important points all the way to when the draft got leaked.

And I could, it's kind of like a God thing, but the combination of like digesting

the meetings and the research, I could kind of feel God was just like pressing me to like

just tell the full extent of what the story was.

And that's what eventually led to like a two -hour conversation with Pastor Tom.

I just simply asked questions and listened.

He just simply talked.

And eventually towards the end, I just said, Tom, I believe you.

I'm just going to clear my schedule and put this together.

In fact, if you remember in March, you asked me to like do like the,

like what was it, the podcast thing, like the chart?

I think so, yeah.

Yeah.

You said, there's a reason why I said no.

And that's why.

Yeah.

That's why, because I was in the process of working through that documentary.

Really quick.

Do you think that you kind of coming into this without all the pre -knowledge kind of helped with

you sifting through and then like making a documentary that's really true to the facts?

I mean, obviously you had some relationship with Tom and you talked to him, Pastor Tom.

Right.

But I feel like if you would have been in this, in the inside of the SBC and known these people for years, maybe

you would have more of a slanted or personal, to where you came from the outside and was like, you just had to get all this

information and follow the trails and the texts and the voicemails and all that.

Did that help a little bit having a fresh perspective?

Oh, yeah.

It helped me because one, like you said, I came in completely unbiased.

Like some people would want like Karen Pryor to go down in flames.

Like I had no desire for that at all.

I was just like, what happened?

Like how do Pastor Tom, what's the interaction with Pastor Tom and Karen Pryor?

Like how, what was the interaction with them?

Because a lot of people were kind of shocked that Pastor Tom and Karen actually knew each other and were

actually kind of good friends before like the ReVoice conference occurred.

But yeah, it really, I think it did.

And also it forced me to ask questions and grill Pastor Tom a lot.

I grilled him as just like, who are these people?

Why do you think this, why do you think like they acted this way or this way?

And that's what kind of led to the quality of the documentary it was because it just went through

so much scrutiny.

Yeah.

And making double and triple checking like the facts and such.

Really quickly too, I should just say, we kind of jumped right into this, but for those listening, the overview of this is essentially

Pastor Tom and his wife.

She writes essentially an essay documenting some abuse earlier

in their marriage.

She's using it to say marriages can be changed.

Everything was for the glory of God.

I think it was like some verbal and emotional abuse by Tom.

He openly admits it.

This was years ago.

This is what, you know, how the Lord has brought us through.

And then that document gets shopped around and essentially shared and then starts to be used

almost like with church politics, like politically, like we're going to kind of blackmail you and say, oh, look what you used to

do.

And it's just all very, that's why I was, like I said, I was kind of saddened watching it too is because it's one of the reasons

why I hate secular politics and I'm involved in it, but it's a lot of backbiting and blackmailing and

teams forming.

And then to see that in a church setting or in a denomination setting is kind of disheartening.

So this whole documentary kind of follows that for those listening who don't know.

Extremely interesting.

But like you said too, yes, you talk to Pastor Tom Buck, but the

documentary is full of screenshots of text messages, audio recordings.

I mean, it's not just like you're giving Tom's version of things either, which I noticed.

It was like, oh no, you had all this evidence, I guess you could call it, or, you know, actual things that

back up kind of the narrative, which I found very interesting too, because no offense, but I don't want to watch a

documentary of just someone giving their side of the event.

So you had to go dig for that, find that, and how did that all come about?

So here's the thing.

Like from the onset, like I was really confused because there were so many, like so many

mechanisms that caused this draft leak.

And I thought the best approach would be just playing the story chronologically.

In fact, I mentioned a document earlier that was a bullet point document.

Little did I know that will actually become the blueprint of the framework of how this documentary would be.

Because I realized that if you start from the very beginning and then work your way to the present,

then you can introduce all these elements naturally.

And instead of, you know, doing like a video essay argument where you present your thesis

and then you have supporting, like evidence to support it, instead all I did was just let the text

messages, the emails, and the audio recordings and Zoom recordings just do the work of

proving what happened.

So it comes more naturally.

And you can't argue what they say.

Like it's their words.

It's right there.

It's right in front of you.

And I thought that was a lot more powerful approach.

And I've had some, you know, responses from people before this was dropped and

everyone was like, yeah, it's so clear now.

Like it's so clear.

Like it's so obvious.

Like why hasn't like an investigation occurred?

Which I think, I don't know when you're going to drop this, but I recommend sooner the better.

Let's see.

We're recording on, what's today, Thursday?

Yep.

It'll be this Wednesday.

People listening to this, it's only about five or six days.

From the time we record it.

Right.

So the documentary is public.

It will be public when this episode drops, but all four parts.

But spoilers for part four, but it shouldn't be a spoiler because it's been public for over a year,

is that Southeastern terminated the investigation because they didn't do an

investigation actually.

They just terminated it because they claimed that an anonymous email claimed full responsibility of the matter.

Oh, how convenient.

I know.

I know.

I put a meme in there, but in the documentary, it's just.

Yeah, it didn't sort of mean.

But yeah.

It's just crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Any other.

Oh, no.

I was just saying, I think this is something that people are going to, I don't want to say

enjoy, but it's something to where, like I said, you did the work of hundreds of hours of editing and

getting the story all put together in a format.

For us, people like me who go, I knew something was going on, but I've got a busy life.

I can't go do the detective work.

And if you've ever tried to do detective work on Twitter, I'm sure you have for this documentary.

It's insanity.

Everyone's tagging this and that.

And he said, she said, and go to this blog.

And you're like, what is truth?

What is it?

I just appreciate you putting it all together in a format that that's very, like I said, look professional and

very watchable.

I told you before the show, I'm like, you know, it's already got a cross platform.

You said hundreds of thousands of views.

I'm sure we're going to be in the millions very soon just because this is something that I could watch on a

streaming channel.

Like I was telling you.

It could be.

I think, well, on my channel, I mentioned this, like on my, wait, did I mention already that like my

Reformed Funny Moments channel, it's not doing well.

But on Twitter, that's where it's doing most of the work, like for 100 ,000 views

per part.

It's in four parts.

Well, can we talk about that really quick?

Let's talk about you stepping outside of your norm of Reformed Funny Moments.

So your channel is very popular for Reformed Funny Moments, where you kind of mash up Reformed

guys, talking pastors, theologians, scholars, whatever, and having those funny moments, which years ago,

when I first contacted you, I said, what a great idea, because I believe Reformed guys have some of the best sense of humor, but we're kind of seen

as these stodgy, you know what I mean?

Like a suit wearing kind of, oh, they don't know how to take a joke.

So when you get to know the guys like R .C. Sproul and MacArthur and Bag and all these different guys that you have

on, James White, they're pretty funny, and they have some funny moments.

And that took off.

So you're kind of in that vein.

You go from funny moments to, oh, we're going to go to the truths and lies

and gossip and church politics and abuse.

And it's like, whoa, man, what a shift.

So I can see why maybe it's not getting traction on a channel that usually focuses on Reformed

Funny Moments.

You put it on Twitter, and it's like it blows up.

So talk about stepping outside of that and going, that was something different for you.

Yeah, maybe the editing's a little bit of the same, but I mean the storytelling is what I'm saying.

You do a really good job at telling the story.

There's some language in there, Inferno, and the match was lit.

It's like it makes me want to watch the next section.

So for a young guy like yourself, I'll give you kudos.

It was very good storytelling, which is harder than most people think.

Most people are like, oh, I could do that.

Yeah, try doing that.

Try taking all this information.

Yeah, and write up basically a one -hour mini script and then get people to stay involved with it.

How is that, stepping outside of mashing up funny clips?

And it's more than that, but I'm just simplifying it for the argument for that.

It's interesting when you work on various projects.

There's a reason why I take other projects.

It's because you learn something.

You learn something new, and you try to expand your creativity and such.

And you never know that some of the basic elements that you learn, you're actually able to

transfer into this new project.

So the animation type, how it's all done,

I've done, I've moved photo, I mean, I've animated stuff on my

Reform Funny Moments all the time.

So I knew how to do special effects and all that stuff.

But I realized that in this documentary, to make it visually appealing and for you to visually follow it,

there was a lot of work that went into making sure you follow visually

the information that's being presented with you.

So that's why there was a lot of highlighting passages and narration over

there and such.

So sometimes that transfers over.

So I did it because, well, initially it was supposed to be for a few clips.

It was supposed to be for a few clips.

But I also did it because I thought it would be fun.

It was a lot of fun.

But a month of research went into figuring out what happened.

And even up to the point of release, it was still being refined.

It was still being changed.

In fact, there were a couple of last -minute changes.

In fact, even in Part 2, for instance, I initially thought that the interaction between

Keith and Karen, like Keith authenticating Jennifer's rough draft, would only happen in a

day.

And then it wasn't until a week before it was dropped.

It actually happened two days.

So I had to move and create a section to add that

because we thought that was important because that made it a lot more suspicious.

If you say it was morally wrong to authenticate a rough draft, an abuse survivor's

story rough draft, then why did it take you a day to figure that out?

So we thought that was important.

But I can talk about the editing.

However, it doesn't mean that there's a lot of failures in making the documentary for what it was because

it went through a lot of revisions, especially the first part.

So we broke it up into four parts on purpose because it was a lot easier to compartmentalize and

just focus on particular aspects of what happened that led up to the draft leak and then after the draft leak.

And also it'll be easier for me to send sections to Pastor Tom for him to critique

and review and then get back to me and I'll make the changes and I'll keep working on other stuff as he's reviewing that.

So part one was especially important because especially the first rough cut of

it because there were two major lessons that I learned.

One was the music was too much.

What I mean by that was I was sensualizing everything.

Because as you probably know from my channel, like my motivational stuff, I like making everything epic and powerful.

And people were like, dude, just give me the facts.

Just tone down the music.

I don't need to sensualize.

Okay, fine.

I toned that down.

But the second one was, and this was probably the most important one, is that it didn't make any sense.

Yeah, it's kind of important.

In a couple areas.

And some people were like, because I was relying too much on showing and not telling too much and

expecting the audience to make the connections.

And so that was very helpful because I realized that I need to explain

everything and connect the dots for them.

And so that resulted in more work, more dialogue and more animation.

But it makes it a lot easier to follow.

Well, it clarified everything.

It clarified everything.

So that was what, and so that was important.

And after part one was done, at least what we thought was completed, then that became

the framework to part two, three, and four on how it should be presented and done.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's how, it went through multiple revisions, but overall I was very thankful for the feedback

because it made me realize if I want to do a sort of video essays or something like that in the future,

it's best to explain everything and clearly and to draw the dots for people.

Yeah.

Are you one of those creative guys like me where you're just constantly tweaking and finally you have to go, okay, now it's done?

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

I do that with music all the time.

I'm like, I could change one little word or one little chord or chorus.

Oh yeah.

It's like, like the very last thing.

Were you tweaking right up to the night you released it?

Yes.

I knew it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because you're always looking like, I could change this, I could change that, I could change this.

And then finally there comes a point where you're just like, dude, it's enough.

It's good enough.

Yeah.

Send it out.

And in fact, all the videos, even the teaser was not completed until literally

Sunday.

Yeah.

It was until literally Sunday.

Okay, so that's right around the time I think I, when I messaged you, I said, oh yeah, I saw a snippet of it.

That's what I was talking about, the trailer.

And that was just released a few days ago then?

Yes, it was released a few days ago.

The teaser, sorry, the trailer was made the day before it was dropped.

Yeah, so like.

Crazy.

And I think part of the challenge though, too, was like, there was a reason why the trailer

was the way it was.

Because Pastor Tom says, we have the document from Southeastern telling us to go

public with it.

So you need to include this.

And I'm like, okay, how do I include this in an interesting trailer?

And so I thought, you know, it'll be kind of, I think it'll be interesting if we just read it and then like have a

contrast with like events that happened and maybe end with it, go public, have the music

rise, and then have, there's a title card and then it just ends and then it just, and then

the final words, that Arthur Werry, Board Chairman of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, you

know, that type of thing.

You know, I just realized we never really talk about what was contained in the rough draft.

That was so.

Yeah, well I didn't know if that was on purpose or not.

Maybe because, you know, that was something that was kind of weaponized and used to give some very personal

information.

Is that now, I mean, is it now public?

You can go find it and read it?

I mean, it feels a little voyeuristic just to read it to, so you can see about someone's shortcomings.

You know, that's the way I was feeling about it too, is here's a bunch of pastors and believers that are essentially

weaponizing a moment in a marriage, in a vulnerable moment in a marriage where they were

both saying, look it, we've learned and grown from this.

And then they're using it like, oh, we're gonna use this against you and smear you publicly.

And it's like, dude, we're believers here, man.

That's the most sickening thing, is like, these are people from so -called Christians.

Yeah, I totally expect the world to do that.

Unbelievers, yeah, black, yeah, you're supposed to use all that stuff against me.

But from believers, it was a little disheartening.

So what was contained in the rough draft?

I won't go into much of what it is because that's private, that's for their

story.

But pretty much it was abuse that happened to Tom and Jennifer before they were married.

And that's something they didn't want to proclaim yet.

They didn't want to proclaim yet for reasons I won't go into.

But if you read the draft, though, I have never read the rough draft.

But they say that's only like 25 % of the story.

The other 75 % is God restoring the work in the marriage.

And people want to focus on the 25 % because they think Tom's an abuser.

They think Tom is like, he's unrepentant.

Right.

Well, no, actually, it tantalizes the flesh.

Yes.

It feels like gossip.

It can be used against, I mean, it's all the things that the flesh absolutely loves when we see someone else stumble.

When, in fact, the Bible tells us not to rejoice when a brother stumbles, right?

But the flesh wants to.

We had this confession at our church.

We do confession every Sunday.

And one of our elders wrote this piece.

And I posted it.

It was six months ago now.

But it was so beautiful because he had this term of like, we have determined that we are the sweet

spot of righteousness.

Please forgive us, Lord.

We look at the guy that has the really nice car and go, oh, geez, he's into

materialism.

And he just wants to have a nice car to show off.

And we see the guy that has a car not as nice as us.

And we go, just work a little harder, you know?

Or we see the guy coming out of the store with the bush light.

And we go, oh, well, we drink craft beer.

It's like this weird thing where we determine we are the standard for righteousness when, in fact,

God is.

And it's so tough because we love to do that when we see, even in the past, this is something that happened

years and years ago.

They've asked for forgiveness.

They've worked through it.

The Lord has changed their marriage and brought them through it.

And all glory to God.

And we still want to go, I feel, I get the sense most people want to go, oh, yeah, well, I didn't do that.

So I want to sit in a place of judgment.

Yeah, I think that's what it is.

It makes us feel a little bit better about ourselves.

It's also the strange mentality of the victimhood Me Too movement.

It's where they don't want the gospel to be able to transform your life.

Instead, they use their past abuse to platform

themselves.

In fact, that's the whole reason why the draft was sent to Karen Pryor for feedback,

was for people to have hope that the gospel can fix a marriage.

Because if you remember, in 2018, the whole hashtag Me Too movement was going on, even in the SBC.

And that was the reason why they wanted feedback to get

Jennifer's thoughts more collectively.

And eventually, eventually leads to a publication.

So that way people can see how the gospel, if the gospel can transform

their lives, then it will most certainly do it for theirs.

But as the documentary lays out, a series of tragic events ended any potential of publishing

the article.

But eventually it came back up in 2022.

But it's interesting, though.

And this is what led me to how the documentary

ends.

Because the thing is, you read the passage in Genesis,

where Joseph's brothers, they did everything evil to him.

They beat him up, threw him in a pit, sold him to slavery.

And at the very end, he says, what you meant for evil, God meant for good.

And despite the evil that was done to the books, and it

should never be experienced, it should not, in God's unusual

providence and will, he wanted their story to be told to the public.

And so eventually that's what led to their marriage story being published on

G3 on April 7th, 2022.

And many people were blessed and encouraged by it.

In fact, I have a section there where they talk about how many, at one

point, Jennifer was counseling multiple women that came to her because they're trying to figure out like, how do I pray for my husband?

How do I work with my husband?

And stuff like that.

And really, and even on Twitter, when it was initially published, and it was like retweeted like 600 times and stuff like

that.

It was like, it was crazy.

And so, I mean, that's how I wanted the documentary to end because really that's all

what they wanted to do from the very beginning.

It wasn't like they were trying to hide something from the public like, oh, you can't have this, this will

also destroy my ministry.

No, they've been proclaiming this thing for over 30 years.

For over 30 years, it's nothing different.

It's just that some pieces of the story, they just didn't want to proclaim yet.

But this is something they've wanted to proclaim for over 30

years.

And Lord willing, this documentary will shed light at

Southeastern actually needs to do an investigation and there needs to be an independent investigation.

Well, I do on the justice side of that.

However, the story of the gospel in redeeming and saving marriage will continue on.

Yeah, amen.

It will continue to be proclaimed and it will be continued to be

as a small fire to fight against the wokeism and victimhood trend that's going

on.

Yeah, very good, man.

And what's the official name of the documentary?

Do we have an official name for it?

I can tell you how we got that.

So, it's called The Fires Are Still Burning.

Okay, fires are still burning.

That's what it's called.

But you can also find Jennifer's draft leak as well.

Originally, that's what it was called.

But then Tom was like, I don't like that.

It just seems too poignant.

Yeah, too on the nose, yeah.

And we were thinking about it.

And I remember during one of the May 11th meeting with Southeastern, which he was

reading like a statement for Southeastern.

He said, there's so much smoke that there's multiple fires burning

and one of them is at Southeastern.

And I thought, that should be the title because that kind of encapsulates

what's going on.

There's so much evidence pointing to, like it's surprising the amount of evidence like that

it's pointing to a mishandling of Jennifer's draft at Southeastern.

It's like, why haven't we done an investigation yet?

It'll be so easy and so simple.

Yeah, I think probably particular people in positions of power would either be embarrassed or fired or

have to publicly admit some things.

And our natural flesh wants to hide sin.

That's what we do.

I mean, Adam didn't come forth and say, hey God, I made a mistake.

God had to go, hey, where are you?

They were hiding in their shame.

And if you've done something like that, especially if you have positions of power in institutions, in

Christian institutions, it's very hard for most men to retract

and say, yes, I've fallen, I've sinned.

Generally, when you see that, it's usually because they've already been caught.

I don't know if I've ever seen anyone come out and go, hey, I just want to let you know I did this thing last

week and I need to ask your public forgiveness.

Now, I don't know if that's necessary for every sin that we do, especially if you hold public, kind of like you're in the public

sphere.

But I would imagine that's why.

And I'm not accusing them of that.

I just look at that and you look at the pattern when you've lived for as long as I have and you see that.

It's really tough when you get into a power position, even within a church or a

seminary.

It's tough.

You see it in the secular all the time.

We see it in politics and business and all that.

And you'd really like to hope that it's not the same way in the church or in the seminary.

But sometimes you do see that because at the end of the day, we are depraved and we can justify and

rationalize a lot of things, our flesh can, when, oh, we have people who look up to

us or it's for the better, greater good.

You've seen that a lot.

So I don't know.

I mean, you're closer to it than I am.

Either way, I watched it.

Like I said, I'm about 10 minutes away from the last, the fourth part.

So I haven't seen the whole thing.

I'm right there.

But I would recommend anyone listening go check it out.

We're going to link it up on this episode here.

I'll make sure we share it on all social.

But outside of that, how's Josh doing?

Good to have you back in the studio.

I appreciate you taking time.

Like I said, you were a few minutes away.

You got a long day today.

You're in town for some personal reasons, family reasons, and you got to go do that.

But I appreciate you taking a little time.

But I don't know, give the people an update.

Now that this is done, you got that next big project you're working on?

No.

Is it back to taking a little break, a little breather?

I can tell a little bit about that.

So like the last month and a half was tough because I was almost

editing every single day.

Every single day.

And literally part four was done in a week.

Yeah, wow.

And that's like, don't recommend that.

What was your drink of choice?

Was it caffeinated drink of choice?

I didn't drink any caffeine.

While you're doing that, really?

No.

Oh, wow.

No, I get very jittery if I do that.

So it was just pure strength.

And then my armpits start sweating.

I'm just like, ah, no.

OK.

But either case.

I mean, I occasionally drink coffee because.

Yeah.

But either case.

But every single day, I was just constantly editing it, especially the last week.

It probably was the most, at least the first half of that last week, was probably the most stressful.

I don't know.

It just suddenly hit me.

It was just like, there's so much work that needs to be left done.

Yeah.

But it was also those moments when I would just be like, OK, let's step away from the computer.

Let's just read my Bible and pray.

Yeah.

That's good stuff.

Just lay it before God first.

And what was helpful also as well was the bucks were also praying for me as well.

Yeah.

And people were praying for me as well.

And I can tell you halfway through that week, suddenly I was just fired up.

Yeah.

I was just fired up and ready to finish this.

Yeah.

So right now, I feel a lot more rejuvenated to make something else.

But what's next on my list?

Well, I'm wearing a shirt, Carpe Fide, if you know who these guys are.

Sure.

They've been on the podcast.

Yeah.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Yeah, we're buddies.

I promised them a couple of video projects that got delayed because of this documentary.

Yeah.

So what's next is I have a personal project for them that's going to be

done.

But also, I interviewed them last month.

And so that interview is going to drop on my channel.

And it's been long overdue, but I need to make a Reform Funding Moments again.

Yeah, we're all waiting.

We're feening.

I know.

It's been, I think, almost two to three months.

Yeah, you were dropping them pretty regularly before the doc.

I was.

I was.

And well, also, the thing is that every episode gets progressively

longer to make because the editing gets more complex.

Sure.

And I'm getting more involved with the animation with Anso.

Which, by the way, Anso, he actually provided some artwork for the documentary as well

with the section of when Jennifer Buck recalls that day when

the draft got leaked to the public.

It was towards the end of part two.

And who is this that did the animation?

Give him a shout out.

So Anso, in fact, I would recommend you interview him.

He's actually a guy that, I'll tell a little bit about him.

So he, man, how long do I go?

Because I feel like I saw something with him in the same form on your channel.

It was at Reformation Church.

Well, it's another podcast.

Reformatory?

Oh, no.

No, no, no, no.

No, was that you or?

So he was interviewed by The Bar, The Bar's podcast.

Yep, Dwayne, yep.

I think that was his only interview.

But I've done an animation for, like we've done an animation for

the Reformatory podcast.

Reformatory, there we go, yeah.

That's the Reformatory podcast.

Which, by the way, there will be more of that.

I'm jealous.

I want some animation for Dead Men Walking Podcast.

Gosh.

No, I'm just kidding.

Well, you have video form, so I use that.

There you go, I appreciate it.

But with the Reformatory, though, podcast, they don't.

Right.

And so that's part of the reason why I choose animations.

Absolutely.

Because for the Just Thinking and Reformatory, they don't have video.

So it's just right for an animation, that type of thing.

I've been told I look better on radio.

On audio.

I think John MacArthur said that.

Oh, did I?

Oops, did I just rip from John MacArthur?

So talk about the guy who animates, what is it?

His name is Anso.

Anso, okay.

He has an Instagram, I think it's called Anso Sort of Art.

Okay.

I recommend you put a link for his stuff.

I think two years ago, I think a year after I started making Reform Funny Moments, I

made a public post on YouTube saying, Hey, I'm looking for artists that will help me with animations.

And a day or two later, he reached out.

He's actually from India.

Okay.

And he reached out, he showed me a couple pieces of artwork, and I was like, Yeah, I like the stuff you did.

And we started small.

We started small, we started with a Jeff Durbin animation.

It was with Babylon Bee.

So that way he can understand how I animate, and I can understand how he draws and stuff like that.

And we slowly worked our way up to more complex animations.

Yeah.

So the next one we did.

So how it works is I would, how I do it now is a lot different than how I did back then.

But how I do it now is I would hand draw a storyboard, which is nothing but stick figures,

and like just a basic idea of shot for shot of what I want.

And then I would send it to Anso and give him a parts list of like

hands and like the forearm and the upper arm and like the body.

So that way he has like a list of individual parts for him to draw.

And then he takes a couple days, and depending on the complexity of the character, it takes a bit.

And also he has a thing called life, and he's busy with taking care of his

family and does his job.

And eventually he'll send it back to me, and then I will like then

put it all together in After Effects.

So I'm the one that animates.

He's the one that draws.

Okay.

And then we go back and forth because I'm like sometimes there might be small changes.

Like, hey, can you bring this in here?

Can you draw this?

This might actually help a little bit.

And we go back and forth with that.

And animation, I mean for him, how he draws is very unique.

Based on how I understand it, what he does, he first hand draws it.

Okay.

Then he like brings it to a program.

Yeah.

And then he draws it again digitally with his fingers.

Like it's all hand drawn with his fingers.

Yeah.

Which is insane because he's incredibly detailed.

And that's probably the most common comment I get is that it's very

close to how people actually look as well.

Yeah, it's almost like a sketch.

Yes.

Like he sketches and then it's animation, which is hard to do because there's a lot of detail in there.

Oh, yeah.

Most of the time when you see animation, it's pretty basic.

Yeah.

Even from the reformatory guys, they commented saying like most of the

time when someone draws them or you draw a person, it's like, no, that's not me.

But they thought Ansel nailed it.

Yeah.

Ansel nailed the details.

And so he would then send it to me.

I would then animate it.

So him drawing, depending on the character, takes like several days or a week or something like that.

But for me, like for my animation side, it takes a long time.

Like, for example, the Just Thinking animation was about two and a half

minutes that took at least 40 hours of animation time on my end.

Wow.

Yeah.

It builds character.

It builds character, yeah.

But honestly, it's probably one of my favorite and most rewarding things because there's something

about creating literally from nothing from scratch.

And then you're in complete control of it, you know?

You're in complete control of how it comes to life and

like how you picture in your brain.

It scratches the itchy creative spot, too.

It's great.

And we're getting into more and more complex animation.

So we did one with Jeff Durbin.

Then we did one with John McArthur.

And then we did one with Just Thinking.

And the most new one, I mean, I can say it, but I'm not going to specify what.

It's with R .C. Sproul.

Oh, my man.

So we're going to do R .C. Sproul next.

Actually, no.

We did Reformatory.

What am I talking about?

I totally forgot this, guys.

That's who we started with.

Reformatory.

They're in good company.

Yeah.

Durbin, McArthur, Reformatory.

Yeah.

There's going to be more Reformatory animations.

I just need, like I said, it takes time.

And there's a thing called life.

And I'm busy.

I have my own full -time job that I deal with and involved in my church and my spiritual

growth and stuff like that.

But it's an enjoyable process.

Yeah.

But I really want to start working on that as soon as I can.

But I've made a long overdue promise with Carpe Fide for the interview and some

projects for them.

That'll be a good interview.

This was back when Jason was still on the podcast.

We had them both on.

And it was a really fun episode.

They do a lot of great work, especially with the whole Canada situation.

My son has that same shirt.

It's his favorite one.

I have four of them.

They're great conversation starters.

They really are.

Actually, the project I worked on was I'm creating a promo reel for them for the G3 National Conference.

Yeah.

And they just gave me a bunch of shirts as an appreciation.

And I love them.

They're great for that.

So, yeah.

That's what's on my plate.

I want to make another Reform Funny Moments.

And I have in my mind how it should play out and such.

Throughout this entire documentary process, I have been saving more

cues for funny moments in there.

So, trust me.

I'm still making them.

All right.

I wanted to focus on this documentary because I thought it was very important.

Yeah.

And I thought maybe that the Bucks will use this documentary to keep telling

their story on how God has been working in their lives.

Amen.

Yeah.

Cool.

Well, Josh, thanks so much for coming in, taking out time of your busy day, busy schedule today.

We appreciate it.

Always love it when you're in the area.

And, again, it's pretty crazy that you've got to actually stop in studio two times

for someone who's out of state.

It's very cool.

So, we'll make sure we link up everything on the podcast and all our socials when this

drops.

And I think so by the time everyone hears this, it's a complete everything's

out.

People can see every part of it, right, which I would recommend you do.

And then, yeah, make sure you go follow him at Reform Funny Moments as well, too.

But that's not the name of it.

It's Kuiper Belt Productions.

Kuiper Belt Productions.

Or it's the asteroid belt in our solar system that no one knows about.

That no one knows about.

But, Josh, thanks for being here.

And, guys, as always, thanks for listening to another episode of Deadman Walking Podcast.

We appreciate you telling a friend, sharing with a friend.

That's how we grow.

That's how we glorify the Lord.

If you guys want to know more about us, you can check us out at dmwpodcast .com and even visit the merch cave.

We've got all kinds of good stuff.

These new ones just came in for Deadman Walking, and it actually has the explanation of how we got our name.

You can get a cool mug kind of behind Josh's head there if you're watching this, a Deadman Walking mug in a different style that we

have, and all kinds of good stuff.

Look at that.

He's even advertising for us.

If you're watching, he's – yeah.

It's filled with dust.

Don't drink out of that one.

All right, guys.

But, yeah, follow us.

Go check us out at dmwpodcast .com and all the socials.

Josh, thanks again for being here.

We'll make sure we get that documentary promoted on our end, too, because I think it was just absolutely great.

But, guys, as always, remember the chief end of man to glorify God.

Enjoy him forever.

God bless.

Baptist rule.

I'm going to keep that in.

I'm going to keep that in.

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