12 Days of Christmas Charity! - Jared Sparks (Shepherd's Crook) - 5/5

All right, well, welcome to another week. We are wrapping up the year. Everything is happening. It's all coming at us so fast.

Hope you had a good weekend. I hope you had a good Lord's Day. I hope you had a good everything. Let's get back to Christmas charity.

Now, if you remember from the last episode that I did, last year or the year before that,

I started the 12 Days of Christmas Charity really to talk about people that, you know, I didn't really agree with on things and I didn't even think they liked me very much, but I liked them and I wanted to kind of, you know, signal boost them, kind of thing, just in a spirit of charity.

Well, this year I'm not doing it quite the same way. Everyone that I highlight here, some of them

I might like, some of them I might not like, you know, some of them might like me, whatever. Some of them I agree with, you know, it's just there's really no rhyme or reason to it.

This is just people that I think you should follow and I get a lot of value out of following. And today

I'm gonna talk about Jared Sparks. Pastor Jared Sparks, this, he's a great guy.

I love his content. He's been on my channel before or I've been on his channel before and, you know, you could follow him on Gab.

He's got a podcast. Here's how he describes himself. He says he's a Christian. He's a husband.

He's a father. He's a pastor. He's a hunter. He's an angler. He's a runner. He is a pastor of Christ Church Carbondale, Illinois.

He does the Shepherd's Crook podcast, which is a pastor courage ministry. I just, this is, this guy's, this guy's great.

You know, go sign up on Gab. Honestly, it would be worth it to sign up on Gab just to get this guy's content regularly.

This is just, you know, he posts like little, you know, pithy comments. He's, you know, with wisdom and stuff like that.

Just things like that to encourage you. This is what his Gab TV aesthetic looks like.

This is an episode he posted a day ago on nationalism and evangelism. Honestly, just, just a real solid guy.

I highly recommend him. His stuff is always helpful. His stuff is definitely directed at normal people.

You know, I was, I was talking to my brother just, it was Friday and I was talking about the weekend ahead and we're like, well, what are we going to do this weekend?

And, and on Saturday I had my, my wife's family, they have a yearly Christmas party and me and my brother always kind of joke how like when we have social events, you know, we always kind of dread them going up to them.

Like we don't want to go, we want to cancel, things like that. But then we always have a good time when we're there. Like it's, it's like, it's never a bad when we're there, we always have fun.

But then the lead up to a social event, we kind of always dread it. That's just part of our personality, probably how we were raised.

I don't know. I don't know. But it's just something we always kind of make fun of ourselves about. And, um, my brother,

I told my brother that we, I had this Christmas party and he's like, oh man, you're probably dreading it. And I was like, well, no, this one is different.

And that they're just regular people. You know, there's no pretense there. There's no, there's no reason, there's nothing that you have to prepare to like impress anybody.

And so there's just the expectations on like, you know, there's no performance that you have to do. It's just, you go there and you have a good time and it's always fun.

And, uh, and it's just like regular people. And that's, that's what I liked about it. Anyway, uh,

Jared's content is so clearly for regular people. He's obviously well -read.

He's obviously very smart. You know, he's obviously got an academic side to him. There's no question.

And I don't mean just because he's got books back here, although he does have books. I've commented about books in the background before, but Hey, that's, that's just an aesthetic.

It's just an, it's my opinion. We all know how I feel about that. But the point is that you can tell he's very smart, but his content aims to be, uh, accessible to regular people.

You know, he's, he's doing ministry for regular people. He's not doing ministry to be impressed, to be impressive to everybody else, to get kudos and accolades from everybody else.

In fact, the very fact that he primarily exists online on Gab shows you that.

Because if you want a black mark on your record, then be active on Gab because Gab is the worst thing ever.

There's anti -Semites there. And it's just so funny. I was thinking about that too. You know, I remember Big Eva people ripping

Gab because there's anti -Semites there and stuff. And yet they're posting on Twitter and it's like, yeah, but there's child porn on Twitter.

Like if you're going to use the same standard, like, doesn't that mean you're pro child porn? You idiot. That's kind of mean what

I just said, but in any case, so it's just, there's no pretense with Jared. Like I feel like I've never met

Jared, uh, besides online, of course. Um, but I feel like if I, if I went to his house, you know, for dinner or something like that, it would be the same as like my wife's family's

Christmas party where I wouldn't have to, there would be no performance necessary. We could just have a good time.

We could just enjoy a nice meal and have fun and talk. And there's no, there's no need to try to impress people.

It's just, that's, I don't, I mean, I don't know that Jared's like that, but that's, that's how he presents online.

I highly recommend you follow this stuff. If you're on Gab, definitely give Jared Sparks a follow.

If you're not on Gab, get on Gab and give Jared Sparks a follow. But even if you're not willing to do that, here's his websites, the shepherds crook .co

check it out. He's got a podcast, the shepherds crook and all of that stuff. I'll put, I'll try to remember to put these links in the, in the comment section or the, uh, the about section here.

I'm not sure if I'll remember it cause I never do. Um, but it's just so encouraging. You know, his, his feed is there's, there's no doom and gloom.

There's no black pilling. It's just a man who's like, he's got his, he's got his, uh, his nose is his head down.

He's working and he's just got, you know, he's, he's grinding away at that grindstone. And, and it's just, it's just very encouraging.

I love this content. I get so much value out of it. It gets my highest recommendation. The only thing

I will hedge, Jared, is that you post Baptist propaganda sometimes, and I don't like it.

But I do like, I do like Baptist. I'm just joking. In any case, Jared Sparks, highly recommend very, it's just a solid guy.

Um, he easily could have been, you know, climbing the ranks in big Eva. He could have easily climbed the big

Eva corporate ladder. He's the right kind of guy for it. He's got the right attitude, you know, things like that.

But he just decided not to do that. He just decided that that wasn't for him. And he's going to do, you know, what, what he feels the

Lord is calling him to doing. I mean, he posts about hunting. He posts about fishing. He posts about normal stuff, life.

He posts about theology. It's just awesome. I'm just, I know I might run the risk here of, of, of, of sounding like a fanboy, but it just is what it is.

So there you go. I like Jared Sparks. Go ahead and give him a follow all that kind of thing.

Now I do want to talk about something else, and this is just kind of a side topic. Um, I was talking to my wife who my wife is still on Facebook and she still kind of participates in some of the, uh, the online reformed, uh, drama.

And I was talking to her. I was like, yeah, it's so interesting. Cause people will often ask me about the latest drama and I'm just really not involved in it.

And I'm kind of glad I'm not involved in it, but they'll say, Hey, did you see what was going on, the fight left beast network and, uh, uh,

Facebook page. And it's like, no, I didn't. I'm just not involved in that stuff. You know? And, um, and we were just talking about it and we were talking about kinism, which is like all the rage right now.

And you know, it's that, that whole issue, it's just, it's, it's, it's too, like, it's too hot to talk about.

It's just too, it's too emotionally charged. Like, no, we can't have rational discussions about it because the thing is, it's like kinism these, these days.