This is the age of the product leader. So if you work in product in 2022 This is the right time and the right place And I'm not just talking about this very own place where there are around 2,000 product leaders in the room taking over the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco and many more joining us online today I'm talking more in general terms about what's really happening in product today 33% of the top fortune 33% of the Fortune 100 companies have a chief product officer Just think about it. Not so long ago the highest ranked product person in the organization Would report to maybe a chief marketing officer or a chief technology officer We didn't have that seat at the table now. It's happening It's even better is that this is growing year over year This title the chief product officer has grown by 41 percent over the last three years. It's only getting better. I Remember when I started the company eight years ago a lot of people would ask me is this a project school What's going on? Like why do I need to be in product? Is this for high tech companies? Is this just for Silicon Valley? I'm so excited to see that we are demystifying a lot of those things and really Democratizing this role to many many poor people in so many different industries. So how did we get here? What's really happening? Well, if you use the word product before the year 2000 probably think about something physical just physical and It's only at the very beginning of the 2000 2001 actually when the launch of the agile manifesto happened When that was like a huge shift in how companies went about building software You really understood that it was more about taking customer feedback than creating long plans It was more about iterating faster than just waiting for Something to ship and then see what happens and that started making us realize that product could be something digital as well 2001 2002 Google launched their first associate product management program An internal product school to train some of their software engineers into product management They started to realize that there was a need for product management and that that training wasn't really happening out there in the market More good things kept happening in 2009 a VC firm called and recent hall of it was created They published an article titled software is eating the world That article is incredible because it really Created more awareness around some of the macro trends with internet becoming mainstream Social media becoming mainstream Smartphones and how all of that was creating more adoption for consumers to use the internet to purchase stuff to use it So software is not just for software companies every company is a software company We kept moving and realizing that now product teams product people also need technology in order to build stuff and some of the Technology available out there in the 2010s. It was mostly created for other types of personas. It's a lot of like Tools for presentations for numbers for words But there wasn't really a tech stack for product managers And if you look around today in this venue all of our partners They are creating technology for product managers Some of them are actual unicorns or public companies today, and it only happened in the last 10 years It's absolutely insane The term product lead growth that we are all familiar with was only coin in 2016 by a partner at another VC firm called open view and I was really cool because Unified a lot of the concepts and tactics that some of us were using This really created that motion around Product doesn't only come in at the end when a team says something and then product has to go and deliver Product is elevated to the center of the organization and it's touching every single point across the user journey Users are using the product even before they become customers and now that's something that is more mainstream than ever The rise of the no-code and low-code tools also helped many more creators and product people Ship stuff and be more self-sufficient Long gone are those days where we really need to rely on someone else to give us a data analysis or a user research or Code something now product people can really go there and and and get to the customer faster and directly and ultimately all of these trends were Amplified and accelerated during the pandemic because online as a channel is not optional anymore And that was the only way for a lot of businesses to actually survive and thrive So that's ultimately was been pushing the adoption of the chief product officer and the growth of the product teams But let's take a look at the faces of product leadership today Because that has also changed a lot and by the way when I say product leader I mean it in the most inclusive possible way I'm talking about not just chief executive officers chief product officers Executive vice presidents of product or other fancy titles. I really talk about Anyone who is in the product organization who's building connections with other people both inside the product team outside the product team To make things happen leaders lead regardless of their title in fact most of the people who end up Product leadership title or promotion. They've been living before they actually got that Market validation and that official promotion So Mamuna is actually a VP of product Shopify and very active contributor to the product school community as an instructor Mariano is the CEO of Mural which is the tool that we are using for the presentation today Alex is a principal product manager at Slack and Stephanie is the head of product at Twitch One of the things that these amazing product leaders have in common is that none of them started computer science And they still lead incredible product design and engineering teams. In fact 73% of the product managers today globally Do not have a computer science degree and there is nothing wrong with that. I started computer science It just comes to demonstrate that there's so many paths into product and not just to break into the role But to actually grow as a leader there So let's actually Bring us down to what happens when I actually invest in product growth what happens when I put the right product leader in play and What's the impact that he's going to make in my organizer like if I hire a product leader How is this going to change my date today? Well first and foremost Product is now owning a big part of revenue Product in many cases owns a quota and talking about the self-serve channel that now many companies offer For consumers to go directly and purchase something without interacting with other people But not just that we've also seen that that channel is helping the sales organizations to better qualify The people they should interact with so they can customize bigger packages for them So ultimately if you take SAS software as a service as an example We are seeing that Companies that apply product-led growth in SAS are seeing a higher revenue overall than the SAS companies that are not applying PLG yet Another important dimension of how having the right product leader can impact your organization Is the amount and the depth of the relationships that the product team is going to have with so many other functions in the organization I'm sure you're familiar with the Venture then bring a diagram here that says that product is at the intersection of engineering Design and marketing. That's not new. We I grew up believing that but then you realize that This goes much bigger than that Product is at the core of the entire company. There are strong relationships being built not only with those three functions But also with customer success user research Data analytics just to name a few and of course sales So this is the next generation of product organizations And if you dig and if you zoom in into the actual product org chart the people who are in the product team You realize that these teams are not just made up of product managers designers engineers, maybe business analysts and a few other roles They if we are saying that product is now at the core of the organization If we are saying that product is now building stronger relationships with many more teams than ever We also need to invest in those Product teams to be able to prove to properly create those connections And what I mean by that is that the actual org chart of a product team is looking more like a t-shape Which means is that in addition to having some of the generalized roles that I just described We're also seeing specialist roles that are being part of the product team. I'm talking about product analytics, for example product corporations or product growth These are the specialist that are going to help product be more self-sufficient run experiments faster Get insights faster and ultimately orchestrate the actual delivery faster So this looks amazing like after looking at this who wouldn't want to be in a product led organization with amazing product leaders That's an easy set at this point. The problem is that it requires a village Houston we have a problem here because you're probably imagine that okay. We need to hire a lot But that they need to be all at once, but we still need to hire it would really want to do this the right way The additional problem is that we not only have to hire maybe Specific people that we don't have in house yet. We also need to take it off our people Given the current situation where and that's report that we run on the future product management We identified that around 26% of product people today will leave their current company within the next 12 months Maybe you're thinking well, that's not me. Well, what if it's you too? What if you lose 25% 26% of your current product team on top of having to hire additional product people just to really build this High growth product team well don't get too scared because there's ways to go about it and The most obvious one is probably Throw money at the problem Let's go out there to market and start hire people and there's nothing wrong with hiring people. It's absolutely necessary to hire talent But I cannot be the only Strategy in fact, it's just not sustainable because it's always going to be a get more expensive more competitive And still if we don't really improve retention, even if you go out there and hire the best people What if they also live? so What best companies or best product lead companies are doing in this case is to complement that approach with Improving and investing in retention of their product team now Retention what is retention? When applied to a team well specifically the biggest lever for retention is training it's really investing in the people that are building stuff and There are so many flavors to it we'll get into that in a second But before that I also want to demystify something around training Sometimes in product we tend to believe that Only the the new or despite in pms are the ones that require training and once you're in the game Kind of learned on the go and of course There's a lot of things that you learn on the go, but we are seeing that actually the fastest growing companies Prolet organizations they are investing in their existing product teams So they can be upskilled and they can become leaders faster So if you look at this in two dimensions on the one hand we're seeing Product managers being upskilled LinkedIn published a report two months ago saying that today Product management is the is the job that will get you a promotion the fastest that validates There are a lot of companies already Training pms to grow them as fast as possible just because it's more efficient than that's hiding from from the outside But there's another huge opportunity Maybe a dentury level of the pyramid, which is what about all of these hungry? People who are there who are business analysts who are project managers who are UX designers who want a chance at becoming a product person Investing in those people and given that opportunity can be probably the best opportunity to build your own pipeline and not Just rely on The market because let's face it every single time We want to go there and hire a p.m. On average Especially in the area. There's a cost of $240,000 let me say it again $240,000 for every time a product manager leaves your organization or you need to go there and So how are these large organizations going about this? Well? Companies like Google I mentioned before but others Facebook Amazon into it others They build their own associate p.m. Programs or product schools basically That requires a lot of investment. It makes sense for you at a certain scale There are other organizations that are offering stipends to their employees so they can go out there and pick the right solutions for them There are other companies that would set up mentorship programs The point is all of these companies are investing in the retention because they know That's the only way they can grow their product teams in a health way So before I say bye, I want to close this with a final thought I want to appeal to the morality of the product leader Yeah, the morality of the product leader and I see some of you are smiling because some of you might be thinking well, I'm good like Recruiters pinging me all the time my company just gave me a raise or maybe a title promotion. I don't need any of this And you might be right For a short period of time because right now it's not a secret that product is hot And if you are in product today, you are going to have different options But that is just not sustainable things change all the time So what best product leaders would best product organizations are doing is to be proactive about it It's capitalizing on this opportunity to grow even faster than just the trends Because if you think about it in Star Wars theme and I brought my lightsaber here We are facing now a Situation we have the dark side of the force that is saying do nothing Yes cruise and you'll be good But you will also have the light side of the force that is telling us get a little uncomfortable Take care of yourself invest in yourself if you are in a leadership position today invest in your team Because ultimately the teams that do that are going to better take care of the customers and that's the ultimate win Thank you very much


I'm Van Butik. I'm a cooperative extension specialist and the co-director of the Cannabis Research Center here at UC Berkeley. Today, I'm going to talk about some of the research we've done on mapping and modeling cannabis in northern California. This research started with a really basic question. How much cannabis is out there? Around 2012, 2013, there was a number of media reports indicating that there is substantial environmental harms from cannabis production in northern California. However, none of these reports actually had data documenting how many farms are out there and what type of damage they were doing. So in 2014, working with a large group of undergraduate graduate students and postdocs, we started mapping how much cannabis was in northern California, specifically in the cannabis cultivation hotbeds of Humboldt County and Mendocino County. We've now completed mapping for the years 2012, 2016, and 2018. To do this mapping, we start by identifying cannabis grows on the landscape. We do this using high-resolution satellite data. Essentially, this is the same data that you would see on Google Earth. And indeed, if you go to Google Earth and scroll around Humboldt County or Mendocino County, especially if you look for images from fall dates, so in July, August, or September, you can clearly see cannabis farms. So essentially, what we do is we identify cannabis farms. We do this by looking forward and backward in time and seeing where cannabis plants appear and disappear. We do this for both outdoor cannabis gardens as well as greenhouses. Undergraduate students have done most of this work. Basically, they identify where these are. They mark them on a map. We put this all into a computer and we get a digital layer of cannabis farms in northern California. So we've done this now in 2012, 2016, and 2018, Humboldt, Mendocino County. And we've done this for about half of each county. And we've done this for a statistically representative sample of the county. So we think if you take the statistics I showed today and roughly double them, you'll have a pretty good idea about how many cannabis farms are in northern California. So from this research, we have some very basic findings. For the first time, we have some idea of what happened during the green rush. And what we saw was that, first of all, the number of farms increased between 2012 to 2018 by over 50% in both Humboldt County and Mendocino County. So we saw a lot more farms on the landscape in 2018 than we did in 2012. The next thing we saw was that all the farms were on average getting bigger. So farms increased from on average of about 6,000 square feet to up to about 9,000 square feet. So a large increase in the size of the average farm. So combining the fact that we have many new farms and the farms that were in existence are getting larger, what we see is an overall increase in the square footage of farming by over 100% in both counties between 2012 and 2016. An interesting point is that while the square footage has increased, most of this increase has come from a very specific type of production. And that is production within greenhouses. So the amount of greenhouse area has increased by over 200% in each county. What this means is that the actual number of cannabis plants and the actual pounds of cannabis produced in each county has increased even more quickly than the square footage of production. This is because greenhouse grows oftentimes have multiple crops in one year. Therefore, we expect that the average number or the average amount of cannabis being produced in these two counties has doubled or tripled between 2012 and 2018. A big policy change happened in 2018 and for the first time, cannabis farms needed to be permitted by the state of California and local government and able to be legal. Using our data set, which included both permitted and non permitted farms, we were able to analyze for the first time how many of the farms were getting permitted. What we saw was that most farms in Humboldt and Mendocino County were not permitted. Only about 20% of greenhouse products or greenhouse farms had the applicable permits. However, the farms that were permitted were a little bit larger than the farms that were not permitted. So although only 20% of farms were permitted, these farms made up over 40% of the total greenhouse area. We saw a similar trend for outdoor production as well. Only about 20% of the farms had the required permits, but those farms were the larger farms and so it accounted for about a third of the overall square footage of production. We're interested in why some farmers had permits and why some farmers didn't have permits. And so we asked, we used statistical models to say, are there farm characteristics that lead to farms being more likely or less likely to engage in the permitted industry? We found there was a number of interesting correlations. One was that older farms were more likely to have permits. Another thing we found was that farmers who had invested and grown their farms between 2012 and 2016 were more likely to have permits in 2018 as well. But the overall largest factor that seemed to determine whether or not a farmer entered the permitted market was how large they were. Essentially, if you had 1,000 plus plants on your farm, there's about a 75% chance that you were going to be permitted.  So farm size is a strong indicator of whether or not cannabis farmers are going to enter the permitted market. One thing that we are interested in was the spatial arrangement of cannabis grows that we're mapping. This is important for a number of reasons. First of all, from an environmental perspective, it's really important to know if the cannabis grows are clustered in one area, if so, this could have two effects. On one hand, this might mean that the environmental damage from cannabis is more concentrated because they're all being grown in the same place. On the other hand, if the cannabis grows are clustered on the landscape, that might mean that there's large sections of the landscape that actually aren't impacted by cannabis grows. And so there's an interesting trade-off based on the spatial arrangement of cannabis grows. We did analysis at two different spatial levels looking at both the watershed scale and within the watershed scale. And what we found was that within Humboldt County, there was strong clustering of cannabis farms. Essentially, if you were a cannabis grower, there was a good chance that your neighbor was also a cannabis grower. One thing that we also saw in our data was that between 2012 and 2018, there's a number of farms that went out of business. There's a number of new farms, but we had over 400 farms between 2012 and 2016 that actually stopped producing cannabis. One thing we were interested in about that was, was it possible that the reduction or the abandonment of these farms had something to do with new environmental policies that the state was introducing, which were designed to make it more difficult for farms in environmentally-sensitive areas to farm.  And essentially what we found was it was really unlikely that enforcement of environmental actions contributed to what farms were abandoned overall. There was little correlation between environmental sensitivity and the likelihood that a farm would be abandoned. We looked at what factors were the most important for farms that were abandoned. And once again, we saw that it was the size of the farm was the driving factor. Small farms were quite likely to abandon, large farms were very unlikely to abandon. So once again, we see this dynamic where large farms persist and small farms do not. We're interested in the environmental impacts of cannabis and one area where there had been quite a bit of press was having to do with forest clearing. So the idea is that there's all these new cannabis farms. They're out in the forest and they're clearing land, they're clearing forest for the farms. And the images you see here are from cannabis farms in Trinity County in one of the most densely farmed areas of the state. And you can clearly see that there's openings in the forest from cannabis farms. But we wanted to look more systematically and say, could we really see this change from cannabis farms? And then how did it compare to other drivers of deforestation? So in this case, we looked at logging. So we looked at logging permits from 2000 to 2013 in Humboldt County. And we looked at all the new cannabis farms that were established. Then we used remote sensing data to say, where was there actually timber harvest or deforestation? Where were the trees removed from the landscape? And then we compared the effects of timber harvest to the effects of cannabis growth. What we found was that timber harvest contributed nearly 10 times as much to removal of forest, the removal of trees, than cannabis overall. So the area removed by timber harvest was much greater than the area removed by cannabis farms. And this had larger impacts on most the sort of scientific ways that we measure forest habitats that are based on what we call fragmentation metrics. So take away in general, timber harvest had a larger effect than cannabis farms. Interestingly though, if we scale this to the amount of land used for cannabis and the amount used for timber harvest, we found that actually the effect was on a per acre basis, very similar. And in fact, sometimes cannabis had a greater impact on a per acre basis. Finally, we found that in some areas, some watersheds, about 15 out of 60 watersheds, cannabis farms actually contributed more to these forest fragmentation metrics than timber harvest. So while overall, timber harvest had a larger impact, in some areas, cannabis was actually a larger driver of timber loss. Another thing we should be really clear about is that in California, if you're a permitted timber harvesting organization, you need to replant the trees, it's the law. And so we would assume that in the long term, the forests that were harvested will grow back. It's unclear what happens to cannabis farms in the long term. Do they revert to nature? Do they continue as small farms? We simply don't know right now. So I wanna emphasize that the impacts that we're showing here are short-term impacts on forest fragmentation. And what happens in the longer term as trees start to grow back is unclear. Given these results, we wanted to think about how we could develop policy to help mitigate the impacts of cannabis production on the landscape. And to do this, we really wanted to know what drives the location of cannabis production. Somebody's thinking about entering the market and developing a farm in these Northern California counties. What characteristics are they looking for in the land that helps them or that leads them to decide where to put a farm? And if we know that, we can think about what land use policies might be most effective at mitigating the harms of cannabis production. So what we did was we ran a number of models, statistical models, basically looking at what parcels in Humboldt County had farms and what parcels did not have farms. And using these statistics, we were able to find some trends in the data which suggest what leads people or what parcels are most likely to have cannabis on them. One interesting result was that the percent of the parcel that was zoned for agricultural purposes was not an important factor in determining whether or not there was cannabis on the landscape. In fact, the larger percentage of a parcel that was agricultural land, the less likely it was for that parcel to have cannabis. Essentially what we saw was that parcels that were agriculture have stayed in agriculture. They've not converted to cannabis in our dataset. Parcel size was somewhat important. The larger the parcel, the more likely it was for cannabis to be on that parcel. But there is one variable that was by far the most powerful at predicting whether or not a parcel had cannabis or not. And that is whether or not the neighbor had cannabis or not. So there is these strong spatial clusters that we identified in our earlier analysis were robust in the modeling framework as well. That is there seems to be some social conditions that lead to the clustering of cannabis. It's unclear if this is a feeling of protection in areas that has historically allowed cannabis production. If it's a knowledge transfer, one neighbor teaching another neighbor how to grow cannabis, or if there are some biophysical things that we're unable to control for in our model. But overall it does seem that cannabis farmers tend to cluster and the best predictor of where a cannabis farm will be is whether or not there's a cannabis farm nearby. So this can tell us a few interesting things from a policy perspective. First of all, this clustering is seems to be sort of a social phenomenon more than sort of a biophysical phenomenon. And what this means is that cannabis is being grown throughout the county in many different types of landscapes. This means that there's a good chance that land use policy could be effective in making sure that cannabis is grown on parcels that are most well suited for cannabis growing. That is ones that have a little threat to the environment. We also saw that logging had a larger impact, but cannabis had a larger impact per square foot. What this means is that when we talk about the environmental consequences of cannabis, we have to be very careful and a little bit nuanced on how we talk about it. We have to remember that this is a plant that takes up a very small percentage of the landscape. And while it may have environmental impacts in specific areas at the landscape scale, it's typically not yet been a major driver of deforestation in Northern California. We've seen a lot of farm abandonment and it seems like this has not been correlated with environmental threat. It seems like this is a product of, it seems like this is a product of simply farm size and small farms going out of business and large farms staying in business. So if we think of all of this work together, what are the main takeaways? The main takeaway for me is that cannabis is a crop that's very similar to other crops and can probably manage to limit environmental impacts through land use policies that incentivize cannabis being grown on parcels that are not environmentally sensitive. What do we mean by this? Well, cannabis can be, one, grown on parcels where cannabis is already grown, so limiting the expansion to new parcels. Two, when new parcels are needed for cannabis expansion, it's probably best if these are parcels that are suited well for agriculture, areas that are flat, areas that have good soil, areas that you don't have to build new roads to. All of these factors can help reduce environmental impact of cannabis. And overall, we think that land use planning is a tool that can really help solve some of the problems we've seen with cannabis on the landscape. Real quickly, I wanna preview a few other of the projects we're working on looking at land use in cannabis in California. We have a similar analysis that we're doing right now in Siskiyou County. It's a different situation up there, but we're seeing some of the similar trends. We're seeing this strong spatial clustering on the landscape from cannabis there as well. We're also looking at cannabis growth in Calaveras County, which is a county that swung back and forth from having cannabis be legal and illegal. And this is a really interesting story of how community changes over time are impacting cannabis farmers and the potential environmental impacts of cannabis. And finally, we're interested in expanding our work to the statewide level. So looking at where are the permitted farms? Where are the characteristics of these permitted farms? And how do the dynamics that we've seen in the North Coast related to the dynamics we're seeing in the Central Coast, which is now one of the major cannabis producing counties in California. And so hopefully we'll be reporting back with those research results soon. Thanks for listening and have a good day.


And, moving to Canoes' date, the governor, Abdulahi Ganduje, has declared Friday as a walk-free day to enable Muslim faithfuls to continue with the Eid al-Fitr celebrations. The State Commissioner for Information, Mohammed Garaba, announced this in a statement on Thursday. Garaba said the decision was in consideration of the fact that Wednesday, May 12, which was part of the two-day Eid holiday declared by the federal government, fell within the 30 days of Ramadan period. Hello. Hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


That was a good chance right on the edge of the box for Wiemann. Bardi on side, Black stays down, Ramsdale's up his line! Finish from Jamie Bardi! Only a snip of an opening, really. It's set up, he looked up. Ramsdale looked in hope of the ball, sailed over his head, dropped under the crossbar and into the net. 11.5 minutes gone, it's Bardi giving less to a 1-0 lead. I'm not sure what Ramsdale was doing there. He got caught in between the devil and the deep blue sea. He's got a skate on his line. It'll be a bit higher up the pitch to start, but you can't take it away from Bardi. You've done everything that was required from his point of view. And just lifted the ball all over the goalkeeper. Phrasers ball, Callum Wilson is on the side here. Callum Wilson has equalised! Wilson is off the mark for the season! A simple as Leicester's goal there. Jerry's down the inside left channel. Wilson with his left foot squeezed it across goal and squeezed it inside off the far post. Sort of a quarter-hour, a very open game, and it's 1-1. What a fine finish that was. I thought he'd run out of angle, but he managed just to scoot it off and get it over Casper and in off the far post. Lofty ball over the top here, looking for the run of Bardi again. Dripping out a little bit wide to the right. Bardi has it outside the penalty area. Cannons it against Cook, but it bounces back to Bardi. Cook was careful. The ball comes in and scored the first, and he's created the second. As he ran across Steve Cook, Cook had to pull out of the challenge for fear of giving away a penalty, and Teelamans stole in and squirted the ball in off the left-hand post.  Well, he just done cookie, didn't he? Just inside the area, and probably your heart is running back towards goal. One touch too many, and the counter-attack has broken down. That's lovely, link-up play from Leicester inside the form of Pelgie. Again, Mepham was there. Wipe by Bardi! One touch into the left corner of the goal, and the series have got a long way back from here. 18 minutes left. Jamie Bardi with his second of the afternoon. I thought there might have been a hints of outside at one stage, but Leicester wasn't having enough in there. Simple one for Bardi. Great pass. He's got them looking at the screen and helped it into the net.


Guys, I want to just share with you how Jesus saved my life and Before that I just want to read a verse of scripture to you to you that was running through my spirit this morning If you'd open your Bible or your iPhone or if you're in sin and you have a Samsung open to the book of Ephesians The book of Ephesians, I like that. He did a little piano part on there when I said that that's good Hallelujah Ephesians chapter 2 Verse one and you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins dead Dead not alive completely dead He made alive in once which you once walked to verse 2 according to the course of this world According to the prince of the power of the air the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience Among whom you also once conducted ourselves in the lusts of the flesh Fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and work by nature children of wrath That's who I was that's who you were and I'm gonna share with you how much of a wrathful child I was but The beauty of this scripture is found in the next verse. It says just as the others but verse 4 But God how many of you understand everything is dark but God You know what good is the moon unless the sun shines on it Everything is dark the moon's a reflection as soon as God comes in though but God he changes everything But God who is rich in mercy not poor? His bank vault is full of mercy doesn't matter where you came from like our precious sister who shared her testimony There is no condemnation one of the worst things I see in the whole world is in inside the Christian world It's the judgment of where I'm at and where others aren't God anyone can God can draw anyone to the mercy feet of Jesus to those holes that are burning brass in his feet that Led for all of us even if you grew up in the church and prayed 15 hours a day that same hole was for you But God who is rich in mercy Because of his great love with which he loved us Isn't it amazing that God actually loves you You know one of the biggest struggles I ever had as a believer was to believe God loved me I didn't struggle to pray. I didn't struggle to fast.  I need the help of women to fashion us But we're fashioned by the Lord Marked out in his image breathed on face-to-face The very first thing that God ever saw and that man ever saw through the eyes of God when God looked down at man The very first thing he saw of man was the eyes of man opening and looking him in the eyes God was always about intimacy. He was always about his image You're the image of God. He's rich in mercy. He really does love you He won't love you more when you finish that fast He adores you that's why you can worship in spirit and truth and worship with true adoration Sometimes people are like Christian penguins. They're so stiff and I'm no longer a slave to fear, but they're fearful of everyone's thoughts They're full of fear That's why I love new Christians when they first get saved because they have no idea how they're supposed to be They just are When I meet little kids one time I was preaching the gospel in this church and and this little kid some the pastor took An offering for me and they put it in a basket right here It was kind of quite awkward to be quite honest with you I'm behind the pulpit and they people are walking up putting money and so I kind of turned my back I didn't want to see what they were giving me. It was very awkward. He put it right there But a little girl she was about four or five She saw this basket full of money and as I was preaching not in the offering time later 10-15 minutes later as I was preaching she walked up on stage I said hello sweetheart She came up on stage and she looked at the money and she jumped into that basket And then she began to distribute it all and throw it out back to the crowd You know why because no one told her how to behave she is Do you understand what I'm saying?  I Was raised in a Christian home My father was a golf professional by that's what he did for a living. He played golf He he heard about this man in Africa named Reinhard Bonke And Reinhard Bonke had a ministry at the time where they had around, you know Maybe 30,000 people meeting in this tent that they had this big yellow tent and my father in Australia where I grew up My father where there was no internet then you know it was in the 80s My father he had this just strong conviction from God that we must move to Africa as a family We have to go there and and I'm a little kid and my dad was my hero You know people have like superman and all these things my father was it to me everything was about my dad You know and I'd go to school as a kid and people would say you know They're gonna bring their favorite toy and and I would actually literally bring my dad I would say dad Can you come for the show and tell because you're supposed to show a part of your life that you love and I would have My dad come and I loved him and I was obsessed with my father and and he was my like You know you couldn't have a son that was more infatuated with a father And he looked a bit similar to me full beard and everything and and he was a golfer and but he was a very sweet man Very very loving man and he used to give everything away and and I remember that as a kid because you know He would just always people would always be coming to our house who were like golfers and some of them were young kids and 1718 he would train them up and and then he'd preach to them tell him about Jesus and still I have contact today with some of these People who are professionals who got saved through him and and he would give all these clubs them for free And he'd pray for them and just always full of life and and very loving and he felt from God He said to my mother Jenny. He said we need to move to Africa He goes what God is doing in these in these are tents and saving people He goes I'm feeling the Lord telling us move to Africa We need to go there and serve Reinhard Bonke who at the time was not as known as he is now And if you don't know who I'm talking about you can look him up online Their ministry is seen around 79 80 million people led to the Lord Jesus 80 million But at the time it was 30,000, you know, it wasn't so big and so as a little kid I was just like awesome We're gonna go to Africa and my dad went first kind of to spy out the land and he had sent one year worth of letters One year in the mail letters every week or every second week like 30 to 40 letters And he sent them to Africa until he finally got a reply from a man named Peter Vandenberg and he said come He obviously could tell my dad's dedication was very real. He was gonna give up the the Golf profession which paid well Our young, you know me five six years old with my brother and sister young kids the living for the gospel sake and he He basically went by himself to interview there in Africa, but he called my mom a little bit into the trip And he said Jenny. I need you to pray for me. He said in in my hotel room the walls are moving and She said what do you what do you mean the walls are moving? He's he said the walls I can see the moving and he was really freaking out She said my mom said she goes you need to go to the pastors and the leaders there in in seafan and get them to Pray for you and so he did they laid hands on him, but it got worse and right before he was supposed to have His interview a few weeks. He'd been there already three weeks or so right before he was supposed to have this interview My mom made the decision. She said it's not going well. She's not sleeping. She said you need to come home So he flew back to Australia when he came back in the presence of my mother They're both praying people he was better a little bit He calmed down a little bit but he is still having these things where he'd get anxious all the time and he didn't know why and Then on my brother's first birthday when I was six years of age We were about to cut the cake and everything and and all of a sudden I hear for the first time really my father Yelling and like crazy and then back then we had these old Telephones that you put down on a thing and you ring with your finger and and my all the sudden I see my dad run and he's screaming at my mother and and he throws the telephone through the front window big window of the house And this is completely the opposite nature of of him And so I grabbed my one-year-old brother out of instinct and my mom said take him across the road because They were friends with our family and I took him and and I said something's wrong with my dad And she rang the the ambulance the police, you know that and they came and and to cut a long story short My father ended up they put him in You know in a suit type thing and and they they put him in a mental hospital and and they diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia something he never had before and He came back from Africa a different man to who he was when he left and so We continued to at that point to just pray I guess and every day my dad was in there sometimes for two months Really bad really serious. They put him on lithium lithium, which means you're like basically You can't function, you know, he'd sit at the kitchen table and it's still really his Bible He loved the Lord so much that he couldn't function correctly and so lazy And it's not his fault because of the medication, you know And so for me that was my hero my dad and so we would pray in the evenings My mom would pray and he would sometimes come in and pray as well and she'd say one day when your dad's delivered We're gonna have ice cream cake and we're gonna give praise to God And I just remembered that as a kid because we prayed so many times about this day of deliverance But sadly where I went to school the people in my school didn't understand any of that They weren't Christians like we were and my last name is Fitzgerald and he had schizophrenia So some of the kids got the two words fits the skits and they tease me my whole upbringing and beat me up And and I was a little kid. I was not tall a skinny kid, you know, believe it or not But I was not tall and and they would tease me fits the skits and I come home crying every day And I had no friends and and so at that point eight years of age I began to be addicted to pornography and I would walk out the back of our house and hide this stuff in the ground in The dirt literally bury it in the dirt and I would look at pornography with no sex drive I didn't have a drive for sexual things I would just look at these women on a page because it would make me feel like someone loves me and My dad was at that point. He was a bit incoherent He couldn't do what he used to do used to hug me and kiss me all the time and he just wasn't like that anymore I'd sometimes say dad and he just look I couldn't get his attention the same way And so I began to be addicted to pornography at the age of eight fully addicted and and then by the age of like nine I was actually selling The pornography was very weird how what I started to do and but still not looking at it with lustful capacities It was very strange because you're a little kid and then Still though every night, you know every two nights my mom she'd come into my bed And she said let's pray for dad and and I just pray for dad And so then we couldn't leave the house because in that four year period between like six and when I was ten Years old my father was so volatile We couldn't leave because if we left the house he may smash, you know, my mom was his full-time carer He couldn't work as a golf professional anymore Everything was and still we're believing when he gets delivered We're all gonna go back to Africa because we're supposed to work for bonky. That's God's will and We had one day the first day where they said my mom and my dad had talked and my dad was a bit concerned that We never got away out of the house ever we never went anywhere in four and a half years And so my mom and dad agreed that she would take me my sister and brother away for one night And my dad gave me this little handheld fishing reel My mom took us near a beach around about an hour's drive from our house And we stayed in a tent one night and my dad gave me a little fishing reel, you know the ones you put with your hand as a little kid and And he sat me down it was interesting he sat me down and he gave me this fishing reel He started crying he said he said Ben I love you and I was like I love you too, dad I love you dad, you know, so I loved him and he when he said that it was real special because he didn't say that quite as much Those days, you know, and he gave me this hand fishing reel and he just looked at me and just he just had tears in his eyes It was very very deep moment I was like I love you dad and he he gave me that fishing reel and I went away that night with my mom and With my brother and sister and I put the fishing reel in and I honestly believed to this day That was the Lord because I had no idea what I was doing, you know And I put it over the side of a pier and I caught a fish and and that's what the last thing my dad said to me Before we left that night was catch me a fish So I did and I slept with that thing my mom was so angry She wrapped in newspaper, you know, and I slept with the fish like I put it She's like get that thing out of the tent, you know, I love that fish and I was so excited the next day So we're driving back to see dad and I just couldn't wait to show him the fish So I was the first one to run inside and I said dad, you know dad It's like I caught you a fish dad and and he wasn't responding he was I thought well Maybe he's asleep and I I ran around the house and I got into his bedroom and he there he was in bed. I said dad dad I caught you a fish Dad and I'm looking at him. I go dad dad dad Nothing So I dropped the fish and I walked over to him I touched him and his head was ice-cold and I jumped back and I actually felt something dark on Me at 10 and he was dead and I knew instantly he's dead. I said mom I said I said mom I said screaming and she's like what and I ran outside where she was unloading the car I said dad's dead. I said he's dead and she goes. Don't she goes. Don't you dare say that? I said mommy. He is dead. I said help mom help and she freaked out. She went inside and then I ran I ran from the house I Didn't run inside. I ran I took off the police found me several hours later by myself My father that night. He'd taken 70 sleeping tablets 70 he committed suicide He took his life. It was too much. He felt like what he was doing to our family and he'd have these violent outbursts and he just couldn't do it anymore and He felt like he put us through such suffering and he took his own life, but at that point I began to run I mean, I really ran The two hour of me going alone was an indication of what was happening in here See my hero and everything I live for the love that I received from him It was dying, but it really died in that moment You know, I really took on this deep deep wound of grief and rejection and when you mix rejection with an already strong Porn addiction you mix the two together. What's gonna happen?  I was a smart kid But I just started to rebel like crazy different boy I was gentle sweet like my dad funny and everything and then before that and after that a different person And then I was in school and so every time I could do I'd grab an apple and just throw it at there The leader of the school hit the leader in the head. I'm kicked out of school You know and then next minute I'm out of school something like that would happen, you know next minute at 14 years of age I'm leaving school completely. I started working as an apprentice now the porn addiction has become sexual now It's become an addiction to women not pornography 14 years of age. I'm living by myself I move into this house with an older man to do an apprenticeship And I just start running down this road and I was doing exactly what I did after I touched my dad's Deadhead when I touched him. I just ran inside so sin and grief this terrible concoction, you know The Bible says clearly though like I just read in Ephesians 2 one with all sin Every trespass is the same even if I didn't have the grief the sin would still be causing me to run Because you're running from the truth of what can really redeem you and my dad he was my world So everything about my life was I want him to be healed. I was exceptionally disappointed You know an angry inside why didn't this happen and why didn't why wasn't he delivered and I was so sure and So I was just running and and next minute I find myself in very bad scenarios I find myself at you know, 17 18 years of age starting to deal the drug ecstasy and And playing pool, you know pool like eight ball nine ball I used to play four to six hours a day In fact, I could have been if I continued in the road. I was in I could have been a professional I was very very good and and trying to become a professional pool player But I was dealing ecstasy and using women a woman would come into my life She'd be in my world for a month. Her world would be destroyed All the manipulation of me all the the using of people all the toughness I put on this tough face I wasn't tough at all on the inside I was terrified But I was hardened on the outside because of this grief and sin and all of the things that sin produces It slowly just inches you further toward the death of conscience and then the death of the flesh and then the eternal death Which is not a real death It's where you're in hell and it's where you're faced with everything that you ever did and demons are your masters It's terrible that place is not for any human being That's why God came in the flesh of his own son God in the likeness of man Sorry, God in the image of God came down in the likeness of man that man in his fallen image of man Maybe come back to the likeness of God and this is Jesus, you know, and I didn't know that Jesus I just knew grief and sin. I used to do terrible things But I don't want to really boast about them because they're stupid They just they're honestly just the outcome of sin and grief But I would do weird things like I would I would turn off all the lights in my house I hated natural light. I'd go to bed at four in the morning I'd put the shower on cold and sit there in the freezing shower because I thought that I deserved to not have a Good shower even though I was in sin. I had all these strange things that I would do I wouldn't want natural light on people turn the light on in the lounge room. I'd say turn it off turn the light off I was afraid of light. I was I was beating myself I maybe I blame myself for my father's suicide because I went away the night that he committed suicide But the last thing you said to me was catch me a fish and I did But by this point now, I'm destroying everyone who's in my world. I'm fake I'm wearing so many masks. You wouldn't believe like I was manipulative I could do anything I could take a sales job and just turn it into I'd be a great salesman And then within a few weeks I'd steal from them majorly steal from them I would collect money for a disabled foundation. I'm not disabled. I lied I begin to collect false government checks. I knew what to do.   God will get you because of that woman So the Holy Spirit begin to speak to me in nightclubs God was haunting me. I had all these beautiful women. I had all this stuff that you think you'd want I could put cocaine up my nose, but inside I was dying The sin that there I'll be my man. I'll be I'll do my thing I'll be I'll shut down my heart I'll all these things that I did all they led to was just further and further inward darkness and shame It just was nothing. It felt like nothing, but it was all fake and Then I had a profound experience my girlfriend at the time like looked like a supermodel Worked at the nightclub that I was in and I used to go to that nightclub all the time and sell drugs and stuff And just try and act like a tough guy and and this thing was starting to wear off on me And one night it was like God opened the veil on me and I felt so depressed But it was like I could see all these people in a dark club Rubbing up against each other trying to drink and they just talk such a big game They talk such a big life and and I was and I knew a lot of these people and I just could see them And I'm like I'm like what's happening here and it's like God lifted the veil on me And I could see this human search for significance Like the preacher says of Ecclesiastes by the way the wealthiest man who ever lived at the sum total of his life at the very end Says all is vanity all is grasping for the wind He could look over his palisades massive mansions He had 12 bronze lions around the largest swimming pool You've ever seen and he looked out there and all these women he had and he said all is vanity It's grasping for the win to know God is life He had everything but didn't have this and he understood and I begin to understand for some reason I didn't think of God, but I thought of the people. I'm like, what are we doing? Why why is everyone trying to be have a six pack? Why does everybody have to look better than the next guy? Why is that girl going home with a guy she just met he could be a rapist Why and I started to think about this and I said to my girlfriend working in the club I said Alina her name was Alina Which actually is almost like a bit of a Ukrainian sort of Russian name Alina I said Alina I'm going home She goes you okay. I said no, I said this is all fake I threw the drugs out in the crowd and I said this is all fake. I went to my house I did exactly what I did every night in my house. I turned the lights off when I got in I sat there and I lit up a cigarette all that was in my the lounge room of my house was the light of a cigarette Smelt like terrible. I live with other people who dealt drugs.   She has God has promised me and I wouldn't I didn't believe her but With the light of only a cigarette See I had all these other stuff, you know, I'd cash in my pocket all this thing these things you think would build your security Beautiful women are you can have all that Everybody gets old but You can have beauty. It's not bad. It's good, but it doesn't last forever You can have money in your pocket that comes that goes you can burn that thing up in a second Someone can drop you like that you can be fired from the biggest company can turn bankrupt How many stories have we heard about people who all of a sudden at the very top of the echelon of the corporate chain a Jumping off a bridge committing suicide because everything they put themselves into was a paper note They fractionalize our identity people do it now with Instagram you can do with your Instagram I'm gonna become popular. You know what you're telling God. I'm worth someone double tapping on a screen What a joke What a what an absolute I mean if you could subtract humanity down to its lowest level and show what sin really is there it is Like my value comes from a comment on a Facebook That's how I was but I didn't realize that's how I was So I turned the TV off after a few minutes of listening that preacher But God was not done with that sermon and I didn't know that Just the light of the cigarette and then the left side of the room The Lord Jesus entered the left side of my lounge room at 415 in the morning and As Jesus came in to the left side of that lounge room.  I cheated on her every week. I was a manipulator. I did not know who I was I was fake. I didn't know my value I was longing for someone to show it to me, but I didn't know it. It was a mask and Jesus came and I knew I knew somehow It's God because when he came through it came through the left side of the lounge room And I have a cigarette there and all of a sudden in my heart I can feel and it was like like kind of like loud through me I can feel this presence and then the voice of God Thundering on the inside of me and the first thought I had I remember the very first thought was like how can God be? Talking in me. I'm not a Christian. How can his voice? I was really confused by it I was like, I know how I live and but I can hear this voice inside me that was not my conscience You might say, oh, Ben, that was your voice. You imagine it.  I love you Please forgive me for all the pain I caused you a little voice in your head cannot make that kind of a transformation But with this cigarette in my hand Jesus spoke to me. You know what he said? He said son Jesus called me his son before I'd even said the sinless prayer He said son, I love you And he said I want you to give your life to me and then for one hour He began to tell me about my life about who he is about the gospel and about my future and I just lost it. I mean I For the first time in in years. I was crying I was I was an absolute mess and and I could feel like this waves of peace and even though The cigarette he never told me put down the cigarette He never told me I'll talk to you once you finish your cigarette Jesus is not religion Jesus is God Jesus knows the state of man. He's not a God who comes to put another heavy burden on you He's a God who comes to lift them to lift the thousand pounds of falsehood and sin and weight That's on your soul. And so as Jesus began to speak to me I just lost it and the Lord began to tell me he loved me and it was inside me the voice on the inside How can Jesus speak to a prostitute addict like that?  It's because he made you and it's because he bled and already took that liar on the cross He took that man. He took that fake stuff. He took all that falsehood He took that addiction to sex that I had since aid he took it all there on that cross He died as me he was in all things poor that I might in him become rich in him He became the poorest of poor. We don't understand his suffering How can you go from the most glorious place to the lowest place and be happy and joyful to do it for the joy set before him How can you do that? Someone loses their car or their job and they're depressed He bankrupted himself out of heaven and even had the greatest things he to me My father was everything and to Jesus his father was everything and my father committed suicide and the father in heaven ever Never ever left Jesus, but because of who he because he became as us because of who we were He was separated for a moment from God and God's own heart broke that he even had to separate himself from the son for us so that we could never again say that We have to be separate in All forms became as us in all points became weak tempted But never sin so he was a perfect lamb ready to be slain God was rich in mercy and he bankrupted the whole vault and put it in a man called Jesus And he said I'll place that man in the earth just to be as you to walk as you to understand you to fellowship with your Sufferings to walk through the left side of your drug dealer's house and tell you that I love you and I can change you That's our Jesus. He's not a dead religion. He's not an impressive three-point sermon He could care less about that. What kind of award will you get when you get to heaven the best sermon award? The best Instagram award The Lord is love his life love the Lord God with all your hearts on one and strength to love your neighbors yourself on these two Hang all the law and the prophets the Lord himself is life And I met life that morning. I didn't meet religion. I Met the person my mother would tell me about I met the person my father used to seek that I would I'd watch him Adore I met that Jesus. I met forgiveness. I met freedom It is for freedom that Christ has set us free therefore do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage no longer Are you a slave? We sing it every week. I'm no longer a slave to fear. It's the absolute truth.  I wasn't even clothed. I was sitting in boxer shorts alone. I wasn't even clothed I wasn't clothed or in my right mind like some other man in a Gadarene's area I was not in my right mind or clothes and it's start at stank that Jesus didn't judge me Did he convict me? Oh, yeah Did he was his holiness eminent? Yeah. Oh, yes. Did I still want to go and just smoke more? No I wanted him Because I tasted of John 1010. I came to bring life and life in abundance abundantly My girlfriend came home at just after five.  She never heard before. I said Alina I said, I'm sorry She never heard me say that. I Used to blame her for everything.   You need to get your heart back with the Lord Be fresh in the spirit of the Lord and just in the joy of his beauty and forgiveness And So Alina was like what's happened to you and I said I saw Jesus Jesus He spoke to me and I didn't see him physically but he came in the room I said Jesus he changed my heart and I said and she's like are you okay? Maybe we need to go to sleep. I said no no no Alina I said really and she knew two or three days later sleeping next to her still I didn't really know how to become you know I had some things to still work out in the first times of God, but God's so merciful I'm sleeping next to her all of a sudden she'd wake up screaming She'd say I was being chased by a lion in my sleep. She's not a Christian has no background as a Christian I'm being chased by a lion, but the lion had no teeth and it got to me But these hundred and forty four thousand people who had white robes they were safe from the lion She's never read the Bible. She's never read Revelation and I didn't even know where that was But I said I think the that hundred and forty four thousand things in the Bible and She became a Christian too. She got radically born again She got set free delivered all that stuff and then I began to go on this track in this course Of actually walking with the Lord There was no YouTube so I read my Bible four to five hours a day and I just sat in front of the word I buried my life between the covers of this book and I found out that everybody talked about Jesus Why wouldn't you talk about Jesus? Oh Ben? You're more bold. You're passionate. No, I'm a 70% introvert I love being alone.  We have to be bigger than this So I began to preach the gospel. I was nervous. I was claustrophobic. I was a flight afraid of planes I never darkened the whole of a plane until I was around 20 and the first 16 Sorry was the first flight ever and the next one was 27 I would gladly drive 20 hours rather than fly now I fly 200 days a year all this fear all this manipulation all this control all that was in me was actually Defying me living until I met King Jesus So I preached every day I go to the street Talk to people that Jesus pray for the sick cast out demons on the street I remember my first time that I really had a word of knowledge a woman I was at a hot dog stand and I got the hot dog and as I'm eating a hot dog all of a sudden I looked at her and I knew that she was raped. I don't know how I knew I Just knew and I went back to the hot dog thing and I said excuse me. I said my name is Ben I I believe in God. I said I believe I heard something from God for you And I didn't know how all that worked and she goes excuse me. I said I believe I heard something from God about you I don't believe in God. She goes I'm working. Thank you, but please can you go away?   I let her to the Lord about five minutes after she finished work And I begin to do that every day and There was no there was no Instagram There was no Twitter I had this thing called wanting to please God I Had this amazing profound thing that some Christians have called actually wanting to please the audience of one Some Christians have it Others are just trying to be pleased and and fill their soul and flood their life with some kind of thing that This temporary this guy likes me pastor hugged me today. I must be okay pastor won't be there on the day of judgment Pastor doesn't give that oil of love to Jesus. He does that for himself. He can't do it for you. What about you and Jesus? I Was just preaching because I love God and I tasted and seen and that the Lord is good And I had to tell the people God's good And so I did and then I began to seek the Lord and fast and the craziest thing happened right after I was like six or seven months after I saved I got on a train in Melbourne, Australia where I'm from to Geelong 50 minutes train ride And I got on the train and it was pretty empty and I have my Bible used to have a little Gideon's bar We know those little tiny ones has Psalms and Proverbs as well four hours and just like devouring this thing and just love God No one knows who I am no one I didn't care about that. I didn't care about being known I cared about pleasing him. I cared about truly knowing that when I'd read the scriptures I would I'd be enlightened by the person of the Lord I was really fascinated with Jesus because I'd just been saved out of such trash You know and all my friends started getting saved Because they knew I was a different person and I would trick them I'd invite them to church as a trick, you know, I came to your basketball thing come to my shirt I was very manipulative in a good way, you know, so come to my thing, you know and I'd say this guy's sharing he used to be in the mafia this guy called Tom Papanya Papani or something He came to Australia once I said this guy used to be in the mafia man I said come bro. This guy was like gangsters. He's serious. I said yeah come and he sat there And the evangelist Tom Papanya who was once in the mafia. He was very good He said everybody stand your feet and he goes now sit down if you're a Christian and only the non-christians were standing And he was looking right at them and he said you must be saved, you know crazy stuff My friend got born again, but listen all my friends they all begin to drop into the love of Jesus but Something very strange happened to me and this shows the sovereignty of God and God is sovereign that you're watching God is Sovereignty you're sitting here. You're on God's calendar today. It's no mistake. You're here You think no, no, I went to this church a month ago and it is no mistake Make no mistake. You can have an ordinary service.   You wouldn't have any excuse You wouldn't you'd let go of those little rights like that that all fall in his presence All the sickness in your body you'd have faith for the healing power of God The fire of the Holy Spirit would come on you you wouldn't make excuses the emperor with holes in his hands It would be enough for you to say here's my heart take the hole in my heart through those holes in your feet Take the hole in my heart. Take the fake mask the falsehood So on this train, this is what happened I Fell asleep reading my Bible We came to a stop And all of a sudden a man taps him on the shoulder I wake up shocked and he handed to me a hand-fishing reel Hand one just like the one my father gave me Over ten years ago I looked at he goes you drop this he had he was a tall guy big white beard and white long hair And he was about 70 I'd say And I go no, no, this isn't mine. I looked up he was gone And I was like and the first thing I did was I tried to find him because I was like I go What the heck I said, this isn't mine. I got this isn't mine. I started to look and I couldn't find the guy Now I don't know whether he was a man or an angel. I don't know I don't understand that part I know it wasn't God because I didn't feel that eminence from him But I did feel it was so strange But he disappeared maybe he got off and walked left and I couldn't see him at the station We're at I don't know so I don't proclaim to know but what I know is this I know it happened after I was like who the heck is that guy? No one else on the train in the in the whole carriage just me And I sat back down and I'm holding this fishing rod and the Lord said now you catch me a fish He said the same thing to me as a father. He said you catch me a fish And so I began to preach the gospel and that's all I've done since and I'm not shutting up anytime soon And and now we have a ministry called awakening in Europe I think I'm past the Vlad wanted me to put one of the pictures up I went into this little stadium I think it might be up there somewhere and I went in there by myself a few years ago and into Europe and I know not that one That's that's what happened after I went in there Past the Vlad wanted me to put the one of me standing there for some reason. No, not that either These are all fantastic and they're all actually what happened. There I am I stood in that thing by myself but the same voice The same voice I love you Ben Follow me the same voice He said that thousands will turn to me and I'm like that's like my mom said And so the the end result was that we begin to preach the gospel all over europe and we're still doing it today And actually the after that that was a fun time walking in there and seeing nothing Having no favor in the german church having no influence at all Trust me at all like had nothing no money nothing And and then the real picture of what happened was 27 000 people filled that stadium That's an altar called two and a half thousand people answered the altar called on the very ground Where hitler used to preach and commission his army And jesus is commissioning an army of jesus people all over europe. It's awesome, man. It's so crazy. So So now I'm trying to catch fish And today i'd like a fish But I just catch him I catch and give The lord is the one after you.  Oh, I stand there in worship and I just quietly say love you god You've lost that zeal You've lost that what the bible calls first love fire return to your first love Jesus said I don't want to take your lampstand away Jesus is not trying to take us away But when he spoke to the church of Ephesians in Ephesians chapter revelation 2 when he said to that church He said please he said return to your first love. You know what he said and by the way You can't blame your leaders. This church was the best church in the world You know who was the pastor of that church at one time? It was timothy You know who else was in that church mary the mother of jesus herself was in that church the revelator John was in that church and apollos They had apollos john mary and timothy all of them in that church leading that church They had apostolic. They had prophetic. They had glory. I'm sure they're in the midst of a tumultuous Area and generation they had miracles like crazy.  I have one thing against you one thing only When jesus says he has anything against you you quickly want to make sure it's not against him anymore But he didn't say i'm against you like he's in what a joke you are Why would he tell you hey look i've got something that really we need to talk about I'm telling you this because I love you. He said you've lost the zeal for me You used to do this for me You used to love me. You used to have a fishing reel in your hand thinking of heaven You used to used to love this thing and just dive yourself and bury your life in the covers of the book here and and be able to Turn off your tv. Leonard raven hill said how are we going to destroy and pray? We destroy the strongholds of satan if we cannot turn off the switch of the tv We want revival don't we we want awakening want to fast even fasting It's amazing and I fully feel the spirit of the lord on what they're doing and what you guys are doing I feel it but even fasting you can patch yourself on the back and still be cold as ice in your heart And still mistreat your wife still love your pornography more than jesus Still be back sitting and go I'm not coming to god. That's what I used to do to my mom. I threatened her You know one of my best friends now is my mother You know what one of our favorite things to do together is is to tell people about jesus together You know what kind of a precious thing that is Memories you can never ever get any other way except through the spirit to in each other living in the spirit Don't you want joy back? Jesus said I warn you He said return to your first love and he said lest your lamp go out lest I take it from you He said that at around 40 ad in the church of Ephesus was dead Completely shut down and closed by 50 ad They had a 10-year window And they didn't follow He wasn't rebuking timothy Jesus wasn't rebuking. We know john the revelator.  Would you give your life to him today? You're watching at home. Would you be real with god?


Well, first of all, thank you. I'm going to get a little feedback here. But Mark, let me say hello because it's nice to be able to see you. It makes me feel a little bit at home. And also, I'm sorry, I know you're there. And Chris, as I understand it, you're there. And Andrew, I wish I could shake your hand in person. And there are several others there I would love to be able to meet. I'm going to, in this very finite universe of about 20 minutes, try to address a fundamental topic. This is a difficult medium, in a sense, for primates because being in person is such a richer experience. But I'll do the best I can. I wanted to address the topic of how the field of animal studies is developing, especially in relation to the much more common notion of animal rights. I think this addressing this topic helps us think about what it means for humans to engage the profoundly important fact that each and every one of us lives in a multi-species world, as Mark's presentation no doubt underscored in many ways. And this world is quite correctly described as a more than human world. Now, this important fact suggests not only the possibility of non-anthropocentric views, but in many ways it can be seen as demanding or begging them. The salient fact that we live in a more than human world also prompts us to explore lots of the limits that we face in our own understanding of the world, for example, in our environmentally framed or what we consider environmentally framed viewpoints, whether those are secular, religious, theological, or philosophical. We know that there are limits in the way we do this. And trying to imagine other viewpoints helps us assess how we're framing adequately or less than adequately. I think also finally, the fact that we live in this clearly more than human world is in tension with the claims made implicitly and explicitly in our mainline institutions, our public policy that human exceptionalism is a morally acceptable position. I think the tension between human exceptionalism and the need for non-anthropocentric imagination drives us relentlessly to assess our ethical, intellectual, cultural resources for doing these kinds of things. I think we need the widest array of critical thinking skills to assess how self-serving our claims have been about the fact that we're the most important, the most intelligent, the most X, the most Y beings on the Earth. In order to address this relationship of animal studies to animal rights, let me come about this in a bit of an unusual way. In 1965, a very important documentary in the history of film came out. It's called The Battle of Algiers. Gilles Ponticorvo is the director. That film is important in its own right, but I want to use a particular comment by an Algerian during that film to frame what I want to do. A man by the name of Larvie Ben M. Headey says during that film to a young Algerian, it is hard to start a revolution, harder still to sustain it, hardest of all to win it, and when you have won, it is then that the difficulties begin. You might think the revolution I'm talking about is best referred to as animal rights in a minor way that might be true, because many of the notions we call animal rights relentlessly open doors for us or in the Algerian's terms, it either starts a revolution or helps sustain one that has already begun. But I want to suggest to you that animal rights is not the major revolution at hand in the topic that I'm talking about, even though I'm going to underscore that animal rights is extremely valuable because it opens door after door and thus hearts and minds. So although animal rights is important, I'm going to suggest that it's a derivative topic. It draws its lifeblood or its heartbeat to use biological images from a much deeper and wider revolution, which is, I'm going to suggest, reflected more broadly and more fully in the field of animal studies. All right, how to define this field? That's the study of our species' past relationships and treatment of other living beings. Certainly our present treatment, since that's so ethically relevant, but I think, as importantly, our future possibilities here. With a suitably large dose of concern to assess as accurately as we can from our limited vantage point the actual realities of other living beings. You can see Mark's work has really contributed to that latter, that heavy dose that I described. I'll come back to that. Now there are competing names for this field. Human animal studies, animal humanities sometimes, anthro-zoology, but all three of those alternatives have humans foregrounded in their names and certainly in the way that they're approached generally. And in an environment where really dysfunctional human-centerednesses, not all human-centeredness has to be dysfunctional, but many of the forms we have are that in such an environment we find it difficult to focus on non-human animals. So I think that the best term to use is animal studies because that does the minimal damage of obscuring other living beings in the face of our own incredible attitude towards our self-importance. Keeping one's balance as we go through this kind of animal studies is incredibly important. And I'm going to suggest to you that the way that we keep our balance in doing animal studies is to do animal studies in the key of animal rights as it were. Now, four points to help you grasp what I mean by this. The phrase animal rights means different things to different people, of course. I'll deal with that in a moment. The phrase in any of its forms does at least two things. One, it reflects a reawakening of time-honored ideas that have appeared in countless cultures. Secondly, it also constitutes or any use of animal rights also constitutes an appeal to some altogether fundamental features of human life found in our daily life. Humans all around the world feature these. And these features are remarkably feckoned abilities to be concerned about others. And secondly, our capacious human imagination by which we assess who those others might be. By reawakening these time-honored ideas about others, by appealing to these foundational features of our ability to care about others, that is how animal studies is in. Well, first of all, it's made real by animal studies. And it's the reason I suggest that the larger revolution is animal studies and that animal rights, an important social movement around the world without question, is just a part of this larger revolution. Let me turn to the phrase animal rights because it means different things, as I said. There are many senses of animal rights, but two very distinct ones. The principal versions are the older version, the sense of ethics-based, ethics-informed concern for other living beings. A great challenge for us as individuals, of course. But here, animal rights means something like moral rights for animals outside our species. There is a newer competing sense, particularly we find this, for example, in American law schools. Animal rights means specific legal protections for specific living beings outside our species. These are law-based, law-mediated protections. And they come in many forms, to be sure. But the historically significant one is the use of specific legal rights for specific individuals offered in a specific jurisdiction. For example, the kinds of specific protections offered by the American Bill of Rights. When used in this law-based sense, animal rights has a moral dimension, to be sure. But the significant conceptual move and the significant political aspect of this meaning of animal rights is that specific legal protections actually called legal rights are characteristically tied to individuals of some species outside our own. Now, that's important, but I want to suggest to you that as important as that is, there is a way in which it is a derivative problem, a minor problem. Historically, animal protection has been pitched in this important key of animal rights in the moral sense. Rights, of course, historically, since the 16th, 17th, 18th century, that discourse has carried incredibly important psychological political value. And that's no doubt the reason that rights-based approaches today continue to be very important. But there are many problems with rights-based approaches for both humans and non-humans, particularly because it's tied to a Western enlightenment vector conceptuality that has limits with regard to fundamental protections that we can offer other living beings. Please don't misunderstand, surely animal rights has been and will remain a valuable approach in many different ways. It underscores the importance of other living beings' realities from their vantage point. It underscores the importance of seeing their interests, not our interests, in using them. But I really want to go beyond animal rights here and suggest that in a very forceful way, the larger field of animal studies is the way we recognize the more-than-human world, not just animal rights, set another way, starting, sustaining, winning the real revolution requires animal studies, not just animal rights, because only then will the social movement around the world, called the animal protection movement, often only then will it really win. And of course, if it then wins to use the Algerian's insight, that's when the difficulties will begin. But that's something our species is up to, meeting that ethical challenge of living in a multi-species world. That's the first point. Animal rights means different things, and it is an important concept, but it is a derivative problem from the larger task that animal studies sets itself. A second point that reflects this claim that animal studies needs to be done in the key of animal rights. We need to speak carefully. We use the phrase animal relentlessly to mean other animals, living beings outside our own species. Now, think of this. We recognize we're mammals. We recognize we're primates. These are animal categories. Many of us recognize, although it's less well known, that we're also great apes. If we take the scientific revolution seriously, not as a new fundamentalism, but as an essential partner in exploring the world, and you can see in Mark's work how remarkably able science is to explore world when it's done humbly, then we recognize our animality. If we take that revolution seriously, we recognize our animality and our citizenship in a more than human world. And doing so is a wonderful way to problematize human exceptionalism and all its dysfunctions. So a major reason why the revolution has a possibility of actually being one at some point is that science is accompanying us here. Of course, then, difficulties will still ensue. What do we do with our wonderful ethical abilities? They're finite, but capacious. So what do we do with them? So a second point here is that we need to speak very carefully about the issues before us. It's something we've not inherited particularly, phrases like humans and animals, great dualisms that are unrealistic, unscientific, and need to be surmounted. A third point, the central importance of humbly, honestly, communally, searching out other animals' realities. We must do that together. The task belongs to all of us. I see this as a point of combined humility and togetherness as the most important point to make about either animal rights studies. We approach the human world in many different ways, various ethical, cultural, everyday encounters. So you want me to hang up and call back? So here, to focus, I'm on the third of the four points, central importance of being humble, honest, communal as we pursue, searching out other animals' realities and our possibilities with them. Because this is necessary because we approach these problems with our sciences, ethical, religious, cultural traditions. We approach them in everyday encounters. We have deep and rich literatures on this. We're environmental. We're members of communities of faith sometimes, members of local communities. So we really need multiple, humble, mutual, communal ways of searching out other animals' reality. As we do this togetherness, one of the resources is the ancient nature of moral insights. For example, I hope you've heard Chris Chappell this morning with regard to the Jain tradition and it's amazingly rich and deep insights. But we could say that about Chinese traditions. We could certainly say that about other Indian subcontinent traditions. Sara Talili today will no doubt talk about some of the extraordinary resources in Islam and Andrew will talk about Christianity's surpassingly capable resources for approaching other living beings generally. Bottom line, there really are diverse forms of the animal protection movement around the world as people respond to an entire range of issues and that's what makes it mandatory for us to do this humbly, honestly and communally in some different way. A fourth point, this humble, honest communal work requires interdisciplinary approaches and animal studies is the epitome of an interdisciplinary mega field as were. The humility takes us well beyond any one discipline's discourse. It certainly takes us beyond the human centeredness of our education. It requires of us many different kinds of literacy, scientific literacy, arts literacy, environmental abilities and awareness and all of the very complex aspects that brings to us generally. In the concluding few minutes, let me just review some of the things going on. I'll suggest to you that a lot of animal studies today remains extremely centered. This is clearly the case in animal law. It continues to focus primarily on the animals that humans are most close to. That's a rich preoccupation but not an exclusive one. The preoccupation with legal rights is a very human centered approach. Generally there are lots of other tools in the legal toolbox. Fields such as critical studies have wonderful insights to offer deeply ethical commitments but they often push us to sort of theoretical interest that may be wandering away from other animals realities. That's a central task that we're almost accomplished. Contemporary philosophy and epistemology, major contributions feel heavily human focused in some way, certainly a cutting edge of animal studies and trying to get beyond. Lastly, science. As practiced, science has continued to be extremely human centered. Mark Bekos ends with the treatment of people like Donald Griffin at Harvard. And Donald Griffin's work made it very clear that science in a very biased way approached other human animals and needed to open up that cognitive revolution. Mark is one of the three stellar examples of how rich, I think, can be somebody takes the cognitive revolution seriously. Lastly, if you reviewed our public policy, social movement theory, these remain so focused that they need to get beyond and to understand that are truly rich in flexibility like self-information solely but in transcendence. It's that humility is so spacious. One said, not one stupid, there's a basic education or education there's humans that we end up circumscribing rather than animating them. So for me, animal studies is an approach that can help us see to quote, the world isn't a collection object. So, let me, I can. Yes, yes, I can. And Peter, can you repeat that? Yes, yes, I can. Sure, sure. This is a quote from Thomas Berry, a theologian slash geologian who just died recently. The world is not a collection of objects but a communion of subjects. And one, I'll finish with this comment. There are individuals in your crowd who've been working on this insight for a long time, although Thomas Berry said it beautifully. Andrew Lindsay's were, Stephen Clark's were, Mark's were, Chris's were. People have been doing this for decades. And I hope that one of the wonderful things about the conference is that it honors that particular insight. Thank you.