Welcome back, welcome back. This is still why in the morning and I, you know, I appreciate you that you've chosen to stick with us. If you're just joining you're still in time for the first conversation of the day. We are talking on today's health segment we're talking more on environment and the environment we're talking about the African climate crisis that we're experiencing. We want to understand climate change.  That's what we're here to talk about today and we are joined by experts in this on my right, immediate right. I have Mudoni Trufena who's the founder of Mazngira Saturday, Saturday's Nation and just next to her we have Felix Karaoke who's the program leader Rotary International COP28. Alright, I hope I've introduced you right. Let me get to you just so as to confirm. Yeah, I'm the founder of Mazngira Saturday's Foundation and I work with kids on Saturdays. Okay, you work with kids on Saturdays? Yes. In regards to environment? Yeah, in regards to environment we have our Repair and Park in Ghaduraini along Thicke Road where kids come on Saturday to learn about environment and the kind of solution that they can provide and also we do a lot of activities together. Mostly they are art-based so that we can engage everyone and we make it exciting and easy and simple for them to learn. Okay, I love that kids are also being engaged, you know, with helping the environment. To you Felix? Yes, my name is Felix Kimani Kariuki. I'm ASRA Africa Chapter Chair that is Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group. I'm also a member of Lavinton Eco Rotary Club which is the first eco-based Rotary Club in Africa and it's been a joy pretty much working in that group and with that agenda reason I say so it's because the environment is where we live. The climate is something that we need to be in order at the moment because it's a big crisis and so working with Lavinton Eco we've been able to do a lot. Trufena can testify to the same, she's a Rotoract. What happens is Rotary has different levels. There is now the Rotary then we have the Rotoract that is basically students who are in I'd say college or just finished college and also we have now the Interact that is members who are in high school. So how we met when she was a Rotoract and so you are able to work as Lavinton Eco Rotary Club and also the baby which is the eco-variance of which she's a member of and this much I can say about it but it's up to you now. Okay so maybe we'll get back to that later on but let's now talk about the African climate summit and not really the African climate summit but the African climate crisis that that is there. So why do we need to have the talks on African climate crisis? What's happening to the climate for people that really don't understand about it? Let me start with you. Yeah so for people actually we need to introduce art yeah because art has the ability to tap to the depth of the emotions of people and spark conversations and also we artists are able to break down scientific data that in a way that it can be it can be perceived by the common public. So the first one of the things we need to do is to look at the way we can be able to bring the common public to understand what the climate crisis is all about so that we can be able to spark innovative solutions and inspire actions from everyone. Okay so art is part of one of the solutions you know of just communicating and breaking down the scientific jargon. To you Felix what is the climate crisis all about before we get to the solutions? Okay right now we are trying as much as possible for the warming not to go beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. Right now looking at the temperatures we are living in we are pretty much above that. It's still it's still habitable the world still is but you see the catastrophe that's resulting from it. We are having the meltdown at the Arctic's we are having the flooding taking place. We are having extreme droughts like five seasons this happened and we saw what happened in Somalia, Ethiopia, northern part of Kenya, Algeria, Tunisia they had wildfires. We saw the tsunamis that affected down south we're talking of Malawi, Mozambique all this is because of the temperature increase so right now what you're trying to do is to make sure that we ensure that the temperature does not go beyond 1.5 degrees extra B because we are measuring ourselves from industrial age pre-industrial age that's how you're measuring ourselves so the increase has been going on going on I know the the highest that was it was around the year 2016 when it really went high and then kind of spiked now it's been rising again and Paris agreement was all about that to ensure that the temperatures don't go beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. The coming summit COP28 it's more like they're taking stock what has happened how we are achieving anything as any remarkable changes since the last time we met. COP the conference of parties began the year 1995 so that's how you come to 28 right now and it's been like since 2021 there was an aspect of every single country has to be able to commit to how much carbon dioxide they will allow to be emitted in their own country so that when you talk about carbon emission that's what we're talking about exactly and that's what's causing the the temperature increase because we have too much of it in the air industries do cost that deforestation does cost that fossil fuels which is a big conversation right now as to why we are having COP28 in a country that's the biggest producer of fossil fuel so that's controversial still so it's an issue of what which way to go now because it seems like the temperatures are not really going down they're actually going up initially we were looking at at least 30% reduction but now we are looking at 43% reduction which means we are not making any improvements so where are we lagging that's the question the fashion industry does contribute to the same I think it's number four if I'm not wrong the fashion industry itself because what you for example a trouser can be able let's look at a trouser jeans trouser production of it end-to-end you're looking at at least 150 150 carbon I mean CO2 mega you know metric tons it just one one trouser how does one trouser produce because what you're looking at is the whole entire process from production to until the government has been very and how much has been produced in terms of CO2 and then we look at agriculture agriculture remember that catches our mainstay and agriculture produces about 20% of CO2 and then the worst is livestock livestock produces 14% of that so implication is there's a push towards people eating less meat there's a push towards people not focusing so much on livestock which is still according to some cultures that is unacceptable and it won't happen exactly yeah so if you look at a country like Denmark I think it was increased the attacks on meat so as to discourage people from consuming meat so what is being pushed for is what they call the plant-based diet because they say once we adopt the plant-based diet then we decrease the amount of methane the amount of gas CO2 that's going into the air so eventually that's the whole agenda just to make sure that CO2 is not in the air right now we have an overload I think about a thousand gigatons of CO2 that is just the overload that's not even the continual emissions that are taking place so implication is instead of reducing we actually add increasing exactly so it's an issue of what steps do we need to take to to ensure that we're decreasing in terms you know producing and also how are we able to decrease what's already an overload in the air so that's what the conversation is all about wow and I love how you have summarized this in a very simple way the CO2 the excess CO2 that's in the air that we're trying to use and it's you know I'm actually it's very interesting that even agriculture something that you know you wouldn't think adds to the CO2 the air promoting the climate change that we're seeing is actually a part of it there's a culture there's fashion you dress but you don't really know what what it costs you know the environment and there's a lot to it so back to you what do you think what do you think okay before we went go to what what we think should be done but how from the conversations that have been going on since 19 you've said it said 1995 so what is not going right if over the years for all those years there have been talks there's been meetings and you know it's still increasing nothing good is happening so far nothing substantial has happened so what is not going right I think it goes down to representation matters in the policymaking processes no matter how much you go to the street and you know activists they go to the street you give your views on the street the polly the decisions are made in the policy tables and programs so that goes to representation matters and also the the energy on the implementation of the policies that are made in the cops okay yeah so that's okay what about you Felix what has not they've been quite some steps towards ensuring that we are achieving what we need to achieve but remember different countries have different mainstays or rather what contributes to their GDP some countries depend on almost 90% on coal at least us as a country we are I think 90% renewable energy others they depend so much on fuel you know fossil fuel so getting ourselves onto the same table to agree who or rather what percentage should you as a country commit yourself to decreasing so we achieve our agenda generally capitalistic while we live in whereby we want to make as much money as possible so all these are just distractors but there've been some achievements here and there I mean look right now we have electric vehicles on the road right yeah yeah we have electric bikes on the road right so you see those those are trends towards that agenda we are in fact there was a time whereby if your house produces a hundred liters of water or other consumes a hundred liters of water you're supposed to put some solar panels okay that is a mandate up to now I don't know if it's enforced but it's a man it's a it's a it's a low actually okay so so my point is there been steps towards that but it's it's an issue of we are not doing as as much as we need to and that's why you see that the achievement is not as much as it needs to be take agriculture for example remember it's our mainstay right yeah and how our farmers farm is traditional implication is you find most of the farmers because you're looking at 90 something percent of small-scale to medium-scale farmers they've never tested their soil implication is they depend so much on fertilizer you see a long time ago fertilizer never used to be in the scene yeah but after World War two there's something called industrialized farming which happened in the west and this destroyed their soil we took it up as something that we should also adopt unfortunately it's also destroying our soil and in addition to that what's happening is that's when now you have things like soil erosion that's we have things like flooding a healthy soil can never be carried away by water what's carried away by water is the dust and dust comes when there is it's a long story what we need for example maybe if I break it down to you you might understand a little bit better we need as much carbon as possible in the soil as much as possible in the soil yes as much as possible I think it can absorb up to 4,000 gigatons there's no question about it we need it as much as possible and that's why things like for sale fuel is a big debate because the more you mind the more you dig the more you release what's carbon is there back to the air so we need all the carbon in the soil now the form of farming that we do which is tillage it releases the carbon out of the soil back into the air when you're using your tractors when using your jambes you're actually destroying a whole framework in the soil and taking the carbon back into the air so the kind of farming as I was trying to point out to is that it's still traditional whereby we still practice what's causing the damage in the air that is releasing carbon the kind of farming that is supposed to be practiced is no tillage no tillage is whereby what you don't dig but you kind of create furrows because what we need on the soil is as much biomass as possible and that's when I remember you were taught I don't know if you did agriculture but back in my day we did agriculture and there was something called mulching there's something called cover crops now we've been having a lot of monocrops whereby just one kind of crop and what's happening is with one monocrop retaining the moisture on the soil is close to impossible and that's what you need in such a way that you're able to retain the carbon also in the soil the trees they take in the carbon they give us the oxygen now the carbon the trees take they take it down to the roots down to the soil when it gets to the soil it creates a gel called gelatine now this gel is what enables the soil working with the fungi to create the kind of nutrients that the plant needs when this framework when you dig you cut down this framework what happens releasing the carbon back to the air now you see what now you see the whole chemistry biology behind it there's much to farming than just digging there's a whole science behind that's going to help the environment like mulching you're saying cover crops yeah okay rotational grazing all right because what happens is when you do rotational the the lifestyle they leave their droppings right and this is needed in the soil a healthy soil just a table spoonful of a healthy soil has much more biodiversity than the population in the world just a tablespoon just a table spoon so what happens is we're lacking that biodiversity in the soil at the moment and the problem is we only have approximately one extension officer to 5,000 farmers now many farmers have never seen an extension officer and remember the traditional and you're looking at an age group of 65 plus so guess what happens they'll still practice the old way yeah our soil about 37 percent of it is degraded on the continent about 46 percent of it is degraded we're not the only ones in the u.s. over 40 percent of their soil is still degraded they approximate by the year 2050 if we still continue farming the way we continue the way we are farming now we're gonna be looking at 90 percent of the soil degraded which means what now the dangers is the risk is is they're projecting the population to increase by 60 percent by that same year by that same period and if our soil is degraded which means less yield less quality of food and the population is increasing and right now we still have 256 million people on the continent of Africa that are sleeping hungry then we are looking at a crisis yeah so the whole climate crisis is its reality yes and now we're going to face the problem of starvation exactly what people are actually experiencing even now yes but it's going to be even worse than it is exactly so to you Muzoni what do you think should be done what is it what are some of the mitigation measures actually my host was asking for for Kenya is it whose comparing mitigation is it are we mitigating are we adapting you know what's the difference between the two we in Africa we we are more adapting because we least contribute to the crisis yeah okay so we are that we bear the brands you know what the developed countries have done so ours more is on adapting and the president I think doing the climate summit said that declare that climate adaptation as a key priority for delivering Africa's march to sustainable economic transformation and green growth so what are some of them what are some of the things that we need to do to to get to this yeah we just need to like find out of any initiate yeah like create initiatives yeah to lead to adaptation yeah in our local like a locally led actions yes like yeah like what you do in yeah we must focus on beating plastic pollution so we we focus on sustainable fashion like what I'd like this is for sustainable fashion because this yeah my hair my hair is plastic free and it's reusable so this is the second year I'm using the same hair I just wash and wear so mine is also sustainable because it's dreadlocks okay I'm staying longer yeah you know okay because the other human hairs are plastic and they cannot be reused because they are hygienic so it's contributing to the crisis we just find our own small ways to reduce the crisis yeah I'm also a fashion artist so I use plastic milk bags to create fashion wears so that's a some things that we can do in our small ways we don't need to do big things so even in our small capacity just you as a youth doing what you can within yourself within your capacity to just save the environment is a big plus to what they're what we're doing the bigger picture it contributes to it right sure okay well Felix you want to pick from that she mentioned plastic it's the big talk right now I know there's an organization like team our group that you take plastic and they build a house structure out of it that is durable there are many organizations that are doing adaptive matters because as you mentioned as she said Africa we are looking at four percent in terms of contribution to greenhouse gas four percent so we are not the majority in terms of costing all these problems we are kind of living with from climate change flooding and all that deforestation that is us there's no question about it but we cannot put that on anybody else but you have to come up with a system that takes care of that deforestation you know like the 15 billion you know trees we are supposed to plant yeah and rotary has been planting for years and years she was a girl scout they've been planting for years and years so this are just identifiable measures you know for us to be able to kind of mitigate us but adoption is pretty much what we are pretty much you know doing as as a population as a continent you know there was a conversation that as much as Africa can produce you know so much solar you know we need to be able to engage in that the financing that goes into that sector we only get about a think two percent of it compared to the rest of the world who actually don't have much to give compared to us in terms of solar energy so these are almost an imbalance when it comes to financing in that climate financing and we need much of that for us to be able to help the rest of the world to be able to meet the offsetting that they do or other that is needed I don't know if I answered your question yes speaking about climate financing you've just talked about that I understand that you know the developed countries had pledged I think a hundred billion you know how you know but when you said earlier on that we've not really been receiving this have they kept to their word what needs to be done is this will this form part of the conversation at COP 28 in Dubai yes definitely twill because COP 28 is all about stock taking what what do we miss the mark where the gaps where the loopholes what didn't we do what do we need to do when they are committing that to a hundred billion what happens is there's no pinpointing who's gonna give it to who you see some some some stuff were pretty much and defined and that brought a whole issue you know in terms of controversies and all but now it's an issue of after the Africa climate summit we know what we want we know how we need the financing of it to be structured in such a way it's fair play because and then at the end of the game it's not because as I mentioned if you look at carbon credit for example in the Western world you are looking at a price of $200 plus you look at Africa we're looking at an average of $8 for that so question is why and we're the ones who are actually helping you to offset so why are we getting the less portion of it and yet we are the ones who are actually suffering because of the industrialization that's taking outside of our continent so the restructuring is is key there's no question about it it was mentioned in the Africa climate summit those are consensus about it that's where there was the Nairobi declaration about it so that's that's pretty much has to be talked about and I'm sure it will be well-addressed all right yes just before I come to you Muzvani about the still and the finances in what form does it come because does it come as a grant does it come as a loan that will need to repay after some time just to make it clear for for us to understand the financing it's got to be mixed it's a mixed bag it's a mixed bag why is it a mixed bag it's because grants will come to enable we are not all at the same level in terms of GDPs in every country so some will come in terms of you know credit there's no question about it so the financial structure will take some will come as loans there's no doubt about it so it will take it to be a mixed bag yeah it would be but at the end of it it will all amount to what needs to be yes okay all right back to you coming to you Muzvani he has been talking Felix has been talking about carbon credits so for people that don't understand what carbon credits is explain to us what it is the carbon credits is the the compensation that we get for the emissions that is caused by mostly the global the global global north community so once like it's calculated what I mean we given like the compensation that you get to finance the activities that you're doing on the local levels to reduce the impact of the climate crisis mostly caused by the global north communities okay yeah so how do we get this compensation Felix you look like want to say something just to add to what she said that one carbon credit is 1000 tons of CO2 1000 kilograms that's yeah pretty much yeah yeah so that's what it is so one ton of CO2 equals to what one carbon credit so how much you're able to sequester that's another jargon which I might have to break down but it's true it's true I mean it's been it's been mythical to many people as I mentioned during the Africa climate summit when people are being interviewed 90% could not even mention one SDG out of 17 so all these jargons need to be broken down much more advocacy needs to be done and so that's what a carbon credit is it's an issue of okay how much CO2 have I taken from the air put it back down in the soil how much CO2 have I prevented for being produced especially in the fashion industry so that's what it is okay and I know that people are getting into carbon credits as a means I don't know of making money because it can be so if myself I decide to plant cheese and then I okay I don't know the math around it very well but I decide to plant cheese then I get the money out of it from a company is that how it goes okay that's also another myth that needs to be broken down okay reason I say so it's because you need a forest of trees over a period of time to be able to sequester enough for you to at least acquire enough carbon credit that you can be able to trade in the market so take an acre of trees at least an acre of trees give it at least five years maybe three years and then now at least after all measurements have been done then at least you can have something to tender that's good enough to be able to be considered for such a market so it's more than just one tree the forest it's exactly that's the point of it and so it's it's over time it's not like I plan today and then give me my money tomorrow no you it takes time it takes time so because at the end of the day it's its behavior based also that's what you need to understand yes everything about the carbon credit and the carbon market its behavior yeah based all right boxy mozany some of the things that we are seeing in Kenya apart from now this the initiatives that you've mentioned but also companies coming think private companies and the electric cars how much how much do you think you have done as a country to participate in this we've done relatively good but there's still a lot we need to do yeah what what area do you think we can improve on better well we can improve on financing that's one and also I still insist on representation matters okay because we are not able to understand everything we know to be everyone is not represented and I'm saying this because if I've given chance to speak again I'll just speak a whole hour but yeah yeah I'm an artist I'm an activist yeah yeah if you look at the art sector and if it we adequately represented in this policy and programs making tables then we're going to give a whole impact yeah so to me it's about representation because we're going a lot I threw a lot we're doing a lot and we are still not doing a lot so we can only know if we include everyone you can include an artist even kids even include you know intergenerational dialogue if you have it then you have everything that we need because and also the government and they yeah the government is doing well so we should not be like fighting the government we need to to be like be in the advocacy space with the mind and attitude of providing solutions yes yeah so if you talk about companies that we have so many thematic areas that we can cover so if you talk about electric vehicles that is one that is energy so it's doing well on energy but what about finance what about inclusivity you know and other like innovation and technology so we should look at everything like we have all the avenues to explore so if we are able to explore all the avenues then we're able to have all the answers if you look at electric because that's just one but we're doing well but again we need to explore all the points we have totally not done anything on yeah sure inclusivity okay okay what have you what impact have you been able to do in your own capacity with your team and you know the different things that you're doing yeah in art so I'm the creativity that UNSDG scan has contacted so we've done a lot of impact in information yeah in giving information to the public through art I'm a guitarist I've been going to the streets you know singing in the clubs and also like what are you doing my small ways with my kids so they're able to learn as they grow and they're able to create more impact because they'll have more knowledge about it when they're growing yeah and we're just happy enough because at least for the first time in the Coptini 8 we're having arts and entertainment pavilion in the blue zone you know and we having a Coptini 8 report on the artists and we're going to release it in a music form so it's we feel like we're being included like there's already a movement in the UN that has arts and art and culture growing but still if you look at it there are no artists they're not they're not artists in it like there are no artists in the room giving inputs to programs and policies so want to be represented like just like it doesn't it's not appropriate to have a whole panel of adults speaking about youth people I mean youth young people is the same way that it is not appropriate to have non-performing artists speaking about the artists we need to start looking at artists as intergenerational professional and stakeholders the investing holders who can and need to speak for themselves okay but at least now there's a step you have a platform that you given that Coptini 8 okay very interesting and for the youth that are wondering how do they get involved in this conversation how do they know who's representing them at Coptini 8 who are usually there who goes on behalf of you know Wanjiko or the common one I'm sure yeah any of you can answer that she can tell you how to qualify to Coptini 8 it was competitive I think she was top 20 out of a hundred thousand applications over ten thousand applications and I talked to it and she Wow congratulations yes so we have different organizations who will send the youth we have the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance right we've been doing a lot of work especially with university students this day UK YCC I think it's called right yeah who are part of Greenpeace so they're different initiative sending youth so in fact we even have the which was it was good for me to see the Ugly Can Church they do have representatives and this was impressive for me to see because many a times it's not like you see the church you know in that space yeah and actually this is the first year that Pope Francis our Pope is going to be part of because it's critical it's critical he's a force by himself so that's top of approval on that it's gonna bring a lot of buying into it because we have a lot of Catholic you know members so it's it's critical for him to do that especially because of how much power he has and influence and it's as you say it's a climate crisis it is a crisis it's it's more like an emergency as in if you don't do anything now we are looking at our own disaster what you're trying to fight for is humanity to continue existing or not that's what you're fighting it's as simple as that and we are at the end of it if we if we don't do things right you're looking at more disasters you saw the flooding that's taking place yeah you saw the lives lost in fact this is an after effect it is an after effect exactly and then I mean as I mentioned our soil is degraded so by and I mentioned 90% by 2060 is gonna be degraded if you still keep farming the same way so it's a crisis which means we lack food so much needs to be done the fashion industry you see so many clothes being thrown out plus it's being thrown out so it's a crisis that needs to be addressed other than that a humanity is looking at its own end so instead of looking at my end why can't I fight for survival that's what you're doing at the moment okay it's that bad it's crazy we need to do something about it literally and now as we wrap up on this conversation I want you both to say something your final you know say on this to to the youth that is watching the youth that are watching but before that you know do we have after cop 28 do we have you know those that are in the government those that make policies do do we have them there and will they be accountable to us from you know to give us a report tell us this and this is what we're going to to see this is what needs to be done this is what was agreed on yes so let me ask you mother yeah the reports are done by different groups depending on those who represent we have represented by the government we have represented for the youths from the artist so everyone has is accountable to giving reports okay yeah so we will see that yeah you'll see that okay so that's something good give us your parting short to this to the youth who's watching right now and if you want to speak directly to the camera that's your camera mm-hmm so yes I'm expect adequate representation from creation to 30 units digits and we do our work and they do our artists delegation we are looking and we're aiming to put the artist as the integral component of cop 28 yes thank you very much where can people find you on social media or your organization yeah my social media personal social media on Facebook it's moudoni shrufena on tic-tac moudoni and a scot-rofen I do creative work on environment and on instagram moudoni and a scot-rofen okay awesome thank you very much with only we appreciate your insights to this conversation at gflex my parting short is there's money to be made there's no question about it in green jobs get technical skills because at the end of the day we need people who can be able to take ion batteries convert them into something else because right now almost every house or rather every person goes through three phones in a year and what happens is at the end of it when you dispose it that's another hazard to the environment we are creating but if you can find a way to be able to recycle that you can find a way to be able to we have the we center the we center they can give you the skills to be able to find how you can be able to make money out of it by collecting them and also being able to dispose through them if it's the job you can work as an extension service officer to be able to help the farmers practice what we call regenerative agriculture that's another job on its own so there are many many green jobs that even though it's a crisis a crisis only brings a solution so it's up to you to be able to sit back and ask yourself whatever skill you have how does it apply to this next economy that we have and we have technical colleges TVET and also if you want to get more information on the same as I mentioned some people are using plastic to build houses I just reach out to me at felix.kimani.org then we'll be able to converse more on the same okay wonderful I love that there's opportunities in the green sector whatever you are skilled at you can divert it on this side and with crisis comes opportunities solutions amazing thank you guys for coming on board and sharing your insights on this that has been Felix Karaoke who's the program leader Rotary International Corp. 28 and Muzoni Trufena the founder of Mazinger Saturday's Nation I hope you've taken something from this conversation something has been made clearer to you about the climate conversation we're going to take a short break and then Brian Sakwa will be coming next with the conversation stick with us


Good evening. Every single year, millions of people around the world get excited for upcoming video game releases. This has been happening for decades now, for as long as video games have been a thing, and if you're watching this then I'm sure there's at least one video game release you can remember getting hyped for. Back in the day, launch dates for games like Halo 2 had passionate fans literally setting up camp tents outside of GameStop buildings overnight just to be among the first to play them. But how far would you be willing to go to get your hands on a new game? Would you be willing to camp outside a game store? Would you be willing to illegally pirate it using shady software? And if the game you wanted to play wasn't released or even finished yet, would you be willing to hijack the internal server network of the company working on it just so you could illegally download a copy for yourself? To most people, that last part might seem a little bit over the line. But back in 2003, one little German boy didn't think so, and his actions are responsible for birthing one of the most prolific video game mythos and one of the longest running most dedicated gaming communities on the entire internet. Today, I'm going to explain why people are so fascinated by the Half-Life 2 beta. Now, what is the Half-Life 2 beta? Well, as you probably know, the term beta is used to refer to an early build of a game that isn't quite finished yet. It's not uncommon for people to be drawn to these early versions of games, as they're usually very familiar looking, but just different enough to be interesting. Duke Nukem Forever is a great example of a game with a community that's honestly more passionate about what's not in the game than what is. However, in the peculiar case of Half-Life 2, the word beta is actually used as somewhat of an umbrella term that doesn't refer to any one specific early version of the game, but rather pretty much any content that didn't make it into the final release. And that's because the scope and direction of Half-Life 2 changed so much over its six-year development cycle that earlier versions of the game are pretty much unrecognizable from what we got in the end. Different characters, different weapons, different locations, different stories. The game changed a lot, and the only reason we even really know as much is because of an event so intensely damaging to the game's developers that it might as well have been an active industrial espionage. See, the story accompanying the Half-Life 2 beta is honestly one of the craziest and most memorable tales in PC gaming history. Allow me to give you the rundown. The year is 2003. It's been five years since the release of the original Half-Life, and the yet to release Half-Life 2 is quickly becoming one of the most highly anticipated video game sequels of all time. Axel Gembe, a young German hacker, wants to play it really, really badly. So using his tech skills, he illegally infiltrates Valve's internal servers and begins downloading files off of them. He ends up making off with not only an unfinished build of Half-Life 2, but also pretty much every single map, model and asset ever created for it, its source code, and even files related to other games Valve was working on at the time like Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike Source. Now, Axel was a huge fan of Valve and never intended to hurt them with his hack. He was just desperate to learn more about their upcoming games, even if it meant getting invasive. But Axel did share some of these files he acquired with a few close friends of his, and then some of those friends presumably shared them with their friends, and inevitably, an early build of Half-Life 2 and all of its accompanying source code wound up leaking online to the public on October 4th, 2003. Panic. This was a flaming catastrophe for Valve. Half-Life 2 was said to be their biggest product yet, and was the game they were relying on doing well to keep their doors open. Not only was this massive humiliating leak obviously a disaster for their employees more out, but it also exposed that Valve had been pretty much lying to the public about how ready the game was. Valve had previously scheduled Half-Life 2 to release that year, and this leak made it obvious to everyone that there was literally no way that was going to happen given how rough of a state it was in. Half-Life 2's already crunched developers were now forced to rush their game out even harder than before, as the company bled what's estimated to have been over a quarter billion dollars in estimated damages, and the greater public began to question their integrity. This whole fiasco nearly sunk the entire company. In the background of all this madness, Valve CEO Gabe Newell had of course linked up with US law enforcement, and began desperately searching for the man responsible, going as far as to publicly reach out to online Half-Life forms to ask the community for help. However, this never amounted to anything, and as time passed it started to really seem like nobody online knew who was responsible for the original hack. After five long months, all of their leads had gone cold, and it was beginning to look like the man behind this cybercrime was never going to face justice. But by this point, Axel Gembe, the true culprit, had been watching one of his favorite game companies get thrust into turmoil over a leak he had inadvertently caused, feeling conflicted, guilty, and no doubt nervous knowing that the FBI was onto him. So what did he decide to do? Well he directly emails Gabe Newell of course. Axel personally apologized to Gabe for everything that had happened, explained that his true motivation was just being a huge fan of the company, and that the leak was a complete accident. And then to round things off, he took this opportunity to ask Gabe for a job at the company. Yeah. After months and months of fruitless searching, the man Val had been looking for basically brought himself to their doorstep. They arranged a phone interview with Axel, and then told him he was officially invited to visit Val's headquarters for a second in-person interview. However, as you might have guessed, this interview was actually nothing more than a ploy to bring Axel to America, so that the FBI could promptly arrest him. Before that could happen though, Axel was arrested in his hometown of Sean O. M. Schwartzwald, Germany in May 2004. And despite how much damage his actions had caused, the judge in his case pitied him for his young age, troubled childhood, clear remorse, as well as the fact that he wasn't actually the one who posted the files online, and he was let off with a remarkably lenient sentence of no jail time and just two years probation. Half-Life 2, the finished version, was later released in November 2004 to critical acclaim, and through helping launch Steam, played an enormous part in turning Valve into who we know them as today, the only billion-dollar game company that doesn't make any games. Gabe Newell became a billionaire, stopped wearing John Lennon glasses, and by now has even lost an admirable amount of the weight the PC gaming community once ridiculed him for. And yet, despite how much time has passed, how Valve as a community has moved on, and how the gaming world at large has changed, the Half-Life 2 beta leak still continues to captivate millions of people to this very day. In fact, it's even inspired what some people might call copycat crimes, more on those later. Anyway, now that we know the story of how it all went down, you're probably wondering just what's so interesting about the contents of the Half-Life 2 beta that would make someone willing to risk prison time over it. Well? As we touched on earlier, Half-Life 2 had a uniquely complex and turbulent development cycle that the 2003 leak gives us a lot of great insight into. And since Half-Life 2 is the game that gave birth to Gary's mod and brought us pretty much every other massively famous game that runs on the source engine, knowing how it evolved into what it is today, adds interesting context to a lot of popular internet culture. Like, it's really strange to know that the creepy priest guy that millions of people have seen in famous G-mod videos at one point look like this. Probably the first thing worth mentioning about the Half-Life 2 beta is how the game's story changed. Although the game's plot was always going to end with the human forces triumphing against their alien oppressors, the early storyboards for the game were much more hopeless and darker. In the Half-Life 2 that we got, City 17 is basically a giant prison camp with sprinkles of futuristic technology. But in earlier drafts, it was an all-out industrial dystopia powered by child slave labor, with the outdoors smothered in a toxic green smog that forced the population to wear gas masks all the time. All of this is the basis for one of the most ubiquitous and longest running memes in the community, the mantra that the Half-Life 2 beta was dark and gritty. However, while this green, nasty, foggy version of City 17 is one of the more recognizable cut and revised locations, it is far from the only one. For example, the reason the city was swamped in so much green fog in the first place was because of the air exchange facility, which was this enormous atmospheric reprocessor, bleeding the earth drive its resources and terraforming it for alien life. Although it was never quite finished, this cut chapter is damn near fully playable in the 2003 leak, and it has some really interesting Halo 2 kind of vibes that I've always enjoyed. There was also going to be a section of the game set in the Arctic and on an icebreaker ship called the Hyperborea. This idea was eventually reused in the Half-Life 2 episodes to bring us the mythical Borealis ship, an end-game time machine that Half-Life 3 was almost certainly going to revolve around. See what I mean about how it's interesting to see how this stuff evolved? There's also the desolate wasteland ruled by the Antlion King, which was scaled back to just the Highway Coast segment in the final game, this train depot near Nova Prospect you were originally supposed to explore, an underwater research facility called Kraken Base, which eventually evolved into Black Mesa East in the final game, and tons of other strange and nifty lost locations like the ever-beautiful Ravenholm Docks. And in addition to all these cool lost maps, the beta leak also shows us many interesting monsters and characters that didn't make the final cut. One of the most well known is the Hydra, a giant electrified water tentacle that was prominently featured in some of the game's promotional material. Although the developers all agreed that it looked really cool, they eventually decided that it wasn't very fun to fight, and felt too much like a rerun of the tentacle boss from Half-Life 1. In fact, making Half-Life 2's enemy roster more unique from the original games seems to have been a big point of focus for the team, since they also cut this combine female assassin, the hound die, and a couple of heavy combine units that somewhat resembled the old Zen aliens. The cremator is another example of a famous cut monster. He was supposed to be this weird, imposing combine janitor who would burn dead bodies and aliens to ash in the streets. The developers loved him so much that even after they cut him, they stuffed his head model into a jar in Kleiner's lab, leaving it ambiguous as to whether they still exist in the final game's continuity. It's actually pretty crazy how many different enemies Valve came up with for this game, and how few of them made the final cut. This metrocop elite and this bullsquid were apparently both still in the game by the start of 2004, which is kind of crazy to think about. In terms of actual human companions, my personal favorite cut character is the hyperboreal ship engineer Odell. His face may have been reused for Odessa, but I still find him in the scenes he starred in very memorable on their own. There's Captain Van, the leader of a cut faction called the Conscripts, who was later merged with Eli Maxwell to create Eli Vance. There's the earlier version of Dr. Breen called the Consul, who comes across a lot more cold in 1984-esque and whose propaganda about how the true citizen behaves are yet another example of a popular beta meme. There's this early version of Dr. Kleiner, who was cut after an awkward encounter in an elevator. I talk more about that in this video. And finally, there's Alex Vance, whose original skin tight jumpsuit design was weirdly sexier than the one we got in the final game. Sorry, but someone had to say it. Before we move on, I do also have to mention the cut weapons found in the beta leak, especially the Fizzgun. Just like the Hydra, this thing was prominently shown off in one of the game's E3 presentations. And when the game launched without it, a lot of people were super disappointed. Modding the Fizzgun back into the game was one of the first things the Half-Life community did once it came out. And that's actually the backstory of how we wound up with Gary's mod, believe it or not. Gordon's firearm arsenal was at one point going to be a lot bigger too, probably because they once planned for the player to be able to switch out weapons and lose their inventory at various points in the game. One of the most beloved cut guns is the OICW, which got replaced with the AR-2 in the final game.  Just generally a lot of crazy stuff that it's interesting to imagine fitting into the final game. Anyway, even outside that absurd amount of lost content and the crazy story behind the leak itself, there's a few other key factors that I think also play a big part in fueling people's undying love for the Half-Life 2 beta. One of them is Valve's reputation. If there's one thing this company is known for that isn't convincing people to spend thousands of dollars on virtual gun paint and hats, it's the fact that they pretty much always deliver unforgettable video games. This gives them a uniquely loyal diehard fanbase, and that, accompanied by the fact that their output is so ungodly slow, makes any and all content from them a hot commodity that people literally fiend over. There are many cases in which people in the community have spoiled business relationships with Valve, and breach legally binding contracts with them risking jail time just to leak more beta content onto the internet. It's pretty crazy. The most recent and notable example of this is that Valve giga leak that happened a few months ago, where a guy on Discord literally leaked almost all of Valve's internal repositories from 2017, unleashing almost every map model and texture ever created for Team Fortress 2. And this is far from the only leak to have happened since Half-Life 2 released. It's sad because, while the public getting their hands on content like this is cool, it's also seriously straining Valve's relationship with its community. This all helps bring a sort of true crime feeling to the beta culture, and I'm not really sure how to feel about it. But moving on, I'd say probably the second thing about the beta that captivates people, and probably motivates all these desperate leakers, is just how mysterious this cut content can be. The Half-Life 2 leak is something Valve generally avoids talking about or addressing publicly, which makes some of the bewildering stuff that can be found in the beta feel even more strange and unexplainable. This bizarre Hazard 01 map brings the player into a training course, then has them escape the bounds of the level and get scolded by the G-Man. One of the cut City 17 maps has this flickering room with a weird creepy clock mechanism in it that no one seems to have ever come up with an explanation for. And there's even some people in the community who claim that the cut sound file Trans-6 includes audio of the last moments of a female Soviet astronaut who died in space. Though I'm pretty sure this is just a myth. There's also some stuff in the beta that isn't necessarily creepy, but is definitely bizarre, particularly in relation to G-Man for some reason. This map called Icky Pop features him getting carried away by a crow.  Now's also probably a good time to mention what I think might be the longest running Half-Life 2 beta meme of all time, free TVs. There's a Half-Life 2 level from the year 2000 which is lost media that apparently showed civilians in City 17 beginning the uprising revolution by breaking into stores yelling get your free TVs. It's really a shame we probably won't ever get our hands on this map, given how highly coveted and silly it is. It's like a gag from The Simpsons or something. One of the things that I think goes hand in hand with that mystery appeal to the beta is what I guess you could call the deception element or something like that. As I mentioned earlier, the leaks showed the public that the game wasn't ready yet, but looking deeper it also demonstrates that a couple of the things Valve advertised about the game were deceptive or even flat out lies. The Half-Life 2 E3 presentations that Valve gave were a lot more heavily scripted than they were letting on. A lot of the maps they showed off weren't anywhere near complete and thanks to the leak we can see that if the guy hosting the presentation would have moved just a little too far in the wrong direction, he would have completely broken the illusions of these levels. And I can't help but notice that even the final game's marketing material includes a ton of outdated images and arguably false advertising. Now I don't have a very big collection of Half-Life 2 stuff, but even I have a copy of the game that I can easily spot cut material on the case of. Like this beach with an ant-lion guard and a gunship doesn't appear in the final game, nor does this area with all these cut gas mass citizens running around. This picture shows Eli and Kleiner's lab for some reason, and I'm pretty sure all three of the front cover arts for the game have cut levels transposed in the background of the characters. Hell, even to this day, the Steam page for Half-Life 2 still has cut content in its screenshot gallery. It's as if Valve didn't even care to clean this stuff up at all, and that I think is probably the final and maybe even most important reason that people continue to stick around and obsess over the Half-Life 2 beta. For the community of people who continue to spot these quirks about the game and who have a shared love for the story behind them, beta content continues to inspire tons of really cool and interesting fan projects and remakes, and it's brought a surprising amount of people together over the years. There's a remarkable amount of passion and love that's been put into bringing Valve's cut ideas to life in these projects, and it's difficult to not feel at least a little intrigued seeing these enemies and locations stitched back together, allowing us to fully appreciate material that was once almost lost. Not all of it is totally constructive though, I must admit. Discussion about cut content does have a habit of sometimes drowning out other topics in the Half-Life community, and there's a small minority of people who do seem to view the beta like it's just a secret finished game that Valve intentionally downgraded for no reason, of course ignoring the reality of game development and failing to appreciate the hard work that went into creating the final product. But at the end of the day, that's just how it works when you have a cool interesting thing on the internet. People are always going to pervert it and be annoying. There's no denying that the story behind the leaks in the beta, as well as the mystery around it's mythos, are fascinating and easy to get lost in. And it's interesting to think about how many other games might have had crazy development cycles like Half-Life 2's, but that we don't know about because the developers were more tight lipped and never suffered a crazy disastrous leak. Just like myself, the Half-Life 2 leak turned 20 years old this year, and yet it somehow seems like we're still learning new things about this game and its development on the regular. Everyone knows that it's hard for a video game to amass a cult following, even a really good one. Thousands of video games are produced every single year, with the vast majority of them going completely unnoticed by the general public. So I would say that it is truly remarkable that this unfinished, uncompiled disaster of a leaked build from two decades continues to inspire and captivate people to this very day. Thank you for watching, I hope you enjoyed and learned something. I've been Ricky Blober, subscribe to my channel for more epic videos, and have a good day.


Thank you for coming to this workshop. I know that it's kind of difficult to get up here.  At my last workshop, we were right by the coffee stand. So I started a bit early to let people out early, so they go get coffee and be the first in line. I'll still try to let you out early. I got booked a little tight today and I have to go do another workshop on lower campus. So this is how we're going to operate this one. We're going to kind of go through discipleship. We're going to talk around how we really reach out to teens and take them deeper in the faith. Then we're going to have a time for just Q&A. Because again, I feel like it's funny. They give you these amazing topics, like talk about making teens disciples for Jesus. That's like one of my favorite things to talk about. Then they say you only have an hour and 15 minutes. Then on top of that, this is maybe like the fourth talk you've heard today, and you have another one tonight, and you have like four more days or something like that. I understand that there's just so much that we can take. And so just as all the talks I'll be doing this week, I am not trying to get you everything you need to know about discipleship, but try to get you a few foundational things that you can bring back to your parish. So as you see a teenager, you know that they're not hopeless or helpless, and that there is a way that they can come deeper into relationship with Jesus Christ. And so we're going to talk around how we do that in some practical ways that are deeper and a little bit more substantial than just have them pray. And then we're going to have some time for Q and A, to where we can just talk through some of this stuff together, troubleshoot some of these challenges, because the reality is, is that what we're about to talk about, though it's one of my favorite things to talk about, the thing that's tough about it is that there's no silver bullet. I wish I could say go home, find a teen, pray three Hail Marys, let them read the gospel mark, have them come back, talk about it, and they'll be a disciple. But that just won't work, right? And plus if that was it, this would be a really short talk. And so I want to make sure we have some time to just discuss this and to really digest it together. And so we'll talk for maybe 40 minutes, take 20 to 25 minutes to kind of break this open together and then try and get you out of here a little bit early so that you have some time to decompress before tonight's session. Does that make sense? We're all on the same page. All right, let's go ahead and pray and then we'll dive right in. Nay, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. God, we just thank you for today. We thank you for the breath in our lungs. We ask that you just bless us. You lead us and you guide us. Lord, we believe you've called us into this mission. You've called us for a purpose. So Lord, we pray for your anointing and your grace to be with us. As we take some time to just learn a bit more about you and your call to serve the church. So Lord, be with us and guide us. We ask all of this in Jesus' name, amen. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. For those of you all that I haven't met yet, my name is Chris. I know some of you. You've been at a talk or two with me so far. But for those that I haven't met, I live here in town now. So I'm officially a townie, which is still strange for me to say, even though it's been six years. I grew up in Northwest Ohio. Did youth ministry in a very small parish in Florida? Then did youth ministry in a very big parish in Houston? Came back to Steubenville to serve with an inner city ministry and did that for six years. And now over the past six months, I've been serving the bishops with the Eucharistic revival and the National Eucharistic Congress. And so collectively about 15 years of youth ministry experience. And even though I'm technically out of the parish and not technically serving teens on a weekly basis, the way that I used to when I was in the church, I still am privileged to get to disciple and to walk with a group of a few young men to kind of help them grow in their faith. And so last talk, I kind of started this whole kind of conversation with a group of youth ministers about doing outreach. This is somewhat of the second category where we talk about what do you do once you actually reach somebody? How do you take them a bit deeper? And I think anybody who's ever presenting, it's just kind of tongue in cheek. It's the thing you're supposed to say, like, I love talking about this, you know? When you're talking to teens, you're like, I love talking about virtues restrictions.  I actually genuinely love talking about discipleship. It's one of the things that gets me excited. It's one of the things that helps me get out of bed in the morning. And so for us to be able to talk about this is really thrilling for me. But I don't wanna kind of oversimplify this because like I said, what we're gonna do here today is just the tip of the iceberg. We're just going to take a look at what this means and what this looks like and how we can start to move towards this with our youth programs and in our churches, because if there's ever a generation that needs discipled, it's today's teenagers, amen? And I think discipleship is fairly easy to kind of get behind. I mean, one, the church has called us to disciple, right? That's Jesus' last words in the Gospel of Matthew. If you haven't heard this verse yet, you're gonna hear it time and time again. The Great Commission, where Jesus turns to as apostles or at least the 11 good ones that were still standing. And he says, y'all, you need to go and make disciples. That's what he said. It was his last thing that he said, go do this. It wasn't a great suggestion, right? It wasn't a great recommendation. It was the great commissioning. It was the call and he called them forth. But then even to double down, the church decades ago came back with renewing the vision and echoed that simple truth for what youth ministry is supposed to be in our church today. And they gave three kind of overarching goals. And the first one is right there to empower young people to live as disciples of Jesus Christ in our world.  And to foster a total growth, a spiritual growth in each young person, that sounds great. But discipleship is the first goal of youth ministry. I remember once, I worked in this parish in Houston, again, big parish, we had a parish administrator who was an enigma. I couldn't tell if he was a good guy or a bad guy. You know, it was kind of like some days I showed up and I was like, oh, I think he really likes me. And other days I showed up and I knew I was on his bad list. And I just could never tell where I stood with him. And then one day, I don't remember what it was, but the diocese called some churches together, just selected a few of us, some of the bigger churches. And they just wanted to have this pow wow of what we can do as a diocese. And so every church sent their parish administrator and a youth minister. So now I'm teamed up with this guy. And I don't know if you've seen Mad Men, but this parish administrator was like straight from Mad Men.  And I remember being in this meeting and being so nervous because I knew I was gonna be asked some questions. I was gonna have to give input.  And so I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen. And then something amazing happened. The other youth ministers spoke first. And I could tell not only did they not impress the guy that I was with, but their vision for youth ministry was very different from mine. That as the diocese kind of leaned in to say like, what's working? These different youth ministers said, we love to get kids around and play video games and to jump up and down and get them really excited about Jesus. And that's fantastic, don't get me wrong. If you were there at my last talk where we talked about outreach, youth ministry is supposed to be fun. You're not gonna get kids to stay if they're not enjoying themselves. And again, I'll say this time and time again.  If you invite teens to a program and because of where they're at spiritually or mentally or emotionally, they don't meet Jesus, but they have a good time and they feel safe, you'll get another crack at it. And so what these youth ministers were saying was not bad. It was just incomplete. They just wanted to create a safe place. And I remember hearing that and kind of looking at my parish administrator and seeing that he wasn't totally satisfied. Now granted, again, he had a disposition where I wasn't even totally sure if he loved Jesus, but I could tell that he did not love these answers. That's just how hard he was for me to read. I'm sure he loved Jesus, he's gonna get to heaven way before me. But in that moment, I just said, at my church, we want to create a safe place for the teens to hear a dangerous message, that they're going to hear something that's going to challenge them and change them and ultimately develop them into disciples. And I remember I said that and I was really nervous because it sounds impressive, but I wasn't totally sure what it meant because I was like 26. And I looked over and my coworker was like, Mm-hmm. And I realized then that I kind of had him and I had everyone else and I started talking about how we need to push into discipleship. That sometimes we get afraid of really challenging young people because they're young and we don't want to rock the boat too much and don't get me wrong, we need to be pastoral. But I cast this vision from renewing the vision about empowering young people to live as disciples for Jesus Christ. So that's the end goal and anything short of that is a failure of our church, that if we aren't creating disciples, there's not much that separates us from the local YMCA. And so as I cast that vision, not only did I feel like I was able to hopefully bring about some good and new initiatives in the diocese, but I also got my church a little bit more on board with what we were trying to do in the youth program. And I think it's easy for people to get behind discipleship. So I'm not trying to put myself on this pedestal, like look what I did, right? Like there's a reason that everybody loves Gandalf. It's because he took Frodo under his wing and made him more than he ever would have been if he stayed in the shire, right? Or there's a reason I still think about Mr. Miyagi from time to time and wish that he would just call me Daniel's son, right? Because we want to naturally be taken under someone's wing, we want to be led, we want to be taken care of in a way so that we can go from getting beat up from the bad ninjas to beating them up because we've learned karate by painting fences and waxing cars, right? Now granted, that's not talking about the church or Jesus, but you bring that into the church and then all of a sudden you see people like Paul and Timothy. And Timothy was a young guy who was lucky enough to be ministered to and reached out to and mentored by Paul. And then you have Ambrose and Augustine or Francis and Claire, Ignatius and Francis Xavier, right? Time and time again, you can look at the church's history and it's not just that you see Jesus saying, go make disciples, you seeing the saints making disciples because disciples become disciple makers. And so we need to acknowledge this, talk about this and look at this. Now, when we talk about ministry and we talk about discipleship, I want us to see what we're talking about, but also what we're not talking about. If you came to my other talk, again, we didn't have screens so I didn't make a PowerPoint. There's something called pre-evangelization, then there's discipleship. And there's all these things that coexist in the midst of this process.  Most likely there was kind of this progression where you asked a question or you grew up in a house where you kind of heard about Jesus and you were forced to go to Mass, but something happened, you're invited to a Bible study, you started going to Mass, you heard homilies, God took hold of you and you started going deeper and deeper and deeper. And so when we talk about the process of conversion, there's this pre-evangelization and initial evangelization and initial conversion that often happens before we get to discipleship. So this past weekend, I was in Rochester speaking at the Stoneville Youth Conference. So it was like this, but with teenagers. And it's fun and it's engaging and it's also a little frustrating. Only because I know that for so many of those teens that were there, it's going to be a highlight of their summer. And no matter what I say from stage or what the other speakers say, it's so challenging to communicate the truth that what they experienced there that weekend is still waiting for them at their home parish, that there's no Jesus of a Stoneville Youth Conference. There's just Jesus. And to make that jump is challenging. Now again, I speak for the conferences, I love the conferences, I'm at Franciscan speaking at another conference right now. I'm not saying that's bad, but what I'm saying is that those youth conferences offer initial conversion to teens who have never heard the gospel before. But if that's all they ever do, we're taking something that's supposed to be a springboard into deeper relationship and essentially making it not to be crude, but a one night stand to where they just kind of come and they meet Jesus for a bit and they won't see him again for another year. And that's not the purpose. We got to make sure that we're pushing them deeper and further. And so as a youth minister, and even as a parent now, where my kids are just two years away from being able to go to a youth conference, I want them to go to those things that are going to give them that initial conversion, those things that get them excited, those spiritual highs that we talk about so much, those are not bad things. But what those things do is it gives us a chance to go deeper with the teens and to allow them to go deeper in a relationship with Jesus Christ. And so when we talk about discipleship, we're talking about these initial things already taking place so that we can get to better catechesis, them actually believing what they're talking about and having changed their life, continued growth, and then actually becoming disciple makers themselves. So this is what we're focusing on. If you're thinking like, well, what does initial evangelization look like? We can talk about that later. We're gonna focus on some of these things and how to best do this, right? Does that make sense? So I wanna make sure we're on the same page as we look at this because what we wanna do is get to a place where God is not just attractive, but he's intimate, right? That they're not just kind of infatuated, that they don't just like God or the idea of God, but they're actually open to a relationship with God and allowing that relationship to change them. Because the reality is, is that we can't come into an encounter with God and stay the same. We never see that. Even away from God, we don't see that. When I first met my wife, when she wasn't Grace Frank, she was Grace McKnight and I saw her from across, actually outside this building, across that little construction area, I thought she was really cute. But if you would have said like, hey, you see that girl over there? Like that's the only girl you're ever gonna be able to talk to again. I've been like, what?  And I've been like, what? That doesn't make sense. And then she's gonna like move in and she's gonna like enjoy the color pink and not that you really need much shampoo in the future, but the bathroom's gonna be filled with all of her stuff and it's just like, I'd be like, what are you talking about? Like that makes no sense. But once I got to know her, understand her pretty soon, like she was the only girl I wanted to talk to, right? I wanna spend money on her. Like I'm so privileged that she actually was willing to take my last name and spend a life with me. In a similar way, something needs to happen with Jesus. And the question is, how do we do that with teenagers? But we know it can happen. We see it in scripture all the time. My favorite story in all of scripture, and again, it's one of those things like, you're supposed to say it's your favorite. This is actually my favorite, the woman at the well. It was actually the gospel at my wedding. And the reason I love it is because it's such an amazing unpacking of discipleship. And I'm not gonna read the whole story and we're not gonna go through it all, but if you can recall this story, this woman shows up at this well and again, she's kind of outcast. She's on her own. We don't have time to get into all of it. But when she sees Jesus, and he's kind of breaking the rules. And again, I just, I wanna talk about this story and I just can't. But there's a lot going on here. She's kind of salty, right? She's not very warm and welcoming to the Messiah. But of course she doesn't recognize that it's the Messiah. She actually calls him a Jew, right?  I'm a Samaritan. We don't hang out, get away. And then they start talking. And then she calls him a man. And then she calls him sir. And you start to see these walls come down and she calls him a prophet. And then at the end, she proclaims to her city that had once cast her out that he is the Messiah of the entire world. And she actually becomes the first evangelist in the Gospel of John. Jesus does that on the context of one conversation. It helps that he's God, right? For us, it's going to be a little bit more of a process. But the hope is, is that we can have young people kind of go through that same progression that Jesus goes from the stranger, which again is this pre-vangelization into a more deeper and substantial relationship. And so when we talk around some of this stuff, let's just define disciple. Because again, this is one of those words that's just so easily used, but sometimes misunderstood. And I'm not going to define it so specifically that we just kind of put ourselves in the corner. But I do want to make sure that we understand what we're talking about, right? Because again, if we look at the Gospel, Jesus kind of gives a couple of parameters, right? A disciple goes and he baptizes in the name of the Father, so in the Holy Spirit, and he teaches others to observe all that he has commanded, right? That's again, coming from the great commission that I alluded to before. But I really love this quick little translation or definition of what discipleship is and looks like. The word disciple means a learner who accepts the teaching of Christ, not only in belief, but also in lifestyle. Learning with the purpose to obey what is learned, it involves a deliberate choice, a definitive denial, and a determined obedience. So again, I love that, that last line, deliberate choice, definite denial, and then determined obedience, right? So no one looks at the cross and goes, eh. You might say like gross, or ooh, or no, or you might say you did that for me, but you don't really look at that when you understand what he did for us and go, I'll think about it later. When that truth really lands on you, there comes a point where you have to make a choice. That's why Jesus says in the book of Revelation, be hot or cold, but don't be lukewarm. And so how do we help teens make a choice? And then how do we help them know that that choice, that yes to Jesus, means that we're now saying no to other things? Again, going back to that silly analogy about my wife, when I started that altar, and I said yes to her through wealth, I work for the church, so more poverty, right? But health and sickness, that whole deal, I was simultaneously saying no to anyone else. And when we say yes to Jesus, how do we help teens know that that means that they're gonna have to live a little bit differently? That means that they can't just come to church on Sunday, but do whatever they want on Saturday. And then how do we help them stay focused on that narrow path so they can keep going? Because don't we know that Jesus is not all rainbows and unicorns and cookies baked with sunshine, that there's still gonna be storms, there's still gonna be bumps in the road, but he's gonna be there in the midst of the storm, and he's gonna pick us up when we fall. And so, as we look at this and we come to the discipleship approach, we need to understand that we have to be a little specific. And again, just kinda looking at this, that the ministry is to be carried out or carried on by people and not programs, by someone, not by doing, or by someone, not by something. Disciples cannot be mass produced, we cannot drop people into a program and see disciples emerge at the end of the production line. It takes time to make disciples. It takes individual, personal attention. It takes hours of prayer, patience and understanding to teach them how to feed and nourish their souls. When I think about discipleship and I wonder what that looks like, this is a quote I come back to often because I feel like so much is packed into these few sentences. When I was, again, in Houston, I don't know if I said this here, it was a large parish. We had about 600 teens coming on a Sunday night when I left. And my pastor loved it. It looked good, there was a lot of energy and excitement. The parents felt pretty good about dropping their kids off to a place that seemed so accepting and there was so much energy and so much life, the teachings were fine, the core team was well trained. And yet it was challenging because it was hard to tell what the fruit was. But that was only one of the challenges, but it was a big one. What's happening here? Because even Jesus talks about the challenges of people hearing the word of God, but in not bearing much fruit, right? Remember the parable, the sow or the seed? Again, it's one of my favorites. But as far as a teaching goes, not one in Jesus is best, right? If you don't, and I'm just, I'm not saying that like it was bad. Jesus, he was a great teacher, but just practically, can you imagine like if I came up here and I was like, so there's this farmer, he's kind of lazy. So he's just kind of like throwing seeds, some seed went out, fell on the ground, bird got it. Some other seed fell over here, the sun came out, scorched it, some other seed fell and then the weeds came out and choked it and some grew. There's fruit, did y'all hear that? And if I just walked away, you'd be like worst talk ever. You know, like you can't believe he came to Bosco for that. And then at the same point, the apostles, they hear that and they kind of have a similar reaction. They're like, hey Jesus, great homily. Listen, can you maybe break that down just for us because I don't quite understand what's happening? And this is interesting because it's one of the only parables where he actually gives you what he's talking about. Jesus all the time gave these parables that people were like, wait, what? And they had to think about it. But this one, he breaks it down. And again, to just kind of look at it, he says the bird is like the devil and so some people, the word's thrown out to them but it just never really takes hold. It's just, it was never gonna happen. But then he starts to break down these other things. He says the sun comes out and it scorches the seed. There was root, but it just, when things get tough and there's tribulation, there's persecution, there's suffering, it just gets too hot and then they can't withstand it and so they just, they'd go away. Remember the weeds? It says concerns of the world and love of lesser things. Isn't that boring? Isn't that scary? It wasn't like illicit sex.  It was just the concerns of the world just come and choke it. And then of course the seed that falls on good soil it grows 30, 60, 100 fold. But it's interesting, 75% of the people are intrigued by the word of God. They grab on to it. But it's only a fourth that actually bears fruit. And I remember thinking about that when I was looking out at this army of teens at my youth group just thinking like, what's happening here? Like how do we gauge this?  We had other things to kind of offset some of the large crowd problems. But that wasn't the only issue. The problem was that when you're in a crowd of 600 people it's so easy to get lost. And when you're lost it's really hard to be a disciple. I remember when I was first getting there we had this tragic accident in the parish a young father passed away unexpectedly and I didn't know the kid. I'd only been there for like a year or so. But again, as the youth minister it was my job to be there to support the family and this teen anywhere I could. And so I went to this funeral. It was very sad and very tragic. And I remember seeing the teenager throughout the whole mass. I was just watching him and looking at him. And as the funeral mass ended and we were gonna head to the grave I saw him standing by himself and I thought this was my chance to go introduce myself and see how I can assist him. I walked up to this teen in mourning and I go, hey, I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm Chris. And he looks at me and he goes, yeah I know. Because he had been in my youth group for a year. But when you have hundreds of kids in front of you every week, how are you supposed to have this intentional specific connection? And that's what I love about discipleship is that it's not about a program it's about the person. But this is also the danger. Is that as a church we're so often conditioned to just start a new program and don't get me wrong, I'm not talking that programs are bad, they're good. But when it comes to discipleship we have to think differently. That we can't just assume that there's a one size fits all magic bullet that's going to bring everybody into a relationship with Jesus. That there has to be an intentionality something specific that we work towards with the person or people in front of us. And I remember again being in this large parish and struggling that moment with that teen probably changed the course of my ministry because I was shook so bad by it. And I was friends with various youth ministers but I really clicked with some Protestant youth ministers. And I remember sitting with this one guy who was actually leaving his very large non-denominational youth group to go serve on a college campus and continue to do college ministry. And I remember sharing the story I just shared with you and talking around that and kind of understanding the challenge of what leading a large youth group was gonna be because at first I was just excited about how many teens were showing up to listen to me speak. And I didn't know how to bring it down and how I could just work with a few if I had so many. And this guy Chip was his name. He looked at me and just said, hey, like you gotta do for a few what you wish you could do for many. And I thought about that and I was like, why does that sound right? And then I realized like, cause that's what Jesus did. Right, like he died for everybody but he poured into 12 people. In fact, I thought about this. Jesus lived and walked with the apostles for three years. So if we just break that down seven days a week let's just say eight hours a day there's times where Jesus won't have to pray, sometimes the apostles won't have to get food but let's just say on average eight hours a day for three years, that's 8,000 hours. And those apostles still had major, major gaps in their lives when Jesus ascended back up into heaven, right? So if that's what happened with the apostles who led the church after three years living with Jesus we need to be patient and understanding which is here in this quote. When we look at the fact that we're gonna have teens for a handful of years for just a small amount of hours. And yet, we can still push in in a few key ways so that we can lead them towards discipleship. Y'all still tracking with me? So what are those ways? So here are some earmarks of discipleship. And we won't go through these in great detail but once we do, we'll make our way through these four that's gonna be where we land the plane and then we're gonna kinda move into some time of Q and A, okay, so we're almost through the content. What time does this end? Five, okay, so we got plenty of time but I like to talk so we'll see how this goes. So when it comes to discipleship, and again, I know that this is a 10,000 foot view so you might be saying like, well, what does this mean practically? What does this look like? I'll give examples, but this is where we're gonna probably lean into Q and A, okay, so if you're wondering like this this needs to be more practical specific, I know. I know we're going quickly through this but I wanna get there with you guys, all right? So first, there needs to be an intimacy. There needs to be a real relationship and a dynamic that is vulnerable and honest. And this can be challenging, maybe one of the more challenging elements specifically with today's young person because intimacy does not come naturally but if you've ever had a friend who is inconsistent or wears a facade or a personality around you that's different from somebody else or when they're around somebody else rather, you know how hard it is to actually have a meaningful relationship with that person. Right, we've all been there, you're hanging out with your friend and then somebody else shows up and they start to act differently, they talk differently. We need to make sure that we've, again, and this is going back to that chart that the pre-work has been done so that there's a trust and a willingness to be vulnerable with one another. And I shared this quote again with the group that was with me last session so if you heard this just bear with me and humor me but I was talking to a veteran youth minister the other day and he was talking about the challenges of youth ministry today versus when he got into youth ministry like 30 years ago. And when he said just kind of stopped me my tracks because he was so pointed and he was so specific and what he said was so scary. He said teens when I first started and I would ask the basic question, do you want a relationship with Jesus Christ? They would ask, who's Jesus? Today you ask, do you want a relationship with Jesus Christ? And they say, what's the relationship? And so this idea of intimacy is foreign because oftentimes the way teens can be real is behind the screen because there's a safety net here, right? That's why you see online bullying going through the roof because I can say something mean to you, I would never would. You look really cool and nice but if I said something really mean to you I might see it on your face and that would make me feel bad but now I can say something through a phone and I don't see the reaction and it gives you this false security. That's why when I was in high school a girl broke up with me over AIM and if you know what AIM is it means that you're my age and she broke up with me twice via AIM.  And for teens today they are not used to having a relationship specifically with someone who's not their parents where they can be open and honest and vulnerable because they're afraid they may not be accepted. And for us as ministers and mentors and leaders of the church and young people we need to let them know that this is a safe place that we are a safe presence and that we're gonna be a consistent presence and that's how we get to intimacy. It's not by bearing our souls, again as adults that doesn't necessarily mean that like we need to be sharing everything with our teens. There should be boundaries. And there are even things that the teen shouldn't tell you, of course. However, if you're consistent and you're honest eventually that leads to some sort of intimacy. And for us when we see a teen who is ready to go a bit deeper if we can continue to be a present in their life continue to draw them closer to Jesus by sharing what Jesus has done in our lives by giving witness to that, by being vulnerable in that and being again there time in and time out it will lead to a place where there can be an open dialogue and you're gonna need that as they start to get a little bit deeper in their relationship with Jesus Christ because they're gonna want to ask questions and they're gonna have to kind of talk about the ups and downs. Like if they start praying they might come to you when all of a sudden they don't feel those warm fuzzies or they might come to you when they open up the book of Deuteronomy and don't understand anything that's going on. There needs to be a level of trust there and ability to have a conversation that's different from a monologue or a talk but a willingness to actually engage. And then there needs to be a mutual responsibility. Again, we're driving towards something specific our relationship with Jesus Christ. That this isn't just a mutual friendship. That this isn't just camaraderie. That there's something that we're trying to accomplish here. We're trying to experience the love of God more deeply every day and allow that love to change the way that we live our lives. And so for you as the leader your responsibility is to help guide that person. To be there for them, to be presence. That you're not gonna leave them high and dry. Now of course there's boundaries but that you'll be there for them. There's a young youth minister that I'm actually discipling now. He's never been discipled.  And we were talking about discipleship and I just asked, I was like who's been discipled and one kid raised his hand. And this youth minister I'm discipling now is kind of in the same boat. He's supposed to now do all the discipleship stuff but he's realizing he's never been discipled. And talking to him's kind of infuriating because he's just so used to doing whatever he wants and not really having any responsibility and I have to keep kind of pushing him forward because my responsibility is to keep him going forward and keep him on the straight path and not that he's going off on some crazy bender but he's just sometimes a little lax or places he should probably not be so laxed and I have a responsibility to help him because he asked me. We wanna have a discipleship-disciple relationship. And for the young person, their responsibility is to take this moment seriously. That again, there has to be a deliberate choice that they are trying to live for Jesus. That doesn't mean they're going to be perfect saints. It doesn't mean they're gonna go and change the world tomorrow. Teens can barely change their own underwear. There has to be realistic expectations but they have to have an understanding that they're actually trying to do the faith in a real way. And again, I just love to take this and just simplify it by saying one beggar is showing another beggar where the bread is. That's what this means. We're all trying to get fed. We're all trying to get to Jesus and we're just doing it together. Now the other one has to be customizable. And again, this is where we have to be careful not to go into program mode. When I was in this really big parish, we had something called discipleship groups.  And it was so difficult for me to work with my court team because they would get something that I would give them so they could be prepped and they would think what I gave them was law. And really what it was was supposed to be a starting point to allow the conversation to go for the teens to start to flourish and then water where there seemed to be fruit that we're not trying to do a program. We're trying to really serve the people in front of us. For me, I remember when I was again in Houston, we had it all mapped out. We had a handful of youth ministers. We had a secretary who kind of had things structured in a way that just made sense on paper. And then life just happens. And so the way that we kind of had it was that I did high school and I oversaw everything and then I would take discipling young men. We had a female youth minister who did high school with me. She would take a lot of the young women. We had a middle school guy who would step up in my place if I couldn't be there because I had to do managerial stuff. We just had it laid out. And then the female youth minister had a baby and she was gone for a while. And while she was gone, this teen showed up as the church in a panic. She was in high school and she was crying. And I remember someone just kind of like brought her into my office and just sat her down. And I was like, I don't know what's going on. And I didn't, I was like, do I call the youth minister who's on like maternity? Like I'm way outside my depth. And I try my best to talk to her and work with her and I don't know. I don't think it was my best work. It was fine. Gave her some Kleenex, she talked. And maybe 30 minutes later, she was gone. And then like a week or two later, she came back and she wanted to follow up.  So we start talking again. And she starts to open up a little bit more. And I do my best to kind of just be present to her and love on her. And then the next week, as if God was giving me a grace from heaven, the youth minister from maternity came back and I thought like, I need to give this girl to our youth minister. They're gonna be a match made in heaven. And so I set up a meeting.  She's gonna just keep working with you. This is really good. I think everything's gonna be great. So we set up a meeting. The youth minister is ready for that meeting, but then she gets appendicitis. And so she has to cancel last minute. And so I have to go fill in. And now I'm meeting for a third time and I go and meet this girl. And at this point, I start realizing like, you know what, some of her wounds are father wounds and are from men and maybe this is okay. And then she started to kind of open up in some ways that I've realized like, this is still okay, but we need to put some parameters on this. And then she just started to really ask like why I'm talking to her. And I didn't wanna say like, well, it's because the scheduling is so messed up here right now. But she just said like, why are you doing this? And I said, well, because I want you to know Jesus. And then she said like, well, I have some questions. And I said, great. And so she started asking me questions. And I started answering the best that I couldn't. If I didn't know the answer, I'd look up the catechism verse that or paragraph that I needed to find and I would give it to her. And then a couple weeks went by and she was like, hey, I have more questions. And I said, okay. And so there was a coffee shop not too far. I was like, I'll meet you at the coffee shop or bring the other youth minister and she's like, great. So we start this all of a sudden kind of dynamic where she has questions. I'm kind of like her go to Google account. And she just looks at me for everything Catholic. And even though I never would have really shaped it that way, before I knew it, we had kind of entered into this like pre-evangelization, pre-catechesis relationship outside of programming. And then she offered to babysit. And then all of a sudden, my wife got her claws into Morgan, this teen. And she would be over more. And we had a good relationship with the parents. And before I knew it, and again, in a way I never would have scripted, we were in a relationship that was essentially me discipling her where she had enough trust in me. I was able to speak into things that the other female youth minister was not able to speak into just because she was a woman and she needed to hear some truth from a man. I kept bringing the female youth minister along. I kept setting up parameters so that we were always safe. But in a unique way, I had to take what I had done so many times for young men and totally shift it to be with this young woman. And let me tell you, as I look back at all the people I've worked with and all the stories in which God has chosen to use a schmuck like me, the way that I got to walk with Morgan through her high school years is one of my favorites because it was something I never would have planned and it was such a blessing, not just I hope for her, but even for me and my family, she became our prime babysitter and my kids still talk about Miss Morgan who now lives in Houston. But we need to be flexible and being able to work with the teens and young people that God brings forth. And then there has to be accountability. There has to be a way in which we were checking in. Jesus lived with the apostles every single day. We're not gonna be able to do that, nor should we want to. But there has to be some sort of accountability in which we are making sure that we're actually moving forward together. We all ping pong back and forth. Oftentimes we think faith is like a balance beam and if we fall, we're done. Or it's like a conveyor belt that just pushes us forward, but oftentimes you've been walking this walk long enough. You know it's about two steps forward, one step back. With a teen, sometimes it's one step forward, one step back, and then you just wanna cry. But there's an accountability and a pushing them forward together so that we are moving and working towards that end goal which is getting them to be empowered with the love of Jesus Christ. And this can be tough because sometimes someone comes from, again, a really powerful experience like a sumo conference or a retreat at your parish, and they're like, I love Jesus, I wanna give my life to him. And they mean it, right? Again, if you've ever chaperoned one of those big things, you get in the bus afterwards and maybe you give the teens the mic afterwards and they stand up there and they're like, I'm never gonna sin again. They mean it, but it's not true. And that's okay, but when the highs kind of fade and life gets tough, there still has to be a way in which we can hold each other accountable. And that can be challenging. I remember when I was doing inner city ministry, one of my favorite things I got to do specifically early on when I had a little bit more time in my responsibilities was to work with young men and to push them towards a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. And granted, these guys I was working with from the inner city were probably not as formed as you would think that many people would be who were considered disciples. But for the demographic we were serving, they were prime. And I remember that there's this kid, Deshaun. He was a white kid. His name isn't typically one that you'll see with a white kid. And so he was really kind of ostracized from both communities. And he just didn't really fit in and he was kind of socially awkward. And he was a good, good young man, but he just did not care about Jesus. But he said at first that he wanted to know more about him. And I would take him to McDonald's, we'd go bowling, we'd do all these different things. But there was never like this growth. He just kind of wanted a place where he'd come and complain. And anytime I try to talk about Jesus, in light of those complaints or those hardships, he didn't want to hear it. And after a few months, I had to kind of call him on it and say, hey man, this is really gearing up for something else and I'm not sure if you really want that. And he looked at me and again, maybe this was just because he was 15 and he didn't quite know what he was saying, but he said, yeah, I don't. I was like, okay, I really appreciate that. I can't wait to keep hanging out, but I gotta tell you, like some of this stuff needs to kind of stop. We need to kind of alter our relationship because these other guys here, they do. And so we had to kind of actually have this tough moment. Now the reason that worked was because I was still committed to hanging out with them, doing all those fun things. And I wasn't just kind of saying like, you don't love Jesus, see you later kid. I got in and do that. But there was an accountability. And he realized he wasn't quite ready for that relationship with Jesus. And he was probably more back in that pre-evangelization stage. And so we just had to kind of switch gears with him. But if we can be in a state where we have some real vulnerability and intimacy with young people, if we can hold each other responsible towards our faith, it can be specific to the individual or customizable. And we can be accountable. We have the basic foundation or earmarks for discipleship. Cool, does that make sense? Now again, I talked a little bit longer than that. Again, I wanna get you out of here a little bit early, but I wanna make sure we talk around the practical components and the specifics. And again, this is where I could talk around things that I think work because of my experience and because of my paradigm and because of my vantage point. But I know every parish is different. Every person is different. And knowing that it has to be customizable, I don't wanna just assume anything for you. So what I'd like to do is again, going to this time of Q and A, we can talk, we can have a dialogue and we can just share a little bit about what we see as working, what's not working and what questions we might have when it comes to discipling young people.