Navigating the Digital Landscape: From Doom Scrolling to Faith Scrolling

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:02:17

Gerald, welcome to the Coming to the podcast.

Gerald Jones: 00:02:20

Oh, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:02:23

Looking forward to it. Anyone who can design something and get it to market, I'm excited for you.

Gerald Jones: 00:02:28

So thank you.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:02:29

It'll be a fun conversation.

Gerald Jones: 00:02:30

Oh, I know it's going to be fun.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:02:33

So I'm going to ask you my favorite question to get us warmed up. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Gerald Jones: 00:02:39

Well, you know, this is one when I was just a kid, and I've always lived by this, and I even tell my kids this to this day, so it stuck with me. So I think this is the best advice I got. And it's if you believe it and you can conceive it, you can achieve it.

And I learned that from Father John back when I was, like, 8 or 9 years old. And it stuck with me, and it gave me the ability to dream because, like, I believe this and I conceive it, then it can be done.

So that's something that stuck with me. And I tell my kids and anybody who's close to me, I give them that advice.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:03:13

I love that. I've heard that before. It's always great advice.

Gerald Jones: 00:03:17

Yes.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:03:19

So Blessing was born in a digital landscape dominated by outrage and negativity, especially in today's culture. What personal experiences made you realize something different was needed?

Gerald Jones: 00:03:31

Well, you know, I think we all started feeling this recently, where social media. It started out fun. It was just friends connecting, doing silly dances, and.

And then it started to get, you know, they started being rewarded for outrage, rewarded for compromising your values or doing, like, dirty tricks on people, and you start to feel negative. I started to feel anxiety. I'd go to bed, and I'd be scrolling right before I went to sleep. And then I'd have, like, bad dreams or I'd get anxious.

The next day I'd wake up and I'd feel anxious. So I felt there had to be a change. And that's what you know, really brought us to saying, you know, we gotta do something. We gotta change this.

This world. Because social media is here to stay. I mean, the genie's out of the bottle. We're not putting it back. It's here.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:04:17

That's so true. I'm curious. You and Kevin designed this together. Tell us about your friendship. And how did you guys work together to design this?

Gerald Jones: 00:04:27

Well, you know, me and Kevin been friends over 20 years. We met backstage at the Academy Awards. We weren't winning an award. We just were both working there.

I got in Through Debbie Allen, who's a choreographer. Everybody knows Debbie Allen.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:04:41

Oh yeah.

Gerald Jones: 00:04:42

I was interning for her and then she called me up one day and she was like, hey, do you want to work at the Academy Awards? And I was like, yeah. So that was like 20 plus years ago. And then I met Kevin backstage. We just started chatting backstage.

We had a lot of the same interest and that's what our friendship first started.

And I think having that foundation of friendship for the past 20 years, it made it possible to do businesses like Blessed is because there's no, it's not ego driven.

There's been a long standing relationship where we kind of can read each other and we know when somebody needs help on something or when somebody's struggling with something. And so having that, it's not something that's forced, it's not something that's fake or manufactured.

It's like a true friendship that built over the years to help us create blessing.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:05:31

Why is it important for you to have this app be more than just a positivity platform?

Gerald Jones: 00:05:37

You know, I was at a college yesterday, it's a Christian university out here in Los Angeles. And I thought it was really important.

We were talking to the students, we had a booth set up and we were like giving away prizes and introducing people to Blessed and what I kept hearing is how it's such bad, you know, how social media is so bad on the mental health and how these young generation are really suffering with these mental health crisis is because they're comparing each other online or they're, they're in order to get attention, they have to do something that goes against their values and they're compromising their own values. So that's what really made me believe in Blessed and was like, yeah, this is what we need, this is what the world needs right now is positivity.

And when you hear direct feedback from like right face to face, direct feedback from students, the intended audience of this young generation, you know that you're on the right path.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:06:30

I love that. And it's, and it's so true. You, you created a term I had never heard before until I got your, your promo.

I, I've heard about doom scrolling, but define for me what faith scrolling is.

Gerald Jones: 00:06:43

You know, actually Kevin came up with that one, so I will give him credit. I like to take credit for some stuff, but that one, I gotta give it to him.

Um, and you know, it's funny, he didn't even say it as like this is gonna be our thing, faith scrolling. We were just talking about Doom scrolling. And he was like, we need to replace it with faith scrolling.

And I was like, that's it, we're going with faith scrolling. That is like, I don't think there's a better way to say what our purpose was with faith scrolling. And that's what blessed is.

I mean, it works like any other social media platform, TikTok or Instagram. It's all short form video content, it's all user generated content.

But it's something that's uplifting, something that when you scroll, you're going to feel good about, not feel anxious after you scroll. So that was like really the base of what we were doing. And, and already we've got like tens of thousands of people using the app.

And I, I know you were scrolling on it earlier today. There's some really fun people on there. The content's great.

So I mean, it's like, I love how people have already embraced it and, and use it for what it's meant to be used for.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:07:44

Now here's a tough question. Every, with every platform, it starts out sometimes with either innocent or good intent.

How do you make sure that the content on Blessing doesn't take a dark turn?

I mean, is there, you have to have some kind of filters and how do you, how do you work that so that you aren't getting into the whole First Amendment thing and.

Gerald Jones: 00:08:06

Yeah, yeah, well, I mean we, we have listed in our terms of service, which nobody ever reads anyways, but. Right. But there, you know, luckily so far people haven't tried to infiltrate us with like some negative content.

But we do have a couple of filters in place. We have an AI feature that will look for nudity, will, you know, look for bad words and flag these type of things and bring it to our attention.

But we also have a staff that works 24 7, including myself, I'm on that staff working 24 7, just looking at content. New content comes up and I don't mind doing it because I love being on Blessing. But we'll go through the content.

If we see something that looks a little bit off or something that's not aligning with the values of Blessing, we'll immediately flag them, contact the creator and say, hey, this doesn't meet our values or this doesn't meet our platform standards and they can either fix it, delete it, if, you know, maybe it wasn't intentional and if they keep violating it, then they get removed.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:09:07

No, that's good because I'm just thinking for every good thing, there's always four or five bad Actors. So I just gotta curious how you do that.

Gerald Jones: 00:09:17

We knew that somebody at some point is gonna try to be the bad actor just because they see something positive and they're gonna be like, let's see if I can ruin the fun for everybody.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:09:27

Right? How are you getting the word out, you know? Cause it's always hard to get breakthrough with so many different social media content creators places.

How are you breaking through all the noise so that blessing gets elevated to prominence?

Gerald Jones: 00:09:42

Well, you know, we, we're doing a lot, we're doing a lot of the on the street thing.

Back in the days I grew up in like the 90s, 80s and 90s where they had street teams out there when they were breaking a new record or are trying to expose things before the Internet.

So we thought it was important to get right down into the colleges and universities, meet with the kids, let them see who we are, tell them exactly what we're about. So I think a lot of people are blinded by so many ads. They get ad ads and just scroll away, scroll away.

I mean, we do, we do have ads out there because somebody's going to see an ad and be like, oh, this is what I'm looking for. I've, I, you know, I'm feeling bad. I want to try this out. But on top of that, we're also out there in the streets.

We're doing community events, we're going to youth organizations, we're giving them blessing hats and we're giving them blessing sunglasses and like free swag and just showing up with like lunches. So I think I Out there with the community is how we're starting out. And we've only been live for like maybe three to four months.

So I think out there on the street and just shaking hands and getting to know people has been really effective so far.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:10:47

Awesome. So tell me a little bit about the design of it. Tell me what the. Give me the behind the scenes for the tech people who love the tech part.

Give me the behind the scenes.

Gerald Jones: 00:10:59

Oh yeah. Now this was a journey. This app took us two and a half years from the conception the idea to launch. And then you know, you just go.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:11:09

And chat GPT and tell them, create it.

Gerald Jones: 00:11:11

Oh, you know, this is before chat gtp. As far as I know, this is. We started this thing there wasn't that kind of AI at least readily available to U.S. consumers.

So I mean, this was an uphill battle. This was an uphill battle. We knew what we wanted. We had this vision in our head of what we wanted.

But it was so hard because you know you're building something and you see it, you're like, oh no, that's not right.

So two and a half year journey from start to launch and then we did a soft launch back in November, December, just to kind of test it and get the bugs out. And the fun thing about Blessing is we're always developing, we're like, we're never not developing something.

We actually updated the app today, so if you download it 30 minutes ago, you need to redownload it because we just do another update on there and we have another update. We're meeting tomorrow. We got some really cool features coming in the next update. So we're going to start working on that.

So I think that's the funnest part is when you build something and then it starts kind of growing and evolving and you start saying, wow, this is really like flourishing and people are really embracing it. But also you keep it fresh by always introducing new things.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:12:27

So for those who are familiar with some apps, what would you say Blessing is most like? Is it most like YouTube, most like TikTok, most like Instagram, most like Facebook?

What's what, how would you kind of, what area do you see bless and fitting into?

Gerald Jones: 00:12:44

Yeah, we're very similar to, I would say TikTok and Instagram, where it's all short form video. You can also post pictures if you like to just like Instagram. And that's how Instagram initially was. It was just pictures. So we, we combine that.

So you got the, the best of Instagram, the best of TikTok. But what makes ours a little more unique is that we created an opportunity or a way for content creators to get paid from day one.

So you don't have to have a huge following, you don't have to be some celebrity, but you can start monetizing your account immediately. Because what we offer is something called personalized messages of faith. And I've already seen people buying them and purchasing for each other.

We got some NBA athletes on there, we got some singers on there, we got recording artists and all these fun people on there. And let's say your son or your daughter's has a sats coming up or a big test or is nervous about some event that's coming up.

You can ask for a request, a personalized message of faith and it's just, you know, a few bucks and you ask them to say a little prayer for your daughter and they will send a personal message to your son or daughter or your friend or somebody's in the hospital just trying to brighten their day. Just saying, hey, I'm Gerald. I'm from Blessing. I'm one of the co founders of Blessing, and I know you're going through this, that or the other.

I just want to say that God is with you. And then you kind of say a little prayer and you just, you know, brighten that person's day.

It's more personal than sending somebody like a Valentine's Day card or Mother's Day card or something like that. So it's personal, it's fun, it's uplifting. And you're also supporting Christian creators, so it's like you're winning all the way around.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:14:26

I love it. So if you're a Christian content creator like myself, and you say, hey, this sounds really, really cool, how do I get started?

Gerald Jones: 00:14:33

Oh, it's the simplest thing ever. So to get started, you just apply like you would any other platform. You put your email address in or.

So you can do it through your email address and you'll get like a confirmation code. It's to make sure that you're a real human being. Or you can.

If you have an iPhone or Google phone, you can apply using this, like, one button and you just press it and it's like it has all your information stored already in your. Your phone, and it would just fill out all the form for you and then you're on. You can start posting the same day.

I think you can probably do it less than five minutes and you could be already up and posting. And if you decide to, you don't have to monetize your account.

If you want to just use it for fun and just post a little while, or if you wanted to watch other people, you can do that. But if you decided to. You know what? I'm getting a lot of feedback. I'm getting a lot of requests. Let me monetize my account.

You just turn that on with a click, a little switch on there. You turn it on and you set your pricing. Like, for me, it's like 499. I don't know anybody wants to talk to me or what's a blessing for me.

But it's like 499 and that's it. As simple as that.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:15:42

Wow. So tell me a little bit about. Because we have so many people in the Christian space, you run into all kinds of different theological beliefs.

Do you have like a. A set of. You have to be this kind of a, you know, believer, or is it just kind of wide open in terms of the whole Christian space?

Gerald Jones: 00:16:06

There, you know, it's. It's wide open. And, and you know, what's important also is that you may not be a believer.

You may be wanting to tiptoe in to see what this is all about. So we're not going to ask you, you know, what your faith is or your background.

You can join, and you may not believe in Jesus, you may not believe in anything. You may be an atheist. You can join if you want uplifting content. And when you're here, you're going to see people leading with love.

And when you lead with love, you're going to draw people in. So even if you don't believe, you're going to start feeling the spirit, you're going to start being drawn in.

And it's a good way for Christian content creators or people of faith to outreach to people who may be curious about what this is or curious about Jesus, and they don't know.

And you're not going to find this stuff by talking to people on Instagram or TikTok or some of these other platforms, because you're going to get engulfed with people getting hit by cars or a dog attacking somebody on a lady on the street or some weird stuff.

So you come over here, you're a little curious, and you're going to see a lot of people with positive, uplifting spirits, and you're going to get drawn in.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:17:15

I love what you're doing, and I love the fact you're creating community in your mind. What do you hope? What kind of community do you hope Blessing creates going forward?

Gerald Jones: 00:17:25

You know, it's like peace. I want peaceful community. I want people to realize that the world is a beautiful place.

I think we spend so much time on social media, which rewards all this negative content instead of the positive content. You watch the local news. What do they say in the local news? If it bleeds, it leads. You know, they don't put the good puppy stories up front.

They, they put the car wreck, they put the plane crash. They put anything like negative. They say if it bleeds, it leads. And we grew up like that. That's all it was.

So I thought it was important to make a space where people can come and realize the world is actually a beautiful place.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:18:05

I love that. You and I both know that in the digital space, faith is really being pushed to the margins in the public space.

Why is it important for Blessing to be unapologetically faith forward while still being welcoming?

Gerald Jones: 00:18:20

Yeah, you know, that was also important to us. I mean, we're not hiding anything here. The name of the app is Blessing. We're going to be right up in your, you know, right up in your face.

This is what we are. Unapologetically, this is what we are. We're. We're an app and we have Christian values.

And if you don't like it and it's not for you, you don't have to come. And if you don't like TikTok, you don't have to go there or Instagram.

But if you want to feel good about your day and you want to, you know, feel good about life in general, you're going to visit Blessed now. You don't even have to sign up. You don't have to put your information in.

If you want to just tour Blessing without even signing up as a user, you can check it out.

And if it feels like you belong here, it feels like this is my people, then jump on in and start posting and start sharing your faith and what encourages you and uplifting somebody else. I think I was talking to a student yesterday. This is funny.

And I was saying, what was the last time you did something for somebody so small that you didn't even realize what you did? And it changed their life? And I think on Blessing, you can do that.

You can change people's life without even seeing them, without even knowing who it is. Somebody got a message on Blessing. It just changed your entire day. And the outlook, just. Ripple effect all the way through the world.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:19:37

I love that. What, is there an age. Age limit to be part of Blessed Community?

Gerald Jones: 00:19:44

No age limit. I think we. I don't know if we have anybody really young.

I saw a kid who looks like he's probably 13 on there, and we got people all the way up to, you know, 50s and 60s and above. I'm sure, because there's so many users, we got like, tens of thousands of users. We look at the.

The downloads, like, weekly, and we're like, always shocked. Like, oh, my gosh. It's like crazy how. How many people embraced it so early because we were terrified when we launched this.

And we don't have any backers. We don't have anybody, like, financing us. It's just me and Kevin taking out of our own savings and our own money and.

And putting it all into something we really believe in. So seeing those downloads really feels good.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:20:26

So I'm always curious for people like yourself who create apps like this, how do you guys make this profitable for all the effort you put into it?

Gerald Jones: 00:20:35

Well, it's like building any community. When you build a house or you Build a church.

I mean, people of faith have built so many beautiful monuments, and when they go building these things, they don't think I'm going to be rich. No, they built it to honor God. They honor their vision and they honor God. So right now we're not making any money. We're making zero dollars.

And we may never make money, but we built something of faith. There's something that my kids are proud of. My mom's proud of, my aunts and uncles. Everybody's proud of this thing that I built with Kevin.

And that alone is just like I was put on this earth to do something. And it was Blessing.

I didn't know, but all of these journeys that took me up to, you know, opening and launching Blessing, that all led up to that moment, I think, is that opportunity to launch something that we really passionate about.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:21:30

I love it.

So for those content creators who want to be part of Blessing, what responsibility do they have in shaping the emotional and spiritual climate of that community?

Gerald Jones: 00:21:43

You know, that's a huge responsibility. And, and I think that's why Blessing is so important, because everything is user generated these days. It's. What, My kids don't even watch tv.

My daughter took her TV out of her room because she doesn't watch tv. She's either listening to music or she's on social media. And now she's on Blessed. But.

But it's such a huge responsibility, especially when you know that you're doing something positive as opposed to some of those negative trends that are out there. So you don't want to put those vibes in the world and you want to put some positivity in the world.

And if you are a responsible creator, you're going to do something amazing and change people's lives.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:22:22

That's awesome. So I'm going to ask you a bunch of lightning round questions here to kind of rapid fire one word you hope people feel when they use Blessing.

Gerald Jones: 00:22:32

I'd say peace. I want them to come away feeling peaceful.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:22:36

A daily practice that keeps you grounded.

Gerald Jones: 00:22:40

You know, it's. I talk to God every single day, twice a day at least. I talk to him in the morning, I talk to him in the evening.

And especially when I'm going through something that's rough or I woke up this morning and I wasn't feeling like the best because my daughter's car had broke down and I had all these things on my plate today. But if you talk to God, just having a conversation with God is just going to make you feel so much better and just Take a lot of that pressure off.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:23:05

Is there a scripture or a quote or a phrase that gives you hope and sustains you?

Gerald Jones: 00:23:11

This is another one I told you. The one. This. That from Father John told me from when I was a kid. But this is another one I tell my kids also is.

And I don't even know where I heard this. It might have been my dad. And it says, don't talk about it, be about it. And that's just take action. And that's what we did here at Blessing.

It was just like we jumped. We didn't know if there was a market for this, but we just said, just jump and see what happens.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:23:36

I love it. Coffee or tea?

Gerald Jones: 00:23:39

Oh, man, I drink coffee, like, three times a day.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:23:42

I can tell.

Gerald Jones: 00:23:42

Yeah, yeah.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:23:48

One act of kindness that changed your perspective.

Gerald Jones: 00:23:52

Ooh, that's a good one. Oh, man. I mean, I've been really blessed to have a lot of really kind people in my life. I don't. Let me think about that one.

What's one thing that really changed me? You know, I think it's. It's my family. I think it's my family just supporting me.

They knew I was dumping a lot of time and effort and money to this and my own kids. You know, they knew this money could have went to them. This money could have went to them. Buying a new car instead of driving that old car that's.

That died on the road yesterday. So I think that kindness of somebody believing in your vision is. Is, like, priceless.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:24:36

All right, fill in this blank. Hope to you is.

Gerald Jones: 00:24:40

Ooh, Hope to me is. Oh, man, that's a tough one. These lightning rounds. I'm very slow with the lighting round. Let's see what is hope to me? I think hope is love.

I think if. If you love something and you. And you're hopeful, I think it. It's all combined.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:24:59

That's great. This is not lightning round. This is just another question, but what gives you hope? When you look at the next generation.

Gerald Jones: 00:25:06

Of digital creators, you know, I think what happens is I've already seen these people on Blessing and how they've already. And a lot of them are really young and look like they're in college or in their 20s.

Seeing how they embraced it and seeing the message that they're putting out there and the stories. Like, we have an athlete on there.

I think she runs college track and field, and she likes to post her fails, and then she has some encouraging words and some scripture to go along with it. So when you see that type of stuff, and you start realizing that this is going to change somebody else's day.

Somebody else is going through the exact same thing. And then when they see it that somebody else has gone and overcame those obstacles, I think it. It just encourages me that.

That we're on the right path.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:25:57

How do you hope Blessed influences a broader social media landscape?

Gerald Jones: 00:26:03

You know, I'm not sure how other people, other. The other platforms will do or if it will affect them at all.

And I'm not saying you need to stop using these other platforms, but if you want to cleanse and you want to get away from that stress and that drama, then you come over to Blessing. And if it starts growing and it starts expanding, I think.

I think people are going to realize that faith and hope and encouragement is actually a great thing. It's not all about leading with negativity. You can also lead and scale up with positivity.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:26:37

Love it. I'd love to ask my guests this question. What do you want your legacy to be?

Gerald Jones: 00:26:44

I think my legacy should be, you know, my kids are my legacy. I try to instill in them all the values that I grew up with.

And then what I've learned, and I think Blessing is an extension of that, is my legacy is that somebody who cared about the world, who wasn't, like, money first. It was always mission first, and that's what Blessing is. I hope my legacy is somebody who is mission first over money.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:27:10

All right, on this show, we have a surprise question. Number. Pick a number between 1 and 10 for your surprise question.

Gerald Jones: 00:27:16

Oof. 7.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:27:19

7. What is the worst job you've ever had?

Gerald Jones: 00:27:24

Oh, man, I had some pretty rough jobs, man. I was a plumber. I was a paper boy. If there's a job out there, I've done it. Car wash.

I think all my jobs were pretty fun, but I think the worst job I had was when I was a paper boy and I used to deliver newspapers in the mountains. San Bernardino mountains.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:27:46

Oh, my goodness.

Gerald Jones: 00:27:47

Yeah. In the snow.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:27:49

Oh, no.

Gerald Jones: 00:27:50

Yeah. So I remember one. One time I got so close, I lost control, and I started skidding towards the side of the mountain. I got out.

I looked how close I was. I was, like, maybe six inches from going over, and. And I was so young. I was a kid, so I was so young. It. It did.

It didn't affect me until I got home, and I was like, oh, man, that was close. So. So that was a tough job because it was cold.

It was in the middle of the night or super early in the morning, and I almost went off the side of the cliff one year.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:28:24

Yeah, that had been my last time, I'd have turned around and went home at that point.

Gerald Jones: 00:28:27

Yeah. You know, at that age, when you're 20, you think you're invincible. I was, yes. Less than 20. I was just a kid.

I was like, you think you're invincible at that age?

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:28:35

Yeah. No, we'd have been like, yeah, you can do it. Get your own paper.

Gerald Jones: 00:28:38

Yeah. Right. So, yeah, I had some crazy gigs back in the day.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:28:46

So, Gerald, where can people find you? More importantly, where can they can find Blessed and download it and share it with other people so they can also be blessed by this?

Gerald Jones: 00:28:55

Well, you can find me on Blessed. That's B L E S S N Bless. And it's on all the app stores.

So if you have Google or the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store, you just download it, everything. It's free to download, free to use, free to sign up, and free to follow me.

So if you're listening and you want to follow me and see my silly content, check me out on Blessed.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:29:19

And if you're a content creator, check out Blessing. It'd be a good way for you, especially as a Christian, to kind of share your gospel message with the world.

Gerald Jones: 00:29:26

Yes, absolutely.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:29:28

Well, Kevin, I mean, Gerald, thank you so much for your friendship, your faith, your courage and image to imagine something better in a noisy, busy world. For our listeners. If this conversation stirred hope in you, we invite you to download the Blessing app.

Experience faith scrolling for yourself and share it with someone who could use encouragement today. Please subscribe to Becoming Bridge Builders. Leave a review. Help us continue amplifying stories like Gerald's and build bridges instead of walls.

Until next time, Keep choosing hope. Keep practicing kindness. Keep being blessed. Thank you so much, Gerald.

Gerald Jones: 00:30:06

Thank.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:30:10

You.