On January 1st of 2021, Luke and I released a video announcing the creation of this ministry. In that video, we laid out our beliefs and said that we would start making videos on a regular basis. As of today, it has been two years since that video was posted, and nothing has been done with this ministry since. That wasn’t our plan.
In mid-to-late-2020, Luke suggested to me that we start a news organization. It was an eventful year, with the BLM riots, COVID, and the upcoming election, so there was a lot we could report on, and since we care about world events and politics, we wanted a way to put our voice out there.
That idea died pretty quickly. There is actually a lot that goes into running that kind of thing, and we didn’t have the resources to keep up with everyone else. I had another idea, though.
For a long time I have wanted to start a ministry. Sharing the gospel is commanded by Jesus and it’s what I want to do with my life, so I suggested that we do it. Around November, we started work on our first video. We wrote it together (with a lot of advice from my dad), we filmed it, I edited it, and on January 1st of 2021, we posted it.
At that point we had a lot of ideas for this ministry, and our next video was already well into the writing process. We had a long list of topics we wanted to cover, but none of that happened.
We put a lot of work into that first video. Writing the scripts is a time consuming process; we want our information to be correct and well presented, and we had to write when we were both free so we could work on it together. Filming needs to be on a day where we have a few hours to meet in person, and editing is its own beast that takes many hours. We wanted to dedicate the proper amount of time needed to maintain quality and ensure our information is correct.
Unfortunately, 2021 was pretty busy for both of us and we weren’t able to keep putting in those hours, even though we really wanted to. One of the biggest setbacks was shortly after we posted the first video: Luke took a baseball to the face and knocked a tooth out. While he was taking time to recover, I planned to start making videos myself. They would be mostly unscripted, and I would talk about world events or whatever else I felt like covering. I never got around to that either.
Later in the year, I wanted to pick things back up. Luke told me to go ahead with the ministry myself since he always has sports or something else going on, so I rewrote a video that was intended for both of us, and I actually filmed it in September. We were going to have a video posted!
Well it turns out I messed up a setting on my microphone and each clip either sounded completely different from the others or it was just unusable. I guess I accidentally changed some setting after I did my tests. I’m still not quite sure what happened. I tried to rerecord the audio for everything, but it took forever. I spent a few hours just to get maybe 20-30 seconds, and I didn’t have time for that.
But now I am actually ready to work on this ministry, and God willing, this will be the first of many articles. But first, let’s discuss the ministry itself.
The first topic I want to address is the videos. We originally started this ministry on YouTube because I have a passion for filmmaking. Documentary-style videos are fun to make and they’re an effective way to share our message. Unfortunately, they take a long time to make and, as I said before, I don’t want to rush them. As much as I would like to continue making videos, it probably won’t happen often.
The good news, however, is that we have a website now (I’m sure you’ve noticed that by now)! Writing articles is another thing I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and this website enables me to do that. For the foreseeable future, this is what I will be doing with the ministry—equipping and strengthening believers (and hopefully making new disciples) through articles that discuss the word of God and world events.
I have no set schedule for releasing articles, but I do hope to publish at least a few every month. In addition to that, Luke and my dad will both be writing as well. I’m not sure how often they plan to release articles, but I know they will both do good work. My dad wasn’t in our video, but he has played a huge role in getting this ministry going. He just finished his Master of Divinity, so I am looking forward to what he is going to write. I recommend you follow Upward Gaze on our social media to be notified every time an article goes out (and to see any other stuff we release). To find links to those social media, visit upwardgazemin.com/connect.
As a quick note on social media: you will notice that in our introduction video, we included a link to our Parler accounts at the end. The video was made right as Parler was blowing up, but after it got shut down, I don’t think many people returned to it. At least, I didn’t. Since then, a lot of other alternative social media platforms have appeared, and I haven’t liked them for various reasons. Because of that, Upward Gaze is most likely going to remain on the major social media platforms, that being Twitter and Instagram. I still don’t like the company behind Instagram, but now that Elon Musk acquired Twitter, it has become a much better platform.
There is one exception to this, and that is Gab. It’s the only alternative social media I have actually liked; it’s well designed, they own all their infrastructure, and the CEO is a Christian. I haven’t used it enough to develop a full opinion on it, but there is a chance I will start using it.
Whenever I start making videos again, I will continue posting them to both YouTube and Rumble. Our videos will go on YouTube for obvious reasons, but I also like Rumble. They are the best competitor to YouTube and they continue to improve their service. It also serves as a backup in case our videos ever get censored on YouTube.
With all of that said, I look forward to the future of this ministry. If you are interested, please check out the website; I put a lot of work into it. Follow us on our social media if you want to be notified of all our article releases. If you want to support this ministry, the best thing you can do is pray. Please pray that God would use us to glorify Him, strengthen and encourage His people, and bring people to Him.
I will publish my first real article tomorrow, but in the meantime I encourage you to read our statement of faith at upwardgazemin.com/about .