The Behind-the-Scenes History of the Wake-Up Call

Summary

The Wake-Up Call – "The Behind-the-Scenes History of the Wake-Up Call"

Podcast: The Wake-Up Call
Host: J.D. Walt
Guest/Co-Host: Nick Perot (Producer/Director, Creative Director at Seedbed)
Release Date: March 18, 2026

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Episode Overview

This special episode offers a "behind-the-scenes" look at the history, evolution, and vision of The Wake-Up Call—a daily devotional community and platform dedicated to helping listeners reorient their lives around Jesus. J.D. Walt and Nick Perot recount the origin story of Seedbed and The Wake-Up Call, discuss how it has changed over the years, spotlight their community-driven approach, and introduce new resources designed to foster deeper engagement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing the Hosts and Their Roles

• Nick Perot’s Background (02:02–03:53):

  • Based in Bettendorf, Iowa, Nick is originally from Canada, and has been at Seedbed since 2013 as creative director and chief designer.
  • Personal tidbits: married to Camille, three kids (Lloyd, Iona, and Wilfred), and a passionate vinyl record collector.

• Team Behind The Wake-Up Call (06:36–07:37):

  • Marin handles video and podcast edits, Holly Jones does written edits, and Andrew Dragos provides theological review.
  • J.D.’s son David manages social media; a wider team and many guest authors contribute.

2. How It All Began: The Origin Story

• Initial Inspiration (08:03–10:49):

  • J.D. Walt, then at Asbury Seminary, asked, “How do we help each other stay at home in the Bible?”
  • In 2005, created a daily Lenten scripture reader: “If it's worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly at first.” (J.D., 09:56)
  • Emphasis was on reading the Bible together as a foundational spiritual practice—“The issue isn’t having a Bible… How do we get the word of God out of the Bible and into here and into our lives?” (J.D., 10:26)

• Growth into a Movement (10:49–12:55):

  • Readers grew from seminary community to churches requesting them for various seasons.
  • The project earned a Lilly Foundation grant (as "seminarius," Latin for "seed bed"), with vision of a “50-year sowing for what we hope will be a 100-year awakening.” (J.D., 12:58)

3. The Evolution of the Daily Offering

• Content and Format Transformation (13:35–16:41):
  • Started with just scripture and classic writings; only later did J.D. add his reflections, prayers, and prompts—often shaped by personal hardship.
  • Introduction of RESPONSE sections: written reflections, journal prompts, and prayers in addition to scripture readings.
  • “The Lord taught me long ago that if you're going to give something to others as manna... you’re gonna have to learn to receive it as manna day by day.” (J.D., 15:59)

4. The Name and Moravian Roots

• From 'Daily Text' to 'Wake-Up Call' (16:41–25:11):
  • Originates with the Moravian Daily Text, a 17th-century devotional tradition where 365 Bible verses were drawn annually for daily reflection—a significant influence on John Wesley and birth of Methodism.
  • “Our deal has been, we've been trying to get back to the roots of what really was the greatest awakening in one of the greatest awakenings in world history, the British Awakening.” (J.D., 20:44)
  • Name change driven by the desire for clarity and resonance: “When we did [Seedbed] Daily Text, people are like, are you gonna send me a text on my phone?... We need a better name.” (J.D., 25:11)

5. Community Dynamics and Resource Development

• Iterative, Responsive Growth (22:58–27:38):
  • Community input shapes content and resources. Prompts and journal spaces included after requests and seeing people’s own adaptations.
  • “We like how the Wake Up Call community tells us what we need to be working on and what's landing, what's making a difference.” (Nick, 27:11)
  • Expansion to books, field guides, prayer books, and journals as people sought to print, share, and collect materials.

6. New Developments: The Magnum Opus Project

• Introducing 'Unpuzzled' and New Workbooks (28:23–31:39):
  • Launching a comprehensive series workbook, "Unpuzzled," and making future content similarly structured for individual and group use.
  • Incorporates discussion guides, prayers, Bible creeds, group activities, and ample journaling space.
  • “How can we tell people it's important to read and journal and then not give them a way to do it?” (Nick, 29:45)
  • Includes QR codes for weekly video teachings to prime group conversation.

7. Global Reach and Ecumenical Family

• Wake-Up Call Community Worldwide (22:06–22:32, 32:06–32:41):
  • Diverse, interdenominational, represented across continents—“We got United Methodists, Global Methodists, Baptists, people living in Hernhut-type communities in Australia... in Africa, and Canada, all across the world.” (J.D., 22:06; Nick, 22:22)
  • Vision: “Little Hernhuts… hernhut means the watch of the Lord. And that's really what our vision is for every local church.” (J.D., 32:10, 32:22)

8. The Rhythm and Values of the Wake-Up Call

• Consecration > Transformation > Demonstration (32:45–33:17):
  • “If we're not getting it outside of us, then what's it all for? …Personal transformation can only be understood if it spills out.” (Nick, 32:45)
  • “Fruit grows on flourishing trees.” (J.D., 33:17)

9. Upcoming Series and the Community’s Influence

• Content Planning Driven by the Community (34:07–35:50):
  • Next releases include Dan Wilt’s “All the Things: Everyday Ministry and the Power of the Holy Spirit” and a renewed study of Philippians.
  • Community surveys and requests (especially for guidance on the Holy Spirit) directly inform upcoming content.

10. Commitment to Accessibility

• Always Free, Always Growing (38:08–39:08):
  • Encouragement to subscribe and share; resources offered for free, reflecting a mission-driven rather than profit-driven approach.
  • “We're sewing, not selling.” (J.D., 27:04)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly at first."
  – J.D. Walt, on launching the original scripture reader (09:56)

• "The issue isn’t having a Bible… How do we get the word of God out of the Bible and into here and into our lives?"
  – J.D. Walt (10:26)

• "This is a 50-year sowing for what we hope will be a 100-year awakening."
  – J.D. Walt (12:58)

• "I'm hardly a teacher. I don’t consider myself a Bible scholar. I'm a Bible lover."
  – J.D. Walt (15:46)

• "We're sewing, not selling."
  – J.D. Walt (27:04), on their approach to resource distribution

• "Consecration leads to transformation, leads to demonstration."
  – Nick Perot (32:45)

• "One Christian is no Christian."
  – Nick Perot (29:54)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:02] – Nick Perot’s background, role, and personal life
• [06:36] – Introduction of team members and expanding efforts
• [08:03] – The very first scripture reader and why it began
• [12:26] – Defining “Seedbed” and the vision for a long-term movement
• [13:50] – The evolution from text to devotional, reflection, and prompts
• [16:41] – The Moravian Daily Text and its influence on Methodism
• [22:06] – The global, ecumenical Wake Up Call community
• [23:24] – Introduction of journal prompts and community feedback
• [25:11] – Why the name changed to Wake Up Call
• [28:30] – Launch of new workbooks and resources
• [32:10] – Vision for “little Hernhuts” and the watch of the Lord
• [34:07] – Upcoming series based on community requests
• [38:08] – Subscription encouragement and free access commitment

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Flow & Tone

The tone is warm, candid, and community-oriented, infused with humor and humility. Both hosts emphasize learning as they go, respond actively to community feedback, and remain committed to the core practice of reading the Bible together. The episode blends historical context, personal anecdotes, and future plans while always tying back to the practical mission of helping people encounter Jesus and share the journey in community.

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Final Thoughts

This episode not only charts the history and ongoing development of The Wake-Up Call, but also offers an inspiring testimony to the staying power of communal spiritual practices, humble beginnings, and adaptive leadership rooted in listening to God and one another. The takeaway: transformation is a long-term endeavor, but done together with intention and love, it is both possible and fruitful.

Transcript

[J.D. Walt]

Foreign. Hello, everyone. Wake up. Sleepers rise from the dead and Christ shines on you. This is a special episode of our Conversations podcast. I'd say we have a special guest, but we actually have another host. Okay, I'm bringing you the wizard behind the curtain of the Wake Up Call today. The producer, the director, the guy who's really created everything you've ever seen, almost in seedbed, that you've loved, Nick Perot. Hello. And we wanted to talk together. We'll kind of interview each other a little bit here, but three things we want to do. We want to talk to you about the origin. I want to tell you the story of how every. This whole thing started, that what we call now the wake up call, and even see bed itself. And so that's step one. Then we want to talk about how it's evolved a little bit. And then finally, we're going to share with you what we might consider to be one of our preliminary magnum opuses.

[Nick Perot]

Huh, Opie. Magnum. Opa.

[J.D. Walt]

Magnum. Opi. Yes. In what's coming up in the next series that's going to be carrying us through the Easter season. So, first off, Nick Perot.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah,

[J.D. Walt]

Nick. Nick lives in the Quad Cities, if you know where that is. That's in Iowa, and it's in Illinois, right?

[Nick Perot]

That's right. It's right on the Mississippi River. We're about two and a half hours west of Chicago, home of the original riverboat gamblers. And, yeah, it's. It's.

[J.D. Walt]

What's your particular city?

[Nick Perot]

My city is Bettendorf, which is in Iowa. Bettendorf. I think there's about 30 municipalities all around that make up the entire Quad Cities regions, but there's four.

[J.D. Walt]

But you're not from there, Nate.

[Nick Perot]

No, I'm not. I'm from Canada originally.

[J.D. Walt]

Canada. Okay.

[Nick Perot]

That's right. Well, don't hold it against me, jd.

[J.D. Walt]

We love Canada.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah, that's right.

[J.D. Walt]

And Canadians.

[Nick Perot]

I was full when I came in here. Everyone's been very kind since I moved many years ago.

[J.D. Walt]

Nick has been with Seedbed from almost the start.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah.

[J.D. Walt]

What? 2013.

[Nick Perot]

2013.

[J.D. Walt]

And he's been our creative director and chief designer. And we've pulled him into a hundred strategy meetings, and he's been a true gift to us. He's married to Camille, has three kids. Lloyd. Lloyd. It's not Fiona.

[Nick Perot]

No, it's Iona.

[J.D. Walt]

Iona, Lloyd. Iona and Wilfred.

[Nick Perot]

That's right. That's right.

[J.D. Walt]

And they're probably getting to be about, what, 13, 10, and 7.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah, you're close. 6, 11, 13. Yeah. Which is crazy. So crazy. But they're all amazing and I'm super blessed to have any of them, that's for sure.

[J.D. Walt]

And you see behind Nick, he is a music aficionado. Amuse head. Would that be the right word?

[Nick Perot]

I don't know what the right word is. People always ask how this happens. And I just tell them, you know, every Christmas and birthday gift, you know, for 20 odd years slowly stacks up

[J.D. Walt]

in the spirit of my Jacques Derrida story in his famous celebrated library. I gotta ask you the obligatory question, Nick, have you listened to all those records?

[Nick Perot]

Well, I know he would say that I haven't listened to all of them, but I've listened to two of them very, very well. I would say I've listened to 90% of them. But this year, starting January 1st, I decided to go back through and listen to every single one alphabetically by the title. And now we're into March and I've gone through just over a hundred. And we, we just crossed into the bees.

[J.D. Walt]

So the, the bees.

[Nick Perot]

The bees. We're gonna be after this a couple years, I think, to really hit them. I can't listen to a pace of three to four records a day with meetings and everything. So.

[J.D. Walt]

Have you listened to one today?

[Nick Perot]

I have not yet. I've been, I've been, I've been talking to you.

[J.D. Walt]

Exactly.

[Nick Perot]

That's right.

[J.D. Walt]

We started early today, didn't we, Nick?

[Nick Perot]

We did, but we started. Well, you know, we started really early with the wafer call.

[J.D. Walt]

And every day you're posting, we start very early.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah.

[J.D. Walt]

As my dad always says. Now is this going to be on the radio? I'll say, yeah, dad, it's on the radio. And he'll say, well, what time does it come on? I said it's early.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah, yeah, very early. And if it's not, if it's, if it's not in its appropriate time, I, I get told that there was an error.

[J.D. Walt]

We hear, we hear, we hear.

[Nick Perot]

We hear you.

[J.D. Walt]

Such caring listeners, folks.

[Nick Perot]

We hear you.

[J.D. Walt]

You know what happens is when we mess up the wake up call, we get a wake up call, don't we?

[Nick Perot]

My wake up call is a panic text.

[J.D. Walt]

We're glad for it. What happened? You know what people would say? They still say this over the years. Did he die? I'm like, I'm risen.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah, that's right, that's right. No, I apologize, folks. You know, I'll take all the blame for any, any mistakes. It's usually because I was trying to make one last final tweak the night before and missed some step along the way. So I apologize. But now, what's great now is we have you accessible in, like, four or five different formats. So if we miss it in one, people find you in the other. It's great.

[J.D. Walt]

And yes. And the other thing I want to say is Nick is. Is like. He's leading this team. We've got Marin. Maren is really. She's doing the edits on the video on the podcast.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah.

[J.D. Walt]

And then we've got Holly. Holly Jones, who is doing the edits on the written work.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah.

[J.D. Walt]

And we have Andrew Dragos, who does the. What we might call theological edits and lets me know if I'm borderline heresy in anything I'm saying. So it takes a village to do this thing.

[Nick Perot]

That's not to mention David, who's putting posts on social media.

[J.D. Walt]

My son David is running the social media.

[Nick Perot]

You know, we had so many guest authors. We've had so many people with a marketing touch to try to get a word out. It's a lot of people who touch it in the run of a day or a week.

[J.D. Walt]

Yeah. But that's not how it started. Let's talk about the start.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah. J.D. tell me, because, you know, I've been in for a pretty long time, and I remember when we first started trying to take the email and put it into a book form, and we started calling it the. You know, we had those nice black square, the daily text to try to make it, like, very bold and strong. But I want to know what was the first iteration, the first incarnation of this?

[J.D. Walt]

Do you know how this started? I was working up at Asbury Seminary. I was dean of chapel, and I was vice president of community formation. And I thought, you know what? In the church, in the history of the church, if you want to start a move, the first thing you do is you start reading the Bible together. Right. That makes sense. Like, we gotta. We got a constitution, a core text, and we have a community, and we want to invite the Holy Spirit to come. We want to invite Jesus to become our teacher. And the Word of God is our textbook. And so I just started asking that question. I'm like, you reckon at this seminary we could go really back to the basics? This is a place where they're digging the wells down deep into things like the filioque and the, you know, the peripatetic relationship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That's all wonderful, but I'm like, how about we come back up to the surface, get on the ground together. All these students are coming here. And the Bible can quickly become like a workshop, a place of work. I'm like, how do we help each other stay at home in the Bible? And so I said, let's start. Let's start reading a common text, we called it. And. And what we did to very start it was in 2005. We made our first daily reader. I even have a copy right here. It was for lent of 2005. And you'll notice I drew the COVID art. Okay. One of my mottos is, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly at first. At first I'm just like, let's get something in their hands. Let's not perfect this endlessly. We can iterate on the way. And that's really our story. But we created a daily reader for the 40 days of Lent. And people, I mean, they all had Bibles. Yeah, sure. But the issue isn't having a Bible. I'm always saying, how do we get the word of God out of the Bible and into here and into our lives? How does the word become flesh in our lives? And so we pulled texts and readings and we passed them out. Look at it. It's just got its own little homemade spiral bound.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah, yeah.

[J.D. Walt]

People ate it up. They ate this word and so much so they said, what are we doing next semester? We started making a scripture reader comment reading together every semester. Okay. In time, churches started saying, we've heard about those readers. Could we get some of those for our church for this spring, for Lent, for Easter, for the fall? And we're like, well, let's pray about that. Yes, we would love to get you some readers. And so we just printed more. And these orders started growing up, and I thought, you know, this is. This is a little publishing company we've got here. And from the very start, we had already started calling this thing seminarius. We gotten a grant from the Lilly foundation to help us do this. The word seminarius is the Latin word for seminary. Because when you're in academic communities, you do fancy things like that.

[Nick Perot]

That's right.

[J.D. Walt]

To show people that you know something.

[Nick Perot]

How else are you going to impress anybody?

[J.D. Walt]

Seminarius is the Latin word. What it actually means is seed bed. And that's what seminary means and the whole thing. Guys, how do we get back in the seedbed and sow the word of God in the soil of our lives together?

[Nick Perot]

That's right.

[J.D. Walt]

And that's where seedbed started. 2004, 5 was our first reader. You know, it took us Till top to, till 2012 to fully move out into something that was really church facing and world facing. You know, one thing, the other thing we've learned is everything takes longer, is a lot harder than you thought it was going to be and costs a whole lot more than you imagined. That's just the nature of it.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah. And that's right.

[J.D. Walt]

And this is a long game.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah.

[J.D. Walt]

We, we said at the beginning this is a 50 year sowing for what we hope will be a hundred year awakening. And there's no shortcuts. And it's day in and day out, waking up, growing up, showing up in our hearts, our homes, our churches and our cities. And Nick, talk a little bit about the journey of what we might call, you know, if this was like rough draft, do it poorly. Where have we come along the way with this?

[Nick Perot]

Well, I was going to ask first. I mean I'm even curious to know how the daily entry began to take shape into the form that we kind of all know now. You know, I know originally it was a scripture and then it was, it

[J.D. Walt]

was scripture and like reading.

[Nick Perot]

So when did it become. Consider this from the start. When did we add the prayers? When did you add the journal prompts? Because I, and I can't even remember when did the consecration prayer. At the beginning.

[J.D. Walt]

Yes.

[Nick Perot]

It's all iterated and grown. Right.

[J.D. Walt]

It is totally grown up out of the ground. And yeah, when it started, I didn't even write anything at all because I'm like, what have I got to say? I'm like, I don't have anything to say. And let's, let's, let's get God's word and let's find somebody who's been dead a while, whose writings have survived. We would put that in there. And then we started calling it. Well, it was actually after we got to seedbed proper, you know, in 2012 and 13 and 14. I'd been through another about decades of difficult things.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah.

[J.D. Walt]

And, and it's when you go through difficult things that the Lord gives you things to say.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah.

[J.D. Walt]

It comes back. It comes by hard things.

[Nick Perot]

We must answer. We must go through many hardships,

[J.D. Walt]

many hardships to enter the kingdom of God. And who said that? Peter or Paul? One of them said it in the book of Acts.

[Nick Perot]

Someone who knows hardships, you know, and

[J.D. Walt]

the Lord just began to craft or bring forth a message that he'd been, that he planted in me long ago. Went through a crushing pressing and now it's began to be wine and oil. And, and it evolved over time. To.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah.

[J.D. Walt]

I always wanted to say, you know, hear now the word of the Lord, and I want that to stand apart on its own.

[Nick Perot]

That's right. It's.

[J.D. Walt]

It's another category altogether, of another order of magnitude. And then I say, now consider this, consider this.

[Nick Perot]

You're properly aligning yourself.

[J.D. Walt]

Exactly. I'm, I'm hardly a. A teacher. I don't consider myself a Bible scholar. I'm a Bible lover. I've studied the Bible a lot, but that's not the measure of my teaching.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah.

[J.D. Walt]

And it, and frankly, it's. The Lord taught me long ago that if you're going to give something to others as manna, like that's day by day, he said, you're gonna have to learn to receive it as manna day by day. And that's what it's been.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I wonder how many people listening now are trying to think back how long they've been involved. You know, at New Room, we always, we used to ask people, okay, how many people have come four years or five years? How many people have been here 10 years? Well, the same goes for the, you know, the wake up call community. And you know, it wasn't always called that.

[J.D. Walt]

It was the daily text, the seed bed daily text. Let me tell that little origin story.

[Nick Perot]

There you go.

[J.D. Walt]

Okay. The most popular devotional in the world. You probably don't even know. This is called the Moravian Daily text. Okay. This is right out of a place called Hernhut, which is a place in Germany. Count Zinzendorf. This would have been in the 17th century. There were refugees coming to this wealthy landowner in Germany. It was a place called Moravia, now present day Germany. And they needed a place to stay and he took them in and they established an intentional Christian community there.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah, and that's where we also get banned.

[J.D. Walt]

That's where we get bans, banded discipleship. Well, the fact, the truth of the matter is that Methodism owes almost all of its origins to Hernhut. John Wesley. This is the story. He was on a ship on his way to America and the ship was called the Simmons and it ran into rough seas and he thought, we're going to die, this is it. And he was panicked. This is when he realized he did not know Jesus. He knew a lot about the church and about Anglicanism, but he's like, I have no assurance that it's going to turn out for me if this ship goes down. He looks over, over to the side and he sees a group of families and they're singing hymns on the ship and they're exuberantly joyful. They knew the storm was there too, and, and he, he, he went to, he went on to America, had a terrible experience, an utter failure. He was a failed missionary. Comes back to England a couple of years later. First place he goes, he's like, I gotta go. Where were those people on that ship from? I've gotta find out what's going on with them, that I need that. And he went to Hernhut.

[Nick Perot]

Now, were they on the boat as missionaries? J.D. because the Moravians were like a missionary force for their numbers. The reach that they have is remarkable.

[J.D. Walt]

It is. And this is what happened in Hernhut. They, they tried to start a Christian community. They could not get along. They were just at each other's throats and, and Count, and Count Zinzendorf said, let's, let's enter into a covenant together. And they consecrated themselves and they had what they call the, the Moravian Pentecost, I believe it was. The Holy Spirit visited them and electrified, illuminated the community. They started a prayer meeting. That's right, that day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah.

[J.D. Walt]

That lasted a hundred years. And that's where the modern missionary movement was birthed right out of Hernhutt. Well, one of Count Zinzendorf's practices, one of the community's practices, we said banding. That's where we learned, that's where Wesley learned banding was every day, every year, they would take 365 Bible verses on pieces of paper, put them into a big bowl, think the bowl's still there, and fish out a verse for every day. And they called it the Moravian Daily Text. They started publishing those in books with little devotions and a little hymn for fragment after. And so, you know, we still, like artists.

[Nick Perot]

Hey, good idea is a good idea.

[J.D. Walt]

We are Methodists and we're like, let's. Our deal has been, we've been trying to get back to the roots of what really was the greatest awakening in one of the greatest awakenings in world history, the British Awakening.

[Nick Perot]

Well, and that does get to, like you said, if everybody's just kind of generally here together, to be religious together, you know, it can devolve very quickly, but it's, you know, it's putting some guardrails together. How are we going to make this work? And so let's have a regular prayer meeting. Let's have groups of three to five. And what you begin to get to is, is a real formational movement.

[J.D. Walt]

Yes.

[Nick Perot]

Where you Begin to make sure that everybody are feeling the same way. We're aligned together. We're all moving in the same direction. And you know, that's, that's what we've kind of adopted into what was the daily text and is, is now called the wake up call. Because we realize that we're all spread across, not just this country or spread across this continent, we're spread across the world. Joined every morning together as a family. As the family. The body of Christ carrying on into the world with that same mindset. It's powerful.

[J.D. Walt]

We're all in different, many of us are in different denominations. We got United Methodists, we got Global Methodists, we got Baptists, we've got people living in Hernhutt type communities in Australia. There's really remarkable.

[Nick Perot]

We've got people in Africa and Canada, you know, I mean, all across the world. And we have young and old and we have male and female and we have pastor and we have, you know,

[J.D. Walt]

you know what we're doing, Nick? We're reading the Bible together.

[Nick Perot]

Together. That's right. It's a meeting with Jesus every day.

[J.D. Walt]

That's right. We're meeting with Jesus and we're. He is the teacher of his word. I am a witness, just like many other people. And, and it's still quite small, but powerful. Yeah, potent.

[Nick Perot]

I mean, it's interesting to, to see how the community has helped inform what this is. You know, it's. Yeah, it's the feedback and it's hearing, hey, what, you know, what's resonating? How is this changing your life? What, what is, you know, God opening your eyes to? What are you learning about him? That helps us understand, you know, helps us understand what's going on. Sometimes I don't think we know what's happening. We're just.

[J.D. Walt]

This is a community. So along the way, one of the things we started talking about and teaching on. Well, we started putting journal prompts in the, in the daily entries. Like it's your turn to talk, it's your turn to reflect back. You know, it's revelation, God's word.

[Nick Perot]

That's right.

[J.D. Walt]

Response. Okay, what I'm writing every day, that's not revelation. That's response. And then we come down to prayer. That's response. And then we come down to journal prompts. That's response. Where we're inviting people and people have, they've. I've had people send me so many pictures of their journals and spiral bound notebooks and scraps of paper. And so we thought, what if we were to Make a journal.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah. And because the nice thing is it's actually going. You know, you have a book that you read and you go back to it in a couple years and you might read it again, and, you know, it'll hit maybe as hard as the first time. You know, I remember reading that.

[J.D. Walt]

Oh, you totally forgot it. You. You. Have I read this before? Because I read it and I'm like, did I write this?

[Nick Perot]

Well, that's just it. It's when I read what I wrote, like, rereading the author's words is okay, but seeing what I thought is like seeing how I received it, seeing the state that I was in, reliving that awakening and seeing it again. You know, we did journals.

[J.D. Walt]

You got any of those handy?

[Nick Perot]

Well, I mean, we started, you know, we. A few people might remember these, which were these Wake Up Call journals. We put together this. We started to make these after we decided we needed to switch the name to the Wake Up Call because we felt the Daily text, you know, was a good homage to where we came from. But when you're starting every day saying, wake up sleeper and rise from the dead, you know, that's what we're talking about.

[J.D. Walt]

You don't have to explain what Wake Up Call means. When we did see bed, Daily Text, people are like, are you gonna send me a text on my phone? And they say, well, what's seed bed? And then, well, what's a text? And I'm like, oh, we need a better name here.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah. And it was never about us. The Daily Text isn't about seed bed. You know what I mean? It's about Jesus.

[J.D. Walt]

We did the journals. People are like, oh, we like that. And kind of flipped through that. What that looks like.

[Nick Perot]

What we started doing is, you know, we would just put, you know, we were kind enough to be able to get in IV to put in there. And so we would put that day's text in, and then we would just give lots of. Just space to write. But oftentimes we weren't able to get the entry in. Sometimes it hadn't been read because you were. Hadn't been written or. Yeah, it wasn't ready yet. So we were like, well, we'll. We'll give a journal piece they can write down. But, you know, that's. That's. That's most of the way there. But then we started to think, okay, well, how can we take, you know, basically a lined journal?

[J.D. Walt]

But we started making the books, too. You got any books handy? The old ones.

[Nick Perot]

I don't have any of the old ones. Handy. No, hang on. But I mean, okay, I got one out in my living room. But yeah, we've also, I mean we've touched on so many parts of this. Some people remember these, these field guides for daily prayer. I mean, this is coming.

[J.D. Walt]

The content after the series.

[Nick Perot]

That's right, that's right.

[J.D. Walt]

There's. Encourage one another.

[Nick Perot]

There's the many people, many people we finish, finish a series and say, hey, who wants to buy a book copy? And people would raise their hands and pre order and then we'd have to race to get it done.

[J.D. Walt]

What happened? A few months people would send me pictures of their three ring binders that they printed off every entry and punched holes and put them in the binder. And I'm like, we should start making books.

[Nick Perot]

That's right.

[J.D. Walt]

We're obviously not in religious retail here at Seabed. We're sewing, not selling.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah, I mean we have, I mean we were saying today that some, some people develop resources or they make content, you know, based on what they think people should, should do or what they should read or what they should hear. And we like how the wicked call community tells us, you know, what we need to be working on and what's landing, what's, what's, what's making a difference. So. But where we are today.

[J.D. Walt]

Little prayer book we made.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah, so I just held that up while you were away. We had, we've had these prayer books. These things were. We had two different sizes of it. People don't know it. This is, I think Steve Bed's best selling resource in terms of quantity sold.

[J.D. Walt]

Yeah, for sure.

[Nick Perot]

We just. I just saw a video of somebody in Hawaii who was doing an unboxing. Did you see that?

[J.D. Walt]

In another language.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah, in another language. Opening up their little pack of daily. Daily prayer books. Right?

[J.D. Walt]

Prayer books.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah. And then of course we had a lot of people know this. The bands field guide was talking about how to work with a band and the importance of being in a group. So we've kind of taken our journal and we've taken our two prayer books and our band books. And then we're taking books like this that just have the weekly or the daily content.

[J.D. Walt]

Daily content.

[Nick Perot]

And so what we finally put together that we're launching next.

[J.D. Walt]

This is our magnum opus.

[Nick Perot]

April 6th. Yeah, our magnum opus looks like this, which is called Unpuzzled, is the first entry. But moving forward, our aim is for every Wake Up Call series to be featured like this, where people can use it almost like a workbook and go along and all of these. All of these entries come, you know, with the entry, the title, the consecration, the verse writing space. It comes with group discussion guides. It comes with prayers. Many of the prayers that people know, like the prayer preparation to open the Word. You know, we have the, you know, the prayer of consecration. We have the Bible creed in here. We have the swords creed in here. The prayer demonstration. I mean, we just tried to jam this.

[J.D. Walt]

And it's got journal space.

[Nick Perot]

Oh, tons of journal space. That's the whole thing. You get to, like, you can see where you can get your entry and you can get your questions. You can get your journal space. It's got.

[J.D. Walt]

And it's not a little bitty book that you're trying to figure out, how can I write in the margins of this thing? It's this thing. It's a little bit larger. It opens in your lap. It falls open. It's made for responding to revelation. That's the point.

[Nick Perot]

Well, I think we came to a point where we realized, how can we tell people it's important to read and journal and then not give them a way to do it?

[J.D. Walt]

Right?

[Nick Perot]

And similarly, how can we tell people, hey, you know what? It's best? Well, like we say, one Christian is no Christian. Engaging with this on your own in isolation is not going to bring the full experience of encountering Jesus in the we, in the us, in the body of Christ. And so how can we tell people that's important and then not give them a way to do it? So we're like, okay, well, that means we gotta get some group discussion guides in here so people can have the help to be able to talk about it. We're trying to take what we view, feel are the values of this week.

[J.D. Walt]

4 conversation guide. You see that QR code? If you put your little camera, your phone camera on that, it'll open up. I'm doing a separate little video teaching each week that will pop up in your group, and It'll be about 10 minutes, and it'll prime the conversation.

[Nick Perot]

That's right. That's right. So this is just this. I'm really excited about these because I feel like we've finally taken, like I said, our core values and what we have always talked about, and we've actually done it instead of kind of dancing around it a little bit. And we'll still probably iterate on it a little bit. I'm sure it'll.

[J.D. Walt]

Y' all are going to tell us what it. What we forgot and what it needs. And. And I've already found things that we forgot to do. But we're not going to tell you what they are because we're going to see if you can find them. But you know what, What I've. Along the way, I started hearing like, oh, we, we do the wake up call in our Sunday school and I'd write them. I'm like, well, tell me how that works. Yeah, that's how we came up with Conversation Guide. Listening to what's already happening in these little classes all over the country.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah. And we hear too, about people who are in a band and how do they kind of all stay on the same page? When one person's in one city and one person's retired and one person's working, how do we all keep on the same page? Well, you know, we all kind of follow the daily tax.

[J.D. Walt]

Exactly. And their band, they're not doing Bible study, but they're all reading a common text. It's like the soundtrack. And when they get together as a band, they just dive into the band questions.

[Nick Perot]

That's right. And that's going to lead to lots of little Moravias, lots of little Hernhuts.

[J.D. Walt]

Little Hernhuts. You know, hernhut means the watch of the Lord. And that's really what our vision is for every local church.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah. In America.

[J.D. Walt]

The watch of the Lord. We're keeping vigil, we're reading the Bible together. We're loving one another. We're actually praying and we're moving out in demonstration, in mission, in the world.

[Nick Perot]

Well, that's right.

[J.D. Walt]

It's revolutionary. It's so simple.

[Nick Perot]

Consecration leads to transformation, leads to demonstration. That's right. That's right. And if we're not getting it outside of. Outside of us, then what's it all for? Well, personal transformation can only be understood if it, if it spills out, if it goes around, if I'm not taking that love, taking that light from God and reflecting it like a mirror to those around me and hoarding it for myself. I've missed the point in time that's called fruit.

[J.D. Walt]

And fruit grows on flourishing trees.

[Nick Perot]

That's right.

[J.D. Walt]

It's beautiful. Well, we, we. We probably have said enough here today, at least for our first time doing this together. But we want. We wanted to give you the full story behind what's about to come out. And we want all of you to have a copy of it so that

[Nick Perot]

this is not the. Not the last one, because right after this we have another one coming up.

[J.D. Walt]

We have Dan Wilt coming with all the things called all the things I love the Subtitle of that book, it's called Everyday Ministry and the Power of the Holy Spirit.

[Nick Perot]

At the end of our gospel series, J.D. we put out a survey and we asked people, what would you like to see covered on the wake up call? And of course, there were all kinds of suggestions about different books of the Bible.

[J.D. Walt]

Revelation, revelation, A lot of that, A lot of that.

[Nick Perot]

But do you know what the number one topic was?

[J.D. Walt]

Holy Spirit.

[Nick Perot]

The Holy Spirit.

[J.D. Walt]

Holy Spirit.

[Nick Perot]

People want to know what does it look like to live in the power of the Holy Spirit? What does it look like to. Looks like Jesus move in that way? Well, that's right. That's what our friend John Thompson will tell you.

[J.D. Walt]

Yes, but that's that. Yeah. Dan Wilt has written a beautiful.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah.

[J.D. Walt]

Six weeks. And then coming on the other side of that, we're going into Philippians with a study that we. And we're coming back on some that we've done several years ago and we're reframing them into these workbooks because we want a church to be able to do unpuzzle, whether it's actually now on the wake up call or not.

[Nick Perot]

That's right.

[J.D. Walt]

We want you to be able to, to come into it and experience it on demand in your time as you want to.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah. Especially considering many of those were never recorded for the podcast.

[J.D. Walt]

They were never on YouTube pre podcast days.

[Nick Perot]

Some of them were pre consecration prayer. They were pre, you know, some of the other journal prompts, the things that we've put in there. So we're just kind of taking kind of what we've learned. And you're even, I know in some of these you've even gone back and take another look at those, seeing how they feel. So it still feels fresh. And I think people are going to, you know, hear it again for the first time. Right.

[J.D. Walt]

We went from here to here. It's only taken us, what, 20 years. 20 years.

[Nick Perot]

That's true.

[J.D. Walt]

Oh my gosh. It takes. Things aren't easy.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah. It's a long obedience in the same direction.

[J.D. Walt]

We just keep going. You just keep sowing, you just keep putting the seed out and then that brings the more seed and well, thank, thank, thank you, Nick, for, for jumping in here today. We're going to let you get back to your records. You got still a listen ahead of you today.

[Nick Perot]

I got.

[J.D. Walt]

You know what it's going to be?

[Nick Perot]

What's that?

[J.D. Walt]

What is it gonna be? What are you listening to?

[Nick Perot]

Oh, I can't even. I don't remember right now. I think I'm in a Tom Waits record right now, maybe it's called that. As me, I'm trying to think. I have a few. It's, it's a list of, I think 13, 88 albums. So, yeah, that's how far along I've got. It's. It's a little psychotic, I think, but we'll get there. It'll last me, you know, this way I don't have to decide what it's gonna be. So, yeah, coming up, I've got Randy Newman and I've got the band and I've got a group called the Divine Comedy and I've got the Beach Boys and I've got all kinds of people coming up in the next week.

[J.D. Walt]

Then you're going to get to the seas and you're going to come to Chris Tomlin.

[Nick Perot]

That's right. That's right. Well, you know, I'll have to. I don't know if he has any records on vinyl, but if he does, I want him.

[J.D. Walt]

Well, thank you all, everybody, for, for joining us for this special episode of behind the Scenes. Really behind the scenes, behind the Music. There we go, full circle. One of my favorite shows on mtv, behind the Music. And yes, and listen, if you're not aware of the Wake Up Call, we want you to subscribe. You can see links, you can see links in the, in the information on this call, either podcast or YouTube. But the surest way is to go to seedbed.com wakeupcall one word, name, email address, you're in and we'll be right in touch on that.

[Nick Perot]

Yeah, the absolute best. Anything that people can do in terms of leaving a comment on a video, leaving a rating on a podcast, any of these things, they all help. Not only does it help who you're telling, but it amazingly, these, these things like YouTube, things like Apple, they'll send the wake up Call for us as we kind of let people know that it's valuable. So any help that people give like that, it doesn't, doesn't do anything for us. Just gets the word out. Yeah. So we're really grateful for every, every positive recommendation, every share. It's, it's great. And that way we can keep giving this out for free to people, which is exactly.

[J.D. Walt]

And that's the thing too. We want to say, you know what, if you can't, if you can't get a book, hey, it's, it's still free. Like, what kind of business model, what kind of retailers are we giving it

[Nick Perot]

away from the front door of the shop?

[J.D. Walt]

But yeah, It's. It's not that just shows you it's not. That's not what it's about for us.

[Nick Perot]

No.

[J.D. Walt]

And anyway, you already knew that, but we appreciate you and. And thanks for joining us. And we'll see you. Where are we going to see him? Nick?

[Nick Perot]

We're going to see him on the field.

[J.D. Walt]

On the field?