Gary Sheng & Will Preble - Silicon Sanctuary and Christofuturist Vision

Opening and Context

Gary opens post-chiropractor adjustment: "It's hard for me to imagine if I didn't have that, honestly. I get, like, I'm aligned."

Will shares impact of Gary's recent article: "I had a friend of mine I shared it with, and he listened to the whole interview, and he talked about it for like two hours. You're putting some good stuff out there."

Gary updates on recent developments: "I got invited to speak at the STOA, which is this philosopher YouTube channel that I personally benefited from. So it was kind of like a cool full circle moment." Mentions upcoming conversation with Paul VanderKlay end of October.

Silicon Sanctuary Vision

Initial Concept Presentation

Will introduces early-stage concept: "I've been having some conversations. I have a mentor who's like 80 years old. He's very successful in the traditional business sense... Still does consulting part-time."

Core problem identified: "There's not a lot of mass transfer of wealth influence, like, doors opening to the next generation of builders right now. Like, there's a lot of people in the body of Christ who are successful, kind of done their thing, and they're just, you know, chilling."

Silicon Sanctuary Framework

Will reveals the brand: "Please don't share this brand yet, but the concept is called Silicon Sanctuary. So the idea being to basically create, like, these Christ-aligned alternatives to the Silicon Valley tech networks."

Vision components:

• "Not starting with a physical place, but having sanctuary cities, essentially, where you build hubs and build local, global ecosystems"
• "The real focus would be connecting the older generation of success, wealth, mentor, capital, etc., to the next generation who's coming up in the body of Christ"

Will's uncertainty: "I don't know if it should be a venture capital firm or something totally different, or not even manage capital at all, but just focus on the network part of it."

Future of the Church Discussion

Gary's Core Question

Gary raises fundamental issue: "Where I feel called to explore is the question of what really is the question of what does the future of the church look like?"

Critique of current model: "Why does the church look like a building with a guy in front of the stage, and you're just kind of like passively consuming for two hours on Sunday?... There's like a little show with full-time clergy that where there's kind of like this distance between the person attending and the person doing the presentation."

Vision for change: "What I think it needs to go is more like everyone should be discerning their calling. And for some of these super wealthy people their calling now is to give money to the future of the church. But what I'm not saying is give money to existing institutions."

Bottlenecks to Church Growth

Gary identifies key questions: "It's getting alignment about what's bottlenecking the growth of the church. It seems like an interesting question for me."

Technology opportunity: "What technology doesn't exist that can be built to help get the word out in Muslim-dominant countries."

Christofuturist Movement

Philosophical Foundation

Gary on the term: "I know the term Christofuturist is a kind of interesting one. It kind of captures, like, it's kind of evergreen, kind of an evergreen meme, where you're just like, what is the future of the church?"

Will's alignment: "I really like, I mean, the Christofuturist direction is very aligned with, yeah, I mean, everything I've been orienting towards as well."

Institutional Critique and Responsibility

Gary's provocation: "Men are to blame for where we're at today, because we're supposed to be leaders... And then put differently on an institutional level, the church is to blame for our civilization right now."

Assessment: "The church has been pussified, like in ways where... we let Satan take over everything, essentially. Satan uses TikTok. Satan loves TikTok."

Edge City Model Application

Gary's Revelation

Gary connects dots: "What about this can be forked and just made Christian? So they recently went to Bhutan to do a week-long little retreat for international tech people to meet local tech people... It's kind of cool... but why is this not happening for Christ?"

Proposal: "If you feel called to do this and you want to travel more, I would totally show up to your events. You know, let's say you're like, hey, bunch of smart Christofuturists, including some wealthy ones. Let's go hang out for a week in XYZ special location that has some sacred significance."

Pop-up Sanctuary Concept

Will's response: "Make a pop-up sanctuary, right?"

Gary elaborates on sustainability model: "You basically just need every, like, pop-up village to activate enough energy, including funders' excitement, to then fund the next one, right? And so the first product was really continued excitement around gathering."

Vision for gatherings: "Finding people that really value that kind of fellowship that's currently very rare. And I think it could be easily be a shelling point because I don't know of anything like this right now."

Trans-denominational Coordination

Generational Advantage

Will identifies opportunity: "I think there's a lot of people in our generation that are even coming into Christianity from a different angle... They're thinking about these things. And so it's less of like... let's get everyone to be Orthodox or whatever."

Gary agrees: "We can have our theological debates and all that, but it's like, we need to be, we're diverse in thought, but we need to be unified in purpose."

Power Centers and Independence

Gary emphasizes strategy: "What I'm not so subtly hinting at is that we need to create a separate body of power, like a nexus of power... That makes it so that they don't even quibble over the denominational differences because they have self-interest."

Example of trans-denominational appeal: "Every denomination wanted to claim Charlie [Kirk] when he died. That was the perfect example. When you're powerful enough, when you are almost undeniably like a servant of Christ."

Capital Allocation Crisis

Will's Fundraising Experience

Will shares insights from raising for Covenant: "I've met with probably 10, 15, like, tier one, like, pre-seed, like, early stage people in the valley at this point. I have Eric Ries, the lean startup guy, is, like, doing some advising for us now."

Eric Ries connection: "He's writing a whole book on how to build incorruptible companies, like, how to set up your governance so that your company doesn't get turned into, like, the opposite of what it sets out to be."

Vision Deficit Among VCs

Will's observation: "It's interesting to see like how many of the capital allocators don't actually have a lot of vision. Like they learn, they build instincts and intuition for the money making side of it."

Arizona dinner anecdote: "I was at a dinner, private dinner with like 80% representation of all the relevant funds here, 80-90%, and people were just sitting around, and they're like, we want the future of Arizona to be better, and so how are we going to do that? And no one had any answers."

Critical assessment: "You're the ones allocating capital, you have no idea what you're allocating it towards. It's like you can't even articulate a vision of what you say you want."

Discipleship Gap in Technology

Current State Analysis

Gary asks critical question: "Who's getting the discipleship to, if you have technological gifts, where are they being discipled right now? And I mean that in a broad sense of the word. How are they being nurtured to fulfill their calling to God?"

Answer: "They're not. The answer is no. They're not. They're having to figure it out for themselves."

Movement Building Need

Gary on individual limitations: "Most people are not narrative builders. They're not movement builders. They want to plug into movements, right?"

Event circuit importance: "The event circuit of Ethereum was critical, has been critical to the development of Ethereum itself, the whole ecosystem. Absolutely essential."

Vision for Christian tech: "I just see the future of Christianity exacting, just like stealing the best patterns of the secular futurist world. These conferences, these pop-up villages, these are the social innovation technology of the future."

Turning Point for Technology

Political Model Application

Will proposes: "What needs to happen in technology is what Turning Point did politics to an extent, not the same model, not the same, like, form and function, but it's kind of like that, you know, you start that movement."

Key advantage identified: "What Turning Point had... they had a lot of wealthy people... who were like, oh, I'm interested in the future of civilization, like in the future of America. So the money was not a problem."

Vision Casting Need

Will's assessment: "It's just no one's really coalesced, no one's cast a vision in a way that's compelling enough to coordinate, to get people to start coordinating in that fashion."

Gary summarizes: "Building technological power and progress according to the Christian worldview seems like a good idea."

Cultural and Civilizational Concerns

Islamic Expansion Discussion

Gary on Europe: "Europe has fallen, man, and I just have to imagine that extremely wealthy Europeans that care about the future of civilization are like, whatever we are now is not going to allow our heritage to survive."

Clarification: "It's totally not about race, it's totally not. I've lost friends over this. It's not about race, it's about destructive totalitarian ideologies like Islam that want to destroy Christianity, that want to wipe us out."

Dearborn Example

Gary cites specific case: "Seeing the videos about the prayer noises in Michigan, Dearborn... Where they're just, like, playing, they're all, like, everyone can hear it at 5 a.m... That's takeover. It's a show of force."

Martyrdom prediction: "Unfortunately, there's going to need to be bold Christians that are going to have to be willing to be martyred by Muslims clearly standing up for their faith and not letting Muslims take over American cities."

Minneapolis Anecdote

Will shares local example: "In my home city of Minneapolis... the guy who played the pirate in Captain Phillips, like, that guy's from Minneapolis. He was, like, running for mayor, and the Democratic Party, like, he had so much support, and the party, like, rescinded their [support], because they're like, oh, they're just gonna, like, install their own leaders."

Ascendance Long-term Vision

Company Building Goals

Will outlines: "My brand, Ascendance, my studio, the goal there long-term is to be building these Christ-centric technology companies... Focused on sovereignty and stuff like that."

Scale ambition: "I want to create, because it can't just be about, I don't want to just sit and build companies, I think the goal is to get 1,000 builders to build companies, and maybe not just companies, build communities."

Discipleship Through Building

Will's comprehensive vision: "People that are leading in the capacity that they're called to lead to shape the future of the world through a Christocentric lens."

African Discipleship Model

Alternative Church Structure

Will shares powerful example: "I have a friend here who's from Africa, and now he's a fund manager and, like, has a crazy story. But, like, came here from Africa when he was 18 with nothing, and he's [now] 32."

Home church model: "He does discipleship at his house, and he has gatherings on different nights and stuff... I was there last night, and there was, like, deliverance, like, people being delivered from demons and stuff like that."

Institutional Resistance

Church pushback: "One of the churches that we go to, they got mad at him because people, like, young people were going to him and getting more, like, they were growing more in three months than they grew in three years at the church."

Gary's assessment: "Do you know who the main Pharisees are going to be? The leaders of the traditional institutions. The Christian churches."

Next Steps and Collaboration

Inaugural Gathering Concept

Gary plants vision: "What I want to plant on your heart is an inaugural gathering, maybe it's in Arizona, I don't know, for like a Christofuturist transdenominational invite."

Gary's availability: "As someone that doesn't have a lease, you know, I would be very open to going to events if they fit the schedule of my... basically my mission."

Will's Resources

Will mentions potential: "I have some people here that could potentially like get funding for the first one... kind of a matter of like timing and pushing out the vision a little bit more of like what this specific brand and entity does."

Key Themes and Takeaways

1. Silicon Sanctuary as Bridge: Connecting generational wealth with emerging Christian builders in technology
2. Edge City Model Adoption: Using pop-up gatherings to build Christian tech community without institutional overhead
3. Trans-denominational Unity: Focus on Christ as unifying purpose rather than theological differences
4. Discipleship Gap: Critical lack of mentorship for technologically gifted Christians
5. Vision Deficit: Capital allocators lack coherent vision for the future they claim to want
6. Cultural Urgency: Recognition of civilizational threats requiring bold Christian technological leadership
7. Movement Building: Need for "Turning Point for technology" to coordinate Christian technologists
8. Alternative Models: Home churches and discipleship houses showing more spiritual fruit than traditional institutions

The conversation reveals deep alignment between Gary and Will on the need for new Christian technological infrastructure, with concrete plans emerging for inaugural gatherings and continued collaboration on the Christofuturist vision.