EP357: Jeff Talks Digital Missionary Conference

All right, hey everybody, Jeff with a special Thursday stream, special Thursday, it's interesting,

Stacy is out there watching, knock knock anyone here, check one two, okay yeah, I'm a little

late jumping on the stream, 11.06, you know what guys, I have been, guys and gals, I have

been burning it on both ends this week, and so I'm sorry, I'm sorry, this is atypical

Jeff Reed this week, and it's unfortunate, it's the week heading into the Digital Missionary

Conference, it's coming up right around the corner, which is why I want to do this stream

to talk about all the cool stuff that's coming up, because I just, I'm excited, I am excited

about what's coming up with the Digital Missionary Conference this fall, and we need your help

to get people connected and get them in, so we're going to talk a little bit about, especially

the Digital Neighborhoods one, the first one that's coming up on the 17th of September,

and so hey, before I get going, like just so, so thankful and appreciate, you know what, forget

it, let's just get going, hey, you know what, this fall, the Church Digital, we are sponsoring

four Digital Missionary Conferences, yes, some would call it crazy, and those people were

correct, but hey, you know what, you only live once, so we are doing four Digital Missionary

Conferences.

The fact is, is that we, I, I really wanted to go after a niche audience, instead of trying

to reach everybody, I wanted to reach somebody, and I wanted to get some representation for some

of the niche audiences that are out there.

I love what's happening in the European space, I love what's happening in the gamer space,

I am so passionate about, you know, the recovery space, and seeing that move into digital and

virtual spaces, and so I was like, hey, let's just do everybody, and by the way, let's just

do a, a general discipleship, digital discipleship, digital church planning conference as well,

and so next thing you know, we're sponsoring four Digital Missionary Conferences in between

September and October.

People told me I was crazy, some people advised me, literally, I've had conversations with some

organizational leaders that said, hey, Jeff, that is probably too much, and in response,

now I see that those people were correct, but it's cool, because it's going to be a lot of

fun, we're going to have a great time, there's a solid lineup that's coming in, and we're going

to have an incredible experience to give people exposure, it was funny, you know, we've got

like the chat bot on the Missionary Digital website, and it comes, I'm the guy who gets

the chat, and yesterday morning, okay, this morning, somebody was like, hey, would you get

your fat head off the screen so I could read the text, I'm not actually sure what that was

about, sometimes there's hate in the, you know, in that space, but this, yesterday morning,

it was a good conversation, there was a guy who asked, I assume it was a guy, that may

be on me, but somebody asked, what is a digital missionary?

And so I had a really interesting conversation with someone that was in the Asia area, who

was interested in exploring the idea of what a digital missionary was, and that's why we

do these digital missionary conferences, is to get people exposed to the idea of being

a digital missionary, let them recognize that they have influence in digital space, and that

digital can be used for evangelism and or discipleship, so super cool, and all these are the themes

that are resonating with our digital missionary conference, the digital neighborhoods conference

that's coming up September 17th. All right, so I'm gonna try to do something here. I confess, normally I do a

check on this, and I didn't push my magic button to make sure it was set up, so we're gonna see if it's

gonna work. Let's hope for the best here. No, it's not, but I think I can fix that real quick.

Um, yeah, give me one second, everybody. Oh, this is awkward. Oh, this guy doesn't know what he's doing. Yeah, you're right.

It's, it's been that kind of a thing. Um, where's my switcher?

Nope, I'm not, I'm not here.

Tom says he's not here, uh, which is nice. You know what? I'm just gonna talk about it. We're not gonna,

we're not gonna use that. That's cool. Hey, the digital missionary conference, we've got a great

line up coming up for, for the digital missionary conference. Um, the, the first one, digital

neighborhoods, like this is the most broad. Like I said earlier, it's not the niche audience of the,

of the one, two, three of the, the Europeans, what they're doing of the, uh, the gamers, what they're

doing, and it doesn't have a really tight topic like recovery does. Instead, um, what it is, it's very

much centered around what the gospel, what the gospel looks like in digital and virtual space.

We're going to have a lot of conversations centered around, um, centered around the idea of, uh,

platforms as places, recognizing that there's different cultures on these platforms, platforms

as places. That's really the heart philosophy of the church digital, where it's like the platforms that

we are going to the church digital. They're like places, they're like countries, they're like

communities. And so since they're like communities, since they have cultures, let's use those cultures.

Let's recognize those cultures and use those cultures to our benefit when, when sharing the gospel.

Oftentimes we do see that, that cultures actually trump of, of platforms, trump the cultures of places.

TikTok culture is TikTok culture, whether you're in Pakistan or whether you're in, in, in America.

Um, virtual reality culture, VR chat culture is the same, whether you're in Africa or whether you're

in Europe. And so as a result of these things, it's, it's important for us to recognize the culture of

the platforms that we're in. This is really what we're going to be talking about in the digital

neighborhoods conference. We've got Jason Morris kicking off, uh, the conference. He's going to be

talking about rethinking the digital map platforms as places. So excited about this fluent faith,

speaking the gospel into everyday life. Jason, or excuse me, Jeff Vanderstelt. Okay. The second speaker,

the guy right after Jason Morris, I have been waiting for this talk to happen to the church digital

family for a very long time. Jeff Vanderstelt is, is, uh, uh, a pastor here in America. Um, I have,

I have loved sitting down with him and having many conversations centered around digital and he's

a supporter of what's happening at digital. He does a lot of work centered around discipleship

in microchurch movements and in his, in his, uh, runs an organization called saturate. Um, but, but he has

a, um, he wrote a book called gospel fluency and a lot talks a lot about how people find Christ in,

in the experience of recognizing the gospel in all of our lives, just not in the conversion period,

not just in finding Jesus and recognizing the sin in our lives, but how we, the gospel is in our lives

every day. And every day we draw closer to God through, through discipleship. And, and, and his,

his ideas here on gospel fluency, as it ties into the work that we're doing for digital evangelism,

is truly beautiful. And so I'm excited for gospel fluency for Jeff Vanderstelt to share here in

this conference moving forward. There's another talk we've got coming in the third talk at a digital

neighborhoods conference on September 17th, Cheryl Boyd from crew coming in and talking about audience

mapping. Now, audience mapping, this, this may be a new concept, you know, concept for some of you.

Um, you, you've heard about the angle scale where, you know, understanding where people are in their,

in their, um, in their faith. And, and it's like, okay, an atheist is, is as far away from God as

possible. Uh, because there is, they don't even believe that God exists and agnostic believes there's a

God, but that's not them. Uh, but they don't know who it is. So at least they recognize there is a God.

The God just doesn't care. And so, you know, there's, there's varying degrees all the way up to the

missionary who moves over to, you know, Africa or the fully devoted Christian, whatever that looks

like. That's, that's all fire for Christ. And so that's the line that most of us have to have,

you know, as we look at and talk with people and help them understand who Jesus is, that's the

journey. You know, some would say that's the, almost the customer journey and understanding

who Christ is and then growing beyond that to understanding what Christ has for their life.

And it's, it's interesting. Cheryl Boyd, and actually this came from some of our TCD friends,

um, Wes and his wife, they have, uh, started working with this idea that it's, it's not a straight line

as much as it is recognizing, Hey, there are some people that if they believe this, their next step

is going to be this or this. So in, in atheist, I mean, really the, the biggest challenge is,

is to help them find Jesus or help them discover there's a God. And in that, that's a huge challenge,

you know, in itself, just that, that small little step. But if there's, uh, you know,

somebody that is, uh, is, is going through a divorce and going through a depression, a hard season,

there's limited steps that they can actually take away from God or close to God, closer to God.

And so it's this audience mapping is all about the gospel and discovering how audience mapping works

in digital and virtual spaces. What is that path, uh, for your audience, for the people that you're

trying to reach in digital and virtual space? How are you helping people take those next steps,

your audience? And what are the pathways they can go? The, the, the purpose here is not to understand

a, a large culture as much as it is your culture, the people that you are reaching, who is your audience?

And let's map the path of how they are going to find Jesus through your ministry. And where are the,

the distractions, where are the divergence, where are the issues going to pop up?

And in the average customer journey, the average Christian journey, the average discipleship journey

to help them get there, it's going to be great. And I'm excited about number four, um,

Bekeleyshenko. Uh, so Bekeleyshenko also with crew. It's interesting. We actually have a lot of crew

in, in this conference. Didn't necessarily mean it that way. It organically happened, but crew, uh,

Bekeleyshenko is coming in. He is, um, one of the high up leaders within crew global campus created for

Christ global. I want to say Bekeleyshenko is responsible for, oh my gosh, I heard the stat at

one point. I actually want to make sure that it's right. Um, I think it was 2.4 million churches

planted or 2.4 billion churches planted. I honestly, I don't, I don't remember, but this man has, has a

huge undertaking, uh, that he's working with crew where he is trying to see one church for every

thousand people planted across the globe globally. And we're talking a massive movement. He, he works his,

his organization with crew is global church movements. And so he's trying to create churches

on a massive scale globally. It's phenomenal. The work that he's done. The one, one of the first

conversations I had with Bekeleyshenko was through, um, Rick Warren's finishing the task and Bekele sits

me down and says, Hey Jeff, how do we get a one church for every hundred people on the planet globally

using digital tools? Hey Jeff, how do we get one church for every hundred people globally

using digital tools? By the way, the answer to that question is now the church digital, um, coming

off of that and with finishing the task, I actually was so moved by it. I built it and you all are now

operating inside it with the church digital on how we're creating a disciple making movement globally,

utilizing digital tools and teaching church planting and things like that. It's, it's an early step,

but it is a very important step in this movement to create a digital and virtual movement. Now,

Bekeleyshenko who literally is, is responsible for millions, if not billions of churches is

responsible for billions of people finding Christ historically over time. Yeah, I don't think it's

billions because there's not that many billions of people on the planet. It was 2.4 million. Um,

it was, uh, but as, as he's doing that, Bekele's coming on to do a, uh, to do a talk on, uh, apprenticing,

apprenticing in the wild, reproducing leaders for digital mission. How do you apprentice? How do you

multiply yourselves? What is the challenge, uh, to, to multiply and now to have both working

simultaneously and in the same or diverging and starting to plant and do something else? What

does multiplication look like in a, in a digital missionary or a digital church's life? You know,

what I, I, digital churches have grown. I mean, I, I look at some of the stuff that, that we're,

we're doing and what we're seeing, you know, among our brothers and sisters that are out there planning

globally. Digital churches through the church digital have grown. I don't know that they've multiplied yet.

I don't know that we've created a really good example of multiplication at this point. And

Bekele is going to have a hard conversation with us that it's not just about growing. It's about

multiplying through that. And so these are the four keynote talks. We've got coming up platforms as

places. Rethinking the digital map. Jason Morris kicking off with that. Jeff Vanderstelt, uh,

fluent faith, speaking the gospel into everyday digital life. Uh, Cheryl Boyd from crew,

audience mapping, tracking spiritual thresholds online. And then Bekeleyshenko, Dr. Bekeleyshenko,

uh, apprenticing in the wild, reproducing leaders for digital mission. It's interesting. All of these

talks, these are not just talks we've, I've actually asked all of them and there's time. Uh, there's a,

there's an application. There's a, a, a strategic step. There's a, a lab. There's something that is going

to be done off of each talk to have you start to process through and to take home with you

an action step, a, a first step and any intermediary movement towards applying what you're hearing

in this talk. This is not like a conference where, Hey, la, la, la, everything's great.

This is more of a summit where you're getting some dirt underneath your fingernails and you're

going to start to see some work happening, uh, in, in your ministry. Now we can't do it all for you,

of course, but we can help you get started on that. And, and there's plenty of time and opportunities

for, for follow-up and the like with that. So, um, I would say check out the conference,

the conference digital neighborhoods conference is one of four conferences we're doing. There's

more information for the, for the digital missionary conference, the digital neighbor, it's gone neighbor

gone, friend, digital neighborhoods conference at missionary.digital slash neighborhoods missionary

digital slash neighborhoods. It is, you know what we might as well rename this thing and call it,

it's all about the gospel digitally. This conference is going to be all about the gospel

digitally. Wednesday, September 17th, uh, kickoff at 10 AM Eastern excited about what's coming up with

that. Now, um, coming off of that, uh, we do have, uh, other conferences, uh, on September 24th,

we have our recovery conference September, excuse me, October 1st, we've got our European conference

and October 8th, we have our, uh, uh, gaming conference. All information on all the conferences

is at missionary.digital, www.missionary.digital. All the conferences are free.

Just sign up, register, show up. Once again, we did this last time, all video on demands are only

available if you register. So, uh, if you're like, Hey, I can't be there. How do, how do I want,

I'm going to just watch it on YouTube? Sorry. You're not going to, we're not going to release the,

the, the conferences, but, uh, the, the, the talks, but you can publicly, but you can register.

And by registering, you'll have access to the talks privately. Okay. Awesome. So check out more

information at www.missionary.digital. Now also with, and I will say this, we'll highlight this later,

but, um, there's a lot of breakouts that are happening with the conference. We're doing a lot

of breakouts and excited about this. It's going to hit the website next week. So I'll be able to

do a screen share and show you some of these, but I just, I wanted to hit some of these breakouts that

we've, we've got coming up. There's a lot of really creative people hitting a lot of really fascinating

topics on this. Okay. Like Keegan. Uh, oh my gosh, I'm so excited about this one. Let me see if I'm

going to do something here. How do I freeze that column, uh, to make that? Okay. I was just going

to have to make this really big. Uh, I don't know. I can do that instead.

I hate spreadsheets. Does anybody else hate spreadsheets as much as I hate spreadsheets?

You probably don't know that, but I do hate spreadsheets. Okay. Um, Keegan and Bevan, uh,

Keegan West and Bevan Geinder. I'm excited about this one from create international. They're talking

about how to communicate, how communicating cross-culturally with honor, authenticity,

and humility. What a great topic. Dr. John, Dr. John Harris coming on, empowering believers

beyond the pews. Anne Bosarge, uh, talking about being the church on social media. Craig Bradley,

Craig's a new friend, uh, executive director of AO lab, uh, is talking about introducing, uh, the seed

Bible. There's a new digital Bible platform he's been working on and it's, it's, it's really cool.

I'm excited for you all to see this. Um, Nick Smith are our friends from Tapos is coming on to

talk about from sermon to search discipleship powered by AI. Um, Micah Bales is, is talking about

planting, uh, uh, microchurch networks, uh, utilizing a pest. And so, um, very, very good. Alan, uh, Alan,

uh, excuse me, Christian Ninja. Uh, I can tell you, I don't know that Christian Ninja's got his name

public. Is it? I don't know. Uh, Christian Ninja is coming on our friend from taco. Uh, why are they in

their room reaching the ones who shut the door? Cameron Bailey, uh, Cameron's with digital mission,

uh, project, uh, unlocking Google secret ad toolbox. Dr. Tim Yee is doing soul care for digital

missionaries. Lucas Pulley excited with this one. Uh, Lucas Pulley is from Tampa underground,

underground network doing a talk on being called, called trying, risking, planting, and leading from

a growing awareness of calling. Wes and Leah Brooks, uh, coming on and doing a talk, uh, on their,

their company venture AI from scalable follow-up to personalized discipleship for everyone.

Uh, Liz Anderson is with crew and she's doing a follow-up on, um, on the audience map. She's

going to do a lab in one of the breakouts and is going to walk everyone who attends the lab on,

on how to do create their own audience map. Uh, Andrew Jones, uh, is going to do, uh, is going to

be talking, you know, a tall, skinny Kiwi. I was like, who's Andrew Jones? It's tall,

skinny Kiwi. Kiwi's doing a talk on augmented reality. Stacy Knapp is doing a talk on recovery.

Uh, Alina Delp, uh, pastor, uh, pastor Alina in VRMMO, uh, is doing a church, uh, talk on real

faith in virtual reality spaces. Uh, and, and of course, Tim Selleck, who's, I mean, Tim Selleck

actually is as listed on here last, but he's going to be a solid talk, solid talk right here. Talking

about reaching the one and, and, and helping you understand who your one is. Y'all this,

these are some phenomenal breakouts that we have, and we're only offering the breakouts

through the nine 17 conference. We'll have the times of these, uh, on the website here

very soon, but we are excited about, uh, what's coming up with, uh, the keynotes and the breakouts

that'll be represented at the nine 17, the September 17th conference. All right. And so

you can check out more information on, on all the nine 17 digital neighborhoods conference and all

the conferences at www.missionary.digital. But here's what I need you to do. I need you to bring

somebody with you. If you're, if you're watching this stream, that means that you are, you're friends

of Jeff at the church digital. You've been hanging around for us a while. You've seen the stream,

you know, the inside route, you know, what's going on with fam and everything in between.

Um, I want you to bring somebody with you to the digital missionary conference. Remember when I was

like, Hey, you know what? We really haven't multiplied much in, uh, in the, in the digital

missionaries. We really haven't multiplied much into, into digital churches. Um, this is our opportunity,

uh, to, to find somebody and say, Hey, you know what? I'm really passionate about this thing about

sharing Jesus online. Would you maybe want to be a part of that? Why don't we go to this conference

together and, um, and see what it looks like? Why don't you, uh, even, even put on like your social

media channels or in your communities, Hey, I'm, I'm going to this thing. I, I, I'm really excited

about this. Uh, who would want to come with me? Who's interested in learning more and start to get

the word out on our, uh, digital neighborhood, um, conferences, uh, on our digital missionary

summits and start to, uh, to get people included into that. So here's what we did. We, the church

digital, actually Barbara's word revolution team. Uh, they've been, they've been working around the

clock to get this conference, uh, off and going. It's, it's been a, been a hard push, but love the

work that they're doing and love them for doing it. Uh, they created a series of, of media kits that are

available to download now for each conference. Uh, each conference is available at, um, a share,

share, s-h-a-r-e dot missionary dot digital share, s-h-a-r-e dot missionary dot digital. There's, uh,

graphics, um, there's a pre-written out posts. There's a lot of resources. There's a list of

speakers and themes, uh, for each conference right there on the page that you can easily grab them,

uh, download them and share about them in, in public environments. You know what? Uh, I'm,

looking at all the, the hate, uh, on, uh, on for, um, spreadsheets. I would even say, you know, Tom,

Tom says he hates, uh, spreadsheets more than me. Melanie says she hates them more. You can even

put these graphics in spreadsheets. I don't know why you would, but you could, you could put them in a

spreadsheet and then you could email that over to someone and say, I don't, the one thing I probably

hate more than spreadsheets is email. Um, so that just got weird. Yeah. And so we're excited about,

um, about getting the word out with the, the share. Um, and so help us get it into, you know,

a lot of you connected or connect connected into other networks and to other things. And, and this is an

opportunity. This is an opportunity to get the idea of digital missionaries into maybe some of these

other networks, some of these other organizations, maybe even your own church. Hey, you know, invite

your pastor that doesn't understand or doesn't know how to support, um, you as a digital missionary,

or thanks all the stuff that you're doing online is weird. Invite them to the digital neighborhoods

conference. I guarantee you between Jeff and Bichelli, his mind's going to be blown. Nevermind Jason

Morris. Oh my gosh. And in the audience mapping of Cheryl, like the, the first conference is mind

blowing. Uh, the second conference is going to be gut wrenching. Uh, and then we haven't even gotten

to like the European and the gamer stuff. Like it's going to be boom, boom. And so this is a great

opportunity, uh, to get people connected. By the way, we've, we've got, um, we've got Nicholas chiming

in here. Oh, darn. That's the first day of my local crew staff conference. Folks might be tired.

Uh, man, there's this thing called coffee, Nicholas. That'd be great. No, I know. And you're

on the other side of the planet. Um, the conference starts 11:00 AM

American Eastern. Uh, and so I'm pretty like 10 PM your time. Um, yeah, like get it, get a hot

chocolate kickback. Um, I mean, Hey, and also Nicholas, I mean, if it's, if that's crew,

it's Bichelli Shanko, bro. You got Bichelli Shanko speaking. He's, he's like one of the,

I don't know, the, the top five crew big wigs. Like it's not, not this ain't nobody to like sniff

that man. That's huge. I could not believe we got Bichelli Shanko to line up. Jeff Vander

Stelten, Bichelli Shanko at the same conference is, is, is mind blowing to me. Uh, and so I'm so

thankful for, for that to happen right there, which is why you need to be at the 917, uh,

digital neighborhoods conference. I'm working on somebody for the next one. And, um, I'm not,

I'm not going to say who it is publicly, but if this one comes through, I may just retire

just outright. I'm done. Like I will, I am, I am going to not do any more conferences because I have

just hit the conference peak. If, if what I want to do lines up next year works, I don't know that I

would actually do that. I'm not going to quit, but, um, it's, it's, there's some really big names,

some interesting ideas that were kicking around next year. And, um, I would, I'm looking forward

to talking about and getting out there as soon as I can get confirmations. So, Hey, listen, um,

this is going to be a short stream today because I got a lot of work to do and I got stuff I got to

do to make sure these conferences are going to happen. And, uh, we're, I'm working hard, working

my networks to get the word out, to get people to show up and register for these conferences. And so,

uh, I'm, I'm going to go, but here's what I need you to do. I need you one to register for the

conferences, www.missionary.digital. Number two, I need you to invite somebody. There's some

shareable resources and assets for you at, uh, missionary.digital, excuse me, share,

s-h-a-r-e.missionary.digital. You can download a ton of assets, those at the, at those two, uh,

websites. And then three, I need to see you 917 for the digital neighborhoods conference. All right.

Sounds good. We're going to talk more about this in the, in the, in the conferences and in the

streams to come, uh, beforehand, but I love, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this more on the

Thursday. I think for a stretch, it'll probably be Tuesday and Thursday through the conference

season. Uh, uh, hyping up the conference, teasing the conference on Tuesdays, celebrating the conferences

once we get them done on Thursdays and kind of do a go between in there. You know me, I like to,

I like to mix it up. And so I think that'll be a good way to do it. All right. But I, at this point,

I'm going to land the plane. Uh, I think I'm the only one who's been talking for him. By the way,

thank you everybody who's been in the audience. Uh, I'm, I'm even seeing, uh, Sonic, Sonic showed up

to do a, um, uh, uh, uh, open office with me this morning and, uh, I was not there. Yeah. I, I actually

had, I had an appointment in the physical world, Sonic, and, and, and I couldn't make my, my digital

appointment with that. And so I do apologize for, for missing that. Uh, my open offices, I will be

spotty over the next couple of weeks as I'm just focusing more on conferences. And, and actually,

I was doing a contract job for a physical church here in town. And so I just, honestly, I forgot

and, uh, came home after the very early meeting that I had and like went unconscious sleeping for

a while. As you can tell, I'm kind of tired burning it. You know, I started to say I'll rest when I'm

dead. Not the right approach. Probably not the most mentally healthy approach. I actually tell my

daughter all the time, you're no good to us dead. Not that she's suicidal. She just really works hard.

She gets that from me and I'm worried about her burning herself out. And so I can appreciate the

people saying to me right now, Hey Jeff, take it easy. You know, good to us dead. I'm saying it to

myself. I appreciate that. Thank you. But we got a couple more weeks to push and then the conferences

will go on cruise control. But until then we got to, we got to keep pushing to, to get there. So

thank you. And thank you for doing up, helping in us, helping us get the word out to share dot

missionary dot digital. All right. Hey, we're going to land the plane for everybody else that other than

me that was on the show, which was nobody. So for me, this is Jeff with the church digital.

Thanks for hanging out with us on the stream today. And, um, we'll see you next time on the show.

Have a good one.