EP344 - Alan Hirsch Talks the Role of Digital in Incarnational Ministry

all right hey everybody welcome to the church digital we are doing a special

live stream i i i want to call this episode 344 numbers uh escaped me we actually talked about

this yesterday on the normal stream like i just i lose track of numbers these days but

i am very excited about the conversation at hand we're bringing on we're bringing on uh maybe you

know i started to call him the the father of like modern church movement but i don't know

if that's weird to anyway we're bringing on alan hirsch into the conversation very excited

um about alan uh a vision on visioneer uh for for many uh church multiplication organizations

and movements and really just an inspiration uh to me in general and we're going to get into

into some things alan's been a supporter of of digital church of of digital missionary for for

a while and really what we're going to get into today um is is the is the heart of digital what's

the role that digital plays in incarnational ministry now right there that question already escapes my

um my my general knowledge consensus knowledge so probably we're going to start the conversation

with hey alan what exactly is incarnational ministry and then we'll get into the deep end of the equation

because uh you know i just ain't that bright uh but hey before while i ain't that bright uh we we do

work a little hard here with the church digital and i've been promising this so we the church digital

we did a digital missionary conference uh back in april early april april 2nd and had 1100 people show up

day of from 80 some countries around the world an incredible online conference super excited about it and

you know of course uh when you do one thing well you've got to build on that and so we had announced

that we were doing a fall digital missionary conference and uh and so we but we didn't just

want to stop at one missionary conference we are doing four we're doing a series of summits

uh for uh the digital missionary conference in september and october and i told everybody

that we were going to tease them we're going to come up with the titles we're going to announce them

today and so i am a man of my word we're going to get to alan hirsch in one second but i told you

we're going to be rolling out the new digital missionary summit series the series of conferences

we are going to be doing online 100 free uh for for anyone and everyone uh around the world this fall

and so uh you know someone somewhere has got to have a drum roll happening uh jesse carbo is not

doing one off camera right now even though i wish he were but let's just go ahead and roll this out

um we are doing thank you jesse too little too late but uh we've got four of them coming up

first up uh let me see if i can zoom in i can't can i zoom in yeah there first up we're doing on

september 17th digital neighborhoods discipleship happens where life does now um this is probably of

the four that we're doing in the fall this is the one that is the the most uh discipleship centric

uh digital discipleship this is the probably the one that's the most general across the board that

we designed one conference for everybody and so that's going to be september 17th information is

available at missionary.digital the website missionary.digital the second conference of the digital

missionary conference is oh that oh it's actually this is the third one the fourth one is a secret i

see what we did here the third conference october 1st the european digital missionary conference this is

we're in partnership uh with a european german missionary conference um uh miss uh mission alliance

and so we're excited uh about the european uh digital missionary conference this this conference is going

to be interesting they're going to have like 10 or 11 ted talks like 11 or 12 minute ted talks

boom boom boom boom rapid fire excited about how this one's going to be coming out with the european

digital missionary summit the third summit that we're doing actually it's the last one uh time wise

october 8th is the digital missionary gaming summit now this one we're actually hosting in discord

excited about this one but the it's a gaming summit and designed for people that are uh doing ministry

in and around gaming spaces so twitch discord inside video games uh even some metaverse vr stuff's going

to be happening in this one and so we've we've got neighborhoods uh second we've got european

third we've got the gaming now we had announced those three previously there jeff there's nothing new

here i know i know i know be patient the next one this is the new one we had not previously announced

this one yet and this is going back to september 24th we are doing uh a a a christ-centered recovery

recovery a digital recovery conference creatively titled control art recover uh i'm gonna be honest

that was uh chat gpt let's give credit where credit is due chat gpt is a freaking genius uh yes it will

take over the world one day yes but we're gonna enjoy the time leading up with that as much as we can

all right so we are doing a a conference centered around uh honestly the necessity for recovery in

digital spaces and uh well if we're gonna shine light into the darkness of digital we need to be

prepared to shine that light on ourselves and so recovery is not just for people with addictions it is

really for all of us and in a personal level i can tell you that it is highlighted uh that it is magnified

that is amplified uh my ministry after going through that and in resolving some of the issues that some

of the baggage that i've carried in my own weight so we are doing in my own life we're doing four

conferences overall uh first off september 17th is going to be the um digital neighborhoods conference

september 24th wednesday um recover uh recovery conference third is going to be the european

conference and fourth is going to be the digital gaming conference digital missionary gaming summit

yeah that's all i got commercial wise i i told you like i have people that want me to say this for a

while even my own team we're excited putting this together uh we have been busy booking people uh from

all sides of the planet um europe to south africa to california to you know i i'm trying to find

somebody out in like uh singapore to book in to get like the asia pacific islands and hey for the stream

today we're bringing in uh someone from uh oceanica and so excited for this so so let me uh to it let me

push the button and bring everybody on uh but let me set up how we ended up here by the way uh alan

hirsch thank you for joining us once again uh jesse carbo is no stranger to the church digital founder of um

digital missions project project shins is singular singular or plural it's plural plural digital

missions project and is on the the board of the church digital as well so excited to have uh both

of you all on today now jesse started a um it was writing an article for missio nexus that actually got

published uh alliance missio alliance i'm sorry uh and it got published a month ago uh jesse maybe you

want to highlight that a little bit sure sure yeah missio alliance um you can find them at missio

alliance.org and we wrote an article called beyond twitch incarnational ministry in everyday digital

spaces really just talking about can you do incarnational ministry in the digital space and so

yeah i'm looking forward to this conversation with uh true missiologist here with us from australia yeah

yeah so what what i really found out is while talking to jesse about that article

the more that i was like oh my gosh i really wish we could get like alan hirsch and ask him a couple

questions uh about this and and so we did and so really wanted to um invite alan to come on and start to talk

to us a little bit uh as a as a alan is it i can call you a digital supporter like i don't want to put

words words in your mouth there right yeah sure i i certainly support this i do not claim any speciality

in it um i follow uh at a bit of a distance uh somewhat um amazed at uh what's going on but uh but

certainly i i think um we we need to explore this this whole field so you're very much a supporter

i i love this and so a digital friendly guy who understands incarnational ministry my let's let's

bring him in and let's start to maybe pull back uh some of the curtains here and get a better

understanding uh but hey i i don't want to assume anything because i'll be honest i and i'm not

kidding i don't think i really understood what jesse meant when he said incarnational ministry

uh until i said hey jesse when you say incarnational ministry what do you mean

so so alan uh the the uh missiologist that you are uh in in less than i don't know two million words

what exactly do we mean when we say incarnational ministry yeah if you you picked up on the fact that

um i call myself the lord of the long answer right so in less than two million words i think yeah i

mean i've got a counter over here so talk slowly yes uh well talk slowly uh no i'll go as quickly as

i can well incarnational ministry essentially um is a form of uh mission engagement with the world that

models on what god has done in jesus christ in becoming a human being so when we talk about the

incarnation of the son of god and the incarnation of uh logos whatever that we we we i mean it's a

remarkable act right so like here we have the reality of the eternal god the maker of words worlds with

words um who speaks the universe into being is eternally present uh actually becomes one of us

and is in the neighborhood for 30 years and no one even noticed right no one figured it out hey

the person who created the universe is you know right there in my neighborhood in fact they mostly missed

it um and then even his disciples don't get it until much much later in the game right that who they're

dealing with here and uh so there's something about the hiddenness of god in in in the human or in the

ordinary that is kind of played out here and i often so in forgotten ways i play it out this way that

i talk about the six pieces way of trying to frame the incarnation and then translate the incarnation into

our mission incarnational mission so first let's look at the incarnation you look at jesus would you discover

that jesus became one of us is present i talk about presence in the neighborhood uh the reality that in

jesus god became fully and whole wholly present within human existence right so that's one presence is

fully present proximity it's kind of similar to presence but um is in not only in the neighborhood

he um he's not only a human but he's in the neighborhood but he's also involved where other

people are so he's in the the marketplaces the pubs uh you know in the streets where people are is in

proximity to them this will relate a little bit to maybe when we talk about this uh you know in third

places and fourth places engaging those kind of spaces um other one we say is powerless that he comes not as

the kind of conquering king but as a kind of suffering servant and this also says a lot about the

incarnation uh the kenosis we talk about in theology of the self-emptying of the son of god um powerless uh

prevenience that's an interesting one um uh when jesus says i only do what i see the father doing

he's recognizing that god's already gone ahead and he attempts to pay attention to what god's doing

and and do what god does right um and this is really important you know in in our

going into kind of areas where we i'm unclear of what's going on we just find out what god's doing and

join with him proclamation that's when we proclaim the gospel jesus did became the kingdom um but it

usually this plays out very well once you've done the other ones um you know once you've actually

established credibility presence you know seen what god is doing you're acknowledging it the only other

one i would add is passion and this we my wife added this into the equation she talks about the

incarnation of the heart uh where we engage sympathetically with the pathos or the suffering

or the anxiety of the human situation and condition so you know where we feel what god feels and these

are all based uh on the on what jesus experiences the six p's but they translate into incarnational mission

as well so we follow you know we do the same thing we need to be present in the neighborhood we need to be in

proximity with people be in contact with him now we find out what god's doing we proclaim the gospel and

the kingdom of me and we feel what others feel we we have an incarnation yeah that's broadly the way i

kind of talk about at least in one of my books that makes sense no totally and uh even with the accent

um like just once again you know i'm hearing very smart words uh empathy proximity uh presence eternal

um is this is it's it's it's a it's a rich picture i i think that that you're you're painting here

uh and but you know a lot of this like the presence the proximity um often it's perceived to be missing in

digital or it's it's the absence of it digital is the um is the cheap version of it i cannot be with you in person

and so instead i will facetime you um i i cannot be with you in person so i am going to

write this email instead um i i i would love to maybe just the dialogue some with you just even like a

shooting from the hip um what what is the role of of digital what is the the what part does it play in a

uh in uh incarnational uh ministry in an incarnational relationship what what what should digital be it

for this well um jeff i can't i i mean i i i can't like i said speak as an expert in digital i'm not

but i i am aware and i've spent a lot of time trying to think about the role of technology in our lives

and um the digital space uh vr kind of spaces uh that you often engaged in are simply expressions of

how technology impacts us um for instance i mean like a hundred years ago whenever the phone was

uh invented it creates the same conditions maybe less impact but you know when you know people at a

distance can talk to each other and uh this you know that already starts the process of

depersonalizing to some degree um which can be problematic um but

we have somehow managed to kind of integrate it pretty well in fact i think telephones and and cell

phones etc etc now are actually ways in which we keep in touch with each other and probably have a more

relational connection than simply what was before that was letters which is another technology if you

will uh you know that was used much slower and also deeper not personal but yet personal you know but

i i just think playing that out i think digital is is an is an example of that but taken at a whole

different level and um there are problems in it i think we need to be very clear but there are also

opportunities representing to us and actually uh challenges which we as christians who have got an

obligation to be present in all spaces where people are um when we follow the incarnation we you know we

say what would jesus do here i mean what's the incarnation mean in the digital space i think we have to be

present have to be have to have proximity we need to kind of feel what you know to engage where people

are at to feel what they're feeling and to humanize them um to bring dignity to bring good news in in

those kind of spaces so i think it's a very much a it's a good challenge for us and i think you guys are doing

the truth yeah go ahead i think alan a good a good follow-up question would be is would jesus use digital

uh yeah that's interesting question uh you know i'm i'm much more engaged uh with ai um and the same

question might come about with that um the one the way i actually think about ai it's going to be as i

i think jeff has really said it's going to rule us entirely but um but the the when you see this in

in a broader context um ai is not god even though it's going to pretend to be omniscient and omnipresent

it's going to actually be highly problematic in that regard because it displaces god in a lot of

people's lives you're going to turn to ai for all your answers you know not to pray you know that's going

to be an issue no question about it but um but but god's still sovereign um ai isn't independent

uh reality and even it was god is still a lord over all things so it fits within god's overall frame

and in his purposes it's not that he's surprised oops they created ai you know um i think he knows what's

going on but it doesn't mean it's not going to cause great confusion and complexity for us down below here

and um and i think the same as digital i mean it's would he use it um yeah i think it's a created form

uh i think he would um but i do think you know there might be a challenge there to constantly remember

that actually embodied relationships you couldn't have a marriage online could you i mean you could you

get head in that direction but you couldn't really you certainly couldn't make babies and don't think

about that too much online um which kind of shows you like somewhere along the line that you know

ultimately these things are personal yeah and relationships are deeply personal and embodied

experiences um i think that might be just a you know just to just to keep it it's it's it's not

ultimately real but it's definitely real but not not perfect right yeah yeah you're right it has its

limitations digital um like like a lot of things in life there are limitations to us to its use um and

you know to its use case right and um uh using the phone analogy like like and i think i would even want

to go back and say that even if we take digital off the table when we talk about incarnational ministry

and we look at ministry leaders church leaders i think that's a struggle for a lot of pastors to even

live it out even if you take digital off the table and we're not trying to figure out like what's the

the digital solution many pastors that i you know even myself when i pastored for 25 plus years like

the temptation to shut the door to my office at the church building and be totally unaware of what's

happening in the neighborhood right and expect people in my church to invite people to this gathering on

sunday morning and consider that ministry and all i do is preach and maybe counsel during the week

and we really miss the picture of what it means to be incarnational and so so going to your phone

analogy i can use the telephone to promote my product or i can use the phone to be present and to listen and

to connect and to build a relationship yeah right and so it's really about the question isn't so much for

me would jesus use it but how would he use it how would he use technology to be present in people's

lives to to bring truth to bring the gospel to build relationship and i think that's the real

like if we really get down to it like the church right now in the west like we're introducing all

the technology is moving so fast like i think you know you were saying you don't want to be an act

you don't want to be a self-proclaimed expert i don't either because i don't think jeff does either

because technology is moving so fast and changing so much i mean i'm the generation that the internet

you know started you know and i tell my kids you know my youngest is 17 and i'm like oh baby i remember

when internet was you know that dial-up modem and you had to wait 10 minutes before it was ready to

use you know it had to warm up and it had all these weird sounds and she has no idea i mean she has to

watch a youtube video just kind of see what that was like you know and um technology just moves so fast so

it's so i think there's an incredible opportunity for us to help encourage pastors to think more like

missionaries today i'm even though i have an organization called the digital missions project

it really is a project because a lot of my conversations really are coaching and encouraging

pastors to to really think about intention like what is the intention behind your ministry and and

and how do you live that out even with digital off the table forget about digital like like how do you

live that out like what how do you do you know what's going on down the street do you know your

neighbors like i'm in a church office here and you know this church has an issue with like they don't

even know who their neighbors are they have the same people that have been coming here

for the last 40 years and that's it and hopefully with this new pastor they just got there'll be some

revitalization work and they got to knock on the doors and get to know the people that live here

so yeah oh i think that's very very very useful and very good comment um and i do think um yeah we

can be highly disincarnated in ordinary ministry so you know any any criticism we might put into kind

of issues of digital i mean it's just applies all around as you've well stated but the other i think

that in your article uh you you said as well which i think is really good point is that not to

simply use the digital space as a place for marketing or selling something but for actual

being present to people that are there and and having regularity in that um being there for them

listening humanizing like i said you know properly rather than simply using you know internet as a

kind of way of kind of getting your ideas out you know i think it was a useful comment too bro

yeah yeah not 90 i think 99 of churches right now in the west the way that they use digital

is really just a marketing tool they're blasting and from yeah they're yeah it's a platform they're

just blasting information about their events um the next thing that's coming up and they're not

they're not having conversations they're not engaging i remember one time i was at a pastor's retreat

maybe about a year ago last september and um we were talking about this digital and and this pastor

new church planner from from from from los angeles he said to me he goes man i want to use digital

and social media but i don't want to be a tick tock dancing pastor like in his mind the way to use

technology is that he had to be like one of these tick tock dancing pastors and i said no not at all like

he's like well how how would you like what would i do and i said well here's a thought like do you

use whatsapp he's like oh yeah every day do the people in your church use whatsapp okay what if you

said that on sun you know if you preach your sermon on sunday morning what if on sunday evening

you said you were going to be on whatsapp for an hour answering questions and having dialogue and

conversation about the sermon that that morning i mean this was like a mind-blown moment for this

guy he left there goes man i'm gonna do that that's so simple i don't got to be a tick tock i'm like

technology can be used in meaningful ways to build relationships and engage people and take people

further but we just haven't we haven't i think part of the reason why we haven't thought about how to do

that digitally is because we're not even doing that physically like in irl right in real life we're

struggling even there yeah yeah do you think your your tick tock pastor your tick tock dancing pastor

jesse if he had one hour a week to give would he rather do like that be available in physical space

or be available like that digitally i don't know i don't know if he would rather

be available physically or digitally but here's what i do know culturally people are less and less

willing to do things physically because of busyness calendar competition people just have so much on

their plate and because of the ability of digital technology right people are just i mean look at the

trend of church attendance it's it's in decline yeah what's not in decline is is um the number of

people that are following christian content online like there's a movement of young people that are

coming to jesus because of christian influencers online so it's not that people are disinterested in

christianity jesus spiritual truth people are more guarded about what they commit to physically you know

participating in right so i don't know if the pastor you know he might say yeah yeah i'm willing to get

together with people physically my point is that like if you live in a community where people aren't

willing to get together physically then how do you reach them yeah how do you disciple people

who are less commit like we so we jeff you and i live in miami

that culturally here in miami people are very non-committal you know when i led the network

here for eight years we would invite hundreds and hundreds of pastors to come to events and i would

get all these in you know all these yes we'll be there but it was always like i'm just gonna it's

more like i'm saying yes just in case i don't have something better to do

so so what do you do in that situation like yeah you you want to challenge people and encourage

people there's there's times like you can't make babies digitally you know you got to get together

in person so there's times when you have to challenge and push for that physical connection

and and get in person but then the question is like you know what are how how can we think creatively

about using technology in a way that a lot that creates the room for us to have discipleship

oriented conversations and not discipleship oriented when i say discipleship i'm talking about

not just spewing content out of people that they would consume

but conversations that motivate people and encourage people towards obedience of the lordship of jesus

alan maybe maybe you can help me with this i it's it's funny we we've used to you were talking

earlier about um you know even the having babies uh you know you can't do that physically or can't do

that digitally i'm not going to prove you can um but i i i would say that there's a um there's a

a conception a perception that i'm totally confused now but there's a perception that

a lot of humanity is lost digitally like even that's the knock on on chat gpt is the more that we use ai

the more that we lose our our humanity uh and and oftentimes i've i have found you know this is

non-scientific uh study here but you know the the converse is is true as well that that digital is a

tool that actually can allow you to engage um relationally it can be used as a communications tool

but it is also a very powerful tool towards being able to be in presence with one another um you know

when my wife and i were in college 25 years ago we were paying mob bell 10 cents a minute to to talk on

the phone cross country and now you know we can pick up any device and i can be looking at her uh for

free essentially and so like technology is moving and is and is overcoming some of that that that

human traits that was once lost um or that has taken a while to really start to understand

what do you say to a pastor yeah you don't delve much with the the technology but

um when you talk with people that are are very locked into a way of of doing church you know

so much of what you're doing is even on on that outskirts uh of of new norms and an established

uh kind of challenging the established norm so to speak how do you help them try to see something

different uh how how do you coach them walk with them what are those conversations with you normally look

like that's a good question um um i would just make a comment just briefly before i get to that um

about like i found um this very medium or zoom you think about over i know that you're in florida you

didn't experience uh covered and all that stuff but the rest of the world did um we were you know we

were living in new york where it was getting really quite hectic so we we actually left to go back home

with family um and then you know almost up but was it two and a half two three years of kind of messy

kind of life lockdowns you know we were in the most locked down city in the world in melbourne here in

australia but um with zoom you know it and i realized i mean this was the way i kept connected

and in fact it's a very useful it's a very useful uh way of being connected with a lot more people

than i could normally be and it's kind of pretty much free and secondly i don't have to travel so i'm

saving on all kinds of technologicals and you know producing too much kind of you know carbon emissions

etc so no i i think there are a lot of really really good things uh in in in technology but in terms of

like um the you know people looking at things differently um one of the things we you know

because we do with a lot of people helping them think about church in the different frames so

um often people think of church in the legacy model as a building you know kind of picture it like this

it's got steeple it's always got steeple got pews you know all that stuff in it uh that's what the

church is and helping people think differently about that um you often have to um help them to go on an

unlearning journey in order to learn new things you have to unlearn things that are kind of holding to a

certain paradigm so actually you know developed a process of that called the metanoia curve for

metanoia journey metanoia means paradigm shift by the way and it's a biblical word for repent well

repentance is a very bad translation actually uh when you do you translate metanoia

meta you know what that is don't you meta is beyond over um noia is your thinking now is your mind so

you're thinking what comes out of your mind so thinking fundamentally differently to the way you're

thinking now so in other words experiencing paradigm shift and this is cooked into biblical spirituality

we're meant to have an ongoing experience of this i would argue any move towards god requires it

because god's ever greater god's going to always blow your mind right you can never put god in a box

if you put god in a box you gotta repent it's called idolatry and uh and it's not god that you've

got in the box and your little doctrinal boxes so the idea of having always having your mind blown

willing to think differently it's actually a critical part of biblical spirituality actually and you're never

going to learn about anything without unlearning stuff that got you to the point where you are now

so i that's kind of the thing we we take very very seriously in whatever you're grappling with

uh in order to learn something new radically new what are you willing to unlearn first

sometimes our commitments to past traditions or ways of thinking limit our capacity to engage what god is

doing in the current moment so being open to the present means being open to having your mind blown

to learn again so we're using digital beyond a communications tool we're not just selling

something with this but if we're leaning into um creating community if we're developing uh using this

technology for presence uh to reinforce proximity uh to maybe engage with people um

using this technology

as a as an on-ramp maybe there are people that are more digitally friendly that we want to

engage with in that way before we get to uh engaging them into a physical space

is that is this what i'm i'm hearing from the group uh from the two of you as we're talking about

the role of of digital in um incarnational

jesse i think you've got the you've got this brother what are you feeling yeah you know what

so my adhd like just went into hyperdrive because he said something about unlearning and now i can't help

but like i'm just been processing this idea of like you know with technology it's always forward

movement it's always like learning something new and then you just presented this idea of metanoia and

how we have to unlearn and it's got me it's got me processing like how do you help in a culture

where everything's about like learning you know think about like all the pastor conferences that are

out there you know pastors go to there's so many conferences and you know we want to learn like what's

the next thing to get better more efficient more effective reach more people grow get bigger and

then you're saying for us to be able to do this we actually have to unlearn

that seems almost almost impossible or incredibly difficult yeah

it is very difficult and changing in a system is it takes real commitment

but sometimes circumstances kind of force us into that so like you know um again i i lament this

friends you know like what covered had the opportunity of teaching us is about decentralized

forms of ecclesia you know in smaller more reproducible homegrown local owned kind of version

of ecclesia networked as a movement it was a fantastic opportunity for the church to unlearn

and re-learn and to find a new and far more productive less expensive way of doing church but

hell no we're not going to go there it's going to be doubled down and for most churches it's gone

back to the standard form because that's all they knew um and it's partly

because people weren't willing to let go of prior ideas that they deeply invested in how to get

someone to understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it

often the leaders are the ones most vested in the prevailing system so

actually winning them over is a difficult thing but i would like to think that the kingdom of god

or to challenge us you know to constantly uh unlearning and constant growth um and not sitting with

kind of prevailing forms of church that but for us largely was settled in the 16th century we're

not even living there now why would we insist on running churches like in 16th or 18th depends on

your tradition right um if you're catholic back even further you know why would we assume that the ecclesiology uh which is

is if the ecclesiology idea of church is really not just a physical building it's kind of a set of

assumptions about how the church relates to the world and the purpose of the church in the world

and the way that we've normally conceived it is profoundly in effect it's not effective anything

and it's incredibly expensive so i know this because we've done research that in america when you put the

budgeting and the cost of running the church in america on every on an annual basis up against the conversion

rates in in america it's 1.4 1.4 million dollars per convert in america wow

1.4 million per convert yeah you talk about an expensive system that's ineffective i mean that's

a good enough reason to change yeah and yeah sorry again for us to it's often bound up with the fact

that we invested in this so often it's a financial issue yeah i need to get money for my family to get

yeah you're committed you're locked in yeah yeah and so you're locked into a system like that but we have

to free ourselves as leaders from those kind of constraints in order to kind of lead the church into

new ground and i think again the digital it could prove to be a really a wonderful way of actually

investing our resources imagine if you put 1.4 million dollars into your digital strategy you know i think

you'd get a few more converts if you did it well and you did it incarnationally uh you'll get a few

more converts than you would by running the standard system yeah yeah all right so are you saying so

i'm just curious i want to go back because you said since covid it seems to you as you because you i feel

like you have a a pretty good pulse of the church landscape i mean i'm not i'm not assuming that you know

about everything everywhere but you're talking to network leaders um you know really on an

international level so you're saying your sense is that people have doubled down on the old way

of doing church and are unwilling to do because i and the only reason i'm asking is because from my

perspective which again is very limited compared to your perspective like i'm friends with the guys

over at the tampa underground you know kc underground those guys you know they've been doing what they've

been doing for so long and all of a sudden post-covid it seems like there's been this burst of people

very interested in kind of a decentralized approach to ministry that conversation has gained a lot of

momentum from my perspective again which is very limited no no you're absolutely right jess i i think you

are um but i would say the overwhelming uh predominant kind of church has gone back to running sunday

services yeah but now there are actually real live we call them proof of concept uh movements

that are around now and the microchurch movement being one of them that are actually demonstrating

another way and that's the proof of concept idea is really important because it'll show us a new way of

doing things and by the way just on that fellas you know the reason why you one another reason why you

want to get this right is that when you think about church growth theory well it was a theory it was

brought by donald mcavern comes to fuller seminary becomes a professor there and he's a movement guy

he's bringing movement thinking uh from from his experience i think it was india and um

but this is combined with marketing and management theory you know with peter wagner and those dudes

and it becomes what they call church growth theory contemporary church growth theory

now it's a theory until two churches came along and gave proof of concept they were called willow

creek and settled back um no i mean there were more but fundamentally those two were they created

took this idea and they created two different systems they created huge platforms that prove that this

is a way is viable and it's a way to go the rest of the church in the world went in the same direction

and so all you need to do is to have a few examples of these where it's really kind of working

properly theologically aligned and discerning your way properly you do that and everyone's going to

follow and i think you might very well become one of those proof of concept organizations that you're

looking for like yeah i agree yeah it makes a lot of sense and i've had a conversation with jeff many

many times because you know not to put jeff on the spot but there's times when you know you know like

anytime you lead an organization there are moments when you feel like giving up because you don't know if

it's worth it anymore there's this there's these moments of uh is the word liminality right like

like this this tension this this like is you know should i keep doing this and then you know and i just

keep saying to jeff like like because he's an early adopter like he's a true early adopter he's been

doing digital ministry since how long jeff since 2000 maybe 2000 like yeah so so yeah i'm like man i to me the

sense at least in my gut is that we are one to two years out before

digital ministry breaks loose across the church globally because well not even globally in the west

i say not globally because like i'm connected to people that are doing things in the 1040 window and

that's the only way christianity is growing in the 1040 window is because of digital yeah there are more

converts that come to christ because of digital tools um because they can't do it in person

immediately and so digital has become one of the mechanisms for allowing the movement of christianity

you grow in places where it's illegal so but yeah i think yeah digital has it's it's a heart it's hard to

adopt because they see it as a marketing tool to promote their their products and services um when it really

needs to be more so yeah that's the conversation we've been having is like yeah but guys i think this way it

becomes critically important to bring integrity to this practice uh online i think the incarnational

frame gives you a very good example of how you can maintain a christ-like presence not something that's

manipulative or un-christ-like which is there's more than enough of that crap going around yeah um you know

but to actually uh commit yourself to you know what does it mean to be a genuine jesus-y presence online

and then working that out which i think again um you know just your article is very good bro and i would

say i think it still needs work and i think um guiding people because i think most folks go on board and they

just they're pragmatic or they you know they want to market or sell ideas and create their own platforms

um we're seeing where that goes right and we see what social media can do every idiot's got a

bloody pulpit now haven't they you know and they're just ranting and i mean i can't even follow x anymore

it's just vile you know and but so we as christians need to actually embody a very different way here

and i think uh the discipline of actually you guys actually laying down the template

um the default mode that might follow i think is very important to build in the kind of the character

character issues maybe is a word or uh the kind of a good ethical approach to what does it mean to

gauge online also kind of an awareness of technology and how it changes us we invent our tools and then they

reinvent us social media is a classic where it's caused all kinds of problems in the world because

people weren't aware of it so bring awareness bring thoughtful approaches to this you know in in your

pioneering or or apostolic work and what you're doing now very very important you're laying down the template

yeah it's interesting because yeah i mean you're talking language like you know like the pioneering

work that needs to be done and in some ways it feels like well some a lot of this technology

been around for a while but it's still so new and there's still so much to figure out and it moves so

rapidly um yeah yeah and i think yeah we need to invite god's spirit in this process to help

guide yeah because there's things we're going to get wrong yeah um the other thing i would also

challenge again is something to really think about is to go on you know i'm just you would know this

particularly i'm very big on movement so that's my shtick right you know idea of getting things that can

scale and have large impact you know over time and uh and distance and i think the the

the kind of digital world gives us incredible options there to actually start movements of common concern

or you know jesus movements discipleship what does that look like online you know being you're building

that out each of these become clearer as you build it out but the idea of movements and getting you know

know and i need to spread um jesus idea to spread virally i think is something we need to put our minds to

and again with you know with central ethical guidelines to it as well yeah it's really good

really really good so you know for me it's been by the way if there's questions uh in the audience um

kiwi's having like a side conversation uh as kiwi normally does when he's on these things it's a lot of

fun to see um he's a genius he should be on here yeah meta he should um yeah he can take my spot that'd be

awesome um metanoia it's you wrote the book back in 22 23 published it uh 22 23 somewhere somewhere in

there um yeah yeah we we've talked we've talked about that that in the past um and in coming from

a guy who's been doing digital ministry since the 2000s like it's literally i launched my first online

community uh april 15 2000 um i uh oftentimes i i've been told no it doesn't work that way like

literally the same argument to for 25 years no it doesn't work that way and and it centers around

the church's use of digital community that the church should not use digital community digital

community is um forgive me is the bastard child of physical community um it there's no there's no

god doesn't belong in that space um you you can insert you can you can look at my youtube comments

uh centered around virtual reality and find lots of people that think that uh the devil is uh is in

these digital and virtual spaces yet yet we're we're finding that god is is moving and that people are

finding christ and are being discipled and amongst these spaces atheists are coming to christ um

agnostics are discovering jesus unchurched or re-engaging and even evangelizing and discipling

others uh and this is not a once again this is the the forgetting uh the unlearning portion of it

that we're not it's not a broadcast model it's uh it's a conversational it's a relational evangelism model

a relational discipleship model and it's um and it's picking up it's picking up steam we're still

young with this approach um it is a true missionary model it is going to where the people are at

yeah and where that's really the question you know we we've really pushed this idea of platforms as

places that we look at at twitch the platform of twitch the community around twitch the community of

discord the community of vr chat the community of facebook in many of the same ways that a normal

missions agency would look at uh india china brazil uh and and in that way like like forcing this

digital community is a community worthy of a church mindset um and that you know has been

well received by some and not well received by others i i would love if if i could maybe just a little bit

of your time here let's for sake of argument let's flip the script here a little bit on

incarnational ministry alan you're usually good at thinking on your feet here um

incarnational usually would be micro i'm existing in the neighborhood in i have a presence in the

neighborhood there's a proximity relationship to that and that's where it is and yes we can use

digital as a way to complement that proximity to get people in whether or not or things like that

typically where i you know rewrite the script flip the script and try to do the unlearnings and this is

where it's been a little hard as as of late is this platforms as places where now i'm saying that

you know in discord as it is in the neighborhood and and discord is the neighborhood as well

what what are some of the opportunities or constructive challenges of putting

platforms as neighborhoods as neighborhoods if we're looking at incarnational ministry in these spaces

what what are some of the challenges or opportunities we may be seeing

well i think we've already covered a few of them um the um

i i i i think um you know like going back to the the issue of marriage um which is maybe one of the

ultimate forms of uh human love and ultimately the you know we human beings probably do need physical

contact um i wouldn't i wouldn't say that it's either or i would simply say i think it's a legitimate

space to engage and for some people this is where they could go to church i think it's quite clear

and the fact is i mean like we you know the prevailing churches might might critique it but

it's not that you know most churches are great places to belong either you know you go there you

get basically preached at or you get some sort of religious experience but you know they're limited

so they can be kind of inauthentic in themselves you know so you know if if it is you know that you

know it's jay craanda over it's so funny you're talking about uh saddleback jay craanda digital

pastor over at saddleback anytime he sees me he he's like you know how you know it's uh talking about

incarnational well yeah but you can't you can't have sex digitally well i mean technically you probably

could but that's not and that's not a good thing and we don't want to get it too deep into that

but you know the bible ironically you know paul talks about being single uh and and then there's

there's the flip side towards towards a lot of this and so there are people that live without that

and and i i do not believe physical or digital like it's not it's both there is there you know i'm not

saying it's hybrid i don't want to use that that term in that but there's physical selves and there's

digital selves in that where there's a proximity towards it but um towards both sides of it are

do you see where there's an opportunity to to build relationships that exist only in digital space

i think there will be uh situations where that is the case um um again i i don't know enough about it

um but i think like there are there are some problems related to that with some of the japanese kids who're

gonna do gaming and don't leave their rooms for 23 hours or something like that and um i i think there

will be uh unintended effects uh of going all out in any technology um we invent our tools they have an

unintended reciprocal effect on us um not all of them healthy uh ai is going to be a classic case in

point it was a big one bigger than digital proper because it displays human intelligence and it does

a cracker job of it and it doesn't matter whether you know the theoreticians tell us it doesn't think

like a human i said it doesn't matter but 99 of people are going to treat it like it's god yeah you

know yeah so we're going to be thinking like it will not it thinking like we will at some point

we're going to sound smarter you know uh but we're going to be dumber because we won't do much thinking

for ourselves anymore and that in the long run i don't think is good for us so we need to be aware

of that technology does have a reciprocal effect and that's you know we need to just be aware of it

uh when we inflict it upon other people just to try and predict that you know again we couldn't have

predicted this with social media uh but it has changed things in the the whole anxious generation

stuff and um you know kids now just almost completely you know you know posing for the camera you know

it's it's changed things it had a huge impact on society and not all a bit good some of it's very

good i just think we need to think both ways about it and be i think a wholesale engagement with it um

you just got to be critically aware good and evil in all things and we need to have discernment of

spirits that's good that's good what we solve the world's problems tonight

hopefully we made people think a little more more deeply about it yeah what um it's the other side of

the planet where alan's at so uh it's uh thursday morning where he is so he the future does exist we

do we do make it uh to that point um any uh you know i don't want to take up too much more of alan's time

but um uh closing thoughts jesse as we're wrapping up here anything on your side no i just i'm super grateful for

you alan um you've had such a profound impact on the church at large and in my life and you know we

started a network here in miami and i remember we we started this gospel leadership network and i remember

you challenged me you said you should call it the jesus leadership network and and your challenge really

like knocked me back and i was like i was so gone because i was part of this like young and reformed

group of guys and it was like gospel leadership and you challenged me and i was like later i look

back and i'm like yeah alan was right i should have changed the name right away like on that day i should

have changed the name and uh wish i had but i didn't and then uh you and i had a chance pre-covid

i think it was the fall of 2019 to go to cuba and train some church planners and i thought about this

because we were talking about incarnational ministry and we met with that cuban actor

and got to share the story of the of the prodigal son and he was so you know a self-acknowledged

agnostic you know who basically was like i don't believe in god but he loves pachi and he just wanted to

like be with us at dinner and and i just remember you and and robert and pachi sharing the story of

the prodigal son with him and he was so blown away and and i just kept looking around and i'm like what

am i doing at this table like i shouldn't be here like this is this is somebody snuck me in you know

maybe they don't see me over here but um but i'm just great grateful for you and thank you thank you

for everything yeah thank you just i feel the same way bro what am i doing at the table uh honestly

and i often find myself pinching you know pinching myself thinking oh my god it's probably because

it's probably because deb lets you be at the table because she's really the she's the best one you

know she's she's amazing yeah it's uh it's all about the women giving the the men permission to be

every man marries up that's something we can can certainly 100 hey alan as as we're wrapping up um

any closing thoughts on your side today no i i guys just keep going um you know i'm i pray for you

uh rooting for you um i think what you're doing is absolutely critical um and let's keep keep keep

the journey going but yeah and just stay centered on jesus like jess was saying love it well i tell you

what you can't go wrong if you become more like jesus so just stay close it's gonna be good it's good

all right kiwi's got a question we'll ask alan to wrap up here uh how will our effortless and daily

connections digitally affect the way we understand the role of the church i think he's got to answer that

isn't that normally what he does it's it's like he he he pokes the bear with the question a little bit

knowing that he's got like the right hook ready to swing uh anything you want to anything you want to

share here i think what he's saying is i mean we clearly engage um digitally all the time including

what we're doing now uh these things are really part of what we're doing how do they affect us as the

church well i think they do play a role i know we need to again be very aware of it and enhance it

and be more jesus in our use of these things but um yeah but they do i mean technology impacts us in so

many ways you know and we we're entering into a you know a technologically defined reality um i i actually

think that there will be i predict this there will be pre-ai and post-ai like bc dc you know

but um um i think that in if we kind of survive the 21st century they will kind of um mark it as

as a kind of an era epoch difference so all that to say um because i think everything changes now from this

point yeah i i just you just did say if we survive the 21st century like i i want to draw attention

you did put an if in there right yeah i did put it okay all right all right i wasn't sure if it broke

broke up in my ears just just one that's another podcast that's a whole that's all that is another

it's it's i have all kinds of thinking about what's going on no but the uh the the post the ai as as

as the the the time stamp the labeler uh is uh is beautiful yeah yeah i mean it's it'd be interesting

as as you know bc ac before christ ano domini maybe that gets replaced uh in time

it might be supplemented but um i do think we're going to see the world as before it's like we can even

say internet was just uh resourcing information for us it was unbelievable but it didn't do our thinking

for us right ai actually goes into the very core of human consciousness the language language goes to

the very center of how we think the internet distributed us it didn't it didn't replace us

ai ai ai has the ability yeah that's right no i i get you that's interesting well in i'll reach out

to you in 12 to 14 months and we'll have that conversation then if we still um if we're still

around there's no promise all right so we're gonna we're gonna land the plane for uh for jesse for

alan this is jeff at the church digital for a special wednesday stream thanks for hanging out with

us today everybody and we'll see you next time on the show y'all have a good one have a good one