EP338 - Jeff Teases What's Next

All right. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. Once again, doing a live stream

here on a Tuesday afternoon, at least here in the States. Jeff Reed here, founder of the Church

Digital. And if you've been listening to the stream or not listening, watching the stream

for the past 20 minutes, you know that music was muted. And I wasn't aware of the music being

muted for 30 minutes until like 10 seconds ago. And so sorry to make it kind of boring

as you were hanging out here a little bit on the pre-show. And so, hey, got an interesting

conversation coming up. If you're in chat, say hey. But we've got some really kind of

random things we're going to be hitting on, heading into the stream today. I was excited.

He says, hi. Evidently, Troy is skipping school, not skipping school. It's so hard to

tell. Troy is working while at school and still takes the time to say, hey, Jeff, every Tuesday,

love it. Troy graduates high school in a couple weeks, I think. And so, man, Troy, hey, good

to see you. Hope things are going well today. And I'm praying for you, my friend. I want to get an

update how it's going with your teacher. DM me on Discord or Slack. Slack. What is that? Where did

that come from? Discord or WhatsApp? Slack? I haven't opened up Slack in months. I had a vendor that I

had a contract with that used Slack. And that was the only reason I used Slack. Anyway, conversation

for a different day. But I'm excited about what's coming up for the Church Digital. And so I thought

I'd gather together and maybe just do a little bit of a tease talking about where we're going in the

weeks ahead with the Church Digital. It's so interesting. Even Steve here is like, what's Slack?

Okay, Steve, there's a reason we haven't exposed you to Slack. Don't worry about it. Slack is like

WhatsApp, but for business people. But it doesn't have near the exposure of business people. And it

doesn't have any community based around it unless it's the community you build in. Like WhatsApp has

community built around it. But Slack is more isolated in the approach. But it's another asynchronous

community. Troy is saying today is Leighton. That's Leighton, L-E-I-G-H-T-O-N, flat cap.

That today is when the EDM starts. And we're excited about that. I'm excited to get Beta 3

kicking off of Equipping Digital Missionary Cohort. We'll be talking about that soon.

We've had, for what it's worth, we've had about

maybe 150 people want information on this most recent EDM cohort. And in total, we've had about

300 people register overall. And so at this point, we've graduated maybe 75 people from the course.

And so, you know, some of the ratios were as an organization, we're trying to figure out

how to make it more sticky, how to adjust some of it. We're going to talk some about this

in the weeks to come and roll some of this stuff out. Honestly, we've had some onboarding issues,

some database issues over the past three or four months. And so working through getting some

resolution on that as well. And the team's working hard on that. But we're excited

to see people like Troy kick off. And actually, Steve is starting to teach Equipping Digital Missionaries

as well. Steve and Troy are in different cohorts as I think about it. I think Steve is actually

going to be teaching the, or co-teaching the Tuesday cohort, the Wednesday cohort, and Troy's

in the Tuesday night cohort. But it's very exciting. EDM is going and growing with Leighton.

We're doing a couple cohorts in America. We're actually doing a Middle East cohort as well.

Tariq is starting his first EDM cohort, Equipping Digital Missionaries cohort tomorrow. And so he's

putting finishing touches on that right now. Germany is going well as well. We've got our friend

Simon has been teaching a language specific German Digital Missionary cohort, literally as we're

speaking. And so he's been doing it for a month or so. He's actually wrapping up, I think, the German

version of that. And then my friend Yatope. I'm so excited about this. Yatope's cohort has been going

great. Now, this is actually a great example of, you know, we talk in the court about digital imperialism.

We talk about, yeah, not one passport needed. You know, equipping digital missionaries is global.

Steve says, you know, it's global. We don't even need a passport to do the stuff that we're doing. That's beautiful, Steve.

Thanks. You know, this is digital. We're talking about digital imperialism. You know, imperialism is,

you know, back in the in the old days, it was you would you would battle one country would overrule

another country in war, and then you would inflict that culture. And it goes back to biblical times

and Babylonians taking over things and inflicting their culture on the surrounding. And so Jason

Morris, we've actually have theorized and talked about digital imperialism, about how we want to enforce

even subconsciously, not meaning to do it, but subconsciously of enforcing your local culture,

your national culture in digital spaces where it could impact other cultures, even even secondhand.

And what's happening in Africa is actually a really good example of that. And so I almost want to

take a example here. Ian's jumping on and saying another colonialism, yeah, digital imperialism,

digital colonialism. Yeah, it does kind of both feel that way. Because what was happening in Africa,

and we knew it was going to be a stretch. I'm going to make a confession here on stream. I may not say

this publicly. You're going in the deep end here on the Church Digital Podcast right now. I don't know

that I've said this in a public facing anything yet. So I taught the Beta 2. I just finished my second

digital missionary cohort in Africa. And so Yatope did one. The first one kind of had mixed results.

I jumped on. I was like, hey, Yatope, let me co-teach. Let me get an experience of what's

actually happening. Let me see it with you. And so he and I taught one together. I have a confession.

We invited maybe 30 or 5, 40 people to do this cohort with us. Sub-Saharan South Africans primarily.

Out of that, we had maybe 10 or 11 people commit to doing the cohort with us.

Go ahead and ask me, hey, Jeff, how many people actually completed the African cohort with you and Yatope?

Anyway, the big giant goose egg. Zero. Like, I don't even think we made it into week three.

Like, it was horrible. And this is nothing racially against the Sub-Saharan South African people.

Nothing culturally that we, you know, I'm not demeaning them in any way.

We, the Church Digital, had not figured out how to engage and connect with them.

And so, you know, Yatope's like, hey, I want to try something.

And I love this. I love this about Yatope. Yatope's been hanging around with us long enough.

The experimental nature he's got is beautiful.

And Yatope says, hey, I'm going to do this.

I want to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to cut all videos out of this thing.

And I'm just going to talk.

I just want to, want to, want to teach it myself.

No, no watching videos in advance.

No flipping the classroom.

Flipping the classroom.

Jeff, I've never seen it work in an African context.

Any of the other cohorts, flipping the classroom doesn't work.

Let me do it.

Okay, Yatope, you, you run with it.

Dude had like 12 or 13 people show up for his cohort, man.

I am so excited.

And, and engagement's been high.

And so once again, it's, it's, you know, for us at a subconscious level and, and we, we knew it was coming.

We just had to experiment through it to find the way.

It wasn't that the, our way was the only way.

It's the deep end right off the bat with the church digital podcast today, how we were doing equipping digital missionaries, how we were teaching.

It's very important for, for me to say today that how we're communicating, how we're teaching, how we want to equip, like it's as, as we're working with outpost leaders globally and different people, even on different platforms.

Like it's, we don't want to change the, the, the, the, the philosophy.

We don't want to change the message, but, but we're completely fine changing the delivery.

It was so funny.

I was actually, we were interviewing, uh, another ministry partner yesterday.

Uh, so Monday morning, 8am Eastern, first meeting of the day.

It's an international organization.

We'll talk, probably talk about this later today, if not next week at down hall, but so excited about some of the doors that this, this ministry partner is opening up.

And, uh, in one of the email conversations, I said, I, I was like, I'm really, I really want to dig into what you're comfortable with for us to contextualize your message.

And, you know, anytime you say contextualize to, to an author, to a content creator, to, to someone like even like a, an organization that does the, the curriculum that they do.

Like, okay, when you say contextualize, what do you mean?

Like, are, are you, are you going to like rewrite our stuff?

Are you going to like theologically misalign?

Like you get concerned, right?

And with this particular ministry partner, I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I don't want to change what you're saying, but I do want to change the delivery because, you know, your context, you know, may be different than what's happening in digital.

And it's definitely different than what's happening in virtual reality.

You know, it's funny.

We, uh, we, we look at, I'll take alpha as it.

No, let's do, um, yeah, I mean, let's do alpha.

Why not?

Alpha, um, you know, in physical space, alpha is like a 45 minute video longer.

And, and you have dialogue, you know, as you're, you're in physical space, dialoguing through alpha, by the way, if you've never looked at alpha USA, um, definitely look at alpha USA.

It's, uh, or anywhere, any of the alpha global ones, an incredible ministry opportunity for digital missionaries.

Incredible.

We often thought that we, the church digital, we should be hosting like alpha talks, uh, on this.

Oh my gosh.

So much is happening in chat right now.

I can't even keep up.

But, um, and so alpha 45 minutes physical.

Awesome.

Watch a video.

Talk about it.

Cool.

Do it.

Um, when alpha moved digital, actually the student version of alpha became the more popular version digitally because it was, it's shorter videos.

It's more engaging cuts and edits.

And, and it's, uh, uh, the, this, you know, the music soundtrack, kind of what you're listening to now, it drives and it keeps people engaged for longer.

For a period of time.

And so we've actually seen that the youth version of alpha is incredible digitally.

And it's very successful to bring people in, to have a spiritual conversation, to be open to dialoguing about, you know, things of faith.

People that are called to Christ can engage with a 15 minute video and then talk about it.

Like that, that's, that's, that's acceptable.

That's acceptable digitally.

In virtual reality, people don't want to watch a 15 minute video.

Like they want to watch a 30 second video and talk about something.

Because in VR, it's much more important that people talk, um, than, than watch or listen.

And so how do you get them talking?

And how do you lead them through the talking?

How do you do active listening?

And so, as I was talking, you know, all the way back to Utope, Utope culturally understood who he was trying to reach in sub-Saharan South Africa better than a white bald man with a beard wearing glasses could do in Miami, Florida.

And he is, he's adapting it.

And so internationally, if you're watching this, that's what we want.

We want to be very open-handed with, with our content, with our training, with our ideas, with our relationships.

And, and empower people like you watching this to, to help us create digital missionaries globally.

Realizing how we create digital missionaries in America is going to be different than how we create digital missionaries in Africa or Europe or, um, you know, the Middle East or Oceania or Asia Pacific or Russia or South America or, you know, insert place here.

Which is going to be different than virtual reality where Mr. Pete is, which is going to be different than, and don't even get me started on some of the generational breaks, uh, in platform cultures, cultures, uh, platforms as places.

Like, like, the idea is not to create a, uh, the way to train.

The idea is to create a framework that can be adapted to best work for you.

And that's what we're doing.

Hey, we've got some incredible, that's much more on EDM than I wanted to do right off the bat.

But, uh, all that by saying that, um, what's his name?

My friend Troy is starting Layton's EDM tomorrow night.

And so coming on the chat, uh, Mr. Pete, uh, is, uh, is, is jumping in as well.

Uh, Mr. Pete, we are in big screen.

So I love this.

Mr. Pete grabs our stuff all the time and I'll broadcast it in, in real time in big screen.

And so if you're watching in big screen, hanging out with Mr. Pete, uh, do that.

Mr. Pete, I got to get with you soon ish, maybe, maybe, maybe in June.

Uh, we got, we're got some stuff coming up with, uh, the digital missionary conference.

And I want to loop you in on that life on mission.

My new friend, Jose, Jose, man.

Thanks for, uh, thanks for stopping in.

Good to see you.

Um, you Jose, we're, I'm excited.

I've been thinking about you.

I've been talking about you and Stacey past couple of weeks.

We're going to have, uh, some things to talk about here in the months to come.

Um, you know, Tom says, I want to change what I'm saying.

I have no idea what that means.

Um, probably made something sense at some point, but, uh, well, I mean, that's assuming

that Tom makes sense at some point.

And that right there is a big assumption.

I love white beard.

Just saying, Tom, glad you're hanging out with us.

Appreciate it.

Uh, Mr. Pete's letting us know that we are in VD, EDM or we are in VR now.

And, uh, Jose is, uh, is, uh, in EDM.

Jose, are you, are you in Tuesday or Wednesday?

Who's your, who's your leader?

Are you with Ian or are you with, uh, um, flat cap?

He's got too many names, flat cap.

He's in flat cap and discord says in, or, uh, excuse me, size.

I I've been mispronouncing it for years.

I found out the other day size, uh, size in, uh, in WhatsApp and say, and, and Layton,

like when I see him in the face.

And so like, it's, it's, uh, he's a, he has an identity crisis, uh, so to speak.

Yeah.

Stacy, I'm telling you, Jose, Jose, he's going through.

Uh, I'm excited.

Jose, uh, I, I am, I am definitely, definitely excited.

Okay.

Hey, listen, um, that was a lot about EDM guys.

I was working on the interview and gals, excuse me.

I was working on the interview of interviews that I really wanted to happen today.

Like, like I have been accidentally working at accidentally may not be the best way to do

it, say it, but I've been like, um, put it, trying to work on an interview for a couple

months.

And, um, and, uh, there was something happened in this past week and I was like, we got to

do it.

We got to do it.

Now's the time.

Like, this is hot.

We got to break this.

And, uh, and, and, and, and timing just didn't work out.

So let me, let me tell you what I'm working on.

And, and, and we're, this is going to happen May 27th.

I don't know if you know this, there is actually a huge movement of digital missionaries within

the Catholic church.

Like this is, this is, excuse me, digital missionaries, influencers.

This is global.

This is discipleship.

This is, uh, gospel oriented, um, within the Catholic church.

And, uh, it was funny.

I, I, I ran across them almost organically, um, while I was working with, uh, putting together

the, the spring digital missionary conference.

One of our speakers was like, oh yeah, I actually have been working with the digital, with, uh,

digital missionaries over in the, the Catholic church.

And I was like, wait, what John Packard, John Packard, Josh Packard, Josh Packard was like,

yeah, I've, I've, I've actually been working with like the Vatican on developing theories

for the, the Catholic church.

And I was like, uh, I, I, I didn't know such things existed.

And he's like, yeah, actually I know the leader.

Have you met, have you met Jose?

Would you like me to introduce you to Jose?

And I'm like, yes, please.

And so Jose, uh, dear you, you quality, I'm probably mispronouncing the last name, but

I've been WhatsAppping who's Jose, uh, who lives in Dallas, Texas, uh, for the past,

uh, maybe three, four months, like, um, probably this year, uh, building a relationship.

Jumped on a couple of zoom calls.

It's the, it's the Hispanic Catholic version of, of Jeff Reed, like honest to God, we have

the same stories.

We have the same struggles.

Um, in some ways they're a little more, the Catholic is a little more, uh, advanced than

us because the Catholic, uh, religion is more centralized.

They all fall under the Pope.

And so the previous Pope was a huge fan, was a huge supporter of digital missionaries.

The, the problem really became convincing some of the regional, uh, was it, um, Cardinals

to kind of dig into that.

And so I, I've been wanting to have a stream with Jose and we just had been struggling trying

to get Catholic denomination.

I'm sorry.

Uh, Tom is, is correcting me.

I apologize.

That actually is the right word.

It is a denomination.

And listen, it's, there are some people that are going to send me hate mail because I'm

talking about Catholics and, and, and, and, and that and cool.

Like there, I do view it as a, as a denomination.

Um, there are, there are Catholics that get it.

There are Catholics that don't guys.

I hate to tell you this.

There are evangelists, evangelistic churches that get it and that don't.

Uh, and so, you know, scripture is filled with references to, uh, some will say father,

father, and I will say, who are you?

You know, there's, there's lots of, of references towards the fact that some who claim to be

Christians are not, and this should not be a surprise to anybody.

So I'm having this, this conversation and this guy's incredible.

And, uh, I was like, man, I really want to share some of these ideas and, and, and almost

encourage our people and realize there's a whole other network out here of, of Catholics

that, that are, that are wanting to do the same thing that we're doing.

And we're trying to figure out how to work together and align on some projects.

And so I've been, I've been like, Hey, let's do a stream.

Let's do a stream.

Let's do a stream.

You know, and then unfortunately, you know, the Catholic, uh, the, the Pope dies.

Uh, there's a new Pope, an American, a Cubs fan is now, you know, embraced as, as the

new, uh, leader of the Vatican and the Catholic church.

And, and he's now, and, uh, and so I reached out like immediately and I was like, dude, let's

have this conversation.

And, uh, he's like, okay, let's do it.

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

I'm Alex.

He was actually WhatsAppping me from the plane as he was flying to Rome, uh, to try to figure

out, you know, what was going on and, and, and all this.

And, uh, and so he's still, he's in Rome right now and he thought he was going to be

clear and, you know, it's leadership and organizational leadership change, lots of in and outs, lots

of meetings, lots of, of things happening.

And, uh, he just, he didn't have time to get free.

And so we're going to do it the 27th.

And so if you're interested in learning what the Catholic church is doing in the digital

missionary space, I'll have the, um, I don't think he is the top leader in the space, but

he's one of the, uh, the people in the, uh, in that team that's recognized even at the, at

the Vatican level, who's, who's leading and in representing digital missionaries, literally

at a global level.

And so super excited to have Jose on the 27th.

Some of you, I had hinted that it was going to happen today.

I was, I was this close.

Literally, we, we were dancing around it up until this morning and this morning or during

the night, last night, he's like, dude, I just, I really can't because I can't step out

of this thing and it's like, okay, no problem.

We'll punt.

Let's do it.

Let's do it later on.

I'm excited about that.

So, uh, that's going to happen on the 27th.

Now let's talk about, about the 20th and, and I want to invite you all to a sneak peek.

I'm going to invite you into a sneak peek for something because next week we are going to

do our town hall meeting.

Now, as you know, and I'm actually going to click this button.

Um, and that, that worked, that worked.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, it's just a little, it's not centered.

Let me do that.

And that'll be better.

Yeah.

It's good enough.

I, um, get Mo good enough to move on.

So we do a town hall meeting every couple of weeks.

We gather together.

We talk about, uh, this through our town halls.

This is where we want to learn from you.

What's working.

What's not working at a global level.

And, and essentially how can we help?

I can tell you like as clear as day, I had a conversation with God and asked God, is it

my turn to plant a church?

You've heard me tell the story.

God, is it my time to plant a church in digital space?

And every time I ask, he clearly says, Nope, sorry.

And then he says, help.

And so I want to know how we, the church digital can help.

So here's what I'm going to do.

You know, normally in the town halls, I've done these things like, uh, live in the moment.

And so we're actually going to release the survey, the poll early.

And so you can zap that QR code that's on the screen right now, or you can go to the church.digital

slash poll, the church.digital slash poll, because I literally right now want to hear

from you.

Now I'm not going to publish the results today because that's just for the town hall meeting

in a couple in next week, a week from today, the stream this time next week, but over the

course of this week, we're going to ask at a global level for the people connected with

us to contribute to this so we can get a more accurate picture of what's happening globally.

So if you are watching this live, you know, zap the QR code that's on the screen, the URL,

the shortcut is the church.digital slash poll, P-O-L-L, as opposed to P-O-L-E-P-O-L-L,

the church.digital slash poll, and that's going to get you in.

But a couple of questions, and you should have the ability to answer these questions right

now.

Once again, zap the QR screen.

If you haven't, you're not going to see the results.

One person has already voted, but responses are hidden because I'm holding this back.

But feel free to contribute at least once to this, the church.digital slash poll, zap

the QR screen.

Where are you from?

You like the little map here on the screen?

This is so cool.

You'll see the graphic throughout.

I asked ChatGPT to create a world map in the style of the church.digital brand.

And so it created all the squares and kind of, quote unquote, pixelized the global map.

And so I was like, yeah, that's cool.

My wife looked at it and said, Jeff, Hawaii is only one island.

So come on.

You can only do so much with a giant square.

Generalized.

I think it's Gitmo.

It's good enough to move on.

So feel free to jump on that.

Let us know the church.digital.

Excuse me, the church.digital slash poll.

The next question we want to know, favorite platform or community?

Well, I guess I didn't turn that off because somebody said Discord, which is cool.

We love Discord.

Do I need to press H to hide that?

I'm kind of curious why that showed up.

That's okay.

We'll figure it out later.

Favorite platform or community?

Feel free to vote on that.

Next question.

Who are you?

I feel like I want to sing.

Who sings the Who Are You?

Who, who, who, who?

Somebody's got to know that.

Tom has got to know that.

Tom, I'm kind of, is it, is it?

Oh, my gosh.

Who does sing the Who Are You song?

It was, it was the song for, for years, for the CSI.

It's, it's an older band.

It's, it's a, it's not a modern rock.

It's a classic rock band.

I'm, I'm, I'm flabbergasted.

I cannot come up with this right now.

I feel like I'm a failure at some level because I cannot figure out.

Is it Rolling Stones?

All right, let's pop up ChatGPT.

This is more important than anything we got going on.

Who sings, Who Are You?

ChatGPT to the rescue.

Searching the web.

The British rock band, The Who, released in 1975.

Thank you, ChatGPT once again saves the day.

I, to be honest, I, I use ChatGPT exclusively at this point for searching.

And I would say, oh, yeah, Ian comes in after the fact.

Where were you, bro?

The Who.

I've got Jose, Jose, the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland.

That's not exactly what we were looking for.

But ChatGPT did come in and save the day.

Ian, you were technically a little late, but I'll give you credit because of, of delay.

So, you, who are you?

You are a fill in the gaps there.

Missionary, church, staff, employee, missions, organization.

Normie, you're a normal person.

Well, we're all normal.

Well, okay, except for Whitebeard.

Everybody else is normal and filling in the gaps there.

Ian's kind of a little off.

A little bit.

All right.

Recent missionary success.

Recent missionary success.

That's what we're looking for here.

Tell me a success story.

I want to know in your missions work digitally, how's it going?

I want to see some wins in here.

So, share that success story there.

I also want to know what your biggest challenge is today.

What's not working?

Tell me a story of where things are working and then concisely tell me what's not working.

Now, it's funny.

Now, it's funny.

I actually thought about being able to type like multiple things, but then I figured some

of you would like list out 15, 20 different things and just like blow it all up.

The one thing, the top thing.

Maybe it's like two or three, but really like what's the one thing that's not working for

you?

Would love to know that.

Following up as well, equipping digital missionaries, the cohort.

It's awesome.

I took it and it was great.

I loved every second of it.

I think it's awesome.

I'm going to take it soon and we'll let you know.

Eh.

I really wasn't that interested in it, which is cool.

That's where you are.

And then some of you may be like equipping digital missionaries.

What are you even talking about?

And if that's you, that's cool.

I'd say, you know, read an email, join a community.

But if, if you don't know what's going on, like we need to do a better job communicating.

And so I want to know who you are and where you are in that.

This is a fun one too.

I wish the church digital would what, um, what do you want us to do?

What is a, uh, an action step, a takeaway?

What is a need that you get solved?

What is something we can do to help?

Like I'm, I, Jeff, I'm giving you the keys.

What do you want from us?

How can we best help you?

I wish the church digital would do this.

That's what I want to hear.

Now, you know what?

We are going to be publishing the results of all of everybody that we're going to be,

you know, we're going to run this.

We're going to announce this poll today in the communities.

I'm announcing it here for the first time this morning.

We're announcing it in the communities today.

We're going to be running it in emails through our entire network over the course of the week.

We'll be beating it in social media and other places.

And we're going to share the results of it in the town hall meeting Tuesday, May 20th, 1 PM Eastern New York City time on YouTube.

So we're going to be streaming on the church.digital slash, or excuse me, youtube.com slash the church digital.

I don't know why I do that.

I always want to do the church.digital slash YouTube.

I don't want to do that for any of the other social media.

Like I have no idea why I always, I, every time, every time I want to do the church digital slash YouTube, but it's not youtube.com slash church digital.

What's the, when you're playing baseball, uh, the yips, you know, where you do something for so long and then you screw it up once and then you can't, you can't ever do it again.

What was the guy's name in baseball that screwed it up?

And then Lou Gehrig took over his job.

That was the other thing.

Oh my gosh.

And then, you know, Lou Gehrig played however many, oh no, it was Cal Ripken.

No, Cal Ripken beat Lou Gehrig, but it was Lou Gehrig, Lou Gehrig was the story.

You know, Lou Gehrig, the baseball player, he played like, I don't know, a million baseball games in a row, uh, until Cal Ripken beat his strip, his, uh, stretch.

But there was a guy that, that took the day off for like some lazy reason.

And Lou Gehrig took over his job.

Um, yeah, Chuck Noblock caught the yips, uh, with the Yankees.

There are a lot of people that have caught the yips with the Yankees.

Uh, that, that's another conversation, uh, towards that.

Uh, and then, you know, I, I could make a joke about A-Rod, but I'm not going to do that.

So that's cool.

We're going to move on.

Um, all right.

So, Hey, we're excited.

The town hall is going to be Tuesday, May 20th, 1 p.m. Eastern New York.

And so we're going to, we're going to roll out the results of that.

Uh, feel free to send a, you know, invite people into it.

Uh, send the, uh, the link around to others as well.

Uh, get them to church.digital slash poll.

We'll redirect you there to get their, their opinions.

Um, listen, there's a lot of things that we're going to roll.

The town halls are always, yes, we want to listen to you, but I'm going to be honest.

Some of the things that we're doing right now, we're actually, because we listened to you three

months ago in, in January, February.

The reason we moved to a digital missionary model was because we listened to you all a year ago

and realized, Hey, there's not churches hanging out with us.

It's digital missionaries.

It's individuals.

It's normies hanging out with us.

It's so funny.

Ian is like normal.

How insulting.

I love that.

Ian, thanks.

Thanks for sharing that.

But, you know, he's, okay.

Ian is more, Ian's probably more normal than the rest of us.

But, um, the, the thing is, is that by listening to these town hall meetings, by recognizing who's

in the community, we realized that there was a need for us to pivot organizationally.

And even equipping digital missionaries that came about as a result of having people like

you in the town hall meeting say, the biggest thing that we need help with is, is equipping.

And, and some of the things we're going to roll out in the town hall meeting next week are

directly related to some of the lessons that we learned from the last town hall meeting.

And so we realized that, you know, uh, we do, unlike the Yankees, sometimes we do actually

learn from past experiences and want to aggressively help you in that instead of like the Yankees

spending, you know, the, having the, writing the biggest checks and trying to buy what they

think's the best names, even though they crash and burn on occasion.

So, Hey, town hall meeting next week.

Um, here, same channel, same place, the church that I did it again, youtube.com slash

the church digital.

Uh, I can tell you this, we're going to be, we're going to, we're going to be teasing

some things coming up with EDM.

We're going to be teasing a lot of things centered around the equipping.

The future is bright.

I've, I said this in the past.

I'll say it again.

2024 was the year of connection and community for the church digital, uh, new branding, new

website, new missionary awareness.

Um, a lot of change happens at the connect in the community level 2025 is the year.

year of, of equipping and what we started, what with, um, what we started with, um, equipping

digital missionaries is the first step of many things to come.

I may have, I may have lost a relationship with Jose.

Jose says, I'm going to turn the other cheek this one time, leave my Lee Yanks alone.

Fair enough.

It's fair.

Actually, honestly, I haven't watched one baseball game, uh, this year.

Like I just, I have, I've, I've, I've not had, I, this is, this is a, I haven't talked about

this publicly.

I don't think I actually played baseball with Alex Rodriguez, uh, in high school.

And so I was, uh, I was on the baseball team in high school, Westminster, uh, played baseball

and football.

Alex Rodriguez was actually my quarterback.

Uh, he was a sophomore.

I was a, no, no, he was a junior.

I was a sophomore.

And so I was the center, uh, quarterback.

And so, um, had a, had really a, I mean, uh, I don't want to say a good relationship, had

a decent relationship with him.

He was a baseball store, more than football at the time.

And, uh, you know, he of course went on to do great things.

Uh, and so I really don't mean to demean, but I, I just am not into baseball.

Like I was, I, I, we can, we can unpack that at some point, uh, Jose, that, that might

be fun.

Cool.

So, all right, but listen, some other things coming up and, and I'll go ahead and make this

announcement.

Now we, the church digital, um, we're going to be, uh, rolling out a new podcast season

starting, um, after the town hall.

So is it Tuesday, the third, uh, what's the Tuesday?

What's that date?

I meant to look that up and get it in my head before we got to this point.

Do, do, do, do, do, do Tuesday, the third, Tuesday, the third.

We're going to roll out a new season and, and we're calling it, uh, empowering tools.

Now, so many, I, this, the one thing that I've learned from the, um, from the conference

was that so much stuff is happening globally.

Like there was so much interest in the breakouts and so many people were like, Oh my gosh, Jeff,

when you did the, the, the rapid fire thing at the end with all the breakouts, that was

my favorite part because I got to hear what these people were doing and I had no idea this

was out there.

And so we're, we're, we're kind of pulling from that a little bit and over the course of

the summer, we're going to be featuring a number of ministry partners, a number of organizations

that are creating powerful and effective tools that can help people like you doing digital

mission work, whether it's a, an AI that does, that can do evangelism for you or a, um, or an,

an assessment to help you, uh, better understand who you are as an individual and who's the leadership

people around you are, or, or maybe it's, it's an evangelism tool or a technique that's available

to engage with Gen A and Gen Z like there, we're already having conversations across the

board with a number of organizations, software databases that are available to help.

And, and, and the people that we're, we're inviting to the, this conversation are, how do I say

this cost effective for the budget set up for digital missionaries?

Like, like we're not talking about the big bucks here.

Oftentimes we're not even talking about small bucks.

Some of these organizations are, are nonprofit or offering product for, for free because they

want to help, um, small churches, church planners, missionaries really be effective in their spaces.

And so listen, I, I started, I started making calls last week.

Hey, you want to jump on, you want to jump on?

And, and it's been, you know, rapid fire people coming on and wanting to, to help share the

resources that they have to help you become a better missionary.

And so we're going to have empowering tools, uh, the, the podcast series, the stream series

launching on June 3rd.

By the way, my wedding anniversary is June 4th.

That'll be my 26th, 99 to 25.

That would be 26 years, right?

I think.

Yeah, we're good.

We're good.

26 years.

We're 26 years.

Tell my wife, uh, I'll be at the stream Wednesday, Tuesday.

I'm taking Wednesday off.

It's cool.

Uh, and we're going to, we're going to go have some fun.

All right.

Uh, what else do I want to talk about?

EDM three already talked about that.

Uh, and oh my gosh, there's, there's some other things.

I'm not going to get into it.

Jose, I was going to get into it today.

I feel like we need to, um, you and I need a healing moment before I roll at the next

thing.

I'm really excited about the next thing, but I did some damage.

I hurt you, uh, about the Yankees.

And so I, I, I apologize.

Um, I do have some, you know, hurt feelings over the years where, you know, the, the Marlins,

my, my Florida Marlins would win the world series.

And then like the next year on, you know, all of them would go and be recruited by the Yankees.

You know, we used to joke that the Florida Marlins was basically like the, the, the step above

spring training.

It was the farm league.

The Florida Marlins were the farm league for the Yankees.

We didn't have any money, but the Yankees did.

And they knew how to write big checks, uh, for multiple years.

The Marlins could always write a big check for one year, but they couldn't do multiple years

in a row.

Uh, but good for them.

Glad it works out.

Is Jeter still alive?

I swear.

I never hear from that guy anymore, but I don't, I don't pay attention to baseball.

What do I know?

All right.

Hey, you know what?

Uh, I think I'm going to wrap up.

It's a little early 45, 40, 45, 45 minutes on the stream.

That was a yips right there.

I was stuck 40 to 45 minutes on the stream today, keeping it clean and simple.

We have a lot of fun stuff coming up next week.

So stay tuned on that.

If you did not jump on the, uh, on the poll for the town hall meeting, please do that.

The church.digital slash town hall.

You know what?

I'll go ahead and I'll throw that graphic up here one more time.

If you manage to make it that far, uh, it would be that button.

And so the church.digital, um, slout town hall, or you can just, uh, zap that QR code that's

on the screen right there and that'll take you to Mentimeter, which will get you in.

You should be able to self-direct you through the talks, uh, the different questions.

There's a next button.

I think you can click through if you've got questions, feel free to ask it in there.

We'll be addressing questions at some point during the talk towards the end, but this is

our opportunity to hear from you.

So go ahead and take the time to do that.

Let us know, drop questions in there and, uh, we'll be addressing them throughout the town

hall meeting.

So next week, um, 1 PM Eastern New York, the church.digital slash YouTube.

I did it freaking again.

That's three times that I've done it on this and I'm self-aware of it.

YouTube.com slash the church digital.

Uh, we want to hear from you on that.

Okay.

All right.

And with that, at a 42 minute stream, we're going to, we're going to land a plane.

So for Jeff with the church digital, this is Jeff with the church digital.

Thanks for hanging out with us today on this Tuesday town hall next week.

Bring a friend and we'll see you all then.

Talk to you later.

Bye.