EP333 - Jeff Revisits the Digital Missionary Conference

all right hey everybody welcome to the church digital podcast episode three hundred and thirty

three we've done three hundred and thirty three conversations centered around digital ministry

i think we launched this thing twenty eighteen twenty nineteen maybe i'd have to really go back

and look but it's been five or six years over 300 conversations uh it's been a lot of fun over the

years uh doing some of this if you want you want to go back you want to listen to bad audio go back

and listen to like episode one the first conversation i ever had uh was with a guy uh tyler

sansom i love tyler tyler was actually probably one of the most interviewed people on the show here

some of the stuff he's doing with church anywhere is incredible physical churches that really understand

digital mission work tyler was really a pioneer and just happened to fall into a church that

really backed him and ran with it and so it's really cool to see that but it was arguably one

of the worst interviews i've ever done in the history of time it's funny actually go back and

listen you know i say ums and ahs and you knows a lot i'm not a really polished speaker and so i do

use transition words to help my brain kind of catch up with my mouth or my mouth catch up with my brain

probably is a better way to say that and for those those first i don't know maybe 20 or 30 interviews

like i would like i say like a lot too i don't know if you caught that but i would literally like

scrape each um and ah and like out i would cut it i i would it's post work was like hours the idea of

doing a conversation live like this where people are hearing it in real time no no way i could do that

and uh you know it's amazing what 300 plus interviews will do all of a sudden people like

you're you know you're really a good interviewer like you really make people feel at home it's like

i guess that that's fine uh after doing 300 of them what is that 200 24 hours a day

so that would be 10 plus days that would be 240 uh so 25 percent of 10 would be 12 that's almost two weeks

worth of talking straight nothing about digital mission i listen i challenge you uh listening audience out

there binge the church digital podcast all 240 episodes for it if you want more than just audio i'm pretty sure we've got

video for at least 250 of that of those episodes on youtube go for it binge i challenge you

you don't need that much jeff reed in your life so maybe that maybe that's a bad idea hey you know

we've got we got some people hanging out with us on youtube grateful for that uh methos uh from ohio

says hello it's been fun he's been hanging out with us a lot uh white beard tom mcguire jumps in came in

early he was at part of he was the first one here and i started a little late because i was making my

coffee i want to hat hat tip my my coffee mug here you see this the little uh blockhead from from lego

and so i just spilled my coffee all over my table and i wrote notes on my table and i spilled coffee on

it so now it's it's all weird but at least it's fragrant in the room uh very good uh steve steve's in

there saying hey life capture is saying hey as well how's it going man always good to see life capture

enjoy that i can see the ums and haws in waveform uh so i didn't have to listen to it yeah you can do

and now listen ai man they do all sorts of stuff uh and uh with the plugins and and cut that

back in the day like we had to do it manually and now ai just does all that you click a button

and it mutes everything and it's technology i tell you like i'm really i'm really excited

methos is phantom methos and yeah definitely it's good to see you sir um i you know i tell my kids like

the stuff that my kids are doing my daughter's 16 my son's 14 and the stuff the stuff that they're

doing in engineering and programming and coding uh and the the abilities they have to do stuff

like and and we're we're intentionally training them not to use ai but at the same time also

understanding what ai can do and the power of that oh my gosh this this next generation there's going to

be untold capacities of that and then of course someone will weaponize ai and then it'll all be

over but at least we will enjoy it until that point you know it's just know it's going to happen but

until the point that it does happen rock and roll baby let's uh let's go yeah hey uh so we got a

meeting happening in real time uh simianski is catching up with phantom methos and so fun to see this

happening right here in youtube you know once again the church digital bringing people together which we

did in a big way last week you know we did a little thing called the digital missionary conference

i i gotta tell you uh in my in the grand scheme of what i thought the digital missionary conference

was going to be and what had actually happened it was freaking ridiculous i am so excited to see what

happened uh on uh was it april 2nd you know actually the day we wanted to do the conference i'll just

give you the sneak tip uh sneak peek we wanted to do it i wanted to do it tuesday instead of a wednesday

and so i i was looking at april 1st and i was like no i i can't i cannot do a digital missionary

conference april 1st like there there's no way i like people will think it's a joke and won't show

up and so okay we'll do it april 2nd that's fine it was so good we had you know as as near as we can

tell stat wise we had 1400 people register for the conference we had uh a thousand over a thousand

active uh viewers unique viewers for for the conference um it was it was really interesting

like we had people were watching through altar live and we did we had some problems with altar

live we may get in that a little bit but when we were doing it in virtual reality which i loved and

we had we built a world in spatial vr uh vr tiger built a world exclusive for us so thankful for that

um yeah metho says uh i could not attend april 1st so i'm glad it wasn't yeah definitely and we would

we would do wednesday's a better day for us anyway moving forward i think wednesday is going to be the

rhythm but um you know it was interesting we actually had some some bootleg conferences happening

it was really like yeah i may i think we screwed up permissions on youtube and people were actually

watching not an altar live but they were watching straight on youtube and engaging with us and commenting

on the youtube feed which we had wanted to drive all traffic through altar live but they were going

straight to youtube we even had and if this was you i want to know like i'm not upset i actually i love

that this happened somebody was doing a bootleg conference in big screen in virtual reality they

they created they put the the the feed the youtube feed up on on a big screen and created a completely

separate conference in virtual reality based on on what we were doing a big screen seriously if that was

you um i i want to know yeah we're we're talk live capture somebody else has streamed it to big screen

i want to know who that was i and you know stacy's saying i love the bootleg conference look

we created something that we could not control i mean that that's the end game with this there's so

much and praise god can i just say that there was so much excitement around what we were doing

that people wanted to do it in their own way i literally like you can't see i have goosebumps

right here just talking about this and and if it was i don't know who mr pete is if it was mr pete

i would love to get connected with mr pete on discord because mr pete is my hero and by the

way i would love for mr pete to do that next time the idea of of taking the conference into multiple

worlds why not the idea of of championing this in different ways why not and so you know let's

continue seriously if one of you guys could connect me to mr pete that would be fun i i don't think i've

met him along the way but i'm very excited to see that the the conference expanded beyond their wildest

dreams i you know i would love this as as we're talking in here i want to ask some questions because

we've got some we've got some audience that's active what was your favorite part of the digital

missionary conference it was it was it speakers was it was it the groups was it the tables like what

really stood out to you uh through through the conference oh my gosh methos is saying here um

mr pete you should definitely know who he is sometimes he's awesome 80 plus years old doing metaverse

ministry seriously methos like now like friend me like you're already friends on discord please make

that connection i want to meet the guy that's 80 years old doing metaverse ministry i want i want to

bring him on the show i want to have a conversation i want to know this guy's story that's freaking

phenomenal there are it's been surprising to me over the years uh yeah definitely yeah please you

uh 80 years old you definitely need to meet him i will i will seem young yeah so yes he is

the old guy let's get the 80 year old guy on here man we all look like babies pups compared to him

yeah that's so funny seriously though what is what was your favorite moments um somebody get mr pete on

here right now no don't do that i just can't but i don't care what was your favorite moment uh from

the conference breakouts speakers what was the what was the mic drop moment for you the oh crap just

got real moment what was the line what was the the takeaway what was the action step i'd love to know

give throw it in chat here and and give some insight for me there were there was a couple things that

that hit the fan and and and when i was booking it i i knew when i was scheduling the things out

david nelms um dave you know and i said in the conference david nelms blew my mind i don't know

10 12 years ago he's he said a couple things to me back in like 20 probably 2011 actually no let me get the

year right 2015 maybe 2016 so like eight or nine years ago the if your disciples not making a disciple

are they really making are they really a disciple like that was that was a powerful thing um but for

me it was the idea that he was and he said this like he was reaching as a lead pastor of a church he was

reaching thousands of people like he did the math it was like his his church over the years over

multiple years had reached two three four thousand people whatever the number was and he walked away

from that model and started a disciple making an evangelism model he he shifted the approach away from

growth to multiplication and and at the end of of 16 years of multiplication his organization now the

the timothy initiative reaches more people in a day than he had done in multiple years of growth ministry

like they're training 180 000 missionaries this year let's let's stop and let's let's think about this

over over over a 16 year career he he engaged in the idea of multiplication and uh of in in investing in

people and then asking them who you look let me tell you timothy initiative at the base level

uh and they're they're they're friends i can say there's nothing but respect for for the nelms father and

son and the group that's running tti but day one you know bring somebody to christ day two hey who are

the 10 people in your life that need to know this let's pray for them day three hey how can you share

jesus with those those 10 people what would that look like and then basically the days to come the eight

nine weeks of the of the of the cohort is all centered around multiplying have holding them accountable to

reach out so it's very evangelical in the very relational but a very evangelical relational model

and by investing in that he went from david nelms in the course of 15 16 years david nelms investing in

to now 180 000 people invested in this year 100 000 churches planted globally but this year can you

imagine what that would look like i mean a confession hour for me i'm 40 i'm 47 years old sure i'm not

as old as as mr pete but but i'm up there the idea that by the time i retire at 65 we could be part

the church digital could be part of a movement that's training a hundred thousand people to be digital

missionaries utilizing digital and metaverse and virtual and and and using i mean let's 15 years from

now all that's going to be stale it's going to be innovation what's next to be at the tip of the spear

could you imagine what it would be like to be part of an organization that was the tip of the spear

innovation and missional purposes i you know i i i feel like i got a real um taste of that

and got to to just a vision for for what we can be with the church digital and so for me david

nelms really brought that home in a big way uh i'm seeing a lot of feedback coming in so so let me come

up here steve reed wasn't one thing it was seeing so many people getting excited about taking this to

the next level i i agree with that steve man i was i had thought it was funny i i i i barbara

and and andy they'll they'll tell you this we were talking about the conference and this is months ago

when we pitched it and i said you know what we can get if we can get 200 people to show up for a

digital missionary conference it's a win and um barbara's like come on jeff you gotta think bigger

than that and i was like what 500 500 okay 500 she's like jeff you still gotta think bigger and i

was like are you telling me you think you can get a thousand people to register for for a digital

missionary conference okay fine that's on you let's let's get a thousand people to do it we had 1400

people register we had and the fact that we had a thousand people show up of that 1400 the fact that

it went bootleg beyond that so many people are excited and are curious about this and are looking

for it and i love the fact that we get to be a voice for it here methos breakouts and tables afterwards

uh were my favorite not that the speakers weren't good also no i totally get that the idea of um of

connecting with people uh relationally that's actually what i loved about alter live i hated that we had

the problems with the uh with the platforms as much as we did but the the ability to be relational to

connect i told you all this isn't a webinar this is not where you sit back and consume this is where

you lean in and dialogue and so many people were excited about that hey we got simon uh jumping in

uh from uh namibia uh i'm blessed hey simon thanks for thanks for coming on uh and being a part of that

uh we've got uh life capture i like the quick fire breakouts even though they're kind of unplanned

give a good overview on what's going on without taking too much time away from exchanging on the topics

that was uh like the the micro ted talks thing we did at the end um that was a takeaway from me

i i will i will be trying to work that in again for for future conferences uh i had i've never done it

like that you know i've seen like the the full ted talks where every every breakout gets 15 minutes but

but the five minutes the machine gun everybody gets exposure um and then you know who to go talk to

in the breakout sessions for more information that was a takeaway i think we're going to see

something like that that in the future and so listen the the um the ted the uh the the keynotes were good

um for me like i i like learning from from the keynotes i i personally i engage more in in the

breakouts and in the in the in the tables like i love networking i love connecting i love relationally

talking uh with people and the ability to to hang out at those tables and to talk and meet people

the highlight for my entire conference listen the keynotes were great the the the conversations

the being able to host and dialogue see a thousand people were so good the highlight for me was when

i looked at the screen and and i was looking at the seats and and and i literally saw oj from

metachurch who's the world builder for metachurch sitting next to pastor d who's uh been a digital

pastor for a decade plus and has been looking for a virtual reality world builder and they're literally

they're sitting next to each other in the in the aisle in the in the auditorium and alter live they

can see each other i don't know if their cameras are on i don't think they had talked to each other

before that and saying literally in the moment pastor d you're sitting next to oj the two of you need to

have a conversation because pastor d oj can solve your problems and oj pastor d needs your help

you see that's the ability when we network when we connect together with some of these things like

the conference it's this idea that we are not alone and as pioneers and as innovators and it's doing

something different to reach someone different there's this ideology that we are alone we're stuck in

this this this this place of of isolation because nobody really identifies with us outside of the

people that we're working with and and over time that gets hard and so to do the conference to do

the communities like we're doing at the church digital we're going to continue to do with the church digital

um that we are going to continue to push the bar on on getting people connected so what we're doing with

the outposts and equipping digital missionaries and and everything we're doing is centered on the i was

funny i was just talking with uh jason morris we're we're we're working on some things we're talking

about some things at the equipping level i don't want to get too deep into it right now but um you know

one one of one of jason's pain points he's very passionate about this very passionate about this

is all of our all of our equipping all of our learning it needs to be done in community

like like right now there's a pain point within the church digital really centered around

the idea of of even having teaching like on demand where we would have trainings that are available to

binge on demand in isolation because in in isolation training that really leans more towards consuming

not towards execution what we're actually seeing is is that for execution to happen it's not training

in isolation but it's training in community and so even creating a community center center on the

conference like we did which feeds into the communities of facebook and whatsapp for the church digital

that that's the goal is to try to move everybody from the community of the conference into it's why we

pushed edm so much steeper down maybe we should have pushed tcd and and whatsapp more that's on me

there's some other things i would probably structure differently overall but like i love the fact that

we're educating in these communities we're training in these communities and we're holding accountable

in the communities if you're going through the training we want you to see the training

be executed so how is that working why is it not working and what do we need to do

to help you you do it better um here i've got steve's coming in i was surprised that even though

it was digital some people felt they needed to sit in the back

confession hour with the church digital steve i haven't showered this morning and so uh slept in

which was nice i had had an early meeting so jumped out of bed threw on t-shirt and in jeans and so i

myself haven't even showered today i'm going out with a date with my wife tonight and so i'll be

completely online until about you know date night date time about 6 p.m figured i might as well you

know shower for my wife because i i don't want to stink too bad but i i i can relate to that um but

you know the the backseat baptist see even in in altar life i do i was so proud i was so proud of

the number of people that leaned into those conversations that sat in there the more that

you're known is the more that you're loved and the fact that i mean sure we did have spectators on

the outside but the culture of the event was to lean in so many people leaned in they sat in those

seats they had those conversations they hung out in the in at the tables when the when the platform

broke like it did there was like i there was urgency i gotta be in that breakout room right now

why is this platform not working it was uh it was it was beautiful yeah okay tom i i always sit in

the back even at the conference i've been a tech too long yeah i get that tom but you know in altar

live you don't you don't have to sit in the back like there you can be a tech and sit in the front

row too you know that's that's that's okay um you know tom i i just want to make sure you're alive

man you you may you may not be the old guy but you're you're the you're the closest guy that's on

the fringe so it's it's good to even see you here on the stream today my friend cool uh what i want to

talk about what's next okay so here's what we're doing we announced a digital missionary conference

the second one and so we're going to do a digital missionary conference again

on uh wednesday october 8th right now if you go to missionary.digital www.missionary.digital

you can pre-register and we've had 65 75 people pre-register for this upcoming digital missionary

conference conference is going to be free once again um and so we're we're going to do something

in that space i say something here's what i want to know if you're watching right now um what are we

doing so i'm kicking around some ideas this conference did not what we just did you know like i said at the

last minute i came up with this idea of the new wine skin it was kind of an intro idea but it was a

very general broad conference i would love to know but yeah steve's already registered for the

conference and excited about that like i said 65 or 75 already have but here's what i want to know

um do i need to pick a theme do you like the conferences being broad or or do i narrow down

and do we like pick on a theme for the conference overall like i don't know mental health or prayer

or evangelism or discipleship like is there is there a necessity to fine-tune on on a theme and and if

you think that is what is a theme you would want to see or you know should we keep it broad kind of

with that would love some feedback put it in chat let me know this is something that i've been i've been

wrestling with i love the the idea of themes uh and and think they're they're important to it but

dedicating an entire conference to something like that i'm i'm not sure uh to be honest i've even

kicked around the ideas and barbara like i told her this today and and uh she had the the look of

i don't know if if i don't know how i feel about this but the idea of even doing like micro conferences

that are like more finely tuned on on different topics and different themes overall um and so

that's what that's interesting we've got some feedback here let's kind of work through this

methods i love what's coming in uh depends is there going to be a third and a fourth conference

okay yes the church digital will commit to doing two conferences a year uh for the foreseeable future

um i just one i love the ministry that happened two i'll just be honest uh we with the sponsors that

are there uh we were able to fund the or the organization for probably five months and so from

an operational standpoint it's a win on multiple fronts uh and so we will be doing more of the

conferences in the days to come one of the challenges that we ran into was um so we were talking like

okay here in america i just produced a conference where i put a bunch of the majority of people were

americans and it was it was a conference on an american time zone and one of the biggest problems

we had was the time zone issue uh and it was also a bunch of people who look like me were were on on

camera doing this and to be honest i don't want to produce a conference with a bunch of people who

look like me contextualization being what it is and so like i would love to empower simon to do a digital

missions conference to that's reaching europeans i would love to do conference with utope with with

ebby with josh with the you know the different regions that we're we're really reaching into and

and building relationships with and starting to do digital missionary conferences within those regions

that are more contextualized for the for the people that are there and so we're already narrowing down

a little bit in the vision because i don't think it's i don't think it's always going to be one

conference it's my opinion and this this is we're getting into the uncut the raw jeff reed in this

uh this is not this is not official this is like half-baked ideas in my head i want to do i want to do

the mega conference once a year with the with the church digital uh and so like what we did with the

digital missionary conference last week i i would love to do that every spring till you know jesus comes

back i think that's a great idea what i what i'm kicking around the idea in the fall

is doing more um regional takes where we you know we help simon produce a conference in in europe and

and some of the outpost leaders we we equip them and start doing some of these regional conferences

that may or may not be based on on october 8th you know it may not be aligned uh globally but i don't

think we'll ever be able to get everybody to agree on a date globally but we can resource them and and

and help them do some things in in their regions uh even branding or not branding it doesn't matter

to me i just want the ideas to get out there the the the flip side of that though is that we will

produce some conference at some level that's where i'm like is it going to be open or not i don't know

uh life capture saying keep it open steve reed actually has a great idea reinforcing bless begin with

uh shared experiences serve and um share your jesus story there um with the key uh to how to listen

digitally if there's one one of the things that i would redo on the keynotes el michelle did a

incredible presentation on active listening in digital space in virtual reality um the next conference i'm

going to ask her to do that at the at the global level because it really was a phenomenal um conference

it was a phenomenal thing that that needs to get um revisited uh simon is saying mobilizing the church

yeah i mean mobilization is the area that we are uh stuck's not the right word it's the it's the area that

needs the most attention for us uh simon you may be relatively new with us which is awesome

our framework is connect community equip mobilize we want to connect with people digitally and with that

with our digital influence we want to invite these people into a community uh digital community whatsapp

discord you know things like that facebook groups because we see uh digital evangelism digital

discipleship happening best at the community level because of the relational equity that's happening

there and with that relationship once they find jesus we want to help them find their calling and

equip them to do what god's calling them to do and then mobilize them and send them out and so

organizationally confession hour we've done a really good job of connect community equip we've done a

really good job of connecting community we're just now within the past three or four months really

getting into equipping uh and now that we're getting some of our our digital missionaries out of equipping

digital missionaries and and building out more resources at the equipping level you're going to find in the

next six months we're really going to be more focused on mobilization and so mobilization may not be the

theme for fall 25 i i would i could see it really being the theme of 26 if we did um if there's a series

then you can have a narrow theme it makes sense that that's i mean that's what i'm wrestling with

it's interesting because i want i want to narrow i want i i want to make everybody happy but i also

know uh that if i try to make everybody happy i don't make anybody happy and if i make somebody happy

then i make a lot of them happy and and so i'm i'm really kind of bifurcated right now i do this

like this is this is my mind space where i want to make everybody happy but i know if i make everybody

happy i'm not going to make anybody happy and i constantly just fight with myself on how to do

that uh you can make a poll on discord or whatsapp and ask people what to have a special topic yeah i

mean that that's it this is this is really a lot of that for right now is uh i'm i'm digging in and

starting to talk with people and listen i i'm a i'm i'm a listener i i like to hear what people are

saying and so yeah if you're if you're watching the stream i've said this time and time again if

you're watching the stream live you are getting the unfiltered the raw jeffreed if you're listening

to this on demand i mean you can hit me up on whatsapp and discord and share your opinion that's nice

but if i click on like show add the broadcast on my screen and the chat comes up like this is where

it really is is influencing me at a high level uh stacy yes we all need to learn yeah el michelle

was equipping was was incredible that was when i when i scheduled her for virtual reality because i

needed to fill the slot and took her out of where i was thinking on the digital broadcast

there were two regrets i have for the conference overall and that was that was one of the two

that was like i hate that i have to and i told her that i was like i hate that i have to do this but

i need you to do this um the other thing if you're curious was and people have told me it was

conferences way too packed way the crap too packed um there was no there was no breathing point i started

out i started off producing a four-hour conference that ended up being a five-hour conference that ended

up being a six-hour conference that ended up being a seven-hour conference and uh but i built it on the

framework of a four-hour conference and it just kept growing and growing and growing and i probably

should have restructured it at some point um uh so hey we got we got steve uh don't need to be

worrying them here go ye digital the great commission in in a digital in a connected world the great

great commission in a connected world yeah we we've done uh the the great commission but digital like

that's a theme that i think i was the guy who said that i don't think i i stole that from anybody but

that's that's been a theme that that we've used a lot steve uh light in the feed sharing christ in

digital space man steve's like really throwing them down here click share disciple uh from wi-fi to

worldwide spreading the gospel without borders that's good um yeah methos is saying it right here three days

in one day is packed and if i do another i told i told leader i told my team today um if i do another

seven-hour conference uh if i'm in a place where i'm doing a seven-hour conference i will make it an

eight-hour conference which i will then make a two-day four-hour conferences i would break it up in in the

two days and do it wednesday and thursday that was that was another miss and that just became as this

thing grew and grew and grew um it just it exploded which to me is so exciting like i i i didn't walk

away feeling oh my gosh i had to twist the arm of these people to speak oh my gosh all these breakout

people um like they didn't want to be there they were doing me a favor it was it like nobody in the

past i had to do that in the past it was like hey come speak at this and do me a favor um people

people see what's happening they they they they are getting outside of us they're getting a glimpse

of it and and they they want to support they want to be a part they want to understand they they want

to help you doing what you're doing i the one guy i don't know that i've told who the one guy is there

was one guy i really wanted to speak and uh because of scheduling timing uh it was a late ask and it

just we could we couldn't get the schedule worked out but he was legitimately upset that he could not

speak at this conference he's not a digital guy he's he's a pastor he's well known i want to save the

bullet i'll probably do him for it for the next conference because it'll fit in uh he'll fit into

what we're we're doing in the future but this is the the the larger point is is that people want to

support what we're doing digitally that to me is is the big takeaway is we're not alone there are

there are different ecosystems there are different people there are that want to partner with us that

want to work with us i just literally just had a meeting uh with a guy um somebody from the church

digital uh like an hour ago where it's pretty much like hey i almost want to bring you on as a as a

partner development guy because we've got a ton of people that want to partner with us that want to

share resources and knowledge base i just i need somebody to like be accountable to help us process

it and work through that uh and so we're like there's i've got not spilled with coffee but i got

a bunch of names written on my white desk right here of people that want to take the next step

partners that want to dive in and resource our missionaries at a higher level it's oh my gosh it's

so exciting like i'm getting i'm getting a glimpse of what the future looks like at the equipping and

even at the mobilization level and um uh god willing man we're we're at the verge of of something

really really great for you all and so hey we're gonna do we're i'm committing to uh yeah three days

that's been up there a long time uh it wasn't just the length but the number of things uh within it

yeah yeah it was it was it was packed in the ability to uh you know steve says time to share

time to digest time to breathe um yeah we didn't we didn't we didn't get it it's that's that's a fair

assessment um and i'm taking that i did not i'm trying to think so i produced physical conferences

the physical conferences that i've produced you know i doing what we did at that speed you'd have

walk time you'd have lunch time and things like that um you know physical i think i've done full day

i've done full day conferences digitally that may have been the longest conference i've ever produced

it was was much longer because like i said it just kept growing uh more and more sponsors wanted to

come in more and more breakouts were needed i kept asking speakers and honest to god it was a four

hour conference that just kept growing and growing and uh i lost i lost control i i with grace when i say

this i'm actually glad i lost control i mean from from a from a control freak that i am

i i i love the fact that this thing evolved on its own i i i think that god moves when we lose control

i guess god can work through us but god can also move through some of the some of the recklessness

that that's in place and so i yeah you know what actually uh stacy in planning in the planning our

enthusiasm snowballed which yielded rich content squeezed in the shorts amount of time i mean yeah

that's my that's my point and so love that um ian's ian's lol awesome ian i'm not i'm not used to

that account for you but but good deal i'm assuming that you all right

sipping away at my diet coke um what time is it oh man it's been a good book been a good stream i

just i lost track of time hanging out uh with you all um yeah it's really time to share time to digest

time to time to time to learn time to digest it's it's taking it from

ideation uh processing it and uh applying it uh so you know you're learning new concepts you're

processing it and you're applying that's some of what we probably need to build in more the table

alter live i mean i love alter live if we could get alter live to to function you know be a little more

stable i think it's a great environment if not we need to figure out we love the love the auditorium

love the the tables um we we overstretched some of the server stuff uh for the breakouts that was

where the the obvious problem was but the idea of using the tables to apply that to process what

we're talking about to sit at a table maybe even have a one-on-one conversation with somebody invite

your team to come in together and sit at a conference table together or to sit down with

a partner and have a long conversation like there the underutilized asset was the tables some of some

of the feedback that i've gotten was the best part of the show the best part of the conference was

actually hanging out at the tables as people were leaving and just having the the one-on-one the free

conversations throughout the entire thing and so um we will definitely lean into uh more of that

in the in the in the future some other feedback coming in uh if it was a blunder uh it was some

magnificent uh one fourteen hundred thousand in attendance 80 85 countries hundreds uh if not a

thousand left extremely excited uh and pumped god did move yeah uh there are worse things that can happen

in life than getting a thousand people to to log on and learn how to be a missional using digital and

virtual technology and it was it was v1 i i've always if you learn it's built in and stacy can tell you

it's built into our culture v1 is version one's better than version none stealing that from um

crap who says version one's better than version none the guy that's uh the the podcaster gary v version

one's better than version none um get out there and do something if you if you succeed you succeed

if you fail you learn what not to do next time and uh and and try again ideation is is and what we're

doing digitally it's it's so important experiment try fail fail is not stop fail is learn and and iterate

and try again and try again and so we definitely succeeded it was a huge success so excited about

what happened definitely learning opportunities um if anything i wish we would have done a conference

we had talked about doing a conference um through the church digital in fall of 24.

um and i i kind of i i kiboshed it i killed it we had just transitioned to digital missions like august

of maybe july august we announced it publicly in september you know jason and i invested a ton

in energy into lazon and the team invested a ton of it and and we really as an organization we really

didn't know what digital missionaries was like we we were we were just starting to define it and meet

and engage with people and so on our goals we wanted to do a con one conference in 24

but because of our of the transition i was like no let's not let's let's pause it's not time

in hindsight maybe maybe that experiment would have been worthwhile but what we did and where i feel like

the doors are opening for us in the future organizationally is very exciting and um i tell you

one of the one of the other wins for me i'd put this top five was was the fact that we had so many

people um volunteering like i mean i sent an email maybe a couple days out i was like hey we're looking

for for volunteers to help with tech support to help with running the prayer table and to help with

capturing video what um you know if you've got anything uh if you're interested you know reach out

maybe 15 people probably in total came in and served at some level uh that was it was interesting

like some some of our leadership had no idea that was happening till day of and i was like oh my gosh

like all you got all these people yeah i mean just i just asked and they they said they were interested

and and to me actually um one of the board members who was involved one of the board members of the

church digital reached out and he's he's like it's him he said he's like that's the most exciting thing

for me about the conference because now you've got people that you're not paying that are buying into

the the and owning the strategy and they're they're they're investing themselves into it into making

something like this happen it was a big deal getting people to to give of their time and a lot of people

volunteered to lead breakouts a lot of people dealt with tech issues a lot of people um like just

invested of themselves and shared themselves uh through through the conference and and seeing that

ownership of of the vision of the church digital and the idea of helping digital missionaries

across 85 countries like that was a beautiful thing beautiful thing selfishly i would love to

hit 100 countries i can't believe we hit 85 um i i don't know somebody like i've been internally

asking myself is there a goal for the next conference i don't know yet i've i've we've got to figure out i

think the model is it going to be targeted and focused or is it going to be broad how many regional

conferences are we going to do um i think we're still a little undefined yet to really say a number

we're aiming for but um i would say that we as an organization i don't we're not that there's no

downtime on conferences we're already we're aren't like literally this morning i'm already leaning into

you know the next one and starting to strategize and talk about where we're going

uh with the conferences and and so no rest for the weary october day 8th is looming i probably need

to set up a countdown on one of my monitors here just counting down uh to the to the day and a

projected time but um we want to see more of these conferences in digital virtual space and and i tell

you like i've i've had through this conference and other relationships like i've had very um

influential people from multiple denominations large denominations that want to be a part of what

we're doing in the future like it will be very interesting to see if if we can partner with some

of these organizations um i don't want to get too much into it because it's still kind of fluid um

we're not alone and and and if there's if there's one thing that i want to champion maybe that's the

theme of of of the next one is we're not alone in this there are there are more people that are

digital missionaries that are out there in this space that are experimenting that are trying um and

we this is an opportunity for us to to validate what they're doing and and to reach out and start to

extend community in different ways methos is asking are there a hundred english-speaking countries yeah

there are english is a primary language across the board that being said i'm actually very much one

of the reasons i want to do regional conferences is i don't want this to be the face of the guy that's

doing a digital missionary conference in south america i i would rather and i've said this publicly i would

rather equip somebody else to do that like you know the digital missionary conference in in europe that

we want to do in the fall i i it's not going to be english speaking like german french spanish i'll let

simon figure that out but i i definitely want to get to the place where we're contextualizing this out

globally and that even means i may not be the face there needs to be somebody else if we're going to do a

conference for gen z uh on on this probably not going to be me but i want to i want to help get somebody

else that can speak that language uh out there same gen a etc like um english is a lid english is a

connector but at some point it's a lid and so we need to get beyond english we need to get beyond ourselves

and start to platform at a global level regardless of the context and yes yes you can create an ai

version of me speaking portuguese and it is excellent my my korean my mandarin chinese has faked out in

via ai hey jen my mandarin chinese has faked out one of my really good friends who is mandarin chinese

and so like it is possible to do it my opinion just because you can doesn't mean you should

and instead of being the the english guy that's talking about american digital ministry

i'd rather find people mandarin china is a hard example but i'd rather find people

that can speak of digital in their context and so i would rather grow and train relationships

and help them contextualize and then figure out how to communicate it um yeah well there's no language

barrier between young and seniors at least mostly uh oh oh that's because uh steve says i'll host the

ones for senior uh senior citizens i guess uh unless you can get mr p i know i i can appreciate that and

i appreciate that too but um i there's not a language barrier but i think there's a contextualization

barrier uh when it comes to platforms um oh it's interesting there's some good metaverse

church stuff happening in brazil methods who i'd love i'd love a connection there i've got a um

one of the people we're bringing on the board of the church digital is very connected

in portuguese in um latin then the portuguese side of latin and south america and so looking

to expand some relationships over there but i would you know on my side i'm looking to partner with

anybody everybody i want to learn what people are doing my my mission in in life and everybody that's

watching this hopefully knows this i i want to i want to discover where the issues are and um how to solve

them a for the people that are stuck and then be so that the future generations don't get stuck there

and i want to start to provide training and resources that can that can help streamline and and help

digital missionaries be more effective so they don't even have the issues of getting stuck and so i want

to be the gasoline that gets poured on the flame uh the spark that the holy spirit has given many of you

and what god has called you to do which is a fun place to be for me um but it is um

challenging as well but i love what i'm doing i love the fact that many of you are bought in and

excited about the church digital and the digital missionary conference and what's ahead i would i would

say this if you're interested in more information on the digital missionary conference including uh the

october 8th uh registration uh go ahead and hang out and go over to the website that's on the screen

over here wwe i did my finger the right direction kind of sorta how do i it's weird i can't there it is

www.missionary.digital www.missionary.digital well um hey this has been the wrap up uh for for the

conference thank you for the conference uh we took a we took a week off we were doing a season through

the church digital podcast talking about questions we're going to get back into that uh with with

questions some of the questions and issues the digital missionaries are getting stuck with i have no idea

who we're going to bring on next week because i have no idea we're bringing on next week so we'll have

a guest on diving back into the topic of that we'll have probably a couple others we're going to get

into we've already started talking about what's next for the show uh with uh with the stream here

looking forward to the future seasons but we're gonna we're gonna wrap up some of the questions

here and and move forward there's there's a couple people i want to highlight greg coming on from from

france my friend hi hi greg bye greg uh greg uh appreciate you thanks for hey greg served uh during

the conference i appreciate what you did handling some of the tech with that and uh simon's talking

to me about some of the stuff greg he's thinking about with you so excited to see how things develop

on that side france and beyond but hey i've got to go because i gotta meet a really cool guy uh that

i've never had a conversation with before and i'm excited about what this this one could open up i'm

excited about a lot of stuff but always excited here but i gotta land a plane because i gotta be in a

google chat room in about four minutes and so for jeff with the church digital this is jeff with the

church digital talking about himself in third person today that's awesome thanks for hanging out with

us today here on on the stream and we'll see you next time on the show you have a good one bye