EP 323 - The Right to Share Jesus Digitally is Given or Earned in Community

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast.

Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church.

But more than tech for tech itself, we'll address deeper questions.

Is disciple making possible digitally?

How should we approach the digital mission field?

Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space?

Oh, and where does the metaverse and artificial intelligence fit into all of this?

Whether you're a big or small church,

The Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church,

digitally and physically.

And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

All right. Hey, everybody.

It's Jeff here, founder of The Church Digital.

And we are talking episode 323 on The Church Digital Podcast,

highlighting the digital missionary, you know, I call it framework.

I'm starting to test this other language of flywheel

as we're starting to explore maybe doing something different

and reaching different people by doing ministry in digital space.

And so, hey, I see some people are jumping on us.

By the way, I'm streaming live on YouTube.

Hey, to our YouTube friends, go ahead and jump in the comments.

Let me know if you're watching live on YouTube.

And I'm also on Instagram.

And so I've got Peter Nallin I see jumping on.

So excited to see Peter.

Thanks for doing this.

Jumping on.

So I'm talking to my phone at the same time as the camera,

trying some different things here with season 11.

Once again, season 11 talking digital mission.

Let's go flywheel.

Now, it's funny.

I've not really said flywheel.

I'm kind of shopping this language around,

seeing if it kind of works, the flywheel.

And so you guys are my guinea pig.

Can I say that?

You guys are my guinea pig.

Guys and gals, people out there that are watching this stream in real time,

I have never done this before.

And so this is, I tell you, if you're watching this stream,

you are always getting the raw stuff.

And so that's what we're talking about here with this flywheel.

Because framework, it is a framework when we talk about the framework of contextualizing

the digital missionary framework of connect, community, equip, and mobilize.

But one of the things that we don't talk about is it's a lot of work to get the framework built.

But once you get it built, it turns into a flywheel where it almost like multiplies into itself.

It almost sustains itself.

It's hard to get it going.

Maybe you don't know what a flywheel is.

And so maybe you should like even back up and shop some of that language around.

And so, you know, in typical Funko fashion, let me present to you my friend here, Leonardo da Vinci.

Some would say, hey, Jeff, you look a little bit like Leonardo, wearing the dark hat and the beard.

Dude's got a pretty hefty beard.

I don't know that I'm there.

But seriously, Leonardo da Vinci.

Not, some of you are expecting a turtle with a, Leonardo was the sword guy, right?

With the blue, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

So, no, that's not this one.

Da Vinci.

He actually invented the flywheel.

And I happened to go to an exhibit here in Miami a while back where they were talking about the flywheel.

And a bunch of Leonardo was a known artist, but he's also a known inventor.

And this exhibit was highlighting like all of his early inventions hundreds of years ago.

And somehow he figured out the physics of the flywheel where it was this, it was this device that you would crank at the top.

And as you were cranking it, there were four weighted pieces of wood that were spinning around.

And what Leonardo discovered with the flywheel is once you get it spinning, and once you get those four things in, you know, I don't know what the language is, centrical force.

Somebody who's in physics can centripetal force, whatever you guys tell me.

But once it starts moving and sustaining in a circular motion, it's sustained, it continues on.

And I would argue, as we're looking at digital ministry, as we're looking at digital mission work, that these four elements that we're going to talk about are these four pieces that go in the circle.

It's these four wood blocks that once you get all four of these working in context, and once you get all four of them, or once you partner with people, and all four of them are sustained,

you're going to see your ministry explode in digital and virtual space because it's built into a reproducing format, a multiplying format.

To be honest, we're seeing that right here with the church digital as we're now seeing the four elements in TCD context work for us.

And we're even seeing that now start to explore in global space as we're starting to expand out and multiply into some different regions.

They contextualize it in that space and, oh, it's so much fun.

But, hey, here's what we're talking about with the flywheel.

I said there was four pieces, right?

Piece number one we've got coming into it is this idea of connection.

Connect.

You know, this is what we see.

Well, let me just give a, well, it's connect, it's community, it's equip, and it's mobilize.

Connect, community, equip, and mobilize.

So, basically, you know, the connections that we have, we want to feed them into community.

And within the community, we want to build relationships.

And through those relationships, establish trust, evangelism, discipleship, all of these things are super important.

But in the community has to have a purpose more than just building the relationships.

What do we want the community to do?

And for the flywheel to sustain itself, okay, that community, we're going to talk about this today, it's got to feed into some sort of an equipping model.

Some sort of a tool where you're equipping people.

In the Church Digital's context, we're equipping people to find their purpose.

What's God calling them to do?

And literally, through the Church Digital, we're helping them do that.

We're sending them out to do that.

As a digital missionary sending agency, we're equipping people to be digital missionaries.

And now we're sending them out to be digital missionaries in their context.

And so, that's the goal.

Connect, community, equip, mobilize.

And just like my friend DaVinci here, hey, DaVinci, just like he spun that flywheel to create the science, to discover the science of those four elements that are now have the force around it to sustain ongoing movement.

So would you guys and gals if we utilize the connect to community, equip, mobilization model.

All right.

So, let me just kind of get into this here in a little bit.

This is what we're talking about here in this season, digging in here.

So, connecting, if we are connecting, if we are doing blogs, if we're doing podcasts, if we're doing streams, if we're doing games, if we're engaging on social media, if we are engaging in these digital connection points, but we're not driving them into a digital community for a deeper relationship, well, I hate to say it, but there's really no power in that.

I mean, sure, you've got lots of followers.

You could have hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, you could have millions of followers, but that's an influencer.

Are you able to speak into somebody's life digitally?

Are we able to share Jesus at that level?

Are you able to change somebody's life at that mass number?

It's not about connecting with people at a superficial level.

Now, I don't mean anything rude about connection.

We talked about that in the podcast last week.

We did a deep dive on the connection.

But the connection for connection to itself, there's more than just connection, right?

This is where community comes into place.

So connection without community is powerless.

I would suggest community without equipping, community without some sort of purpose behind it.

If you don't have a purpose behind your community, I would argue it's kind of pointless.

Like, why even bother with community if the community is not going to end up doing something to have a larger purpose?

And for me, for the church digital and the missionaries that we're working with, we're encouraging this idea of equipping, feeding into mobilization.

Equipping, feeding into helping these missionaries we're training, helping the people that we're discipling find their spiritual purpose and equipping and mobilizing them to go do that in physical digital space.

So that's the 40,000 foot view.

That's the elevator pitch for Connect, Community, Equip, Mobilize.

I hope that's starting to resonate with you.

You're going to hear me this season say that a lot because it is the core foundation of what we're doing inside the church digital.

So last week, we did a deep dive on connection.

And it was interesting.

Last week, if you listened to the live, I was not feeling well.

I would just actually right after the podcast recording I did on Tuesday in the live stream.

I mean, I didn't like crush my car, but I literally crashed and I was out for like three days almost like it was it was brutal.

I just was broken physically.

My body just was like, yeah, you're done.

And it was funny.

Like, I wasn't really beat up.

It wasn't.

So I have no idea what caused it.

I'm feeling much better now.

My point being is that if you watch this on podcast, you're not seeing the live take.

And so it kind of condensed it down to the simpler take for episode 322.

But even that, it's really focused on this idea of connection.

What does it mean to connect with people in digital space?

What are the strengths of connection?

What are the weaknesses of connection?

What can connection do?

What can connection not do?

And so I would encourage you to dig back into 322 and explore that.

But it's important to remember that connection left to itself.

If all we're doing is connection, I'm sorry to say this, but it's most likely shallow and superficial.

Now, somebody is going to say, but Jeff, give me some like extreme situation where they can connect at a deep level involving X platform.

And sure.

OK, you know, I'm not going to fight the battle.

Maybe you're using that platform, not at a connection level, but maybe you figured out how to jury rig it to a community level.

But the fact is, is that platforms like like Twitch or excuse me, like Twitter X, it's hard to get to a deep level.

You only got so many different characters that you can type in and replies.

It's it's cumbersome.

It's not a it's not designed for relational approach.

You know, Instagram is kind of the same way.

Even as I'm streaming right now on Instagram, looking at this camera, you're all you're limited in some context with who you're really able to connect with in a two way conversation.

And so we start to rethink maybe what digital community is looking like.

This is where we start to now recognize that connection without community.

There's no power in it.

Now, as I talk about the flywheel, you know, start to think about this idea.

Digital missions, digital missionary work.

The majority of what we do is digital missionaries.

I mean, if we're really honest, it's it's it's grounded in community.

To be honest, like the majority, it's not even making about shoot.

Let's take that out of the connection.

It's not even about digital missionaries.

The idea of anything in missionaries, digital or physical church, digital or physical.

It's all about connection and it's all about community.

Let's take your average physical church.

Now, it's interesting.

I would suggest connect, community, equip, mobilize.

It's the same playbook your physical church is doing, just different context.

So you've got these people and they are they're the ones that are sitting in the pews of your

church.

Let's just say they're in your neighborhood around your church.

You just planted a new church plant in, I don't know, I'm downtown Miami.

OK, so you planted a church in downtown Miami.

The you want to connect with the people in your context, 10 miles around your where your church

is located in downtown Miami.

Oh, look, there's a giant skyscraper apartment complex right across the street from your church.

I want to go shake the hand of every person in that building and I want to invite them to

church.

I'm connecting with them because they're within range, physical reach of the church.

I'm meeting them.

And yes, in some physical context, you know, it is possible to to pray with a person, to

share Jesus.

The Holy Spirit can open something and do something incredible at the connection level.

He does that in physical and digital space.

Far be it for me to cheapen the impact of God in this context.

But it's important to realize, I would suggest, that it's not just the connection.

It's, hey, why don't you come join us for church on Sunday?

Now, that's the playbook in the physical space.

We want to get him into that physical community to build a relationship in the physical space.

I would argue that digital community is actually maybe even more effective than engaging with

people in the physical community, especially when you're dealing with people that are that

are called to Christ, because digital community gives a safe space for people to have those

hard conversations without feeling the pressure of physicality.

And so the opportunity in physical or digital to use digital community to establish trust,

to build relationships, to deepen relationships.

Digital evangelism, we actually find, is very effective in digital community.

Digital evangelism is very effective in digital community.

Because of relational approaches, we find that, and we'll talk about this here in a little

bit, relationships are crucial for digital mission work.

And the more that we can build relationships, not at the superficial level of connection, follow

the Holy Spirit, but as he guides, get these people, get the people you want to do ministry

with in community.

And there, establish trust, build relationships, evangelize, connect them to Jesus, and even

disciple in that digital community level.

There's so much that can be done utilizing digital community.

You know, it's interesting.

The, I tell this story every once in a while, the US Surgeon General, I'm blanking on his name

right now.

And I'm assuming he's still in office.

You know, I know here in America, you know, Trump just took office yesterday.

And I actually, I'm not sure if the dude got picked up again.

Actually, I need to look up.

But in 2023, the US Surgeon General here in America wrote a deal on the epidemic of loneliness.

This was a big deal.

This was 150, 200 page report, as I recall, citing the major issues in Gen Z and Gen A on

how they are isolated and separated and alone, and they don't go on dates, and they don't

have any friends.

We've got all this connection and no real relationships.

You can, you know, Google the report epidemic of loneliness.

I promise you, you'll find it in a whole bunch of commentary centered around it.

Now, what's interesting for me is that the US Surgeon General, who is not a Christian by any

stretch, I believe, doesn't profess to be, we've got mutual friends.

He is, he says that there's seven ways, there's seven ways in America we can address the epidemic

of loneliness, three of them actually utilize digital.

But the one that I really want to cite today on how to address the epidemic of loneliness.

It's funny.

I would think, okay, all the teenagers need to trash their phones because that's, that's

what normal culture would say.

Well, they just need to get rid of their phones and start having conversations like normal

people.

It's not what the Surgeon General said.

The Surgeon General said that we, corporations, we, organizations, we, institutions, we, churches,

we need to do a better job of utilizing digital community.

The Surgeon General, to address the epidemic of loneliness that's engaging in the next generation

in Gen A and Gen Z in America today, the top medical guy says, hey, digital community is

crucial and y'all suck at it.

We need to do better.

And so even the Surgeon General recognizes there's power in this digital community.

We just haven't utilized it yet.

So, so what would it look like to actually, you know, utilize this thing to, to establish

trust, to, to build relationships, evangelism, um, and, and even at the discipleship level.

And, and actually I'm reminded of a book that I wrote way back in the day, somewhere over

here.

I got my finger, right?

It's not showing up on Instagram right there.

That is so hard to do point.

You know, you can't see me on Instagram, but I'm pointing with my finger and it's like

mirror.

Yeah.

It's, it's just, it's mind blowing.

But I wrote this book with, uh, Dr. John Harris called Sharing Jesus Online.

And then we take this idea centered around bless.

You may have heard Dave Ferguson, uh, write the blessed practices, um, and, and, which is

a very relational approach towards evangelism.

Begin with prayer, listen, eat together with someone, serve that person and, and share Jesus,

share your Jesus story.

Now, Dave and his brother, John, they, they wrote the book and they developed the framework

in, in physical context, right?

And so this is where I am going to connect with my neighbor.

Uh, and I want to go share Jesus with my neighbor.

I want to build a relationship, uh, with my neighbor to connect with him about Christ.

And so I am going to, before I do anything, I'm going to begin with prayer.

All right.

I'm going to pray it up.

God helped me in this situation.

Give me the words to say and help me connect with, uh, my neighbor.

And then I'm going to go connect with my neighbor.

And, and instead of talking, the first thing I'm going to do is listen.

Hey, how was your day?

How's your wife?

Tell me what's going on.

Let's let's.

And you're, you are letting that neighbor, letting that person talk.

You're listening.

You're, you're engaging him and you're building that trust by, by listening.

Even at the listening level, you're already at community because community is two-way conversation.

Not one way.

Connection is, is you talking at people, social media posts, uh, blogging, uh, podcast streaming.

What I'm doing right now.

Like I've got Steve Reed on here.

I've got Peter.

I've got tall.

I've got people that are processing this stream with me.

But to be honest, I'm having a lot of one-way conversations here.

I'm not really engaging in two-way.

This is connection.

But by blessing, by beginning in prayer and listening, you're in community two-way.

And, and that's, that's the opportunity now to listen to people and, and strengthen that

community even more by, by eating together.

Hey man, this, this is great.

I'd love to talk more.

Let's go grab coffee.

And what's interesting with eat together in physical space.

Now, how do you eat together digitally?

We'll get there.

But eating together in physical space, there's a level of intimacy.

There's a level of trust.

Like if I'm at war with someone, if, if we're having verbal abuse towards each other, I'm

not going to trust them enough to go sit down over Starbucks.

Or if I am sitting down at Starbucks and having that conversation, well, that means that I am

attempting to overcome the struggles and, and make myself more accessible.

There's a humility that's involved when you sit down and eat that vanilla bean scone in

front of their, their face.

And so there's this opportunity to eat together through the process and deepening that relationship

by eating together.

And then you, and according to Dave Ferguson, you serve them like, you know, Hey man, I'm,

I'm, I'm sorry to hear you're having a hard time.

Can I, let me, let me mow your yard for you while, while, while you're traveling.

Oh, you're going to be out of town helping your mom.

Do you need somebody to house it or check your mail?

Show up at their house.

I heard Dave tell me the story once of how he showed up with, uh, he went to like this

special bakery in Chicago and, and he showed up at his neighbor's house with like a, this

like special loaf of bread that other than you can only buy at this one bakery.

That's really good.

It's like, Hey, I got two loaves.

Why don't you and your family take one?

Like it's simple to do, uh, to serve physically.

And so that, but once again, you're establishing trust, you're building the relationship and then

you share your Jesus story.

So like when you go through, begin with prayer, listen, uh, eat, uh, serve, and then share your

Jesus story.

You'll notice the bottom, the last step, share your Jesus story is, is really the, um,

is really the point where you are now speaking.

The rest is you action to build a relationship.

Now, it's interesting that, that Dave didn't choose the words like, um, Oh, I don't know,

like, you know, jump on a, uh, soapbox and tell them everything they're doing in life.

That's wrong.

Or that it's, it's not, you know, some, something like stand on some, uh, theological mandate,

uh, and just start, you know, slapping them upside the head.

It's not, it's not soapbox and, and it's not slap.

It's, it's share your story.

Hey, let me tell you what Christ did and did in my life.

I was, I was, I was at a time similar to yours and, and Jesus really met me in a, in a big

way.

Can I, can I share with you how, how that went?

So that is blessed in physical space.

Now I'm, I'm here to tell you, according to that book, begin with prayer, listen, shared

experiences, serve and share your Jesus story.

That is an incredible relational framework that works beautiful in community to share Jesus

and to bring people to Christ in digital and in virtual space.

Like we are seeing it time and time again through the church digital.

And, and I want to encourage you to start to recognize the power of, of community, the

power of a relational evangelism and, and to that relational discipleship.

Once you bring that person to Christ, you, you want to be part of that discipleship process

with them.

By the way, I'm not, I'm not speaking to like pastors here.

Um, you know, it's funny, the majority of pastors that actually watched my stream through

the COVID years, majority of those people are gone.

Like they're not, they're not keeping up with what I'm doing.

Cause I'm not talking about like how to get their church service to look great on stream.

Like I, I can have that conversation with you.

That is so not interesting to me, by the way, helping normal people become digital missionaries

to utilize their influence and digital virtual space for the cause of Christ to create a movement

of normies that are helping change the world, uh, and, and to come to the, uh, understanding

power of the gospel and understand their humility and the power of the kingdom.

Yes, please sign me up for the humility of the kingdom.

By the way, I'm, I am, I am all about that.

And so for us, normal people, bi-vocational ministers, people with nine to five jobs that

have nothing to do with ministry that are just, Oh, on the side.

Hey, let me, let me do a little ministry here in digital or virtual space.

Listen, let me, let me see how God can use this.

God can use this.

Uh, it's a, it's a powerful, it's a beautiful thing.

And so engage in this idea of relational evangelism, engage in this idea of once they know Christ,

continue the relationship, relational discipleship.

Now, the beautiful thing about the flywheel, the beautiful thing about the framework, this

connect, community, equip, mobilize, connect, community, equip, and mobilize is that it can

be contextualized.

I'm using big words today.

I feel like, you know, this may be, this may be the, um, deep into the pool for some, this

may be, this can get contextualized.

You know, I, I, I've had hundreds of conversations with people and they would say something to the

extent of Jeff, just give me a, give me a formula.

I just, I just want, I want four easy steps for each.

Can you just tell me what to do and I'll do it.

Jeff, if you can come up with a, with a four simple steps to, to launching a digital church

plant, um, it'll revolutionize the world.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy because of the word contextualize.

You want to launch a Facebook group church.

To reach the retired generation.

You want to launch a video game church on Twitch to reach, uh, 20 something gamers.

You want to figure out how to decide, start a discipleship movement for Gen A, Gen Z.

Uh, you want to do something in virtual reality.

That's engaging with people in, in Morocco and, uh, you know, some of the, um, uh, MENA region.

Uh, you want to do something in, in Africa.

You want to do something in South America.

You want to do something in Oceania.

You want to do something in the middle East.

Like it don't contextualization.

Um, that's why the church, the physical church, that's why the American church really, I mean,

this is why I said the American church was lazy.

Uh, actually I said they were cowards, but lazy may be a better word.

Because contextualization is hard because contextualization isn't scalable because they have their audience.

They don't want to put in the effort to find a new audience.

They just want to scale what they're doing more effectively.

And that's, that may not be a bad idea.

Like, I don't want to be critical of that model and of that play.

If I was investing millions of dollars into a certain type of model with a certain type of person,

I would want to maximize the ROI on that as well.

The problem with that model is that you only reach a certain type of person.

And this is where I say digitally, we have the opportunity to reach someone different by doing someone,

something different.

I say it again.

We have the opportunity to reach someone different by doing something different.

And it's leaning into these contextualizations.

It's leaning into adapting that flywheel, that connect community equipping mobilization.

That's why it's so important.

I've got my friend here, New Zealand, tall, skinny Kiwi.

I have no idea what time it is on your side of the planet, my friend.

Contextualization is why nobody should take a how to start a VR church in three days.

It takes a long time to figure out a new digital culture and be a redemptive part of that.

Yeah, it's interesting.

No, no shots intended.

I know somebody actually does have a VR church in three days.

And I would, I've had the conversations.

It's not three 24-hour periods.

Okay.

Like, let's, let's, let's back off the food train there.

It's more of like the, it's okay.

Like, I don't want to get like, did God create the world in seven days or seven time periods?

I'm not saying it was, you know, seven 24-hour periods versus seven time spans.

But yeah, it's, it's never as easy as, as three simple days.

Well, and to be honest, tall, skinny, that's one of the reasons I don't think I got as popular.

I could have been a lot more popular if I'd said, oh, it's four easy steps.

You guys can do this in 72 hours.

No problem.

You know, it, I actually, I had a, you know, I've told this story.

I had a global organization with a globally recognized lead pastor ask me,

Hey, Jeff, how do we get our, how do we get, um, one church for every planet,

one church for every hundred people on the planet globally utilizing digital tools?

Like there's a lot of desire to see this move,

but the importance to contextualize even what community looks like.

Like, you know, it's interesting.

I've been, I've been even wrestling with this in a, in a global context here in the past

week.

I had, I had a call from, um, Utope.

Utope is, uh, Utope, if you're watching, this is awesome.

Like don't, Utope sometimes second guesses himself when we talk.

And, um, you know, it's funny.

He, we were on this call and I'm like, Hey, so I was, how's EDM going?

What's going on?

I was getting like, you know, updates from him.

And, um, you know, Utope's in Nigeria.

He's been involved with us for the church digital five or six years now, seven years pre COVID.

And, and he starts like wanting, talking about changing things.

And, and, you know, you know, ever having those conversations with somebody and they're

like dancing around what they want to say.

Cause they're, they're afraid of, they're going to hurt your feelings or, you know, they

don't want to like, it's like broken glass or eggshells and they don't want to like, you

know, do too much damage, but they really want.

And I'm like, Utope, don't dance around it, man.

Just, just, just say it, just say it like contextualization requires that you say it.

Utope, I invited you into the conversation to recognize that how we think in America is

different than what's going to be effective in, in Nigeria, the, the conversation, so to

speak between he and I is, is that I am a huge, and my team for the most part, the church

digital team is a huge proponent of flip the classroom, the, that method of, of teaching

and then how we utilize community on the backside to reinforce the teaching that's in play.

Utope, in his experience through what he's taught and what he's, what he's actually done

as participant, it's like, Hey Jeff, flip the classroom doesn't work in, in, um, African

context.

Lesson learned, bro.

What do we want to do instead?

Come up with a proposal.

Think outside the box.

Dream big.

That's what contextualization is.

Actually, I told my leadership the other day, um, you know, talking about EDM as, as we're

talking about at the out, we're going to get into that post some of that later, but I was

like, there's, there's nothing in contextualization.

There's probably something that's off the table there.

It's, I don't want to say nothing's off the table at this point.

I cannot think of something that I would say, no, you're not allowed to do that.

You know, like I almost want to say like the life church motto, the Craig Groeschel, everything

short of sin for the kingdom is okay.

Like, I don't, I don't know what I would say no to.

There's probably something, but if you're not stretching the limits, uh, if you don't think

you're stretching the limits of what I would approve, you're not thinking big enough.

I I've had multiple of his conversations this week and it's so, I love, I love this.

I love seeing, I've been looking at people like on, on a, on a zoom call, a Google meet,

we use Google meet, Google meet call and their eyes, they just start to widen when they realize,

wait, he really means like shake, break it up, shake it up.

I I've been using the language of, um, deconstruct, deconstruct this baby.

And rebuild it.

Like when I'm talking contextualizing, you're not, there's not four easy steps.

It's we're going to help you establish the steps you need.

Realizing that what Utope needs in Africa is different than what Simon needs in, um, uh,

Germany and in Europe, which is different than what so-and-so is going to need in, uh, the

Middle East, which is different than what Abby's going to need.

Rafiq in the Middle East, Abby in, uh, uh, Southeast Asia, which is different than Oceania,

which is different than like, you know, insert.

And I haven't even gotten to the platforms.

How do we talk about Gen Z and Gen A and gaming?

And, um, I sat with my, um, I sat with the chair of the board today.

I had a breakfast with him, Charlie.

I have breakfast with Charlie probably a couple of times a month.

Once every couple of weeks, he lives here in Miami.

We, we, we go, we go way back like a decade or so.

And, um, I, I can on it.

Like the, the dreams of 25, I, I, to this day, I'm like, God, I don't, I, this is my prayer.

God, I don't know how I got here.

And God, I don't know how you are equipping me.

I don't know how you are expecting me to do what you are asking me to do.

Cause this is so out of my league, but God, I'm, I'm going to obey you and in obedience

to you, I'm going down this road.

Um, you know, I, I don't know.

I'm to the level of God, I can't, I need your brother, but, uh, you know, the Moses Aaron

deal, but it'd be nice to send some people along the way that, that, that can help.

And, um, you know, everybody on the team at this point has serving such an important role

and it's fascinating.

I, I, I literally, I, I can look at these people and I can say, you are, we just brought

on Stacy, uh, to handle, um, member care and some mental health stuff.

And, uh, I was, was sitting down with Stacy and I was like, you are literally, I rattled

off her resume over the past five, seven years.

I was like, you are literally created by God to do the role that I'm asking you to do.

Like everything that I know of your history, we can talk about your other history pre when

you got on my radar, but everything about you has built you to the point where you can

do the job that I'm asking you to do.

And it's amazing time after time, after time, the people that I'm talking with right now,

it's, it's that same way.

And what's fascinating is that, you know, a pest, they all think different, uh, motivations

they're, they're, they're, they're driven different.

And this almost gets back to, this is off topic, but you know, don't surround yourself

with yes.

People don't surround yourself with people that agree with you surround yourself with people

that don't agree with you and challenge them to make you better and be humbled to listen

to them when you need to.

It's a hard lesson.

All right.

So what does it look like?

What does it look like?

I'm, I'm, I'm reigning this back in.

That was a, that was a diversion.

I got, I got to come back here a little bit.

What does it look like to contextualize community?

All right.

You know, I, I, last week, oh my gosh, I don't remember who had the conversation with

live last week.

Um, but we did, we did a deep dive because they, they didn't agree with some of my perceptions

of Twitch.

I view Twitch more as, as a connection platform.

I, I, to be honest, I've never really seen Twitch, the platform as community.

Now I can cite, you know, it's a streaming, it's a one way.

I can't actually hear the person I'm seeing texting coming back.

Um, and so that's, that's my biases.

That's my opinion.

I am not God, nor am I anyone that watches Twitch on any regular basis.

So I'm not an expert on how Twitch can be used for digital missions and context.

If you want to talk with anybody that understands how to use Twitch in digital context, you're

hanging out with, with, uh, uh, with flat cap, you're handed, hanging out with Andy, Chino

mage.

Like there's a ton of people inside TCD that know how to do Twitch far better than I do.

I am not a streamer.

I, I, I fake this on, uh, on literally I play a streamer on TV.

Think about it.

And so I, I, I'm not, I'm not the one to say what can, it cannot be done by community, but

that's also part of contextualization.

In my context, I can't use that tool in that way.

In your context, maybe you can, and, and, and start to ask yourself these questions.

Can the platform, you know, Twitch in this example, can it allow for, for two way conversations?

I would say that the, the, the benchmark for a digital community to be an active part of

the flywheel in order to build trust, in order to establish relationships for digital evangelism

to be effective, for digital discipleship to be effective.

If we want to see that happen in a, uh, effective digitally digital community.

If we want to see that happen in digital community, there has to be some level of two-way conversation.

And at what varying degree does that happen?

Now, a lot of the, the Twitch people I know, like Twitch is part of what they're doing, but

they feed it into discord.

And so they've got the Twitch, they've got the discord as well.

What would it look like for, for you to use a platform for a while?

And, and does that sustain itself or do you need to feed into something else?

Like globally, we're in discord, uh, for a lot of our community in our context, that was

removing more global.

We needed to do something more than discord.

And that's when we, we hit into WhatsApp.

And now that we're in the discord and WhatsApp, we've got to use YouTube instead of what's built

into discord.

And so we start to build some complimentary tools, start to wrestle with some of this.

How does this look in your context moving forward?

The other thing that I would suggest to you, and we hit on this a little bit earlier is what

is the purpose?

What is the purpose?

What are you really trying to accomplish with your digital community?

Are you trying to get people to do something?

Are you trying to just get people to hang out?

Are you creating a safe space?

What are you handing off to in and through the community?

If, if the only thing you're doing with the community is reinforcing what's happening at the

connection level.

So you're creating a connection, community, connection, community, connection, community

loop.

And there's nothing at, at a deeper level.

I said it before, man, that's, that's really pointless.

I mean, at the end of the connection, community, uh, infinity loop that's happening there.

Yeah.

You're building up a lot of followers.

You are building up people.

Uh, you're gaining followers, but I mean, to pardon the biblical term, I don't know that

you're making disciples.

And even if you're promoting connection and community until you're equipping them specifically

and then mobilizing them and empowering them to do what God's calling them to do, sending

them out, it's, um, spiritual milk when they should be eating solid food.

What is your community's purpose?

Start to wrestle with that.

Think through that and be challenged to think outside of the box.

In some of these ideas, look at different ways that you can utilize community to accomplish

something.

What's the purpose beyond that connect community loop?

Give it some sort of a purpose.

Um, if you're in our system, it's equipping because we want to see, we want to see people

empowered on fire digitally.

We want to give people purpose.

Uh, we want to get people on the solid food.

We want to get people off the spiritual milk.

And I can tell you so many stories around that.

Um, there is, it's interesting here.

Tall skinny Kiwi.

Uh, let me zap this real quick.

Uh, with the very first short term mission team, Jesus told them to leave their bags behind.

Yeah.

Also, I've got, uh, Steve here.

Kiwi, we need to hang out.

Kiwi!

Dude, I, I sent you a DM on WhatsApp.

I, or on, on, uh, on, not on WhatsApp, on Discord.

We got to talk.

I need you.

Literally, I had, I had three of our people together.

And, um, I said, who else needs to be involved in this conversation?

And, uh, uh, 100% voted we needed tall skinny Kiwi.

So, let's figure that out.

Check your DM.

I'll tag you after this.

Uh, Steve Reed, one of my new friends here in, uh, in TCD.

Um, it's one of the things I like about your format.

Nothing's off the table.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

If we're not, if we're not challenging people, um, we're not doing it right.

And, and Kiwi says hello.

I love that.

Good morning.

Kiwi is 15 hours away from me.

It's 1 p.m.

So, it's 6, 7 a.m.

Your time, bro.

Good morning, Kiwi.

Melanious.

Um, I'm listening too.

So, Melanious is around.

Yeah, we're starting to get some love here from the YouTube crowd.

I, I'm going to be honest.

And, and, and I apologize for this.

This season, um, I'm going to be more talking, less dialoguing.

Uh, next season, what's coming up?

Uh, next season, we're going to be really focusing on questions.

I'm going to be engaging a lot more, uh, in this, in this season, though.

I'm going to be kind of banging the drum and getting through this.

Tall Skinning Kiwis, 8 a.m. in New Zealand.

So, I hope the coffee's good.

I'm, I'm, I'm sure it is.

Listen, some of you are listening to me monologue through all of this, and you're probably thinking,

well, dang it, Jeff, this sounds like a lot of work.

I'm not a community builder.

That's not what I'm called to be.

I, I just, I'm a, I'm a content creator.

I don't know anything about Discord.

I don't know anything about community.

I'm not interested in this.

I don't have time.

If that is you, congratulations.

You're a normal person.

Partner with somebody.

And that, that's, what's really is fascinating about the digital community, the digital mission

space that we're in right now.

The collaboration, the willingness to work together is phenomenal.

And so take this opportunity right now and maybe start to find some people to work with.

I'll tell you, one of the things that I'd actually would, would invite you to do is even

with inside the church digital, our communities, there's always an opportunity to connect and

talk with people at a large scale, but more than that, take our EDM course, equipping digital

missionaries and start to connect with a cohort of people that are in, in a similar space and

similar calling.

And maybe you'll find somebody that, that wants to partner up, or maybe there's an opportunity

to even work through one of our outposts, uh, in, in different contexts and meet up people

in that space.

Like the church digital exists to be a resource for people like you.

That are doing digital missions work.

And if you're, if you only want to operate at the connections level, you need to find the

people that can operate at the community.

I cannot tell me, tell you how many connections only churches, how many connection only, um, missionaries

I've seen dry up, I've seen burnout, uh, because they don't have an accountability.

They don't have a relationship.

They don't have a community to feed these people into.

So important to think through a multiple tier, this flywheel model.

It's so crucial for the digital ministry space.

Tall Skin and Kiwi.

I'm thinking through new ideas of a first person, virtual church, vicarious model based on streaming

and watching a single avatar go through an interactive church experience.

Just love to chat through that.

I swear I fricking love Kiwi, man.

He's just always, always thinking outside the box.

He was thinking outside the box on this stuff before.

I don't want to say before I was born, but yeah.

I mean, dude's been doing it a really, really long time.

Uh, digital ministry podcast, Utope.

Hey, Jeff.

Hey everyone.

Utope actually was talking about you earlier on the show.

Uh, you'll have to go back and, and scrub to, to get caught up on it.

Um, but this is, this is the core of it.

You know, last week we talked about connection and in this, in this flywheel of how do we

get perpetual motion, centripetal force.

I'll discover how to say that word at some point, but how do we keep it spinning?

How do we get ministry going?

It takes a while to get started.

It takes some work, may take some partnerships, but the idea of connecting with people, uh, using

social media, using blogs, using podcasts, using streams, using gaming, using whatever it is,

and use that to feed into a community.

The communities where we establish trust, we build relationships, evangelism, discipleship

happens best in community.

And then with all that feeding them into some sort of an equipping process to church digital,

we'll give you ours, equipping digital missionaries and that.

And so you're starting to now train them on how to do this and then mobilize them and send

them out.

This is a incredible opportunity for people to do effective ministry digitally.

They can be contexted.

They can be white labeled.

They can be reshaped in all of this.

And so, Hey, this past week was connection.

Today was community.

Next week, we're going to get into equipping.

I'm excited about this one.

We're going to let some of the, uh, sorry.

I said the cat out of the bag.

We're gonna let some of the secret out of the sauce.

I don't, I hate cats and, um, I guess secret out of the sauce.

That's not bad.

I really feel like that needed to get worked on better.

I have no idea how to transition out of this.

So, Hey, I'm just going to wrap.

I mean, I hope this was a good one.

Thanks for coming in and hanging out with me today.

Uh, but for me and everybody else who was hanging out here, uh, with the church, uh, digital

podcast, thanks for jumping on here and, uh, we'll talk with you later.

Bye.