EP293 - Andy Mage & Building Deeper Relationships Embracing Asynchronous Community

But all you really need is some sort of pastor or communications director to set up a Discord server, set up a Slack channel, set up a, you know, whatever, and simply just check in with people.

Once in the morning, once at night. Once in the morning, once at night.

You're going to be shocked at how quickly people get used to that rhythm.

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, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast.

Yes, we got episode 293. By the way, we are doing this recording live.

So we are hanging out currently live in Discord doing this broadcast.

And through the beauty of Riverside.

By the way, TCD Podcast is once again brought to you by Riverside.

The Riverside software is currently broadcasting this at the same time from, not from Discord, but at the same time we're in Discord.

It's broadcasting it into our Facebook group as well as YouTube.

It does have streaming.

So it's really built in.

We're doing Riverside and Discord at the same time.

And we've been doing it that way for, I feel like a month or so.

Have not had one issue whatsoever.

Incredible.

Knock on wood.

Knock on wood.

So you're saying I jinxed it?

Are you saying I literally jinxed it like right here, right now?

You did it.

We're all, we're going downhill right now.

That was me mouthing.

If you're on YouTube, you got that.

But I realized this is an audio podcast too.

And somebody's like, what's going on?

Yes.

No, listen, it's, Riverside has been awesome.

And actually I was talking with Andy off air right before we got on here.

Every time I log on Riverside, it's like I find some new button.

I get an email about some new feature.

Like for the first time, I'm utilizing their script slash teleprompter software feature that's built into the software.

And like, I'm really impressed with that.

Normally I would like to have to put my notes here on, on a side thing, but instead now I can use the teleprompter and just, you know, look at Andy's face.

And at the same time, the notes are just right above.

And so like Riverside, check it out.

Whatever your context is.

I just found out Tom, Tom Pounder with the TCD sidekick is moving his show over to Riverside and his church is moving over to it.

Had a conversation, another church, what other church?

Oh, was it DK Hammonds?

No.

Somebody just told me there were, but some other, some other podcaster, somebody part of TCD was moving their church over to it.

It wasn't Tom, it was somebody else.

Oh, oh, I know.

No, no, no.

It was Fred.

Fred, the guy that was part of, um, the, the, uh, gosh, the, the webinar we do with Rezzy.

He's moving his church over to it.

His pastor is doing like a weekly podcast out of his house.

And so they got to simplify and Riverside is just such a simple platform to do.

So check it out.

The church.digital slash Riverside.

The church.digital slash Riverside.

Okay.

So I guess that's it for the opening.

We got, uh, Andy Mage, of course, uh, Chino Mage been chiming in already here, uh, with the TCD.

Uh, so Chino's, uh, operations director.

He is, what, what's the title, operations director for the church digital.

What's the title with Lux these days?

Things fluctuate.

Uh, I am, yeah, I'm the creative pastor over there.

Creative pastor at Lux church, uh, chief operating officer for, uh, the church digital and, um, dad and husband at home.

Dad and husband at home.

So that, those, those, uh, were probably in the backwards order of priority.

You know, let's, let's put dad and husband.

Depends on the day.

Maybe, maybe.

Got to, got to pay the bill at some point, but, uh, but very good.

So it's, it's awesome to have Andy on here.

As we are kicking off season seven and the great thing about season seven here with the church digital is every week of season seven, I'm probably going to come up with a new title for even season seven.

Cause I'm going to announce season seven title right now.

And I'm going to tell you right now, I don't like the title that I have.

So we're going to come up with new title probably for next week.

And I'm probably going to like that when it changed it.

Cause you know, here with the church digital, we just, you know, what would fly at fly, you know, build a place, I guess.

Yeah.

Set a ride, run and gun.

Yeah.

Who cares?

Uh, but here it was digital opportunities here, uh, with season seven.

You know, we're going to be talking about five different opportunities, uh, within context for your church, five different ideas that digital can help be implemented in your church.

And guess what?

We're going to give you some practical ways that your church can actually take some steps forward into that space.

I'm going to give you the sneak peek right now.

We're going to come back and talk to this later.

Uh, but the church digital, we are launching into some learning communities this summer.

Uh, you're talking about building the plane as it's flying.

We get Barbara Carnero in, in position as connections and communication.

We launched the new website.

We're already changing a whole bunch of stuff on it.

But, uh, the fact is, is that we want to help churches like yours take some practical steps here in 2024, even getting into the summer.

And so we're going to be launching five different learning communities, uh, in, uh, through the church digital to offer for churches to come alongside, get connected with other churches that are asking similar questions and take some practical steps into implementing the new strategy in your church.

We're, we're, we're talking, well, we're talking about Andy Mage in here doing a synchronous community.

We're talking church communications.

We're talking virtual reality.

We're talking mental health and digital ministry.

We're even going to get into some like micro sites and hybrid, what that could look like at, at a hybrid church.

And so lots of opportunities for your church to implement, to learn something here.

And it's a definite opportunity in digital for your church today.

And so over the next five weeks here with season seven, we're going to dig in into all five of those topics.

Uh, async today, uh, Barbara Carnero coming up next week with, um, church communication, uh, uh, tsunami coming up in two weeks, uh, with virtual reality.

The week after that, we're going to be, uh, it's going to be Megan Carter on mental health and digital ministry.

And to wrap it up, it'll be me and a guest to be determined.

I don't know who yet, but talking about the idea of micro sites in a hybrid church.

And so look for those conversations, by the way, all of this, everything we got coming up is now on the TCD discord event channel.

And so check that out.

Uh, there's all sorts of stuff that at least what I've got coming on.

Uh, we got to get, uh, some of our other guys, Andy, when he's on, um, uh, flat cap.

JMO actually did an open office.

I hung out with JMO doing an open office on Friday.

That was like a really cool thing.

So, man, I, that was a lot of announcements at the beginning of this thing.

I'm like, it's like, you're like doing, I'm already doing a plane.

Yeah.

You're doing a church service right now.

You need to take a nap.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, is there anything else that we actually have to say today is in, in, in this, uh, in

this live podcast recording?

No, all good.

Just looking at the chat and people are talking about drugs and koalas doing stretching stuff.

So I think we're, I think we're right on par.

I actually have no idea how to respond to that at this moment.

Good.

Yeah.

That's how I close everything.

Cool.

All right.

So, Hey, let's actually get into the podcast.

Um, that was a mouthful.

Thank you for that nap time.

Uh, J O P.

So good, man.

Um, Andy, what do you do?

So you result like, let's, let's actually, I actually want to get into the life of Andy

Mage.

So Andy was a, Andy had like five jobs, but he was a full-time pastor at, at the, at

the brick and mortar.

Um, and so was, was a digital pastor there and stepped down January of this year, right?

Was it early, early, early 24.

So, and that, so now you, you're doing the luck saying creative pastor, you're doing the

operations for TCD.

Uh, like what do you do when you get up in the morning?

What does your day actually look like?

Uh, I get up very early, uh, usually five ish, um, Bible journal, coffee that for 45 minutes,

hour reflection, prayer time, all that.

And I work out cause I'm a fitness buff enthusiast guy.

Uh, and then it's immediately into whatever the day holds, whatever my to do is app tells

me that I need to be doing.

Uh, usually with creative pastor of Lux, I'm doing a lot of, uh, preaching and, uh, a lot

of graphic work, a lot of, um, video work, a lot of content around that.

Uh, I'm also, um, putting together a worship team.

Well, have already been putting together a worship team, a, you know, we're talking about asynchronous.

So this is an asynchronous worship team, uh, literally around the world.

We've got people in Guam and Dallas and San Diego and Pittsburgh and Michigan and Tampa and

putting all those together and post producing a bunch of stuff for worship.

And that's for Lux and then hand, you know, hanging out the community there, playing games

with them and being in community and doing all that.

Lux digital church.com head over there.

Uh, discord.gg slash Alexa digital church as well.

But, and on the kind of other hours of the day, I'm also the operations guy for the church

digital formerly, the digital church network.

And, uh, I am monitoring and handling our discord server.

I am editing podcasts.

I am on podcasts.

Uh, I am recording lots of video with lots of people.

I'm constantly having a camera stare at me, uh, looking at a teleprompter all day.

Um, it is, it's a very fun and interesting world and every day is a, is a little bit different.

Um, with, with church digital, I've been kind of helping to spearhead the new phase that

we've been in.

Um, you may have noticed a lot of changes that have come about in the last three or four months,

um, with website and look and feel and logo and all those things.

And that's been with the help of Barbara Carnero and word revolution, but also, uh, that's landing

on my plate and, uh, it's, it's been a lot of fun.

And every day is, I keep, I keep saying this every day is a lot different at coming from

a brick and mortar where I was a worship pastor for 10 years.

And then I was a digital pastor for five years, uh, where every day, everybody said every day

was different, but it wasn't every day.

You kind of got into routine.

This is, this is completely wild and I love it.

It, I would not have it any other way.

Yeah.

Uh, it is working for yourself kind of like, you know, out of your home is completely different

than, you know, showing up to the office at nine o'clock and clock in that, that nine to

five or that eight 30 to four 30.

Uh, like that, that to me is, is, is the, is the surreal, uh, approach to that.

And so, Hey, and, and by the way, uh, uh, DCN, uh, rest, rest in peace, RIP.

Um, yeah, so it's, it was funny.

Like I, I, I have some stickers actually here in my office.

I found them on Friday when I was cleaning it up and I was like, Oh yeah, sorry.

Digital church network.

Miss you.

Like occasionally I'll find, I'll find like a graphic somewhere on like our Facebook group

still has the DCN graphic actually has an old TCD graphic on it too.

And I was like, Oh yeah, I gotta, gotta get that updated.

So yeah, pour one out for the homies.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My, my LinkedIn was like, it's, I stopped working for, for digital church network in December

31st, 2023.

I was like, no digital church network lives on.

It's not actually dead.

It's not like I quit that job.

It just lives on in the church.

It's absorbed.

We absorbed.

It's such, that's such a,

a great word.

Well, I am need to create a morph video.

JOP is fire today in the chat.

That, that is so good.

Um, all right.

Hey, so, so let's get into this, Andy.

We want to talk about async.

Now I, of all of the topics of 2024, I think I am more excited about the potential for churches

to utilize asynchronous community.

That's probably the thing that I'm most excited about today than anything.

Like, like I have been waiting for this conversation.

I'm looking forward to this.

I cannot wait for this learning community.

There's so much potential for the church in this space.

And it is foreign to me.

Like I, it is beyond my mind.

I don't understand why no churches are very few churches, like half a dozen churches are

utilizing this space.

Well, I cannot believe it.

And so like, I want to actually, I want to go through, um, like we're going to, we're

going to go, we're going to go one Oh one.

We're going to go elementary.

We're going to go preschool here at the beginning because we got to get churches on this idea

of async and how, whether you're physical, whether you're digital, whether you're fidgetal,

wherever you are in the process, like async can help you.

And so let's, let's walk through this kind of at a very elementary level.

Let's walk before we run.

And hopefully we're sprinting here by the end of this thing.

So basic question, just to kick off the right here, Andy, what exactly do I mean when I say

asynchronous community or async?

The original asynchronous community was, if you look in the, in the Bible, you look at

the letters that Paul was writing back and forth.

That was asynchronous community.

Paul was literally doing asynchronous community 2000 years ago.

Uh, and that's that, that right there is kind of striking when you think about, oh, this

dude, you know, we, we often hear, and I might get a little, not slanderous.

I might get a little irreverent when it comes to some of the brick and mortar type pastors

who don't believe in the power of digital.

And that's just me.

Sorry.

But they often say like, well, you can't actually form asynchronous community.

What is that?

That's just email.

And there is no life there.

And I, I would push back and say, well, Paul was doing that 2000 years ago.

And he, he seemed to have a pretty good grasp on what was going pretty much, you know, what

was happening with the spread of Christianity in Europe and Asia at the time.

Asynchronous community is literally people that are not synchronous with each other, not on a

zoom call, not on a discord call, not face to face, not talking on the phone.

It is text messages.

It is discord messages.

It is Facebook.

It is Instagram.

It is all of the social media things.

It is any, anywhere that you are landing with a community of people that are your tribe, that

are your people that you can identify with those that you can automatically scrape away that

layer of dirt that happens when you meet somebody new.

That is asynchronous community.

That is one-on-one.

I feel like we're doing, um, the thing on Reddit right now is ELI five, explain it like

I'm five.

That is exactly how I explain asynchronous community.

It is, it is anything that is not immediately synchronously connected.

That's interesting.

You, you parallel this to like Paul's letters and, and going back to there.

Um, you know, uh, we, we actually were talking about this in a, in a discord stream, uh, maybe

last week, you know, and about how the letters was, was a district distributed, um, gospel.

And it's like, we're using the internet to the same way to distribute the gospel app and, and

how like Paul wasn't able to go.

And he would send Timothy like with the letter and would say things in the letter, like, Hey,

I'm sorry, I want to be with you.

I can't.

Cause, um, I think my joke was I'm either in prison, I'm sick, or I'm sick of being in

prison was typical Paul's response.

But as a result of that, Hey, I'm sending Timothy, show him a little respect.

And then he would tell Timothy, Hey, Timothy, don't let him look down at you.

Cause you're young, you know, just, you know, just stand your guard, stand your ground.

And so, uh, but that was, that was that distributed model where the gospel is being sent out.

And you're right.

A synchronous community with the distribution of Timothy along the way allowed for that two

way conversation.

Hey, this guy, Paul's talking about this crazy stuff.

We, the church at whatever, uh, Corinth, we don't agree with that.

And Timothy would say, well, blah, blah, blah.

And they would say, blah, blah, blah.

And there would be a dialogue.

There would be a conversation about that in real time.

And this is what we get the opportunity to do, to have these conversations in, in, in real

time.

Now, what, what's interesting here is what's the difference in, in, it's interesting.

Andy, I don't know how you're going to respond to this.

What's the difference between a synchronous community and like social media?

Cause, cause you can have that dialogue in social media, but what makes a synchronous

community special compared to the quote unquote community that we can get in social media?

I think community is that thing it's thrown around a lot as like a buzzword kind of like

that back, you know, right around COVID it was engagement.

Oh, we got to get our engagement up.

We got to get our, uh, we got to make sure our engagement metrics are there.

And like, what does that actually mean?

And then you'd have to, you know, 15 different people would give 15 different answers.

And, and that's kind of what it is today.

Like a lot of the, I do a lot of consulting on the side.

I help churches kind of get their, not social media presences, but get their digital church

presences up and running.

Um, I help low, small businesses also do it.

Actually, I have a, one of my clients actually just signed up for a Riverside year long subscription

with the church digital, uh, link.

So thank you, Laurel Slade, uh, for, yeah, thank you for the little kickback there, Laurel.

Um, but the, you know, the thing that, uh, that often comes up in those meetings is, well,

how do I get my community out of my, well, X followers or my Instagram followers?

And it's like, listen, that's not community that is call and response.

That is conversation.

Community is the deeper level of conversation.

Community is that thing that you can, again, scrape away the dirt and know that that's your

people.

I don't know most of the people on Instagram, anybody that comments on anything that we're

doing on TikTok or Instagram, I don't know them.

I might maybe possibly know their screen name ish because I saw it four or five times, but

they're not providing me any social connection.

They're not providing me a support network.

They're not providing me spiritual growth or guidance.

They're not encouraging me to find healthier lifestyle and make better choices.

They're not offering support during transitions.

They're not, you know, facilitating involvement and service and doing all the things that we

do as community, right?

That that's, that's just, that's call and response.

That is, that is a, a literal conversation, sometimes just 15 words and then an emoji.

Community is that deeper felt need.

It's that thing that we, we try to derive from and all of our church engagements.

It's the, it's the thing that, that we're all searching for.

It's the, it's the quote unquote God-shaped hole.

Like, yes, we need community with God, but we also need community with other people around

us.

And, and the, the, the difference is that the asynchronous community that we try to form

takes it that deeper level.

That's why if you go into our discord, we have, you know, we've got general chat and

we've got Q and a, and we've got all these other things, but we also have channels for

tech and art and music and movie and TVs and memes and food and gaming and metaverse and

all these other things.

And then prayer requests and devotionals and discipleship.

The reason that we have those things and are fleshing out those channels is because that's

what community does.

We take it into those deeper levels.

We take it into your people, your tribe, your, your, your, your, uh, your group that you

can automatically know that those people are for you.

Yeah.

So good.

It's interesting.

Just this morning, I found a, um, an article we'll put it in the show notes.

Uh, but there were actually, uh, JMO, Jason Morris put it on LinkedIn.

It was a Seth Godin blog.

Now, now I'm a, honestly, I'm a huge Seth Godin fan.

Um, Seth Godin's not Christian.

And I, I probably quote Seth Godin regularly.

If you've heard me speak publicly, I tell several different stories regularly about Seth

and some of his strategy.

Um, but the, uh, the, the, the, I, the idea of this blog with Seth was that not to be focused

on the, the top of funnel, uh, but instead to be thinking more about the bottom of the

funnel.

Like it's, it's not just in, in, in, you know, in, in a lot of what we do is, Hey, let's

just get more followers.

Let's just get more viewers.

Let's just get more and more.

And it's all about getting people on the top.

And instead Seth's like, Hey, focus on, on the bottom piece.

And it's interesting, even paralleling that J, uh, JOP is quoted here in, in the discord

is saying community equals, or for community, it's more about quality than quantity and utilizing

the community to, to build.

I would read into that a deeper relationship.

It's, it's more, more about what you know about someone rather than, Oh my gosh, I have,

you know, umpteen million followers.

And said, it's a, it's about, man, I know these people really well.

And, and, and the, you know, I speak into their lives.

They speak into mine and there's trust.

Like it's very hard to get trust of millions of people, especially if, if you're trying

to get them into like, I don't know, a disciple making relationship.

But if you take time with individuals in the community or something like this, yes, it can

look like that.

So very, very interesting here as, as we're getting into this idea of, of community.

Um, now it's, I mean, you're talking here, Andy, let me, let me, um, let me play devil's

advocate.

Okay.

So, you know, you're, you're, you, you, you said things like movie channel and TV channel

meme channel.

Yeah.

Okay.

You, maybe you validated some things by saying prayer requests and, and, and stuff like that

and devotionals.

But, but man, this isn't, this still isn't real community.

Like, like this is, this is a, I mean, we are on discord.

That's like for video gamers.

That's, that's like what they use to play video games.

How you can't, you can't have real relationships in that space.

Hmm.

I would, I, I would push back very, very hard on that notion.

Um, the, obviously you are playing devil's advocate and obviously we wouldn't be here

if we, yeah, I did this claim it up front.

It's the devil's advocate.

Yeah.

Okay.

If we, if we weren't fully bought in and, and, uh, white, white beard in the, in the,

in our discord chat says the difference between community and community toss.

Yes.

Community toss is the kind of the acute point of community.

It is like, that's the, that in my opinion, talking about the Seth Godin idea, that is

the bottom of the community funnel itself.

You want to get to community toss after community, but we're neither here nor there right now.

The, the, the, the idea of being real in community.

So I, uh, I'm a nerd and I am a, uh, I'm a gamer and I was a, um, this is about back in

two, between 2000 and 2006, 2007.

I was playing, uh, ranked Halo.

Halo is a video game.

Uh, one of my favorite games of all time.

I was ranked on the MLG circuit.

We were MLG's major league gamer.

We were playing a lot, a lot, a lot of Halo.

We were doing competitive tournaments and we were doing the whole thing.

We didn't have discord at the time.

We had a thing called team speak.

And then, um, after a little bit, Microsoft's own Xbox live chat got good enough to where

you could actually be in there.

And so I was doing a lot of Halo two and a lot of Halo three.

Well, I got saved in 2005 and didn't really know what to do with that.

And so I was still playing Halo, still kind of hanging out with the same sort of degenerate

amount of people.

And the, the part that, that kind of human Christian Christ seeking part of me was like,

Hmm, I want to try to turn this into something.

And so I joined up with a couple of guys that were not of my clan.

And I had found them on actually chat.

We had message boards back at the time.

Remember those?

And we had Halo message boards.

And so I joined up with a couple of guys and we started doing Bible studies in some of

our, we'd create custom lobbies every Tuesday night, uh, right around seven 30 Eastern.

We would all log on.

Um, we would do a Bible study for about half hour, 45 minutes with just two or three of

us all, you know, synchronously.

Uh, and then we would go and play Halo for, you know, we'd do headshots for the next hour

and a half to two hours and kill each other and bring people in and just have a lot of

fun that grew from two to three guys into about 15 to 20 guys, uh, over the span of about

a year and a half.

And I never met these people.

And yet I had some of the most deep conversations that I've ever had in my entire life over a

headset on my Xbox controller, looking at a halo lobby when nothing else was happening

and a Bible in front of me.

And to this day, never met.

I have actually, I've met one of the guys in person out of the 15 people that were in

the end.

I met one of them, 14 of those, well, 13 of those people, uh, never met.

And yet I still remain in contact with all of them.

I, they are all friends with me on discord.

I have all of their, I can, I can hit them up right now in their various stages of life

and they will drop everything to talk to me and I will drop everything to talk to them.

Now that is not asynchronous.

That is very much synchronous community.

The asynchronous part comes in when we start messaging back and forth.

When I do realize that, Hey John, he's out in San Diego and John has had been having a

rough couple of months.

His, uh, his wife got pregnant again and it was kind of a little bit of a surprise.

He's got a 10 year old, he's got a 12 year old.

And now all of a sudden, Ooh boy, he's going back into that.

He thought he was out of diaper mode and now he's back in diaper mode.

And asynchronously, he is asking me questions.

Hey, how did you do this?

What do you, what do you do about this?

How can I pray for you?

We're doing all of those things.

That is a very real, very real thing.

Now, granted that is based on years long emphasis of playing video games and a shared experience.

But there is a, uh, there's something interesting about setting a table for those type of experiences

where you automatically, all of a sudden, I keep, I keep using this term.

You brush the dirt away, you brush that dirt away.

And all of a sudden you find a common foundation with somebody.

And it just takes just a second to brush that dirt away.

And there you are.

And we are now in a relationship with people.

One of the things that also tends to happen when you open up channels like food and gaming

and metaverse and memes is that you're setting that table for somebody to brush that dirt away.

I can share, you know, I think Leighton Flatcap shared a, shared a, um, a meme about, uh, the

Kool-Aid man running through a, running through a brick wall.

Love that.

But like, if, if I, if I wasn't of a stage of life that I didn't understand that, I'd be

like, yeah, okay.

I know that's funny.

Okay.

A brick wall and then something about, but I understand that.

And now, even if I didn't know Flatcap, I would be like, Hey, this dude's my age,

probably just innately.

Like this, this guy's probably my age.

He understands what's going on.

That is a synchronous community at work without you even knowing it.

That's interesting.

So, um, and you know, what's funny is it, I'm going to be honest here.

It took me days to figure out that meme.

And, um, like, I don't know what, I don't know what that says about me.

We'll put the meme, we'll put the meme in the, in the, in the show notes too.

Cause it look, I'm looking at that.

And, you know, if I looked at it on my, uh, on my desktop and I couldn't zoom in on it

and I was like, I don't get it.

I really don't get it.

I don't call myself out cause I don't get it.

And like literally a couple of days later, I could, I could zoom in on my phone.

I was like, oh yeah, that makes sense now.

So yeah, uh, but you know, and really community, at least the way that, that we're utilizing

and the way we're, I believe the way that I would suggest that churches utilize it is

a mix between synchronous and asynchronous.

Now let's, let's actually, you know, I want to be once again, let's have an elementary

conversation, get them to walk before we can run.

Cause a lot of time I talk about async and sync and they're like, well, what's, what's

the difference?

Okay.

Synchronous would be having a conversation with people at the same time.

So like synchronous communications would be doing a zoom call, um, getting like a small

group in, in a Google meet, you know, even, even at some level, what we're doing currently

on discord where, you know, Andy and I are talking and then there's a chat with like eight people

running and, and we've got, uh, a rock y'all and flat cap and Ian and JLP and, uh, Melanius

and, and white beard and DWR and purposeful Paul.

We've got people in there and they're communicating to us and, and flat cap celebrating because we're

talking about his Kool-Aid meme.

Like literally, yeah, he just posted it in the chat so that everybody can see it.

So like that at some level is synchronous.

We're all communicating at the same time.

Asynchronous though is like, I post at 11 a.m.

Andy reads it at 11 45 and responds.

Somebody else sees it and replies to both of us at 12 30.

And so it's outside of time, async, asynchronous kind of communications in, in asynchronous community

and flat cap, that was an incredible meme.

I just, I gotta, I gotta celebrate that and, and, and hand that off.

Um, so like you're talking about your buddies on, on the, on the, uh, the, the bulletin board

way back in the day, you know, that was what we actually used to start e-believer, um, you

know, message boards and, and, and all that.

Uh, were you around for like the, the dial-up modem, the BBSs?

Oh yeah.

Was that you?

Yeah.

My dad, my dad is a, uh, it was, was, and still is.

He, uh, was a computer programmer.

He used to actually write video games for a company called Epix software, which wrote games

for the Commodore 64, one 28.

Uh, he actually, if you Google his name, he's got three or four different games to his name.

Uh, some of which I still play off and on through emulators.

My mom wrote the music for them.

Like they were, Oh wow.

They were big games.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Big, big games.

TRS 80.

Absolutely.

Um, yeah.

And, and they, but, but so we had, this is, this is going way back, but 91, 92, we actually

had a T1 line dug, uh, for us cause my dad was working from home.

And so we had a, we had a direct connection to the internet and then we moved to Florida

in 95 and we had to go back to dial up.

And just, I remember just sitting there going like tapping my fingers going, why is this

so slow?

All I want to do is get my Deftones pictures and my Korn downloads and Korn, not the other,

not the P word, Korn, K-O-R-N, the band.

Uh, I wanted to get those downloads and like, why is this taking so long?

This thing's just yelling at me.

So yeah, I, I unfortunately remember that.

Yeah.

They're in chat right now.

There's actually a conversation to see who the oldest guy is in chat right now.

Trying to like throw out the old school stuff.

And, uh, my money's on white beard, punk monk.

Yeah.

Uh, we just need to go back to Zork.

And so white beard are our resident theologian for the church digital.

I feel like basically needs the tattoo of the old guy saying, get off my lawn and get

off my Bible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And every time I see him, if I, it's a rock y'all.

A rock y'all coming in with a chat as well.

Not so.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

You know what?

That actually, oh, I don't know.

Um, a rock y'all white wall, white beard may win because of his beard alone, but the

two of you and both of, you know, who not of this world is like, I just want to call

out a rock y'all white beard.

If you two have not had a conversation with the two of you, that would actually be really

interesting, uh, for the two of you to connect up.

You're both.

Every time I describe white beard, I say he's eclectic and, and a rock y'all you're

kind of eclectic too.

All right.

Hey, let's get back to the conversation.

By the way, DWR, DWR actually posted something, uh, in discord as well that I thought was

very interesting doing some asynchronous missions training right now with the student getting

ready to serve in Asia.

That's what we're talking about.

That's amazing.

I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.

Cause that is, that's amazing.

Also, I think that's Jack Nicklaus giving me the thumb or giving me the hand that he wants

to punch me.

It looks like Jack Nicklaus.

That's weird.

Okay.

Hey, so, uh, DWR, if you can share some more, what you can share ethically, uh, you know,

feel free to, we'd love to, we'd love to talk through that, but, um, I do.

Hey, listen, by the way, you're hearing us.

I'll talk a lot about chat here.

Um, come hang out with us on discord, like here with the church, digital's discord.

We'll talk more about it.

There's lots of, of community.

We're talking about a synchronous community.

Come see it in real time.

Just go to the website, discord.thechurch.digital.

That'll walk you through getting your discord account, downloading the software and subscribing

you to the church, digital's discord server.

And you can see in real time, actually what this stuff looks like and, and how churches

like yours can take advantage of it and, you know, jump into conversations in real time

like this, by the way, I, we're, we're broadcasting right now on YouTube and Facebook.

And so if you are over there on those platforms, Hey, thanks for watching over there.

Uh, but, um, y'all need to come over to discord because discord's like where, where we have

fun.

Like I, to be honest, I, I just, I can't keep up with that many chats.

And so like, um, we're broadcasting over there.

I, to be honest, I don't even know if I'm really looking at it that much, but we'd love

for you to come over here and hang out with us.

So once again, it's discord.thechurch.digital.

Come over here and hang out with us.

Flat cap says, I remember when we got our first color TV, that may be the get off my lawn

got right there.

Like of everything, man, I don't, I don't know about that.

All right.

Um, so we were talking about gaming somehow I set up, that's what I, we're talking about

BBSs and, uh, I got, I got off topic.

My fault.

Um, how are, but our relationships real?

Like I'm, I'm talking about flat cap, flat cap, you know, Andy, let's talk about you.

I, I, we've been in physical space at the same time, twice, maybe five times, maybe five,

that many.

Yeah.

Maybe, maybe four.

Yeah.

Like a couple of expos and then a, then a day in Orlando.

Yeah.

And a, in a church IT network, maybe in there.

So three, four.

Tennessee or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Flat cap.

I've seen once, um, Barbara.

I've seen once, um, white beard.

I've never been in physical space with, but I've had one zoom call with the guy.

Um, like, so it's, are these relationships real?

Like, let's, let me, let's put it, let's put a, let's put a, uh, let's put a label on it.

Are these relationships real enough to get to the place of, of discipleship of, of entering

into that level, that quality, that, um, authenticity level of relationship?

Yes.

In a word, um, if you think about what discipleship actually is, it is being a follower, right?

Like you're a disciple of metal music, or you're a disciple of mathematics or whatever.

And all that means is that you are simply following the principles and tenets as closely

as possible.

Being a disciple of Jesus is literally following as close as you can to Jesus.

Getting the, what is the old thing?

Getting the dust of the rabbi to cover you, like walking so close to him.

That's what discipleship is.

And so it, we as church leaders and church workers and pastors and, you know, bishops and

deacons and all that were called to be disciplers and to make, go and make disciples.

I go all the way back to my very first comment about the apostle Paul using letters to do asynchronous

community.

He was a pretty good discipler.

He was making disciples asynchronously, asynchronously, yes, but asynchronously all across the ancient

world.

We, he was using a system of roads that have been created by Rome to get from place to place

to place.

Rome had gone before him for hundreds of years and they had been paving and making sure that,

you know, highways were safe and all this other stuff.

And Paul was simply utilizing those highways and byways to get to different places to make

disciples.

Well, we now have legitimately a series of tubes connected called the internet.

Perhaps you've heard of it.

Al Gore created it back in the eighties and it is, this is our Roman road right now.

We have the opportunity to make disciples, to become disciplers ourselves with this, literally

this thing in our pocket.

I do a, I do a, um, a podcast called the hybrid disciple.

You should go check it out.

Uh, we're at youtube.com slash at the hybrid disciple.

We are also part of the church digital podcast network with our good friend and buddy Ashley

Lagos.

And part of the hybrid disciple is we are bridging the gap between digital and physical discipleship.

How do we make, and how do we entertain, and how do we really, uh, constrain ourselves

within the physical limits of discipleship while also expanding and being part of, uh, digital

discipleship.

And I have to tell you, it is a both and thing.

The digital relationships are absolutely 1 million percent, 1 trillion percent real.

You can have a, uh, an amazingly in-depth conversation.

You can do all of these things in person.

I am proof positive of it.

You are proof positive of it.

Every single person in this chat and pretty much everybody listening to this is proof positive

of that.

And when I get asked that question, well, it's not real, right?

It's just a screen and all those other things.

I direct them to my children.

I've got a 20 year old, just turned 20 yesterday.

Happy birthday, Austin.

Um, I have a 17 year old daughter.

She'll be 18 in July and I've got a 14 year old son.

Uh, now the 14 year old doesn't have social media because we're not allowing, we didn't

allow social media until 17, 18 anyway.

Um, just because I know the dangers and evils of social media and all that.

But regardless of the fact, my 20 year old and my 17 year old have screen names, they

have handles on Instagram and on, uh, and Tik TOK and they use them interchangeably with

their digital and physical relationships.

There is no barrier between digital and physical, what they see on their phone, what they grew

up with.

That's what they know.

And that's not for better or for worse.

That's just, that's what they know.

And so why would we not want to utilize these tools to form real relationships digitally when

we know that physical people are going to be affected all throughout this?

Yeah.

So good.

Uh, I'm going to quote here, by the way, Whitebeard says that, that he had Christmas dinner with

Al Gore at the United States Naval Observatory.

I actually, a couple of days ago, I referenced that Al Gore invented the internet joke.

Um, and to my kids, my kids are, my kids are very right over their head.

My kids are very intelligent.

Um, like they're like very smart.

My daughter's like number one in her class, high school freshman.

And my, my son's in seventh grade.

And both of them said, who?

I'm like, I just.

He spelled potato with an E.

No, that's not that one.

It's the other one.

That was, what was it?

What was his name?

Uh, oh my gosh.

Oh gosh.

Uh, you keep, you keep talking.

Sorry.

Somebody in chat will post it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan Quayle.

Uh, so good.

Thank you for that Whitebeard.

Whitebeard is, is, is like.

All over it.

He's, he's, he's, he's jeopardy one-on-one.

Um, but DWR, DWR 1138, which is a reference to THX 1138.

I hope if not, that's really interesting.

Uh, but DWR says, uh, he does an online course that he gets to moderate, uh, and add context

specific discussions.

And he's working with students doing an online course, which I think it's a great option.

What, what, what, you know, look, thinking of like an online course, like a Thankgific or

something like that, which, which is, which is an option, which is asynchronous.

Um, you don't get a lot of, of the, um, I mean, you don't get the memes channel.

You don't get like a lot of that goofiness kind of stuff in, in a, in a, in something

like that.

Uh, in an asynchronous is, is the goofiness really a, is it necessary?

And how do you balance like the goofiness with a serious, like discipleship level stuff?

That is a, honestly, a great question.

We, uh, over at Lux, we have to deal with that same thing.

Lux is, uh, a church that was started by Mark Lutz, um, who many of us know, and it was started

three years ago by gamers for gamers.

And it's, it's since expanded a bit, but the core demographic is really a gamer centric,

uh, church.

It's awesome.

Love it.

I fit in.

It's my people.

It's my tribe.

That's my community, my community and parts of it are my community toss there.

And the thing about gamers is that we're all inherently trolls, not like ugly, nasty, gross

people, but we're all inherently, uh, we, we like to get in a chat and make people laugh

and poke fun and do that's just, that's part of the gaming culture.

Um, sometimes it can be taken too far.

And then there are other keyboard warriors that, um, decide that they want to blow up everybody's

spot and make things real bad and all that.

But by and large, it's just for fun.

And that there's a ton of goofiness there.

Uh, but there's also a switch can flip at Lux and it immediately goes from, Hey, we're

joking and laughing about something, some meme, some gaming channel thing.

And then all of a sudden somebody hits with a prayer request and it's like, Oh no, we're

down to business.

And it's a switch that just automatically flips.

Now that's built into the culture there building into this culture here.

We, you know, white beard pointed out that goofiness builds camaraderie and that's absolutely

it.

We need to have these types of things.

We can't just, we can't be 1000%.

We are geopolitical spiritual savants that are serious 100% of the time.

In fact, we probably shouldn't be serious even 25% of the time because, you know, I look

at, I look at the example of Jesus and like, I'm pretty sure Jesus spent a lot of his time

walking around with 11 other dudes.

And guess what?

Like dudes are dudes.

And most of these guys were ordinary unschooled fishermen.

You know, they, they had some things going on and there was probably some farting and probably

some, some burping and probably some like off collar jokes.

And I guarantee you, there was a lot of laughter.

There had to be, to be following around Jesus, there had to be a lot of laughter.

Or else three, that three year intensive thing where there's, if it's just only healing and

only, you know, this serious sermonizing, like there's no way nobody would have followed

Jesus that long, Jesus dapping or, uh, yeah, doing the dad there, um, in the chat from, from

flat cap.

So we need to have that, but we also need to build into our culture that, Hey, this is

also a place to come and share and be vulnerable and know that we are on shared mission with

you.

This is a place that, that we can understand that there's going to be people in your life

that are not going to understand what you're doing.

There's going to be people in your life that are going to get sick and are going to get

hurt and going to get injured and that are going to, you're going to need prayer.

Your mental health is going to struggle and, and, and your, your physical health is going

to go down.

We need to make sure that part of our culture also is establishing that realm, which, you

know, the coolest part about discord is that it breaks up into channels.

And so I'm not necessarily going to have all of that stuff in our tech channel.

Now in our tech channel, we're talking about AI right now, and that's pretty cool, but we

can go to our prayer request channel and we've got Leighton sharing some, sharing some

praises.

Like that's, that's very cool.

Discord allows us to do that.

Yeah.

I love the channels aspect and, and, you know, the ability to mute, ignore, turn off.

Hey, you know what, man, I'm, I'm really not into podcasts and I don't, I'm getting this

podcast, but I, you know, I don't, I don't want to keep up with that.

Or, um, you know, there, there's even been stuff that I'm like, yeah, I don't want to,

I don't want to get notified about this or that.

And so discord has so many permissions to be able to filter out what you do care about

and what you don't care about with that.

And so I do, I, I love that ability to kind of filter that, that back.

Well, you know, with, uh, and you guys have heard me talk about this and if not, you'll

hear me talk about it more, but it's this, the idea of, of a digital church flywheel

or a framework, or, Hey, if we're going to do digital ministry and this, this works for,

for digital is this honestly probably works for physical as well.

Uh, but it's, it's this simple framework of the, the, the people that we can imagine a

funnel, if you will, or a circle or a square, like we can spin it many different ways, but

it's this idea of the, the connections that we have in a digital space, this would be social

media connections.

This would be your email database.

This would be, you know, any of these, even personal relationships, the connections that

we have, uh, should be led into community.

And within that community is where we see discipleship happen.

Now, what we understand is that, you know, the people that are watching our church online

services, I mean, yeah, they're engaging with us, um, you know, an hour a week.

And I was just actually on the call earlier today, uh, with, uh, with the church and they

were like, uh, and so they, they have like their online church broadcast service and they

have a physical church service.

They weren't able to get their, um, their, uh, small groups, like they stopped doing small

groups of realism working.

And they just recently started one-on-one discipleship through the, through the navigators.

And so it's like, I mean, that's been working well.

And so it's like in physical space, they've got, okay, so they've got a physical church

service.

They're building relationships within the physical building community.

And then eventually they're getting down into, excuse me, and eventually they're getting

down to one-on-one discipleship.

And they're like, well, how do you do that online?

And I was like, okay, it's going to be really hard for you to get somebody watching an online

church service and to get them immediately into a one-on-one relationship.

Like there's not that trust that's in place digital like there is physical.

We started talking to them about micro sites, about digital communities, even like, um, Facebook

groups and, and discord.

And like, we're talking about here with asynchronous where you can, well, the look frog slowly,

so to speak, where you can build that relationship over time in that community.

And then what we're finding is a great way to get connected, you know, deeper into that

community, um, is once you're as getting or deeper into the community, that's where you

start to get into discipleship level conversations and even feeding into the one-on-one.

It's interesting.

Daniel M I've been blanking on this guy's name for, for weeks.

I've been telling the story and I could not remember who it was did a podcast with Daniel

M and he was talking about the difference of social space and about how the U S church

doesn't utilize a social space.

Well, you know, this is, this is like a medium size group, the church, they do big size groups.

Well, consider that Sunday morning, whether you're a hundred person church or a 10,000 person

church, you're a big meeting probably goes pretty well because you put a lot of effort

into that, by the way, that's top of funnel, even falling back on the Seth Godin blog.

Um, and then your discipleship, most churches do discipleship somewhat well, like even the

church I was referencing with the one-on-one discipleship or, or the small groups, like

whether or not that your discipleship strategy is effective, you're pouring resources into

discipleship and to your standards is probably operating the way that it should.

That's not a knock.

It's just, everybody's different, but what is not well, and this even gets back to some

of the Seth Godin stuff is that midsize community, that, that social space.

Even if you look at the life of Christ, I'm sorry, Andy, I'm going on a tire.

Even if you look at the life of Christ, he had all three levels.

He had the, the early church when Jesus ended up to heaven, there were 68 men and women.

And that was the church of acts, uh, pre, uh, pre Pentecost, 68 people.

Uh, and they were hanging out together.

Like that was the church.

That is the top of the funnel, so to speak.

Bottom, bottom of the funnel in Jesus's ministry.

Well, mid funnel social space.

Jesus had his 12.

That's that middle group.

That was the disciples and then the group that Jesus was really close with the people that,

that he was intimately discipling really gets down to the two or three.

So I would actually question Andy, whether Jesus was farting in front of all 12 or just

the three side conversation.

I don't know that we need to get into that one for today.

Um, but, but the fact is, is that we now have this opportunity to see community pull people

deeper down the funnel because ultimately this community, it builds trust and that trust allows

us to get deeper into that.

You know, Andy, I, I, I have, I, let me ask you this question.

Um, I have been, you know what?

I think I actually heard Jason Morris say this first and this goes back to 2017, 2018.

This is before I first met Jay Mo when I heard him say this.

See if you agree with it.

Digitally people find community before they find Christ.

Do you agree with that?

Yes.

Yeah.

I, I would, I mean, look at the way that, that we are structured in a lot of our discord servers

and in a lot of our social media stuff.

Like the, the already convinced are going and, and saying amen and putting praying hands and

doing things like that on a lot of these other things.

But, but the, the, the exacerbation of loneliness that happened in 2020 with, you know, a worldwide

pandemic and people in certain cases being locked inside their houses for a while.

And, um, you know, the, the fear mongering that was going on in a lot of people's hearts

was because they didn't actually have a community around them.

That's not a political statement or anything.

That's just, there was a lot of fear going on and there was not a lot of people to actually

have discourse outside of that fear.

And those that, those that didn't know Jesus were finding community in a lot of places.

And I will tell you, and we're using that word community again, loosely, but discord usage

skyrocketed over that time.

And that's where discord started to turn a little bit from being a gamer centric thing

into being a little bit more widely accepted.

You can go back and look at a bunch of studies that have been done and usage rates and even,

um, monetary values of discord from 2020 on, you can see that there's more money being poured

into it because people are recognizing the value of things like it.

And inside of that, there's a lot of people that don't know Jesus that are seeking to

just talk, just hang out.

We get a lot of people in our luck server that, um, they, they heard about us from a friend

or they saw us on a stream or something like that from somebody else's stream, one of our

stream partners, stream allies, and they'll pop in and they're definitely not believers.

I mean, some of their screen names that pop up there, you can definitely tell they are

not believers and yet they want to hang out and they want to play league, league, uh, you know,

league of legends, or they want to just, um, listen to some music with somebody, or they

want to just be there like that.

That is, that is an overwhelming propensity or overwhelming majority of people that join

into Lux that do not know Jesus.

They they'll join and then they'll meet Christ there.

Yeah.

And what, what an incredible, once again, opportunity missionally to start thinking about,

you know, digitally engaging these people, um, inviting them into a community, not to judge

them or ridicule them because, you know, I actually I'm thinking of, you know, Alice in

the palace, you know, is, is just the resident story that I feel like we tell a lot, but it's

a, she's part of, it's a perfect example.

You know, Alice's screen name pre Christ in, uh, in virtual reality and, and, uh, Twitch and

discord, I think was Alice queen of hell or something to that queen of queen of Satan, queen of

Satan.

Yeah.

Something, something to that extent.

And, um, and she, uh, through a eight month relationship, six month relationship with half

a dozen or maybe two or three different churches, a whole bunch of different people in virtual

reality, you know, Jay Earhart, a digital missionary in, in Twitch and VR, you know, led Alice to

Christ.

And so she changed her name from Alison, uh, excuse me, Alice queen of Satan, uh, to Alice in

the palace, you know, sure.

Her parents were, um, um, uh, not hardcore Satanists, but, uh, I'm neo-pagans is the word

I'm looking for, you know?

And so she changed from that, that lifestyle and found Jesus and, but she found it not like

through a comfort invitation where she raised her hand.

When the pastor preached a sermon, she found that it was a result of a long period of time

of relationships that's being developed in virtual reality, in Twitch, in discord.

And so it's incredible to see the opportunities of things like that happening in real time.

Speaking of in real time, I think I just got kicked out.

Um, can you, can you see me or can you add me?

Um, Andy, I think I lost you.

Yeah.

Uh, sorry.

I'm coming back.

Okay.

All right.

I'm back.

Um, yeah, I got disconnected.

That was a really important line.

You know, I, I, I butchered Alice, uh, and, uh, Alice queen of Satan, queen of hell, whatever.

And, uh, and, uh, and, and, and automatically, you know, spiritual warfare attacks discord.

Um, and, uh, and some, I literally just said, you know, you are now off the stage.

And I was like, well, I didn't click my mouse.

How did I get off the stage?

Yeah.

Come back.

Come back, Jeff.

I'm back.

Everybody calm down.

I think I didn't go anywhere.

Uh, you know what?

Yes.

It's, it's, uh, it's, it's software.

It's, it's going to, going to come back.

Yeah.

I'm back.

Yeah.

I'm back.

I'm back, Jeff.

I'm back.

I'm back.

Everybody calm down.

I think I didn't go anywhere.

I, you know what it's, it's, uh, it's software.

It's, it's going to, going to kink up every once in a while.

Um, all right.

Let's, so let me ask this.

Let's get, let's get practical.

Cause we, we've done it.

We've done an elementary walkthrough of, okay, this is what asynchronous is.

This is the community, um, you know, digital, you know, I've heard Mark talk about this,

that what he does for Lux, you know, what he does on Twitch is the equivalent of the Sunday

morning service.

Um, what he does on discord, engaging the community is the equivalent of Monday through

Saturday.

It's like, it's like the, it's the, it's the discipleship.

It's the relationship.

It's, it's, it's being the pastor versus the, being the, the public speaker, so to speak.

So let me ask you this, um, for a, in a hybrid environment, how would a hybrid church, a physical

digital church, how would they even start to begin to utilize something like asynchronous?

That's, uh, that's something we did at Bay Hope.

Um, the church I was at for the last five years, um, I found in the first eight months that I

was there.

So I, I started in June of 2019.

Uh, so before the COVID pandemic and in the first nine months that I was there, uh, the

first six months, we're really just getting my feet into the desk, you know, processes

and it's a big church, you know, multi-site church.

And so it's, there's a lot of bureaucratic and process driven things.

And so just trying to get that there.

And what I found was that I had landed in a place that we had, uh, we had a lot of, we

had, you know, a couple thousand people that were streaming us and connecting with us every

single Sunday.

And then we're dispersing for the other 167 other hours of the week.

And so I'd have them for an hour and then I wouldn't have them.

And that's a little Messiah complex E from me thinking that they needed to stay in contact

with me outside of emails and text messages and all that.

But that's really the point of church community is to make sure that you're there to support

and encourage and again, strengthen and share, you know, live a shared experience with somebody.

So I started building out, we had a, we had a large Facebook group that wasn't being used.

So I started building out the Facebook group and then, you know, COVID hit and then the

world got turned upside down.

And what I found was the, we went quickly from being a, a stream or a, a, a live multi-site

church that was streaming of services to all of a sudden we were a digital church, completely

digital church for about three or four months.

And then it, you know, then we turned into a hybrid church and I continued that Facebook

group and then I opened a discord server and, uh, we had a Slack channel for a little bit

and Slack didn't really take off.

And the thing that I kept noticing was that people were apt to go into discord on their

lunch breaks and they were going into discord on their way home.

Obviously they shouldn't have been typing on their phone and yet they still were, uh, they

were checking into discord before they went to bed.

You know, I, the average person was checking into discord two to three times a day.

And these are, these are definitely not gamers.

There are people that, um, you wouldn't think would ever, would ever want to check into as

something like discord.

And yet they'd open it up on their phone because they wanted to stay connected with their friends

and their family that were all also there.

And, you know, when I left, we had a discord server of a hundred, 150 people, something like

that.

Not huge, not small, but not huge.

And I was pretty proud of that.

The thing that I kept noticing was a, a, a step that we have to take, you know, Whitebeard

said setting up a campus pastor and then having something like discord to follow up on things

is yeah, for, for, for certain churches, they're going to have the resource to be able to hire

somebody, but all you really need is some sort of pastor or communications director to set

up a discord server, set up a Slack channel, set up a, you know, whatever, and simply just

check in with people once in the morning, once at night, once in the morning, once at

night, you're going to be shocked at how quickly people get used to that rhythm.

And it will be rhythm.

You're going to have to, you know, that you talk about a flywheel, Jeff, to start a flywheel,

you have to put a lot of energy in at the first part.

So like, if you think about when you're starting to pedal a bike, it takes a lot of energy to

pedal a bike, but once you get that bike going, you don't really necessarily have to put as

much energy in to keep that flywheel going up front.

If you truly feel that you are called into a hybrid sort of asynchronous lifestyle, which

spoiler alert, you should be.

But if you, if you truly feel like this is the way forward for you, it's going to, it's

going to be a lot of effort for you.

You as the communications director or a campus pastor or church leader or whoever's listening

to this, it's going to be a lot of effort, but you're going to realize very quickly that

it's going to pay off in spades.

You're going to notice also the people that are super passionate about your community that

are super passionate about staying connected and you're going to be able to utilize their

strengths and resources and gifting and talent in your community as well.

So my, my biggest practical advice is, man, just start, just do take the first step, like

get off of your hands and take the first step, whatever that first step is.

Is it opening up your Facebook group a little bit wider?

Cool.

Is it just simply posting in the morning and at night?

Cool.

I'm not saying you need to go hire a discord admin or anything.

Although the church.digital, if you want to talk a little bit more about that, uh, we

would, we would love to have that, entertain that conversation with you, but, um, take that

first step and start posting, get a little bit more regular about it, open up that door

and allow people to, to come into your community.

Yeah.

So, so good there.

Um, so good.

And so learning communities is a great way, you know, I'm just do a quick commercial for

the churches to get plugged in, uh, to start to learn how to do what we're talking about.

And that's, there's lots of questions that are come up on this, talked about it earlier.

Andy is actually leading a asynchronous community learning community for, for hybrid churches,

for digital churches to better understand how to take advantage and utilize this.

And so you're interested landing page.

If you go today, when we're doing this live broadcast, landing pages and up, but if you're

listening, uh, next week, when it was goes, conversation goes public, the church.digital

slash learning community, the church.digital slash learning.

That community, all one word on learning community, check it out.

That's a great place to get more information about this.

But once again, it's not up currently for this, uh, uh, live recording.

Uh, and so, yeah, it's, it's interesting.

It's some, uh, chat, uh, purposeful with Paul.

Most churches are already doing some sort of asynchronous email lists and texting.

It's important.

Like, I just, I want to reiterate this, um, that you are, that it's easy for people to talk

to the church.

Like, I think the reason I like asynchronous the most is because it's so easy for the church

to receive feedback, to receive conversations.

Like digitally, it's better to ask questions than make statements.

To get up on a soapbox and preach something is not nearly as effective as building a relationship

and listening.

And so if that email, yeah, white beard says that email and texts tend to be one way

and for purposeful, Paul, I'm sure he has a purpose, more interactive forms of async.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're, we're on the same page, but just for those that, that are outside thinking about

this, like the importance of asynchronous is the ability to listen to that and build a

relationship by listening, not by talking.

Uh, and that's really what you want to get to in digital space.

It's not, to be honest, that's one of the things that Andy does so well.

The other part is, oh my gosh, if you do asynchronous well, your volunteers are leading it and running

it.

Like as, as a pastor, you don't need to be hands-on or you can get, you can do once a day

or twice a day, hands-on checking at lunch and at the end of the day.

And that's all you need to do because, cause the, your, your, your volunteers are so excited

about what's happening in that space.

Why?

Because you're finally doing something that's up there, up their alley.

There's a, uh, Andy, do you know, have you heard of this, um, introvert economy has that

phrase, but this is a new thing.

I just became aware of it a couple of weeks ago.

Introvert economy, introvert economy.

This is interesting.

Bloomberg, uh, Bloomberg.com published an article in January.

And as far as I know, that's the, uh, that's the first time that I've been able to find

a reference to it.

But basically what they're saying is, is that the, uh, the, the socioeconomic status changed

post COVID and ultimately people don't like being in social spaces and instead they're wanting

to do stuff from their home.

And so as a result, um, economies are shifting where now it's, it's, it's like, how do we get

the last mile?

Like Uber eats is far more, is far better than, than, than, than cooking or going

out to eat restaurants are, are making, are making more delivery and smaller footprints

without having to worry about all the seating spaces and stuff like that.

And so what, what's interesting from a church level is some of the stuff that we're talking

about with digital community.

Well, shoot, you may have some introverts that aren't really good in social space.

That would be awesome doing something like this, which is interesting.

Even talking about Alice queen of hell, like she is much better in a digital community and

engaging in dialogue with, with people, uh, than she is in physical space.

And I've had many conversations with her to know that to be true.

And so it's, it's understanding how digital community maybe can help you reach that different

type of person that, that your physical community can't do.

And having a hybrid, having digital community and physical community, once that compliment work

together is really the way to go.

That's some of the stuff that we're going to get into here, uh, within the, within the, uh,

learning communities that, that we're, that we're doing.

Um, and you know, Andy, I'm, I'm curious, uh, maybe you touched on this.

You know what?

Let's pivot.

Let's, let's get into this, uh, towards, towards the end.

I want, listen, and I say this, uh, I, I, I'm just the fact that I started the conversation

with, I want tells you there's ego involved in this statement.

Um, there, there, there's a couple of things in my life that I feel like I'm really early

on, like leading the curve ahead of the ball game.

Okay.

You know, I'm the guy whose first online Bible study he led was in the year 2000.

I was talking asynchronous community before Facebook existed in, in the marketplace.

Like, so I'm used to being ahead of the curve here, uh, digital church, a little ahead of

the curve, COVID accelerated things and made it, made it, uh, commonplace asynchronous community.

I kind of feel like we're maybe a little bit ahead of curve, really working with that bleeding

edge here a little bit, maybe more of the cutting edge coming in, uh, as we do have, like I said,

maybe half a dozen churches that are exceeding well in this space, but I really want the church

digital to be like the paramount example, the, the, uh, the, the pinnacle example.

I think that's probably the better word, the pinnacle example of asynchronous community.

I would love to hear from you because, because you are responsible.

You are like the community guy for the church digital.

That's, that's your job.

And you launched discord a month ago and ish, ish, and we are flying, we are rocking and

rolling.

I'm doing a broadcast here, live recording of, of this currently in discord.

It's been a lot of fun the past month.

Um, let's give a sneak peek.

You know, I love leaking stuff here on the, on the podcast, especially what, where, where

are we going with this?

What's coming up?

Let's tell us what, what's happening here with the church digital.

We've got two, two, yeah, two big things coming up.

Um, so you've noticed that we've kind of already started this where we have had live streaming,

like we're doing right now, plus some live office hours.

Uh, Jeff's been doing it.

Flat cap's been doing it.

Uh, JMO popped in a little bit.

Uh, we are going to be expanding that a little bit.

I'm actually going to be streaming, uh, into our discord server.

And the idea behind streaming is we're not gonna play video games.

We can play video games if you want.

Uh, but the idea is I am, I've been streaming a long time flat cap as well, but I've been

streaming a long time on Twitch and I kind of love the idea of just getting together with

a bunch of people.

Uh, and so one of the streams is literally going to be kind of just a, I say co-working

loosely, everybody says, Oh, co-working is like a thing that we all get in together and just

hang out and don't do work.

But I want us to just be able to have people around.

Um, I am an introvert and yet I have an extroverted nature when it comes to some of those things.

And I like having people around when I'm working.

And if a lot of you are like me, where you are on a computer or you have a phone or something

along those lines, and yet you're kind of head down and you're working on some things,

it's nice to have people in there.

And so we want to be able to lock arms a little bit during the workday.

And so once or twice a week, just for maybe an hour, hour and a half, maybe two hours,

we're going to start doing some co-working streams and that's literally, Hey, bring what

you got.

If you got questions, come on in.

This is not office hours.

This is more just, we're going to be, we're going to be working alongside each other.

Uh, we're going to be, you work on whatever you want to work on.

I work on whatever I want to work on.

We're going to try a big old grand old experiment.

Um, one of my favorite streamers, her name's Asia, the girl, she is on Twitch.

She's also on, um, she's got her own website.

She works for, um, a company called live streamer and, uh, or live stream, sorry.

And she does co-working streams.

They're some of my favorite streams.

They, she puts on some like lo-fi music and she just works and she just talks with a couple

of people that, they come on into the stream.

They come in and hang out.

There are people that, that are, um, that are devout Asia, the girl followers.

And I want us to have that kind of community to come hang out, chill type of community.

So that's, that's number one.

Uh, number two, the big one is you're going to start to see a lot more, um, uh, I'm going

to say interaction and I don't mean it that way, but as our flywheel starts to turn a little

bit more and as people kind of get our humor, you like the fact that people are sharing Seinfeld

memes in our live streaming chat right now makes me feel very, very happy.

And that's exactly what I'm talking about.

As we start to see these things, uh, pick up, as we start to get a little bit more of

our humor and a little bit more of our goofiness out there, uh, the real personality comes out

and then the true test of who we are as a community is really going to be shown.

And I think we have a lot to offer the rest of the world in terms of how do we actually

be disciplers?

How do we actually be movement leaders?

How do we actually help people stay on mission while at the same time having personality and

not being scared of that?

And so that's, that's honestly the biggest thing that you're going to start to see out

of our discord.

Um, a lot of the things that you will also see in discord channels is that people try to

force community and they try to force personality and they try to force culture.

And you can do that a little bit.

Uh, you can guide it, but anytime you try to force a culture, you end up with a company

like Twitter.

And we kind of saw what has been happening with Twitter over the last year where you're trying

to force a culture of anti-authoritarianism and all sorts of things there.

Sorry, if you still use Twitter, that's, that's, that's on you.

What's Twitter?

Yeah.

X.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry.

Uh, yeah.

The art is formerly known as Twitter.

Um, yeah, yeah.

So the biggest thing, the biggest thing you're going to see is a personality start to come

out.

And I, for one, want to be the curator of that personality.

We don't want to guide it.

I want to, I want to be the curator.

I want to, I want to hold that personality in my hands very loosely and go, okay, world,

I release you into the wild.

And so just, uh, the, the, the church digital discord, it's going to be the place to be.

Yeah.

I love it.

I'm, I'm streaming Tuesday, uh, every days and Thursdays, every, every Tuesday I'm streaming.

I'm doing, uh, several different open offices.

One is going to be more casual and one is going to be, Hey, bring your questions and let's

talk ministry wise.

And so I've got all that on the discord event board.

And, um, I, I just would do that.

My streams, by the way, like if I'm not doing a, uh, recording like this, my streams are very

casual.

Like I, I've been, I put some of those streams on, on pod on my podcast recently.

And, uh, I was, I, I think the last one I did, I was like, man, I'm not even going to

put like, it was so relaxed and chill.

It's like, I'm not, I, I, I'm not going to publish this.

Like it's, it's a lot of fun, but I'm, I'm just like sitting around having conversations

with people like it's, it's not, it's not really like podcast meat.

Like this was a great conversation.

We got to, you know, goof off with the chat.

The chat at this point is not even listening to us.

Like they are so, they are so off in whatever is, is happening right now.

Uh, yes, we are.

No, you're not white beard.

Come on white beard.

Go, go watch friends and, and Seinfeld white beard has only watched five or six Seinfeld

or friends and I know I'm missing out.

Yeah.

That is literally the get off my lawn guy, uh, right there.

Oh my gosh.

Friends, what's the guy upstairs?

Um, that, that's always like stomping down beneath and they're always like doing the broom

thing up.

Uh, come on, come on.

Somebody, somebody pull that.

Um, Mr. Rickles, Mr. Heckles, Mr. Heckles.

Yes.

There you go.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

White beard is Mr. Heckles.

Oh, he is.

It's so, so good, man.

I'm sorry.

You had to die though.

Um, sad, sad, sad.

Spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, it did not, it's for a 30 year old show.

Yes.

Yes.

So good.

All right.

So, Hey, listen, we, we, the church digital, we, we want to set the example for asynchronous

and what we're doing here, um, through the church digital and providing, uh, consulting,

uh, to other organizations, conversations that we're already having and, and working with

churches, uh, through learning communities and, and, and otherwise we want to help, uh,

understand the organizations, figure out how to better utilize the funnel, so to speak,

to get better conversions down at the bottom, leading towards discipleship, disciple, disciple

making and, and, uh, and evangelism.

Like it's, it's so important and it is such a missing piece for the, the, the, the problems

of the church today.

So information on, Hey, listen, we're going to have, um, once again, for the live recording,

um, we're going to have an after party here in a little bit.

I'm wrapping up the broadcast.

So stick around.

Y'all don't leave as I'm hanging up for those of you who are not listening, uh, in, in,

in live, check, keep an eye on discord, keep an eye on, on, on our social media

as we start to broadcast and really get out there when we're doing these live recordings.

I know I've got five or six or seven, I think almost listed here in the next couple of months.

Like I'm leaning, I'm leaning heavy on, on, on the, on the live recording things would

love to have community in.

And so you could be posting whatever Kramer gifs and all the other stuff and deal with

the chaos that's in here.

And so information on the discord server or to sign up for the discord servers at discord

dot the church dot digital.

Uh, and so definitely want to be a part of that information on the learning community.

Learning communities as we're wrapping up, um, is, uh, so it's the learning communities

are going to be June, July, and August.

Um, dates are pending on that.

Um, Andy's doing his, and like I said, we've got five different topics that we're going to

be hitting with five different facilitators.

And so cost on the learning, the learning communities are eight weeks, all online, uh,

cost is, and all going to be discord based.

You see how I keep stalling on the cost?

Like that's, that's kind of intentional, but not really.

Uh, yeah, it's eight weeks, uh, all on discord.

So you're going to be learning how to do this, you know, and you get access to private channels

on discord.

It's going to be a lot of fun, but, uh, the cost is going to be seven 97.

It's normally nine 97, $997.

Instead, we're making it seven 97, um, for, for this first round.

Uh, and so we want to get churches to get wins out here.

And so if you're, if you're serious about experimenting, kicking the tires on, um, on a

learning on, uh, asynchronous, you want to get the tips and the tips, tips and the tricks

and the secrets from Andy mage.

Um, you, you want to be a part of it.

Uh, check, uh, actually it's, yeah, it's going to be the church.digital slash learning

community.

We'll have all that up here.

Uh, by the time this conversation goes public.

Awesome.

Yep.

Hey, so as we're wrapping up here, Andy, any, any questions?

Any closing thoughts?

I should say that was, I have no, I got no questions for you, Jeff.

Thanks.

Um, one of the, one of the things that, uh, I, I love that we're doing in discord is kind

of just being, you know, getting to read all these gifts and all those other things.

But, uh, one of the biggest things is that just be on the lookout.

We have, we've got a vision here and Jeff kind of talked about it very briefly and you're

going to start to see it flesh out a little bit more over the next year.

We've got yearly visions, we've got monthly goals, and then we've got weekly conversations

that we're going to be starting in, in May.

And so I just invite you to start being, uh, encouraged and really, uh, being engaged

in those conversations.

You'll see a little bit more starting next week as those start to roll out in our general

chat and, uh, throughout some of our channels, but everybody that's been here in the audience,

thanks so much.

Uh, we love you and, uh, continue to invite your friends to a wacky place like us where

we can talk about brick, uh, where we can talk about brick, brick comms and the it crowd

and, uh, um, you know, just have a lot of wacky, weird fun.

Confession hour.

I've never watched the it crowd.

Either one.

Isn't there, is there an English version as well?

I mean, there's a British and there's American.

The American one's fine.

The British one's real good.

Is it real, real good.

Yeah.

It's real good.

I'll do it.

Like I watched the British office.

Actually, I love British humor just for whatever reason.

I never got into, um, like to be honest, uh, whose line is it anyway?

The British version.

So good.

I would watch that old, like when it was on comedy central decades ago, I would, I wasn't even

alive when it was filmed, but just listening to those guys talk about whatever the crap they

were talking about, which made no sense to me, but their accents, I could just watch that

show all day.

Like there was literally a summer when I did nothing, but had comedy central on 24, seven,

three 65.

This was before South park.

So it wasn't like gross, crazy stuff.

I personally don't get into South park, but I know others do, but I'm not judging, but

I just don't.

But, um, everything else, Andy, I love South park.

As I recall, like that's not a direct shot, but I don't call you out, but are you, are you

that guy?

Or is it somebody else?

No, no, I used to.

And then I grew out.

Oh, I know who it is.

My brother-in-law.

My brother-in-law is a huge South park guy.

He looks like you, which is why I put the two together.

So forgive me.

Okay.

Um, but then I have a lot of respect for my brother-in-law as well.

So I respect both of you.

I got you confused in my head.

Casey, you're not listening to this, but I do appreciate, uh, you know, everything you've

done for me.

Thank you very much.

Hey, we're going to land the plane and we're going to swing over to, to the after show.

So discord, feel free to don't go anywhere, throw crushes in chat.

We'll bring you up and we can talk about this.

We're going to stop recording and thank you all.

Hey, for Andy, for the podcast, uh, this is Jeff with the church digital.

Thanks for jumping on the live recording here, being part of the show.

We'll see you next time.

Y'all have a good one.