EP291 - Jeff Celebrates 5 Years of The Church Digital Podcast

thinking outside of the box, doing something different.

Well, everything I just described to you today is commonly referred to in 2024 as Christianity Today.

Movie reviews, music reviews, sermons online, community discussion board forums.

It's nothing new under the sun on that.

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.

But hey, listen, it's great to be here with you today.

We're going to get into some celebrations here in a little bit.

I mentioned earlier the Church Digital Podcast, TCDP.

The podcast celebrates its five-year anniversary yesterday, April 15th.

Yeah, it's tax day.

And I decided to launch a podcast, the Church Digital Podcast, five years ago.

So that would have been 2019.

I had been doing the Church Digital less than a year when I decided to do the podcast.

And publicly talked about this.

I actually texted with Ray today and thanked Ray because Ray the Armist is the reason I'm doing the podcast.

Because Ray told me to basically shut up, stop talking about it, and actually just do it.

And that was the words that I needed to hear.

Ray, you know, I was a live producer for Church.

And so I had this ridiculous vision of what I wanted the podcast to be.

And I didn't want to do it until it was perfect.

And I'll never forget, Ray tells me version one is better than version none.

And, you know, I've heard that.

He stole it from a couple of other people.

But, you know, get out there, get going with it, get started, make it happen, and improve.

And we did.

And version one was nowhere near the quality of what I wanted at the beginning.

But it was still pretty dang good.

And so stop waiting for somebody.

Stop waiting for your best opportunity.

And just jump on it and go.

Get started.

At least that would be my advice.

And that's how I've lived.

As you can obviously tell through the Church Digital, we change so much stuff here on a regular basis.

We're always innovating and experimenting and implementing and iterating and all those really long, complicated words that you normally hear when you talk about goals.

There was an interesting conversation on Discord today.

I don't know if you guys saw that.

About, you know, goals and the usefulness of it.

And so, like, I always found that.

When I was in my 20s, I hated goals.

I felt that goals were restricting and limiting to where we were going.

Melanie, you were talking about that a little bit.

I always felt like goals were restricting for where I wanted, for where I thought we were going to go.

It's like, well, what happens when God pivots us?

And so, kind of negative on it, I guess, a little bit.

In my 30s, I discovered that, especially the more that I've worked with, this is Melanie, this is me.

Don't, I'm not saying anything.

But the more that I worked with teams, the more that it was more than just me, the more that it was like, okay, the goals are necessary.

It's just to keep everybody aligned, to make sure that everybody understands the purpose.

Because I'll never forget working on a staff, and it was a church staff, as a matter of fact.

And we asked the church, Eric Iger, who was executive pastor at this church, Eric Iger, author of Simple Church, if you're familiar with the book.

The church that I was at, Christ Fellowship Miami, actually was the first Simple Church.

It was the book that, the church that he wrote the book at.

And he said, okay, hey, so what do we expect people to do after they attend a week in service?

Like, what's next?

And I swear, six different people in the room came up with six different answers.

And it all had to do with, like, their area.

And it was not holistically aligned at all.

And it was like, okay, like, we don't, nobody in the room has a clue.

They're all just self-centered on their own thing and not seeing the big picture of what we as an organization are trying to do.

And so it was really interesting to see how goals, like, that season was really where goals made more of a clear understanding for me.

Well, we'll get into that here in a little bit.

Hey, a couple announcements.

I guess I have some things coming up.

So, you know, I work with The Church Digital, obviously founded that.

We've got a great team here with The Church Digital.

New website, by the way, check it out, thechurch.digital.

If you have not seen that yet, take an assessment.

Learn if you're wired, if you're gifted.

Well, you know, what is it?

What are you thinking about this idea of planting a church in digital or virtual space?

And are you equipped for that?

There's an assessment there on the website for that and other things and other Easter eggs you can dig into.

Check it out, thechurch.digital.

Very cool.

Hey, so one of my other gigs is as I work with a company called Resi.

Resi Pushpay, kind of work within their ecosystem.

And they have a webinar, a series of webinars that I'm leading for them called The Resilient Church.

Now, there's a lot of physical, there's a lot of digital church planters in here.

And so I'm going to be honest, guys, the webinar is really not for digital church planters.

It's much more towards physical churches doing digital ministry, physical churches, how they can utilize digital, like what's the why of that?

We're calling it The Resilient Church.

And so if we've got any of our physical church friends on here, we'd love to have you check out this webinar.

We've got, you know, a lot of, you know, Tyler Sansom, lead pastor of First Capital Christian in Cordon, Indiana, is coming on.

We've got another church, one Mosaic Church in Nashville, Tennessee, somewhere in Tennessee, is coming on as well.

But we're going to be talking about connection and community.

What does it look like to connect with people and what digitally, what does digital community look like?

You know, Resi does an incredible job with encoders and the technology aspect of it.

But what we're really trying to do is trying to coach their customers as well as others, use Resi almost every day, Whitebeard.

That's awesome.

Whitebeard, what?

Are you hardware or are you broadcasting out of Pro Video, Pro Presenter?

They, you know, they do a lot of the streaming.

But a lot of the customers, they really don't understand the technical or the ministerial points.

And so really spending some time with Resi and the customer base over there, starting to help them understand the base of it.

So the first webinar is going to be April 24th.

We're doing a series of six webinars, April, May, June, July, August, and September.

For more information, you can go to resi.io slash community dash connection.

That's a mouthful, I know.

They don't make it easy for streamers.

Well, Jeff, nobody ever says this.

We don't need a vanity URL.

Nobody ever says this out loud.

It's always on social media.

Yeah, but you got streamers.

I mean, it's resi.io slash community hyphen connection.

RSVP, come hang out with me at the webinar.

It's going to be April 24th.

I want to say 1 o'clock Eastern time, hopefully on the website.

Number two thing coming up here, right around the corner, DK Hammond.

You know, DK Hammond's a guy that's been doing digital ministry a long time as well.

And he is an African-American.

And he has been doing a lot of work for the African-American church in digital space.

And he started posting some stuff on Facebook the other day.

And I just immediately was like, hey, we need to hang out and have that conversation.

Because I know, and actually, Elmichelle, I did a podcast with her on that a year ago, year and a half ago.

I was starting to scratch the itch on African-American church, some of the challenges, some of the opportunities, some of the obstacles that's really in view of the African-American church and their struggle to adapt to technology.

And their struggle to, in the church context, I should say, at least it's interesting.

Like they, well, I don't want to get into it.

We'll let DK do that.

So, hey, we're going to do, it's going to work.

We're going to experiment again.

We're going to do it live here on Discord.

And so, my friends here on Mighty Networks, come over to Discord.

We're going to do a podcast live Friday at noon.

We're going to record it.

We're going to delay it on the, we'll delay it and play it back like a week later down the road.

We'll schedule at some point.

But a live podcast recording, DK Hammond, talking African-American church.

You know, we're going to be talking through this format and live podcasts and Andy's wanting to do some streaming in here.

I think FlatCap is actually streaming in here tomorrow.

I want to say FlatCap, if you're around, shout at me one way or the other so I can say it.

But, you know, we, we're a week into the Discord thing and I love it.

I love, I love the community.

I love the conversations.

I love the technology of it.

We still got to fine tune some things.

Okay, so FlatCap is going to try to do tomorrow.

Tomorrow, noon Eastern, I believe, right?

Confirm for me, FlatCap.

Tomorrow, he's going to try to stream on Discord and Mighty Networks together.

So, he's going to do the same thing I am.

It's really clunky in the first, like, 30 seconds because you got to, got to press go on one.

You can't press go on both at the same time.

And there's work you got to do once you press go.

And it's, yeah, it's, just be awkward for the first 30 seconds and then you'll be great.

So, very cool.

Yeah, so those are the announcements.

We've got the Resilient Church webinar series that Rezi's putting on with me.

Rezi.io slash community dash connection for more information on that.

And then DK Hammond coming right back here.

We're going to be in the live stream Discord, TCD Discord channel, noon Eastern, this coming Friday.

So, you don't want to miss that.

Okay, hey, so it's the five-year anniversary of the Church Digital Podcast.

And, you know, like I said, Radiarmus really was the impetus behind this.

Rezi, Ray, what, Rezi, that was funny.

For some reason, I just had this vision that I was going to name my dog Rezi because I've named my dog Ray.

But my dog, it's not Rezi.

It's not, it's Ray.

Medicine.

Woo!

So, you know, it was really funny.

Ray told me when he's like, hey, Jeff, do the podcast.

He's like, hey, you know, Jeff, so like get 10 podcasts, call it a limited series, get it done, and, you know, just be done with it.

Just get out there, do something with it.

And it was funny.

Like I told Ray, this was 2019, 2018.

This is early 2019.

And I told Ray, I was like, 10?

I'm going to do more than 10.

I mean, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to launch with five.

And he's like, you're going to do more than 10 podcasts on church online?

I was like, yeah, sure.

I mean, that's not going to be hard.

And so he didn't believe me.

And so we're doing 291 right now.

Literally recording 291 as I'm talking.

And so we've done a lot of conversations with a lot of really friendly people, a lot of really wise people,

a lot of pioneers, a lot of brave people, getting out there, trying new things, taking some heat for some things.

And so check that out.

It's thechurch.digital.

There's all sorts of information on there.

You know, it's interesting, even for myself.

I am like the worst entrepreneur, business person on the planet.

I just I want to, like, disclaim that about myself here.

When you.

Like when you grow a podcast.

Your goal is to make the podcast as big as possible.

And just like, you know, if it do two days, do three days, do five days.

Like you want your audience to be huge.

And and for whatever reason, I just always had the antithesis idea.

Like it's not about growing the podcast big.

It was about multiplying podcasts and creating a podcast network.

And in distributing the wealth among others.

And it was it was kind of like a more of a distributed model.

And to be honest, that's that's why we signed with.

Well, I mean, that's the distributed model is is what's the principle that you think the goal is.

That's interesting.

Whitebeard, it's a good comment.

You know, the idea of breaking up leadership and saying, hey, let's let's go with the distributed model of leadership like we are now.

Or or to be honest, even the idea of the movements that we're working with, you know, I mean, my job title was literally metaverse church next director.

And when I was in that season, we recruited and started developing Stunami Stu to to be the really the Stuart McPherson to be the voice of of the metaverse for the church digital.

Because it's like it's not it's not going to be me.

Let me let me get somebody else that it can be.

And it was, you know, I don't I don't know if that's.

That's probably not the wisest financial decision, but I've never been bright financially, but it became more of a of a ministerial play of a of a of a of a context, depending on what our goal is.

You know, our goal was not.

Our goal was not to create a million dollar company.

I had a I actually had one of my mentors.

Year was twenty.

Nineteen.

Twenty twenty.

Year was twenty twenty.

I'm sitting my one of my mentors is a lead pastor here in Miami and I'm sitting in his office.

I'm going to lean back.

I'm getting a little comfortable, guys.

Yeah.

But so Whitebeard says Patreon is the best way to make some money on a distributed podcast network.

I mean, you're not wrong, Whitebeard.

But when you've got.

You know, one, two hundred audience, five hundred audience spread across, you know, each podcast and you've got six, seven, eight podcasts on your network.

I mean, viewers are distributed across all of them, you know, as opposed to like.

You know, I'm just talking out loud like a Kerry Newhoff, who's got a million downloads and however many hundreds of thousands of viewers.

And and like we just.

You know, there was there was an option.

Let's go with a let's go with a popular idea or let's go with what Jeff's thinking about digital.

And.

You know, we went with this rare idea of movements in digital space and digital discipleship and digital church planting and and the thing that nobody was really talking about and really getting into.

And so that's what I think really made it unique.

You know, it's interesting.

This guy was telling you about one of my mentors.

He's a lead pastor in Miami and I'm sitting in his church and he's in front of a whiteboard.

He's he's helped me strategize some things out as we were looking to transition away.

This is 2020, mid 2020, late 2020, looking to transition away from Stadia.

At the time, I was director of digital church planting for Stadia and was looking to start what would be digital church network, which is now the church digital.

Part two of the church digital.

And so but I'm sitting there in this pastor.

I just he's like whiteboard everything that you're doing.

And I literally I just every every connection, every relationship, every side job, every opportunity, every conversation like it was.

It was it was it was mammoth.

And I'll never forget this pastor friend of mine looks at me and says, Jeff, you got a you got a billion dollar business here.

You just don't you don't know how to do it.

You don't know how to run it.

And he's not wrong.

I don't know how to run it.

I don't know.

It's a billion dollar business yet.

I think I think I think we're I think we're the pioneers paving the way so someone else gets rich.

But hey, you know, somebody should say that, you know, pioneers get shot, settlers get rich.

You know, we talk about on the podcast like I should get a tattoo anytime it's just tattoo where the conversation.

I think I've said that enough on the church digital podcast that it needs to get tattooed.

Cool.

So the podcast is five years and 300 episodes.

Got some really interesting conversations coming up.

DK Hammond talking African-American church.

Excited about that.

Peyton Jones trying to line up Peyton Jones.

Peyton Jones is the church ninja.

No, he's written.

He actually is the church ninja.

He's like obsessed with ninjas.

He's obsessed with G.I. Joe.

His din is more 80s pop culture than my than my backdrop here.

He's got a if you're G.I. Joe, he's got a snake eyes tattoo like the the the snake eyes kind of language that snake eyes got on his arm.

Peyton Jones has the exact same thing.

So that's why I'm going to do a podcast with him on the church digital podcast because he's likes G.I. Joe.

No, I'm kidding.

Peyton Jones probably wrote what's commonly referred to.

He wrote it with Ed Stetzer, but he commonly referred to as the textbook for church planting.

It's just called Church Plantology.

We did a podcast with Peyton Jones where he was talking about his book.

I did this maybe two, three years ago, and we were applying that book to digital church planting.

And so you can go back into the archives and check that out.

The Church Digital Podcast, Peyton Jones.

I'll look it up at some point.

But, you know, Google works.

Peyton Jones Church Digital Podcast.

But what was interesting coming about that was a couple of months, a couple of weeks ago, I guess, Stu started texting me out of the blue.

He and I, for some reason, we text each other to get each other's attention.

We don't Discord, which is weird because he's a Discord guy.

But, you know, my first inbox is always text.

And but Stu tells me, he says, he's like, Jeff, have you ever heard of Peyton Jones?

I was like, yes, he's a friend, mutual.

Actually, Chesley, I believe, now works for Peyton Jones.

There's a throwback.

But what so Stu started, like, really getting into plantology, getting into the book and really started getting excited about applying some of these ideologies into virtual reality church planting.

And so I was like, oh, Peyton, we got to we got to get the crowd together.

And so Peyton, Tsunami and I getting together for a conversation, talking about plantology, arguably the modern textbook.

Lee Stadia considered it.

Craig Whitney, who has planted more churches than I've attended in my life, credits plantology as the modern textbook.

So I'm looking forward to that conversation.

And then we talked a while back about Steve Addison.

And so I'm trying to Steve Addison is one of the current movement missiologists, you know, does a lot of work.

He's in Australia.

He lives in Australia.

Met him here in America, hung out with him at West Palm Beach.

Oddly enough, I just exchanged emails with Peyton last week.

Yeah, that's very cool.

Thanks for sharing that.

The so thanks.

Thanks, Paul.

The Steve Addison's another guy.

He just wrote a book on movements and act in the book of Acts, biblical movements.

And so I'm really excited about what's coming up there.

Looking forward to that conversation.

Like Steve.

It was interesting.

I hung out with Steve for like I'm totally going to get into that white beard.

So a CPLF hung out with Steve at a Starbucks in West Palm for a couple an hour or so, maybe 90 minutes, 90 minutes and two hours talking digital, talking movements.

You know, he's got a lot of insights biblically.

And he said, he's like, because I asked him on the podcast when we were hanging out.

And he's like, Jeff, I mean, I don't know digital.

I really am not comfortable speaking into that.

I was like, nobody knows digital.

I don't want you to talk digital.

I want you to talk movements.

Let me apply it to digital.

But, you know, let my audience figure out how to apply it to digital.

But you just come on.

I'll just be you and talk about that.

So looking forward to that conversation.

It's interesting.

I mentioned Whitebeard.

I mentioned Ed Stetzer in passing.

Ed's a friend.

You know, I haven't texted Ed in a while.

But Ed used to speak, was a guest speaker, a regular guest speaker at Christ Fellowship Miami, the church that I was the weekend producer for.

And so I did.

I worked very closely with Ed for a number of years over there.

And there is a CPLF, Exponential and Church Planter Leadership Forum, CPLF, have announced some sort of an agreement, which is interesting because CPLF is a very good organization.

And so, Whitebeard, I'm going to tell you a story.

And we'll eventually get into what I want to talk about.

But let me tell you a story about Ed Stetzer and CPLF.

So 2020, I literally January, January 26th, this is the year COVID hit.

January 26th, I started my job working for Stadia.

Now, pre-COVID, I had six weeks before COVID hit.

So they were onboarding me.

And then COVID hit, and my stock, you know, went up 1,000% in Stadia because, you know, they had a digital strategist that wasn't attached to a church that understands how to do digital ministry and streaming and the tech and the discipleship and all aspects of it.

And so, like, you know, Stadia was banking on it.

And so it was a, you know, mutually beneficial relationship.

Because of Stadia's exposure, a lot of, I mean, exponential.

I remember meeting Dave Ferguson, and Dave Ferguson was like, you know what?

Everybody knows your name, but no one has a, Jeff, but no one has a clue who you are.

Who are you?

Where did you come from?

Because you were nowhere, and now, thanks to COVID, you're everywhere.

And that was just the reality of being in the right place in the right time and being used by God.

I am a nobody.

I am not anything special.

I'm barely a guy that should be in front of a camera.

And that's not the meds talking.

That's genuine.

But God used me in that season, and God continues to use me to his pleasure and for his benefit.

And so one of those was a relationship that I developed with CPLF, where when I got hired

by Stadia, but before COVID, CPLF, Church Planner Leadership Forum.

No, let me back up.

Church Planner Leadership Forum.

This is a think tank of 40 of the top U.S. and or global-based church planting organizations

in the country or the planet.

I'm not sure if it's U.S.-based or if it's international.

But this is like invite-only crowd.

This is like super legit.

This is like, you know, you don't even really talk about how you're going there kind of thing.

It's like a secret.

And I got invited because I was director of digital church planting for Stadia.

What's a digital church, Jeff?

This is pre-COVID, before COVID hit.

I get invited to come speak at this thing.

And so the super secret, super elite, in front of the top 40, like, you know.

And so my friends at Stadia, I remember when Craig Whitney and Jeff Bennett, the two guys that I really worked for when I was at Stadia,

when they found out that I was invited to go speak at this thing, they were so jealous.

Jeff Bennett was like, Jeff, I've attended that thing for a decade, every year for a decade.

They've never asked me to speak at that thing once.

You don't even know what CPLF is.

And they asked you to speak at it.

And you're asking us if it's a good idea.

Yes, it's a good idea.

Get over there and speak.

And so I did.

I ended up speaking at this thing.

And so Daniel, oh my gosh, who did the Q&A for me?

There was, it was, the format was I had 30 minutes to speak.

I was allowed to speak for 20 minutes on a monologue, like go through slides.

And then I had 10 minutes of Q&A.

Now the Q&A was already established.

Like the person, I think it was Daniel Yang, forgive me, Daniel, if it wasn't you.

Daniel Yang went through the Q&A questions with me in advance so that I was on the same page with him.

He made sure that I had all the good questions.

Everything was resolved.

And so, you know, I come on this thing.

I am, this is early in COVID, so I hadn't done a lot of public speaking yet.

I am super nervous.

And for the first time, I have major tech issues with my slides where I can't get it to work.

And some pop-up keeps popping up on my screen on how I'm sharing my slides.

And so nobody can see the slides.

And people keep messaging me that there's a problem with the slides.

And my mic keeps cutting in and out.

Like, this is the worst presentation I have ever made.

I take that back.

This is probably the top three of the worst presentations that I've ever done in front of this super elite crowd.

And so I go 15, 18 minutes.

Daniel Yang, whoever it was, forgive me, you know, cuts me off like he said he would.

And it's like, okay, hey, you know what?

Let's get into some questions here.

And so he asks me the question.

Now, what you need to understand is this is in Zoom.

But this isn't like Zoom webinar where I can't see the crowd.

This is Zoom call.

So I can see every person.

I can see their squares on the grid.

And when the first question comes up, Ed Stetzer is in the room.

Ed Stetzer turns his camera off.

I noticed it because Ed Stetzer was on my screen, but I didn't think anything of it.

Ed Stetzer turns his camera on again.

Ed Stetzer turns his camera off again.

On again, off again.

And then finally, about 90 seconds into me answering the first question, Ed Stetzer turns his camera on and he unmutes and says,

Hey, Daniel, I'm going to go ahead and interrupt this here.

Hey, Jeff, good to see you again, my friend.

Hey, I really appreciate the conversation, Jeff.

And Jeff, I love how you're using Scripture to prove a digital ecclesiology.

We all kind of got a chuckle out of that.

Hey, Jeff, you know, we've had this conversation.

You and I have had this conversation for years about digital and the effectiveness of digital church.

Daniel, would it be okay if I just, like, ask Jeff some questions myself?

Because, you know, he and I know each other real well.

And so we want to, I would rather just, like, ask my questions than listen to yours.

And, you know, Daniel's like, okay.

Jeff, is that okay with you?

And I'm like, it's your show, man, if you're okay with it.

And so Ed Stetzer proceeds to drill me for 25 minutes.

Now, this is not like two friends sitting around Starbucks drinking a latte.

He's swinging haymakers at me.

He's, like, taking elbow shots to my chin.

He's, like, doing cup checks.

He is physically, verbally, physically attacking me.

And that's not possible.

But you understand what I'm saying.

Like, the idea of digital church.

And, you know, for the first 30 seconds, I thought, okay, I've got to respect this guy because it's Ed Stetzer.

I mean, it's Ed Stetzer.

I can't take shots of Ed Stetzer in his own house.

And then I was, like, screw that.

He's not going to stop.

He's going to keep taking shots at me and at digital doing this.

And so I started taking shots back at him and being very sarcastic, very, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did Jeff go out?

No, no, Jeff's still here.

Hopefully Jeff's still here.

Yeah, it looks like it's good for me.

It looks like Miss Dahl is having some problems with the internet.

So, man, I'm, like, taking shots back.

The chatter in the chat explodes.

People on both sides of the equation.

Ed Stetzer supporters.

Jeff Reed supporters.

Team Ed.

Team Jeff.

Taking shots at each other.

It's like the cage match affected the entire auditorium.

My phone starts getting texts from people.

Way to go, Jeff.

People that are in the room that want to make sure that I know that they saw me are encouraging me.

And it's just, like, it was this ridiculous kind of 30 minutes.

Like, it went long.

I apologized to the guy afterwards.

It just was so funny.

This whole thing went down.

I just apologize because it took so much longer than we were scheduled for.

But as soon as I hung up, as soon as I got off that call, this is honest to God truth.

As soon as I got off that call, Ed Stetzer texts me.

Jeff, that was great, man.

That was awesome.

I loved it.

That was so good, man.

Thanks for being a part of this.

Thanks for being a part of CPLF.

Would you want to do that on my podcast?

Why don't you come on my podcast?

Let's do it again on my podcast over there for everybody else.

Okay, Ed.

So I literally went on his podcast to get attacked.

To bulk up, to fight back, to argue, to prove points.

So funny.

I don't know what the moral of that story was.

But CPLF's a great organization.

Exponential as well.

And they'll do well together.

Excited to see how things develop there.

You know what?

Ed, actually, somewhere around this time, 2020, probably pre-COVID.

You know what?

It was probably late 2019.

New had a better chance of growing than old.

New churches had a better chance of growing at a faster rate, at a larger rate, than old churches.

I mean, you can take with that what you want.

It's one of the reasons why Stadia is such a proponent of planting churches.

It's why I love planting.

And I've spent time, you know, supporting the idea of multiplying churches.

And a lot of that's been multi-site, too.

But, you know, even multi-site is new at some context, which is why church plantology is huge now.

You're right, Whitebeard.

So true there.

And so I wonder what it would take to get Ed Stetzer back on the podcast.

I did a podcast with Ed.

Man, he was maybe episode 50 or 60.

I tell you what, if you can go to—actually, it's probably not there anymore.

It used to be thechurch.digital.ed, thechurch.digital.ed.

Ed said in his podcast, the podcast I did with—he did on my show,

whatever this Jeff Reed guy is talking about, you need to be doing it.

Like, it was the best endorsement I could ever,

which is so funny because that guy was, like, ripping me a year later.

So, very cool.

Hey, so we're celebrating the five-year of the podcast, which is awesome.

Excited about that.

There's some other celebrations that we've got coming up.

We have the—and this is more of a me thing, but the 24-year anniversary of the church of—excuse me,

of eBeliever.com, of my first business.

My first .com actually launched April 15th as well.

And so, you know, I've told a little bit of this story, but I've never—I haven't gone into great detail on it before.

And so I figured, hey, you know what, I'm going to—I'm going to take some time today since it's the 24-year anniversary

and actually talk about it here a little bit.

So, you know, I've told this story.

Usually when I public—when I speak publicly, I talk about how I graduated from college December 1999,

Texas Christian University, degree in radio, TV, film.

And, you know, in 1999, you know, 20 days before Y2K, I was stupid enough to think,

oh, I'm going to go get a job as a digital pastor.

Surely some church in America is smart enough to hire me, looking at what the Internet could be,

in the year 2000, to hire me to be a digital pastor.

And for some reason, no church would hire me in the year 2000 to be a digital pastor.

And so I set out to screw you all.

If you're not going to hire me, then let me give you a proof of concept and show you why you should hire me

and show you why the Internet—of what ministry can look like for the Internet.

Now, I was not smart enough to call this thing a church.

I don't even know if it was a church.

We can actually, you know, have that conversation later and actually drill into it,

if it was or was not.

Yeah.

Whitebeard, graduated from PBA with broadcast journalism, 1988.

Yeah, you're gramps compared to me.

We had a guy your age that was a college freshman when I was a college freshman, Whitebeard,

and we called him Pops because the dude was old.

Just saying.

All right, coming back.

And I'm older than him now, and I'm gray, and my body's falling apart.

Oh, so many things.

But we started this.

I built this eBeliever.com.

We started January, right after Y2K, literally January 2nd.

You know, the end of the world did not come.

The economic systems did not crash.

There was a little bit of a—

If you remember, if you're old enough for Y2K,

coming out of that, there was a little bit of a tech boom.

And companies like GeoCities and Hotmail, a lot of the early .coms had a lot of success

and found a lot of funding really quickly.

Now, all that exploded.

That exploded somewhere around April 1st, 2000, if you remember.

Yeah, thank you, Melanie.

They have a wise choice.

And so my company publicly launched April 15th after the crash.

So we weren't able to fully take advantage of it.

But we had—it was a Christian online community.

This was before Facebook.

Facebook was still, I think, in colleges.

It wasn't even at public level.

MySpace was kind of a thing.

You know, it was really more of Napster.

Netscape was around.

AOL was still a thing.

And so this is before the social media.

This is from Web 2.

So I started an online community way before Web 2.

We were doing our technology stack.

We were buying third-party applications, CGI applications,

and installing them on a Unix server.

So we were using Ultimate Bulletin Board for our discussion boards,

basically our Facebook walls, because Facebook walls didn't exist.

So we had to install Ultimate BB to be that for us.

And then we wanted to have—to give away email addresses.

We gave away eBeliever.com email addresses, web-based.

And so people would do that.

We actually let people design websites.

And so we installed like a GeoCities type of thing

where people could build their websites on eBeliever.com,

actually some of the earliest youth group websites were going to be what we did,

were based off of our system.

And so even then, we were really trying to be more of a distributed type model.

Online Bible studies.

The first Bible study I ever did online was we took 75 people through the book of James.

I did InterVarsity Press, the little paper-thin booklets, maybe like 20 pages,

that you can buy for like $7 at the Christian bookstore back then.

And so, yeah, we just—I would, you know, we would read a chapter, read a section,

and then I would ask some of the questions in the discussion boards, and people would answer.

Webcams, webcams weren't a thing.

And so it was all text-based, and it wasn't Discord.

It was more like, you know, more like Facebook wall type of stuff, and more of that.

Forums, which is really what that really is more of than some of the async tech that where we are today.

And so movie reviews, I would go.

I would watch—I would watch movies at either Thursday nights.

I would get permission from the movie theaters that were near me where we were in Fort Worth.

That—Life Guides, that's exactly what that was.

Life Guides.

We would show—I would go when the movies were being shown Thursday nights.

The employees would get me in.

Or I would go and watch them Friday at noon.

And I'd sit with the legal pad, and I would just make notes.

The world's worst handwriting.

But I have a degree in radio TV films, so I'm used to writing in the dark.

And so I would take notes on what it is, and then I would write vert reviews.

Movie reviews, music reviews, I would email some of the Christian music scene at the time and basically ask permission to, you know, do music reviews and post MP3 clips or even post entire songs online.

And some said yes, some said no.

Remember, this is the year 2000.

Like, this is way before any of this stuff was out there.

And, like, there was—everything was gray.

It was no black and white.

There were no laws and rules centered around this.

And it was funny.

Like, I remember Tooth and Nail.

Tooth and Nail said, thank you for being willing to review our music and sent me a giant box with every Tooth and Nail publication previous of the year 2000, like 2000 and back.

Literally, it was like 75, 100 CDs.

I still have them.

And so it was so cool to kind of see how they leaned into it.

Like, some leaned into it, like I said, some didn't.

You know, and at the beginning, I did all the work.

And there wasn't—like, this whole database systems and CRMs and Squarespace that have—or CMSs, I should say, not CRMs, like content management systems.

Like, that didn't exist.

Like, that didn't exist.

Like, that didn't exist.

I'm coding pure HTML.

You know, maybe I have Adobe PageMill.

But very, very, very little of it.

And, you know, heaven forbid, in using Adobe PageMill, I—which is before Adobe Cyber Studio, which was—go live Cyber Studio, which was—I mean, there's—this is so many layers of, like, archaic.

But heaven forbid I changed the template because if I changed the template, I have to change that—that make that change on, like, 100 pages because it didn't—it didn't sync up.

The precursor to Excel.

I don't.

I'm not that old.

Dreamweaver.

No, yeah, no, no, no.

Yeah, dude, Dreamweaver is new compared to some of the stuff that I'm talking about.

Macromedia Dreamweaver—Adobe bought Macromedia Dreamweaver.

Before that, Adobe bought Go Live Cyber Fusion, which was a crash and burn.

Before that, Adobe came out with their own product, which was called Adobe PageMill.

And that was what I coded this thing on.

Shuhata, man, you're—you are throwing me back here, my friend.

Thank you for that.

This is a great conversation.

Mistala is asking some good stuff, too.

But, yeah, it was—it was archaic.

And I found myself—well, I found myself digging big holes that I couldn't fulfill.

And, you know, just like I did with the Church Digital, I mean, to be honest, I kind of was like, all right, let's get some people to help.

I don't have any money.

I have—I can give you free CDs.

And so that's what I did.

Any college student at Texas Christian University—and I went to my friends—any college student that would review a CD for me, I would—I'd give them the CD.

And so it wasn't the Jeff Reed Show.

I started platforming some others.

Any pastors who wanted to put their—give me their video teaching file—or their VHS—their VHS tapes so I could encode them into real video.

You remember real video?

Well, from broadcast.com, before Windows Media, before QuickTime.

Yeah, real media.

There you go.

We were encoding VHS into real media and publishing that.

And that was—that was some of the first video teaching files.

That was from some of the first sermons online.

This is before YouTube, guys.

And so we were—we were out there.

We're talking about Bleeding Edge.

You know, talk about pioneers getting shot.

This is what we were doing.

My brother-in-law was a—was a Bible student.

I don't think he ever did seminary, but very, very educated, very trustworthy, very theologically stable.

And the idea of him—I asked him, hey, would you mind teaching some Bible studies online?

He loved it because he saw that he was impacting hundreds of people around the country, around the planet.

Like, there were dudes—it was fun.

I was hanging out with him Christmas, and he mentioned the guy's name.

I can't think of the guy's name right now.

But there was a guy in the United Arab Emirates that always did his Bible studies.

And he's like, oh, he's like, oh, yeah, man, I found what's-his-name on Facebook the other day.

And he started lamenting and reminiscing about that.

And 20 years later, 23 and a half years later, almost 24 years later, still going through that.

Thinking outside of the box.

Doing something different.

Well, everything I just described to you today is commonly referred to in 2024 as Christianity Today.

Movie reviews, music reviews, sermons online, community discussion board forums.

There's nothing new under the sun on that.

Biblical, by the way.

Nothing new under the sun.

You know, sometimes I think that a lot of the times, the way people get offended over the church and technology,

it's more grounded upon what their opinions are and what their preferences are,

not so much of what the ecclesiology and what the Bible actually is and what the Bible says.

And so I do think, we smuggled, oh, this is interesting,

Shuata, we smuggled King James Bibles on computer chips for hand-held electronic dictionaries into Saudi back in the day.

Yeah, that's cool.

That is really cool, man.

Thank you for sharing that.

I don't know if, I don't know if I want to ask who you are now, but that's a really interesting story.

My mother was smuggling Bibles into Romania in the 80s and 90s.

And she was actually in a horrific car accident in Romania as they were trying to kill,

as the Romanian secret police or whatever was trying to kill the leaders of the organization that was trying to smuggle Bibles in.

And I've got friends that are smuggling Bibles, digital Bibles into Cuba,

using Bluetooth and low-powered and some beacons and, oh my gosh, so much, so much fun.

Which really just reiterates the point.

God is doing so much around us.

I mean, look around.

The stories that are in here from old school web design.

I launched 100 websites before the year 2006.

98% of them easily were churches and non-profit and para-church organizations, church groups, college groups, denominations, organizations,

Christ-centered groups.

You know how much heat they got for having a website 25 years ago, 24 years ago?

You know how much lack of support I've gotten over the years?

I remember launching that community.

By the way, we had eBeliever.com.

We had 30 to 40,000.

I don't remember the actual number.

I don't have those records anymore.

But it was somewhere between 30,000 to 40,000 active users.

Not active.

Active is an interesting word.

I don't remember the stats.

But we had 30 to 40,000 users, registered users in the system.

Hits by the thousands per day.

Like, it was phenomenal.

Because there's nothing else out there.

And when people were looking, hey, what happens if I search for God in Alta Vista?

Oh, look, here's this site called eBeliever.com.

What yesterday was so controversial today.

Well, yeah, everybody's got a website.

Today, you want to do what in virtual reality?

You want to do church where?

I don't know that it's that controversial anymore.

You know, it's interesting.

Jim Tomerlin is the father.

I don't think I've ever told this story on the podcast.

Jim Tomerlin.

Oh, this was, he told me this story on the podcast.

Jim Tomerlin.

Somewhere around episode 101, as I recall.

Maybe, maybe before then.

Jim Tomerlin is arguably one of the early forefathers,

one of the founders of the multi-site movement here in America.

One church, multiple campuses, you know, either video teaching or team teaching.

But Jim, you know, he, he really founded this idea at a church in Colorado.

Implemented it at a very large scale for a small church you all have heard of probably here in America called Willow Creek in the 90s.

And then went on to create multi-site solutions, which is a company I used to work for.

And I worked for Jim when he was at Christ Fellowship Miami as chief of staff as well, where he was chief of staff and I was live production.

And so digital strategists and a bunch of other things.

But Jim would say that any time the church has and adopts, church struggles to adopt technology.

Church struggles to adopt any change.

You know, so often, you know, I want to say church hates technology.

And maybe it does, but it's not just technology.

Church hates change.

Case in point, no committee will ever decide to change that, the carpet color in the worship center.

Never going to happen.

But what Jim would say is that there's, there's three different stages.

One, two, three, three different stages for changing culture, for adopting and changing culture at a church.

It's one's the cool phase.

Oh my gosh, Whitebeard just found it.

You did, sir.

Very good.

That's it, man.

That was me.

Whitebeard just posted a photo of, yeah, archive.

I was going to do it.

I just didn't take the time.

Of eBeliever.com.

And so music reviews, movie reviews.

You can see there's a Netflix DVD.

That was how we were making money, was affiliate programs.

I had one sponsor that paid me $1,000 was worship.com or worshiptogether.com.

I forget which one.

But they paid me sponsorship to be on the homepage and we had them for a season.

The cross there in the upper left was DHTML and so dynamic HTML.

And so you would like mouse over and then it would pop up.

Like it was, I mean, HTML wise, it was, it was pretty impressive.

This is all pre-flash on the coding, of course.

But yeah, that's, that's what we did.

And I'm going to have so much fun.

But the three phases for adopting in technology is, is churches that are cutting edge are going

to adopt it when a cutting edge church adopts something.

Well, why is it called cutting edge?

Because you're going to get cut and there's going to be blood and you're going to bleed.

And so it's going to hurt.

And so a lot of times adopting beings, one of those first adopters, one of those early adopters,

you get shot, you get hurt, you go over budget, not planning on that, not necessarily going to have,

you know, smooth systems to implement on the backside.

And so it may be twice the word.

I mean, there's plenty of reasons why cutting edge hurts and bleeding edge bleeds.

And so bleeding edge, cutting edge, like cutting edge is, is that first, is that first wave.

And then he would talk about how beyond cutting edge, then it gets to cool.

Well, now all the cool churches are doing it because the cutting edge figures it out.

Now cool is an interesting word.

You know, life church is a cutting edge church.

Life church is a cool church.

And, you know, a lot of the larger churches, the churches people have heard of, they're perceived as cool.

They're, you know, and so I don't want to get like judgmental with the word cool,

but it's the idea that a second wave comes in that still has a lot of money, that still has a lot of patience.

It's probably churches that you've heard of, and they're doing it to try to stay in the forefront,

to try to, because they're in a position where they can experiment and do something.

And so you've got cutting edge, you've got cool, and then the third option is commonplace.

It's where the idea becomes saturated, and now everybody's doing it.

Broadcasting church services online has become a commonplace idea.

2018, when the church digital started, I would probably guesstimate there were maybe 200 churches in America

that were broadcasting their church services online.

Nah, maybe a couple thousand, but 200 were doing some sort of online Bible studies.

This is what I'm a comment was about broadcasting.

So maybe 2000 and 2018, when we first started TCD.

2020, obviously, or 2019, I would say, a lot more came on,

more and more as the idea was becoming more and more cool.

But the idea became commonplace, thank you, COVID, where now PushPay tells us 91% of churches in America

are broadcasting their church services online, live streaming at some level.

And so what you're being ridiculed, what you're being criticized on as, you know,

so cutting edge, so bleeding edge, so hurtful, so damaging, so,

it's just a matter of time for somebody else does.

Before somebody's, some guy named Whitebeard Punk Monk is pulling up a gif of you from archive.org

and showing it off to the people at the time, saying,

hey, look, this is what this guy was talking about.

You know, it's funny, when shots from the outside hit, shots from the outside hurt.

Even the Ed stuff.

Like, Ed was a friend, and I knew Ed had a purpose behind what he was doing,

but at the time, it hurt.

I'm not going to lie about that.

The flip side of it, though, is like, when the shots come from

your friends, your family,

when there's not understanding, even with your spouse.

I mean, I understand that.

I get that.

I've been part of that.

I remember my, it's not directly to my wife.

My wife actually has been really supportive, but it's funny.

I don't know that she understands everything that we're doing now,

but she's supportive in it, and she's supportive through it.

Some of my other family has not been.

You know, I can remember conversations and comments like,

hey, back when I was doing eBeliever,

and building out that online community for 30,000, 40,000 people.

Hey, so when are you going to quit this and get a real job?

When are you going to actually do something for God in the church?

I actually took a church job and ran eBeliever at the same time.

Because I felt like I was being judged harshly

for not working for a church by the people I was working with.

It's just my own hangup.

Interesting.

When you're going through hard times,

and you need somebody to reminisce through and talk through,

somebody who,

oh, what's the word I'm looking for?

Empathy?

It's not empathy, but empathy?

Yeah, I feel you.

Would love to catch up.

Yeah, you're not the real,

you're not really a missionary.

Oh, Whitebeard, you've been fun to listen to today.

You know what's funny?

E-Believer went down in a flaming ball.

Like, crashed and burned.

Oh my gosh, I haven't told this story in so long.

I got to do this and I got to go.

I was, it was 2003, Thanksgiving.

I had, for three and a half years, I built eBeliever from the ground up.

Launched 100 websites, like I said.

At the same time, that was how I made money,

was building websites for Christian organizations.

Hosting, CD-ROM, flash, graphic design, flash animations, video work.

We were more agency that just ran the community on the side.

And it was fine.

Nothing wrong with that.

We were heading back.

We were, my parents, we were, my wife and I, no kids.

We were living in Fort Worth, Texas.

My parents were in Miami.

And for Thanksgiving, they invited us to go up to their,

my parents had a place up in the mountains in North Carolina.

They, we hadn't been up to it in years,

because I was just focused on my work.

And she was doing graduate school.

And so, like, we just hadn't done a vacation with my family.

And so, you know, we were, quote unquote, pressured into going.

So we went on vacation.

And so for Thanksgiving, we went up into the mountains.

And when I say mountains, I mean freaking mountains.

Like, cell signal didn't work.

And Wi-Fi didn't exist.

And my parents didn't have internet.

Like, I am unplugged.

And by the way, these companies, when I say, like, we built, I built.

I mean, I had contractors.

I had freelance guys.

I had people I would sub jobs out to.

But at the end of the day, it's me for accountability on this work.

And so I, I go on vacation, arguably the first vacation I've had in at least four years.

And I was in college before then.

Up to the mountains.

And, and turn the phone off, disconnected, auto messenger on email.

If there's problems, I'll get back to you on Monday.

And after Thanksgiving.

And we're flying back Sunday.

And I remember we fly from, no, we drive from Carolinas to Atlanta.

And I'm at the ATL airport.

And I turn my phone on for the first time.

Not a smartphone, but I could check my email on my phone.

I turn on my phone for the first time Sunday afternoon in a week.

And, um, for some reason I don't, um, get my email.

Like one of, one of my domains, Jeff at ebeliever.com.

The email is not working for it.

Now this is before you hosted through like Gmail.

This is like, it's hosted on your pop three server, on your web server.

And I thought, huh, that's weird.

Um, but a lot of my other websites were up.

Um, and so I couldn't figure it out.

And then I started getting voicemails and voicemails and voicemails.

Hey, Jeff, my website's down.

Hey, Jeff, my, uh, my email's not working.

Hey, Jeff.

Hey, Jeff.

Hey, Jeff.

Hey, Jeff.

Dozens.

Blowing my phone up.

Hey, Jeff, where are you?

Why aren't you calling me back?

Hey, hey, Jeff, things are so great.

What's going on?

Um, I had, um, taken a vacation on a very bad weekend.

My primary server, I actually had two or three web servers at the time, but my primary server,

um, uh, ebeliever1.propagation.net, which housed 69 websites, ironically, um, crashed.

The hard drive crashed.

Hard drive failure.

Um, well, it's a good thing I paid this company.

I'm not gonna tell you the name of the company.

It's a good thing I paid this company tens of thousands of dollars to host my server, uh, to backup my server and to maintain it.

So I called up that company and I said, go ahead and install the backup.

Sir, what do you mean backup?

You know, the thing that I've been paying you for it to do.

You've 24-7, 365 maintenance and backup.

Um, sir, we don't have any backups.

What, what, what do you mean you don't have any backups?

You just lost 69 websites, not including the entirety of ebeliever.com.

My entire online community.

I'm talking email.

Like, I'm not even talking email addresses.

I'm talking emails.

Hey, your Gmail just shut down today.

Could you imagine your entire church saying that their Gmail just shut down today?

Can you imagine 69 churches worth of Gmails shutting down in one day?

You ever been F-bombed by a pastor?

I have.

I actually, my, my, um, I now understand what, um, lace check means, um, because several of my friends thought I was suicidal, um, because I lost 69 websites.

I lost the entirety of my online community.

I lost everything, uh, from a five-day vacation over Thanksgiving 2003.

I actually sold my business for pennies on the dollar.

I mean, literally, I, I, I gave it away six months later, practically speaking, um, just because I, I didn't want to do it anymore.

I was so, I was so sick of technology.

That was actually my, um, uh, what's the word?

Luddite phase.

There was, there was a, there was a phase of maybe a year or two.

That's when I owned a Christian bookstore.

It was, it was, you know, I'm, I'm sick of the technology.

I don't want anything to do with it and, uh, eBeliever in many ways kind of brought me to that point.

By the way, make sure you trust your partners, the people you partner with.

And, and I mean this to my partners, to my planters here.

Don't go in alone.

Find somebody else that can walk on the path with you.

If only for your own sanity, you don't need somebody to be high tech.

You need somebody, maybe you need somebody to be high tech.

I don't know what you need for me.

I didn't need somebody to be high tech.

I just needed a companion.

Like Ray, for me, when I started the podcast, the church digital, when I started the church

digital, Ray was the companion for me.

He, when I left Christ Fellowship Miami to, to, he became digital pastor.

He took over my job for me and, um, and really just became, you know, really enveloped in what the

church digital was and I'm super excited about what he's doing now.

I hung out with him a little bit on Sunday at church.

He and I go to the same church, reality church in Miami.

And, and he's actually getting his PhD and, and some really exciting things are in store for him.

Um, PhD and medical PhD.

I say all this to say is that it's very easy to be isolated and alone.

And I would challenge you that today you don't need to be alone, um, find somebody to go along these

paths with you that believes in what you're doing.

Um, if you can't find somebody, you know, you're going to be hard pressed to convince somebody you

don't know.

And so I would challenge you finds before you get going and really building out what you're doing.

Find somebody that can join you in your walk, in your journey, in your path.

Cool.

Hey, I keep going longer and longer.

I'm going to start turning into a two hour stream guy.

And I don't even really mean to, it's just telling stories.

Hope this has been fun for you.

Um, if there's, um, wrapping up here, if there's anything I can do for you,

let me know in that, let me look and see who's on here.

Uh, Guy Taylor, Hector, Thomas, Paul, Paul, good to see you again.

Chris Caputo, always good to see you, man.

Alexandra, thanks for hanging out, uh, with that as well.

And over on the discord side, um, white beard, uh, flat cap,

Chuhata, Chuhata, Chuhata and Melody, Chuhata, Chuhata.

Okay, man, appreciate you guys.

I hope, I hope this has been fun, entertaining for you.

um coming up on the podcast who knows oh friday i'm doing that interview with uh dk hammonds you

want to come back for that and then get more information on uh the resi um resilient church

webinar series all right thanks everybody cool to hang out with you talk to you later

you