EP287 - Innovating for Impact: Jeff Talks Digital Church Movements

I don't know where you are in your church journey or your ability, your leadership responsibility.

Love you, Hector.

I wonder how much of that we need to be aware of and we need to be thinking about.

How much of our desires for legacy, our desires for impact,

how much of what even we're doing digitally is long-term versus to be short-term seats?

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.

Hey, TCD family.

Jeff Reed here, doing a stream here.

But excited to jump on here and talk a little bit here to the TCD fam.

Now, we'll put this out on YouTube as well.

We'll put it on demand over there.

I may put it on the podcast and just really try to get this out on a regular basis.

Because, you know, I'm excited to talk to the family here at the Church Digital.

And so, waiting to see some people come in.

But looking forward to connecting here with the Church Digital fam.

Now, a lot has been going on here with TCD over the past couple weeks.

Last week was Expo.

And so, a lot of you were in Expo Orlando, there at First Baptist Orlando.

This exponential global conference was happening.

And it's such an incredible, awesome time, I know, within our leadership.

Jason Morris was there and was speaking with Jim Tomberlin and his crew at the Multisite Group through Resi.

And Andy Mage was doing a lot of work last week at Expo for Lux.

And I know Mark spoke over there with something.

I believe Layton was definitely around as well and was doing a lot.

And so, it was a really exponential, was a really great time to connect and really start to see, honestly, some digital get a little more fruition.

Now, I was actually not at Expo this year.

I took this year off.

I'd been there maybe, I don't know, five or six years in a row.

And so, I took the year off.

I was actually speaking at a push pay event in Dallas that I was contracted to be at.

And so, Miss the Exponential family was excited about it.

Hey, Elle, Michelle, Spencer, Deborah, it's good to see you all.

Glad you can jump here on the stream.

But what's really interesting, Gerald, hey, Gerald, what's going on?

What was really interesting coming out of Expo that I am hearing and seeing more and more of, and it's actually push pay.

We talked about it with their CTO a couple weeks ago on the podcast.

The acceptance of digital or the perceived acceptance of digital, what people are thinking is digital, is becoming far more regular.

It was funny.

Jason Morris was telling me about his talk.

It's funny.

I've actually spoken, his talk, what he did.

I spoke in that track.

That was actually the first place that I spoke maybe five or six years ago at Exponential.

And it was Jim Tomberlin, who's a digital supporter.

But it's a multi-site track.

And to be honest, historically, you know, there hasn't been a lot of support for, like, the people in the room have not been excited about digital ministry.

And so, like, there were times, maybe five or six years ago, that when I would speak for that talk for Jim, it was really a hostile audience because they weren't wanting digital.

They weren't wanting to talk digital.

And so when I touched base with J-Mo this morning, hey, what's going on?

How was Expo?

How did that talk go?

I know that's typically tough for him to speak in.

And Jason laughed.

And he's like, man, there wasn't anything tough about it.

I was building up my defense within the first five, ten minutes.

And everybody kept shaking their head yes like they agreed with me.

And I realized I was wasting my time.

And so I skipped, like, a couple slides and went just into the rest of my talk where I started actually talking about how digital would work.

And really, that's what we're seeing.

Aaron Sin, I've talked about that CTO of PushPay.

90, I'm going to get my stats confused.

Confused, forgive me.

But something like 91% of churches consider themselves hybrid.

Now, what hybrid is, we can have that conversation.

But 91% of churches today, physical churches, mostly interviewed, I don't think any digital churches were represented in that interview.

But 91% consider their ministry hybrid, having physical and having digital aspects.

90% of those interviewed, 90% of those interviewed, 9-0, stream their services at some point, for some level.

Now, maybe they understand why.

Maybe they need to be reminded of why.

Maybe there needs to be better definition centered around that.

Or maybe helping them have more purpose behind it.

But there is a huge opportunity, I would suggest.

I mean, really, we talk about hostility around digital.

And I'm curious, yeah, so we, through the Church Digital, we talk a lot about digital discipleship.

That's still a battleground, I would argue.

You know, A, because of the digital context of discipleship, but then also our view of discipleship is a little different than the, you know, the established churches.

So there's still a lot of controversy in the, at least in our, some of our arguments.

But I would suggest that it's, the pendulum is shifting a little bit here.

And I'm, I personally am feeling that.

And I'm seeing that.

And it's interesting.

In my talk with PushPay, I did a modified talk.

And I've done this maybe three or four times for PushPay and for different churches that are, it's really, it's a boutique kind of conference.

It's six, eight, ten churches, very small kind of crowd, very intimate setting.

And, and I've, I've done the same talk four times.

It's modified slightly, but same general gist.

And for whatever reason, this time, it didn't land.

Last time I did this talk was September, and it was a freaking slam dunk.

And, you know, I don't know if it was just different churches in the room, different places.

I don't know if I was just in a bad mood.

To be honest, it was actually, last time I did, it was probably June.

So it's been maybe eight or nine months since I had talked publicly.

It was the first time I talked with the cane and kind of gone through that.

And so maybe some of it was that, but like, it was the, the defensive posture of my talk did not resonate well with the audience.

And so like, I found myself agreeing with JMO, man.

And, and some of the stuff that Mark and Andy are, are, are, I'm hearing through Lux.

It's a, it's the same thing.

It's like, man, we didn't have to, we didn't have to fight.

Like people are, are agreeing.

There's some that are interested.

It's like, we, we didn't have to sell.

Like people were coming to us.

And so I'm curious if you're out there listening in chat here, Hector, hey man, Hector, how are you doing?

We should, we should catch up.

Great to see you, Hector.

I would love to hear what you're all experiencing with your churches.

Are you feeling physical and digital?

Like, are you feeling that, that hesitation towards digital anymore?

Are people open to the conversation?

Are they just not understanding what it is that they're, they're, they're wanting to, to connect with, but they're open to it.

Like what, what is the feeling?

What's the temperature that you guys and gals, what are you feeling in your churches?

Go ahead and do this.

And as you know, we're doing this on demand.

It's not, put it in chat if you want.

Um, but on demand, you know, I'm going to give you my cell phone number, 484-324-8724, 484-324-8724.

It's number four of the church.

Uh, so text me, uh, and, and, and let me know your opinion on that.

I would, I would love to hear from you on it.

It's interesting.

I've been, um, oh my gosh, so much to talk about today.

Um, a couple of weeks ago, I did a stream shared from the heart and, um, got emotional, cried a little bit on camera.

I think that was the first time I cried on camera publicly.

And, uh, so you can go back.

Well, it's, it's somewhere in our YouTubes.

You can find it.

Um, but, uh, would definitely love for you to, to, to go back and, and, and experience that and just even get a feel, uh, where people, uh, literally around the planet are praying for the digital church and, and, and what we're seeing and what we're championing and what we're wanting to do in digital space.

And so Elmichel is saying here, well, um, what bird, pink mink, uh, I, I have no idea who you are, bro.

Uh, that's awesome though.

Hopefully I pronounced all of that accurately.

Uh, the brick and mortar church has had to change how they do ministry because people didn't come back.

You know, that's interesting.

White beard, punk monk.

Thank you.

That makes more sense.

Um, the pink mink would have been interesting, especially given your, uh, avatar photo there.

Um, the brick and mortar church has had to change, uh, how they do ministry.

You know, it's interesting.

I, I agree with you, but at the same time, I'm actually seeing that's not true.

Um, what there are some churches that are in decline.

There are many churches that are going up to the right.

Now, in my opinion, the hangers on, I have, I have stories.

I don't have stats to back up what I'm about to say.

Um, I've had several churches report to me that the loose hangers on pre COVID, not the typical engaged person, but the, the crowd, not the community, not the loyal people.

The, the, the, the hangers on, the hangers on didn't come back.

Uh, and so a lot of churches took a hit.

Um, and there was a season where they tried to re-engage with the old hangers on the churches that have been successful have said, forget those people.

We're just going to start from scratch and have re-engaged, have built up a new audience, a new crowd leading into a new community.

And so those seem to be the ones, uh, that are, have, have transitioned in this season.

Elle Michelle's emphatically doing a yes with about seven different, uh, you almost have to treat the church as a replant.

You know what, post COVID, I agree with you there, uh, Hector, that, that's very true.

Um, uh, people, Elle Michelle, people are open, but some push back on, on going live at time of service, saying people may not come to the building.

And as a result, you know what, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, Elle Michelle, I'm okay with that.

I'm okay.

If somebody doesn't come back to the, to, if, if you don't stream your service live, we don't, uh, we don't stream our service live.

Um, I mean, we're, let me, let me context.

I'm a, we're a 200, 250 person church plant.

Like we've been open two years.

Um, we have no ability to produce.

We have a high quality worship.

I would suggest, uh, sing a singer songwriter.

Uh, like a very class, very classy professional feel.

Um, we're all mega church guys doing a church plant.

Um, and I'm actually not involved too much in leadership at this point.

I kind of stepped back with some of the health stuff.

And, um, but I, I would say that like, we can't produce the musical portion well at all.

And so we put that sermon online, you know, post, and I mean, we get, like I said, there's a, there's 200 people in the room and a hundred people are watching on YouTube.

I mean, there, there's, there's, there's value to that, whether that's shareability, whether that's spread.

I don't know if we really have 300 people or if it's, you know, a hundred of the 200 are watching it on YouTube again.

Um, there's on demand will all reach more than live.

And so really, like I would suggest, and you know, I'm going to show you're smarter in this.

I'm not teaching you anything you don't know, but pick your battles, right?

As you're walking into this stuff.

If, uh, if somebody doesn't want, it's funny, um, Erwin McManus, Erwin McManus said this, um, if everything you value about your church happens on Sunday morning, nine o'clock, then why the garbage would you want to stream that on Sunday morning?

Streaming that on Sunday morning, well, it cheapens what you're doing physically.

And so if, if you really value Sunday morning, like it's, it's the, it's the umpteenth thing that you're doing, like it's, it's the ultimate of, of what your church is, which maybe it shouldn't be, but that's another conversation.

But if it is, then don't stream it, like make it happen in the physical space.

Now do something else, put it on demand after the fact, get more views anyway, um, stream other things.

Like there, there's other ways to do that.

Definitely would encourage, uh, moving beyond that.

And you see, you see that on the show, which is great.

Uh, people are open to some pushback, uh, yeah, of which I disagree.

Whoever plans to come inside a building will, uh, and vice versa.

You're right.

And, but you, you pick that on the show.

You pick that battle, like when you can, um, it's better to move the ball forward.

It's better to be progressive.

It's better to be, uh, adopting.

It better be friendly than, than antagonistic.

Um, I've actually been doing some writing for Rezzy and that was, um,

that was actually one of the blogs.

I can't wait for it to publish.

Actually, I went, they were like, Hey, write 1200 words.

And I wrote 2,500.

And I was like, I got another five.

I got another 500 words easy.

I could turn this into two blogs.

And instead they were like, no, no, no.

We like what you did.

Just keep it together as, as one.

But I told my story.

I gave advice on how, um, like how, how to, um, how a physical church can work with the

lead pastor and work with leadership to install, uh, digital ministry.

I said, here's eight tips on how to make that happen.

And then after I gave those eight tips, I said, here's the story of what I did where I literally

violated every one of those eight tips.

I, and practically got myself fired.

I got, I worked myself out of a job.

They did not want to continue me on because I didn't do anything that I'm now suggesting

that digital pastors do.

That's actually how I learned it.

I was like, where did I go wrong?

Here's the eight things I screwed up in, in, in that job and how I basically was like, Jeff,

you need to leave, um, and, and how I postured things.

And so there's ways to do it wrong.

Uh, definitely.

Uh, and, and, but, you know, with anything in life, learn from those mistakes.

Um, Hector, if people don't come to the building, but are engaged online, it changes strategy

dramatically.

Uh, if you engage online differently, uh, than just a window into the room.

Ooh.

Ooh, more than just a window into the room.

I'm going to, I'm going to come back.

Now you see you, Hector, you just, you just pulled the thread on actually what I wanted

to get into in this conversation.

So we'll get there in a little bit.

Um, white beard.

I'm, I'm at a black gospel church in Orlando, Florida tech director.

We stream, uh, we have 900 in person and 1300 online.

We also do all of our small groups online.

Now you said all white beard.

Do you mean 100% all?

Um, and I would love to know what the online context is, uh, for that.

If you're holding classes, parent nights, you see a very, very good one white beard.

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, you're my hero, bro.

Like how, how many groups don't, don't be, are you better not be lying to me right now,

man?

Like this is, this is serious stuff.

Um, let me know.

I'm real.

That's really interesting.

Um, I want to, I want to explore this more.

Actually may want to dig in six day groups.

Okay.

So it's, it's, it's starting strategy, but your culture is online, um, which, which is

good, uh, towards that.

And, um, yeah, very, very cool.

I do want to dig into that.

Uh, so I'll, I'll hit you up via, uh, um, fam messenger here in a little bit.

I, I, it does, I do want to pull the thread here, um, of moving beyond the online stream

being a window to the physical space.

Um, that was very well said, Hector.

I have a strategy that I've been kind of working through over the past year or so in context.

It's really a framework of, of how digital churches operate.

And, uh, you know, I, I would love y'all's feedback as, as I'm kind of, you know, trying

to get these to come through, I've got a slide.

I'm not going to put a slide up because it's just, it kind of distracts from the moment.

So let me, let me just kind of walk through the, the four steps and it says, so the first

step, you know, is what I'm calling connection.

So through our connections, uh, we drive people, we engage with people and drive them into community

within the community.

We build and develop relationships that lead towards discipleship.

And within our discipleship, we teach and we train people towards multiplication.

So connection, community, discipleship, multiplication.

Show the slide so I can screenshot it.

Is that the correct way?

Is it screenshot it?

What's, what's the, what's the correct way to say that?

No, I'm not happy with it.

Um, to be honest with it, I, I, I shared the idea with, uh, with some of my, my Rezzy push

pay friends.

And, um, this is, um, it's that they were, they were excited about it.

And so like, they're like, they're, they're graphic artists.

They want to, um, to take a look at it.

To be honest, Elmichelle, I've been talking about this for so long.

Some of the slide decks I probably gave you way back in the day to, for you to use, you've

probably have access to the slide already, but it's really, and at the time it was content.

And you say content leads to community.

Our online church services have to leave the community.

Our, our social media has to lead to community.

Our TikTok posts, our reels, everything we do has to drive people to a community because

we cannot do discipleship on TikTok.

Like I, I will, I mean, I'm not, I'm not going to, yeah, no, I will die on that hill.

We cannot because the TikTok platform is not rich enough relationally for us to create a,

a, um, a system of discipleship, maybe one off individual people.

Okay.

Maybe, but a system of discipleship existing in digital space in, in TikTok, it's, it's not

resilient enough of a, of a platform for that to happen.

Okay.

Hot, hot lead there.

You know, send your hate mail to me, Jeff at the church digital.

Um, so, but what we're really doing is more than, than content.

Right.

Um, and so it's really like social media, our influence.

So it really starts to become our connections, our connections, which includes content, which

includes social media, which like all of this, our connections have to lead people into community

where we can build relationships with them, where I can know what's going on with El Michelle

and be excited for what's going on with white beard and, and, and be praying for, for Hector

and his transitions and, and to be able to be aware of what's going on in, in these spaces.

Um, Hey, Scott, Scott, Scott, Scott's a guy I haven't seen in a while, uh, show up on this

thing.

So Scott, great to see you kind of pop on here today as well.

Hey.

And so once again, it's that community aspect where we build relationships.

Now, the, I mean, the biggest problem with the church online, the hybrid church, the church

that's doing a broadcast of a window to seeing what's happening in the physical building is

they're trying to get organized or they're trying to get their visitors, um, either to

come into a physical building, which they may or may not want to do, or to, to join a small

group, which there's not enough trust to really do that.

You see this, this process of connection, leading people to community, building relationships

towards discipleship and getting to the place of multiplying and empowering others towards

their creating their own process.

This entire process is really about trust.

It's really about how much trust does that person on tick tock have?

Do I have enough trust with this person to get them at least into a discord community?

If the answer is yeah, oh my gosh, uh, Hector, you're quoting Isaac.

Let me get to that in a little bit.

I love that.

Isaac.

Isaac's a bud.

Isaac actually started his stuff down here in Miami.

Good stuff.

Um, so, um, where we are is that our, um, sorry, I just got distracted, but our, our.

Uh, it's all about trust, right?

And, and how we're utilizing and engagement in our connections to build that trust, to drive

them into a community.

Now, I mean, this even works in physical space, right?

The connections that we have within a church service, you're able to drive that into a community in

physical space.

And so getting somebody connected into a small group physically relatively easy to happen.

It, but there's physicality.

It's a lot easier to trust.

I think I, I think I said this a couple of weeks ago, like if I'm a visitor at a, at a physical

church building, uh, I have actually don't really have a problem leaving you, my baby, my newborn

child, and giving you all of my contact information with that child.

I don't know what it is about physicality, but physicality, there's a higher level of trust in

that environment online.

I, I, man, I'm not even going to give you my email address.

Like, I'm going to check you out several times before I build that in.

And so it's really, it's a hard jump digitally to build that trust.

But once you can get that trust into community, man, that's where I think we're really able

to see relationships develop quickly.

And now through that, that growing trust in the relationships, that's where we're able

to get into relational evangelism, relational discipleship, like, you know, you know, we've,

we've talked many stories and some of my virtual reality friends can, can, you know, tell the

story of this Alice in the palace, formerly Alice queen of hell, you know, she's a great

example of, this is a, it's a woman, uh, um, a neo-paganist, a Satanist who found Christ,

uh, in virtual reality as a result of relationships that developed over eight months.

And, and, and we say JMO is, is Jason Morris on, on our leadership team is famous for

saying digitally people find, uh, community before they find Christ.

That's different than the physical church, physical church.

People find Christ and then join the community.

I mean, literally it's like raise my hand, pray this prayer, come forward and get, get introduced

to the church or, you know, whatever the process is.

I'm Baptist.

That's the way I was growing up digitally.

It's, it's, it's not that way.

Um, digitally it's join the community like Alice, get invited into the community,

get pulled into the community.

Alice actually showed up to troll the church in virtual reality and ended up, um,

being invited in two weeks later after trying to troll it, she was actually managing the tech

more point for virtual reality.

And six to eight months later, I found Jesus accepted Christ, uh, through conversations.

So good.

Uh, Isaac, uh, so Hector saying it's hard.

Isaac, uh, petite free air, uh, did, did it, but it was a one-off and it was really,

uh, from folks who enjoyed him reading the Bible and thoughts.

They ended up asking him, uh, and then doing the work to help, uh, build a podcast.

Uh, you know what, Isaac, uh, I, I, I've worked with Isaac in the COVID season.

Um, it was part of, uh, it's a church United, South Florida network called Church United.

Um, he, I think Isaac's now out on the west coast of Florida.

Isaac was quoted as me as saying, Jeff, uh, we only, he had a building, he had a warehouse,

maybe, you know, in, in a, in an art district down here in South Florida.

Isaac was quoted as saying, Jeff, the building slows us down.

The building's a lid.

We don't want a building.

Uh, we want, we want to be digital.

And it was so beautiful of a concept and to see the stuff that he's doing.

Um, he's done a lot of work with alpha.

Like if you were look at alpha, um, USA, like they, they did, I don't know if it's a student

track or like a young track, but he adopted alpha towards that.

Um, and his church, the last I heard is doing, doing great.

He's not working with Church United anymore.

So I don't necessarily have as much access as I did at one point, but I know he's, uh,

I get texts from him every once in a while, encouragement texts.

And so that's good, good to see.

Um, but this process connections, which leads us to community and through the community,

we, we build relationships towards discipleship that take us to the point of

multiplying disciples out and releasing and empowering them to do the same thing over again.

It's that cycle that I think we, uh, the church, digital, we, the metaverse church,

we digital and physical churches that are out there.

We've got to start championing these, these ideas.

It's interesting yesterday.

Uh, yeah, I do have it yesterday.

Um, I drove up to West Palm beach.

Uh, I was hanging out with, uh, with some friends, uh, where I, I got to meet a borderline

hero of mine.

Steve Addison is, uh, is Australian as well.

We had a story of Australian last week, Australian of this week.

Sorry of Australian.

Uh, Steve Addison here, new book, uh, acts, uh, in the movement of God.

Steve is a, uh, a missiologist.

He went to college at West Palm beach there at, uh, Palm beach Atlantic.

Um, their white beard.

He was, uh, yeah.

So I was, I was right there.

I was at, at, uh, family Christian, Christian family, uh, there at the heart of, um, uh,

PBA.

I actually was walking around the library.

I was having coffee with, uh, with Steve Addison and some of the no place left people.

Um, and, uh, it was funny.

The, the Starbucks that I was at had a sign over the, over in the corner that it was the

John MacArthur, um, whatever, whatever, whatever cafe, like, I guess John MacArthur had paid for

this Starbucks cafe in the library and blah, blah, blah.

And so I was talking with Steve Addison and I was like, Hey, look, we're sitting in John

MacArthur's cafe.

Steve laughs.

And he's like, yeah, that guy hates me.

John MacArthur hates you.

Yeah.

John MacArthur hates me.

Like he, he, uh, he, he's ripped the church digital.

Uh, he ripped, uh, Chesley and I, uh, some, I think he's 22, 23 and in some, some articles,

he and his organization actually went very much against the idea of, of virtual church.

Actually, I think, um, digital church is what we would call it.

He kind of used some old language.

Um, but Chesley, I think really alienated him, um, by saying the church needed a disruption

and it does.

Um, and the disruptions coming.

The disruptions happened everywhere else on the planet.

Why would it not come to America?

Uh, but that's not for us to say right now.

It's, it's, it's, let's do what we can for the kingdom with the, uh, opportunities available.

So I'm hanging out with my friend, Steve Addison.

No, about Steve Addison.

Um, he's a, he's a missiologist.

He's a, he's a huge guy.

Um, he's written a number of books of talking about movements, talking about movements that

changed the world and about how, uh, people started, um, um, um, people have started movements,

evangelical movements, disciple making movements, um, that have impacted cities, states, regions,

countries, nations, continents.

Um, and, and what does that look like in, in biblical context?

When we look at the book of acts, the church of acts, when we look at that, at the early church,

what do we see in context of, of movements?

How did they operate?

You know, and, and, and if we're fair, how does that, how does that compare to the,

to the church of today, to the American church?

Let's take John MacArthur out of the conversation.

And so like, he started dropping some, some bombs, and even like the historical church,

like what is movements looked like historically?

And what, what do we, what do we need to learn from this for the future?

Let me give you a couple of tidbits that, that Steve Addison shared.

I was just so blown away.

I was so encouraged, um, by it.

Um, he started talking about the church in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem church,

Gen zero, like this is where the church started Jerusalem.

These are the, was it 60 some, 80 some people that are up in the room with the tongues of fire and all that.

Oh, you're killing me.

White beard.

It's a different MacArthur.

Man, that kills my story.

I was so excited to be able to say that guy hates me.

That guy doesn't know me.

Nevermind.

Hey, you know what?

White beard, you just killed everything for me.

Like, I can't, I don't even know what to do right now, man, like that.

No, I'm kidding.

That's, it's, it was irrelevant.

It was a very small point.

What I was actually trying to say, um, the church in Jerusalem, but thank you for that.

I do appreciate the, the correction.

I'll, uh, I, I will adopt, I will adapt my stories moving forward.

Okay.

So, um, the church in Jerusalem, the 60 some, 80 some people, tongues of fire coming down.

3000 people saved.

Um, where is the, where's the Jerusalem building?

I mean, initially there is no like church buildings anywhere.

If, if you looked at like the, the, the church, um, the biblical church, my mom actually did this.

My mom asked me the other day, I think she's going through a study of acts, um, with, uh, some people online.

My mom teaches two online groups, by the way, which is awesome.

She's like old and she's, she's still doing it.

She's like, she loves online, but she asked me, she's like, Jeff, how many of the early churches were house churches?

I was like 100%, 99%.

Like there wasn't a lot of other opportunities.

You don't see church buildings from that era.

Like it was the majority of them, if not all of them met in homes or living spaces or things like that.

It's not like there was building campaigns, uh, in the time of Christ, uh, towards that.

And my mom kind of laughed at the irony of, of just how much things have changed.

Um, but the truth of true church of Jerusalem, it literally gave itself away.

Like the, the persecution that came with, with Saul, um, with, uh, Stephen and the story of Saul.

Uh, I mean, the scripture literally says, and they taught, they shared the gospel as they went.

The, the church dissipated.

The first church was not a, uh, legacy church.

It was not an eternal church.

They were not trying to build an entity for, for forever.

It was specifically designed and ended up through God's wisdom to be a distributed church, to be sent out.

Um, it was not an ekklesia forever.

It was a diaspora.

It was, it was a distributed church that was meant to be the seeds for others.

Um, and, and, and it's interesting.

I wonder how much of that.

I don't know where you are in your church journey or your ability, your leadership responsibility.

Love you, Hector.

Um, I, I wonder how much of that we need to be aware of and we need to be thinking about.

How much of our, our desires for, for legacy, our desires for, for impact.

Um, how much of what even we're doing digitally is long-term versus to be short-term seeds.

You know, last, last time I did a stream, we talked about the ability to, uh, connect with others, to mentor.

Let's have Paul's that are mentoring us and let's have Timothy's that we're mentoring and, and, and, um, in discipleship and multiplication and who are we empowering?

Who are we apprenticing to, for this next generation of planters like that?

I think is, is so important.

And I don't think digitally, like if I were to look at us as digital churches, um, what I know, and I don't know everything,

but I don't know that we're really understanding that multiplication.

I don't think we're really taking advantage of empowering that next generation yet.

Part of us wants to be, uh, and, and I get it, I'm, I'm guilty of it.

Part of it is, you know, I led the church digital for a season where it's like, I don't want to bring on more leaders

until I get the model figured out.

And then when I get the model figured out, we'll, we'll bring on more leaders.

The thing is the model is constantly evolving.

It's constantly changing.

We're, I mean, we're even bringing out some new changes

like there is stuff I've brought out Monday, major impacts within the organization.

And we're, we're going to roll this out and communicate it out in a couple, in a couple of weeks.

But there's, there's just, there's always, there's always change, right?

It's almost like, we're going to wait to have a baby.

You just have the baby that you're never ready for the baby.

Um, you're, you're never ready for the apprentice.

By the way, the apprentice can help you develop those next systems.

Like they can give you the feedback.

They give you direction.

They could be eyes on the field.

And so like there, there's this challenge to, to give it away.

The church in Jerusalem didn't wait.

Now, arguably they had, you know, persecution.

There was a gun to the head, literally speaking, to get them to that place.

But I think that's the opportunity for us

maybe to start to apprentice, to train, to find someone that can walk along with us,

carry some of our burden that we can eventually release to do their own.

And whether that's an offshoot of what you're doing as, as like a, a, a sub brand, or whether

that's a completely separate thing.

I mean, does it matter?

Um, but the fact is, is that, man, there's so much potential in life.

If we start to multiply ourselves into others.

And it's interesting.

Steve Addison, he, he told me a story, uh, yesterday.

And, um, uh, white beard, you're more, and some of you others on here, probably a little more

theological, um, especially church history, more grounded than I am.

And so I'm probably going to butcher the story.

I'm going to look it up, but I just wanted to share the rough version of it right now.

And, uh, it's William Carey.

Uh, William Carey is, uh, was a, my understanding was an Anglican pastor around 1750.

And it's set in the 1700s.

And, um, William Carey, my understanding, um, was really, uh, an, an early movement leader,

much more about multiplication and discipleship.

And that was really kind of his approach on, on how he was, was managing church a couple

hundred years ago.

Um, and that was, I mean, you think it was controversial in 2020, um, some of the stuff

we're doing that his ideology was controversial to the Anglican church in the 1700s.

So much so that the church literally changed his church literally changed the locks on the guy,

locked him out of the church building and forbid him from, uh, speaking.

Now, William Carey was, was a young person at the time.

Um, but he, he did not give up on his disciple making approach on the way that he viewed God

in viewed ministry, even as controversial as it was in the 1700s.

And so he pulled 20 individuals as a young adult, as a young man, um, and met with them regularly

in a pub, in a pub, William Carey, 20 individuals.

And over the course of the year, discipled those 20 individuals and then sent them out.

Year two came around.

William Carey didn't have any funding, doesn't have a job.

He got locked out.

He literally got fired.

He, they, they, they removed, they changed the locks on the guy.

So he's not getting funding, but he found another 20 guys invested 12 months into them

and sent those 20 guys out.

Now, my understanding is that William Carey did that 50 times over 50 years.

And that William Carey, over the span of 50 years, without funding, without a church job,

um, truly bivocational here.

I don't know how, I don't know what he was doing for a living at the time.

But William Carey is, is historically, um, had rejuvenated, uh, evangelism within the Anglican

church by investing in 20 guys at a time in an English pub.

You know, last time I talked here on the stream, we talked a lot about how, um, finances are hard,

money's hard, and we don't know, you know, it's, it's a struggle, right?

And we literally, I was talking about how pioneers get shot.

Settlers get rich.

William Carey was a pioneer and dude got shot.

I mean, he didn't literally get shot.

I don't, I don't even know what bullets looked like in 17.

I guess they had cannonballs, right?

So they had that some sort of gun thing.

Yeah.

I mean, 1776, they had the bayonets.

So there is bullets, but he didn't literally get shot.

I don't know.

I don't think, but he got criticized.

He got ostracized.

He got kicked out of his church for his beliefs.

And instead of running away and crying and hiding, he spent 50 years investing in a

thousand people that I'm sure multiplied into many others.

And dude is credited with restoring what's happening within the church.

And so I would suggest, maybe that's our opportunities for today.

For some of us that are in physical churches, you are championing the idea of digital ministry.

And while they may see an opportunity for hybrid, they may not understand the opportunity of

digital discipleship.

And it's your job to be the bridge to connect that physical church to understand that we need

to be more than just a window into the building.

There's an opportunity for discipleship to be more than just a window into the building.

That discipleship can happen digitally as well as physically.

And oh my gosh, if the church can understand that and invest into that, ministry will explode.

So the physical church minister has a challenge ahead of them.

I would follow up with this that the digital church pastor, the digital church planter, has an opportunity as well.

Because we are the pioneers that are getting shot.

We are the ones that are struggling with funding.

We are the ones that are struggling with approval.

And we can cry about that.

Or we can William Carey the situation and realize they may lock us out of the building.

But who needs a building?

The buildings are the lid that's going to hold us back.

And let's go find a British pub to go invest in 20 guys a year and multiply the crap out of this idea.

And that's the challenge.

I've spent too many of my years trying to get approval.

I don't know what this is on Enneagram.

I'm not really an Enneagram.

But one of the Enneagrams is an approval addict, right?

And in many ways, I've lived my life as an approval addict.

I'm looking for people to thumbs up.

And that's a challenge because I'm also incredibly disruptive.

I'm incredibly change-oriented.

And so I live in this vicious cycle where I want change, but I want people to approve the change.

But I always want to be bleeding edge and I need people to approve.

Don't live yourself in that cycle.

But what we as digital pastors, what we really need to be are the screw-it people.

And let's just find a pub, find 20 people, and change the world.

That's the mentality that we're looking for.

That's the mentality I think that's going to be successful today in digital ministry and digital discipleship.

The world will see what we're doing.

They already are.

Some of the conversations that Mark was experiencing at Expo as a result of planting and Andy and

Leighton was very encouraged by even some of the feedback towards the church digital.

Like where we are, it's an incredible opportunity, but rather than being discouraged in this situation, I want to encourage you to keep pressing on.

They walk us out of buildings.

Realize that those buildings are lids and limitations to what we can do.

And let's keep pressing forward with this idea of digital and how we can reach the people successfully and disciple the people and mobilize and multiply and release people digitally and physically.

We can impact people that the physical buildings are not reaching and impacting.

That's it.

That's the time for today.

I hope this has been good.

I have really enjoyed hanging out with the eight of you that stuck around this long.

Elle, Michelle, Scott, Hector, Gerald, Spencer, Deborah, Whitebeard.

Whitebeard, let's hang out some.

I want to learn more about you.

You've hit my radar a couple of times.

To be honest, the pink mink kind of scared me off a little bit, but understanding you a little bit better in this conversation is good.

But, hey, listen, if you've got thoughts on this, if you're in chat, great.

If you are hanging out with us in other space, my cell number, 484-324-8724.

Once again, that's number for the church.

Would love to hang out with you guys, but feel free to text me.

Any thoughts, challenges, questions, prayer requests.

Let's be praying for the church digital once ahead.

There is just started a community to curate content talks like this on X.

I love that you're in X, Elle, Michelle.

So awesome.

Check out that link.

But let's continue the conversation.

There's going to be some big announcements coming out of church digital in the next week or so.

Really excited about some things coming up very soon that's going to impact ministry through the church digital as we know it.

So stay tuned.

Man, listen, I am a guy who loves leaking stuff before it's supposed to.

And I really want to leak this.

I really want to tell you.

I can't, though.

I can't.

I can't.

I can't.

I can't.

Elle, Michelle, I can't do it.

Don't make me do it.

But I really, I just.

Barbara Carnero somewhere is like drilling into me right now.

Layton says it's okay.

Layton is currently on a cruise ship.

Layton isn't talking to any.

Okay, tiny leak.

The website.

So TCD will have a new website.

And we're going to.

I think I've been teasing the website for since January, first week of January.

But April 5th, I've told the team, hell or high water, the church digital is going to relaunch the website April 5th.

And so that, and that is going to snowball into a whole bunch of other things.

And so I'm excited about some of the, some of the organizational shifts, some of our shifts in community.

It really, it's structured around that, right?

This, this connection, which leads to community where discipleship happens and leads our people towards multiplication and mobilization and our job to mobilize them.

That right there, you want the leak?

That's the leak.

That right there.

Hey, we created a model for what digital church could be.

And oh, by the way, that's how we're going to structure the church digital moving forward.

It's, you know, I've said this, the church digital is not about me.

Organizationally, even the leading of this is not about me.

It's, it's, we're led by a team.

And I'm really excited to see what this team's got in store for us in the, in the day, in the weeks, the weeks, the weeks to come.

Stay tuned.

April 5th.

My head will either explode like the emoji or it's going to be an awesome day.

Hopefully my head explodes like the emoji.

Although somebody would say clean up on aisle four and then that would get weird.

Awesome.

All right.

So, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to stall for maybe 30 more seconds, but as we're landing the plane, I feel like I'm on the church digital podcast.

As we're landing the plane, Jeff, any closing thoughts?

No, listen, it's been awesome hanging with you all.

And we're going to do this more often here in fam or maybe some other community platform yet to be publicly announced.

I don't know.

Are we, are we, are we moving?

I'm not allowed to say that.

Don't make me say it on Michelle.

All right.

I'm out.

Hey, love y'all.

Have a good one.

Bye.