EP245: Your Digital Church’s Local Missions Department

What I love about these initiatives is as, because it's, you've got it digitally,

this knowledge can be distributed through to our digital churches, but it also can be

distributed through our digital churches to the people that we're connecting with all over

America and the world. And so like we can have a church that's operating in Facebook and they can

be encouraging their attenders, their members, the people that are connected with the church,

they can be encouraging them to help with foster families in their communities. Like it's almost

like this idea is getting distributed two times, multiple times, not just distributed to a digital

church, but through a digital church into areas that maybe even the church doesn't exist within

that zip code. So we're really kind of breaking a paradigm here of what local ministry means

through a digital church context. 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 fit into all this? Whether you're a big or small church, an established church, or a startup

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

digitally and physically. Our heart? That churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on

disciple making that will revolutionize your church. And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Hey, all right. It's episode 245. Jeff here with the Church Digital Podcast and excited about this

conversation we're going to get into in just a little bit. I've been wanting to shed light to have a

conversation with these gentlemen talking about this topic for literally months. I found out about this

idea and just through scheduling and issues that we're going to have a solid conversation that's going to

open up a whole new paradigm of ministry for our digital churches and churches that are operating

online. But before we get into that conversation, I just want to remind us as we're wrapping up

2022, there's an opportunity to engage with He Gets Us. And you see with He Gets Us, it's this global

ad campaign. You may have seen the ads on Major League Baseball, NFL games, NBA. Guess what? There's a

couple ads coming with the Super Bowl. Like it's going to be this incredible opportunity to connect

lost people, spiritual explorers, people that are asking spiritual questions and get them connected

to churches like yours. Now there's a phenomenal opportunity to get these people connected to the

local church, churches that operate in physical buildings. But there's a problem. The demand of the

people that have these spiritual questions are more than the supply of churches that exist.

And we're looking for churches that can operate in digital space, that can disciple somebody digitally

to really deal with this mass of people that are asking spiritual questions. Literally, there are

people asking spiritual questions where there is not a church to partner with. And that's where these

digital churches like yours come into play. And so if you're interested, 12 months free. And you get to

take advantage. You literally get inboxed to your account, people with spiritual questions, people that

you can do ministry with. So for more information, check out thechurch.digital slash he gets us thechurch.digital

slash he gets us. By the way, he gets us pairs so well with the conversation that we're about to have

here with one more child. And so I want to introduce to the conversation, Robert Zirin. And Panos, I promise this

is not how you say his name, but I'm not going to do it. So it's Panos, I'm going to say Cortezus, but it's

wrong. And so Panos, I've known for quite a while, Panos, like I'm trying to think, where did we used to work

together at Christ Fellowship Miami? And I mean, when did you start at Cia? How far back do we go?

I think almost nine years. I think nine years ago, we would have some Starbucks brainstorming meetings.

I remember those meetings. Just we had great times. So yeah, I remember about nine years ago, we started

with our Starbucks meetings and then also being part of staff meetings. And you were always the digital,

you were always the go-to for digital and for digital church and for what online looked like.

And so I'm so happy to see what you're doing now. And the church digital, it's absolutely incredible.

The whole network and the nonprofit, everything that's incorporated. And we're looking forward to

working with you guys. Definitely. And so one more child. Well, you know what? I don't want to tell

the story. Robert, would you tell the story, how we got for one more child, what it was, what it is now,

maybe even start to tease here about some of these initiatives that you're doing every child or every

city. Talk about what one more child, what we're doing in this conversation today.

Most definitely. And thank you, Jeff, so much for having us. We truly appreciate it. Love what you're

doing. Love your podcast. So one more child started in 1904. It actually started in Arcadia, Florida as an

orphanage. So since 1904, it's really expanded that we're not only in Florida anymore, but we're around the

country and we're around the globe. So one more child started off as an orphanage, but now we're doing so much

more. We're doing work with foster care, with single moms, anti-trafficking victims, struggling families, and much

more.

And so it's been really fun to see one more child, at least where I knew them. It was the Florida

Baptist Children's Home. And that's what it was in recent years. But there was a pivot to move.

Did you see how I did the pivot? Like the friends, totally unconscious. Did not mean the accent pivot.

Pivot. Moving on. But there was this move to pivot away from meeting physical needs like in an orphanage

and actually moving a lot of these services online. So Panos, maybe talk to us a little bit

about maybe what some of those pivots and maybe what some of those services now are online.

Absolutely. Yeah. So what I like to say is that over the decades, we've always been as an organization

on the forefront of providing the best services for children and families at the time. So our mission

being to provide Christ-centered services to vulnerable children and struggling families. We've done that so

well since the beginning as an orphanage and then for decades as a children's homes. And so we have

campuses scattered throughout the state of Florida where we had children's homes for decades,

and that was the best standard of care for the time. And now looking at today, looking at the past few

years, we've seen that there's been a change for the best standard of children in that best standard

of care where we want to be able to wrap around children and families that are in need. And so it's

not just children's homes. We're talking about looking at it preventatively, looking at upstream issues

in terms of being proactive. How do we wrap around a child and their guardians and their siblings

all together? And so what we've done is we've evolved and we've actually somewhat outgrown

the name. So we're no longer just Florida. So Florida Baptist Children's Home, we're no longer

just Florida. We're branching out into other states with our programming, both campus and specific

programming, and then also with our initiatives. But we're also outgrown Baptists. We still have

strong relationships with our Baptist roots and family. But we are working with churches that are

for Jesus and that are saying, hey, look, we want to provide Christ-centered services to children and

families in our areas. And so they're no longer children's homes. And so we've outgrown that name.

And so we are one more child, which is much more appropriate to see the pillars in how we

work to provide services to children and families. And so what we're excited to talk about today is

something called One More Child Initiatives. And so what we've done is we have provided for many years

really great on-site programming with our single moms programs, where we have transition homes for moms

to live on campus for 12 months. They save money in a savings account. And then through the 12 months,

they are paired with a spiritual mentor, financing classes, parenting classes, they receive additional

aid. And then that's their one-year transition program for our single moms. Our foster programs,

what we do is we provide recruiting and licensing to recruit Christian families to enter into the

foster community to take in children that are in need of a home. Anti-trafficking, we were known for

being able to provide a safe home. And currently, we have mobile response teams in which

we have teams that go out and work with survivors of trafficking. And we specialize with working with

children or anyone under the age of 18 in terms of that. And so for years, we were doing these things

really great as our organization. But we realized that we do things great on our campuses, in our

buildings, in our programs. But what we wanted to do is we wanted to shift and pluck best practices from

what we've been doing for years and put those back in the church. And so that's what initiatives are.

What we've done is we've taken best practices from each of our pillar programs and we've provided and

we've created these initiatives. And so each of our initiatives are absolutely incredible. That

mobilizes churches to be able to serve their community in ways that we have been doing,

but in a way that really takes it away out of our campuses and puts it back in the church,

in the community. And the church shines as the beacon of hope for their zip code in their neighborhoods.

And I know Robert can share some more specifics in terms of each of our initiatives.

Yeah. So I want to drill in and Robert, we'll get to that in one second. But what I think is so

genius about this, and I love the fact that you said beacon of hope, like that's such an uplifting

term. But you did this, you put these initiatives, you plucked this out of the campuses and you put it

online. And so there's an opportunity for a physical church. Like we have, we have a, you know, a mutual

friend that I know, Dave Lopez and Dave's been on the show at the years ago and, and, and done some

stuff and talked with us. And Dave's like, you know, Panos, you gave us a local missions department.

And Dave's physical church now has utilizes some of those, the programming and some of that not tied to

your, your campus, but it's now doing that within the physical church cornerstone that's, that's

located here in Miami. What I love about these initiatives is as, uh, because it's, you've got it

digitally, this knowledge can be distributed through to our digital churches, but it also can be distributed

through our digital churches to the people that we're connecting with all over, um, America and the

world. And so like, we can have a church that's operating in Facebook and they can be encouraging

their, um, attenders, their, their members, the people that are connected with the church, they can be

encouraging them to help with foster families in their communities. Like, it's almost like this idea is

getting, um, distributed two times, multiple times, not just distributed to a digital church,

but through a digital church into areas, um, that maybe even the church doesn't exist within that zip

code. So we're really kind of, um, breaking a paradigm here of what local ministry means through a digital

church context. So, um, you know, Robert, I would love to maybe unpack here a little bit. What are these,

uh, initiatives? Like what are some of these areas that, uh, we're now talking about when we're,

when we're talking about every child, every city?

Yeah. So exactly as Pano said, we wanted to take what the great work, uh, that we are experts,

uh, we're leading and excelling at in our programs and not to be cliche, but like figure out how can we

even, uh, um, reach one more child. So that's what we always want to do is reach one more child,

more family. They're not close to one of our campuses or to where one of our programs are

offered. And so we do that in the areas of foster crew, uh, single moms community program,

a one-time anti-trafficking educational event, a backpack food program that can be one-time or

ongoing and through our meal packing party. So these are the main ways that we're able to come in,

partner with churches, no matter where you're located, whether that's here in Florida,

any state across the country, whether you're a fiscal church or you're a church online. Um,

we recently partnered with one church through our backpack program. Uh, this church operates,

uh, primarily online. They have, uh, folks that attend all over the country. Uh, we just finished,

I believe it was 38 events in 17 different States that we partnered with them to make sure that kids,

uh, had food as they were going back to school. So just amazing, just amazing to see, uh, that,

uh, we can do this. And most of these events took place, Jeff, it was honestly something that was even

new to us. So most of these events took place in people's homes. So in people's homes and coffee

shops, different things like that. So it wasn't like we were having these backpack events with

200 or 300 people in a church and a gymnasium or something like that. It was literally, uh,

most of these events were at someone's home and groups as small as four people, four people,

10 people, 20. We had some bigger groups as well too. Uh, but it really just showed us the impact

that you can make in your local community, whether you're in a physical church or whether you're

attending church online, we literally just had families like a family of four that packed 50

backpacks to make sure that kids at locals, uh, title one schools had food. So just some amazing

opportunities. Yeah. And this is some of the opportunity that, that, that I'm talking about

where it's a, I think it's a new paradigm when we talk about, you know, digital churches and the,

the reach, the potential reach that, that we're seeing as a result of this ministry, it's, it's

reaching different types of people. You know, we, we talked about this, it's reaching different

people in different environments in, in, uh, in, uh, in, uh, in different spaces. And so you're doing

that, um, by, uh, putting it online. And really now we're seeing an opportunity for that to get

distributed out in new ways and getting connected to, to new people and somebody running championing

this idea for, for foster care in a coffee house or somebody running a mentoring single moms program

within their, within their school, uh, or within their, uh, their workplace. Well, now because of

doing digital church and being at more distributed, more decentralized, we're able to see these ideas

stretch far beyond maybe what a physical locale would look like. Now, maybe the physical locale has

more, uh, influence at the beginning because now these ideas are small and getting distributed among

the people, but the opportunity for that to grow, uh, is, is really interesting. And so I, I, I love this.

So, you know, you've got the, the, and I know the church that's doing it. I, you know, maybe I say the

name, maybe I, it's, it's okay. We can, we can keep it quiet. The one church that's doing this digitally,

that's doing it really well. Um, but my, my, my question is, is, are you seeing like our physical

churches that, that are doing this, that are engaging, like what, what stories are you seeing?

What stories are you hearing? Um, what, what, what good are we seeing this idea, these initiatives,

uh, happen? Like what, what are happening as a result of it?

Absolutely. I, one church comes to mind, it's here in Florida. It's in Inverness, Florida. Uh,

they've been doing our single moms community program. They're actually in their third semester of doing it.

It's a 10 week program. So as the moms go through this, I just kind of give you a little backstory.

We provide all the curriculum, a leader's guide, uh, the student's guide, uh, materials that you can

use to promote it. Uh, we do that training. We can go in in person and do the training to train

the facilitators and the mentors. We can do that online via zoom. And so we've seen at this church

in Inverness, um, this in their third semester, just some amazing changes in these single moms.

So some of these single moms that were being mentored that were part of this program in

the first and second semester are now coming back and they're mentors themselves. So we've seen them

get mentored. And then now as the church is continuing doing this, now they're coming in

and they're mentoring new single moms. So we've seen moms, uh, that have accepted Christ through this.

We've seen families, uh, restored. We've seen children that are involved in church for the first

time. Just so many stories. I remember a story, uh, from a different one that talked about, uh,

that the, for the first time in the mom's life that she was reading the Bible, uh, that she was, uh,

trying to, to really seek out God. And she felt like God was working in her life. And she said that

for much of her life, she struggled with alcohol. And so for the first time in her life,

through the single moms program, through the support that she has, she's sober,

she's reading her Bible, she's really seeking the Lord. And so just some amazing stories like that,

Jeff, are happening all over the country.

That's great. And the opportunities we've talked about this. Thank you, Robert, for sharing that,

by the way. But we've, we've talked about these opportunities where, uh, online to offline,

you've heard me say this before, the gospel that we hear in our online world, it has to

influence our offline world, our offline relationships. Otherwise we're just creating consumers.

And so many of our churches, we're great at creating consumers in digital space. Listen

to this podcast, watch this online service, um, read this blog. But what if, what if we actually

challenged our, our, our listeners? What if we challenged our attenders to do something like this,

to, uh, feed hungry children using one more, uh, one more child's programming or speak into and

challenge, uh, uh, the sex trafficking in their locale? Like this is moving far beyond a consumer

mindset and really challenging, uh, and, and stepping into, uh, some environments like this

that are actually making a difference in the physical world. We, we, we often talk about this.

Would our church, it would our community miss us if, if our church shut down and really as digital

churches, even stepping into some of the space and challenging our people to lead out in this,

uh, it's, it, this is taking a big step towards, you know what? Yes. Our community would miss us if

our people were engaged like they would through some of these things that, that one, these initiatives

that one more child is leaning into. Panos, you look really excited, man. You're like jumping up and

down here. What, what are you thinking as we're talking about this?

I'm in agreement with everything. I think it's fantastic that we're, that we're having this

conversation. I mean, considering that even three or four years ago saying, Hey, we were,

we're going to take what we do really well and decentralize this to the point where other churches

anywhere can access, have access to training so that anyone that's at the church can become

a full advocate as well as just being an informed Christian in that space, knowing how they can work

in the foster community, how they can work to combat trafficking, how they can feed hungry children,

how they can support single moms. And, um, so just knowing that on this side of things,

looking at our digital strategy and also our initiatives being offered to churches everywhere,

we want to be able to mobilize, equip and resource churches as best as we possibly can to work in their

communities. And so, um, we just, we have these resources that are available. We offer all these

trainings for free, um, for all of our initiatives. That's because we believe in the church. We know

the mission of the church. We stand alongside the church in doing this because we want the church to

be able to be the hands and feet of Christ. And that's what we're looking to do. And so what does

it look like? I mean, we have tools that we offer as well. In addition to our training, um,

I have one thing and you can either edit this, or we can kind of talk a little bit more about this.

This is a church answers report. We've partnered with church answers to be able to work with churches,

uh, to be able to, uh, create a customized report of key stats in their area. And so we're talking

about households that are low income or below the poverty level, uh, houses that are on SNAP or food

stamps, a number of single moms in the area, a number of, uh, households with, um, yes, single mothers,

uh, married with children, property crime, just different things, number of people that are

involved in the church. So these are, this is a report that we work with churches as well to say,

Hey, look, if you're kind of wondering where we start with initiatives, let's generate a report

and let's look, because what we can do is we can say, Hey, look, we'll pull up the stat within 15

minutes of the zip code that you're looking to target and say, yeah, single moms is an issue in

terms of the number of, or the percentage that's there, uh, in terms of children or the households

that are on SNAP. These are households that we can look at and acknowledge as saying,

okay, these are households that are stretching the dollar. And we know that there's a situation where

some of these families are having to either pay the light bill or pay for food. And we want to

be able to step in as the church to be able to resource our community to let these families know,

you don't have to pick between both. We'll come in and we'll support you on the food side.

Um, and so that's just an example of what we're looking to do. So we're, we're really heavily

investing in spreading, um, and creating as many advocates as we possibly can to be able to reach

one more child. We spend enough time with Robert, myself, or anyone on staff with one more child.

The question will always circle back to that very thing. How do we reach one more child in our space?

The Lord has placed us here at this moment. Um, and so how do we serve? And so I, I'm just,

I'm energetic. I'm not aligned with everything that I'm hearing because it's so exciting to see

what's, what's to come from offering this anywhere, everywhere. And our team is super excited to be

able to do that. At one more child through our initiatives, we want to come in and empower and

equip your, your church where that's digital, whether that's fiscal, whatever that is. So we

want the community to see your church. So we come in behind the scenes, make sure you have all the

resources you need, all the training you need, everything that you need so that you can be the

ones that the community sees impacting. And so I just really think that that's important. It's not

like that we want to come in and we don't, uh, want the community to see one more child. We just want

to equip the church so that they can serve one more child.

That's fascinating. Now there's a, there's a pivot. There's a pivot here where you, you used to be

like the, the orphanage and, and instead of being the, the, the product giver, hey, we're doing the

orphanages. And when we're doing it this way, your organization has shifted. I feel like within the past

couple of years, like this is a recent shift more towards empowering others. It's more of a

decentralized movement where you're not owning the locale where the ministry is happening. Instead,

you're now empowering others, uh, to do the ministry where they are even double decentralized as we're

talking about, maybe empowering individuals to do this in homes and in, and in workplaces. Um,

I mean, I would love, and we talk a lot about decentralization here on the podcast. I would

love maybe to just to talk about why, maybe some lessons that you've learned along the way here.

What observations are you seeing as you're shifting, uh, through this? Like, tell me some of the

decentralization story of one more child here. Yeah, I, I can kind of kick us off and then pass it

over to Panos, but I really see it more as a expansion, uh, rather than, than a shifting,

because we're still doing our, our programs that we've done with excellence for so many years,

uh, kind of referencing foster care. We're still licensing foster homes here in Florida.

We still have foster family homes here in Florida. So we no longer have homes. So that group home

model is where we have paid staff that go in and they, uh, are there the, the house parents of the

group home. So now we have what's called a foster family home model. So a foster family home model

is where we provide the housing, uh, and foster families, uh, get to live there, um, for free

are very small, uh, very small, uh, monthly, uh, payment that they make, but basically for free.

And they're just regular licensed foster parents that are in the community, but we provide the housing

and kind of that, that caveat is that they have to be licensed for five kids. So we're still keeping

siblings together. We're still trying to, um, make sure that we have homes available no matter the

age of the, of the child. So we do all that through our foster family home model, but through our

initiatives, we're able to expand and do far more than that. And through our foster crew model, we're

able to go in, uh, train churches. We have a model that we've designed to train them to build a

really just practical ways, Jeff, that they can support foster families that are in their church

or in their community. So that's simple things like dropping off meals or, uh, uh, babysitting

or, uh, doing yard work around the house or doing laundry, especially praying for those families.

So it's just the way that we're able to expand from that traditional program model, um, and reach

more children for sure. Are you, as you're looking at expanding more areas, I'm just curious, like you,

you've got the, the five offerings now, foster families, mentor, single moms, feed hungry children,

stop sex trafficking, sponsor a child. Like are, is there, is there a wishlist for six?

Is it fine tune and master the five? Like, where are you going with this?

Yeah, it's definitely a combination of both. I'm always trying to analyze our initiatives,

see how we can make them better, see how we reach more people. Um, but yeah, one thing,

exciting thing that we're doing right now is we just translated our, uh, single moms community

program into Spanish. So all of our training, our facilitators guide, our learners guide,

everything is now in Spanish. Uh, we have a church, uh, that has already launched that in Spanish,

our first church. And so that's exciting that we're able to reach even more folks, uh, that,

that, uh, uh, speak a different language. And so the next step that we're doing,

uh, as far as translation in the Spanish, the next thing on the horizon is translating our foster

crew curriculum into Spanish. So we're able to reach even more foster families. So kind of going

back to the church answers report that Panos did, um, it's great for churches to be able to show

churches that so they can see needs in their community and how we can partner with them.

But honestly, it's also great for me to be able to see those needs to say, okay,

what are we not offering that people really need? And so some things that like here locally at our,

at our global headquarters in Lakeland, we have a family support program. And so I've seen the need

of having that same family support program. It's similar to a single mom's program, but, uh,

uh, you don't have to be a single mom. Uh, you, uh, you could be, or you could be a couple,

or you could be just the father. And it's really ways too, that we can come in and wrap around those

families and be able to training on finances and job skills and parenting and different things like

that. And as they're coming to these weekly classes, we're able to help meet some of those

tangible needs that they might have, whether that's diapers or baby products or, or food or whatever

that might be. So that's kind of a little bit of a tease, Jeff, on some different ways that we're

expanding and some different initiatives that I'm looking at.

Yeah. In terms of, and also kind of jumping on, and on the tail of what, uh, what Robert was saying,

in terms of these, the, what we're looking at for the future, what we're looking to do with

initiatives is we're largely looking to equip and empower the local church to respond to the local

community. And what that is, is I want to say that for years, um, it almost seemed like, uh,

it may seem like a ladder was being provided to churches or to communities where you either do,

you're either all in, or you're not involved at all. What we're trying to do is we're trying to

lay the groundwork to be able to offer the tools for churches to step into these communities,

into these areas. And so we're offering the training. We're not saying, Hey, look,

here's some ideas and go with it. We're actually offering robust training with people that have been

doing this for decades with X there's expertise. There's great expertise with the people that are

working on staff at one more child. And so these trainings are robust trainings that really equip

people to be able to say, okay, I think I can be an advocate now for foster care with developing

these foster crews. But then also what happens is let's say for example, with foster crew, someone,

there's a church that's equipped to be a foster crew. They start learning more about the foster

space in their area. And they want to have a deeper conversation, enter one more child again,

and we not enter. I'm sorry. One more child stands with you the entire time. But the thing is,

if you want to have a deeper conversation, we'll have that programmatically. So, Hey,

you started foster crews and you notice that there were five families in your local zip code that

needed help. Well, we wanted to have these foster crews because we know one of the number one things

that we see in foster care is that families burn out from being in the foster community because they

don't feel supported. Enter the church equipped with one more child training to be able to start

this foster group. And you notice we're serving five families, but we know there's another 15 that are

on a waiting list. Well, we've also noticed that, and we've also generated interest in our families and

our church wanting to become foster families. One more child can have a deeper conversation with

you as a church, with you in the community to be able to say, Hey, look, these initiatives are great

and we can expand this. And we can also talk programmatically. Do we want to be able to work

in this area to help recruit and license more foster families? If you have, let's say your single moms

program, you're doing it for a year or two and you realize, okay, we have a good hold in knowing

how many single moms are in our community. We know that there are moms that simply need a place

for one year for them to live. Well, if there's a church that has a space that wants to be activated,

we can activate that space potentially as a single mom's transition home. That's where one more child

comes in for the deeper conversation. So initiatives is really giving you the peace and comfort as a

church to know, Hey, I can enter into the space. We're seeing that church planters being so stretched

in so many ways, looking for so many things and trying to, and not knowing really where to start.

Our initiatives are being offered in a place where church planters can go, okay, I can learn to plant

my church, but then also learn the community at the same time and serve the community. And I don't need

this robust training or college certificate. We're able to be able to provide that for you and for your

team. So does that make sense? It's almost like a, it's almost like a spectrum or where we're going

from initiatives to programmatic conversations to, again, what we say is that question is how do we reach

one more child in your community? Yeah, it's just in time training. You're walking along with them as

they're growing and developing and you're providing the resources when they need it. It's a beautiful

plan. Now, how much does all this cost? Like the access to initiatives, the training, the reporting

that you're doing, some of the coaching that you're talking about, like $2.4 million, what's the

financial outpouring on this? The great thing, Jeff, is it's completely free. So our single moms community

program is completely free. Our foster crew model and our program is completely free. Our one-time

anti-trafficking education event is completely free. There is a small cost involved with our backpack

program and our meal party events that we do. But that's the only cost that's involved is just those two

kind of covering the cost of the food. But it's very, very affordable. We're able to get some great

greats and so make it where it's really realistic for the church. But outside of those two, it's

completely free. This is an incredible opportunity, I would suggest, for a digital church that

is working with people that are looking for opportunities to connect within the community.

Realize that as digital churches reach a different type of person, we're working with atheists,

we're working with agnostics, we're de-churched people, people that have walked away from the

physical building and are engaging in church Facebook groups and are finding Christ after a decade of

being away from the building. We're working with people that don't necessarily think like the physical

church type person does. And a lot of times we're finding high levels of wanting to engage on mission,

try to figure out what their purpose is dealing with people that want to make a difference in the

community and have high level of wanting to serve and wanting to engage, but need an avenue to do that.

And really one of the challenges of digital churches is they really didn't have a good answer for the service

ideas. We just did a stream on this recently talking about this where, you know, if you're willing to

serve in a digital church, you can serve as like a chat host or you can serve as a small group leader and that's

not to diminish either of those positions, but that's more internal focused as opposed to external within the community.

Utilizing these tools, utilizing these initiatives gives us an opportunity to create whole new

expressions of physical ministry happening distributed via the internet and the ability for our digital

churches to empower. I'm in Miami and in a digital church that I'm a part of can empower somebody on the

other side of America. We can be empowering somebody in California to utilize these tools,

people to make a difference within their physical community. So much of what we're seeing in digital

is almost this digital to micro model. And actually we'll have Justin and Janae Klatt on. The Klatt's are

great examples. Panos, Robert, you would love this couple. They've been running a micro church on Zoom

for like five years. And what's interesting is the micro church has grown into a network.

At this point, they, you know, the way that like Rob Wagner, Kansas City underground, Tampa underground,

the way that they look at their respective cities is how the Klatt's look at, at Zoom. And so they,

they empower individuals to reach out physically or digitally to own a church service and invite people

in. And so they've got multiple church services a week. I think they're actually seven days a week,

they're doing church service on Zoom. Somebody's doing a church service on Zoom and they're inviting

people in missionally. Well, the ministry has grown so well. I just recently had breakfast with the Klatt's

or with Justin in Arizona. They've started micro locations. They've started getting into like physical

micro locations. They've started getting into resource centers. People are actually giving them property and

saying, do a, do a church. Like, no, no, we don't want to do a church, but we'll do a community center.

And so we're seeing this start, this digital idea start to grow out into physical, into real space.

And the resources that you're providing here is an awesome step in helping more churches start to realize

what local ministry can be even distributed around the country. So this is, this is beautiful.

I would love to ask this. You talked about Spanish. I'm just going crazy here. Does the stuff that you're

doing work in Latin and South America, or is it more aimed at United States Hispanic? What's the

contextualization of some of these ideas? Yeah, definitely. So we're actually, Jeff,

we're on the horizon of launching some single moms community programs in Latin America. We have a staff

member that's there that's actually in Costa Rica that shortly is going to start training different

churches and equipping different churches with this single moms community program. So we know that that

program fits well. We know that like foster care in Latin America, things like that, it's different.

You know, it's not necessarily a foster care system or foster children or things like that and in other

countries. But with our foster crew in Spanish, Jeff, really the heart of that comes from involvement

that we have with churches in Miami. So not that they're necessary in Latin America, but we know that

there's so many Spanish speakers in Miami. I know that you guys live in that in Miami. I used to live

in Miami. I worked in case management and this whole child welfare dependency for many years in Miami,

and I know there's a great need for that. So really, that's the heart of me seeing that we need to get this

material translated in Spanish starting from Miami and honestly starting from churches that Panos has

partnered with in different areas of Miami that I know that if we can get it in Spanish, we can reach

even more kids. I love, that's just why I love Miami, right? I mean, there's so much, there's so much

multiculturalism in here. I, you know, I grew up Miami, met my wife Miami. Actually, my parents are all,

both of our parents are from Miami, both sets of parents. All of our grandparents are from Miami.

We're like third, fourth generation Miamians. And it's rare to see that down here.

Just the cultural aspect is beautiful. It's boring. It's boring in other places, man.

I always say you reach Miami, you reach the world.

Exactly.

And Miami is also, if you look at Miami, Miami is almost like a time machine where if you want to

see a lot of the nation in five years, it's going to look like Miami now.

And so that, just with what Robert was saying in terms of reaching the churches and reaching

key cities like Miami and other key cities, we're looking to reach the world with our trainings and

our initiatives as well.

That's beautiful. This is a great opportunity. Digital churches, take advantage of this. And so,

let me ask the question, Robert, if somebody's wanting to sign up, if somebody's wanting to get

connected, if somebody wants more information, where are they going, where are we pointing them

at to get connected with One More Child?

Yeah, they can go straight to our website to onemorechild.org/everychild.

So you go to our website, onemorechild.org/everychild.

It's a description of all of our different initiatives. You have the opportunity to click

on there to learn more, to request an interest meeting. So if you want to request an interest

meeting, then we will contact you and my team will conduct that via Zoom. We'll tell you more

about all the initiatives or those that you're interested in and give you an opportunity to sign

up and to get rolling with it. So it's just as simple as going to our website, requesting more

information. We'll contact you within two business days, set up an interest meeting via Zoom to get

you plugged in. Awesome. And so, yeah, we'll put that link in the show notes. One more

child.org/everychild. These are great initiatives. And Panos, what do you got?

If you also, if you're having an in-person meeting and you're

someone who's leading a church network or you're having a community meeting and you need paper

resources, we have postcards that looks like this. This is foster care. We have

different postcard size flyers with a QR code on the back to make it as simple as possible that if

you receive one of these at the meeting or you hand these out, you just simply tell people to scan

the QR code. They fill out the form of the QR code and they'll have a meeting with one of our

team members within 48 hours. They'll have something in terms of a communication via email to set up

that meeting to ask all the questions you'd like about foster care or foster crew or single moms or

anti-trafficking or any of the initiatives we offer.

So if you're looking to digitally, if you're looking to strengthen your digital church,

your fidgetal church, your micro church, whatever, if you're looking to strengthen and really start to

look at how to meet local communities, physical communities, foster care, mentor single moms,

feed hungry children, stop sex trafficking, or sponsor a child, you're going to swing over to

onemorechild.org/everychild and get connected with my friend Panos here, with Robert, or with somebody

else on the team. And so this has been a great conversation. Thank you, gentlemen, for the time.

As we're landing the plane here, Panos, let's go with you first. Any closing thoughts?

Let's see. There was one other thing I wanted to mention real quick. And I don't know if this goes

into another part of what we're talking about. The child sponsorships that we were talking about.

As one more child, yeah, we actually specialize in missions trips. And so let's say that you are a

church or a digital church that, hey, you may have not met in person, you're scattered throughout the

nation or in other parts of the world. We have mission trips that go to 15 partner countries that

we're working in: Dominican Republic, Uganda, Nicaragua, Colombia, Costa Rica, Latvia, Tanzania, Haiti,

Jamaica, Kenya, South Africa, Romania, and Guatemala. And that can be found on our website. And so if you're

a digital church that's looking to, let's say, sponsor a child, we specialize as an organization that

if you sponsor a child in Guatemala and you have a missions trip to Guatemala to a partner site,

you will meet your child, the child that you are sponsoring. You have a pen pal system that we

provide that you can communicate. You'll receive pictures of the child that you sponsor. I think at

least, I think once or twice a year, maybe possibly once a quarter, it depends on the child in the country,

but just know that we offer that as well. So if you're looking to connect the child sponsorship and

then go out internationally, we offer that, we provide that programming as well.

Rob, that's a great idea. Check that out. Is that link on Every Child or is that another link to get

more information on sponsorship? It's on that same website.

Same webpage on Every Child. Awesome. Robert, as we land in the plane here, any closing thoughts on your side?

Yeah, I'm just going to leave you guys with this, that our Every Child, Every City initiatives are

really simple solutions to help you meet the needs in your community and to show the love of Christ.

So that's what we're all about, to help partner with churches, to meet the needs in their community,

to share the love of Christ and to reach more children.

Beautiful. And so reaching more children is the heart. And I love this pairing to help digital

churches move physical, even distributed across their people and challenging them to do some of

these initiatives and to make a difference within the physical community. And so, Panos, Robert,

thank you for the time, jumping here on the podcast, doing this. And prayerfully, hopefully,

we see some more partnerships and some engagement happen with digital churches reaching out and

starting to intentionally focus on serving locally within their distributed communities.

And so this is great. Hopefully, start of the conversation here, but we're going to land the

plane. And so for Panos, for Robert, this is Jeff with The Church Digital. Thanks for jumping on the

podcast here, and we'll see you next time on the show. Y'all have a good day.