EP226: Ezequiel Fattore & Hispanic Church Online

at the beginning of the year we spoke to the church and we said we're going to start investing

into this metaverse concept. We have no idea how it looks like or how it's going to work

but we're going to start investigating. This year the idea is to start investigating it,

to start asking the questions, to understand how it works, what can we do because we don't just

want to take the same service and put it on the metaverse. We're trying to understand the culture

of the metaverse and do something that is relevant for the metaverse. 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 we got episode 226 here with the church digital

podcast and and I'm excited about this one. We're bringing in a homer, somebody from the hometown here

to talk about what they're doing in digital ministry. And so now you remember one of the themes that we're

hitting uh with the podcast here in the summer is we're really looking at some of the um the global

approaches and maybe some of the contextualization as we're looking at african-american churches.

Elle Michelle just did a podcast last week on that with us talking about the african-american

church and what she's doing through ministry out of uh the Tallahassee north florida area.

And what's interesting today we're still staying sticking in florida here and we're digging into maybe

the hispanic church and what it looks like to do hispanic church online and reaching globally a church

that's reaching some of those those cultures. And so like I always want to put the disclaimer

here on this dude I'm a white man with a goatee. There's a lot that to be honest I don't

know and so I'm positioning myself as a listener asking some questions and I always want to be like

hey yo if I'm offensive in this moment I'm trying to get the apology in advance to know that that's

not really the heart of what I'm going for and hopefully listening audience you know me at this point

to be true. So definitely excited about this conversation and I did want to bring into it

uh Ezekiel Fattori and so Ezekiel hey man thanks for jumping on the podcast here and uh and being

with us. Hey Jeff thank you so much for having me here I'm so excited so excited. Yeah so Ezekiel is

with Casa Miami uh which is a church that I've never heard of in my backyard which is awesome I love

that and so we got connected through some friends over over a new thing and it started talking and I

just started learning about what uh what uh Casa Miami is doing globally and how they're utilizing

online it was like oh my gosh I want to I want to unpack more of this I want to I want to learn more

about what this is happening and maybe some lessons that we can start to apply uh towards digital

churches and and church online and things like that so hey Ezekiel maybe just to kick us off tell us

tell us a little bit of your church's story tell us tell us what you guys are about okay the the funny

thing is when you say we're going to learn about the Hispanic church well you call Hispanic church for

me it's church period because it's what we do so let's let's see if we can find out what are the

unique things because it's like riding a bike you know you don't even know what you're doing until

someone asks you what is it that you're doing it's like I'm not sure so let's see what's going on um

love it so we've been around for 18 years now my dad and my mom uh funded the church 18 years ago

then they transitioned the church to me and my wife four years ago my dad passed away three years ago

and then we rebranded the church it was called casa de jesus casa de jesus and we felt like the

things we were doing were not matching the the name or the name was not matching the what we were doing

as a church so we rebranded it as as casa church and we wanted a name that could be pronounced well in

spanish and well in english anyone can say casa and knows what a casa is so um and from there we've

been working a lot on connecting with the hispanic culture in miami one thing that happened is during

covid of course as uh everyone had to close down um for us it wasn't such a hard thing because we had been

been doing church online for 12 years uh that maybe for the the the american churches that that was

something normal but not for the hispanic churches when we started 12 years ago people were throwing

tomatoes at us saying you shouldn't be doing that uh because we need to go to the place until of course

uh covid happened and everyone moved to online so for us uh it wasn't that hard we were ready for it

actually helped us have like one focus saying okay this is the thing we have to do we don't we didn't

have to do the um the the thing with the people in the in the room and then the thing online so we just

we're doing online and our reach grew like crazy and we went from having maybe 5 000 subscribers on

our youtube to 75 000 right now um our facebook group a lot um it has like two millions two million

followers right now and the instagram has 145 000 uh and all that happened during covid

uh so it's it's been interesting it's been interesting to to be able to connect with so

many people yeah that those are some ridiculous numbers i know let's let's yeah i mean let's let's

back up because i want to dig into like two million youtube but um i mean you made the statement 12

years ago you started doing online and there was there was some pushback against that you know try

well no you got to be in person towards that what what's the if i can ask like what's the motivation maybe

12 years ago like is it is it just like the the theology is is very bent towards physical proximity

uh there wasn't access to the technology it was a lack of understanding towards what relationships

could be like digitally like walk me through maybe some of that tension that you felt years ago maybe

some of the tension that you're feeling in covid and do you feel that same tension today i feel there's

always this tension that if you're not in the room you're a second degree uh member of the church

and they say if you if we don't see you in the room then there you're not in the room and we started

pushing a lot through that and we started saying well that's not true like if you're deciding to watch it

from home it's good it's okay we're not going against it we're just uh understanding it as it is

and um but i feel yeah i feel they connect theology to it but there's no theology that supports any of

the technology jesus was always using technology when when he got into a boat and went far from the bay

he was using the technology he had with the water to connect with his voice so i feel like that's what

we're trying to do connect with it through the technology also i started i studied advertising

um i have a bachelor's in advertising and um being able to connect through technology so it's been a

passion for me so i feel like i didn't know if it was wrong or not what i was doing i just wanted to do

it we just wanted to jump onto it and there were some churches that were doing it uh on the on the

american side and we learned from there from them and we said okay let's do it and so now you know

as a result of covid you've seen some astronomical numbers would you say 145 000 on instagram yes uh

at two two million on on on youtube i mean like that's on facebook uh like so where who are these

people do you have any idea where they came from like what what what do you know about these people

that are that are connecting with your church well we're trying we're trying to learn that actually

we're we're in the process of of doing a whole market marketing uh study of the people are connecting

and trying to understand who they are and but of course something that is helping us a lot is the

small groups we do through zoom every week um between 300 to 500 people connect to our small groups

from all around the globe and from there we we connect to them and and we're trying to learn who

they are so so part of your discipleship strategy discovering who these people are getting them in in the

small groups and where there's you know relational relational connections how how how much of a reach

are we talking about like are you latin central south america you know what's what is this reach

thing actually looked at practically uh yeah it's it's south central america it's south south america central

american america mostly actually uh we just did because we're trying to add the physical part to the

digital part because we feel we're a um a church that is digital that has uh in-person expressions

around the globe so we're trying to do pop-up churches wow so we went to argentina on january

on buenos aires we went to buenos aires um and we opened a registration to be like okay whoever wants

to come we want to meet you we want to spend some time with you and in argentina 120 people signed up

to to be there people that we had no idea who they are who they were until that moment um and we just

came back last week from bogotá colombia and 400 people showed up to the event and we connected to

them we spent uh two or three hours talking to them and crying listening to the stories on how these

the there's their lives have been changed and impacted uh for not only the church online but the way we

see god as well yeah i love the opportunities what you're talking about about how to like reach into

people get to know them build the relationships change their lives through the relationships

that are establishing now you said something and i was i wasn't expecting it because it's it's rare

when i hear it and so i'm going to ask you to unpack this a little bit okay you said that you're

a digital church that has physical locations as opposed to a physical church that does digital

ministry i first off thank you that that warms my heart uh but i would love for you to unpack kind

of what what the story is behind that statement why are you a digital first church as opposed to

a physical church that's doing an add-on of digital ministry well before coven we were doing both we were

doing digital and in person during coven we moved to digital and are rich and the people that started

connecting grew up like crazy so we felt like okay this is what we need to do and i don't know if this

is the thing that everyone needs to be doing but this is what we know how to do or or this is um

this is the thing that it's common to us so we started doing it uh and then when people started coming

back we said okay we're just gonna keep it this way we're gonna keep it as a digital church

um that has uh in-person expressions so for example people come on a sunday to our what we don't call

it auditorium anymore we call it studio so they come to our studio it's around for 100 120 people

uh they come to a studio we do live worship we do we do live preaching and we stay after connecting to

the people that came in person that it's our in-person expression but of course everything it's uh

thought out for the people that are watching online i'm all the time looking at a camera well while i'm

preaching and everyone that talks in the in the room is talking to a camera so the the digital part comes

first because of course you have 120 people in person but then at the end of the week you're

gonna have between the uh the people that watch live and the people that watch on demand you're

gonna have 3 000 to close to five or seven thousand people watching so uh that that's what we're doing

did you intentionally go after like going global at what point did you because i i mean i'm speculating

here i'm dreaming here this is your father's church did he have this vision for digital did it just

magically happened did you intentionally go after digital first like what was that transitionary

period what did that look like no it was it was actually uh it wasn't easy at all because at the

same time when my dad was a pastor it was really hard to make him understand that he had to look at the

camera or why we were putting so many lights and so we were like putting the cameras in the places that

he was looking at so if he used to we would move his uh his his ipad or his his bible to the the side where

the camera was so we could have a shot of him looking at the camera of course it wasn't it wasn't easy at

all uh but we kept pushing we kept pushing is is the the thing that was vibrating for us we had a heart for

this we had a heart for for all these people we're not thinking about it it was i'm not gonna say that

i saw it before i knew it no we just started doing it and we and it kept growing and it kept happening

of course um i love how all the the communication is is changing on in everywhere in everywhere so

i wanted just to follow it no i i love i love all of this now do you feel that does the hispanic

culture like you're reaching latin and south america do they do 2022 do they connect with

digital like are are people in other countries other continents are they open to to receiving to

being part of a church that operates digitally first like is there tensions what what maybe is some of

that relationship and some of those early conversations look like with with people

i had the same question until we came back from colombia last week where people that

saw us for the first time in person they had been connecting for two years and a half

so it was 400 people showing up at the place and we stayed we heard two stories of people

saying it's not only the digital church because it's we know it's not just the medium is the message

right it's it's a way of seeing church as well it's a way of seeing god as well so people were saying

the good thing about digital churches i could assist without being judged at all

for example there was a person that it was a transgender person coming to the place he uh

he came with his girlfriend and uh people that were gay lesbians uh people from all over the

the spectrum were there oh another cool thing that happened is many young kids bringing their parents

to the pop-up so they could show them to say hey you you see this this is making me good and i know it's

hard for you to understand that i'm not going to an in-person church or i'm not going to your church

but i'm connecting to this and it was incredible to see the parents after the event

coming to uh say thank you to us and they had the shirts of the church the church marriage on and

they were like they were even talking more than their kids to us uh because they were happy for what was happening

so yeah there's tension of course uh there's tension on on churches that they feel like they're losing

people uh but at the same time there's a bunch of people that they wouldn't go to an in-person church

that they wouldn't because they don't feel guilty because they're part of the new generation

and some they're like um i for my lifestyle for who i am i wouldn't go to an in-person church so

yeah there is tension but it's uh it's far more better the the good things that are coming with it

yeah we we feel that i've at least i've seen the same thing with the churches that i've worked with

that like the digital expressions of church like what what you're doing in in latin and south america

where they have no physical footprint and even like the studio that you're describing we're really

describing like more of a digital first mentality and but what we're finding are the churches like that

are exactly what you're saying you were reaching a different type of person people that the buildings

aren't aren't reaching and so often you know when we talk with with physical churches that are doing

physical churches that are doing digital ministry second you know there's there's this fear of uh

competing with the physical building and and these people should be in a physical building and so

we're we're actually i've had a pastor in my life tell me that i should confess my sin uh for pulling

people out of the bride of christ by helping churches uh you know do online ministry and thanks

side conversation for for another day he's a friend of mine actually but the the heart of this is is

that we're finding digital churches digital first churches like yours are are reaching different

people than the buildings are reaching and so i love i mean i love some of these stories even the

transgender uh trying to go into a safe environment to ask questions the dialogue like that we hear that

story time and time again in digital and metaverse church and so that that's super exciting i know

i'm curious towards this and this may be more of a of a of a miami-based question like so i'm in miami

um you know like there's it's predominantly hispanic uh the uh by by far that's the stronger

culture here within the 305 and the 786 uh when you get down to the latin and south america is

there any contextualization like do we have to worry about um you know different uh different dialects

different languages different ways to connect with people in different countries like how much adaptation

do you do well actually i love that miami has so many cultures because

even inside the hispanic culture you have the argentinians the colombians venezuelans

and we don't say the same words even there's stuff that i'm from argentina but there are words that i say

that are like cursing for other hispanics but i'm not cursing in argentinian basically

so uh but i love that being in miami has helped me understand all those differences

so believe it or not i've been trained for 18 years on how to preach to colombians argentinians

venezuelans from puerto rico from cuba i've been talking to them my whole life all my ministry

so suddenly when we go online we've been doing we've been doing it so i know that someone that

is listening from colombia is going to understand what i'm saying i know that someone from argentina

that is listening is going to understand what i'm saying because i i've been i've been trained to to

see all those differences that's interesting like i there was there was the situation i don't remember

the two languages here but this is this has been like my fear when i worked and i i let me say this

at a personal level i have been told not to speak spanish because me speaking spanish offends spanish

people and so like i know a little bit i've lived here long enough to be able but i've been told don't

don't even try and so like i'm respectful of the cultures but i don't i don't understand it uh but

you know there was a situation i can remember this maybe a little too personal but i was i was overseeing

spanish translation at a uh at a physical church here here in town and um the the the translator

used the word i don't know the the country but was trying to say the pastor said excited

and uh and so the translator you know where i'm going the translator didn't say excited he used the

word that for um you know it's you know excited you know and in the in the type of way that you

don't want to be excited in church and setting and so it was like oh my gosh it became like this this

huge controversy what are we doing how are we how are we translating how are we all right so look um

how how's you because you said something you're like man i grew up here in miami i've been here for 18

years i know understand all these cultures how do you get there like how do you understand that

by laughing at yourself by uh talking to your friends by uh lowering your pride or lowering your

country pride or be like no i'm gonna speak always like as an argentinian or as a cuban or as by lowering

that and and trying to to love everyone and to say okay if this word offends you i'm gonna find another

one um if if this that i'm saying you don't understand it then i'm gonna say something else

so i feel in my case argentinas were so like we're so proud of how we speak who we are

uh and so i had to work on my ego and say okay i'm gonna learn i'm gonna so every time every time i'm

i'm with a different culture i start asking questions i start asking questions questions questions

and my wife she's so big into taking care of that we respect every culture she she's always

like we gotta be careful we gotta be careful of not offending anyone so i feel that that's been the key

i i love that positioning yourself as the learner asking questions uh trying to get feedback and

direction and guidance from from someone position even giving them an opportunity to own what some some of

that is and and and and of course finding friends that are willing to let you ask questions that maybe are

uncomfortable uh and for example last two years ago when uh um with the african-american culture

and everything that started happening um i i i needed to ask so many questions and i didn't want to be

disrespectful but i needed to ask the questions so i found friends and i said hey i need to ask you

questions and if something that i'm saying is not right please forgive me but i need to learn i need

to understand what is it that is going on in your culture and with your people so i can cry with you i can be with

you so um i feel like having friends that are willing uh for you are willing to be offended

by your questions and not take it personal and help you grow and learn that that's the key what's the

percentage of do you because so you've got you know thousands connecting online ridiculous numbers

and in facebook and youtube like do you have a grasp of how much of that is is us based how much of that

is is global based have you worked through any of that yet not me but the creative director of the

church yes and he's working on that but we know that it's it's around 10 or 15 percent on each on each

part we have we know we have 10 or 15 percent on us then mexico then colombia then argentina

so it's it's pretty mixed wow okay so so what what i'm hearing is a very spread like you're not

predominant one or another another that's great because that actually kind of leads i'm going to

back up to your race how do you address race in that situation like that that's i don't want to say that's a

u.s centric but it was obviously it was much more of an uh i'm going to use the word explosion it was

very focused in in the united states a lot of the tension centered around that but your audience is

global and and may or may not even agree or understand some of these intricacies like what

we're dealing with on on the race like what what was that for your season for your church well in my case

i had to take the time to ask the questions to my friends and then communicate to the community

and try to teach them or or say this is what's going on because uh the issue of race it's always it's

also very very very bad on on latin america as well even worse maybe i think we're more conscious on united

states about this issue that it's on latin america so um so all right how we drove through i could have

not say anything and there was not a problem with it but i felt that it had to be the voice and make

everyone understand what does how does it feel how does it feel and how the like i try to make it make it

sense to the people in in in a country what does um what does some of the the technology look at like

this so like you're if you're equidistant across a lot of these countries um you know i i just i i've

done mission trips down in latin and south america and i know they're the lack of technology like they

they landlines are are non-existent actually i went that was funny i went down there maybe in 2018 2017

thinking oh we're gonna start doing like tv apps and we're gonna push it down there and so i'm trying

to get apple tvs or roku's and all these things and none of these homes had wi-fi and none of them had

viable internet in and all the technology was cell phone based and it really it was a i don't know

there was a challenge as much as an opportunity to pivot but like what are you finding that they're

utilizing mobile are they utilizing um web like how are they connecting with you well they're mainly

connecting uh through youtube and yeah it's through mobile and that i feel we try to use as much as we

can the technology that it's already available yes they have issues there's there are parts and parts

there are parts in in latin america that have great technology like uh mexico every country has

sites that are like less privileged than others but you're always gonna find some that they do have

good connection and and they do connect to the church or we have some cases uh for example i have

a kid in venezuela that whenever he goes to his friend's house he downloads the youtube video he

converts it into audio he puts in his he put it he puts it into in his phone and then he listens to it

and whenever he has wi-fi he sends me a dm through instagram to say hey thank you for the teaching

but i love when people go as far as doing all that in order to connect but yeah it's always a challenge

as you're as you're wrestling like how far along are you on the path of this digital strategy

growing in in the physical like as you're looking at how do you get a youtube user uh and convert that

into a micro church or a house church or something like that what what are you guys wrestling with on

that space well first of all in order um we're wrestling with the on how to connect with so many

people because of course we have yeah three thousand seven thousand views after uh one week

but as i said we have three three hundred to five hundred people connecting to a small group

so we're in the whole process of uh creating a crm process while people after connecting or after

sending their first email we can guide them into a small group and how to make the process uh

interesting for them so we're we're wrestling with that right now that that is one of the things

we're trying to to understand how to connect more people from the youtube experience from the live

experience to a small group and then maybe they show up at a pop-up when we do it at their country

awesome i talk to me you said pop up a couple times i want to i want to dig deep on that so you're

just like have have you done any of these kind of describe for me what that process looks like you just

show up in venezuela and do a service like there's got to be something more to that right so we just came

as i said we just came from bogota colombia okay where we did one um so we opened a registration for

people to show up we did it at a nightclub in the in the main part of bogota um it was such a beautiful

place such a cool place and the idea was not to do a service because they listen to us every week

it was the other way around we wanted to make an event for us to be able to listen to them

oh that's smart so um it's it's a meet and greet basically it's a it's a place where we can connect

with uh the people that are connecting to the church it was funny because people were coming

thinking that it was a service and suddenly they see us not doing a service just we created small groups

inside of the room and we just go from small groups to small group you know and listening and asking

them questions and at the same time we make them connect to each other so they create community as

well so we just did one in bogota as i said 400 people signed up to show up it was crazy we were

not expecting so many people at all people were standing in the room because we had a room for

150 people and we were not expecting so many people but it was beautiful so what we did is

we separated into three days the first day we spend it with the leaders of the community because we know

we have leaders that are leading small groups or they're serving on the church online so we try to

dedicate more time to them the second day we do the pop-up itself where everyone comes and then we have

a last supper as we call it where we bring some of the new leaders and the old leaders into a last

meeting and we spend time with them the idea would be for next year to start doing in-person small

groups on those countries so the the end game uh of of gathering people together is to start to

build some of the relationships physically you're connecting digital people together through starting

to build physical relationships to hope to do your discipleship system of small groups within the

physical space so a church in miami is wanting to start physical small groups in bogota colombia

that's that's what i'm garnering from that yeah you said it so good i need to record that and show

and show it to my people because you said it better than i that that's awesome however i can help you

make that happen like that that's intriguing to me but like the when you when you say that to uh to

people in bogota like do they do they buy that is that something they're they're interested in they went

crazy no kidding they went crazy when we said that we were going to open small groups in bogota they were

like finally because we love the digital church we love connecting through zoom but we're kind of

missing sometimes not every no not every week but sometimes we miss seeing some people so uh we're

trying to add that in person part not by opening a church or opening a building but uh but by creating

small groups but still we're going to have the zoom groups as well because people might just don't want

to go to an in-person group and just stay online and it's fine i love this uh were you who's so in

bogota colombia i'm curious let's let's unpack this um are you giving people like are you setting up the

groups for people are you traffic copying people and for bogota from miami are you empowering them to

create their own groups and recruit their own people to come in like how what does building

groups look like on another continent well that is a question that we're trying to unpack right now

because um what happened this time is we as we said we went and we connected with people from our

congregation that are connecting digitally and they already feel leaders or they behave as leaders maybe

they're leading a small group one of these small groups on zoom or they're they're co-leading

one of these small groups on zoom or they're serving as a graphic designer or a host on the youtube

and they're part of a group as well so we connected to them first and we're trying to empower them to be

able to open these small groups around the city the idea is to spend these next six months

giving them the tools and then giving the giving them the the authority to start creating the groups it

might be a mess it might not go well first and we're willing to take it uh because we feel like the

church we're doing sometimes it is a mess yeah but we're learning uh and we're not afraid of failing oh my

gosh and and if it if it does work the upswing of this where you're you're training people giving them

resources giving them time to develop to catch vision towards creating new physical community

on another continent like that's that's phenomenal uh it's it's an experiment it could get ugly but hey

give it a shot see what happens i i love it um tell me how do you um like why bogota what's next on on

your road map like how aggressive during this experiment period how aggressive are you going to be so uh

bogota we decided because on our youtube channel our first city on on our um on the insights was uh bogota

so we said okay let's go there so the second city um it's gonna be lima peru okay and that's gonna

be on september many people of our community doesn't know this but i'm i'm revealing it to you

first all right we got an exclusive right here we're going to lima that's awesome uh so we're going

to lima that's gonna be in september i would love to do at least uh including the one in lima

two or three um more before the end of the year um and then continue next year on doing this because

at the same time we're learning how to do this uh these pop-up churches uh and these pop-up

opportunities we're trying to learn how to make it make it work you know the thing that i really i like

about the pop-ups is you've got a viable long-term discipleship plan a strategy on the back on the back

of it like you're you're not um to be honest like i was expecting you to say yeah and then we're going

to start doing live services down there we're going to rent a band and pipe in video teaching

like it was you know my gut was because i've heard churches do this where it's it's more about

you know creating uh another location for a service but the thing like you're looking at

at the the discipleship at a a community aspect at far more relationship because you're valuing

what you do digital at that high level to do the service component the teaching component

which you're trying to get to as community and that's that's an interesting take on this

well a friend uh there is a pastor in one of these uh places where we went to do a pop-up he asked me

hey i need to ask you this are you opening a church in here like are you competing with us

and i said well you don't understand it we're already here like and we're everywhere we don't

need to open uh a building or or open the church as it's been to be able to be here we're already here

we're just trying to connect to the people that are already connecting to us and as we said it would

be a failure to start saying now we're gonna have church in bogota because we know we already have it

and people are connecting to the church already and they feel we are their church so we will be telling

them okay well you will be into it you would be doing it's not being enough and we do feel it's enough

we do feel people connect they connect with their friends they don't they don't connect live maybe on

sunday they connect around monday tuesday wednesday thursday uh maybe during the night maybe during the

morning and then they connect to a small group so they're creating community so uh yeah yeah yeah

or our plan is not to it's not an what it's called it's not an interest night interest night i think

they call it when we go to a place and see how many people do they have in order to open a building

or a church building and no that's not our our idea well and once again if we do something different

you're going to reach different types of people and so you're you're a walking example of this and so

you're you're growing from you know massive numbers online starting to uh recruit and build uh micro

communities or small groups scattered around latin and south america uh you're you're figuring out the

the the algorithms and continuing to push your uh your message and some of your programming into some

new areas i don't know what if you put much thought into metaverse and virtual reality kind of what's

what's next for you what are y'all looking at well we're trying to get into the metaverse thing uh

because as we said i think we had a um an advantage with the hispanic church because we started doing

online church 12 years ago and of course it was uh a long process a hard process but when it was time

for everyone to jump in we had these 10 years of experience so uh this year uh the beginning of the

year i we spoke to the church and we said we're going to start investing into this metaverse concept

we have no idea how it looks like uh or how it's gonna work uh but we're gonna start investigating this

year the idea is to start investigating it to start asking the questions to understand how it works

what can we do because we don't just want to take the same service and put it on the metaverse

we're trying to understand the culture of the metaverse and do something that is relevant for the

venomers matter the metaverse because that that's every medium it's a message on itself so we're trying

to understand what is the message and how the the medium works in order to to speak to the medium to

the to the place as it should be that's beautiful and and we're gonna have some fun conversations on the

side because i i just i've i've got some ideas but the the idea of of of the the medium is is the

message and understanding that and and tailoring the message differently for the different environments

that you're in is that's a huge step um and and really i would suggest um it's it's a challenge for

a lot of churches today um you know omni channel was really popular pre-covid you know get your message

and get it on every channel possible um and and and pre-covid before the technological shifts that

happened as a result of covid omni channel may have been the best at strategy at that time but coming

out of covid where we've seen massive adoption and massive acceleration within these technologies

what we need to understand is there's more nuance there's more um contextualization within these and and

like what you're communicating on on youtube it's going to be different than facebook which is going

to be and and and you know i dare say facebook in you know um well i mean let's even take it out

of the contextualization uh facebook in uh miami is going to be different than facebook in chicago or

facebook in los angeles because or mexico city because of the different contextualizations that are there

which is why actually i love the idea of where you're using digital to reach masses but you're using the

small groups using the watch parties to break masses down to an individual level you're giving people an

opportunity to speak to each other to be discipled within their contextualizations um and that's

something i feel like we we as the church miss we try to keep everything large uh so that we feel good

about our numbers and i don't want to unpack you know a lot of that but i think that the opportunity to

break it down small to let digital lead towards small relational opportunities uh is a huge win

and i'm excited to see where casa miami is going in the near future ezekiel i gotta tell you once again

you man i i apologize i i'm from miami i've been here a long time and you you kind of slipped in out

of nowhere and i'm like this is i know this is awesome i love this very very cool we're pretty underground

we're pretty underground yeah i know but that's been that's been awesome too because as i said we were

a really small church before kovid we're a pretty much better church after kovid and we learned what

we had to do i had never had uh 300 people in a room in my life until last week in bogota wow

so uh the kind of church we're doing it's uh it's much better for us as i said i don't know if it's

this is for everyone but for us this is what we know this is i don't know how to express it in english

i'm suffering with it but uh this is the thing that um naturally comes from us this is us basically we

learn we understood our line and what we could do and we try to follow it um we're trying to be us and

trying to connect with people like us around the globe and it's been crazy it's been crazy and some

friends they they asked me how are you doing with your numbers in person and when i say we have we have

120 people and they're like thank you for being so vulnerable so open like if i'm saying something

bad i'm like but we're happy with it like again and the place is full we're in the conversations on

how to open maybe a second service without cameras but again we're thinking do we want to do it do we

want to spend energy on a second service or we want to spend energy on the metaverse do we want

to spend energy do we want to burn out our our volunteers in order to open a second service

or we want to keep it like this that we have a service and then we go home everyone goes to their

houses they have time with their families because at the same time we're so big on relationships

after service people stay 30 40 minutes maybe an hour talking at the building on the building to

other friends they will want to miss that we want to do we want to ruin that and the beautiful thing is

we went to bogota and the same thing happened the same culture people always stayed talking to other

friends and other people that they had just met so it does work it does work so we're in that process

we're trying to understand i tell you what even just trying to understand it's interesting we were

talking with el michelle last week and she said the same thing about african-american church it's

standing around after the service it's talking it's it's building those relationships that's why

physical is so prevalent within african-american and and you're even alluding to it with some of the

physical stuff that you've you've been talking about here um and so i the real challenge i would think

for for you and for other digital first churches is how do we capitalize on that how can we create the

after service lobby environment where they're sitting around and talking they're able to engage in

dialogue and and i know like our friends over at alter live i don't know if you're familiar with that

platform but they've done a some big steps in that area uh but i think there's even more opportunities

to make sure that we're not losing the the commute that relational connection point to get people

connected and hooked to be to move beyond just content and really start to even engage in building that

that digital community and so you may have just poked a bear on something right there uh and so this has

been a great conversation this will be this will be one of of many i i have a feeling i want to check

back in with you uh further down the road see how how your digital physical is going and see how lima's

going and and bogota and uh i'm sure many other uh opportunities to kind of build uh these uh physical

off of digital which is such a brave and i believe blue ocean huge opportunity ahead and so ezekiel

thank you for the time and uh we'll uh we'll uh we'll put contact info and some other links in the

show notes for people that are interested and uh definitely looking forward to seeing what god has

in store for casa miami of course thank you so much jeff and thank you for everything you're doing

for opening our minds and being in front of everyone doing it doing it first it's helping us

all to just follow you on what you're doing awesome well hopefully we're following god because if we're

following me we're all screwed but hey we're gonna we're gonna land the plane for uh for ezekiel this

is jeff with uh the church digital digital church network leadership network and god knows a whole

bunch of other fun stuff thanks for uh jumping on the show here we'll see you next time on the pod

y'all have a good day