EP211: Digital Ministry Doesn't Have To Be WEIRD!

Welcome to the Church Digital podcast. Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological

innovations within the church. But more than Ted 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, my name is Jeff Reed, and it's great to be here. Man, I love modern technology, especially

when it doesn't work like it's supposed to. By the way, this entire show is an experiment.

Normally, the average organization would be like, hey, let's actually run a couple dry runs,

test this out, make sure we can do this. Nah, forget all that. Let's just do it for real and a bunch

of people. And if it blows up, hey, that just makes it even a more fun story. So, hey, listen,

we're doing a live show here. Digital ministry doesn't have to be weird. I don't know if you've

experienced stories like this or even have that from your own life. But coming from me,

if a guy has been doing ministry, digital ministry for a long time, I've heard plenty of people tell

me that this stuff is weird and get the side eye and talk to me about how ministry doesn't happen in

ones and zeros and all sorts of crazy stuff. And we're going to get into some of that here in a

little bit. But what I really wanted to do is even just open it up here. And I want to introduce,

I want you to meet some of my friends here. So let's do this. Tom, why don't you go first? Tom,

tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do, and even talk a little bit about the

podcast and the live show that you've got coming up next week, right?

All right. Yeah. So I'm Tom Pounder. I am the online campus pastor at New Life Christian Church

in Chantilly, Virginia. I have a student ministry background. And in fact, I still do student ministry

to this day. But my passion is digital and online ministry. I live just outside of Washington, D.C.

I've lived here most of my life, except for a few years in Germany when I was younger and college

time period. But I've been basically born and raised in Washington, D.C. And I am a cowboy fan.

I root for all Washington teams, except for that, the Washington commanders, I guess is what we call

them now. Betrayal. So you choose the cowboys? Betrayal. How is it better? I don't understand.

I'm a cowboy fan. There's 26 other better options, aren't there, than the cowboys?

Yeah. There are a lot of options out there, but I love my cowboys. And, you know, when I was a

teenager in the 90s, when the cowboys were winning all the Super Bowls, everyone called me a bandwagon

fan. But no one's calling me that anymore. They're just calling me an idiot right now.

Yeah. So that and I have a last thing about me is I have four daughters ranging from ages

20 to 14. So I am the one male in a female dominated household.

You're doing great, Tom. You're keeping it up. You're you're rooting for the wrong teams.

But I mean, you're you're surviving. So congrats.

Thanks. I appreciate it, guys.

Totally. Totally. I think. Yeah, there we go. We're back.

That's in back. I have bad Internet here at the house, and it's the only option like anywhere near

me. So there's no chance of it getting better, which is horrible. Andy, why don't you go next?

Talk a little bit about who you are, what you're up to.

Yeah, definitely. I'm currently trying to hold this ship afloat right now on this here live stream. So if

you see me looking and looking and there's a kind of a note of terror in my eyes, just understand

that these things are held together by chicken wire sometimes. And if you see things moving on the

screen, don't be freaked out. That's not Jeff's bad Internet. That's just me playing with some boxes.

But yeah, I'm Andy Mage. I'm a digital pastor here in Tampa. I'm also a video, the video content

creator and community manager for Altar Live. I'm also helping out with the church digital. I run a

podcast called Breaking the Fifth Wall. I run another podcast called The Weekday. I run another podcast

on that after that called The Altar Live Show. I also try to stream video games on Twitch and help out

with a awesome digital community called Lux Digital Church. I also try to sleep every once in a while,

and I am trying to be a good husband to my three children and two dogs and fish, which I don't know

if you can see them over there. They have been a wonderful addition to this peaceful studio around

here. Yeah, we got a whirlwind going on. That's a lot. Man, like fish, just all that headache and you

just do fish on top of that. Listen, dude, they're like my bonsai tree. For whatever reason, at the end

of the day, I turn off the lights. I turn off everything and I turn around and I feed them.

Yep. And I just, for whatever reason, it's my sand raking or clipping my bonsai tree and the dog

will come in. One of the dogs will come in and we just hang out for like 10 minutes. It's great.

Yeah, let's be honest. When you do this to the kids, it just does not have the same calming.

This is just, I've got a 17-year-old, a 15-year-old and a 12-year-old. So this means

keys or money. Yeah, it's keys or money.

You can do it with dollar bills.

Yeah, exactly.

So, hey, the fun thing about these two guys is they do create some content through the

church digital and obviously there's a lot that's happening there. Now, both of their shows,

they're going to start doing live shows Tuesday, 6 p.m. as well. And so we're going to rotate

some different shows in here. And for us, part of this experiment is doing things live. And Andy

actually mentioned Alter Live. And so we're actually broadcasting this right now in the Alter

Live community. And so I'm looking over here. We got some people over here in Alter Live.

That's great. We got three or four people. Yay, Alter Live. That's awesome. Here's what

I want you to do. If you're watching this in Facebook, you're watching this in YouTube,

LinkedIn, wherever it is in social media, I want you to swing over here to the Alter

Live. It's thechurchdigital.alterlive.com. Come in, create an account. If you don't have

one, join the community. But we'd love to have you in this space and hanging out with us

in the community. For us, one of the things that I've really been leaning on, and Jason,

I'm going to get to you in a second, we really want to use content to drive towards community.

And so for us, doing this live show for us is a way to start to connect people together

into the family, into the community that we're creating through the Church Digital and Digital

Church Network. So come see us over in Alter Live, thechurchdigital.alterlive.com.

And this actually sets up Jason Morris. Jason, we had a scheduling conflict at the last minute,

and Jason dropped everything he's doing with his new life in Dallas. I'm hopefully not a Cowboys

fan. We'll ask that question in a second. But not yet. That's a good answer. I lived in

Dallas for nine years, and I'm still able to say not yet. So I'm going to hold you through that.

But Jason, man, you've had so much change. You were at Westside Family. Why don't you tell

us a little bit kind of what you're up to and what your new role is there with Resi?

Well, I'm a new product manager here at Resi. And what that means is I get to influence and help

develop the new features that are coming out in Resi, which is one of the major streaming platforms

platforms that the church has. And with its recent acquisition by PushPay, there are some very

fascinating and exciting ways that all of these tools can start to integrate with one another

in ways that have never been done before. And that's one of the reasons why I came on to Resi

to be a part of that initiative. And so right now I'm learning a ton and trying to get the new

version of studio for Resi out, which lays a lot of the groundwork for us to be able to do a lot of

really cool things at a cadence that's a lot faster than we've been able to do before. So super excited

to be on the other side of church tool development, because I was a user of the tools for a long time.

And now I can be a developer of these tools. Now that I have this experience, and it's been really

great to be able to influence that. Yeah. What's it feel like to get out? What's it feel like to be

walking on the other side? Oh, dude, it is so weird. Because, okay, first off... Am I allowed to say

that? Are we going to get in trouble, Jeff? Why not? I mean, I don't know who's going to get you in

trouble. We'll just come out swinging. That's cool. What does it feel to get out?

Well, one thing, I moved, right, to Dallas. Right. We, my wife and I, have never been church

shopping ever in our lives. Ooh. Because... Wow. It was either something that my parents decided for me,

or my job decided for us. And this is completely new territory. And I gotta tell you, seeing church

from a different perspective is really been mind-blowing for me, because I know what happens

in the kitchen, right? So when I see it all happen on stage, and when people are talking, you know,

membership classes and stuff, I don't know. It's just, for me, it's going to be really rough for any

church to meet expectations for Maria and I, because we've been living it for so long. And oddly enough,

my digital connection with Westside hasn't changed. So I'm there every Sunday. I am part of a, you know,

a small group, a Westside small group online every Wednesday night. Um, and so my community really

hasn't changed all that much. And if I were smarter, I would have just told them to just keep on paying

me and I could still do the job. But, um, anyway, it's, it's just, I'm in a weird state that way. Um,

because I've never been in this position before and, you know, I haven't not been a pastor for,

or not better said, I haven't been in non-vocational ministry since before I was in college. So this is

really new territory for me, but it's really interesting now how much I understand how valuable

weekends are to people that I didn't quite understand before having my job and my church

being one in the same. So I'm beginning to get a little bit more empathy for families and couples

that only have two days together. If that, and being able to squeeze everything in,

I get it at a different level now. Hmm. Awesome. Well, I tell you what, I'm excited about some of

the stuff that's going to be coming out of Resi and anytime your streamer, your streaming solution

breaks, uh, it doesn't matter the time or day. Jason's cell phone number is going to be

I'll put it in the comments right now. We'll add it in at a later time, but no, we're definitely

excited about Resi.

Honestly, our support team is awesome. They have a better call answer rate than 9-1-1.

Hmm. So they're, they're incredible.

We use Resi at my church. So now I know who to call when I, when I got some issues,

I'll just go right to, right to Jason.

Yeah. Evidently, he can be found at facebook.com/jcmorris. And so feel free to

message him just incessantly. Any, anytime there's an issue, that'll be great. Hey,

um, let's, let's do this. And so I want to get into it. I want to get into the conversation.

If you're watching out in social media world, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, feel free to jump

over to the churchdigitals.altralive.com. Join the community that we've got in there. We've got some

friends hanging out already. Hey, if, and by the way, if there are questions or thoughts, uh, from the,

the chat, bring them up. I'd love to talk to them through, but the heart of what I want to get into here with the

conversation is we're kind of having fun here, relaxing. I'm missing my jam right now in my head.

Where's my jam? It's coming. It's coming. It's very subtle.

The beat's got it. Yeah. The beat's got to drop, man. You got to give it space.

Yeah. I'm not a patient guy with the beat. So, um, but Hey, so like, so the, the idea,

the question here is digital ministry is perceived as weird, right? I mean, let's, let's just embrace it.

Uh, Tom, you've been doing this. How many years I've been doing this? How many years? Jason

outdates all of us. Andy has been doing all sorts of stuff in this space for a long time.

Um, man, what, and we're going to talk about some of this. We're going to drill into some deeper,

uh, specifics on, on individual, uh, episodes later on down the road, but even just to open up the

conversation and get started today, man, what are some examples? What are some of the weird stuff that

you hear people saying, well, church online is really this, or digital discipleship is nothing but this.

Like some of what are the weird negative comments that you hear describing digital ministry?

Okay. I'll, I'll go first, but just because this is kind of on my heart a lot. Um, I was at a

conference, uh, in November. I won't name the conference. Um, but the conference, I went to

two digital ministry, uh, sessions and I was like, this is going to be awesome. We're going to learn

some more strategy and everything. And the two things that both of those things said,

the one thing actually that both of them said was that, uh, online relationships are not real

relationships. Online discipleship is not real discipleship. You cannot have real discipleship

in online. The purpose is to get it in person. And finally, I just had to, I'm sorry. I just had to

raise my hand and say, sorry, we, we haven't experienced that. We ours is kind of contrary,

but that's some of the negative stuff that I've been dealing with a lot lately.

What? Okay. What, what prompted that? Was that just completely unbidden? Was it an actual

question from the audience? Like, where does that come from?

Yeah, they were doing, uh, in one segment, it was like a kind of a round table discussion and some

of the things that they've been learning. And one guy was really just pushing that we need to get

back in person. We need to not be online anymore. We need to be back in person. Again, this was in

November and things were a little bit different than they are now, but, um, it, it just kind of blew

my mind because again, these guys were people who were sharing success stories of online and then

went a complete 180 and saying, we've got to get back on person and you know, real, real relationships

and real discipleship can't happen online. So. Yeah. For me, it, it always ends up well. And Jason,

I share your tearing your hair out motion there. That's, that's that emoji, right? That, that one.

Yes. And Tom, I hear that a lot from, I work in a, uh, uh, a large denomination, uh, that

my church fortunately gets it, but there are a lot of people inside the denomination that

do not understand that real relationship can happen no matter what. And the question then

always comes to, well, how do you do communion? It's always, it always, at least in my denomination,

always gets to the sacraments real quick because that supposedly is what defines what is church is.

How do you do communion? How do you do baptism? Et cetera, et cetera. And it's like, hold on a

second. Um, we were actually at a conference last week at exponential in Orlando and our good buddy,

Mark from Lux digital, uh, did actually Jeff kind of facilitated a bunch of stuff, uh, in the pre-conference

and Mark stood up there and he gave kind of his testimony of where Lux digital church came from.

And he was recounting the fact that being in a digital ministry with people all across the globe

that are having the Holy spirit fall upon him or upon them, excuse me, is the closest that you can feel

to omnipotence and omnipotence. And that right there, if the Holy spirit can do that while you're in

Pittsburgh and I'm in Tampa and that dude's in South Africa, then why can't digital ministry be happening?

So that's, that's kind of the thing I'm wrestling with Tom along that, that same path that you're

journeying. Yeah. I like Steven to scratch that itch a little bit. And, and first off,

let me say, I wrestle with this one, like theologically, I'm not sure how to use the

words that are in my head. And so I'm, I'm, I'm researching this one, but when people talk about

incarnational ministry and, and like needing to be in physical space and, and like the physical

connection of, of people together and how that's really the only way that, that this works, I,

we do realize that the Holy spirit is, is like not it's present everywhere. Like God's in heaven.

Jesus is distanced somewhere else. Like this whole, this whole thing is based off of an, and yes,

an understanding of scripture. Yes. A presence of the Holy spirit in our lives, but it's not like

we're tangibly touching said Holy spirit with our fingertips. Yet everything that we're doing

relationship is based off of the same physical, like to me, it's, and I'm not comparing like a

physical relationship to one of the Holy spirit, but to me, it's just like, can we get some consistency?

Cause, cause you say one thing, but then you expect the other on that side, Jason, you're smart.

Let's be honest. You're smarter than the rest of us on this screen. So

I love what you're saying. I love what you're saying. And even the Bible is like the perfect

example of asynchronous discipleship because we are being discipled 2000 years later than when it was

written. That's asynchronous discipleship. If you ask me, that's like slack on steroids, people,

this score is happening right here. It's called the book of James.

Right. Exactly. And I, I think here's, here's, here's something that I think is going to help tie

together a lot of what I've heard. One of the, one of the comments that I got when I was showcasing

online church back in 2010, someone came up to me and it was, it was fascinating because way even back

then they were wrestling with the same types of problems that people wrestle with today. And it

was a, our, it was a pastor that had one of his friends and he was showing them the online stuff that

we were putting together. And the first thing that his friend said was, aren't you worried that

this is going to keep people from coming to church? And the first response, this was

12 years ago. The first response that this pastor said was, oh, don't worry about it. It's an inferior

experience. And that, you know, I wanted to punch him in the throat right. Because in my mind,

it's not inferior compared to what, you know, I think that there are, no one can, I'll get out of a whole

thought here in a minute. There is, there's probably no relationship that means anything that we don't

enhance in a digital way. Like I was texting my son minutes before coming on this call. I haven't

seen him physically in probably six months. That doesn't mean our relationship isn't any good. That

doesn't mean he's not family, but I'm going to use every tool I've got to maintain my relationship with

my son. He's still my son. Would I like for him to be with me? Absolutely. But that's just not realistic

all the time. And one thing that I think we need to be thinking through is at what frequency

is physical church or physical gatherings really necessary today? And I think one of the things that

even our church planning brothers have discovered is that you don't have to have a gathering every week.

You can have it once a month or even once a quarter and do micro gatherings or online gatherings,

filling in the gaps, very much like how we fill in the gaps in our most meaningful relationships

digitally. It's not really any different. Yeah. I get just even build off that. I hear

Hebrews 10:25 at least twice a week. Do not abandon the gathering. You know, it's funny,

Hebrews 10:25

like this morning there was actually an article about some of the stuff I'm doing new thing. It was

published publicly at 7:00 AM this morning. And by 7:10 this morning, somebody commented,

this is all wrong and quoted that Hebrews 10:25. Don't abandon the gathering. Do not give up NIV

Hebrews 10:25

meeting together. And what's interesting to me is I feel like we're meeting right here.

Like I am talking with, with three, four friends. I think so. Like I'm not breathing your air molecules.

I just, I feel like it's happening in this moment. I think, is it?

And if it's not, if it's not, then we need to get really clear about what proximity's limits really

are. Is it a hundred feet? Is it half a mile? Well, then you better not build your auditorium too big.

Yeah. That, that, that, that, that, that nursing room that may be in another building with the

closed caption TV. We got to worry about those moms and babies. Doesn't count.

Doesn't count. Absolutely. Jason, real quick. I need to ask you a serious, serious question.

Are you in your laundry room right now? No. Okay. No, I'm in my office right now. Okay.

All right. Cause I saw, I saw a post from somebody and you were doing a meeting in your laundry room.

And I laughed and understood all at the same time. Like I got, I felt that there we go. Yes. I felt

that in the interior part of my soul. And I went that right there. That's a digital guy.

It was the only quiet room in the house. I love it. I am, I am all for it.

You know, guys, I actually, uh, just talked to a guy today, um, a church planter today. Uh, and I

interviewed him for my podcast and, uh, because what he did was he was supposed to launch his in-person

church in October of 2020. And he was setting up, he was gearing up and, um, and of course the pandemic

happened. And he shared with me the story about how he said, we can do what we need to do online.

So let's figure it out how we can do. And they weren't able to launch in person for until Easter

the following year, but they met every single week online. They created watch parties where the people

were meeting together and they were experiencing church together. They were having discipleship

meetings on zoom. Like this guy launched his church in the midst of a pandemic. And he's saying, guys,

how can we figure out? It's not, if you should use online, it's how you should incorporate online

tools for your ministry. And that's what really motivated me to see this guy forward thinking

on this. And he launched his church and now they're, they're, you know, they're, they're a

church planter a year old, uh, and they've got ups and downs, but they did it all online to start.

And it was so encouraging. You know what I love about that, Tom is, is you could, you could probably,

um, have more church planters, start a church online so much easier and so much faster because the

fundraising, how much do you need to really raise? You don't need all that much for a building.

Right. And you could probably do it. Well, do it by vocationally so much easier.

Um, I, I personally think that doing things online because of the fact that it is so much

more inexpensive to pull it off. We should be experimenting in lots of different ways

because what do you got to lose? Really? What do you got to lose?

Yeah. And, and the reality is, is that there are churches like, I want to give credit sometimes.

And I'll just be honest. Sometimes I receive more of the negative than praising of the positive.

It's very easy for me confession hour. It's very easy for me to kind of on, on my sleeve,

wear my emotions and be overly critical of some of the negative. Yeah. Just a little bit. If you,

if you know me, you know, um, but here's the deal. I talked with the church today.

Yeah. I talked with the church today that they were like, yeah, we, we once a month physically

week two, uh, we, we meet at homes week three is exclusive online week four. We meet in homes again.

And then the next week we meet, we meet physically together. I can tell you there was a church we were

hanging out with in, in exponential, um, uh, epic church up in Philadelphia. They shut down three

weeks of four. They were, um, they were physical service. And then everything for three weeks in a

row was micro or online, micro or online, micro online. And they did that for nine months,

trying different things. Now they learned lessons and they're iterating off of that.

But really in this season, there's so many, I mean, my gosh, right now, the gas is 420,

what a gallon, at least where I am down here in Miami, you know, as economy shifts and cost goes up,

we need to be considering other options. And it'd be one thing if we're not seeing results,

but the churches that are leaning in, they're seeing incredible results on this stuff

digitally. It just, it feels like it's this old guard that necessarily isn't open to seeing new

things because they're, they're stuck in a paradigm or they don't understand conceptually some of the

stuff that's happening. Well, if you think about, um, everything as a tool for its use, you could think

of a church service as a tool. You could think of your own body as a tool. Um, if you look at it in

that way, then you have at your disposal, probably more tools than your, than you would have considered

before. And what's, what's hard about tools, once you start using them a lot, is that you end up having

favorite tools to do your job. And you're not, and this is true of any, any kind of discipline, by the

way, because you get good at a certain kind of tool and using it a certain kind of way, even if it's less

effective down the road, you know, you could, I can remember the days when I in high school took a manual

typing class and they made me type on a manual typewriter, not even an electric typewriter, a

manual typewriter, because that was the classic way to do it. And I don't know why I did that.

I did that because they made me do it, but what's a typewriter. I think today we need to not be using

old tools to do new work. And God is wanting to do new things. And so I want to give us, I want to

give a shout out to Hector right now. Uh, he just said something that was incredible over here in the

altar live chat. So altar or the church, digital.altralife.com to sit Hector here, Hector Martinez to say

that it isn't a move of God because it's not in person. How would we know we've, we've never been

in, in person. We have to understand what our words mean, you know, even in context of like,

how do we know what the heart of God is often like, even for me, like, I don't think I've ever came out.

At least I don't think I have and said physical is bad. Physical is horrible. Physical doesn't,

doesn't work. There are challenges to physical. They need to be figured out.

Uh, there are challenges to digital. They need to be figured out for me. It's not slamming one or the

other as much as it is, man, there's an opportunity to reach a different person in some, it's something

that's that, you know, I've within the, within the church digital podcast, I'm really starting to beat

on this phrase here with the next season, but it's, it's the, the humble disruptor. Hey, listen,

I'm going to do things different, but my posture isn't, it's not to aggravate. It's not to

frustrate. It's not the anger. It's not to criticize other models and make mine better.

I want to take the posture of, of humility. I want to take the posture of a learner while I'm in the

midst of championing and while we're, we're disrupting here. Like it's, it's the humility,

uh, that often at times I think it's heard more efficiently than the, than the, you know, the,

the anger, the, the, the frustration voice, the battle, you know, I've talked about on my battlefield.

It's when I'm, I haven't, we're not, I can never win these conversations like the face to face.

It never happens. But if, if, um, my battlefields like on the discipleship, it's, it's on actually

seeing success in these churches. It's, it's on those metrics and the change lives and the

multiplication of that. I think that's where we win this argument overall.

And, and I will say, look at the original church planters, Paul, Timothy, Titus to a degree,

even Apollos did well, did not have a building started with community based, whatever. And,

you know, I'm not saying that we need to go get crucified upside down and I'm not saying,

you know, we need to get exiled to the Isle of Patmos, but the idea that they were humble

disruptors, you know, the idea of the holy war didn't happen until three something with St. Augustine.

And, and before that, it was just this sort of, Hey, I'm going to confront you with the gospel

and we're going to let the gospel do the work. And now, I mean, Jason, you're in Texas, Tom,

you're in a really weird part of the country. And then Jeff and I are in an even weirder part of

the country. And yet we're connected and we're talking. I'm not even sure I'm in the same country

as you. No, no. You're in Miami. It might as well be Cuba. Yeah. North Cuba.

Yeah. Yeah. We get our freedom, but it's, it's really good food. Go ahead.

Totally. Totally. I'm sorry. I cut you off.

Way better cafecito. But the, but then we've got, you know, Hector is up in the Northwest,

all these people that can connect quicker with the idea that we can be humble disruptors. And that

honestly was one of the biggest things that I took away from exponential that has changed drastically

in even just eight months of really kind of looking at this through the lens of ultra live. Yes. But also

as we've started to take steps away from the pandemic, God willing in the creek, don't rise,

is that there's a new level of humble disruption happening. It's less about left and right politics.

It's left less about my camera looks better than yours and all that. And more about, Hey,

here's the gospel. Let me show you how we can actually change the world through our technology. And Jeff,

I really appreciate what you're doing with church planters all over the place in the digital church

network that you and kind of Chesley and everybody else are running is that you're approaching it with

humility, but also with power and focus. So keep on keeping on young man.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And moving on. What, what, what other,

what is another thing that that's weird in, in this, in, in digital ministry? What, what's another,

Tom, you've been around a while. What else you got?

Well, let me just say this. I'm going to give a shout out to Jason, because the first time I ever met

Jason, it was at the IMC, the I ministry conference. It was in Dallas. It was Dallas, Texas, years and years ago.

And he gave us, Jason gave all the attendees. It was like 30, maybe 40 people, 50 people or something

like that. He gave us all these goggles that you could stick your iPhone in. And it was like,

kind of like VR of sorts. Those are awful. It was like the preview. But Jason was like,

I always admire Jason because he's such a futurist. He's looking to the future and what's going to be

in the future. And you know, I, I like, you know, so bringing it to the forefront of VR. I mean,

everyone thinks I have kids because student minister, um, I have kids that are now in their thirties.

They're millennials. They're now in their thirties with families of their own who think VR is not real

ministry or not real life either. And I'm like, of all the people who should be getting VR or metaverse

stuff, it's millennials. And these guys are the ones who are telling me, Tom, it's weird. Uh, it's not

good. It's not church. It's like, and I'm like, you guys of all people should get this. But again,

and I'm trying to figure it out, but I'm 47 and I'm like, Hey, it's a mission field. It's a mission field.

I love it. I don't know how many layers of disintermediation we need. So, so it's like

all of us live with at least two, right? Cause our soul spirit, you know, and the body,

we're already a couple of layers already. Right. And we think that's normal

when my soul ministers to your soul after going through all of those layers, just add a couple

more and it's no big deal. People have used other layers, whether it's books or TV or a phone call

to encourage somebody and pray for somebody. All of those things have their place in the discipleship

continuum. And I, I would argue that understanding what each tool does best is probably a better way

to approach it because there are some digital tools that break through barriers that physical tools

like a building and a service intrinsically have, they have these limitations to them, whether they be

by space or by time at the very least, not to mention even how much they cost. And one of the things that

always bugs me about VR for those who criticize it is when I drop into VR, it blows my mind how many

worlds and rooms there are for people to talk about spiritual things that have nothing to do with

Christianity. They're talking to some guru somewhere. They're talking to some atheist about grief.

There's all these worlds out there of people that are searching for Jesus. They don't know it. And I

feel like in a sense, almost, you know, with my VR headset in, you know, in the laundry room,

some days I feel like that I'm like the apostle Paul on Mars Hill, looking at all of these different

idols of all of these different things that people worship, trying to find meaning in their life.

And I look around and I'm like, guys, we've got to be in the public square making a difference

because they cannot outnumber us five to one. That's just not right. Anyway.

I was speaking at a, I don't know, one of the dozen exponential things I've spoken at in the past

year. And I was talking about VR and I was talking specifically about one of these worlds called

VR chat, which is like, if you don't know VR, it's like the red light district of virtual reality. It's

like Wild Wild West. All sorts of crazy goes on there. And it was funny, right? When I said VR chat,

there was a woman, a girl mid twenties out of my view over here on my, on my left. I thought she fell

out of her chair. She just, she just had this like immediate reaction. Okay. And I thought she sneezed.

I kind of looked over a little bit to make sure she was okay. Just kept talking, kept telling the

story of VR chat. And every time I said it, like she, she had this physical reaction to the words VR chat.

And, and, and at some point I'm like, it was, it was wrapping up the story. It was right at the end.

It was like, Hey, let's, let's take a break. Uh, and, and so everybody exits out. It was kind

of in between sessions and she sticks around and I'm like, are you okay? Is there anything going on?

She starts to tell me about the, the dark things, the dark places, the manipulative, the destructive,

the toxic environments that she was personally exposed to the toxic relationships, the, um, I mean,

I hate to use the word avatar abuse. And this is one side of the story. I don't know both sides, but she

definitely was carrying a lot of baggage towards virtual reality. And it was funny. She, she looked at me

and she says, the church has no business being in VR chat. And, and I just, I, I looked back at her

and I was like, because of everything that virtual reality was for you is the reason why the church

has to be in VR chat. Yeah. And, and as much as we see these dark places and dark stories and dark

things, the church has to be the light. That's not the reason to stay away. That's the reason to run

towards it. Now we can talk about ecclesiology and is it a church? Is it a mission field? We can all day

long. I, that conversations are relevant there. The workers, uh, are, excuse me, the harvest is plenty

and the workers are few and it's time to get into that space. Go ahead. Somebody wanted to say something.

Yeah. Um, you know, if you have someone that has such a strong reaction to a virtual experience,

one has to wonder if this whole argument of, is it real or not

should just get thrown out the window? Yes. Because for that person, it was nothing but real. Yep.

For the negative. Right. So could it not all the more be something positive and real?

Uh, the, the real thing I think has lost a lot of weight, especially with the pandemic. We've,

everybody knows that the pandemic has been the great acceleration tool. And then there's,

I don't know if you heard, there's some stuff going on over in Eastern Europe right now. That's also

accelerating some things. And, uh, the idea that we can't have real relationships, that people can't

really do all of their work from home that, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

I think is getting thrown out the window more and more, thankfully. But I, I, I struggle with,

and Keturah, uh, said it in the altar live chat. Sometimes I struggle with sharing people,

the necessity of digital options when they are so reluctant to jump in. How do you, how do you do

that? You know, how do you convince the dyed in the wool or been going on every Sunday for the last 50

years that, you know, nickels and noses type of church pastor? How do you do that when they're just

going to look at us as the young whippersnappers, even though none of us are young and we're,

we're the ones that are just disrupting every budget thing that they have going for the next two years.

What are you guys doing about that?

I love how the music stopped right then. That was gorgeous.

Yeah. I didn't. That was, that was magic on my part. I didn't do that.

Go ahead, Jason.

You know, as you were talking pretty much the church to try to get a strategy to make people move

from one mode that they have imprinted on to another, I don't think is going to be worth your time

because historically missionaries have always been a small percentage of the church.

But those missionaries, those are the ones that love to discover all of these new ways to do ministry.

Those are the ones that are probably already talking to you about it. Those are the ones that

you just empower. And then, then you build off of the people that are natively in that platform,

just like a missionary would. You send a missionary and then he grows the community from that place.

And if you think of platform as place, then all those relational connections work the way that they

would normally do. And then they can build a church right there in that native environment.

So the, the, I think it's a little bit, we're not going to get a bunch of people to, to change

modes. I don't, I don't think that's going to work for them. And that's okay. Because you do,

you need different types of churches and different expressions to reach different types of people.

So let them be what they're, what they want to be. But for those who feel discontent or have that

missionary call, give them the vision to go into a different space, a different place, a different

platform, and give them the power to raise up a church in the harvest. Because, you know, that's just

how it's always been done, you know, biblically.

Yeah. Go ahead, Tom.

I was going to say, I almost wonder, you know, as the new generation, you know, the Gen Zers and

the Gen Alphas come in, if they, there won't be a shift. So almost where, what are our family

ministers and our student ministers and our children's ministers teaching with the students? Like, how are

they embracing this? Yeah. So that when these kids get older, online is not foreign to them. It's

natural to them. I mean, it's already natural. Yeah, they're VR native.

Yeah. Right. But, but here's the interesting thing that's going to happen that at least I'm seeing

is that we've got youth pastors that are trained in traditional Bible colleges. Again, not a bad thing.

You need to have some sort of education and some sort of semblance of what you're doing. But the

traditional Bible colleges are going to take another 15 years to catch up. You know, they're more of a

lag factor than a lead factor. So we're going to miss right now, we're missing sort of that 10 to 15

year gap. I was hoping that COVID was going to speed it up and it, it sped some things up in the church,

but I think it also hindered a couple of other things. And that is one of them. We, you know,

Jason said that, that these kids are VR native. And like my youngest as a 12 year old was just

upstairs playing one of the star Wars experiences on his Oculus. Like, cool. That's awesome.

It was also said during exponential and it's really been resonating with me. These kids are not

defined. You know, there, there is no sort of separation between what happens online and in the VR

world and what happens in school. Their screen name is them. Yep. There is a synergy that is happening

within their soul from the second that they are two years old, they can pick up my iPhone and make calls

on it. You know, they don't know anything different. And we're going to miss like five or 10 years here,

unless we are supremely confident in what we're doing online and supremely confident in what Jesus

has to say to them through these digital spaces. Yeah. And Keturah, this is why you go with the goers.

You, you, you go with the people that are going, you go with the innovators. That's, that's the

battlefield is, is getting them to succeed. It's, it's funny. Um, I'm going to drop a name and whatever.

Jim Tomberlin is a guy that's been influential in my life. He was, was probably one of the founding

fathers of the multi-site movement. And it was funny in pre a conversation I had with Jim. I had the

community attitude. I need to change the world. I need to get everybody in freaking a planet to buy

in the church online. How do I get seven people saved and adopted into the mindset? And, um, yeah,

it's, it's a lot. Uh, Jim, Jim looked at me and he told me once he he's like, Jeff, you got to get

enough people to buy into it, to make it worthwhile. And, and, and at this point, thank you. This, uh,

Andy, this is the thing that COVID did. COVID made it so that enough people have purpose to make it

worthwhile. And, and, and today we are fighting for the right and we're celebrating the successes today

so that the next generation is already that much better prepared. Totally. Uh, so that we're further

along for that. Like I'm not, I'm not trying to convince, uh, an 80 year old blue hair, uh, to,

to buy into online small groups or digital discipleship. It can happen. If you've not heard

me tell them the story of my mom, my mom leads, she's 70 something. I'm not allowed to say the age,

but she leads three online small groups. She's very successful in digital ministry. So blue hairs can't

get it. Technically hers is a little more brownish than blue, but the purpose is not to convince

everybody. The purpose is to help those that are on the way, make a difference with what you can today.

And let's pave the road for, for those that are coming after us in, whether it's physical,

whether it's digital, whether it's digital, whether it's meta, whether it's micro, it doesn't matter.

If anything, that's another thing COVID did. It allowed us to diversify. Let's break up and do

all sorts of different things instead of feeling like we were locked into one model. Because as a result

of all of those different strategies and tactics, we're now seeing different people

find Jesus that we're not finding Jesus in those buildings.

Hey man. Awesome. Hey, listen, I just kind of like landed the plane without even meaning to land

the plane. I apologize for that. Hey, and that's because I did want to keep this around an hour. I didn't

want to go long and so we're at 50 units. We got like four of us as we're, and so we'll, we'll,

it's funny. Keturah is like, uh, just for context, I'm a Kidman director. Uh, no, this is interesting.

I, I, let's ask this one question. I'm, I'm theorizing something. I had, I had a fascinating

conversation today. Keturah, I'd like your take on this too, in a second. I had a, a student-led

organization, um, reach out to me, uh, and ask, inquire about some, some digital ministry. Now

this is not a church. This is one of these parachurch student organizations, empowering

students to reach students, you know, like more of the disciple making stuff that may be typically

more in the Bible. I'm not taking shots, just a thought, but it was interesting to me where, um,

they were more receptive to, I mean, I started, you know, me, I started talking crazy VR church,

Roblox church, Minecraft church, video game church. Like I'm, I'm living in the fringes and,

and if people are buying it, that's great. And it was interesting. This parachurch organization,

which has a little more of a discipleship centric feel, um, they, they were like buying it hook,

line and sinker. Like I didn't, I didn't have to sell real hard. They caught the vision quickly

for that. Um, man, do any of you guys pair a church organization, student led organizations,

have you seen, um, like more of, more of a leaning towards digital in, in some of that? You know,

I always feel like people, like the churches are saying, kids don't like student, student ministry

doesn't work online. They don't like zoom. Well, of course they don't like zoom. That was school for

two years and school sucks. Like, is there, is there experiences? Like, give me some insight here.

I would love to answer some, some kid men as well. Like when you look at student ministry,

kids ministry, what are some of those, those tensions? What, what are you feeling or seeing?

Well, I'll say for a student ministry, we had success. Middle school students were more apt to,

to come and do a online gathering than high school students were. But we also had some, some success

thinking outside the box and, and changing how we did the, the group. You know, we, we played some more

games, um, and, and where they were interactive games, like how your scavenger hunt in your home,

go look for this and bring it back. You know, interactive games where they could be interactive,

but also on the screen together as well. Um, we found some really good success with like

PowerPoint games, like, you know, fun little weird things. So we brought back some old tech

to get to the new kids and they were kind of, you know, floored by it. So we, we've had some success

with that with students. Um, and we, we don't hesitate when, if we need to go online and do something

neat and add a different element, we add an online game night or an online trivia night. Um, I know

some people have done online gaming nights, um, student ministers, like video gaming nights, and that's

been really helpful for them as well. Awesome. Uh, Jason, what have you, what have you seen or done?

You seen anything? I mean, you're, you're kind of the guy. Yeah. Um, I think there's about three

things at play here when it comes to a parachurch organization that works with young people. One,

you know, young people, that's their life anyway. So they're already digitally native. They're already

VR native. So it's no big deal for them. That's one thing. Another thing about a parachurch organization

is they're not bound to the same liturgy that a church would be. And so they have more freedom

to, to do different things that a church may not feel the freedom to do. Um,

and another thing about it as well is parachurch organizations that work with kids are very used to

using a lot of different tools, not just one tool, the Sunday service to get a particular job done.

And what's great about, um, what Tom was kind of, um, alluding to was that a lot of these parachurch

organizations would use technology as a tool in a different way than how a normal person running a

church service or a youth service would do it. For example, if you look at the basketball court

in the same way that you would look at Minecraft, you're probably getting closer to the way that

old school, um, youth ministry used to work around a shared activity. It's just a digital

shared activity that you're using to create relationships that are then leveraged for

discipleship. So if you have that basic understanding of using a shared common activity, whatever it is,

it could be physical, it could be digital. It doesn't even really matter. You're using that to

just spend time together, create relationships and then leverage that for discipleship. That's kind of

what happens in these parachurch organizations. And really that's kind of what probably all of us

should be doing is using all of these shared activities, no matter what they are to enhance

relationships for discipleship to occur. Yeah. Keturah, what I, what I said to, uh, what I said to this

organization is they were like, well, how do we start? Um, and, and, and the first thing that I said was,

I was the disciple of the kids to the point where you trust them spiritually. Um, and then ask them,

where, where's God calling you? And, and, and if they say something stupid, like, like, uh, uh, VR or

Roblox or Minecraft or, uh, World of Warcraft or even shoot, DJ Soto right now is experimenting

with Grand Theft Auto. Yeah. Like they are sending digital missionaries into GTA right now. Uh, and

they're having conversations about Jesus. Hey, let me murder this prostitute. I'll be right with you.

Then I'll, I'll, I want you to tell me about God. I don't know. Maybe the line's there. Maybe the

line's not there. I don't know. That is called cognitive dissonance that somebody is using with

that. And that, you know, if the, you know, remember the Pharisees, they brought in the prostitute,

told him, you know, what is the law say? It is no different. It's just in a digital space. That's all.

Well played. Well played. Awesome. Hey, this has been fun,

right? So we're talking about the weirdness. It's not, it's not weird. There there's ways to look at

it beyond the weird. Okay. Maybe the GTA thing is a little weird. I will tell, but, but at least we're

acknowledging going in that that one's weird. Uh, and so listen, I've, I've loved this conversation.

Here's what we're going to do Tuesdays at 6 PM. We will be doing some sort of a live stream here,

uh, in, in all through live tied to the church, digital digital church network. So this week,

and actually once a month, we're going to do this show as a panel, digital church doesn't have to be

weird. Uh, and then at subsequent weeks, uh, Tom's going to do a show and he's going to do a show.

Uh, John Pyle wasn't able to join us tonight. He's doing a live show as well. So you'll see

those guys roll out. Some others probably throw into the mix when Jason Morris gets his life figured

out. Cause he just had a move. I'm going to be like, yo, Jason, it's time to start. Let's,

let's do something together. And so we don't know what it looks like. He's, he's got some ideas.

I've got some ideas, but we're, we're going to, we're going to keep it on the down low,

hopefully until, uh, until he kind of gets settled in and the new life in Dallas and looking forward

to bringing him into a lot of the fun stuff. Cause I don't know a smarter guy, at least who will answer

my texts and respond quickly. I don't know anybody smarter than Jason Morris. And so I, I love having

him involved in this conversation moving forward. Hey, as we're landing the plane, any, any closing

thoughts on your side? Uh, let's uh, Tom, as we're wrapping up anything from you,

don't hate on the cowboy fans. Why? Oh my gosh. That's what you want to land a plane on.

Yeah. You got nothing, bro. It's the cowboys. Yeah. My, my turn. The cowboy fans are the worst.

Take that. Okay. Tom, do you want to take another shot? Are you going to stick with that? Like,

I'll give you one shot to redeem yourself. I love the idea that the online mission, it's a mission field

and be open to doing ministry in a new mission field, uh, so that more and more people can hear

about Jesus. Let's go. Awesome. Love, love that. Love the mission field. Andy, what do you got?

Yeah. Right along that same line. If your kids start coming to you and saying, Hey, I'm feeling like

God's telling me to go do this weird thing in tick tock, or I feel like God's telling me to go put on a

headset and do this church thing. Let them don't, don't knock it until they've tried it until they've

ran that race just a little bit, just to see it. It turns out that this whole digital thing actually

has legs and we need people to actually work the fields for the harvest. Amen. I tell you what,

people will argue. I know because they argue with me. People will argue the idea of a digital or a

meta church. I, I, they won't argue on a mission field. And if so, my gosh, it is so easy to make them

look foolish. You tell me I can't go into virtual reality and tell people about Jesus. Like, that's

really what you're telling me right now, pastor. It, that is such a, the argument you can win,

digital and meta as a mission field. Ain't, ain't no way you're going to lose that. At least with

anybody who has any semblance of, of like gospel in them. Uh, Jason, as, as we're wrapping up here,

any, any closing thoughts on your side as my dog barks? Um, mission fields become churches and the

vast majority of people, um, thought that Jesus was weird. So go with it.

Oh, we just lost Jeff. Hold on. He's coming back.

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Nope. This is, this is fun. Oh, and there he is. Boom.

Hello. Okay. I clicked on the mute button. I clicked on the mute button because my dog

was barking and I, and I, and I, and I hang up. I don't, I don't. Anyway, I'm sorry. I really did.

We can talk about this offline. It was mute. I swear. Jason, I have no idea what you said. Was it good?

Do we need to say it again? It was great. It's typically Jason, typically great.

Awesome. Well, I, I got, I got Tector saying, woo, say that Jason. So evidently that's enough

to, to make it work. Um, by the way, did I mention, this is an experiment. We're trying to

figure this stuff out. We're kind of playing it by ear. And so I apologize for that. And I got to give

Ecamm credit because I was able to get in really quick after I hung up on myself. Listen, um, I, I

love the idea of a mission field. I love these conversations and we, Digital Church Network, we're

here to help empower you to the digital ministry that that's happening. So look for more of these

live shows. I'll be doing a live podcast on Thursday as well. Uh, Chesley's doing round

tables and trainings on Monday nights. And so we're leaning hard into helping people like you,

churches like you, individual digital missionaries like you get into this, uh, digital ministry stuff.

So look for us moving forward, hang out at the digital church network fam. That's fam.digitalchurch.network.

I think I said that right. Yes. And, uh, look for more streams on this in the near future. Hey,

so here's what we're going to do to wrap up the, this here. If you're an alter live, uh,

I'm going to kick you into the lobby. I would challenge you all spend some time,

click on, sit at a table, sit with each other and, and dialogue and ask yourself takeaways from,

from this conversation. What are maybe some of the struggles that you have with leadership

and maybe collectively start to process and work through different ways to, to solve those problems.

And so, you know, I see some, some people in, in, in the, in the, uh, audience here,

I'm going to kick it to the lobby in, in about five seconds, as soon as I stop talking and just

engage in some of those conversations as you have time. And so as always with church digital,

with, with, uh, fam, with digital church network, we're here for you, uh, working through that. So

questions hit us up and fam, but this has been great for Tom, for Andy, Andy, thank you for handling all

the tech as we're, uh, exploring and digging this, uh, out, uh, for Jason, uh, Jason, thank you for

for showing up at the last second. Tom, thank you for like being cool. Who's the oldest guy here?

Oh, is it, is it Tom or is it Jason? Who wants to throw down?

It's probably me. Cause I'm, I'm 51.

Oh, oh yeah.

Oh yeah. Yeah. You, you, you win. Okay. So for grandpa, Jason Morris, uh, this is Jeff with the

church digital and a digital church network and a whole bunch of other stuff, man. Thanks for jumping

on here as we're doing digital ministry. It doesn't have to be weird. Y'all have a good day.