EP207: Jeff Reed & The State of the Digital Church Address

Content without community, it leads to consumerism.

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.

All right, hey, welcome.

Glad y'all are here.

This is the State of the Digital Church Address.

Yeah, that may be a little egotistical, but hey, we're having fun, right?

Hey, my name is Jeff.

I'm with the Church Digital and a whole bunch of other organizations.

And I'm excited to be here with you today for the State of the Digital Church Address.

I got to tell you, today's March 3rd.

By the way, we're doing this broadcast.

It'll hit the podcast at some point later on.

But I'm excited to join here in this stream and to be with you today.

By the way, we're kicking off Season 3 of the Church Digital podcast.

And we'll get into later on, really, the core components of what we're trying to cover here

with Season 3 and the podcast.

But myself, my name is Jeff Digital.

Jeff Reed, that's funny.

And in part of that, I work with the Church Digital.

I founded an organization called Church Digital, founded an organization called Digital Church

Network.

I'm director of Metaverse Church for Leadership Network.

I am a digital strategist for New Thing Network.

And honestly, I just keep talking on and on.

A friend of mine joked with me the other day, hey, Jeff, you have so many jobs.

Like, your business card has officially become an 8 1⁄2 by 11 sheet of paper.

And dude was right.

And that's actually really kind of funny.

So here, let me boil it down.

Man, I am really excited about the idea of a digital church.

And that's really why I wanted to join y'all to join me to jump on this conversation while

we're talking about the idea of digital expressions of church.

Now, when I say digital and when I say metaverse expressions of church, I'm talking about an established

church that's going into the digital or the metaverse state.

I'm also talking about individuals that are planting churches in the digital and in the metaverse

environments.

And really, as I've got my convenient little AirPods here, this is two sides of the same

coin.

Yes, there are nuances when it comes towards planting a digital expression of a church.

And yeah, there are nuances when you're an established church that's trying to get into

the metaverse.

And those contextualizations, really focusing on them allows you to have success as you better

understand your strengths and weaknesses in that space.

But really, my heart in all of this is simply put to have a heart for the innovator, for the

pioneer.

And let's call it up front, the humble disruptor.

Yeah, listen, we are people that are championing and doing this in the digital and the meta spaces.

We are disruptors.

We are disrupting what's happening within the established church organization.

But even more than that, there's an opportunity for us not to be jerks about it, but to be

humble in that and recognize that the established models have a purpose as well.

What we are doing is we're doing this to utilize different types of people in a different type

of discipleship format, in a different type of environment, to reach a different type of person.

And so all of that comes together beautifully.

So here's what we're doing.

We are, we have been here at the Church Digital, we have always been good at content.

It's just been a fact.

We know how to do content really well between the blogs, between the podcasts, between the

the live shows, between the e-books, and everything else.

We, the Church Digital, have been very, very good at creating content.

But the fact is, is that we've really, we've fallen short in some areas, and this is open

confession hour, and we're not going to go that long.

But we've fallen short when it came to the community aspect.

Historically, we've never really set a good example for the community.

Yeah, we've run the Facebook groups, and we've done things like that in the past.

But honestly, I don't think that is as successful as it could be.

Facebook, you're struggling with the algorithms.

People are walking away from Facebook, it seems, in droves at this moment.

And so that's not necessarily a good experience.

And then there's plenty of other issues that are surrounding the Facebook.

But listen, this is really the challenge for the church, the Big C Church in general,

as it's trying to understand digital.

Because the heart of this is, without content, with content, we're all good at.

Like, people create content every Sunday.

But the content is not good.

It doesn't have a purpose unless it leads to community.

And so, you know, we're going to get into that here in a little bit.

So, hey, today we're running an experiment on community.

We are broadcasting this live into a platform called AlterLive.

And if you've never heard of AlterLive, if you've never seen it before, look at it.

This is how I tell people.

If, like, Church Online platform and Zoom, if they had a baby, they got together, they dated,

decided to get married, have a baby, it would be AlterLive.

It is this beautiful merger and a platform to broadcast content,

but also to allow for face-to-face conversation engaging, happening at the same time.

So, literally right now, we are broadcasting this into AlterLive, assuming all my tech works,

which maybe it doesn't, and I'm getting texts.

I'm not sure what's happening right now.

And so, right now, if you were to go to thechurch.alterlive.com, you can jump in,

thechurchdigital.alterlive.com, you can jump into a community that's happening there in this space

and be a part of it.

Would love, would love to have you in that conversation.

Because the part of this is that content without community, it leads to consumerism.

Now, we can ingest content all along, but community, and we'll get into this,

community is where all of this starts to get to application.

It starts to get to accountability.

It starts to get to encouragement, where I'm not running by myself.

I'm running with people that are encouraging me within the community.

I'm not living a Christian life in isolation.

I'm living a Christian life knee-to-knee, digital knee-to-knee, meta-knee-to-knee,

with other people.

And so, this is really the challenge of our churches, is not just to create content.

We're really good at creating content.

The challenge is, is can we create a community, a network maybe, to gather people and to connect

these people together to allow for the encouragement that needs to happen.

This is all based off of a premise.

Jay Cranda is getting a shout-out here at this moment, online to offline.

The gospel that we hear in our online world, it has to influence our offline relationships.

If it doesn't, then we are basically creating consumers.

If we are one way digitally and another way physically.

If I am a Christian and I'm exuding the spiritual gifts in digital space, but in physical space,

I'm abusive to my wife, I'm verbally abusive to my kids, I'm stealing from my workplace.

I mean, you're using words like hypocrite to describe me.

And so, in this online to offline philosophy, we want to see that happen.

But also realize, once again, that community is where the accountability comes from.

But hey, maybe I'm digressing here a little bit.

The state of the digital church, February, where are we?

March 3rd, 2022.

I got to tell you, I have never been more encouraged.

I have never been more excited than where we are right now.

And I want to give you the secret.

I want to give you the tip right here, person out there that's listening.

Digital Church Network, we launched an online community called FAM.

At this moment right now, there are 300 digitally-minded people.

Some of them are pastors, some of them are lay people, some of them are supporters, some

of them are disciple makers, some of them are network and organizational leaders.

There are 300 people in a mighty network, if you're familiar with it, but in an online community

that we're calling through the Digital Church Network, we're calling FAM.

And this is a great expression, experience of community, because I have been able to encourage

others.

Others have been able to encourage me.

I tell people it's almost like we all have the Pauls, the people that have been there and

that are helping us to get to where we are called to go.

But at the same time, we all have Timothys, people that we are encouraging as well and bringing

up to that higher level.

Now, you see, through the Church Digital and all these blogs and podcasts, my gosh, we

just came out with network shows and all this, a podcast network, our traffic has gone up

a huge amount in 22.

It's been a great year.

And so we've got this community, and part of what we're doing, I'll be honest, we're centering

the community around the content.

So the Church Digital Podcast and some of the other network shows that we are bringing on, we are

going to start to broadcast those live weekly this month, where you are going to get multiple

shows live through FAM, utilizing the AlterLive platform.

Now, the thing that I love about AlterLive is at the end of this broadcast, I'm going to stop

talking.

And we're going to let the people within AlterLive start to talk with each other and process and

apply and learn this.

You see, like, the stuff that I'm coming out, if it doesn't help you apply and do something,

then we're all just creating consumers and we're wasting our time.

The purpose is to get you on motion and doing things in digital and meta spaces.

So we're utilizing the content to create that community.

By the way, and we're just a quick shout out here, we're starting a new show.

Digital ministry doesn't have to be weird.

And I got to tell you, I love this graphic, the dinosaur on his phone, who's got the trendy

tattoo on his forearm, plugging away with his headphones on, oblivious to the world around

him.

That message in itself can speak a sermon.

I could go on for an hour talking about that graphic, but we're going to move on.

You're going to hear more about digital ministry.

It doesn't have to be weird.

And a lot of our other network shows here through the Church Digital, we're going to be kicking

that up here in a little bit.

So content centered or community centered around content is one thing.

But what we're also starting to pull the thread on through the Digital Church Network tied

into FAM here is this idea that community centered around roundtables, learnings, essentially

trainings.

We're going to start creating community centered around trainings.

Now, what is so much fun for me right now are talking to people that have ideas about

what they want to do in Digital Church, but they have no idea how to get started.

They don't know who they need to talk to.

They don't know how to recruit the people.

They don't know how to fundraise for this.

They've got this beautiful idea that they are jacked up and excited about, but they just

don't know how to get started.

And so through FAM, through the Digital Church Network, we are focusing in on creating roundtable

discussions where we're bringing in ministry experts to ask questions to learn from.

We're bringing in other learnings and resources, even training centers to allow for the network,

people that are part of the FAM, to learn how to take the next steps they need to.

And within the community, start to understand how to apply that to what they want to do,

to their ministry, to their lives.

So once again, it's not about the content.

It's not about learning this stuff.

It's about helping you apply it and move forward.

And that's where community comes in, because community is the, once again, the accountability,

the encouragement, the things that we need to do to move forward.

By the way, some of the recent and upcoming trainings that we've got going on here, we did

a VR platform with Pastor Brock and, I don't know, maybe five or six other people this week,

last Monday night, a couple of nights ago.

And it was great.

We had 20-some people showing up, learning about VR platforms.

And I think we're actually going to spin up a network of VR church plants to kind of help,

once again, creating some community, creating a network and applying to that.

We're doing an emotionally healthy discipleship.

Chris Caputo is leading that on.

He's doing that early next week.

Disciple-making movements with Rob Wagner.

How to do this disciple-making, how to do this multiplication digitally.

Rob's going to be speaking on this here in a couple weeks, March 14th, somewhere around there.

So, look, we're seeing where we're providing these training opportunities, community centered

around training, which is beautiful.

We want to create community around content.

We want to, more in addition than just the content, we want to create community around

the trainings.

But the third thing, and I've already said it, teased it, community, we want to be part

of encouragement, accountability, prayer, and basically ongoing support.

You see, when you create a community in digital space, you're giving an opportunity for ongoing

support, for crowdsourcing that long term.

I don't need to be able to handle a hundred conversations.

I need to equip a community to be able to have those hundred conversations for me.

Yes, there are some things that only I can do, but there's a whole bunch of other things that

others can do.

And if we can figure out that, where community can support a movement, my gosh, the scalability

and the grow and reach of this.

Maybe wrestle with some of that of your church.

How can you equip your community to support a disciple-making movement so that your leadership

doesn't have to?

How can you release those people to, maybe you're starting to see a parallel, even in

context of your own church.

At the heart of this, all of this content, the events, the training, it all goes for not

without the encouragement, without the accountability of community.

If we are not applying the stuff that we're talking about, that we're reading, that we're

learning, if our leaders are not understanding that, then we're all wasting our times.

And there are better things that you can do with your time than listen to me ramble on

and on about something that is not helping you in your present expression, your present

church experience.

So let's figure out within the community how to take those steps, how to help leadership

understand better, how to recruit the volunteers, how to fundraise, how to develop the strategy,

how to develop goals and benchmarks to go to.

There is so much centered around this family.

And this family is what I want to invite you into.

We were intentional.

I've said the word fam.

This network, this community we've created, we've called fam.

Because for many of us, we were isolated.

We were alone.

There was nobody who was thinking like us.

At least in my life, I can say that's true.

And the dozens of people that I've talked with just this week echo what I've just said.

And so there's this huge opportunity for belonging, to connect with people who think like you

are, who are excited about the things that you're excited about, and who can help the ideas

that you have become better through encouragement and through accountability.

And so for us, we've launched Digital Church Networks fam.

Now, this is the core of what's encouraged me.

And I'm hoping it's going to do the same thing for you.

Swing over to Digital Church Network slash join fam.

You can see the spelling on the screen if you're watching on YouTube or on the stream.

Podcast listeners, digitalchurch.network, J-O-I-N-F-A-M, no spaces.

So this is going to get you directly to create the account to be part of it.

By the way, all of this is free.

The network, the accountability, the roundtables, the live shows.

Look, I'll be honest.

I'm not sure how we're going to make money on this, but we're not going to charge disciple

making and training and information.

Information is free.

Execution cost, which is the joy of doing it in fam, because by getting some of that

execution help within fam, once again, it's budget conscious and able to crowdsource it

so that we don't have to charge for it.

We want to help scale movements.

And we believe in many ways that this fam, this family, this online community is going

to be the source of it.

So the state of the Digital Church, man, get the encouragement you're looking for at Digital

Church dot network slash join fam.

I have said it many times to many people already.

300 plus are in there.

The best asset that I know of right now to help see digital churches and digital ministries

expand is happening right there in Digital Church Network slash join fam.

So I would encourage you to do that, to be a part of what's happening there in the fam

online community.

Hey, well, listen, if you want to jump in, we're going to swing over to like this application

part, and we're going to talk within Altar Live.

And so if you want to go and jump over to the churchdigital.altarlive.com.

If you're listening on podcast, dude, you're not live.

Sorry, lady, it's not happening.

Maybe catch the live show.

Some of the stuff we'll talk about later.

But what we want to do is if you're in that area, man, let's break up into some lobbies.

We're going to send you out here in a minute once I'm done talking.

But essentially, the questions that we want you to ask is, how are you encouraged right

now in your ministry?

What is going great in 22?

And how are you discouraged?

So you're going to go to tables.

You're going to see they're going to send you out into the lobby.

There's little icons.

You can click on to join, sit down at a table.

Others will sit down with you.

But the heart of this is we want to have conversations right now.

We want the content that I've done to lead to community.

And so if you're in Altar Live, awesome.

If you're not in Altar Live and you're watching this online, great.

Swing over to Altar Live.

Jump in.

Be part of the community.

How are you encouraged right now in your ministry?

And how are you discouraged?

Second set of questions, how can community help?

And how can we pray?

So go ahead and take a moment right now.

Jump over to thechurch.digitalalterlive.com.

And hey, we're going to wrap for this broadcast.

This is a lot of fun.

I cannot tell you how much fun it is for me working with the New Thing Network to lead

digitally this movement, this organization, this network happening.

And I'm so excited to be able to take the resources of New Thing Network, Dave Ferguson and the

tribe over there, and roll it out in digital spaces for people like you to do effective

digital ministry and digital multiplication in ways that have not even been seen before.

Super excited.

And we're going to wrap.

So hey, for Jeff, for New Thing, for all the freaking people that are on that eight and

a half by 11 sheet, we're going to call it a day.

Head over to Altar Live.

Be part of the network community over there.

We'll see you next time.

Actually, when we start broadcasting the Church Digital Podcast live in Altar Live starting

here in a couple weeks.

All right, y'all.

You have a good day.