Season 2, Episode 181: Theo Davis & Minecraft Small Groups

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast, powered by Stadia Church Planting.

Through this podcast, learn about how God is using technology and innovation

in digital and digital environments around the world.

Our goal? To help churches like yours learn to be the church digitally.

Our heart? That churches like yours will discover a newfound focus on disciple-making

that will revolutionize your church.

And now, your host, here's Jeff Reed.

We are kicking off Season 2 right here, right now.

That's right, we did over 180 episodes of Season 1

and then just arbitrarily decided to start Season 2 right now.

So, no, there's a little more logic behind that.

We'll get into it here in a little bit.

But before we get started, hey, listen, I'm going to be traveling the country

talking to churches.

I'm partnering up with the Exponential Network with some of their regional conferences.

They're doing four or five regional conferences here in 21 in the fall.

Northern California, Southern California, Chicago, Houston.

And I am going to be at all of them.

I'm doing a pre-conference track on Fidgetal Church, and I want to invite you to be a part of it.

Go to Exponential.org.

If you are anywhere near those areas, Northern California, Southern California, Chicago, or Houston,

go to that Exponential.org website, register for the conference.

And while you're registering, go ahead and sign up for that pre-conference track.

Stadia, Fidgetal, led by me.

We'd love to have a conversation with you.

We'd love to meet you, hang out with you, talk about all the crazy stuff that churches are doing,

and help your church learn to thrive, grow, and multiply.

Physically and digitally, which in itself is a crazy concept.

Pre-COVID, mid-post-COVID, wherever you think you are, we are.

That's still a little crazy, maybe.

And really, this idea of crazy is really what we wanted to focus on here,

which is the reason why we're pivoting and starting fresh with Season 2.

You see, in Season 1, really the three years from where we were now,

with Stadia, with this Church Digital Podcast,

we've been doing this podcast for almost three years now.

That's crazy.

And over that season, man, we've talked about crazy stuff.

We've talked a lot about practical things, too, about helping churches be more effective in small groups,

learn how to discover who people are that are watching the services,

what analytics to look at, how to manage shadows.

There's been so much practical application because of the mass amount of churches

that were trying to understand how to do digital ministry.

And yeah, Stadia, we're still doing that.

By the way, the Church Digital, man, there is some awesome stuff coming out here really soon

that I'm excited about.

So stay tuned about how we are going to help churches like yours be more practical

in understanding this digital ministry.

But that being said, we really wanted to take a turn with this podcast, specifically with Season 2.

Honestly, we just want to talk crazy.

We want to start getting more on that bleeding edge, on that cutting edge, on innovation,

on thinking outside of the box, and highlighting churches that are doing these things.

Not to brag about what they're doing, but to show you, churches out there, opportunities to think differently,

to hear the stories, to see how God is moving in and amongst these churches that are being innovative

by thinking outside of the box.

And really asking you, church out there, questions like, now that you see how God is moving, pray about joining Him in His work.

Let's highlight some opportunities to do radical concepts, to do experimental things, and to see where God's moving.

And maybe you would join Him in doing that.

So that's where we're going with Season 2.

We are embracing the crazy because, honestly, I don't know anybody else who is.

So we're going to be doing that here with the Church Digital Podcast.

Right off the bat here, Episode 181.

I love this conversation.

Theo Davis from Restore Church in Kansas City.

Now, Theo is a former student pastor.

He gets into digital ministries.

He's the digital pastor now with Restore Church.

He's one of the teaching pastors.

Great guy.

Cool guy.

Kind of relaxed attitude.

Kind of loved this conversation.

Man, he is doing some ridiculous online Bible studies right now.

Now, online Bible studies is nothing new.

So many churches in this COVID season have pivoted towards doing online Bible studies.

But specifically with Theo, he's doing these in Minecraft.

That's right.

The video game kind of looks like Roblox, kind of looks like Lego minifigs.

It's a software that's owned by Microsoft.

And I want you to know, that's pretty much all I know about Minecraft.

Like, my kids, specifically my middle school-aged children are not into Roblox, early elementary,

not as much.

But up beyond that, high school and beyond, it's become a powerful platform, a powerful community.

And Theo is starting to scratch the itch of doing Bible studies in Minecraft, not just aimed at high school kids or college kids, aimed at adults too.

Seemed crazy, seemed radical.

He's running an experiment.

I wanted to talk to him to learn what he's learning.

So here for the conversation, we're bringing in Theo Davis, digital pastor, Restore Church.

Myself, Jeff with the church, digital and Stadia Church planting.

In a conversation that I'm simply calling Minecraft Bible studies.

All right, everybody, here you go.

So explain to me, what exactly is Minecraft?

I'm new to this world.

Admittedly, I don't understand it.

What is Minecraft?

Minecraft, it's this super unique game that came out back in like the mid-2000s, was in beta mode,

and then just really blew up and took over the internet, took over YouTube, so many Let's Play videos.

The basics of Minecraft is that it is this massive world of like pixelated blocks.

And the whole thing that you're trying to do inside of Minecraft is you're literally mining down into the earth,

getting resources, going back to the top.

And then you can craft stuff.

You can build houses.

You can build boats.

You can build actual functioning.

Like someone in Minecraft was able to build a functioning computer because all of those resources are in the game.

But most people, they just build little houses.

They just explore the world.

They fight monsters.

And there's a couple of different modes with Minecraft.

There's survival mode.

So like there's monsters and you're trying to just survive, essentially.

Then there's creative mode where it gives you all the resources and you can just build whatever you want to your heart's content.

And so that's kind of the two big camps of Minecraft.

It's a computer game, but it's on every platform.

PlayStation, Xbox, mobile devices, computers, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's just a really creative little world that everyone, I won't say everyone, but just about everyone can jump into and have a good time.

I mean, I've got two kids.

We've talked about it a lot on the show, 10 and 12.

Actually, when this is broadcasting, it'll be 11 and 13.

They both have birthdays coming up.

So my daughter's a teenager.

I don't know how to handle that.

And you can pray for me.

We'll talk about that on Facebook or Instagram or something.

But, you know, they're more in the Roblox crowd than the Minecraft necessarily.

And so, and I don't want to put like platform to platform.

And we've had Daniel Heron on here as well talking about.

But like, what are the key differences maybe?

So I know one world, but not necessarily the other.

Like, what's your audience?

Who are you seeing in Minecraft?

What does this look like?

Yeah, that's a great question.

So like for Minecraft, I really see it as like middle school and up.

I was surprised, actually.

So through this process, I discovered that some of my, the incoming ninth graders of our church

knew about Minecraft and I was asking them some questions because, again, it's been around

for a long time and they've done a bunch of updates.

And I knew it back when it first came out.

And so they were like, hey, we can help you build.

We can help you, you know, go into the world and build a little bit.

I was like, yeah, sure.

And they're doing all this stuff I had no idea you could do in the game because they're

that entrenched in it.

I had no idea that ninth graders, 10th graders, 11th graders were still that into the game.

And so, yeah, the audience, I would say, for the purposes of what I'm trying to do, it's

two primary audiences.

Number one, it's teenagers.

It's young people because young people really know this platform.

They know Minecraft.

They love Minecraft.

Some of them out there love Roblox and love Roblox.

And I think that's also a great platform.

The second group of people is a little more, it's a little harder to find them.

But once I find them, oh man, it's magic.

It's adults who are in their 20s, their 30s, their 40s, who have tried small groups before.

They, you know, they've heard the announcements when they're sitting in a physical church.

And it just kind of rubs them the wrong way.

They're like, oh, I don't want to go to someone's home.

That seems so, like, you know, trapping.

Like, I'm one of those people who I've never really found an adult small group that I love,

that I love everything about it.

And so I wanted to do something where people who were hesitant about small group felt a little more comfortable trying it out.

Because, hey, if they don't like it, they, oh, my power died.

Sorry.

They could just disconnect at any point.

But also, I just love the fun that you can have within the game.

So, yeah, that's the audience.

So, I mean, but there's a lot of communities online that do this, right?

Or do something similar to that.

Like, and I don't want to start rattling off, but there's tons of games that have communities.

There's, I mean, shoot, I used to be big in, like, Disney Infinity.

And building some of those.

Oh, yeah.

So that was, for some reason, I, like, had that.

And then I would, like, stop.

I didn't continue on when Disney Infinity, when they cut the plug on that.

And if you're watching on YouTube, I mean, all the Disney stuff that's on this wall behind me,

you can see Disney, and if you know me, at any given point, I'm wearing some Disney article of clothing.

But what I really wanted to get to is this heart of, why did you choose Minecraft?

So, what did you see to really focus on?

Because you're not, unless they're looking at tools, you're looking more at, where's community at?

And of all the different options out there, you chose Minecraft.

What's up?

Yeah, you know, it's, it was an accident, really.

So here's, when I became the digital pastor at Restore, that community was the first thing I was starting to think about.

How can I start to create community and find who our niche is?

And my initial thought was like, oh, I know, like, in Minecraft, you can create servers.

You know, you can have, like, 100 people on a server at a time.

Maybe that is something where we could start to find some community and develop it.

But as I was learning about the servers that I could create, which had a limit of 10 people through Minecraft realms, I can tell you more about that if necessary.

But there was a, there was a limit of how many people could be on the server at a time.

So I figured, oh, man, that's really not going to do what I wanted it to do, where it could be this hub where people could jump on and discover one another, build whatever it is.

So then, because of that limitation, and Jeff, you know this, like, sometimes it's limitations which pull out our best creativity.

It was because of that limitation that I thought, well, maybe, maybe I could reuse this for another purpose.

Maybe it could just be, like, a fun little game that we play in between small group, or maybe it's, like, you know, one activity as part of a Zoom small group or something like that.

And so then, as I was, like, exploring it and figuring it out, it just sort of dawned on me in the process, why should we just settle for doing the fun activity inside of Minecraft?

What if, what if we tried to do the whole small group inside of Minecraft?

Oh, man, I think, like, so many people would be down for something like that.

So that's, that's kind of where it came from.

Just, just it not working out the way I wanted it to, and then it morphed into something else.

Well, let's talk a little bit here about the journey of that small group.

So when, how, when did you start it?

How many are you doing?

How many people who, like, what can you tell me about those people?

How's the process going?

Tell us the story of a Minecraft small group.

Yeah, so, so we did a beta group.

It was just a couple weeks long.

And really for this one, I was just reaching out to people I knew, people that, some of them were familiar with Minecraft.

Some of them had never played it before.

So we ended up with six people total, and they were all couples.

So it was me and my wife.

It was this guy, Chris, and his girlfriend, Alexis, along with a married couple, Ryan and Becky.

And so we just kind of put it out there, and we were like, hey, we're trying to do this beta Minecraft small group.

It's a total experiment.

I don't know of anyone else doing something like this.

So I'm just trying to see, like, does this actually work?

And if this feels good with some people that I know, I know I could make this work with people I don't know.

So, yeah, we signed them all up.

I made sure they had copies of the game because they need a Java edition, not the Bedrock edition, for reasons I won't go into.

And so then I just started, like, brainstorming, and I started thinking, how can I run a small group in this?

And so at first, Jeff, I was thinking really traditionally.

I was like, okay, you know, we'll have, like, couches, and we'll just, you know, sit in the chairs in the virtual world, and then maybe we'll do some trivia or something.

But the more I thought about it and the more I explored the world, I realized that the possibilities are endless.

And so, really, I broke it up into, like, three sections.

Each of our small groups kind of had just kind of three movements to it.

The first was an activity.

So I created these platforms in this world, and each person had a different platform.

It was, like, 12 by 12.

And the opening activity was to create something that represented you, to create something to share with the rest of us a little bit about you.

And, you know, I created the Eiffel Tower.

Someone created, like, a mushroom farm.

Some Pokemon stuff.

Like, their creativity really came out.

Some of it was, like, really good, and some of it was, like, laughable.

But regardless, it wasn't about your skill of building in the game.

We were just having fun, having conversations as we built.

That lasted for about 15, 20 minutes.

And then we all went around to each other's builds, and we had, like, a quick little two-minute, like, show-and-tell, essentially, right?

So that's, like, the first section.

We always had some sort of build challenge or something to do within Minecraft, like hide-and-seek or whatever.

The second movement of our Minecraft small group was something called Discovery Bible Studies.

This is something I learned from Rob Wagner's Casey Underground group because they do these Discovery Bible Studies.

Really cool.

Anyone listening, check out Casey Underground.

They have this really cool church-planting movement going on.

But so we just went through a couple of passages of the Gospel of Matthew.

We just read a short passage, maybe five or six verses, and then I just asked them five questions.

You know, what did you notice people say?

What did you notice people do?

What did you notice Jesus said?

What did you notice that Jesus did?

And then what is God asking you to do, change, believe as a result of what we've talked about today?

And, Jeff, it was a great conversation.

Like, none of these people knew each other previously.

Like, the connection was me.

But we had a great small group discussion, and we prayed for one another at the end.

And it didn't work out perfectly.

Someone got disconnected, and then they jumped right back on.

We were sitting around a fire.

We built, like, this little canopy thing.

And then the last movement of the small group, so we did an activity.

We did Discovery Bible Study along with prayer.

And then the last thing was just some build time.

So they could leave at that point if they wanted to, or they could stick around and do some build time.

We actually sectioned off 50 by 50 plots of land and created a neighborhood for the people part of the small group.

And I told them, hey, so by the end of the small group, between now and our end date, you have the ability just to create your home.

Your little 50 by 50 plot of land.

You can do anything you want, and we're going to do a contest at the end.

And whoever has the best, you know, homestead will win a prize or something like that.

And so they were logging on throughout the week, building things out, and they actually created some really cool stuff.

But that's kind of the movement, three movements.

So we had the activity, Discovery Bible Study, and then just some build time together.

And I was just really encouraged with how it went.

So, yeah.

That's awesome.

You know, it's funny.

You mentioned Rob Wagner.

I just flashed back.

You and I met, I think, at a restaurant in Austin, right?

With Rob?

That's right.

Sitting at a table?

Yep.

Like, that may not have been the first time we talked, but it was the first time we really talked.

Yeah.

It was the first time we saw each other in person, for sure.

Yeah.

Totally.

Tell me.

Because, and listen, and I know, I'm actually curious.

Did you tell Rob, like, hey, yeah, I'm doing a church in Minecraft?

And I'm curious what his response was.

You know, I haven't yet.

You know, I'm friends with him on Facebook now.

We found each other.

In fact, I was like, Rob Wagner, you know, a friend requested me.

I made it, you know.

But he's an awesome guy.

I got to let him know this.

Because, yeah, we're doing it.

It's been fun.

And Rob's been on the show quite a bit here.

And so we'll link to some of his stuff in the show notes, talking micro, talking watch parties.

And it's been fun in this COVID season.

I don't consider Rob a digitally friendly guy.

Like, he's been immensely supportive.

But by default, he's not thanking digital communities, a community worthy of a church.

That being said, in this COVID season, I have seen him take many strides towards recognizing

the power and the influence of doing digital church and online and how digital can complement

that.

And so I would be interested.

You know, maybe two years ago, I would have said Rob would have been like, yeah, not so

much.

But I really think he's coming around as he's seeing more and more stories that are happening.

We did a podcast with him just recently talking about that.

So that's awesome.

Well, let me ask this.

Like, okay, so you're doing this thing in Minecraft.

Like, how did the conversation with your leadership work?

Like, did they think you were crazy?

Did they kick you out of the room?

Like, did they even know what Minecraft was?

What was that experience?

Yeah, no, that's a great question.

So I remember I sat down with our community life person, Janet McMahon, and I was just sharing

with her, hey, so I want to do some online small groups.

And we've had some online small groups.

So that wasn't anything new.

COVID, you know, everyone had.

But I presented the idea of, I want to do this all inside of Minecraft.

And I explained, like, I hadn't really found a small, an adult small group that I was super

pumped and super excited about.

But I think, like, this Minecraft small group could be really cool.

What do you think, Janet?

And Janet, in her wisdom and all of that, was just like, Theo, this sounds really, really

creative.

Why don't you find a group of people that you know and do, like, a little test group just

to see how that goes.

And then we could totally launch that full blown in the fall.

And I received that.

And that's exactly what I did.

So I was grateful that, you know, she definitely looked like a little surprised, but she wasn't

pushing back.

She was embracing the creativity of it.

And well, if this can help people find their way back to God, let's go.

But why don't you test it first with some people that you know?

So I'm super grateful for some leaders who are willing to take some risks in the digital

world so that we can reach people in the physical world.

Yeah, I tell you, that's a missing thing right now in a lot of churches.

The part of them that wants to experiment, to try something different, to take a risk.

And it's hard.

You know, just even in some conversations today, you know, a couple of churches were telling

me that they're operating at a negative.

And so there's fear in those risks, which gets me to, and I was going to ask this later,

but how much money have you spent on Minecraft?

Like two, three, $5,000?

Like what's it cost right here to run this experiment?

Yeah, I, hang on, let me think, I'm going to try and think of a total cost for you.

I would say I haven't spent more than 400 bucks, maybe 500 bucks.

Really?

What have you spent the money on?

Yeah, so I spent the money, I had to buy two copies of the Java edition for myself and

my wife.

I had to buy one copy for one of our other experimentees.

And Minecraft is cheap.

It costs 25 bucks.

So not a big deal.

I bought some headphones with a microphone because the ones I had were crap and I just wanted a

good, a good quality one.

So those alone were 100 bucks each.

Then the server.

So in order to have a server where people can jump on at any point in the week, you know,

I don't have to be logged on in order for people to, you know, build or enjoy the server that we've

created.

That costs 10 bucks a month.

So that's not much.

I'm trying to think, what else have I spent money on?

Uh, I bought a keyboard because, oh, I bought a mouse too, because normally I'm just a trackpad

guy.

But with Minecraft, you really need a mouse.

So yeah, I would say I've really spent somewhere between three and $500 on a variety of little

things.

It's cheap.

It is not an expensive thing.

And I've been talking to a bunch of my youth ministry friends, because I was a youth pastor

for 16 years before being a digital pastor.

And I've been like ringing the bell, like, guys, you got to try this out.

It's cheap.

It's affordable.

The kids already know how to play this game.

And you could have, you would have a captive audience right now.

And then imagine if you could teach some of these teenagers how to run the groups themselves,

because Discovery Bible studies are so straightforward.

Um, so anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Overall, it was about three to 500 bucks.

So yeah, that's awesome.

We can follow that rabbit trail at some point.

That's good.

I mean, let me ask.

Well, will you just kind of set yourself up there?

Why are you doing this?

What's the goal?

What's the purpose behind doing, uh, Minecraft small groups?

Where's this thing going?

Yeah, I, I want to reach people, Jeff, that otherwise would not come to church, a church

building, even church online.

When they hear this, the, the, the, the phrase like, oh, join my church online.

That can also generate a bunch of thoughts or concepts.

But, um, if a friend were to invite me to, hey, uh, I'm do, I'm part of this Minecraft

small group.

We do lots of building and we talk about Jesus.

That would pique my interest.

I would be curious.

And so this is really for people who just haven't been able to fit into the traditional

way that we've done church, the traditional way that we've done small groups, even like

even a zoom small group can be intimidating for some people sitting in front of a screen,

looking at one another for an hour and a half, two hours.

Um, like that, that can, for me, even that kind of raises my anxiety level, but to be

in a game where you can kind of goof off and it, it, I don't know, it just, it invites

different kinds of people.

So that's really who I'm trying to reach out to.

And already some people are interested who've never been part of a small group before.

Um, so that's, that's my hope for, for us.

And that's my hope for other people as, as they even experiment with this, that they'll

discover, uh, people that otherwise would not have joined their groups.

Are, are open to it at least.

Okay.

So, so let me ask this, you're doing a small group online and you're, the goal is you're

doing a test beta group.

The goal is to reach people maybe that are been burned by church or aren't comfortable

with that.

So you're reaching a unchurched, de-churched crowd.

Like is, is the goal to do the entirety of church, like more of a rich ecclesiologically

functioning church in Minecraft?

Are you doing a small group in Minecraft that's feeding into, uh, you know, your, the church,

restore churches, online services where they're getting teaching or it's like, well, how is

this thing structured?

Where is this separate to the church online and the physical church or a front door?

Like what's, what's your strategy where this fits?

Yeah, this is, um, right now our Minecraft small groups, uh, my hope is that it's a front

door to our digital church or our physical church.

So we're, we're, we're playing in the digital world.

We have both physical locations as well as our digital online campus.

And so my hope is that people will get plugged into this and it'll pique their curiosity to

check out one of our messages, to join our discord, to become part of the larger digital

community, or it might serve as a front door to have them head to one of our physical

locations if they feel like that's a good way to go.

Now, my hope is that as we start doing these small groups and already, like I was planning

just to do one, but I found another leader.

So I'm going to do two of these.

I'm going to do a high school one and a adult one.

Uh, my hope is, is to be open-handed with how this progresses.

So I really don't want to, um, I'm not heading into this with, okay, this is our small group

structure.

These are only going to be for small groups.

I'm totally open to the fact that, you know what, God might be, God might be doing something

in the midst of this.

Maybe I find, uh, a young teenager or a young person that wants to, that, that knows the

community of Minecraft significantly better than I do, can reach out to that community and

start a disciple making movement.

Maybe it starts off as little micro churches in Minecraft, or maybe it's becomes this full

blown faith community.

I don't know.

So I'm just like, uh, I learned from the beginning of this, like, okay, Lord, I have

this idea, but, uh, you know, do with it what you want and I'm going to be open to it in

the process.

So to answer your question, our hope is that it's going to feed into our digital and our

physical locations.

But we're totally open to the fact that if the right people come along and the right

ingredients are there, that it could spin off into its own thing.

Um, but let's, let's do a success, successful full season of, uh, of a group before I get

too far down the road.

Awesome.

Crockpot, not microwave.

Take the time, let it develop.

That's beautiful.

I'm totally going to clip the video section where, where you said micro church in Minecraft.

And I'm going to send that to Rob Wagner.

Just, just, I want a reaction video with Rob Wagner when he hears that.

That's beautiful.

What's been, Rob, I love you.

Hey, what's been the biggest surprise?

Like in, in this, you've been, you've been running this test.

Uh, you started with adults like our, and, and you're doing, have you started with teens

as well, recruiting and developing the teens?

So what, what's been the biggest surprise out of all of this?

Yeah.

Uh, and I think I mentioned this a little bit earlier is that, um, I invited one of the

teenagers to help me because he offered, um, he's like, yeah, I can help you build some

stuff out because you got to do a little world building before you begin.

And, um, he invited a friend.

He said, Hey, I'm doing, uh, I'm helping Theo.

And so that kid jumped on and then we had another kid jump on.

So I had three teenagers in this world.

And here's what surprised me.

Um, they were excited about it and they were picking out their plots of land.

Okay.

So when we do, when we do small group, it was just an assumption for them.

Like this thing's happening.

We're doing small group.

Oh, I can already think of two friends I want to invite to this.

So we're going to need eight plots of land for where we built.

They were excited.

And some of these kids, I could never even back when I was the youth pastor,

I couldn't get them excited about just normal, uh, small group in person, but they were pumped

about this.

So I think also they taught me a lot.

So I learned a lot in the process of just Minecraft and different builds and what we could do and

how we could build out the world.

So I think sometimes as adults, we have this tendency to just want to like do it all ourselves

and set the whole thing up.

But, um, if there's anyone out there listening, invite some of the teenagers of your church.

If you plan on trying this out, invite some of the teenagers to be part of the planning process,

part of the building process, because that's going to give them ownership of the group.

And they're going to want to invite people to something that they helped to build.

Um, so for me, that would be the biggest, uh, aha moment that the teenagers surprisingly

were the ones that were flocking to it.

And I'm having to do a little more reaching out to find adults that want to flock to it.

That's, that's interesting.

And I love the idea, give them an opportunity to have influence, to be a part of it, to come

up with the ideas, let them lead out in there.

Uh, it's, it's interesting in the, you know, and like I said, Minecraft, I don't have a lot

of experience in that necessarily within Roblox.

Uh, you know, I've got friends that are more in Daniel Heron's been on here quite a bit

and he would champion in this too.

You know, he started, you know, the Robloxian Christians when he was like, I don't know,

10 or 11 and now he's 21.

And so, and he's reached, you know, estimated 30 to 50,000 people through a Robloxian church,

um, you know, in, in through over the years and it's still going, but, you know, and he

talks a lot about how it's student led movements.

Um, you know, and, and I've talked over the years with Daniel about, you know, what would

it look like for a church to come alongside?

And, and it's funny, like Dan, and Dan, just the way that he's wired and it's on the

record.

Uh, but he's so driven towards student led and operated movements.

Uh, he's actually kind of fearful about letting organized churches kind of come in into that

space.

And so as an organized church coming in there, you know, the wisdom that you're showing by

letting, Hey, students own this.

Students run with this students make this bigger than I myself can be.

Um, I mean, listen, if, if I was a digital pastor, I don't squat about, about Minecraft,

but Hey, I recognize the fact that it's a community and that there are people that know that community

better than I do.

And if I really wanted to reach that community, I'm not developing the strategy.

I'm talking with others that are developing it.

So you've got some great wisdom that that's shown here, man, what are some other takeaways?

What are some lessons that, that you've learned, um, you know, recently as you're going through

these experiments?

Yeah, I think, um, so one of the things is that what I found is that like whoever's leading

the small group, they definitely still need to know how to lead a small group.

So, um, you know, just, and I'm talking about, you know, working in the room, helping people

connect to one another because we've lost all the verbal, uh, all of the visual cues and

some of the verbal cues.

Cause now we're in Minecraft, we're talking to one another through discord, uh, and all

we can see are these little avatars that can't really express themselves very much.

So as the small group leader, I had to make a lot more efforts of just helping to connect

people, helping to lead the discussion, helping to just say, okay, guys, we're going to do

this.

Then we're going to do this.

Then we're going to do this.

All right, let's start with our opening activity and just doing a good job hosting.

Um, so that's one of the things that as I'm getting apprentices to learn how to do this,

that I'm going to be focusing a lot on, Hey, you are a host.

Like, don't even worry about your Minecraft abilities.

Like you might build great or you might suck at it, but you do need to be, um, you really

need to practice how to be a good host.

So that's one of the, that's definitely one of the learnings.

Um, another learning people, sometimes people cancel and, and life happens.

One of, uh, one of the couples, their car broke down.

And so, uh, we, I had the choice, like, do I cancel?

Do I postpone?

I just postponed.

It's not a big deal.

Just like you would with a, with an IRL group, right?

Um, we just postponed and we finished our group another time.

Um, another man, another learning.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh, I don't know.

It's just, it's been fun.

And I honestly just can't wait to start the group with the high schoolers and with the

adults.

Um, that's been, that's really been the biggest thing is just the eagerness that I have just

to jump in with a whole nother group of people.

So those are, those are kind of the main learnings.

There's some technical stuff.

I will say, um, it was not the smoothest process starting off.

So having to learn about Minecraft realms, which is Microsoft's, uh, own little server

that you can pay for having to learn, um, some of like the, the server commands.

So slash changing the time of day slash, uh, you know, put a setting it in creative mode,

uh, having to learn how to connect everyone on the same discord.

And so there were some technical things for sure that took a little bit of, uh, a little

bit of a learning curve.

Um, more than happy to type up how to do all the different things.

If anyone out there wants to try this out with your youth group or your church or whatever,

um, so that you don't have to, it probably took me about five hours to, to troubleshoot

all the stuff.

Um, ultimately once I was like in the whole process, but now it's, it's runs perfectly

smooth, no issues.

Inviting people to the server took, it was a little bit of a challenge because the, uh,

the invites apparently expire after a certain amount of time.

So on our first group, they were logging on, but then they get kicked pretty quickly.

And I'm like, well, wait a second.

I, you got on, why is it saying you're not invited?

So there's some technical stuff, just like with any digital thing.

But once we ironed out all of those things, we are, our other groups were great.

Hey, I'm going to put you on the spot right here.

Cause you just said it.

Would you write a blog for the church digital?

Yeah, sure.

Listing out some of those things, how to, how to do, how to do Minecraft ministry, the tips

you need for Minecraft.

We will, we'll, we'll offline and we'll figure it out.

But yeah, we'll, we'll publish something and, and attach it in the show notes here.

I love that.

That's great.

Um, and once again, I feel like this is like Rob Wagner's, like the, the guy over here.

That's not part of the conversation.

You said the word, you said the word apprentice that I'm like, Rob Wagner's shaking his head

right now.

I approve.

I approve of this message.

Well done with that.

Um, no, all that was, was beautiful.

So, Hey, listen, there's a church out there who's crazy enough.

And what I want to call out here, let's, before I even get to that last question, you said

that you're having fun.

I want to draw attention to that because many of us in this 2020, 2021, mid post COVID, wherever

you think we are in this thing.

When's the last time we had fun in ministry?

I like, it's, it's been a minute for a lot of us because we're, we're trying to honestly,

part of me and we talk about the show, I feel like we're trying to force something to happen

by how many of us are approaching digital ministry as the mirror image of physical.

And it just doesn't work that way.

And you're, you're having fun by doing something different by doing ministry, not to replace

what's happening physical, but you're recognizing that digital is a different crowd and you're

trying to reach different people through it.

So I don't want the word fun to get lost because I think that's the most, other than Rob Wagner

for the 47th time mentioned, I think that that's the most telling thing that's happening in

this conversation here.

So well, well done.

And, and, and for restore man, way to be brave enough to like endorse some idea of, Hey, I

want to do a Bible study in a small group in Minecraft.

Like I can tell you, I've, I've been on some church staffs that would have chased me out

of the building at that.

So way, way to be brave enough to suggest it and to run with it.

But so let me, let me, that'll segue nice into this last question.

Hey, so some churches out there, some digital pastor, some guy listening to this podcast is

crazy enough to think, Hey, I want to do this at my church too.

Give me some practical steps.

How does somebody get started?

Leadership may or may not be on board.

What does it look like to start an experiment centered around Minecraft church, Minecraft

Bible studies?

Great question.

I would say the very first thing I'll break it down.

Very first thing you need to do, get a copy of Minecraft, start playing it yourself.

Just start exploring the game.

It's not super intuitive.

You'll have to watch a YouTube video or two, but once you get the concept, it's a lot of fun.

The second reason it's important to get the game first and play it yourself is just to make sure it doesn't make you dizzy.

Some of these 3D games where you're in a world and you're, you know, in tight spaces, it can make some people dizzy.

It actually makes me dizzy.

I have to eat Dramamine before I play each small group.

And so if I don't, I'm sick as a dog afterwards.

And so I would just highly recommend figure out if it makes you sick or not.

The second thing I would recommend is find a small group of people that you could test this out with, because it might be a really great idea in your head, or you might have an idea of how it should work.

But when you invite some other people into it and you actually try it out as a group, they can give you some honest feedback of, wow, that was really good.

Yeah, that was great.

Actually, that was kind of lame.

Like, why do we have to just sit on these Minecraft couches?

Why can't we go explore?

Why can't we jump around and play around?

So I would say get a small group of people, get the game tested out.

And then, yeah, I would say another thing to do along with that, because there's so many steps.

There's so many steps in between.

I'm trying to make it as simple as possible.

When you're testing it out, make it a short period of time.

Make it three sessions.

So, you know, session one, session two, session three.

That can happen all in a week or can happen over three weeks.

And that's going to give you a good rhythm and a good feeling for how many technical issues you might run into, how, you know, how the games or whatever happen in game, how the small group time runs.

You might want to change some stuff up, yeah, and then after that, just get as much feedback from the participants as you can, because you know what, what works for me in my context may not work for you in your context.

So those three things, the activity, discovery, Bible study, and then build time, you might need five, like, movements.

You might need six.

You might just need two.

I don't know.

But it all depends on who you're ministering to.

Is it teenagers?

Is it adults?

And just experiment.

I highly recommend a beta group before you actually launch the full-blown thing, because we definitely had lots of technical issues that first one, but then it was smooth sailing thereafter.

You know, and part of that, having that small window to get feedback with that experiment is in receiving that feedback.

And if it's good, good.

If it's bad, that doesn't mean you abandon the idea.

It means you try again.

And so often it was, man, we had bad feedback.

We had a lot of tech issues.

This was the stupidest idea we've ever thought of.

Throw it away and go back to normal.

Don't do that.

Look for the gold in the situation, but don't be afraid to say, this is a failure.

Let me try something else.

This is not the way to do it, but here's a better option and continue to receive that feedback.

And we use in Stadia, we use the word iterate, experiment, iterate, try something different.

Don't be afraid to go back to the drawing board within the same concept.

To Theo's point, just because that's how he's operating in and you're mimicking small groups to start.

Well, maybe it's something different that's going to evolve out of that within Minecraft or maybe on another platform where you can get more community and more easily connect into it.

But don't be afraid to call a failure a failure.

The quicker you can get to that fail point is the quicker you can get on to that next thing where there could be success.

So that was well put there, sir.

Hey, as we're landing the plane here, wrapping up, any closing thoughts on your side?

Yeah, I would say that whether it's Minecraft or Roblox or there's so many other platforms out there.

I think some of I think the principles are transferable.

You know, so find whatever platform it is, find an activity you can do together.

Maybe discovery Bible study sandwiched with another activity because the digital world, the gaming world is constantly evolving.

New things are coming out.

And so, you know, I don't even want to lock myself into Minecraft, although I love Minecraft.

And I feel like I'm starting to become like the Minecraft guy or whatever, the way I've been like coaching some other people on this.

But don't close your thoughts to, oh, this could only ever happen inside of Minecraft.

No, there's so many ways that we can reach people.

I feel like the way that the church is currently structured, sure, we're reaching lots and lots of people across the U.S. and throughout the world.

But there's still billions of people that have not been reached and is going to take different strategies to reach those people.

So maybe a couple thousand people, maybe a couple hundred thousand people, it's going to be Minecraft.

I don't know about the other five point whatever billion, you know, else that's out there.

So just encourage people to experiment and figure out what principles are transferable.

Yeah, a podcast about the mission field of Minecraft.

I, you know, you know, I don't know that you hear this too many places other than the church digital.

But I love the idea of this, of how you're utilizing a platform to reach people for Christ in a different way and discipling them through different techniques than what we would normally see in the physical building.

You know, here at Stadia, I'm going to shift into commercial, but here at Stadia, like we champion this idea and try to help churches understand.

And we use the phrase multimodal, running multiple models, multiple modes of church.

And even some of the experiments in the start of your crockpot experiment towards what a church could look like, what a disciple making process and system can look like on Minecraft is beautiful.

And the experiments, the learnings from that and how it's going to redefine what church is going to look like, not away from the Bible, actually, maybe closer modeling what the Bible is.

And the relational context in that authentic community piece of it is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

I've said beautiful, 47.

I'm not sure what I've said more on this podcast.

Rob Wagner's name or Beautiful's name?

We'll have to go back and maybe do a word count for that.

I'm sure that'll never happen because I don't have that kind of time.

Hey, listen, Theo, this has been an incredible conversation.

Thank you for it.

And Restore Church, man, thank you for being brave and doing what you're doing to reach maybe a different type of person utilizing some of these digital tools.

But for Theo, I'm Jeff with the Church Digital and with Stadia Church Planning.

Thanks for jumping on the show here.

We'll see you next time at the pod.

Y'all have a good day.