BETA31: Digital Broadcast, Digital Discipleship, Digital Campus, Digital-Only Church

All right, welcome to The Beta Show, episode 31.

Hey, this is Jeff with the Church Digital Podcast.

Once again, it's powered by Stadia Church Planting.

Hey, this is the vacation edition of The Beta Show.

I'm actually on vacation right now.

Through the magic of pre-recording in SimLive,

I am joining you guys.

SimLive, from the internet right now,

I'm actually sitting back on this Thursday afternoon,

probably sitting on the beach somewhere around Central Florida.

My family and I, we're going to go check out NASA,

the launch center up there, and it's going to be a great time.

But before I went away on vacation, it was like,

hey, let me at least record this session,

and we can SimLive it so that the people at home,

wherever they are, can enjoy the greatness

of Talking Digital Church here in this season.

Remember, with The Beta Show,

we are answering your digital ministry questions,

so text them in, 484-324-8724.

Yes, that is actually my cell phone number.

And so if you really want to call me on vacation,

guess what?

I literally just gave you my cell phone number,

and I'm taking it with me on vacation,

484-324-8724.

The Beta Show is broadcast live,

as you know if you're watching this on social media,

every Thursday, noon Eastern.

It's on Facebook, facebook.com slash thechurchdigital.

And of course, it's on YouTube as well,

youtube.com slash thechurchdigital.

Normally, I would invite you guys to chat with us live,

and actually, you know what, I will.

Go ahead and throw your questions in

and comments in on the social media platform

you're currently watching in.

Hey, this is SimLive, so this is simulated live.

I am not actually answering these things in real time.

That being said, I'll be glad to engage with this stuff

when I get back from vacation

and happily answer any questions

or comment on any thoughts you guys throw

in on social media.

Next week, we are talking about four examples.

That's one, two, three, four different examples

of digital-only churches.

And so, share some examples of that

and give some testimonies to what's happening.

But for this week, we're Beta 31.

The differences between a digital broadcast,

digital discipleship, digital campus,

and digital church.

So often, and this, yes, okay, look,

I'll confess here.

There may be a little bit of nuancing here.

Maybe a fine line of difference between it,

but within those nuances comes a lot of intentionality

that will really get us to the heart

of being effective in digital space.

So, this is the heart of what we're trying to do here.

Let's recognize, I would challenge you,

churches that are out here listening to this conversation,

let's recognize who you are and who you are not.

And maybe there's some next steps

that we need to take in this season

to help your church progress digitally.

Even as we're going back to the building,

even as that emphasis is happening in physical space,

I still think there's bonuses, there's benefits,

there's purposes to doing this stuff

digitally as well.

Well, here we go.

The four, we've got number one here,

digital broadcast.

So, essentially, a digital broadcast

is the broadcasting of the church experience online.

Essentially, if you're the typical church,

it's that one hour on Sunday.

You're doing that in physical space,

and you're broadcasting that service online digitally.

Now, in this season, there are churches that are considering shutting down

the physical broadcast, the digital broadcast,

because they want more emphasis.

They don't want people being lazy.

They want people to come back to the building.

Listen, and that may be a strategy.

That may be a good strategy.

That may be a bad strategy.

For the majority of you, maybe it's too soon to tell.

But at the heart of this, broadcasting those services

is a great step.

It's the first part of something.

Now, for many of you, you stop there,

and that's where this gets dangerous,

because if the only thing you're doing is broadcasting services,

and you're not doing any digital discipleship,

or you're not using—people are not coming back to the building

to get discipled,

this is where digital broadcasting of church services

gets to this place of being a—it's a content that's being consumed.

We're creating consumers.

We're not creating disciple-makers.

And so the ecclesiology of a church, Acts 2,

is not just grounded in our weekly experiences.

If you read Acts 2, 36 through 47,

you're not getting this experience of haze machines and lights.

By the way, I'm a production guy.

I'm totally making fun of myself here.

But what we consider church is more than that.

So if you're doing the digital broadcast,

and that's all you're doing,

ask yourself this question,

what happens next?

Are you trying to drive people back to the physical building?

And if you are, great.

Is it effective?

If you are not trying to drive them back to the building,

this kind of gets into what I want to talk about next.

I think you should consider exploring this idea of digital discipleship.

So like we said earlier,

Matthew 28,

go and make disciples of all nations.

Well, what does it look like for your church,

for your existing physical church

to make disciples?

Is that happening in the digital space?

Is it happening in the physical space?

Is it small groups?

Is it one-on-one or individual disciple making?

Like where do we teach evangelism,

multiplication?

Where do we really get into the depth

so that people have the capacity

to multiply?

And is that multiplication really happening?

Once again,

through our digital discipleship,

are we just creating opportunities for content,

for people to consume content?

Are we creating opportunities for knowledge to be learned?

And are we larger than that?

Are we even giving them opportunities and challenging them

and encouraging them to go out

and multiply and reproduce and share with somebody else

to put that knowledge to work,

not just for the benefit of oneself,

but to help and have conversations

as people are having spiritual questions

in other opportunities.

This is the heart of what we wanted to talk about

here with this conversation.

Look, the strength of digital,

believe it or not,

really does lean towards this idea

of digital discipleship.

The strength of digital is equipping.

We're creating learning opportunities

and there's community opportunities as well

that gives us a chance to encourage others

to have those conversations.

This works in digital space.

Honestly,

the equipping portion is the strength

compared to even the idea

of creating the content and the reach

because there's so much content.

It's really the community.

It's that engagement piece.

It's really this equipping piece

that gives churches an opportunity

to stand out digitally

because it's working relationally.

Yet the majority of churches,

it seems for whatever reason,

are not interested in using digital

for disciple-making.

They want to broadcast the services,

but when it comes towards

creating communities,

creating small groups,

unleashing people in digital space,

there's this weird aura,

this weird reaction of,

no, that's only reserved for physically.

We can't do that digitally.

And so whatever your opinion is,

is what I would suggest

if digital church,

you should consider integrating digital

into your disciple-making.

You're not really a big fan

of broadcasting the services online.

That's great.

I've been quoted recently as saying,

hey, churches,

we should stop broadcasting

our church services entirely.

If you only do one thing digitally,

focus on discipleship.

Broadcasting services creates consumers.

It leans that way.

Relationships that are developed digitally,

those stick.

And through those relationships,

we see disciples being made.

That's the challenge

I want to give to you today.

All right, look here.

Number three here.

So first was a digital experience,

a digital broadcast.

Number two here,

digital discipleship.

Number three,

this idea of a digital campus.

So essentially,

here's what I'm saying.

If you're combining the church experience

and you're combining digital discipleship

and putting it together,

well, now your church is operating

more like a church

in digital space.

It's operating more like that campus.

Digital is becoming

more of like a fully functioning church.

because if you're able to do discipleship

and experience in the physical space

and you're calling that a church,

well, then arguably,

now that you're doing those things digitally,

it's starting to operate more like a church

or at least more like a campus would.

Here's the challenge I would throw at you.

Don't call yourself a digital campus

if your goal is to drive people to a building.

So often I hear this phrase of,

you know, we're a digital campus,

we're a digital church

or a digital church

when really what you're trying to do

is drive people

back to the physical building.

If you're not doing discipleship,

if you're not helping people

develop spiritually in digital space,

recognize that you're really

a digital front door.

You're not a digital campus.

You're not a digital church.

And this isn't bad.

But don't set up the illusion

that you are creating

a church experience digitally,

a fully functioning church digitally.

All you're giving people,

if you're not doing the discipleship,

is an experience.

You're setting up that, you know,

camera in the back

so people can stay tapped into the message

so that they can enjoy the musical worship,

maybe so even that they can

do church at home with their kids.

And this may not be a bad thing,

but it's not a fully functioning church

according to the ecclesiology,

according to the biblical functions

of what we see that God calls

the church to be.

So understand

that you're a front door.

And the front door may be

the right strategy for you,

but don't oversell what you're doing

by trying to set yourself up

to be something else.

There's validity in both models.

Both lean on the broadcast.

The broadcast is important,

but that discipleship is key.

It is crucial for where we want to go

if we are being that fully functioning

digital campus.

All right.

And once again,

that's leaning on the stream.

It's leaning on that broadcast piece.

Number four here,

digital only church.

Who needs a building?

Who needs to broadcast

that live service on Sunday morning?

Who's got,

we don't have that in a digital church.

A digital only expression of church,

you know,

I'm kind of adding the word only here

to get it to stand out,

is essentially a church

without a physical footprint.

I don't have a worship center

for 1,300 people

in a stage

with five awesome Panasonic varicams

to broadcast the service.

I don't have those resources.

And what's fortunate

with digital only churches,

they don't need those resources.

There's ways to be

a digital only expression of church

without having the resources

of a building

or a massive stage

or massive financial resources,

AVL,

things like that.

Because at the heart of it,

what a digital only church is,

is it looks at the ecclesiology,

the biblical functions,

it looks at starting with Acts 2,

and it reimagines it contextually.

This is not throwing away the Bible

and doing something radical.

This is reinterpreting the Bible

in context with the digital communities

that we're going in.

And so we're talking about virtual reality

and video games and Twitch,

maybe even contextualizing it

for our communities,

for the people that we're trying to reach

and shaping the message for them,

trying to get them to own it,

to replicate it,

to tell others.

And so there's strengths

and there's weaknesses.

Let's call it what it is.

There's strengths

and there's weaknesses

towards this idea

of doing a digital only expression of church.

But the idea here

is that it's not moving away from the Bible.

It's reimagining it in digital space.

And rather than building everything around

what is happening in a physical building

and then trying to cram that square peg

into a round hole of the digital space,

what it is doing,

it's not limited.

It doesn't have the roof, the ceiling.

It is trying to create that round peg

that's going to go in that round hole

that is digital.

So it's not a limitation.

It's actually an opportunity to recognize,

hey, we can do something different digitally.

We're not limited to what's happening.

In the physical space.

By the way, you know, talking crazy here,

Stadia is looking to work

with digital only church planters.

Just in a couple of weeks,

I am starting a cohort

with a number of digital only church planters

exploring this space.

And so if you're interested

in having a conversation

about what digital only church planting

could look like starting

and running a church in digital space

completely from scratch,

go to stadiachurchplanting.org.

By the way,

throwing on that same vein,

Stadia is looking for established churches

that are wanting to go multimodal.

I'm looking for physical churches here

that are wanting to plant

a digital only church.

Once again,

like out of,

completely separate.

This is not broadcasting services.

This is reimagining

what church can be digitally.

Believe it or not,

there are churches

that are wanting to do this,

that are excited

about being a part of this.

I've got an experiment running

with a number of churches

here in the fall.

If you're wanting to be a part,

you want more information,

we can talk about it.

stadiachurchplanning.org

slash digital,

or excuse me,

digital there.

So, hey,

you're wanting to do something from scratch,

or maybe you're wanting,

you're an established church

that's wanting to experiment a little bit

and do something different.

stadiachurchplanning.org

slash digital.

Well, hey,

we're going to keep building

on this digital theme

next Thursday,

noon Eastern.

Four examples

of digital only churches.

I'm going to tell some stories.

We're going to celebrate

some things that are happening digitally.

Going to encourage you guys

to be a part of it.

So, hey,

that is going to wrap

episode 31

of the beta show

Vacation Edition.

Hey, this is Jeff

with the Church Digital

and with Stadia Church Planning.

Thanks for jumping here

on the beta show.

We'll see you next time

here at the show.

Y'all have a good day.