EP125: Planting a Digital Church through Stadia

all right you got the church digital podcast here once again powered by stadia church planning by

the way this is our two-year anniversary for the podcast here we've been doing the church digital

podcast for two years that's 104 weeks i don't want to do the math maybe 730 days plus or minus

a leap year day somewhere in the middle we've done 150 some episodes here the church digital

podcast of beta throw in some cray like it's been a lot of fun in this season and i want to thank

stadia church planting for continuing to help me get the word out talking fidgetal church talking

digital only church it has been awesome every step of the way with my stadia family good times

good times okay for this episode we're actually want to stay focused on the stadia planting side

of this because today here in this podcast we're going to be talking about planting a digital only

expression of church now pre-covid i got to tell you a digital only expression of church a church

with no physical footprint a church with no building a church that exists entirely in cloud services and

social media and digital space um yeah it's a very very controversial idea um you know like people

hey jeff you're sinning by helping churches plant digitally you're taking the people out of the bride

of christ the physical building you should repent of your ways these are some of the conversations i've had in my

lifetime talking about a digital only expression of church and now thank you covid there seems to be a little

more acceptance of this not that covid maybe loosened up what the bible says i don't i don't think covid changed the bible

but i think that we're seeing a better understanding of what digital ministry can look like and what a digital church

can look like and understanding that maybe the strengths and weaknesses of digital play well in context of

doing a church in that space biblically functioned ecclesiologically solid church but it's not what we think

let's even get into it a little bit here in this conversation we're bringing in three digital only church

planters into the conversation you see stadia my family over at stadia we have been doing cohorts

towards planting digital only expressions of church we've got two or three cohorts running right now

honestly i'll be starting two more cohorts probably within the next couple months and so we're constantly

helping planters achieve their vision of planting physical churches or even even digital expressions of

church and so we're bringing in three planters who have gone through cohort with us they've gone through

the training the project management the evaluations and at this point one of them's launched and the other

two are gearing up to launch in the fall and for us this is an opportunity to present to you the listening

audience out there hey here are some guys that are doing digital only planting they are literally planting

a church that will not have a physical building what are the challenges what are the obstacles what are the

celebrations what are the god stories that are coming out of this and and this is the thing that we hope

you hear that god can do things in digital space through a digital church that god has already

done things through digital churches in digital spaces and we want to encourage you maybe this is your

opportunity to come on board maybe you or somebody you know may be interested in planting a digital only expression of church and i jeff reed

literal job title director of digital church planting for stadia church planting i would love to talk with you

so here's who we're bringing into the conversation right off the bat mark lutz now mark is a digital only church

planner of course he is planting lux digital church uh it is a vid it's a church for video gamers excuse me it's a church

of video gamers and mark will dig into that here in a little bit in the broadcast talking about his twitch

and his discord relationship that he's doing with his church we're also bringing in chris monroe

chris is with relate church which is a church that focuses primarily on facebook in his targeted region

it's more of the kentucky uh tennessee kind of areas up in the kind of the midwest i'll let chris

explain to you his one his why and why he's doing relate church and we're also bringing in chesley

lundy and chesley is is launching king city church in the fall and and he has this ridiculous vision for

what a digital church can be and i'm not even going to start to explain it as much as to recognize hey

you need to listen to this podcast you've got three guys with three different strategies that they're

wanting to implement in a digital church reaching completely different people none of them are trying

to steal from the physical building as much as it is create a different church for a different type of

people disciple them in different ways contextually to the end of creating disciple makers now there's

powerful stories in here majestic purple buffalo you need to stick around and wait for that story so

if you don't know you'll know when you hear majestic purple buffalo you'll understand stick around and

wait and hear the story of majestic purple buffalo either way this is going to be a phenomenal

conversation that i hope is going to challenge some of you out there to maybe change the way that

you're looking at church or maybe encourage you to be part of a movement of digital only church plants that

stadia is trying to start up here to reach the world that our buildings are not reaching so for the

conversation mark lutz uh chris munro chesley lundy and myself jeff with the church digital in stadia church planting

in a conversation that i'm really simply calling the planters of digital only churches okay everybody

here you go uh so my ministry story starts uh well i've been in ministry for probably it's about

12 years you know 10 years of that has been serving the same church um it'll be 11 years here

probably by the time this episode is out actually and uh and have been serving kind of like a physical church

and um so part of our ministry story has to do with being inside of the physical church and watching

uh serving in youth ministry serving in discipleship ministry and um watching a lot of kids who came out

of the ministry of our church um and we were really faithful and did our best to be faithful to those

kids and we reached into the community we had a strong missional emphasis you know we read all the books

we went all went to all the conferences and our church is an amazing church it's still the church

that my family attends on the weekends um but i watched as kids just left um and they didn't go

anywhere in particular um they just didn't come back they weren't away at school they didn't go to the

military um they were in their parents basements and most of them were playing video games mostly

because i was a gamer i knew that i was still gaming with them on and off um they had come to church a

couple of times and it just really wasn't for them um and the world swept them up in in a wide variety

of beliefs and that wasn't because they went to a college classroom like i had typically thought

it's mostly because they were educated by social media more than they were educated by the church

and so i remember saying about five years ago to my wife if the church does not change radically

um we're not going to reach the next generation and so lux is inherently sort of born out of that

um i've been a gamer my entire life in some capacity and lux is built to reach gamers it's

to reach gamers where they are instead of saying god wants to reach you exactly where you are so

please come to our church and sit in our seats and sit through our sermons saying let's take the

church to where they are and so when god began to move and call us into something new it started out

of a podcast it was just a it was a podcast that i had started um without really a lot of intention

i had planned i planned for it to last maybe a month or two it was covering a digital card game that i

already enjoyed so it was video game centric and i just started beginning to use it for ministry and

to pray for people and and that's really where lux began um and god began to open doors and

answered prayers and we began to say okay if god's at work here and we're seeing the holy spirit answer

our prayers even though we're not physically touching anybody we don't know these people very well

um and that's when relationships really started to develop and it was like okay what is a relationship

what constitutes a relationship i've always thought that to have a relationship i had to be physically

with people but here i am with three guys on a call all of which i would consider to be friends

and i've never met any of them i've never hugged any of them i've never shook any of their hands

yet i would say because the time i've spent with them they are closer to me right now than the majority

of people who i haven't been able to see for a year because of covet 19 and so it was in the end of 2019

beginning of 2020 that god really moved and said mark i crafted you not only as a pastor but also as a

gamer and my heart broke for the gaming community because i saw what type of a dark place they were in and i had

known that but i had never even considered god wanting to interact with that and so i was like

well i have a heart for church planting i have a heart for gamers but we can't plant a church and

ask them all to come unless we don't have a building i need a church that's not contained within walls i

need a church that's not held back by brick and mortar or steel and timber we needed a church that

could reach people literally wherever it was that they were and that's what you know brought about

luxe and so we began dreaming about that and god began answering a lot of those prayers i came with

a ton of reservation about it i'm a physical church person not a digital church person at heart

i wanted to plant a physical church i didn't really have any desire to do things digitally i was off

social media for four years i had no presence online with the exception of discord and um i saw the power

of community tolls and it was just like okay like this is this is we're gonna be so in in march of uh in

march of 2021 we started luxe digital church online uh we live stream on twitch uh because we wanted to

put a church where gamers are um i i make an important um point that we're not a church for

gamers um not that i mean but we're a church where gamers are okay and i i think there's a port there's an

important difference between those two things because a church for gamers means that everything

has to be gaming centric and in our church everything isn't gaming centric it's gospel

centric and so we just happen to have planted our church where gamers exist already and so our heart

is then to be able to reach them um because i can connect with gamers in a way that people who don't

game just can't and there's nothing against them it's the same if you were really into sailboating

you could connect with sailboaters in a way that i can't because i don't know anything about sailboating

um and so but i do know a lot about gaming and in the gaming community and so that's really where

where luxe is that's where we got started and god's been incredibly faithful to us sort of through all of

that um it's been it's been a while but a really cool ride that you don't consider yourself a disruptor

um i don't i mean i don't know uh i don't i don't gladly take that title i'm not like eager for it

um okay i mean i know that jeff is he he loves the title uh it's like one of his favorite things

that he has he puts it on a shelf at home and he dusts it every day um but like i i don't i don't

naturally consider myself a disruptor i think this is a natural extension of where the church is going

in this is the direction that the holy spirit is sending the church um i think he's made that very

clear so i i hope i hope that instead of being an intentional disruptor um we're i oftentimes kind

of view it as is the the worship wars that we went through in the 90s in the church um where we wanted

to bring in contemporary worship and other people didn't want contemporary worship and right the

church at the end of the street that i live on like right they're they're still in it right they

have a blended service a contemporary service and a regular service and all of them probably have 15

people who show up to them right because they can't get along and have one worship service right and uh

and i i think that this is the sort of like the the worship war of our generation and i'm hoping

it's not a war is the thing like i'm not going i don't want to go into it as intentionally a disruptor

because i have no desire whatsoever to start a war with the physical church i want to partner

with the physical church if that makes sense well said well said um and yeah i i do have disruptor

on my shelf i only dust it twice a month though not every okay not every day my bad take take lessons

here can you remember that please chesley uh in and i just i know chesley considers himself a

disruptor and maybe he's one of those guys that finds a little too much joy in that space although

publicly he's probably going to correct me now but chesley why don't you tell me a little bit of of your

ministry story uh talk about king city too how you got started with that yeah that's only because i'm an

eight on the enneagram i gotta challenge everything yeah so i'm naturally a disruptor whether i like it

or not so it just happens um i was leading a small church in omaha nebraska about five and a half years

and i was in a room with uh there's probably about 25 of us pastors in the denomination i was a part of at the

time and they're trying to figure out how to reach the next generation and i was the youngest pastor in

in the room by 25 to 30 years and so ultimately they looked at me and what do you think and i'm like

well the question i keep asking myself at this moment is what if the church didn't have a building

they laughed at me they said that was crazy and they disregarded what i said and went back to the

how the how are they gonna reach you know the next generation and i realized i i had always not felt

at home and uh felt like i had a a good place for my skills and abilities in the church um obviously

church planting seems to be the most uh the most congruent to my gift set um i'm very entrepreneurial uh i love

business i love starting things but it's still it still didn't quite jive with the way i was thinking

way outside the box and uh i went ended up becoming a youth and young adult pastor at a church in phoenix

arizona i was here for about two years and realized my kids are on digital and i am not so um how do i

help small churches build a youth group a student group that has good resources that could also help

mentor their students and we came up with the idea we have to have a digital community we have to have

a safe space that a student would be able to have a conversation with a mentor and you can't you don't

have many of those safe spaces online even on social um it was a success and then covet hit and my hats

changed because i'm on church staff i became the digital guy because you know he's doing that digital

thing with students and um i love marketing and business and so they're like hey yeah this is a

natural extension but i started realizing this question that i had in my heart some five years ago

like this is real now there's proof of concept and everybody has to do it and so i started looking

online for the specific um a specific phrase digital church planting and i went to page 14 of google and

this guy named jeff reed was there and uh he's not on the 14th page of google anymore um and i got an

an appointment with jeff and the first thing i think i said to you was i'm not crazy who knew

and uh we had conversations i had no idea that i would be here you know what seven eight months later

looking to plant a digital church but i am and so uh obviously as i went down this road it was i i

believe it's a god thing um god has been very gracious um i'm in a uh organization that is super

supportive and uh and loves me and my family and so a lot like mark we still go to the church that we

were on staff at i'm not paid but like i speak once a month there so there's still relational ties i do

believe that there's some real superpower if it did the digital church and the physical church partner

together because at the end of the day church is not a building it's a people and so i'm excited about

that we're really cool glad you found me on google most people give up around page i am too but you

you you went that extra mile to 14 and you're right i'm not on page 14 no not anymore not not

anymore hey chris uh man let's let's talk about about what you're doing so talk to me about this

digital church that you're doing on on facebook how how'd you get started with your ministry

story and and how'd you end up doing what you're doing now on facebook well uh let's see man i grew

up in church uh and uh was very active in ministry as a teenager um was doing little service you know

being being active in ministry at age 11 12 13 just has been part of who i am i knew that god had

designed me for ministry uh when we was right before christy and i got married we just jumped into youth

ministry we have been over the last 18 years been in youth pastors associate pastors worship pastors

we've been lead pastors a couple times and uh in 2018 we were serving as associate pastors and worship

pastors um and uh god began to stir something up in me and i knew it was to plant a church and i fought

him for it for about almost two years um well not a year and a half let's go a year and a half i fought

god with this um the end of 2019 we stepped down from our positions and actually started attending a

different church just to kind of get some space to clarity um and beginning of 2020 uh we had finally

agreed together with god that he was wanting us to plant a church and then the world went crazy and uh

this is just uh i mean everybody was in that predicament uh what was going on at the same time is we had

actually been loaned out to another church to help them while they were in the middle of worship leaders

and so our first sunday at that church was the first sunday that we could not meet together physically

here in kentucky and so i went from being the fill-in worship leader to being the guy who was responsible

for getting the church online just overnight and uh begin to uh we begin to ask ourselves the questions

first of all did we misunderstand god because we were thinking planting a physical church

um it's probably not a good idea to try to plant a physical church in the middle of a pandemic

uh you know these kind of questions and at the same time i'm also looking to see how i can improve

what i was doing with central city church and uh through this i came across a couple of um interviews

um with myron pierce is it um i came across the interview somebody i forget it wasn't jeff it was

somebody else was interviewing him and he was talking about digital church uh and then jeff i came across

the interview with you uh was interviewing somebody out california way who went ahead and decided to plant

a church early and did it all digitally on easter um and so just kind of started my head rolling and then

um i attended this church online summit and it was there that uh somebody said i was going to look

this up but somebody somebody said one of the speakers said that um and it was a pivotal moment

for us he said this he drew a circle he's like this is uh you know the church and its physical presence

and everything that we do in-house he's like in this little circle down here he said this is the

church's online presence and he said that the shift that he he saw coming that was accelerated

by covid was that that was going to flip-flop and the church was going to have a bigger online presence

and a smaller in-house in-person presence and that just got my mind thinking

about what we could do and um i don't say stuff because i say a lot of things

sometimes i will drive down the road and i'm mad at the local ice cream shop down here because they

opened one before i could um and i don't you know because i'm just that kind of guy i want to i want

to open this and that and i just constantly have these thoughts and christy's like yeah just go for

it um but we was talking and she came and she said hey why don't we plant this church digitally

and so i'm a guy who's full of crazy ideas but when she says something like that i trust her judgment a

lot more than i trust mine a lot of times and so i realized that it was god that was speaking to both

of us and so i filled out a church ready readiness planter survey from stadia the next day i was sitting

on a zoom call with jeff reed and one month later we was going through cpac and it was a whirlwind of

a time and we've been getting to do ministry on facebook uh the relate church and uh i've seen a lot of

things happen we do a morning monday through friday morning bible study 8 30 central time

every sunday night at five o'clock we do a time of worship and we've actually had a few

services thrown in the in the mix and we're looking to launch full-time this uh september

well listen like you had you know i would normally say you had lots of different options out there

towards planting a digital church i don't know that there were lots of options i don't i don't know that

there's a lot of people like doing digital church planting or supporting digital church planting the

way that stadia is maybe more and more coming up now in 2021 as a result of of covid but there's not

a lot i do see a lot of planters though that are wanting to do their own thing uh they kind of wanting

to work on their own and develop their own systems as opposed to working with an organization like stadia so

i'm curious why stadia why why did you come along to be part of the cohort why not do your own thing

why not work with somebody else surely it's not because of something that google said on page 14 so

like what what was it that that kind of brought you in that led you to this place of working together

with an org like stadia yeah for me um twofold i had already had a conversation with you and then i am a

part of the uh a legacy denomination and um they already had a partnership with stadia so obviously

though being in the church planting game um previously stadia is a big name and um if they

can put their stamp of approval on you it's like a bank's uh bank system of a credit score

and so um if they say yes or you have a high score like when you're looking at investment dollars and

you're looking at uh a support raising or even just um can you do this stadia saying yes we believe you

can matters and it's not just a well i think i can and i'm going to try obviously i believe there's

those of us out there that can and i can tell you i failed two church plan assessments um before uh

god brought me into this piece you know i don't think i knew that well i haven't really talked about

wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait oh we won't call we won't let you call them out publicly

but we're glad you're here definitely want to endorse you moving forward okay yeah yeah there you go

so no i i did i'd failed two church plan assessments um one of them was because i was reformed in a

non-reformed denomination and the other one was because i was a young kid that had no clue what

he was talking about he just knew he needed to like like start something and so they're like you're not

old enough yet and so um i had been through this this was my third time going through this system

so i was a well aware of what i was getting myself into uh and so my wife's like we're doing this again

really so but um this time you know super prepared uh knew somewhat of what was going to happen i tried

to explain you know to my friends like it's like shark tank you you go in you are grueled for like

two days and uh they want to see how you handle pressure um and it just it meant something because

when they saw it in you and then they can see that you're you're you have uh the ability to do this

we want to help train and coach you to make it even better i i think having that support system

behind you and not doing it alone is so important and that's why i went with stadia

that's awesome chris uh how about you what was was your developing relate church why work with

stadia why work with an organization like us as opposed to doing it on your own well in 2007

uh it was the first time that i ever felt the call to plant a church and uh i'm a part of an

organization denomination that has state overseers or administrative bishops i think that's what they

call them and i called the guy up and i said hey i want to plant a church and he he gave me the green

light go ahead um and uh went six months into it and then he called me back and he's like either you're

going to have to move so far away that you're going to have to start over um or you're going to shut

down and uh in that in that short period of time you know it was it was a learning experience i i

realized very very first off i knew nothing about church planting uh and and i knew that if i ever

wanted to plant a church again that i was going to have to have somebody that was going to come

come along with us and walk walk with us through that process because it's not an easy it's not an

easy task um and there's a lot of stuff i don't know and uh and so when when just stumbling on to

um looking at all the different organizations that was out there um like you said you know there

wasn't a whole lot that was offering for the digital and uh and so when we hit we had talked

in our first interview um it just everything just kind of fell into place and uh and we went that

route hey so so let me let me ask like um you're doing a different thing you're doing

a digital church there are similarities between digital and physical physical there are things

that that poured over from physical to digital there are some things that you've had to relearn and

experiment and do differently so i would love to maybe explore obviously the audience as a general

role understands how physical ministry works as you're doing your digital churches as you know chris

even you with the previewing and and chesley all the stuff that you're doing kind of laying down this

foundation uh for ministry to come what are the differences in doing a digital church compared

to physical only ministry what are the things that you're you're wrestling with whoever wants to go

first yeah i'll start i mean like they're the differences are it's so strange because there's so

much of the core of ministry between the digital the physical that is the same um you know for me

physical ministry was always relationships and um and then you know there's ebbs and flows with that

there's good and bad and you're closer to some people than you are others but in the end of the

day right it's relationships it's like how do you develop relationships how do you invest in people

how do you um how do you help equip people um how do you how do you really you know make friends and

and you know for me like my ministry teams and things they were always my closest friends like i went to

battle with these people like this was for me this was spiritual warfare and and i needed comrades

alongside of me so whenever i dove into ministry at a church almost all of my relationships outside of

my teams suffered because those were the people that were at my house eating meals those were the

people that i was up late with those were the people that you know if we went if with youth group went

really bad and we had to go get a beer afterwards those are the people that i was out grabbing a

beer with afterwards you know like that was those were my that was my tribe and my people and so um

um really digital ministry is no different than that for me anyway um digital ministry is about

relationships you know it's about spending time with people it's about investing in people it's about

equipping people it's about serving people well and relationally you can do all of those things um

there there's some aspects that are super challenging that i wish we could do better you know um but like

this weekend you know one of the members of our teams he and his fiance got married and i was on the zoom call

watching the wedding um you know from six and a half or seven hours south of me i got i got to attend

his wedding this weekend and into him i was there i mean it was shot he was done on an ipad it was

kind of blurry and everything but i got to be there i got to watch he and his now wife get married and

like and that's incredible and i got to participate in in that in that way and there are a lot of people

who you know i would consider friends that i've developed relationships with but our church is you know

a month old as well and so you know a lot of my relationships are a month old some of them are

longer some of those relationships i've been able to develop over the last year or two because they

they came from another digital community that i was already a part of and i had established some

relationships there what is different it's like it's not hard to tell what's different like there's

it has to be scalable and it has to be global from like the very moment like the other day we had

someone join our community he was in one of our streams he came into it he's a believer he's a

63 year old retired police officer from uh from australia and so i just got to hang out with him

for like 30 minutes uh because he stopped in our welcome center i saw him in there and so i popped

in and said hello you know your building's always open digitally and there's great parts about that and

there's there's challenges about that most of your church exists on people's phones so it's not

hard to gather together daily and there's beauty in that but one of my favorite things to do for

ministry was eat and we don't really get the opportunity to do that at lux um i can't prepare

i mean i used to love it prepare a big meal for 30 people that would be my job for the day and i would

serve the meal to 30 people that i had cooked myself and i'm not a good cook but it meant something

to them that i had prepared food for them and with lux um i can't do that and so there's so many

differences and it doesn't take anyone who's been in ministry any you know for any length of time

a while to like determine like oh yeah i wouldn't be able to do this and we could do that i wouldn't

be able to do that we could do that it's the hurdle for most people to get over of i prefer to do

ministry this way i prefer to do ministry physically versus digitally and i don't like what social media

brings to the table and i don't like what the digital world has to offer and i don't like any of

those things either but that's where people are and so that's where the church needs to be

yeah i think um digital is a tool uh it's it's a means to the end it's not the end itself so i don't

think anyone here uh would be on digital if uh there was a better means so um i think it's it's a

component and if there's a better way to reach people that's what we want to do we'll we'll we'll

do anything short of sin to reach people for jesus thank you craig rochelle um at but for for

for what we're trying to do um there's there's a book called the innovation stack by jim mckelvey uh

who is the co-founder of square with jack dorsey and he talks about these uh these little innovative

ideas and stacking them on on top of each other so he talks about southwest he talks about their fight

with amazon and how uh they beat amazon as a small company but it was a lot of these little pieces

that they had said hey we have to do this differently we have to do this differently and we have to do this

differently um all innovation is an undercutting of the legacy model that comes before them and so for

us it was like okay you have this digital uh influencer marketing piece you have the social media piece

um you have crowd sourcing like a crowdfunding and uh you can you could crowdsource anything you want

nowadays too so there's there's these three pieces that digital has given us that if you put them and you

put them in the context of church they could change the way we operate for the good of the church i believe

and so we wanted to do uh we wanted to take those three component pieces and say what how would that work

in a church setting and then ultimately at the end of the day our job as a church is to equip the saints

for the work of the ministry until we all come to the unity of faith right and so for us it's like well

to make disciples i don't want to say discipleship that's wrong but to make disciples is the goal of our

church and so uh the operating system underneath that has to be development and it can't be for

volunteerism it has to be for mission in their context because we don't have a building we have

we have very little infrastructure that needs uh a lot of care so we have a few things that we'll need

volunteers for but we could do an hq team of like 10 people and have you know serve thousands

because of the scalability of this model and so uh for us it was like hey here are these three or four

pieces that are unique to digital that we can take stack them on each other and you can create a whole

new way of doing church that i think is effective and i have you know i could i could talk a lot more

about it but that's essentially what it is for the most part you guys seem to have

like stable background and support from that so um maybe share some stories there because you don't

you're not having these horror stories is that as a result of covet is it just kind of forward-thinking

people that that you're now working with at the denomination or at the sending church like how have you

managed to have healthy support coming in here with this like very radical concept idea yeah i mean

covet 19 helps um because it suddenly makes everyone say oh maybe we should do online stuff or like you

know previous people were like hey i hate online stuff and then they had to go to church online they're

like actually kind of like it kind of kind of actually like it more than going to church kind of nicer

um and and they're like you know people you know boomers and leader who are kind of like yeah like

i'm kind of cool um so that that didn't hurt us we've really only made one ask uh one direct ask uh

for the most part you know it's very interesting because one of the one of our supporters came to us and

kind of said like hey really resources flow along the lines of relationship and so we've just gone to

people that we've had relationship with and for me ministering in the same community for 10 years is

really helpful um i come from a non-denominational church in a rural area of western pennsylvania

that has little to no network um but the network that we do have has been supportive of us and that

has been incredible um it also didn't hurt i mean in our very unique situation right we had

um i just had the opportunity to build a relationship with somebody who ended up being very wealthy

um and that's like that's my unique scenario like it just came into being that like before this

individual was very wealthy we developed a really great relationship then this person became very

wealthy and then and this person wants to do wants to help us and wants to see churches flourish and

and they like the idea and so that made all of the resourcing sort of like that was easy for

us now our home church is very supportive of us obviously we still worship there they're financially

behind us they're behind us and what they say is prayer presence and payment and so they're three

p's we are a network church of new life christian ministries and we've signed a network agreement

with them um but you know i would be remiss to not mention victory family church open door church

in north carolina um and our friends at southeast asia prayer center because they're also all been

incredibly supportive and we've told them the same thing across the board it's not really about your

finances every physical church leader who gets on board and says that what we're doing and applauds

us and says hey we're praying for you we love what you're doing is a source of encouragement to us

because as somebody who had a lot of hot a lot of times to second guess what we were doing

it was the physical church planters that came along us who had planted church you know 15 years before

and said what you're doing is the right thing and that made all the difference was was their

encouragement it was enormous god takes care of money he paves his streets in gold i'm not worried about money

um but their encouragement and getting behind us uh spiritually was huge i mean it was so big

i got i gotta remember that god paves his road with money he's got to figure it out like you

just won't worry about the other stuff that's that's really good so chris like you're you're

interesting in this in this equation um these other guys like they're they're making money off the

church the end game is their their full-time employee kind of heading that way and that may be for you

one day we've we've had the conversation but you're a uh entrepreneur you own your own business or at

least at this point now you've partnered merged with another uh business kind of doing concrete

pouring in um in kentucky so you like if you ever need a foundation poured like chris is the guy uh you

can we'll put link in the show notes you can obviously connect up afterwards uh i don't chris i

don't know if i can help you get any business in kentucky but you're trying to do like a so i we use

the term co-vocational where you're you're doing ministry digitally but your full-time job is

something else and and one of one of the observations i've i've learned talking with digital planters is

there's a lot of people like you who are doing a business and oh by the way they want to do a church on

the side just you know just recently i had a conversation with the it director for a um or a

systems manager for a fortune 500 company and basically he's like jeff no church is going to be able to

afford my salary i want to keep my job i just want to do kind of the the ministry thing on the side so

i'm wondering chris like what's that tension for you being co-vocational where it's not full-time

um but you're you're still are doing ministry you are still being very effective in onboarding and

starting this church it was what support looked like what's long-term look like being

co-vocational working versus not like kind of what's your heart here um towards towards the church yeah so

early in 2018 um got opened the door for us to start a business i've been pouring concrete my

whole life we had talked about going into business for ourselves a lot but it was in 2018 it just

literally fell in my lap like i could not have planned this the way it happened i was unprepared

i'm struggling to find insurance and all the the tax stuff before i can start my first job because

they want me to start and i'm scrambling just trying to get everything caught up god god worked that out

and so uh and during the time of me praying in 2018 one was one of the things that that i was praying

was that this is what you have for me like if you want this this business to work then you have to do

it um there were some other things that we were praying for god if this is where if you want us in

beaver dam kentucky because i'd really like to come down there where you are jeff uh maybe not miami

exactly but you know down that direction uh god if this is where then you're gonna have to let this

stuff fall into place and i'm secretly praying that it doesn't like i don't want the business to go

you know take off i don't want some of the other things to fall in place because i want god to

i know a state overseer in florida let me go down there and pastor a church

um but god this is where he had me and so i realized that this is i'm here for a purpose i'm here for a

reason all this stuff happened and at the end of 2020 we really began to look at planting a church

going full-time in the church or uh closing the business or continuing the business and doing doing

both and uh god worked it out that we was able to partner with uh another business and we actually

merged our companies and he has been so gracious uh to really keep me out of the field and more in

the office and that allows me to be able to split my time between between work and always not every

week's like that but you know i can split my time between doing stuff for the church doing stuff for the

business um and then our our sending church um has been wonderful um he he has just gotten behind us

and like everybody else we still attend in fact we still lead worship for them um and uh they have

it's we don't even look at it kind of like them sending it just is that they're a partner they're

a partner church for us we help them they help us and uh we have been in this in ministry and the

pastor i know uh from the very first time i met him he did not know me he just uh really opened his arms

and welcomed me in there and he has been uh truly uh behind us and for us from day one and uh and so

on the denominational scale i talked to our denominational leader in the state and he said

that they were going to have a meeting about digital church to see if that's a real thing or not and i still

haven't heard the result of that meeting so so what what is a challenge what what's something

that you weren't expecting what what was the hurdle the surprise the gotcha um in this entire process

whether attached to stadia or not i'd love to know what's the thing that took you by surprise uh through

this experience you know for us we launched a couple of weeks ago and so you know we've we've

processed and and i i say that loosely because i look at honestly what chesley and chris are doing

and i'm like they launched they're just not telling anybody yet right like like chris has been doing

live he's been doing online church for a year so he keeps saying i'm gonna launch in september but

really he launched a year before i did um and chesley's already building the infrastructure and the

ministry and the teams and if if that if it's about equipping the saints for the work and ministry

chesley's already doing it so um so i would argue that they've they've launched even if they

don't want to officially say that they have but we have officially said that we have and i think the

one challenge that i didn't expect was that the church remains full of people just because you

started a new thing doesn't mean that you sort of summoned perfect saints out of nowhere who are as

driven as you are and share the same exact vision for the church the same moment that you have shared

it right like they're they're still like they're still attending you know people are still gonna attend

once a month even though you're doing it digitally even though you're doing this new thing and you

feel like this is revolutionary it's going to change the shape of the church and the future is going to

be different because of a product of what we're doing and we're fighting back evil in in sort of the

online world and we're bringing hope to people who don't know jesus and like i'm about all of those

things and i would have expected it physically for people to be like yeah i'm 40 in um and i have 100 in

people like i and you do you have 100 in people i thought i'd have 100 100 of 100 of people and

that's just not the case so the same things that you deal with in the physical church like you're

going to deal with here if you're if you're trying to escape lukewarm believers like there is a plethora

of them that are online they they all have a facebook account just the same as they can show up to your

church and so you know i i think that was a little shocking to me like i was a little taken aback and i was

like oh okay like this just takes longer right like we have to cast vision we have to invest in

people's lives we have to build a base we have to do all the things we would have done um and that's

okay like that's a that's an okay thing um it was just at first it was somewhat surprising to me you

know the same is going to be true people who come to faith for the first time you're going to be most

like zealous and passionate people who are also potentially the most reckless people for your

church to put in leadership that's going to be true physically it's going to be true so actually some of

the stuff that was the same between the physical and the digital church was surprising to me that's

some of the stuff that's caught me off guard other than that um there hasn't been a tremendous amount

of of things that have been like i didn't see that coming like you kind of look and you know what

questions you're going to get asked you know kind of some of the problems that you're going to

have i'll say this don't do what we did do not open up a public forum for spiritual questions that

allows anyone to answer because theological discussions are a dumpster fire in person they're two times a dumpster fire

online that was a mistake i will not make again that one that one also caught me i was like

people are genuine and incredible and and they're just going to come in here and they're going to

give really great responses and they're not going to be rude then then and my community was great but

the writing was on the wall it's like oh man like okay we gotta we gotta shut this down early on that

was the other point of surprise hey i want i want to have a conversation and actually let's do it now mark

um tell me the story of of the guy you've sent me the the feedback from the day of um i'm trying to

remember his name but honestly i'm i'm okay not saying it because i don't want to make it public but

talk to me a little bit about about the individual with uh the com the comment that you shared with me

sure i'll be quick with that but um basically we had a gentleman who joined one of my online

communities that revolves around the podcast that we do that we're using kind of missionally

um he goes by this green name majestic purple buffalo i won't give his real name i'll call him

majestic um he had kind of lurked in the community which in the online world the gaming world is kind

of like i'm here i'm reading stuff i'm present but i'm not posting so you can't see me um we invited

people to join our church he was going through a really hard time in life he was going through a

divorce he was going through a change in occupations covet screwed everything up he was at a really

desperate point and he decided to click on the link to come join our church community and through that in

week two he came to faith and this is a guy who'd never been to church in 10 he ended up in a church

in 10 years um grew up in the catholic church and uh had kind of walked away from it uh had very had

big problems with the church in general and yet he felt when he came to our online service he said this

is the first time i've been back in a church in in 10 years now that doesn't justify digital church in

and of itself it just shows that when people who have not been to church in 10 years show up to a digital

service they view themselves as attending church they don't view themselves as watching your stream

they view themselves as i have now been to church which is an important thing to take note of if

you're a physical church person because the non-believing world views themselves as having attended church

if they come to your online service then then after coming to faith you know we had a meetup

we talked about that he told me and that messaged me a couple days later said he prayed for the first time

literally just messaged me today and he said he had something exciting that was going on tonight

and he said i just didn't have anybody to tell i wanted to tell somebody so that there's a couple

things that happened there one he viewed our church as a church two he's returned to faith in jesus and he

wants to follow jesus which is incredible three we've developed a relationship in the past four weeks

that's deep enough that he would share something with me that he doesn't feel comfortable sharing

with any physical relationship all of those things paint a beautiful picture of why and that's not the

only story that lux has in the first three weeks of beautiful things happening it just paints a picture

of like hey this is why the digital stuff works well and it's if nothing else it also paints the picture

of hey we're not trying to compete with what's happening in the physical building we're trying to reach a

different person uh majestic purple buffalo let's call him magi for short uh evidently has not been in

a church building for 10 years because of something in his life uh and so without doing a different

stated as multimodal different types of churches for different types of people discipleship even looks

different contextually and so doing that reaching majestic purple buffalo i feel weird saying it but

reaching this guy in digital space um guess what probably wasn't happening in a physical space

anytime soon so by doing a different thing right literally this is an example of how we're reaching

a different type of person sorry that was a tangent it was a necessary tangent and something i definitely

wanted to squeeze in chesley chris uh the the the question at the core here is man what was

what's the hurdle what's the thing that surprised you uh with mark one of the examples was what's

similar and what's different with physical and digital like for for you guys what's been the surprise for

you uh in this process chris why don't you go next well this is kind of this has not been a bad surprise

we'll go a good surprise in this and that and she probably would hate me for saying this but i'm

i'm gonna say christy christy has really surprised me and stepped up um now we've always been partners in

ministry and we've always have worked together ever since even before we were married uh but uh she

steps up uh has stepped up and really has found found her place in this and uh her voice and uh

leads these studies if i'm out at work and so and kind of go back to the the whole you know support how

how can i run a business and do do things well i have have great support at home too um not that i've

never doubted her but some of the things that she has has done and has has agreed to do it's just

kind of been been a good surprise a great surprise one that i'm thankful for that um hurdles you know just

for me personally is just trying to find a balance between the work and the church and home

um in fact i had had a my i had a guy tell me the other day he's like he's i don't understand how

you do it he's you know you go to go to covenant we leave worship there on sunday mornings we do our

worship relate on sunday nights we go back to covenant on sunday nights uh we do all the he said you lead a

business you um do your morning devotions and you still spend time with your family he's like i don't

know how you do it all i'm like i don't know how i do it all either um but just the the balance just

trying to find that balance and uh and realizing that sometimes it's okay to step away from

everything and uh and just just relax in fact you know not to be too long but you know just the other

day like i just had that i left the stage singing you know we were singing a song uh the more i seek

you and it says i just want to sit at your feet um and i just i left the stage and i just went down and

knelt at the altar and prayed because i was tired and i was worn out and i just needed to sit and do

what the song said and so uh but i know that was probably a little longer interesting than you was

expecting but yeah just challenge for me it's been try to find the balance it's interesting what what

does a spouse look like at a digital only like a like a a pastor spouse or you know uh it's it's it's

unwritten you know i mean there's only a handful of them out there that that are active and so the

responsibilities the roles uh the ministry opportunities to me i think this is one of the

um unwritten opportunities right now looking at a digital church the role of the of the spouse to

kind of compliment in there or to lead out so chesley well kind of for you uh what's what's been one of

these uh hurdles or surprises for you i think the biggest surprise for me is that people didn't just

go and say yeah that's a good idea i don't know why i didn't have that idea my like i don't know why

i thought hey you know this is where kids are at gen z and millennials and young professionals and

then i'm like obviously we need to do this and it wasn't so obvious so for me i uh i was taken aback

when i uh really he's become a really support like huge supporter of what we're doing but the first

conversation i had with this person he's a pastor of a church uh in our organization and he's like well

should we do this he's like can you be the church in a digital space and i'm i'm like confused i i'm

like i don't i don't understand the question um and one of my good friends was like he's 37 he's a

a pastor in a church of ohio like he's like i don't i don't know man and then his uh one of his

leaders had to move two hours away she couldn't be a part of his church and i'm like but she can be

a part of mine so and now you know my friend's on the board but he still doesn't quite understand

digital and um one of the conversations i had was is digital relationships real relationships and

you know i'm like okay hey do you do you actually do like facetime or zoom or any of this with your

with your grandkids and they're like yeah i'm like far be it from me to go tell your grandkids that what

you're doing is not real relationship i'm like we need a better we need a better construct and a better

paradigm uh of what it means to be the church in a digital space i just i was taken aback by it and i

could either get bitter by it or we could actually start helping churches get better and so um i think

i think that was the biggest surprise and i think people are starting to see it but there's still a

lot of questions out there i just didn't i wasn't aware i just not thought hey this is the best option

you know you you would think well let's let's look at it this way and i and i think you guys phrased

it earlier it's gotten a lot easier and there is more support as as a result of the global

pandemic uh but i still think there are some questions out there and honestly what you guys

are doing by paving that road i mark i've told the story of majestic purple buffalo man if i said at

least 100 people that i'm not exaggerating it's probably even more than that uh because it it's the

example of why we are doing digital church planting it's the reason why it's you're not stealing from you're

you're not taking lazy people and putting them in you're reaching a different type of person that

the building that that strategy is is not able to reach uh and and so like to celebrate that to draw

attention to that and realize that that person thinks it's church they're not looking at it anything

a lost person at any different level then hey this is a church experience and my pastor actually gives

a darn about me and so some of that and seeing those relationships develop digitally and twitch and

facebook and in the social media networks and and the things that that we're doing um yeah let's we need

to do this more we need to help others pick up this this mantle and and run with it so hey let's let's do

this as as we're landing the plane um i'd love just maybe thoughts i want an encouraging word from each

of you there's somebody out there who's thinking about planting uh a digital church maybe it's a

co-vocational thing they want to balance that work life maybe they're doing literally what chesley's

doing where it's a launch large uh massive kind of strategy up front mark being more of a digital

missionary ask kind of doing things on on twitch and periscope like each of you have your different

nuances in your strategy and there's different people out there um just a closing word as we're

wrapping up and landing the plane here encouraging thought to somebody that's out there wanting to do

what you're doing who wants to go first jeff do you still use periscope did i say periscope you said

periscope what was it that you were on the other day that was like you were telling like it's like

the rotary phone of digital like back wait wait wait i'm honest to god i said periscope i will call

myself out publicly if i said that yeah you said what was i trying to say you're doing ministry on twitch

and periscope yeah i meant discord i apologize oh that's fine and discord just making sure you

weren't using it still on so many platforms for so many years yeah i can't seem to get anybody to

read i can't reach anybody on periscope you're the only one there that's it this is yeah touche

much love and then for the five actually what's funny is i still do broadcast on periscope when i do

everything else the five people out there who are watching on periscope ignore what these guys are

saying awesome we're gonna leave all this in the broadcast just just to make it fun we won't cut

that part out hey so i don't know who wants to go first uh somebody say something encouraging yeah

romans 10 14 who will hear if you don't preach like at the end of the day don't worry about all

the haters you know haters gonna hate and that's a great taylor swift song but you need to go preach

because god has wired you to do it so go do it well i'll just say a word of encouragement to chesley

and that is the taylor swift is also close to my heart um and then my word of encouragement for others

is that the digital church opens doors for a lot of people who never previous who who were given the

burden by the holy spirit to plan but have it just felt like they don't have the particular gifting

personality or skill set to do it the digital church in so many ways can remove or emphasize

the superstar personality right it but it i think that the the the challenge with it is that people

think it's it's only that right because they just think of people who've gone viral they see online

they think viral videos they think charlie bit my finger and what they don't realize is that the

digital church is relational at its core and you can actually do that in really powerful ways without

being the best communicator right without being the most charismatic leader um you can minister to

people digitally and start digital small groups bible studies and communities um even if you felt like

you didn't really have the skill set that it was going to take to plant a traditional church because

the traditional church is you have to draw draw a crowd in in the digital church you can kind of go to

the crowd and uh and mingle with the crowd and and and start conversations amongst the crowd and

there's so much of that that's really cool you know for me like my prayer my primary and only gifting in

ministry is communication that's the only thing i got i'm lucky that it's the swiss army knife of

ministry because i can do a little bit of everything with it but i'm not really good at anything else

so my church relies heavily on my gifting and communication um but that it doesn't need to be

the rule right like lux doesn't have to be the rule there is way more to explore in the digital space

the fact that king city and relate and lux are all three digital expressions of the church but they look

so different they look so different and they rely on completely different skill sets i never would

have dreamed of starting relate or starting king city and i have zero desire to start relate or king

city and i'm so thankful that chris and chesley do have that desire because god has called out unique

giftings in them in the digital space allows you to do that the world is so much bigger and you can find

that niche so much easier and that that is a really really big blessing i think of the digital church

if i had an encouragement to people like if you have felt called to ministry or felt called to plant

but didn't feel like you had the particular gifting set of craig rochelle you don't need it to be able

to get into digital ministry god will craft that around you and that's an amazing thing yeah so so true right

there uh so many different models so many different strategies even beyond these three like there there's

there there are different strategies beyond what these these guys are doing and so it's one of the

reasons why it's so fun kind of taking the posture of of learner uh from these man what are you doing

what makes it i met a guy the other day and i didn't know he existed he's been around three years

he essentially does micro church micro locations using zoom uh and he does like yeah it's like six

seven church services a week daily um like a church service day and he's basically creating micro

locations using zoom technology like this is phenomenal never would have thought of it um and it has

once again that too yeah and that has nothing to do with periscope either i just want to publicly say that

okay chris what what what how about how about for you what's what's an encouraging word from you

take the step um you don't have to know every step um when when god told abraham to go he didn't

tell him the whole step he said just go where i will show you uh when he was leading the children

of israel out of egypt they just followed the pillar of the cloud when it went they went when it stopped

they stopped just go as you begin to take the first step god will show you the next step and and

that's just from my personal life i know that you know as soon as we said we was going to start a

church and then a few months later it was no we're going to start a digital church and just watching

how god has transformed even from where we started doing ministry unofficially launched ministry um to

where we are now um and just taking the steps that god leads us um it's just a step by step so um

i'm one who will who who hesitates to start until i have everything laid out the one thing i've got

to learn is just trust in god and and just take the step he will show you the way just take the step

love it uh hey so we're going to land the plane this has been a great conversation um anytime i get

around talk digital only church planting especially guys that that have gone through this cohort really

excited about excited to see the stuff mark's doing honestly chris has probably already launched his

church three times still got to fine tune some things we're working on that but look excited to

see what what both he and and chesley are going to be coming out with um in the fall and beyond so

we're going to include contact information for them in the show notes feel free to dig in into that

uh but remember like when we're doing this digital church planting we're reaching a different type of

person uh and so for those of you out there who have this crazy idea that you're like oh this will

never work or you've been on a church staff where your lead pastor your executive pastor your

denominational contact somebody's looking at you and saying hey that's crazy no that's stupid no it

doesn't work that way um i'm here to tell you it may that may be right or let's talk about it and and

let's see what we can do i literally have conversations with crazy people every day and and it's

fascinating to me what was crazy maybe pre-covid is no longer crazy today so let's have some

conversations and and stadia we would love to talk about innovation to help mothers get aware of that

innovation and maybe find ways to help you plant a digital church so uh let's we'll wrap here for

chesley for mark for chris this is jeff with the church digital and stadia church planning thanks for

joining us here at the show we'll see you next time here at the pod you have a good day