BETA20: Rethinking Church Small Groups, Peloton Style (Clubhouse Edition)

Hey, we're going to get you to that podcast in one second, but before we get there, I,

Jeff Reed, the Church Digital, Stadia Church Planning, I wanted to have a conversation with

you, churches that are out there. One of the greatest things I arguably think that I've done

in my life, other than married and kids, okay, that aside, one of the greatest ministry things

I've ever done is this idea of the fidgetal learning communities that we are offering

through Stadia Church Planning. We want to help you. We want to help your church learn to thrive,

grow, and multiply fidgetally, physically, as well as digitally. We've seen about 200 churches go

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slash fidgetal. Stadiachurchplanning.org

slash fidgetal. P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L. All right. Hey, that's it. We're going to get you back to that

episode right now. Hey, welcome everybody to Clubhouse. Tom, you're welcome to hang out at

the speaker level. If you need to, you can go back down however you want to regulate yourself, man.

This is going to be a fun conversation either way, but we are, I, Jeff Reed, I'm excited to have you

here. So we are going to have a conversation here in context of small groups and how small groups

maybe needs to change or what it looks like moving forward. It's interesting. We have conversations

like this all the time here through the church digital, through stadiacchurchplanning, talking

with digital pastors, executive pastors, church leaders, trying to figure out how to be effective

in moving forward in physical space and digital space and everything in between. And so in a

conversation with Lee Cote recently, talking with some other churches, honestly, it just sprung up

in me this idea of, hey, we need to get some people together and kind of unpack this. So we'll get into it

a little bit, but at the core of it, it's, hey, let's rethink, what if we kind of paused? What if

we kind of restarted? What if we blew up this idea of small groups, physical small groups, digital

small groups, just the whole thing in general, and kind of revisited this concept. So we are recording

this conversation. I want to say this up front. This is on Clubhouse. I don't know about you, but there

are people that love Clubhouse. I'm among them. But there are people that can't stand Clubhouse

because they can't get on it because they're on an Android device, or they're not able to jump in

this. They have FOMO. They're not able to engage it in real time. And so they want to have it. We

distribute it on the Church Digital Podcast. There's links to it in my bio, and we also distribute it in

other ways on social media. And so we want to enable this conversation to go well beyond the 20-some

people that are in this room right now. But at some point in this, I'm very big on conversation.

So we want to hear from the audience. If you've got questions, raise your hand, so to speak, within

the platform. We'll bring you up, even if there's thoughts on this. I want this to be an open dialogue,

not so much like the three of us, the four of us kind of monologuing towards it. So at some point,

we'll open it up and be more aggressive towards Q&A. But I want to do this, just even to introduce

the room real quick. Andy Mage is in. He is a digital pastor with, oh my gosh, I just blanked on the

church, Bay Hope Church in Tampa, St. Pete, somewhere in that area, right?

Yeah, Tampa, Florida. Awesome. And so he's been a friend. I've done online Bible studies with him,

and he's been one of my go-to guys for a while now, even just dreaming about what digital church

could be pre-COVID, not even recognizing, oh my gosh, all this COVID has turned all this stuff into

a crazy reality. Also in this is Stan. So Stan Roda. Roda or Roda? How do I pronounce that?

Roda. Roda. This is the awkward part of having friends on social media. You actually don't know

how to pronounce last names and stuff like that because it never comes up. But Stan has been,

is on staff at New Life Church in the D.C. area and has been really a voice, and I don't know that I

want to give him credit for this, but towards my co-church, towards discipleship, towards

disciple-making, and really been one of those voices that I've listened to and even repeating

in some areas as is helpful. And so if we're really talking about reimagining groups, Stan is one of

these guys that I'm like, hey man, Stan, I'd love to have you come in and share some insight towards

this. And then there's Lee Coat, who is executive pastor at the Crossings in Las Vegas, is part of

a church consulting group called Gromentum. And just one of these voices, honestly, that when he speaks,

he speaks, let's just be honest, like in a physical world, the guy was thinking digital.

As things pivoted, physical and digital, as the church was dealing with this COVID thing, Lee was

one of the voices of church leaders that were leaning very hard towards a digital space. And even in how

he was consulting and coaching other churches, it was a surprise to me to hear guys like Lee with the

credibility that they had in the physical ministry really pivoting towards a digital. So when Lee's

like, and I said this earlier, I know some other people have walked in, I was in a coaching call

with Lee, several other of the stadia, people were there and other churches were there, I asked Lee to come

in and speak on a topic. And Lee almost at a throwaway thought was talking about, man, what if we like

threw away the whole small group model and started from scratch. So I want to hand it over to Lee to start

this thing off. I've been talking a lot, I'm going to shut up for a while. Lee, kind of set the stage here as we're

talking about what maybe small groups is, where the weak spots are, and maybe why it needs to blow up,

why it needs to change, why we need to maybe look at this towards starting over. What are you thinking?

Kind of relive that conversation.

You really want to know that, Jeff? That's great.

Jeff, first of all, thanks everybody for being here. And Jeff, thanks for putting this together and Andy

and Stan. And yeah, I think just to piggyback on Jeff and maybe start the conversation, it has struck me

in both my conversations in leadership here at the Crossing in Las Vegas, I'm having with church leaders

across the country. Jeff, with this idea that engagement is this on our team here and conversations,

and you got caught in the middle of them when you invited me in. It sort of began to morph for me into,

and reading Adam Grant's Think Again book, which is very challenging and very timely for

the season back and go, what are the things that we are going to recreations of the old and results?

To think again about and recreate in a way that would reach the objective of not just engagement,

but we believe in the church that we are attempting to do an engagement towards discipleship and someone

growing in Christ and growing in community with others who are like-minded and doing the same thing,

right? So that's where the Peloton thing came up, and you included that in the title. I don't know how

many people on here have a Peloton. It's kind of a cult, and I'm part of it, and I'm not in denial

about that. It's fantastic. And so part of this conversation came out of us going,

what is it that Peloton has captured that makes people get up at 5 a.m. to join a ride with an

instructor they've never met, and hundreds if not thousands of people from around the world, and to

high-five people digitally, and to race people digitally, and to participate with the objective

of health and fitness in something virtually like that? And what is it about that and that experience

and that motivation where we can't get people to show up once or twice a month to somebody's living room

for 60 minutes for something that we believe is really important? And so I started digging in

personally and with my team to, what is it about this methodology? Is small groups now the old Sunday

school, right? Where most of us would say, yeah, Sunday school is kind of a dinosaur. I'm starting to

quickly becoming the Sunday school of the last generation.

It's in charge, right? Like, has so many churches that are running Sunday school.

But the model is there for people, right?

Exactly. But there's this goal and this challenge, I think, even coming out of COVID,

of maybe we need to challenge our people, our individuals to do more, and to be more.

Yeah. Here's where we are wrestling, even this morning, Jeff, in context here,

is the objective of what all the guys listening on this call, all the leaders on this call would say

is we want people to grow spiritually, spiritual disciplines to develop in their life, connection

to Christ, all that. And we would use whatever method of life groups, small groups, cell groups

that we would do to try to make that possible. Here's where we have to admit that in some ways it's

breaking down. One, we are combining a content space with a community space and trying to accomplish both.

So, most small group models, there's a content element and there's a bonding community and maybe

even a care element that goes along with that, all three of which are very good. They're excellent.

But at the same time, you begin to wonder like, can a small group of eight to 10 people sitting

in a living room, can I legitimately stand on my platform or on our social media platforms

and push people into a small group and go, listen, if you go to this environment, this is going to

resolve. Because I can get on the Peloton and if I get on the Peloton every day and I ride for 30 or 45

minutes, I may not lose weight or become an athlete, but I'm going to be physically in better shape.

There's no way around it. It's going to happen, right? And so, I'm just concerned that we have said over

and over again to our people, go do this. But if we were honest, even those that are going and doing

it, the amount of what we say is going to be accomplished in their life is a much smaller

percentage than we would probably even want to know. So, we just turn up the music on the engine that's

that's rattling and keep doing the same thing. And so, we're like, we're not going to turn the

music up anymore. We're going to try to figure out how to change that.

That's beautiful. Turn up the music, crank up in your AirPods and start living a Peloton life.

Hey, let's hand it over Andy Stan. I would love some insight. Is this resonating with you? I don't

know about the Peloton thing. I don't have one, but I know kind of that passion and it

activating people and kind of getting them moving towards that. Have you seen that in small groups?

Do you think we need to pivot as well? What's your kind of observations towards that? Andy,

why don't you get started on your side? Yeah. Actually, it's funny that we're kind of having

these conversations and thoughts kind of across the country, Lee. I think we're not the only ones.

I think there's many, many, many other people that are thinking the same thing. I actually wrote a blog

and gave it to Jeff, what, three or four weeks ago. It had to be three or four weeks ago about this

concept of our small groups were not working. This is me seeing this on the front lines during COVID,

but even before COVID. I was a worship pastor for 10 years and then I got called to be a digital

pastor. And so I was a digital pastor for about eight months before COVID started, which was kind

of fortuitous that our church had foresight to say, hey, we need to do this thing. And so in that,

even in the eight months prior to COVID, it was trying to get a group up off the ground was just,

it wasn't working. And something about the, it wasn't necessarily the content. Like Lee said,

we were, we were trying to jam the content and the community into the same space. And you know,

you're, you're, you're, you're, it's almost like this weird dichotomy that happens in the human head

when they're trying to do two separate things at the same time. So during COVID, it got even worse.

All of our existing groups obviously were trying to figure out Zoom and figure out FaceTime and figure

out Google Hangouts and just nobody knew what a mute button was. Inevitably, somebody's kid had their

shirt off and was walking around in the background. And like, you heard my dog earlier barking and just,

you know, all that stuff happens when you get eight to 12 people on a call. And so I,

I grew up a gamer, um, a pretty competitive gamer. I actually played, uh, for those nerds out there

that are listening, I played, uh, Halo one and Halo two competitively in tournaments and we won money

and all sorts of stuff. And it was great. But, but, but the core of that was there was three to four

people all the time. And we had a team of four people and myself included. So three other people

on a, what was essentially a Skype call at the time, uh, over Microsoft, uh, the Microsoft live servers.

And we are, our team actually came up. This is back in 2006, 2007. We would start our training sessions,

quote unquote, and this is super nerdy. So just forgive me everybody out there, but we would start

our training sessions with about 30 minutes of prayer and Bible study. And mind you, I'd never,

I'd never met these guys. Like they were, we literally would play virtual tournaments. So, uh,

one guy was in Albuquerque and the guy was in my old hometown up in, uh, up in Michigan and another

guy was in New Jersey. And so we would just do Bible studies. And I knew more about their life.

Uh, I knew more about them. I knew more about where their trajectories were and all of that other

stuff through that 30 minute Bible study. And then of course, you know, you go try to figure out

headshots and strategies and capture the flag and all the other nerdy stuff happening. But,

but the core of it was I was learning about those people and there wasn't the distraction of another

four to six people. And so my thinking, Lee, and, and, and you're, you're, I think that you have the

broad strokes. I was actually just trying to do a little bit of triage in, uh, the digital pastor

realm, kind of in the 3000 plus people I'm trying to minister to on a, on a daily basis. And I said,

what if we didn't do the eight to 12 kind of, you know, right now media type thing,

not saying it's bad, but what if we instead tried to get two to three, maybe four people,

same sex, or maybe one or two couple type thing. Let's get more intense about the actual community

thing. Cause the content, the content's going to happen. I mean, we, you know, God gave us 66 books

of the Bible for content, um, plus all of the other stuff, stuff around it. Let's actually concentrate

on the community. And so that, that was kind of our path. And I'm, and again, it's kind of funny

that we're all thinking about this right now. I think, uh, a year on in COVID we're, we're

technically a year on from everything just basically shutting down in the Western world.

And we've learned so much and yet we've learned nothing at all.

That hurts. We've learned so much yet we've learned nothing at all, you know? And so Stan,

I want to ask you like you, you're a, you're a discipleship, a disciple making guy. When I'm

looking at people that are aggressive in the discipleship space, you're one of those. You're

one of those voices through the things that, that you're, you're, you're working towards. So the idea

of, of not content, but focusing more in deeper relationships, I would imagine the idea of even

a smaller group gathering together. This is going to resonate with you, right? What are you thinking?

Um, yeah, so I'm probably the, uh, I'm probably the oddball in the group since I don't spend a whole

lot of time. I mean, I have a little bit of connection to the digital and all that kind

of stuff, but man, I, I think my, my perspective really does kind of begin from, can we just,

can we start with kind of the end in mind? Like what, what's the hope out of small groups? What's

the hope out of digital engagement, online engagement? Like what's ultimately the hope is

the, is the hope or is the win at the end of the day that, that there's more community, that people,

that we know each other, that we, you know, kind of have that kind of rhythm.

Someone is kind of walking in the, the shepherd and following, he lands squarely on the show.

And I learn from other people who probably have much smarter things to say than me, but what can I

learn about digital as a tool for, um, for disciple making specifically, not so much about like the

arenas of church. I kind of feel like, you know, the Sunday morning celebration is one arena,

the corporation, the body of Christ is kind of an arena. The, the community is an arena, the,

like, there's these different kinds of aspects to it, but ultimately all of these things are

supposed to be pointed squarely at go and make disciples. So I'm coming from a disciple maker

background saying, how do I get people who I'm engaging with either online via zoom? Cause I do

a ton of my training now via zoom. How do I get those people on zoom? Not just, how do I get to

a place where I don't just know what they're doing and about their life, but how do I develop that into

a long-term relationship where we're walking in steps of obedience together and they're actually

reaching people as well. So I guess part of my question with it is I'm, I feel like I'm partly

here to learn, but, um, I think beginning with the end in mind is a really important, uh, concept here

for us. What's the, is it just engagement? Is it just community or how are we taking this to the next

level and helping people hear the voice of Christ in those relationships, in those spaces,

and then walking in obedience? That's kind of what I'm processing.

Yeah. I love that. And let's, let's open that up. By the way, I don't, I don't know that I'm

necessarily suggesting a digital only approach. Um, I actually think that there's things in the

physical realm that, that we need to be addressing and revisiting in there, but, um, and let's,

let's open it up, Lee, you know, uh, Andy, I would love you guys inside on this, the, the end game.

What, what are we as a church? What are we expecting? What, what is our desire to what,

what's the finish line? What's the goal of our, of these new groups? Where are we, where are we

wanting them to take the, the attenders, the, the members that the people who are in the groups?

Well, and I think to stand, I appreciate what you said. I think partly why, why I'm using Peloton,

and I promise not to keep saying it for those of you that resent Peloton, but part of why I keep

saying it is because unfortunately in the church, we have a prime example of an organization that

probably both intentionally and accidentally has figured out how to leverage human behavior

in a way that is both beneficial for the, for the end user. And, and so it's like, where I feel

like sometimes to Stan's point, we don't understand. So we get caught up in the minutia of, for example,

so for example, it's like we, we would count and they watched an Andy Stanley DVD and they had a

conversation. We'd go, man, we count that. And I'm asking the deeper questions of, are we towards our end

objectives, right? Because we had a day long year, two days ago, which sparked even more of a number of

things that came out. But when, as far as attendance, including our online, like we're, we're, we're at

either pre COVID levels or even above, which would have been the typical pre COVID indicator of, or at

least what we, uh, church endeavor, but when we, elements that we would consider at least indicators

of engagement, right? You can't mitigate engagement. It was, it was, uh, that when I ran them to soak

it up, um, it, it was shocking when we started looking at things like, you know, are people giving,

are they connecting, are they serving, are they, are they influencing people outside of the church and

their neighbor and their neighborhoods. And when the data told us that on a larger scale, that was not

happening. Um, but, but people were still showing up and people were still giving. So we could just keep

going forward like that. Um, but we're, we're asking the question, what are we really trying to

accomplish and what are some, what are some new methodologies using the virtual, uh, tools that we

have that we can start. So we've begun some preliminary conversations and some beta stuff that's starting to

happen towards that. Um, and we're, our plan right now is not even to blow up our life groups as they

are, but we believe there's some things we can roll out that will run alongside those that will either

eventually bring life to those or we'll give them a, uh, necessary funeral. And so that's the type of

stuff that we're talking about right now. And what we're doing, I mean, I'll throw this out there, Jeff, and then

I'll, I'll be quiet. But what we're doing is we're having conversations around separating content from

the community aspect of groups to, to, to, to strategically look at those as two, they, they

integrate, but it's two separate paths of engagement and spiritual growth with people and try to figure

out how do we do, what do we do the, how do we provide content and provide life change through

that content at the best possible ways with the best possible delivery systems to people. And then

separately, how do we bring people together in community as they need it without being, you know,

the church that, you know, we don't want to, we don't believe our primary goal is to help people make

friends, but how do we bring people at similar life places together so that they can do life together,

care for each other. And then the content stuff that they're learning will leak into that.

But we're starting to have conversations around not trying to accomplish all of that in the same,

in the same sphere.

Awesome. Hey, clarify for me. I mean, just like define content and define community for me. Devil's

into details, so to speak. Yeah, I get it. Like, what is that?

Yeah, I would say in a typical small group model, life group model, right? And we would even have said

this, we probably still would say this, like, how do you define a small group? And we would define it

by it's a group of people that meet on a, on some kind of definable regular basis, and they have some

sort of biblical content that is a part of it. So when I'm saying content in our context,

it's, you know, our typical small group will meet in a living room or in some space, coffee shop,

they will have some degree of community, pray for each other, and they will have some degree of

biblical teaching or biblical study that will go alongside of that. And I'm not, I hope people,

I'm not against any of that. What I'm saying is how do we do that better? And maybe they don't all need

to happen in the same, in that same space at the same time. Andy, Stan, what are you thinking about

that? Any response? Well, see, I, I view all of this, Lee, and I, I really appreciate your view. I view

all of this through, obviously my vocational perspective, and that's strictly digital,

for us, for, for, for a digital model to work in this aspect. So let me, let me also back up real

quick. I owned a CrossFit gym. It was a faith-based nonprofit CrossFit gym, but I started it and did all

that for about two years with my wife. And then we really didn't make any money on it. So, so we had

to kind of, you know, let it go. But, um, the whole point of it was let's leverage that community that

is in those fitness, the fitness realm. Uh, and this was, you know, four or five years ago.

And so we saw great strides. And so lead to your point of Peloton, I think there's a shared struggle

in that. Um, and I think there's a, a definite band of brothers mentality, even if it's, you know,

um, um, multi-gender, you know, it doesn't matter what it is. There's a shared sense of struggle.

So how, and this could be a, this is a rabbit hole that we could go down if we wanted to, but

how do you get that shared sense of struggle in a small group, uh, other than, you know, I, I don't

know, I don't know how to do that, but in the online, in the online sphere, in the online world,

the eight to 12 just doesn't work. Um, it's just, it's too many voices. It's too, there's just

always some sort of delay. Uh, there's always some sort of something. And so we have found,

and I have found, uh, making it smaller is the way to accurately and, and adequately

serve the needs of everybody in that group. Pretty simple for us.

Stan, how do you, how do you get this in, in a, in a physical environment? I know through

the disciple making and ignore that maybe the digital context, but you know, at the heart of this,

and Lee, I want to come back later and talk more about even to the point of how do we,

activate these people, but like in a, in a house church and in those environments, you're,

you're really staying active towards re mobilizing and releasing people, training people, discipling

people. That's, that's in these, these smaller environments, right?

I mean, yeah, it absolutely can be. Um, I, I mean, I'm sitting here listening and I, I love what I'm,

I love what I'm hearing. I love the, I love the idea of taking the, the tools that are available,

all of these pieces that are available to us through technology and all this stuff. Like I love

all of it, but I guess for me, I'm still coming back and just wrestling with what I'll end up reading

in a Barna research study, you know, in five years, right? Like I I've stood up and preached,

I don't know how many hundreds of sermons over 20 years of ministry. And I've, you know, quoted the,

the statements about how the church is losing the culture war and people are leaving the church in

droves and 75% of high school students, when they go to college, they leave the church. And like, I,

I mean, I remember some of these quotes and those numbers may have changed and whatnot.

My, my thing is, is still just trying to get back to the basic of like, how do we take

each of these elements here and get people moving more toward, more toward movement rather than

kind of to what Lee was saying, I guess, coming in for community and, and content. So like when Lee was

talking, my head went to the way we structure, the way I train and structure all of our small group

leaders, my house church leaders, um, I, I give them a process. It's a seven step format. It's, it's a tool

called three thirds, but the whole point of it is not to deliver content. The whole point of it

is to kind of walk through a little bit of community, a little bit of content, but the way I train it for

our people, whether they're meeting in person in a living room, whether they're meeting on someone's

driveway, whether they're meeting in a cigar lounge, whether they're meeting via zoom, it doesn't

really matter. The formatting of the group leads toward some kind of a step of obedience and goal

setting for each person that's a part of it. So everybody's taking steps forward in obedience and

surrender, um, to, to Jesus. And so that's, that's, it really doesn't matter to me what the format is.

I want to try to take advantage of all of the tools and use them to the best of my ability,

but to get to that point, because like we're talking about, I think small groups and Lee

said it way better than I would have. Small groups are kind of becoming the,

the Sunday school of the 2010, 2020s kind of a thing. Like it's starting to, it feels like it's

not really relevant. Almost in Northern Virginia, we deal with people who have

three and four hour commutes a day. And we were saying that their discipleship next step was a

small group. So I've got guys in the Pentagon, White House, NRO, whatever, you know, leaving home

at five or 6am, coming home at seven or eight at night, or being gone for two weeks on a secret

service mission or whatever. And then they're hearing from their church, well, you got to get in this small

group every Tuesday night for two hours to be. And so then there was this feeling of guilt building up.

And I don't know if I can fit here. So we were at the place of scrapping groups as well. Just kind of

like, what do we do? So for me, all of it just comes back to, let's get these things formatted,

whether we're using Zoom, whether we're using Clubhouse, whether we're using, you know, a meeting

in a driveway, whatever it is, let's, let's just format it more toward obedience and goal setting to

try to move, to try to take some kingdom territory, rather than kind of riding on the heels of like,

oh, well, this is the latest trend. The church has to jump on it because this is the new thing.

And then a year or two later going, oh, it wasn't the thing. Let's go back to the drawing board.

Well, why did we lose a whole generation of people kind of a thing? So maybe, maybe my cynicism is

coming out a little bit, but I I'm really just all about how do we get people to take a step of

obedience? Oh, I don't, I don't think it's cynicism. I think it's, it's, um, and this again, so again,

I'm a digital guy. So go with me real quick, but there's a, the eight to 12 model again, not to bash it.

It, there's a, it feels very cumbersome. It feels very weighty. It feels very much, um,

like the, the, you know, the old, um, church adages, you know, churches are a cruise ship and

takes a mile to turn a cruise ship and all that. And you can't turn it too fast or everybody flies

off. And like, that feels very antiquated because our culture, none of our culture is like that

anymore, uh, as shown through COVID. I mean, how many people transitioned to going to school online

within a week and, you know, working from home within a week, you know, it's the eight to 12

small group model feels very cumbersome. Whereas we need something agile, a little more, um, uh, less

burdensome, a little bit more, uh, uh, able to kind of, I, I, I failed to think of the word, but almost

like a, a quick response team. Andy, as you were talking about that, um, I was thinking about what,

what makes the power of the shared experience within, within the cycle world. And, and again,

circling back to that again, and, and what are the learnings there as you were saying that,

and it's like what they're, what they're doing is there again, they're understanding what they're

trying to accomplish and they're putting the best people on it. Right. So part of what the secret to

a Peloton experience or, or other places is they're finding the best, uh, spin instructors in the world,

right. With a variety of backgrounds, a variety of styles, and they are offering them at your

convenience across the board. Right. So you can, you can tap into the best anytime that works for you

and accomplish something that they're telling you and you believe is very important. Right. And so the

virtual aspect of that obviously fast forwards that for the church, if we can start to get our minds

around, everything doesn't have to be physical. That's step number one. And then step number two

is figuring out, are we comfortable putting less than, uh, productive content in front of people

and calling that. Okay. Because the, the, the model is what we care more about than actually

the data. I would challenge people that are on this call that if they really haven't dug into

their data. And again, I'm not a data person and people that work with me know that, but if you start

to dig into your data and you start to really run numbers around the things that you're trying to

accomplish, my gut would tell me, and if it doesn't scare you and you're like, we're killing it, please

reach out to me. Cause I want to know what you're doing. But my gut would tell me that you're going

to be shocked at what those numbers tell you. Um, and I think those numbers are reasonable to, to Andy's

point of, I think it was Andy who said, you know, we're, we're also asking people to do a multitude and a

multiple of stuff who have very little margin in my life. I told somebody yesterday, the people that

have enough margin in their life to do all the things that we as a church sometimes point them

to actually scare me, right? Like who, who has that margin? Who has that, that freedom? Who, who,

you know, and maybe their priorities are messed up. I mean, it's like, you know, there's only, you know,

168 hours in the week, you know, and if you, if you have a normal life and family and maybe a spouse

and all those things and a, and a, and some sort of a career, you know, we've said this before in

the church, but we have a slice there. And so how do we leverage that? So we're starting to have

conversations around how do we get those objectives in front of people in ways that they can opt in

and grab ahold of it as frequently and often as possible and, and do it in a way that actually

is accomplishing things. Cause the other conversation we're having is actually, and this is going to

surprise some of you, we're looking at models that actually promote scarcity. In other words,

how do we, how do we, how do we present a level of scarcity around content specifically that people

have to opt in now and they have to get it now and they have to choose it now versus, you know,

just a content dump that has no value whatsoever, you know? And so that's why Peloton does live rides.

I've only done like two of them, but the point is that they do it because it creates that level of

urgency with people. I want to be part of that community. So I bookmarked to do that. And so

anyway, there's some of that, that I believe if somebody will dig in and try to innovate around

that, I'm sure there'll be a lot of failures in that process, but coming out the other side,

it's going to be, there's going to be some amazing stories of how we tapped in. Cause I know,

you know, I'm a middle-aged guy and a lot of my friends that I hang out with, play golf with and go

eat with, they aren't doing a lot of the things that I'm standing on stage telling everybody in my

congregation to do, and they're not going to do it in the way that we're modeling it. So I'm personally

convicted to solve that. That's great. Yeah. I mean, you, you feel that, right? If you're doing,

there's always this tension between live and on demand. The reason why you want to do things live,

this may be getting in some into the weekend service, but live is going to give you more ability

to have a shared experience simultaneously with more people, which gives you the opportunity to create

community. And so live experiences for the most part are going to give you more people to build a

community around. Whereas if you do things on demand, make it readily available, that's not giving you the

shared community. You've got two people watching at 4am on a Tuesday morning. Like you're not going to

create community around those two people at 4am. Now, traditionally, we actually see that on demand

gives you more reach. It gives you more eyeballs. And so you've got more consumers of the product,

but maybe not necessarily more people being activated, more people being sent out,

more people making it, you know, online to offline. The gospel we hear in the online world has to

influence our offline relationships, releasing these people and getting them not just consuming a product,

but doing some things in the physical realm. Stan, I want to come back to you. And you were the one I think

that was dealing with, you know, in Washington DC, the Secret Service, the guy who's way too busy,

working 5am to 8pm, and he needs to be dad, he needs to be husband. And so you don't want to overtax him,

and you don't want that guy to feel guilty, because of, you know, there's 27 things that he needs to do as a

Christian, in context of the church. And so you're, you're reimagining some things, I would imagine.

You're reprioritizing, maybe what it means to be. And so I'm walking through that mind space a little

bit. Okay, what does it mean? Like, how did you reprioritize some things? What did you value over

over others? Maybe what was some of the decision process? How did you get from, you know, maybe a

buffet of options down to more of a leaner approach in your church?

Yeah, so, sort of to what I mentioned a little bit ago, you know, we started really with the end

in mind, we wanted to define a disciple, we wanted to have a really clear picture of,

at the end of the day, if you went through a small group, if you went through an online service,

if you were on a zoom call, no matter what it was, we knew exactly what we believed you were

supposed to look like, if you're following Jesus. So we cheated, we did not do the creative church

approach, mission of a disciple to be super trendy, we just stole it right from Jesus and John 1027,

my sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. So we started to define a disciple,

a new life of somebody who hears the voice of the shepherd and follows, or hears the voice of God,

we basically reverse said, okay, when a live stream Sunday mornings, zoom, Bible studies,

men's groups, whatever, it didn't matter to us, we wanted to use the tools effectively.

But at the end of the day, we wanted to say, what does that disciple look like? Let's break it down.

So we broke it down this way, somebody who is hearing the voice of the shepherd is a follower

or a disciple of Jesus, who hears God's voice through scripture, and can communicate back to God

through prayer. So we said, one of the two of the skills we want every disciple to have, we want every

disciple to know how to read the Bible, and how to pray. And then I started implementing a lot of that

in my training through 4Gen, but we went to the next level, what did it look like to actually obey God,

we started talking in terms of engaging the mission of God. So at that point, we said,

we know that part of the mission of God is, well, it's the Great Commission, it's go and share the

gospel. So we broke down the gospel, we have some tools that we use and have developed to help people

share the gospel. But we also, I look at John 9, the story of the blind man. He has the most powerful

13 word story ever told. He says, I don't really know if Jesus was a sinner or not. All I know,

I was blind, now I see. So we started training people how to tell their story. We've done these trainings on

Zoom, we've done them on, we've had some of these conversations, I think, even on places like Clubhouse.

We've done in-home things, we've done some of these things from stage, blah, blah, blah. So boil all that

down. We said, a disciple hears the voice of Jesus and follows, here's the voice of God and obeys.

Every disciple of Jesus must be able to do these four things. And when I train it through Fortune, I say,

imagine the transformation in your church's disciple-making efforts. If 100% of the believers

in your church all know how to read their Bible, how to pray, and through that they know how to hear

the voice of God, to discern the will of God for their life, what step of obedience they should take.

And every single disciple can share their story of how God is changing their life,

I was blind, now I see, and share the gospel with anybody at any time. Would that transform

your city, your church, your community, your neighborhood? And so for us, all of these tools

became super helpful to say, let's get this stuff out there in about as many ways as we

possibly can. But every single one of them needs to point to these core foundational things to help a

disciple of Jesus hear the voice of God and obey through these four specific practices. That's where

we landed. So we just tried to simplify everything we did to those four things. Those are the things I

do most of my training in through 4Gen. We pointed everything we had right at that and then went from

there, but we've used physical, digital, all the stuff to point directly at those four practices.

Yeah, I mean, that was rich, that was thorough, but there's a lot there. And it's really,

it's funny, and I didn't know, really, we were going to get to this place, but there's a tension,

I think sometimes between, and Stan, I don't know if this is language with you through 4Gen, but like

knowledge-based discipleship and this idea of obedience-based discipleship, where sometimes it's,

sometimes our churches, we're educating people in mass, but we're not exactly seeing where they're

living it out in their life, where they're not being the obedience to Christ. They're not living out the

Great Commission. They have the knowledge of that, but they're not feeling it towards the obedience

point. But some of the stuff that you're talking about really gets more towards, you know, the heart

of activating these people, getting them out, giving them personal mission, helping them realize what

God's called them to do. And then as a church, more releasing them out to do that. Maybe it's not,

hey, getting that high-level volunteer to be a guest services person, greeting, you know, as they're

coming into the building, maybe instead it's something about engaging missionally within the

communities, or maybe even being the church more in a, in a digital or a physical environment. Like,

have you seen people respond well to that? Like, as people do, are they receptive? Are they

hesitant to kind of embrace into that idea? No, I mean, we, we definitely have stories of people

trying to embrace into that. Tom, who was on here a little while ago, he's got, you know, a team of

people of like chat hosts and people engaging online who love that process or connecting with people

online, trying to touch base with them during the week, trying to make those conversations happen.

We've got, um, people who are taking full advantage of God's uniquely positioned me somewhere. So we've

got a guy who's trying to do all of his disciple-making efforts in a, in a prison. We've got, you know,

I've got a guy who's using his entire three or 400 person business network to try to disciple. He's

baptized, I don't know, people down to like the fourth generation. I, I think, I think Christians are

hungry for an adventure and meaning and purpose. And I don't, I do not mean this to sound harsh or

negative, but not just kind of come back next week for the next step and how to whatever, like

they're, they're really hungry for this experience of, of God. And my preacher side comes out, Jeff,

I'm sorry. When I start talking about this, I start preaching and it all comes out of my mouth and it

gets messy, but I absolutely think we have people engaging that online in their homes, wherever,

because they want, they want it. And I think we maybe for years have undersold people on the,

the adventure of following Jesus at that level. But anyway, I'll stop preaching.

Oh, I mean, the, the heart of what you're talking about really is, is some of my motivation behind

saying it. And I would love feedback because I'm perfectly willing to be wrong. But when I talk

about, Hey, maybe we should blow up small groups like this model and start over. The reason, one of my

motivations behind that is I, I don't see small groups necessarily being that, that great commission

commission vehicle to get people outside, you know, Lee, I'm, I'm pretty sure you guys at, at, uh, at the

crossings have used the word activator. Like I do the podcast or, or through one of the times we've

talked, I just, I remember you guys have, have used that term activating people within the church,

right? Like is that was you, right? Like, what does that look like? What does activating look like

there, there at the cross?

Yeah. We, we use the term, um, in a practical way, Jeff, like people on the call in, you know,

dream team, uh, owners, you know, whatever term we would use in a practical way, obviously we've

got t-shirts that say activators. So it's a thing, right? So, um, but what we mean by that is what

we're now defining as kind of full, a fully engaged individual, right? Where they're fully engaged

in what's going on. I think the challenge that we're also wrestling with is even with that activator,

love the idea of that, right? That shows ownership. There's a church community element that I believe

is important. Um, you know, but I think we're wrestling with that as well. Like, you know,

what qualifies somebody to be in that, uh, to, to be considered in that group circle, whatever you want

to define it. And, you know, is that actually something that we are comfortable applauding at

this point? Um, or is there elements of that, that we're like, we got to rethink that a little

bit. Um, and so I think in a purest form, we're looking at activation or activator as someone who

is, who is, who is, who is, who is evidencing the, the elements of what a life on mission would look

like. They're living a life on mission and like influencing others. They're giving, they're

serving, they're connected to each other. And you would say that like, I know gathering is still a

thing, right? It's just where we're at. And I think that would be the same in the activator realm for us

here at the crossing and having some more conversations around, you know, how do we do

that? Cause we've treated that as the group that we want to kind of give much more of an insider

load ideas. And so we want to make sure that that continues to be, what's going to really be

important is for us to figure out how do we now can be key leaders to our activators.

Activators really is that opportunity to multiply, to create new community, to, to get that person to,

uh, to share Christ, to be able to bring others into the faith where it's not just growing in context

of what's happening in a, in a large service, you know, event-based evangelism may be questionable,

maybe iffy kind of moving forward if it wasn't even pre-COVID. Uh, but now seeing some of those

people being released and be able to create new expressions. You know, one of the things that we

talk about with Stadia is, uh, is multi, we're using a new word. We were one of the first to use

digital church. That's awesome. And so for us, the new word we're creating here is this idea of,

of multimodal. It's, it's churches that are doing different models of church. They're being the

church in different shapes. And so an established church that's, that's doing a church in virtual

reality, or that's releasing people and doing workplace ministry or creating a micro church or

a micro location network as well. You know, I think you need different models to reach different types

of people. And, and I actually, I think coming out of this, the physical approach is going to have

limitations and we're going to need to be more organic with some of these approaches. And that's

why I love this idea of, of utilizing the groups to equip people to do things even outside of what

the physical church space is. And that may be a radical approach, uh, but I think it's one that's

going to be necessary. That's going to help our, our, our groups have purpose, maybe even beyond what

it's typically done in creating just a, a small community, giving those people purpose, maybe even

beyond that quarterly service project, the church asks them to do. I mean, just even today, I was

talking with, uh, uh, a pastor of a church that we work with the stadia. And he was telling me that

they they've abandoned this idea of, uh, of small groups and for them, they call them impact groups

where, where they're challenging all their small groups to have, um, service impact within the

community. And there's this one particular group, and this is 100% volunteer led. They've adopted,

uh, the local, um, uh, firefighter station, uh, to the point where the firefighters, the head,

whatever they call the head guy at the fire fires, uh, says, Hey, you know what we need? We need a

chaplain. We would love to have somebody that could, could shepherd the 25 people that operate this

fire station. Would any of you like to do that? And so there's a volunteer who is now the quote

unquote shepherd, pastor, firefighter, chaplain doing ministry in this area. And they're, they're

providing food. They're coming for times of prayer. They're doing services. And this is beyond,

I think what we would see out of a nor unfortunately out of a normal small group, but now you've got a

really a multiplication opportunity where there's creating an expression of church within a fire

station for the 25 people that are there. And I think that's an example of creating a new expression

of community. So, Hey, we're going to get to questions. Uh, go ahead and raise your hands if you're

interested in, in, in asking questions, sharing thoughts. We'd love to kind of dialogue through

this, but is, uh, and I mean, this completely transparent and humbly here. Sometimes I lean

heavy one direction. Is there, are we seeing opportunities like this? Like, Hey, let me take

over and let me be the chaplain at a fire station. Are we seeing that typically in small groups? Am I blind?

And that, that level of buy-in is there, or are we really not getting these people on,

on mission at that level? Honestly, we'd love feedback on that. What do you guys think?

It's a hard question, right?

Well, I mean, I feel like I've talked too much and so I keep wanting to be quiet, but, um,

yeah, I mean, I think we are like, I think we're seeing people engage right where they are and finding

creative ways to do that. And again, that can be, you know, that can definitely be this whole kind of

rethink the small group. It can be just engaging right where I'm at. I definitely think we're seeing

people do that. Like I said, I've got a guy with a 400 person business network and he'll travel to a

conference, take a hundred of them to church and share the gospel with them. And he's baptized like

three or four generations worth of disciples out of his business network. Just, just right where he is

kind of seeing that as his, as his mission field. So for me, again, this whole conversation to me is

is a tool to say, let's get toward the mission. But yeah, I, I a hundred percent think that we're

seeing people, um, take full advantage of the mission field, right where they're at fire stations,

offices, um, you know, the Pentagon, I'm trying to disciple a guy who's secret service in and out of

the DC area, you know, in the mornings and whatnot, like there, there are people taking full advantage

of, of the mission, right where they're at. So, um, yeah, I don't know how else to speak to that.

I just, I definitely see that happening.

What's maybe a key component. How do we, how do we find people that, that are willing to invest in

that area? How are we training people that, that can maybe invest into that area? Um, you know,

Andy, in a, in a digital space, maybe even what does some of this look like, um, in, in a,

in a digital component in the digital environment?

It's funny. I was just going to chime in with almost that exact same thing. It's tougher in

the digital realm because, um, the first thing that a digital pastor or any digital quote unquote

missionary has to do is get past the mask that everybody puts on their social media because,

you know, everybody wants to see the best picture and yada, yada, yada. And so you don't actually learn

the person until you, you have, um, gone to a face-to-face type thing. And, and kind of the goal

of our, the goal of the digital ministry that I've been kind of running is we don't, it just doesn't

stop at a chat room or it just doesn't stop at, Hey, you, you did a six week discipleship course.

Like that, that doesn't cut it. Uh, we want this to eventually turn into a face-to-face relationship,

whether that is face-to-face in, you know, a two to four person online group, or whether that's,

Hey, you're physically, uh, in one of these groups or something like that. And then we can

help you discern who you are, who God has created you to do, you know, the spiritual gifting type

thing. Um, I have found in, at least in the Bay Hope breach that we have seen an inordinate amount

of people just, uh, working what I call small miracles throughout COVID, especially just blessing

people, you know, blessing shut-ins and things like that, um, that are unable to get out of the house.

And, uh, I've seen an overwhelming amount of things like that, that I just kind of redirect

to our care department and say, Hey, look, see the digital, like this, this works the ones and zeros.

They, they work. They, they, uh, people actually connect through this stuff. Um, I think there's a,

there's an interesting personality trait though. Again, digital guy, digital realm, an interesting

personality trait that comes through. I hear a lot of stories about people being introverts.

And yet when you give them a task or you say, Hey, I, I would love it if you would be able to

jump at the chance. And it's almost like, uh, and I think Lee is talking about act activated

all over the place and they just don't know how.

Yeah. And I think part of that challenge to what Andy said is, as I mentioned a few minutes ago,

the type of people that we are trying, that is that, that are challenging. And I'm talking about

two areas. Number one, I would talk about people who are, who are past the lifestyle, whether that's

somebody who's a mom or a dad with three kids, once our stage of life that they're in model for our

model to actually meet that towards the growth of that who's far from God. And how do they actually

make a move to connect to the church and connect to Christ and do our systems of group engagement,

actually meet somebody who's a minus five or even a minus three on the spiritual spectrum.

I'm not, I, you know, that's a whole not, that's a whole nother thing.

See, and I find I have an opposite, uh, kind of react, not reaction, but an opposite, uh, experience to

that because in the digital space, at least the people that I connect with on a daily and weekly basis,

you know, a lot of them were, are, are especially, you know, died in the wall, been going to church

for whatever, and can't go out of the house now because of COVID type stuff. But there have been an

over, not overwhelming, there have been a lot of people that are far from Christ that really are,

are interacting and engaging with some piece of tweet or some, you know, Instagram posts or something.

I could probably count 10 to 15 people that started actively become members of the community

and across the threshold of, Hey, let's actually join a small group with you.

Those people are there. And as long as you can get the keyboard junkies to back down a little bit,

I think you can speak truth into them.

Yeah, that's an interesting backup to, to what you were saying, you know,

Barna, uh, December, uh, stats that came over research, uh, do not have relationship with Christ.

Um, they're not interested in it to the physical building or they're not watching the digital services as well.

Like that's, that's not something they're interested in. Uh, and so what Barna was finding is that those

people, Jesus Christ, uh, they're going to their friends that 40% is going to pastor Google or going

to YouTube to find the answers to this. And so like the, which really, I think it's back to this place

of activation, because if we can equip our people to honoring conversations with others, maybe even be

aggressive towards, uh, connecting with their circle of influence towards it. I just think

activation looks different or suggest maybe there's an opportunity to do something different,

even in context of, as before we put so much energy into that physical gathering, but realizing that the

physical gathering in itself is losing its effectiveness towards an evangelistic point where now we need to do

other things to really reach out, engage with others, maybe even leaning on others to be that voice.

Maybe it's not one person exuding a spiritual gift in front of thousands, like a pastor typically would,

but maybe it's empowering thousands of individuals to be, have those spiritual conversations with their

10 people within their circle of influence. I just, I think that the, the standards that we have,

um, I think need to shift. And with that, honestly comes a lot of maybe the assimilation strategies and, and the,

the groups and, and the ideas of, of what we've been doing and what the expectations that finish line with our

groups are. I, I honestly, I just, I feel like we need to, to revisit what that, uh, activated person looks like

and what we're, what we're challenging them to be. Uh, maybe not as a desire that we want them to have

all sorts of checks off that they have to do, but maybe it's as simple as, uh, obey some of the

Jesus commands and, and the great commission and the things towards that and be more of being Christ

as opposed to, uh, being seen in a building, um, worshiping Christ. I don't know. It's, it's,

it's a weak thought. It's something I'm working through, but I definitely just feel that there's a shift

necessary as we're trying to re-adapt towards this new culture. Are you guys feeling that, this shift?

By the way, I would love questions and comments from, from the audience. So if you've got something,

click the hand raise icon, let's bring you up. Happy to let you dialogue up here with us. But while they're

listening, um, like, does the, are you feeling the shift that aggressive? Do you think that,

that it will revert back to some semblance of normality post COVID or am I being a little too

aggressive here? Lee, you're wise. Tell me. No, I'm just, I'm just loud. Um, uh, you know,

I think I've started using the term better normal, Jeff, and maybe it's more of a, of a, of a, uh,

of an incentive or a hope then maybe we'll get there. You know, uh, the new normal phrase is

popular and I agree with it, but I've begun to talk in the frame of, we are in new normal. Now

where are the opportunities for a better normal as we emerge? So my hope would be that, and I think

someone mentioned earlier in the clubhouses, you know, that we wouldn't just revert back.

Unfortunately, everybody on this call knows that without intentionality, without a little bit of

innovation and without some real push, we're just going to drift back to where we were before.

And so I think now in this season, probably the next six months, maybe through the end of the year

is probably the biggest opportunity for a better normal to emerge.

Because otherwise I think 2022, assuming things health-wise go back, will probably in, in most

cases just go back to an old normal. And I'm not sure that that was as effective as we would like it

to be.

New normal. I may have to borrow that. I'll give you credit the first couple of times. I like that new,

uh, the new normal. How are you guys, Andy, what, what are you feeling new normal coming out of this?

Yeah, we're, we're actually, uh, having large scale church. We have like a, we have what's called a

discipleship task force, which is, it feels very GI Joe to me, but it, uh, it is, it's a collection of

all of our ministry champions. And we've been meeting fairly regularly once or twice a month now,

um, trying to figure out the, I think the question, and I forget who it was, maybe Jeff was raising about

what is, what's the disciple of Christ doing now? Um, and so we're, we're actively engaged in those

things. And I think it's not just in the digital sphere. I think it's not just in the physical sphere.

I think it's also in, uh, like the meta sphere. Uh, and then that sounds very infinity war, but it's,

it's a, um, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very prevalent thing in our world

right now. Everybody's trying to figure out the, the meta feeling kind of everything that's going on.

And, and there's going to be a weird, I think Lee, I think you're absolutely right. There's going to be

six months. I actually think it's going to be even longer than that. I think it's going to be one to

two years, just as the economic recoveries slow down. Um, and I, not to get, I'm not getting

political. I'm just saying, you know, there's, there's, this is going to have wide ranging effects

into a lot of industries, uh, in this, especially into the tech industry. I look at the fact that

we're, um, not able to produce, uh, silicon chips right now as such things as the iPhone release and

things like that. It's going to have ripple effect trying to figure this out for a while.

One to two more years.

I'm hoping it would be sooner, but well, just, just keep thinking, you know, it's not just

schools now. We now have to let manufacturing catch back up. And like I said, that's, and

that's just with silicon, but silicon, if you think about the, the, the supercomputers and

things that are being powered by these little chips, that's cars, that's refrigerators, that's

phones, that's computers, that's, um, the little computers that are at your restaurants.

And so if something breaks down, you know, there's a, there's a, a backup effect that we've

had in this. And I think church leaders right now are, are scrambling with good reason, but

I think there's going to be a little bit more grace involved as a by-product of all of this.

So, so you're telling me I've got COVID to blame for the fact that Apple has not released my

augmented reality glasses yet.

I mean, you've got that, you've got a lot to blame for that. Uh, that's, that's been in

talks for what, 10 years now?

One day, one day we'll, we'll hope. Um, Hey, yeah. So this has been a, a, a great conversation,

um, looking at, and trying to figure out how to, um, honestly, just wrestle with the new

normal. What, what community looks like, what small groups looks like, how are we equipping

people towards, um, towards the next normal towards activating them and releasing them out.

Let me ask this question. Um, cause I'm also interested in this. There's, there's the, the

typical, and thank you very much, Rick Warren, even 20, 30 years ago, purpose-driven church,

the, uh, the baseball diamond strategy of, uh, connect to God, which is that weekend service

connect to others, which is typically the small groups connect to serving in some capacity,

which is getting people serving within the building. And then maybe getting people on mission,

which is mission trips, which is multiplication evangelism, you know, that's kind of like that,

that home plate kind of thing. Um, is the, as, as we're rethinking what small groups could be,

is, is there, is this an opportunity to maybe revisit some of that order is first base that the church

service, is that really the most effective is, you know, group second is getting them serving third.

Like, is that, is that the correct order? Or even in context, while we're re-imagining some of this

stuff, is it not time to maybe revisit some of that structure in context of our churches?

We'd love to know what you guys are thinking from your perspectives.

Andy, what are you feeling?

Um, uh, as the digital guy, I always think that it, not always, but for me, whenever I hear this,

this talk, it brings up the old seeker friendly, this seeker friendly church, but this is a bit of

weight has been put on the production. And I think a lot of weight has rightfully so been put on that

scene, you know, people, people have, but all I got to do is go type in that has better production than

my church. And I can go to, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever.com and watch something. And so

I think you're right, Jeff. I just don't, I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. Cause I

think, I think there's a, a one a one B situation happening here. I think we need a platform and I don't

know how, and this is 30,000 foot view of, of making it so that community and engagement are just as

important as the live or simulated live streaming or in-person church service. And I don't know how

to do that, uh, because people smarter than me are trying to do that, but that that's, that's exactly

what I'm feeling. In a digital component, oftentimes it almost does feel like the relationship comes

first. You talk about, you know, thinking above the funnel before even that, that service trying to

build relationships above. I feel like Jason Morris, we talked about that here in clubhouse.

There's a podcast on that, on the church digital kind of touching on that. And so, yeah, kind of

trying to reimagine that in a digital context. I feel that too. Um, you know, stand where you are,

are you, does that feel like the correct order? I know you're kind of like that disciple guy and

you're all honestly thinking backwards in a lot of this approach. So do you feel that normal one,

two, three base path or, or do you feel something different too? Yeah. I mean, I, I, to some degree,

I think a lot of it is similar to what Andy said. I mean, I feel like there's a lot of both and kind

of approaches that need to be taken. I think there's a space for, you know, the whole digital

conversation. There's a space for the mega church. There's a space for the house church. There's,

you know, there's kind of this both and approach that, that needs to be taken. Um, however, I mean,

I, like I said, I, it, it's hard for me to get away from my, my, my heartbeat on this whole,

whole conversation and how it overlays with disciple making and the mission. I think that the church has

seen worse times than COVID. Like COVID, COVID's not the worst thing that the church has gone through

and not only survived, but actually thrived as a result. I think a lot of what we're seeing

is in, in any tragedy, pandemic or chaos, a lot of what we see is not a new character in per in a

person developing, but we just see revealed what's really there. And I think maybe more than anything,

I don't know about reframing Rick Warren's structures, but maybe we need to start looking

at the results of COVID and the impact on the church and say, this kind of shows us where we were

in, in reality with like our mission efforts, how many people were genuinely, you know, following and

pursuing Jesus. And so whatever structure that needs to, to take, whether part of it's digital,

whether part of it's still physical, because I think there will always be a place for the,

there will always be a place for the physical gathering of the church. I think the future,

absolutely. There's a, a place for the digital gathering of the, of the church and who knows,

maybe there's going to be an augmented reality space someday. Like, I, I don't know what all the

future holds on that front, but I think maybe if I could just encourage people a little bit too,

like the church has been through a lot worse than COVID. And in those times, the church thrived and

God did incredible things. And so I think if I had to sum all that up, I would say no matter what your

system or baseball diamond strategy or whatever it is that you've got going on, you just fully surrender

it to the will of God and what he wants you and your church and your ministry and context to be doing

and, and do your best to make disciples out of that, but let, let God use it more than just saying, Hey,

how can I get on the next cool train and try to take advantage, like genuinely surrender it and

allow God to use you through it. So anyway, those are just kind of my thoughts on the, that.

That's beautiful. I saved Lee for last because he's the one. He's the smart one. He's the smart one.

That was, that was beautifully said, Stan. Uh, but you know, Lee's, Lee's dealing in his role as

XP. He's dealing with the physical, he's dealing with the digital. He's dealing with, you know,

multiple aspects of that and, and, and even kind of wrestling with, and we've talked about this is the

idea of like physical discipleship and digital discipleship. Sometimes that looks different.

And, and, and I can even, I can even remember Lee looking at your funnel where there's this line

down the middle and it's like, okay, sometimes this is over here. Sometimes this is here.

Sometimes the physical is doing this. Sometimes the digital, um, how do you, how do you keep all that,

that straight in, in having the strategies where it aligns and the physical and the digital,

because you're, you're having to deal with both hemispheres. Like what, what, what does that even

that pathway even look like? I have no idea. Awesome. I mean, I think that's part of the,

that's part of the learning that we're in the middle of right now as Stan and Andy are. I mean,

I would, I would hate to even pretend to be, um, that we've figured anything out. I think we're,

we are figuring encouragement would be, I don't know that what we have experienced, uh, conversation.

We, we, I don't know what the word is. You said, Jeff, that you said we introduced a new word

multi-mogul, or you said something. It was really cool. Yeah, it was, it was multimodal.

Cool. Love that. We're using an easier word. We just call it an integrated model. And I know some

use the word, some use the word. I've heard people say hybrid, find more deeply in how you're

describing it. We're using the word that I think is true and physical. Um, and probably even when you

and I talked, Jeff is we thought, okay, so what this is going to demand is that we create, that we

create a duplicated virtual environment for everything that we feel is, um, that the church does. Okay.

This is overwhelming. What we've come to learn. And I think, how do we prioritize the key elements

and the key roles that the church can play in helping people discover Jesus and their own personal

journey of faith? How do we prioritize those? And then virtual experience, the experience there.

When we say integrated here at the, what we mean is that people can experience things both as they

so desire and so true. And so we don't limit one or the other. We just start making some decisions

decisions as to what will be in that integrated mode that we're creating. And so that's been some

interesting conversations to have to try to decide that or to try to prioritize that and to then execute

that in the real world. Because what I know a lot of leaders are discovering is what they were so

excited about 10, 11 months ago, when they actually start getting back to in-person, the demand on resource,

time, et cetera, starts to change some of those decisions. And so my encouragement would be don't

allow that to determine it. Find a, find a mode that you guys feel committed to, and then begin to move

there, whether it's in the area of small groups, whether it's in the area of, you know, your gatherings,

all of, all of those things. We have one cool thing going on right now. And I don't know,

it's just kind of interesting. As many people, we've, we've moved some of our key environments

online. So we're right now we're still in a mode where we use as many are aware of like a rooted model of kind of

initial discipleship step. And so that that's been on, we we've been doing a virtual option or an integrated

option for rooted. Twice we've done it. This time we've really leaned in our online campus guy, Aaron, who's on this

call is, is facilitating that. And one of the things that's really cool is at the end of that nine or 10 week

experience. We do a physical celebration. People come together and their groups and any of you that

are doing it know what I'm talking about. We see people get baptized, they share a meal. So we're

doing that here in a couple of weeks. And we actually have, I believe four or five people who have

experienced it completely virtual outside of Las Vegas, who have made the decision to hop on an

airplane and fly here to be present physically for that celebration. And I'm like, okay, wow, that's,

that's again, it's a small anecdotal story. So, you know, I get it, but still it kind of go, it kind of

proves to your point, Jeff, that things can work on that bridge. We always think of people physically

going into the virtual, but what we're experiencing there is a little bit of the virtual, then

kind of engaging with the physical, if even for a brief moment. So those are the type of things that

we're wrestling with strategically on a daily basis. As we pursue that multimodal, modal, how'd I do

there, Jeff? Multimodal. Getting better. Getting better. It's a mouthful. Multimodal or what we would

call integrated model. So that's, that's some of the stuff that we're wrestling.

Well, you know, and I even love there that, you know, we mentioned online to offline, the gospel

we hear in the online world influences our offline relationships. At some small level, you're seeing

that because the, the relationship with these four or five people that made the travel to the shared

experience, um, to Vegas to, for the rooted, like the relationships, the, the content, the process for

them and their digital communities drove them to pay for a ticket in the physical world, jump on an

airplane, drive a car, pay for the gas, whatever, but it got them from their environment and it got it

to, to yours. They were so invested in what they learned and what they experienced and the people

they had relationship with in digital space that it affected and it drove them to do something in the

digital realm. You know, I, and even, and it's going to sound cheesy, like I can't think of the last

time, you know, something on Netflix drove me to the point of, of affecting and doing something

physically. Like, okay, WandaVision that has Disney plus is, is the king of everything. And, you know,

I'll watch that thing over and over again. But in, from an average standpoint, content real is really

hard to affect people physically, but through the community and some of the stuff that you're

describing, Lee, that's beautiful to see. So, Hey guys, I want to thank you for, for this time. It's been a,

a great conversation looking at rethinking small groups and, and, and what this looks like. Hey,

you know, let's just do this as, as we're landing the plane here one minute, just any closing thoughts,

any, any closing vibes, stuff like that. Um, uh, Stan, why don't you go first?

Yeah. Uh, sure. Thanks, man. Um, yeah, my, my closing vibe, number one is I think my biggest

takeaway from Lee was buy a Peloton. I don't know if that's what he was trying to say all night,

but that was the big feel, uh, I got was get a Peloton. Um, no, that was just Jeff. That was

just a joke, man. That was just a joke. Um, yeah. Trying to land the plane. I, I, I just think

so much of it comes down to our ability to surrender to what it is that God would have us to do next.

Um, it's far less about the specific, um, platform we use or whatever it's about. Are we surrendering

these things for the purposes of God and for his kingdom to pursue the mission? Um, and do we have

a really clear picture of that? You know, can we take the digital presence that we've got? Can we take

the physical presence that we got, uh, that we have? Can we, can we use all of that and point it

very, very specifically and intentionally at, uh, at, at the mission? And, uh, so I think if everybody

wrestles with that, that would be, that would be one of the big things I would encourage people to,

to wrestle with is just having a really clear picture of what the win is at the end of the day,

no matter which one of these things we use or how we rework groups or whatever, you know,

what's the big win at the end of the day? Well said, kind of get, discover that why, discover that

finish line and, and, and hopefully that dictates and drives how we're going to get people to,

to that place and in discipleship. Well said. Andy, what do,

what do you think in here as we're wrapping up? Yeah, I'm, I'm extremely excited about the future.

Uh, I'm extremely excited about how church is going to look in the next year, two years, five

years. Uh, I think this defining moment that we all had in 2020 was actually started way before that.

And I think the seeds that we were sowing are, were, were, were starting just even now starting to

reap them. Um, and stand to your point about, you know, the platform or the mode or anything. I think

culturally and, and contextually where we, we now have the ability to have two, three, four different

types of models and within the same church. And that to me is it'd be multi-generational,

multi-animate disciples of all nations. Right there. Uh, multi-generational, uh, is, is an

awesome challenge. I think for us, not even to just to affect the one generation, but get that

generation to share others. Jeff, by talking about multi-generational, I just feel like that should

be said. Hey Lee, uh, what are you thinking? I would just say a couple of things to everybody

to kind of wrap up this conversation. I think, I think number one would be, um, don't turn up the

radio. We said it earlier, right? So there's going to be that temptation to avoid the, the, the

important noise that's out there right now that can be exhausting for leaders. I feel that at times

that you can feel overwhelmed or there's so much noise and there's so much change happening at such a

large pace and we're still mourning the loss of a lot of the, the things that used to be sort of the

cornerstone of what we did. And so there's going to be that temptation for you to just kind of say,

you know what, I, I just can't even process another thing. So I would encourage you number one to fight

that urge to just turn up the music and ignore what's happening under the hood of your organization

or whatever you're leading. And I think secondly, kind of alongside that, I would encourage,

and as the old guy, I guess, Stan, right? I would encourage those on the call that have an opportunity.

There may be, even as you might be getting a little bit, uh, fatigue team or those eyes by the

opportunities for innovation in this year, or at least, um, a hundred percent of conversations with them,

collaborate with them, give, continue to do things and provide an avenue for them to innovate,

provide an avenue for them to, for them to, uh, tap into that alongside the mode. And I think,

I think, uh, progress, which is what we all want, because what we're talking about has consequences

for, for, well said from, from not old in any way, shape, manageable and soft-spoken, never abrasively.

Lee, thank you very much, man, man, for that. Let me, and Lee, I didn't even know you were going to say

the innovation thing, but I, I've, um, was, was going back to a God, which I'm pretty sure he wrote

before I was born. I think the idea of, of see where God's moving in the fidgetal, uh, uh, March 16th,

uh, noon to 4 p.m. Eastern time. We've got 20 plus churches just talking about some of the innovations

that they're, that they're seeing and doing, um, in, in, in, through this COVID season, things like,

um, you know, watch parties, micro locations, house churches, um, discipleship, things like QR codes,

um, you know, all sorts of different innovations, um, and, and it's, and it's fascinating. I, so much,

I think churches aren't interested in, in that innovation piece. They, they like things where,

where it's standard, where it's normal, where it's, it's comfortable. Uh, but I, I really believe

that God moves, um, when, when we innovate, when we change. And, and what's fascinating is, is there's

stories coming out of this season of, of where God's doing some phenomenal stuff with churches that

are being innovative when they're trying to do things differently. And, and, and I would challenge us

all. Maybe this is an opportunity to, to look and see what this innovation looks like. And maybe for us

even evaluate how we do this, uh, within our church. So, um, it's stated churchplanning.org slash

innovation is the link up for that. And it's going to be, like I said, uh, Tuesday, March 16th at,

um, noon to 4 PM Eastern. Uh, three, I'm, I'm, I'll tell you what, this is where we are publicly

releasing for the first time. I'm going to be publicly talking about multimodal. Uh, this was

actually the test drive for that term. It's the first time I've talked about it publicly here.

Uh, but I got to get my act together by Tuesday. Cause that's when I'm, I'm saying it for real in

front of like a whole bunch of people. So thank you for being my Guinea pig in this experiment while,

while I'm trying to figure out like how to use that language and Lee struggling to pronounce it

actually really meant a lot to me because now I've got to be very clear as, as I do it on my side.

So gentlemen, to kind of wrap up on here, thank you very much for jumping in this conversation while

we're, uh, looking at, uh, re-imagining what, uh, church small groups can look like. Uh, and by the

way, we will post a link to, uh, Lee's, um, commission page where if you are interested in

buying a Peloton, if you would buy through links, uh, Lee's referral link, I'm sure he will get like

10% of whatever the monthly is from now on. So Lee, you can go ahead and send that to me. I'll

make sure it's published there. And that way, you know, we, we can, you know, fund your future

vacation or something since you are evidently the Peloton man. So for Andy, for Stan, uh, for Lee,

this is Jeff with the church digital and with Stadia church planning. I just want to thank you all for,

for joining us today. We'll do it next week, uh, 5 PM on Thursday, 5 PM Eastern. We'll see you then

talk to y'all later.