EP115: Digital Discipleship thru Timothy Initiative

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

through this already, and it's been a phenomenal result of it. Culture is changing within these

churches. They're understanding what it is to thrive. They're understanding how to grow people,

how to grow their church, even in the midst of this COVID, not COVID, wherever we are in the season,

and they're even starting to understand what it means to multiply in fidgetal space. There's no secret

sauce to doing a digital strategy. There's no secret sauce to doing a fidgetal strategy. There's no

secret sauce to making your church thrive, grow, and multiply. It takes work. I'm not going to lie,

but through the framework, through the questions, through the learning communities,

we connect you with churches. We give you some content. We coach you along the way to help you

make the decisions that you need to make so that your church's strategy can thrive, grow, and multiply

your church along the way. This is a great opportunity for your church. We would love to have you be a part

of it. For more information, check out stadiacchurchplanning.org

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. All right. So we are going to talk discipleship, disciple-making today. This is not

going to be a technological conversation. Go check out the beta show if you want updates on

Clubhouse and all the awesome things that are happening over in the tech world and in social

media. We're not going to dive into that today here on the Church Digital Podcast. What we are going to

talk about is the idea of doing discipleship in digital space, doing disciple-making in digital

space, and what disciple, discipling someone, what that actually means. So for the conversation,

we are bringing in Ricky Bailey. Now, Ricky is arguably probably one of the most humble people

I've ever met in my life. And that drips through this podcast conversation entirely. Ricky has been

very influential in my life. He's significantly younger than me, which is interesting. But his

heart towards disciple-making, his heart towards evangelism, his heart towards obedience-based

discipleship has revolutionized my life entirely. Well, I probably believed this stuff when I was like

18 to 20, but I'll be honest, I forgot about it somewhere along the way. We talk about it on the

podcast a little bit, but it's amazing how sometimes, well, you know, I don't want to get into it. You'll

hear it on the podcast. It's awesome. So we're bringing Ricky into this conversation. We're doing,

we, Stadia Church Planning, we are doing digital church planning cohorts, digital discipleship cohorts

right now, where we're helping digital church planters wrestle through this idea of obedience-based

discipleship, obedience-based digital discipleship, helping them have a foundation, a reproducible

foundation that's going to help them plant churches in digital communities and digital spaces.

It is an awesome time to be alive. And audience, I'm glad you get to join us in this conversation.

So check it out. We're going to talk about Timothy Initiative. We're going to talk about some other

resources. There are links in the show notes towards all of these things. This podcast episode,

this is one of those conversations that could change the life of your ministry. This could change

the life of your church. Like, I don't want to sell that short. I want you to recognize that

this conversation deeply impacted me four years ago, and it has the potential to deeply impact you as

well. Take this conversation in prayer and look and see what God is leading you to and see if this

lines up with maybe where God was already placing you in this COVID season. So for the conversation here,

I'm bringing in Ricky Bailey, helping out with Stadia with some digital church planting cohorts,

as well as very active in workplace ministry and myself, Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia

Church Planning in a conversation that I'm calling Digital Discipleship through the Timothy Initiative.

Okay, everybody. Here you go.

Hey, so here's why I wanted to have this conversation. And what audience, what you need to realize is,

I would probably put Ricky on a short list of people who have deeply impacted my life.

And I don't know, I don't even think Ricky truly understands the level of this. And Ricky's

significantly younger than me, which is not a bad thing. But in context of his passion for

discipleship, for disciple making, for helping people find personal mission, I saw life differently

up until about 2015. And I had a couple conversations, a couple relationships with a couple

millennials. I don't think I should apologize for that, Ricky and another guy. And truly,

my worldview perspective kind of, and I don't want to say it changed because honestly, it was,

oh man, all that stuff that I believed 20 years ago. Yeah, I need to believe that today. It was almost

like it was a refreshing reboot of my life going back. And so I really, even in context of how I view

digital church, digital discipleship, like all of a sudden things looked different after kind of having

some conversations here. And this is just a little bit of what I wanted to scratch the surface here

with Ricky. And so even Ricky, just to open it up, you can line up 10 pastors and ask them what

discipleship means. And you'll get 12 different definitions because a couple of them, well,

they'll just tell you different things, multiple things. So in just to get us started here, what does

discipleship mean for you? What does that look like for you specifically?

Yeah, I think everything that, you know, I've, that I've learned or the main thing that I've learned,

I guess, in the short time I've been doing this is keeping it as simple as possible. And the more

simple it is, the more reproducible it is. So we typically would just say discipleship is teaching

other people how to follow Jesus. Because the different definitions tend to come from everyone has a

different goal of discipleship. You know, some churches, their goal is to get people serving on

Sunday. Some people's goal is to go to the mission field. And really, if we say, teaching other people

how to follow Jesus, you know, that drives them to the Bible. And you're giving them a model that's

easily replicated because if they follow Jesus, like the Bible tells us to follow Jesus, then there's

no escaping that we have to continue to make disciples, who in turn make disciples.

Yeah, that it's, it's interesting. Oftentimes, you know, you talk to a pastor and they're talking

about like a lifelong following. And I don't want to single pastors, church staffers, you know,

you said simple and reproducible, where oftentimes I'll hear from other church staff, like the vision

is lifelong following, kind of a pursuit that never gets accomplished. What's, do those two ideas

coincide? Or what's really the motivation that separates the simple reproducible model opposed to

maybe what some of the others are?

I think every, I mean, every pastor, there may be outliers, every pastor that I can remember

meeting was, had amazing intentions. And, you know, for the most part, we're amazing men. But

I think that there's, there's so many different ideas of what a Christian should be. And we're so,

we're so tied to Sunday morning. And I think, like, I love Sunday morning. I love,

you know, serving and doing all this stuff. But we're so tied to Sunday morning that we've created

an identity around what happens on that hour, two hour window. And so that, I think that's influenced

a lot of what we call Christians. So because we're used to good preaching, or we want good preachings,

we think every Christian should be a, you know, amazing theologian, you know, things like that. So we've,

we've created a more knowledge based, I think, discipleship versus obedience based.

And essentially, you know, I feel like that it's, it's like everything in business and church,

whatever, you have a goal. And at first, when you make your plan, it's very complex.

And the main goal, or I guess maybe the things that separates a lot of great leaders from

average leaders is being able to take what's complex and make it simple. And that's what made

Jesus so great. And there was no question on what was his disciples were being asked to do, or

that, you know, they were seeing it modeled. They were seeing, you know, Jesus was teaching them all

the things to do. And it was just very, very simple, so much so that after three years, he dies, he

resurrects, ascends, and they're praying. And when the Holy Spirit comes, it's boom, we know exactly what

to do. And it was more about waiting on the power to do what he had commanded them to do versus

waiting on direction. They'd already been given direction.

That's fascinating. For me, this idea, and even looking in this COVID season, this idea of

digital disciple making, figuring out how to make a disciple digitally, how to find, how to help people

multiply, reproduce themselves in the digital space. I think this is the challenge, really, of 2021.

2020, COVID hit March. None of us knew how to broadcast services. Everybody was freaking out.

And we, as quickly as possible, leveraged to get the broadcasts happening so that we could do church

services when, you know, the U.S. government and the whole world was shutting down large gatherings.

And so now, 2021, we're coming back to it. I just read something in the news recently that I think 2% of the

U.S. has the vaccine. Interestingly, and I don't even want to make digital discipleship about, you know,

COVID. But life doesn't get back to normal, whatever normal is, until 60 to 70% of people, at least

according to, I believe, the World Health Organization. So, like, we're not rushing here.

Like, this is still going to be a sprint or it's still a marathon, a journey.

But what's interesting is churches are trying to get back into the building as quick as possible and are

hyping and are rushing to kind of do that because that's this model that they know.

But the people aren't ready. It seems like the average church at this point has 20 to 30, maybe

40% of physical attendance pre-COVID coming back to the building. And so that leaves a lot of people

disenfranchised, disconnected, disassociated with what's happening in the church.

And unfortunately, we taught them that, hey, we need the church's, the spiritual tentpole.

You do this on Sunday for the one hour. And if you can do that, that's going to carry you through

for the rest of the week, the 167 hours still pending. But there's this idea that maybe instead

of doing the church service, that's the tentpole that may or may not even be working in physical

space. What if we spent our time or a portion of our time or a portion of our energy and resources

towards doing discipleship, disciple-making, evangelism and relational evangelism in this

digital space? And so I love this idea of reproducible systems. And it's one of the reasons

why Ricky's actually starting to work with Stadia on helping us lead some cohorts that's designed

towards digital-only church planting and digital discipleship. And so for us, it's the goal of,

you know, it's, well, Ricky, tell us a little bit, you know, in context, we're doing this

Timothy Initiative material. Talk to us a little bit about Timothy Initiative, what the purpose

of this is, and kind of what the journey of somebody who's going through this process, what does that

look like for them?

Yeah, so I think that, I kind of introduced this, something that, as you were talking about

what's happening in churches and, you know, COVID made everyone digital, you know, kind of in a sense,

is it's kind of caused us to realize that what we do, what we were doing online is really not

that much different than what we were doing in person. And we have to ask whether that's a good

thing or not. And what I mean by that is, you know, for most of our church members, we're asking them to

show up to, to watch a sermon, to watch people. I mean, yeah, they, they're singing along, they might

say amen, or reading their, with their Bibles out, or whatever. But largely, they're not participating

in what's happening on Sunday morning. They're, they're watching and it, it may help you grow and

it can help you and, you know, whatever. But, you know, I was talking to my pastor about this a few

months ago. It's like, you know, what, what our members are doing on Sunday morning, the only

difference is they're in PJs and they're watching it on the computer. And so the whole idea of

discipleship is to move someone from spectator to participant. Because that's exactly what Jesus,

like, like when you read through the gospel, it feels like every time Jesus got this huge crowd,

he would do something to turn them away. Like, I remember reading John 6, I guess like our freshman

year of college. And, you know, there's, there's, you know, thousands of people there. And at that time,

I was committed to being a mega church pastor. You know, that's what I wanted to do. And then all of a

sudden, Jesus runs them off, even to the point where his disciples, his closest disciples look at him,

and they're like, and he, and he looks at them and he's like, will you go away too? You know, we get

the, you know, to where will we go? And I think the only reason that Peter was able to say that is

because he had been participating in the mission of Christ and had bought into the mission because he

was there, he was doing it. He was, you know, you read through, you know, Luke, um, eight through 10,

and you see this progression of Jesus, you know, going out to heal the sick and to preach the gospel.

And, you know, it's Jesus doing it. Then there's just a few disciples doing it. Then he sends a 70 to

do it. And so the whole idea of following Christ is actively participating in the mission that God has

set before us. Um, when I was in college ministry, a question I would get a lot is, you know, what does

it mean to, to walk in the Holy spirit? How come I never feel the Holy spirit, or I never see, I never

feel like the Holy spirit is doing something miraculous through me. And the question is always, well, are you

being obedient? Like, are you putting yourself in situations where you have to be obedient and rely

on the Holy spirit? And most time the answer is no. And so the Timothy initiative, um, which is based

on, uh, four fields, which came out of India and training for trainers, or a lot of you may know

it as T for T, which came out of China. It's kind of taking those principles and creating tools,

um, for different cultures. I mean, they're all over the world, but there's a specific one for

American culture as well. Um, so, so creating tools to invite people on the mission that Christ has

given us. And the whole premise of this belief is by participating, we will grow by everything that

we want to be as Christians, everything that we hear preached about on Sundays, we can become that

by participating in the mission that Christ has given us, but not doing it alone, doing it with

a community of people that we can grow close relationships with. Um, not just someone, you

know, my church is small and I, and I appreciate that for a lot of reasons. Like I feel like I'm going

through life with people, but I've been a part of big churches before where I'm literally sitting

beside someone like on one side is my wife. Another side is a guy that I've never met and may never

see again. And that's kind of the disadvantages. Yeah. It's great to gather people to hear the

message of the gospel, but, but Christ called us into mission as a community, not as individuals.

So we have to have those people around us. And that's kind of the whole point of TTI is how can

we get people actively participating in mission of God in a community that holds them accountable and

encourages them and, and, and, you know, Hebrews three exhorts them so they don't lose the faith,

you know, things like that. So you, you've said, you've said obedience based discipleship a little

bit here, a lot, a lot, a lot here, a little, I don't, I'm recording this at the end of the day.

I'm sorry. I apologize for not making any sense, but obedience based discipleship. What,

help me. Um, cause you know, I may not know this, this term, um, what, from a practical standpoint,

like what, what does that actually look like? I think, and there's probably other categories we

can create, but typically what I have seen, um, through churches from, you know, the East Tennessee

backwards Baptist churches to mega churches everywhere. There seems to be really only two pathways that

believers are being offered. And there's what I call knowledge-based discipleship and obedience-based

discipleship. Knowledge-based discipleship gauges your spiritual maturity based on how much you know.

Now that could be something like, you know, how many Bible verses did you learn in Awana?

Or that could be, can you, you know, speak intelligently about predestination? Um, you know,

whatever that would look like, but typically our Sunday schools, our small groups,

it's always been based on learning more about the Bible, learning more about God. And obviously

that does great things, but obedience-based discipleship says essentially that we can't

let our knowledge outpace our obedience. Um, and that's where, you know, and being a product of

like the Bible college seminary world, it's really hard to do sometimes because I love learning about

God, I love learning all the things that no one else cares about, about the Bible.

But once our knowledge outpaces our obedience, we create this illusion that we're more spiritual

than they really are because we can talk about these things when obedience-based discipleship is

literally what Jesus did.

Hey, I'm going to send you out sheep among wolves, go figure it out. And then report back to me. We'll

talk about it and we'll debrief. So he was teaching them, absolutely. But he was giving them a mission. He

was letting them watch him. He was sending them out to practice what he had commanded them to do.

And then they came back together after it was all over to learn from the moments, to learn from the

things, to celebrate what they did and to learn about the things that they weren't able to do.

Um, and when you, when you really focus on obedience-based discipleship, what you tend to see is that your

obedience level and your knowledge levels tend to go hand in hand, which is amazing because once you have

the knowledge way up here and obedience down here, it's really hard to catch up. Um, and one of the

things that I think of, I don't know if I've ever shared this with you or not, but the David Nelms, the

guy who started the Timothy Initiative, for whatever reason, I still don't know to this day, started

spending a lot of time with me and kind of mentoring me in different ways. And we went to the circuit in

Knoxville, the circuit of churches he was sharing this mission with. And there was a guy from Chattanooga

from a small church down the road that came with us. And it was a long day. We're all tired.

It's like nine, 10 o'clock at night. And we're praying that, you know, I think I'm driving. So we're

praying I don't fall asleep and kill us kind of thing. And, and Roger, like, uh, he's in the back seat,

puts his hand on my shoulder and just kind of leans up where he can look at me. And he goes,

I'm going to tell you something Ricky, cause I'm 62 years old. He said, and I've had a lot of people come

through my church and I've created a lot of pastors. I've made a lot of Sunday school teachers. He goes,

but until a month ago, I've never made a disciple. And I remember kind of just being taken aback and he

starts explaining how the Timothy Initiative had impacted him. He's actually out in Nevada, I think now at

Indian reservation as a missionary, but he, um, he said, I always thought the more someone knew

the better they were going to be. But now I realize it's about what they do.

And we all say that, but you know, as past ministry leaders, we tend to be more in the knowledge camp

and we, whether we do it wittingly or not, we try to create people that look like us

sometimes more than what looks like Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've heard stats like this and I'm

going to butcher it. You may have the exact one, but it's something to the extent if a new, new

Christian doesn't share Christ within the first month, two months, 10 days, some very short period

of time, they don't do it quickly. They're never going to, um, do you, do you actually know what that

exact stat is? Or have you heard something similar to that? I've heard a few, I've heard six months and

I've heard three months. Um, but I don't remember where they came from or. Yeah. I can't ground it.

But the philosophy though is, man, like if, if, if you don't make that practice part of, part of your

life right off the bat, it's not going to catch up. And like you said earlier, when, when your knowledge

gets to be so high, but you've not established that culture of, of obedience, all of a sudden your,

your, your, your discipleship is dependent upon that knowledge without the action. You are, you're,

you're not doing the church. You're not doing discipleship, but you're very strong, able to speak

into it. And, and unfortunately, you know, I think that's the state of a lot of churches today

physical churches. Definitely. Even in this COVID season where they've not been able to connect with

people to exude that knowledge. When, if in this COVID season, if we were able to pivot or if we had

pivoted before and not be driven off of creating environments for knowledge to be passed, but instead

looking at it as opportunities to exude that obedience discipleship, following the, the, the commands of,

of Christ in real time, physically, digitally, fidgetally, whatever, like, I think the world would

look at much different place had we pivoted away and we're looking at it more towards obedience

over the past, I don't know, year or so. Yeah. And I don't think I got that until, um,

cause my, my, I had an internship with a church in Miami. I think you were probably still in Texas then

cause we had, I don't think we had met yet. And, um, I was working with a, with a guy, um, who's, as part

of a organization called No Place Left, which is extremely similar to Timothy Initiative. And we're

doing the whole training and, you know, here's a model to share the gospel. And so we did the whole

thing. And then it was kind of like, all right, you guys got it, practice it. Like we were going

around practicing with each other, pretending, you know, we're the lost one. And he's like, all right,

cool. We're downtown Miami. He's like, you guys got an hour and a half, go share the gospel.

So I'm like, okay, well, you know what? I'm not going to just be brave, go do it. Well,

I happened to have another guy with me who was much more experienced with this at the time.

And we were at the, uh, is it government stage? Is that the government center? Is that the big

government center? Yeah. So we were at government center and we had just, um, got off the,

the metro loop into the brickle loop and we're waiting on the, the metro to come by. Um,

which for, if you're not from Miami, the subway, that's our subway, like, you know,

the 20 feet in the air, cause we can't go underground public transportation. And we shared with this guy

and we had shared, everybody had said no, and we're getting ready to go back. And we shared with this

guy and we're like, you know, is this, you know, do you feel like this is something you want to

believe? And he's like, I've been waiting on this all day. We're like, Oh, okay. He's like,

so, so what do I need to do to follow Christ? So we shared the gospel with him again to make sure

he gets it. And he goes, I believe that. Can I, can I pray to Christ? We're like, yeah, man.

So he, he prays. And then the guy beside me, he goes, all right, I got, I got a question for you,

man. He's all right. He goes, can you tell me what we just told you? Talking about sharing the

gospel. And the guy repeats it almost verbatim. And then he goes, who in your life needs to hear

this message? And he names three people. He's like, where are they at right now? He's like,

they're actually at the public library. I just left there. And I want to go back. Can I go share this

with them right now? And so like, as soon as the guy came to faith, the first thing he was asked,

okay, do you understand the message well enough to repeat it? Yeah. Okay. So now we know he gets it.

And the next question is who else needs to know this? So literally from that point on, you know,

unless he ends up getting involved with some community that doesn't practice this,

he thinks evangelism is a normal part of his, of being a Christian. Yeah. And I think that's where

we failed as a church. We've not made that. We talk about it a lot, but it's like, okay,

now you're a Christian come to our church class, you know, our new member class. Here's the history

of our church. Here's, you know, a new Testament survey. And those things aren't bad, but they've

been in their church for months before they're ever told to go share the gospel. So what they've

already normalized as true Christianity is exempt from a lot of the obedience, you know, or the commands

that Christ has given us. And there's, there's so much more, um, faith and dependence on Christ

in situations like you just described. You know, I remember you're, you're alluding, I think,

to Scuba Steve. Scuba Steve has been on the podcast. Go back. Uh, we'll put a link in the show notes to

the episode. Um, but, uh, the first time I met Scuba, uh, was probably 2018. I'm having, um,

lunch with him at a, near a mall that's down here in Miami. And after, and after we finished our

milkshakes, he's like, Hey, let's go across the street and let's go evangelize. And so I'm, I'm

literally walking across the parking lot, mentally trying to figure out how I can bail out of this as

quickly as possible. I don't have time. I, I, I'm like, dude, I got 30 minutes. And, um, and so

while I'm praying, God, get me out of this, he's praying, God, bring me somebody. And we had two

conversations, two different people breaking down at the point of tears in public that neither of us had

never met before. And, and I'm sitting back, the, the skeptic of the situation, looking at it and saying,

God is so much bigger and so much more powerful than I even realized at this moment. We just need

to prepare to be obedient towards him and not trying to do things under our own volition or under our

own knowledge, but be dependent on him. And I wonder how different our churches would look if instead

of having the consumers, instead of having the John six followers, the clingers ons that, that are

hanging onto the crowd because Jesus was doing signs, miracles, wonders, and meeting physical needs,

literally doing food. And instead of trying to build a church based off of those people, uh, what if we,

we built a church based off of the people who were left after Jesus chased them off? After Jesus said

things like, eat my flesh, drink my blood and started challenging physical paradigms that as a result,

all of a sudden, like what was left was this core foundation. I talk about John six so much in this

podcast, they've heard it, but what was left after that initial reach, once Jesus started engaging

was the core component of the church that was built. Like these were, this was where the movement

happened. And, and, and, and my fear is that in this year, 2021, uh, at least the Western civilization

church, the church of America has relegated itself away from multiplication, away from revival, away

from a movement. And instead, even when the world is following, falling apart and saying no large

gatherings, we're trying to go back to the way that it was, uh, which is going to set up some form of,

I don't know that you're going to see multiplication. I don't even think that you're going to see growth

out of this model because let's be honest, February 2020 was not that great of a time in the church

life. Like we were on a 10 year decline, uh, according to Barna and others. And we want to go

back to that. We want to celebrate that as this is the dream. Let's get back to that way. Or why don't

we pivot and try to do something different? Look at how to create a movement, how to empower people

with the gospel and teach them that this is what God commanded. This is what Jesus commanded. So

we should be obedient to that. And so I love, I love, I love the heart behind this. What are you

thinking, Ricky? And the paradigm shift, I think, um, and this, this goes well with digital. I'll give a

physical example and then kind of transition because I think the digital platform has given us even better

opportunity for this. But when I was doing college ministry in Miami, um, you know, the first university

I started with, the, the, the guy that was before me was like, um, Gus was an incredible guy, like

super discipleship minded. And, but he had left, but I came to replace him because he was going to

another church. And, um, a lot of the students that I had, I think that I, I kind of fell into the trap

of, okay, we've got to maintain like what this incredible guy who's years ahead of me, who's much

more mature than me, knows what he's doing. I don't know what I'm doing. Like I've got to maintain this.

Um, and so what that looked like was, okay, can I do more events? Can I, what can I do to get more

people in the gathering? Because my thought process is if college students see a lot of people gathering

for something, they'll be interested and they'll come see what it is. And it continued to fail.

And eventually about a, after about a year into it, um, I realized like none of my students were

sharing the gospel. Like I was really the only one doing that other than maybe one, one other person.

And, um, and then Catherine, who also worked with us at that time, she was an evangelism beast,

but we made the shift my last three years in Miami to never focus on gathering Christians

and to, or sorry, that's not gathering Christians, but bringing Christians into it. We never did an

event. We never did what we never planned anything for our ministry that was designed to draw Christians.

Everything was focused on the loss. And the, and the thought process was one, this is what acts look

like. Like this is modeling more effectively what we see in the Bible. Number two, it'll attract the

Christians we want to be with because so many, like what, what you were talking about is in February,

2020. And now like everything's shut down. We're trying to go back to normal. Some of these churches

will grow, but they're going to grow from other church members from a church members from another

church. And that that's not the kind of growth. I feel like it's not the growth I'm interested in

engaging. I want to engage people coming from lostness to darkness, to light.

So we made that shift. And what we saw was something incredible. We had one guy who shared the gospel

with someone. This guy believed he shared the gospel with someone a few weeks later, led this guy to

Christ. And about a month later, this guy shared the gospel. And we were starting to see generations

multiply. And then we saw Christians who were even of a different denomination, see what we were doing.

And they said, man, I want to be a part of that because that looks like what I'm reading in the Bible.

And so we did have Christians come over, but they were ones we loved working with and ones that wanted

to be a part of what we're doing. And the beauty of like your digital platforms is most people

that you're engaging digitally, like, they're not, if they are believers, it's not something they're

putting out there. You know, if you're, if you're gaming, or if you're on social media,

you know, most of the people that you're engaging are lost. So you, you really have

fewer options if you're trying to build a church with saved people, which I think has been a mistake

that, you know, a ton of church plants have made is, is get a team together, start a church with lost

people and show them how to follow Christ throughout that process.

Yeah. So we're, we're doing a lot of that, uh, with, with Stadia and trying to help digital

churches, help plant digital churches based on a lot of these obedience based disciple making

practices and, and unleashing, mobilizing, training, equipping, and releasing people digitally.

And it's phenomenal stories, even before Stadia was involved with digital churches connecting with

lost people. Like I, I can tell you, we, these are, these are stories that have been told on this

podcast. DJ Soto, VR church connects, uh, uh, three continents, five platforms at this point,

alt space, um, uh, VR chat, uh, as well as, um, uh, rec room, uh, 80 to 85% lostness, specifically

unchurched, a very high level of atheists evidently are involved in virtual reality. And he has a

constant inflow where the first time an atheist is engaging with the church is not a physical building.

It's in virtual reality. Uh, even to the point, the pro presenter, the equivalent of the virtual

reality pro presenter operator, DJ's told the story before is not a Christian. He's an atheist.

He likes the community. He's asking questions. He may be a Christian at this point. I think last I

had heard a couple of months ago, he was really close, but was wrestling with a couple of points,

but the, the overall argument there is there you can build those relationships digitally safer

than maybe you can in physical space. Another guy is telling me, um, uh, Cornerstone up in the

Pacific Northwest, Jason Poling, uh, JPO, as people like to call him, he's about 80%

de-churched. So all those people that get burned by the physical church and swear they're never going

back to a church again, 80 to 85% of what they see in, uh, virtual reality at Cornerstone Church,

the first step of those people who were burned by the church, the first step back towards the bride of

Christ is happening in digital space. And so equipping people, individuals like, uh, you know,

co-vocational, sure, bi-vocational, sure, even church staffers to equip their ones of the church

to have a voice out. I told a church this recently, uh, today, the day that we're recording this,

uh, was, was doing a coaching session with the church. And the question was, okay, well, Jeff,

our organization has like this particular model, uh, the persona, the target audience, like this is who

our church is trying to reach. And he didn't tell me what, I was like, let me guess, it's a 30,

30 year old male. Uh, and he's like, well, actually it's a 33 year old male, uh, with, with two kids.

And I was like, yeah, every church in America has that organizational one. That's who you're

trying to reach. Not saying that's bad, but realize that your organization has never lost,

has never had as little power as it does right now. It's, its voice has never been as soft as it is

right now. And you, your church trying to get out there and, and get into social media and do all

those things. It's nice. The power is not within the organization. It's within the individuals.

And I actually, I would throw up just as another example, look at everything that's happening with

the whole GameStop, the Reddit, the, the crashing of the new economy. Once again, I mean, the reason

this happens so often is that the power is not with the organizations. It's not with the corporations.

It's with the individuals. And so church, as much as we want to own and say our organizational one,

our target to try to reach the 33 year old male with two kids to kind of create that persona and,

and reach that person. That's nice. If we really want to be effective, it's not even the church's

organizational one. It's really more about these individual ones. The, the people who are attending

your church, the religious hanger ons that were in John six, how do we get them to pivot to not be the

consumer of a product? How do we get them to understand how to be released, mobilized, and how to share

their faith within their circle of influence? Power is not within your organization. Power is more within

your organization, empowering individuals to speak the gospel in, in these situations. And that's why I love

so much of what's happening around the Timothy initiative and, and a lot of this. So we're wrestling

with how to do this digitally. We, Stadia, we, the church digital, if we, as the church body, can figure out how to do

digital discipleship, disciple people, mobilize people, release people in digital space, I believe that's when we find

revival. And, and, and I'm praying for those situations to happen through our church planners and churches

outside. And so it really does come down to the heart of this, of how do we disciple people in digital

space? So much so, Ricky, you know, I'll brag on him in a little bit, he's doing a cohort with me. He's, we're, we're

connecting him with eight, uh, digital church planners, uh, and, and guys that need training in digital

discipleship. Uh, it's, it's seven digital church planners and there's a microsite guy. Uh, the

microsite guy needs to understand digital disciple making. So we're kind of bringing them in, into that

as well. It's good. It's going to be a great time, but what's fun is that it's all sorts of different,

um, approaches. I mean, one of, one of these guys is a, uh, a, uh, IT director, uh, for a nationally

recognized company in, uh, Canada. And his goal is not to, I mean, he wants to do his job. He likes

his job. The job pays the bills. He wants to do ministry. He wants to start a church in digital space.

He doesn't want a brick and mortar building. He doesn't, he doesn't want the headache for him.

He wants to do discipleship. He wants to create a movement and he's wanting to do it in digital space.

Another person that we've got in the cohort, ironically, uh, she's also from Canada. Uh,

she's a 20 something who's really passionate about a video game called black desert online.

Now I'll confess, I've never played black desert online. It's an MMO. It's one of these games that

there's like this huge community in there. It's not about the beating the big bad. It's about

being in a community and having friends within the community. And she talks to me

a lot about her guild and how her guild needs Christ. And as a matter of fact, her guild just

merged with another guild. And so now there's three times as many people that she's building

relationships with towards the end of connecting them to Christ. And she wants to start a church

in a video game, which is freaky and scary and awesome all at the same time. And so these are

just some of the people that we're working with and trying to teach them, Hey, the importance of

obedience, discipleship. And it starts with them. Obedying, uh, obedient. That's horrible.

Obeying the words, diving in, into the scripture, sharing who are the people within your circle of

influence. Who are the people within Black Desert Online, within your guild that need Christ?

And, and, and how can we share them, the gospel with them? How can we share these easy, reproducible,

um, systems with them? That's the heart of what we're trying to do with Stadia in context of,

of the digital church. And Ricky's been, um, it's hugely influential heading into this season.

What do you think of Ricky with all this?

Interestingly enough, digital ministry was never really a, a fault until, I mean, I kind of thought,

you know, you know, share the gospel on Facebook or, you know, you're gaming, tell people about

Christ kind of thing. But beyond that, I never really thought about it until I think it was 2017.

I read the novel, I think the movie that already came out, um, Ready Player One.

Oh yeah.

And, and I just remember, I think I read it in like two days. I'm sitting there at 3am in bed,

still, still reading it. Um, and one is like, it was, it was entertaining and a good book,

but the whole time, every, all I could think about was, man, like, you know, maybe not in the same

way, but, but what's happening in this novel. It's like, it's like Ray Bradbury in the 1950s almost

with like Fahrenheit 451 and things like that. Like what, what he's writing about, not all of it,

but a lot of it will become our reality eventually. And too often the church has kind of been reactionary

instead of, you know, being proactive. And I'm like, man, what can we do digitally to start engaging the

people who are, you know, not, not in a bad way necessarily, but going down the rabbit hole,

you know, um, what can we do with that? And, um, so, you know, super exciting about that. I was trying

to, to find the document and I can't remember it now, but one of the things that gets me most excited

about digital church planning, there's a, there's a book called Beyond the Local Church and it kind

of talks about the relationship between local churches and parachurch ministries. Um, but one

of the things that it, it really talks about a lot, and I don't remember the exact stats, but it,

it talks about things that kill movement. And one of the number one things that kills movement is,

it's clergy and it's not, not the presence of clergy. I'm not anti-clergy, um, but hiring clergy

because the moment that a movement is taking place and churches are starting to grow, the moment you

hire someone, uh, whether people admit it or not, there's a subconscious thing that happens where it's

like, oh, okay, I can, okay, we've got a full-time guy now. He can take care of some of that.

And so it talks about the hiring of clergy. It talks about, um, the, the maintenance of buildings

where sometimes churches have to choose. Do we repair the roof? That's going to be leaking water

on our head soon. Or do we send someone to an unreached people group to share the gospel?

And that's an unfair position for any church to be in. Um, and I'm not saying that all the churches

have put themselves in this position. Like, you know, like we, we have been given these models and

we go with it, but a lot of the things that we call church that we give our money to, um, like it,

they're, they're typically movement killers rather than movement spreaders, you know, and what's

happening on digital, there's no roof to repair. There's no electric bill, you know, like all those

things there it's, it doesn't exist. And we can actually give digitally. If we know the need, or we

know the missionary, or we know something like the people can pull in together and give. So that aspect

is still there, like you're giving to mission and you're giving to needs, but you know, there's no

overhead with that. Uh, and if it's something that's simple and reproducible, you don't have to have

clergy. Like you might have some guy leading a network as a, you know, being a resource to people and

helping them through that. But in the, in the average church, there's not someone paid to do that

with this model. And it doesn't really kill the movement so much because, you know, everyone

realizes it's on us, not on him, not on her, not on me. It's on us to complete this mission that,

that we've committed to.

Yeah. I'm, I'm a fan. And thank you for, for those words. I love the idea of a digital only church

and the, the scalability of, of what can happen. I've had that money conversation more times than

I can remember. Um, I can tell you digital pastors who have, who have intentionally said,

I'm not going to make a penny off this church because the moment I get paid, the movement dies.

Um, you know, even to the point where, um, guys like Jade Earhart, uh, who have gone through

church planning initiatives and things like that, don't want to be called pastor because even he

thinks that's a movement killer and wants to be more theologically. We can argue that I'm, I don't,

I don't care for that argument. I've already had it. So like the idea of doing something different

here in a digital only space, I think, I think is, is incredibly exciting. Um, that my comment would

be, what do you do with the money? Um, if you, if you're not paying for the building, like,

and you're not paying for salaries and you're not like this, this money that, well,

does it have to go to the church? Like, can it go straight to the issues within the community?

Can you help people that are in need? Can you do the things maybe that we're called to do

in Acts two? Acts two doesn't say pay for the mortgage. Acts two has a much higher standard when it,

when it comes towards what we're supposed to do with the money. And I think there's an opportunity to

do those things. Um, if you're in a, in a digital church environment now for, for our, our physical

churches, I'm, I'm a huge fan of, of the, of the physical church. That's why, uh, if you can see

the TV behind me, it literally says the word fidgetal P H Y G I T A L. So physical church,

you, you have a place, you have a role and there's even an opportunity for you in this season,

uh, to be successful for the future. Yeah. Digital only expressions of church is a radical concept.

Digital discipleship in itself may be radical for your church, but when it comes to obedience-based,

when it, when it comes towards empowering individuals with the gospel and then releasing

them as your mission force within your city, um, that's how we need to think. That's how culture

is going to receive the gospel. Barna 2020, December, 2020 Barna tells us that 80% of the

people don't care about our physical worship service or our digital worship service. I

butchered this, that 80% of people called to Christ, 80% of people who are not Christians

don't care about your physical or your digital worship services. So that main vehicle for evangelism

that you've been touting and that we've been riding that horse for years, um, Barna has

got cold stats on it right now in the midst of this COVID season that we're not going back

to it. It's not working. And so we need to shift. And that's where I think the, the importance

is for us. Even Kerry Newhoff, churches that are going to be successful in 2021 are the ones

that are empowering, that are equipping people. And so church, our institutional, our organizational

ones need to take a back seat. And instead we need to start empowering others with that gospel,

with this training and equipping them to have these conversations within their circle of influence.

This is how we win in 2021. Um, not fighting on the battlefield, but coaching, cheering on

warriors that we're equipping on the battlefield.

And I think what it, what it boils down to, and I'm careful how I say this, because I feel

like I can easily be branded as like, you know, physical church, mega church enemy. Um, it's really

not true, but most of the pushback that I've got for trying to do simple and reproducible. Um, I think

Frank Viola calls them just organic churches or organic groups. You know, you can define organic

however you want to, but simple reproducible is we've made church so complicated that, you know,

all the things that, all the questions that you tend to get with these smaller gatherings that are

reproducible, very simple. Um, it's, it usually boils down to, it's not complicated enough. So it just

doesn't. And then no one uses that language obviously, but that's what it comes down to is

how do you handle giving? Well, we've made giving such a complicated thing in churches on how we do it,

how much it should be when, when really the new Testament, the model given for the new Testament

is give generously, give sacrificially to the needs of the community and to the mission of God. Like, those are

really the two things that you see people giving sacrificially to, um, you know, even eldership. Like,

we've made this so complicated that, you know, it doesn't have to be that way. Um, you know, and I'm not

saying we just throw anyone in there, but the Bible gives us a model and it's really not that difficult. It's very

simple. Um, and so I think that's one of the things that we're dealing with, but at the end of the day,

like we're all, we're all trying to go the same way. Uh, I'm sure that, you know, 20 years from now,

we'll have a conversation and I'll be like, man, I was so wrong about so many things. Um, but at the end

of the day, like we're all on the same team, we're all heading in the same direction. And we absolutely

all want the same thing. Like we, we want to see the kingdom of God made known and expand across the

entire world. And we don't care if it's, you know, a guy walking through the desert, sharing the gospel

with whoever he meets, or if it's online playing call of duty, uh, whatever, um, like this is what

we're going to. And I think that, um, you know, what, what you're doing with the church digital,

what Stadia is doing, like all these things, the, the tools that you guys are providing for churches.

Um, it may not be used now by so many, but something I've realized in the past few years

is typically what happens on the mission field is what we start doing, you know, 20 years.

You read a church planning book from, I'm not going to name the book, but I read a church planning

book that was released in 2016. And I read a book about missions from 1980s.

It's like the same content. It just took us, it took us that long.

It took us a couple of decades to get there.

Yeah. It just took us that long to, to be willing to adjust and to listen to our brothers and sisters

who are serving in countries that don't have the resources we have. They had to figure out

something different. So the problems that they're solving, you know, 20, 30 years ago,

we're just now starting to approach having to solve. Um, you know, so that's what encourages

me about this is, yeah, there's a, there's a lot of churches doing amazing things online,

um, fidgetally, but in 10, 15 years from now, you know, just because a church came to the party late,

it doesn't mean they're not part of the party. It doesn't mean we don't support them. We don't

pray for them. You know, at the end of the day, like, you know, who knows, like, but I guess only

God knows where we're going with all of this, but, um, I don't know. It's just, it's exciting to see,

you know, what's happening now. Amen. Well, Hey, we've been, we've been talking about this for a

stretch. Let, let, let me say this. If, if it is, I'm putting on the commercial hat. Um,

if you've been listening to this and, and, and you're like, Hey, I'm interested in doing a church

like this, uh, a church in digital space. Um, um, I, I want more information on what digital

discipleship is. Uh, so here's what I'm, I'm literally going to give my, my cell phone number

here on the podcast. Text me directly 484-324-8724. There is a myriad of ways to get connected with me

on social media. Take advantage of that. Hit up the church.digital contact me through that. I don't

care, but let's say all of that. You're unable to do it. My cell phone, text me 484-324-8724. And

let's, let's have a conversation. Uh, let's get started talking about what, uh, a digital church

like this, like what we're talking about, what a movement in digital space would look like, um,

with you being part of it. Like that's, that's for me, it's exciting. Uh, just even to start to get to

help people understand how God can use them in, in digital space. So we'd love to have that

conversation. Um, Ricky, Hey man, thanks for, for jumping on, on the podcast and going through this

as we're landing the plane in any closing thoughts on your side. I appreciate the opportunity. Um,

I appreciate all the kind words. I feel like I don't have very much to offer. So, um, but the same

thing you said, I mean, um, if I can help in any way, um, text me, call me, um, email me, whatever.

Um, yeah, same thing. My number 865-223-3607. I don't care whatever I can do to help. Um, you know,

not, I don't have a whole lot to offer, but what I do have, uh, I probably know someone who does,

so I can at least point you in the right direction. That's awesome. I've never had another person give

their cell phone number. I'm mad respect right now, bro. I mean, it's not like there's millions of

people who listen to this, but you just, you just threw down that, that was, that was, that was

impressive. And, and, and, uh, one of the things that I've loved about Ricky is the humility, um,

of it. Like he's, uh, in, in, in his calling now, what he's doing through Stadia and, and working in

workplace ministry and, and starting to champion more and more of that idea. Um, a higher, there's

not many individuals of higher caliber and him being able to, to speak and take the time here with this,

um, and even being a part of what Stadia is doing in digital means a lot. So reach out, uh, get in

touch. We'll put Ricky's contact info and things like that in the show notes on social, if you want to

engage with him there, uh, you'll have to memorize the cell phone number. I'm not going to put that

Google would not be friends with that if that was there. Anyway, we're going to wrap, we're going to

close. We're going to move on, uh, to whatever's next for Ricky. Uh, this is Jeff with the church

digital and Stadia church planning. Thanks for joining us here on the podcast and we'll see you

next time here at the show. Y'all have a good day.