EP082: Stan Rodda, Tyler Sansom & the Different Flavors of Microsites

Episode 82 of the Church Digital Podcast, once again, powered by Stadia Church Planting.

Jeff here.

We've got a really deep episode on this one.

I got to say I like it.

I'm excited about it because I always say that.

I mean, it needed a line, but I'm excited about this.

But we're getting into a deep level.

We talk a lot on the show about microlocations, and it's been a very popular topic in recent

weeks and months in this COVID season coming through as churches are interested in these

watch parties and these microlocations.

It's part of the long-term strategy.

And what's really fascinating is that even in the midst of this watch party in micro, we're

starting to discover that micro in itself, there's different flavors and there's different

extremes of how microlocations can work.

And so as we're talking about it, I don't know that a lot of the churches are kind of

understanding the complexities and the nuances of the micro.

And so I wanted to really elaborate and try to explore more of what microlocations can look

like.

And so I brought in some people who are really familiar with the idea of micro.

So we brought in Stan Rhoda, who's on staff with New Life Church in Washington, D.C.

New Life is no stranger to the podcast.

Tom Pounder has been on the podcast a bunch.

Jade Earhart used to be on staff with the church.

And so New Life is definitely represented here.

We brought in Tyler Sansom, who's with Church Anywhere Program, First Capital Christian Church,

and so also has a full history here with the Church Digital.

What we've really wanted to do with Ray in tow, of course, as co-hosts, is we really wanted

to start to unpack what this idea of a microlocation is and how you can grow them.

There is a desire, there is a need for churches to launch them quickly, but there's also desire

to want to do it long term.

And so what is the tension towards launching something quickly for today, because we need

to in this COVID season, but developing it into something that will work for you long term?

And so that's the show, that's the tension, that's the conversation.

By the way, I've already had multiple conversations already with other churches that are interested

in doing this.

So take note, if you're listening to this and you can identify, you're not alone, which

is interesting, which actually leads to the other part of this intro here.

Through Stadia, we're doing a number of cohorts aimed at helping churches grow digitally,

combining the physical church and the digital church together into one singular focus,

mission and vision.

We've, we're already taking 70 churches, 60 to 70 churches right now through this process,

and it's going very well.

We're spinning up another cohort that's starting in August.

And so if you are interested in your church coming together and going through a cohort where

we're learning from churches like Church Home, like Saddleback, like Crossroads in Cincinnati,

and getting to dig in to not only content, but being part of conversations with other churches

and facilitators and huddles where we get to help guide through the steps and also help

with some accountability to help your church figure out how to thrive, grow, and multiply.

Yes, multiply digitally.

A lot of the stuff that we talk here with the watch parties and this idea of the microlocation,

some help to actually get that executed at your church, we at Stadia want to do that.

Go to stadiachurchplanning.org slash digital, P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L, and you can find more information

there.

So for now, let's get into the conversation.

We've got Ray Diarmus, of course, co-host.

You've got Tyler Sansom, who is engagement pastor over at First Capital Christian, I believe

lead pastor now at a digital-only church called Church Anywhere.

I think that just happened.

And Stan Rhoda from New Life Community Church.

Myself, Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning in a conversation that I'm calling

How to Grow a Microlocation.

Okay, everybody, here you go.

For you, I'm just curious.

It used to be COVID season, and then it was like race season, and all that kind of stuff

centered around that.

All these seasons have really just boiled down to 2020 is nuts.

There's going to be a ring of fire, solstice eclipse, on like the 21st of July.

I just saw that yesterday, like a big ring of fire in the sky.

Because of course-

I don't even know if you're kidding or serious.

No, I'm serious.

It's like once in every 70 years or something.

I was like, yeah.

Sauron emergence.

That's awesome, man.

Oh my gosh.

I saw the asteroid that's coming to Earth that's going to narrowly-

It's medium-sized, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, at some point, I'm waiting for the seventh angel to come out and pour his

bowl out on the, you know, in time, I guess.

Dude, Kobe died, and then everything just hit the fan after that.

That's where it started.

It did.

That's where it started.

It started with Kobe, and then just straight down the hill.

That's right.

Wow.

And in the midst of all that, you have scientists out in Alaska.

Nobody-

No, I don't think anybody even caught this, but there were scientists out in Alaska, like

mid-April, that said they found evidence of a parallel universe.

And it just totally went completely un-

Like, no, it didn't even hit a radar for people.

I'm like, they what?

People are like, oh, parallel universe?

Yeah, well-tried UFOs, okay?

Yeah.

It's just another day in 2020.

Yeah, that's the universe where Thanos won, and everybody's dusted, so-

That won the world.

Well done.

Actually, that universe sounds pretty good right now compared to Earth.

I mean, aliens hit the radar there for a while a few weeks back.

That became a big thing, so parallel universe I could get on board with at this point.

That's awesome.

Hey, so, you know, Stan is-

Why don't you give us a little detail?

Like, what-

So you said House Church Network, kind of layout here, because we're talking a lot about the

House Church microlocations, kind of like that universe, talking about the alternate universe.

We're talking about just that kind of idea here on the show.

So what actually-

What's the practicality behind what that looks like?

I mean, really, behind it all is just a simple read through the Book of Acts and saying,

how did they do it?

And it just, every time I turn around, when you read through the Book of Acts, somebody's

met at somebody else's house, somebody was saved at a house, a household was saved.

Just over and over and over through the Book of Acts, there's something happening in somebody's

house with a household.

And so my take has started to become that, you know, maybe we're missing something in

just focusing on a big Sunday morning gathering, although that may be part of the answer.

But there's something we're missing.

And so I've heard people, and I've even said this for the longest time, man, what would it

look like if the American church could get back to Acts chapter two?

Just that, if that could happen all over again, what would it look like?

And I think, well, then maybe we should probably be doing things like they did in Acts chapter

two, and maybe we would experience that.

So the practical side of it really is just reading through and saying, trying to do it as much

like they did as possible.

So, you know, establishing, you know, certain rhythms that we see throughout the Book of

Acts in the New Testament.

You know, there is a gathering on Sunday, Acts 20.

We know they gathered on the first day of the week.

And just trying to align ourselves with that.

Yeah.

And it's awesome to me that you're using that Acts too as the foundation, the biblical, going

back to like the biblical functions of what the church is, and even trying to map that out

into some of the home environments with that.

In this COVID season, obviously, we're feeling a lot of those tensions, obviously, because

majority of the world at this point has been locked in their home and unable to get into

the physical gatherings, the gathering together.

And so we're kind of been forced into a digital, a church online mindset.

Now, things are opening back up and people are slowly going back to the building, maybe

possibly some of them are still hesitant to.

And individual states, individual cities, counties, individual churches have different

philosophies in there.

And so that's even interesting.

But hearing these ideas, and what's been fascinating to me is really seeing the different applications

for operating out of a home, seeing them kind of pop up here.

Now, Tyler is through Church Anywhere is no stranger to that.

Tyler's been, how long have you been doing Church Anywhere?

Two years, 18 months?

How long has it been now?

Yeah, a little over three and a half, almost four.

I didn't realize that.

That was longer than I thought.

Okay, so you've been doing it, you've been doing it three, three plus years, you know,

and obviously we've talked a lot with Jay Cranda, their home gatherings, we've had Elevation

on the podcast with their watch parties.

I'm trying to even think, we've had Adrienne on the show recently with Northeast Christian

Church.

She feels like so many conversations with so many different people with so many different

approaches towards it.

But the thing that I really kind of wanted to park on a little bit here is how much of

it is a, I feel like there's extremes to like the home gathering, right?

Where you've got the, hey, we're just going to like press play on this Roku and watch this

entire service type of thing.

And then you've got the fuller extreme, which is more of the volunteer who's leading is not

just being hospitality, but it's more like pastoring and shepherding the environments,

right?

You know, where it's, hey, I'm spiritually responsible for the 20 people that are in this

house.

There's a big difference between, hey, I can throw out some seven layer bean dip and press

play to I'm now spiritually responsible for that.

So, you know, I'd love to even just kind of pick seven layer bean dip that didn't, I was

hoping that we could get a lot, maybe the, maybe the audience laughed at it.

I thought it was funny.

I smile.

Okay.

It's good enough in Zoom.

So the, the audience would have caught it if they were watching on YouTube.

So the, what are the strengths and weaknesses in a model of that?

Because there are some churches that, that the, the watch part is the perfect tool for, for

their context for, for a deeper model.

I mean, there, there's another church for that at, at that extreme.

What have been your learnings as we're going through things like this?

What, why, why did you choose the path that you're on?

What were the, the painful lessons with that?

Tyler, why don't you start off a little bit here and tell us a little bit about church

anywhere, maybe where it fits on that continuum.

Sure.

The spectrum from what you, what you just presented, we would fit on like the far end of giving

volunteers freedom to become pastors essentially, um, to shepherd the people there.

So they're, uh, they're not the hit play.

Let's watch the service.

That's it kind of people.

Um, I will say during this time period of trying to figure out how to gather, um, during

COVID season, um, it's been strange because we've tried watch parties and the buy-in has

not been nearly as good as what it is for church anywhere.

Um, so we've just simply tried the, let's gather, gather people together to, um, to watch

the service together.

They can't, um, come to the building.

And so let's go do it in homes.

And that buy-in has just not been there.

Um, we've, we've got a few of them off the ground that are successful for the most part.

People just weren't into that that much for our context.

Um, but it's bizarre because our whole church is based around, uh, these like tons of micro

sites that we have.

So for us, the empowering part of, um, how we do micro sites within church anywhere, um,

like empowering people to become pastors has led to more buy-in and, um, uh, a more successful

long-term solution.

Whereas I think these watch parties for us have been like a bandaid before we can start

meeting again, um, in our, in our building.

Hey, that, that's, that's awesome.

Tyler Stan, how does that relate to, to you?

Where do you kind of fit in the continuum?

Um, man, I, uh, I actually am not really sure where I fit in the continuum.

Um, I probably just to the, to the inside in some ways of what Tyler is talking about.

Um, it very much the same concept, I guess, in terms of shifting people from saying, okay,

I'm just gonna put out the snacks and hit play and host.

And now I'm moving towards spiritual responsibility for people.

The end result of what, what I'm trying to do, what we're trying to do is, uh, uh, wherever

this fits, um, is really to get those house churches to view their, um, their primary responsibility

as, uh, the discipling of their people and to move them forward for those who are gifted

and called and want to do it, to then move and multiply into new, um, into new house churches.

And so right now, at least with COVID, we've started with, Hey, if we can even get eight

people together, if we can get 10 people together, let's do it.

Which is part of where my question originally, uh, had on the Facebook post it sprung up was

because when I saw the post, I was thinking missional communities tend to run.

They're kind of that mid gathering, like what most of them tend to run that like 40 to 50

range or 30 to 50 range.

And so it's kind of like this high end small group kind of a thing.

And so somewhere around in there, uh, we've just said, or I've just said, Hey, how do we

actually do disciple making in a house church in a, in a house, call it a church, um, and,

and develop people to the point where they are also hearing the voice of God and they are

obeying in the mission to make disciples that is now beginning to impact their neighborhood,

their schools, their whatever.

Uh, and so I, I don't know where that lands on the continuum exactly.

Uh, but yeah, maybe that's where some of this conversation will lead us.

We'll get better clarity on that, but that's, that's what we are trying to accomplish.

When I say house church, I'm thinking disciple making movement, um, is what is, what is in

my, um, is what we're aiming at.

Yeah.

And, and I, I would, I would probably suggest that's, I think that's in the heart of a lot,

a lot of churches where I think they're trying to figure out, I know several that I've talked

to it just in the, in the past week where they're seeing an opportunity and they're wanting to

move to a, a neighborhood disciple making discipleship apprenticeship centric model, uh,

of empowering people to be on, on personal mission towards that.

Um, there's, there's a lot of, and where I would love to maybe park out towards the end

of this is how, how does, how does that actually happen?

You know, there was a particular church, um, yesterday I was talking with and it was there,

uh, you know, I may have said in the conversation, but it's like the, uh, the lead pastor wanted

to spin it up, wanted to, to do these, uh, to do the, the neighborhood stuff.

If we're not able to get into the building, there's, there's a lot of delay that we're

failing.

We need to get to the neighborhoods as soon as possible.

And, uh, and the church was looking at the mindset of, okay, how do we set up these discipleship

centric and empower these and train these and get all these people going and we need to do

it in two and a half weeks.

Um, and that's not, I don't know that you can mic disciple making.

I think it's more of a crockpot approach and it was, was really interesting even helping the

church kind of realize, Hey, you may need to be more on the watch party for the short term,

um, just to kind of get onboarded, learn some lessons and start to use the watch party, you

know, with your bean dip as the beginning to kind of grow and develop deeper down that,

that pathway.

Now, some churches, they're only looking for the watch party because it's a short term.

Um, Tyler, like when, or both you guys, when you started out, did you start at the disciple

making the, the heavy end, uh, of, of the spectrum or did you start earlier and grow?

Like what was the growth process?

Either you guys go.

Um, for, for us, we started with, um, somewhere in the middle.

So it was a watch, it was a watch party with the idea of doing small groups attached to

it.

Um, that's how we started.

Um, but we didn't have like a growth track or anything like that, that we wanted to, um,

send people through next steps or really any plan for like multiplication or any of that.

Um, it wasn't until like probably a year and a half into it that we were like, okay, this

is starting to work a little bit.

We've got to figure this out.

And that's when we really sat down to, to, to start looking at, like, how can we continue

to empower people that maybe have never even been to our church before?

Um, how can we empower someone that's only been to a microsite or online to become, um,

a fully functioning disciple of Christ?

So, but we didn't start that way.

It was somewhere in the middle.

Um, well, I mean, uh, with us up at, up at new life, it started about four years ago or

so we'd wrestled with the idea of discipleship and making disciples for quite a while.

Um, our theory, our practice at the time was, uh, everybody needs to be in a life group.

Um, so the primary next step for, in many cases out of Sunday morning was get into a group,

get into a group, get into a group.

Um, and in Northern Virginia for whatever that's worth, um, there seem to be a lot of churches

that struggle with life groups in Northern Virginia, partly because there are a lot of,

um, super, super professional type people, government type people who are working 60, 70,

80 hours a week, you know, um, high level FBI guys, DOD, um, other three letter organization,

uh, represented at our church, uh, secret service, uh, those kinds of people.

And, uh, so they go to work for 60, 70, 80 hours a week, protecting the president, protecting

the country, protecting the vice president.

And then you, they show up on Sunday looking for a refresh and all they hear is, hey, you

missed group.

Uh, and now they feel guilty.

And it just seemed like we were really struggling through, um, trying to get people in groups.

And so we started in on a journey of just kind of reading, uh, the new Testament and staff

meeting and just asking the question, what's it tell us about disciple making?

What's it tell us about disciple making?

And about two, two and a half years ago, um, God introduced us to a couple of guys who

had their hands and, um, kind of in disciple making movement around the globe.

And we started learning some things from them.

And for us really where the whole thing for us changed was whenever we started getting our

hands around, uh, reproducible, um, simple and reproducible tools that anybody could use.

A secret service guy could use these tools while he's on a break, um, with the buddy that he's

been trying to reach.

And we wanted to take those tools and get them into the hands of as many people as possible

and start training as many people as possible.

And so really that was kind of the process for us.

It was just this reading and praying and asking and seeking.

And then some of that led to trying to up our game in life groups when we were at a point

where we were like, maybe we should just scrap life groups.

Like we, we don't see how they're working here.

Like maybe we just shouldn't do them because we can't, we were a church at the time of 1500

people and we had 30 life groups.

We just couldn't, it was like, man, where we can't get their work in long hours.

Then they need a soccer game and now they feel guilty because they miss group.

It just was this weird dynamic.

And so, uh, we started getting our hands on some tools and said, okay, now how do we train

people to actually go out and share their story?

What God's doing in their life, share the gospel.

How do we train them how to do that?

Let's get some of these things going.

And for us, where we get toward, uh, life groups now or house church now or whatever really

is the end result of saying, here's some really intentional tools we can give to anybody,

no matter where they're at, they can reproduce with their neighbors, their

friends, their coworkers, wherever they are.

And that's kind of been the transformation for us, um, moving us in that direction.

Stan, that's really intriguing to me because, you know, obviously you guys are looking to

break free of just kind of set church, right?

Like not just Sunday morning and not just small group, because obviously people have crazy

schedules and can't really comply with that kind of schedule that the church would set

for them.

So get, get a little more specific, dig in there for us.

Like what are some of those tools that you're really arming them with so that they can kind

of, I guess, take ownership of their own spiritual development, which I think is great.

Yeah.

So, uh, I won't, I won't, uh, plug, forge in too much here with some of the stuff I'm doing,

but, uh, one of the things we say is we want, um, we desperately, well, here, here's where we

started.

We started with the definition of a disciple.

After wrestling with it, we said, okay, we believe a disciple is John 10, 27.

It's somebody who hears the voice of the shepherd and follows.

They hear the voice of God and obey.

So if I can hear the voice of God through scripture, through prayer, through whatever

things I am doing, I can take that.

And here's a couple of tools to now train somebody else to do the exact same thing.

Uh, so we talk a lot about something called the master plan of surrender, uh, where we talk

about becoming a master swordsman, um, becoming very acquainted with scripture, uh, a master

prayer warrior.

We are training people to be, uh, to daily abide in Christ.

We are pressing them for more than five minutes a day.

We're getting away from you versions versus the day.

Like how do we get into three chapters, five chapters, 10 chapters, and just own, own scripture.

And there are people that'll take that step with us.

And there are some people that are back on that life group track of like, I don't have

time for that right now.

Um, but walking people through that.

And then the last part of the master plan of surrender is a master trainer where we want

not only them to be able to, to hear God's voice and obey, to read scripture daily, to

pray daily, but then actually be able to train somebody else how to do the exact same thing.

So then once they have the tools and they're doing it and they see God start to work in

their life and they're taking steps of obedience and God's doing something with them.

Now we can hand them three more people or five more people, or they can go and find those

other people, neighbors, friends, whoever, and they can replicate that.

They can now share the tool, how they got to where they are, and they can pass that.

They can pass it along to somebody else.

So simple tools along the way, but one of them, uh, is master, uh, master plan of surrender,

master prayer warrior, master swordsman, master trainer.

We want every disciple to be able to do those three things, abide daily and tell somebody else

how to do the same.

If I can hear God's voice and obey, I can, I can show somebody else how to hear God's voice

and obey.

And that's where we think, that's where we think and believe movement, um, in a disciple

making context will happen.

That that's awesome.

But, but what's interesting, even beyond your, your, your three pillars or your three steps

there, small groups was a lid.

I mean, the way, the way you're describing it, the, the one hour I've, I've been parts

of, of churches I've consulted, I've been on church staffs and we've talked about, you

know, Ed Stetzer talks about, Hey, we need a third thing.

He's, he said that on the podcast, like church, weekend services, small groups, like we really

can't get to being people being on mission without a third thing.

I've been in church environments where, where, you know, leadership teams and navigation teams

have said to me, Hey, you know, what's more important, disciple making or, or, or small

groups, because we can't expect our people to give another third hour.

We can only expect two hours of the service hour and either a small group or disciple making.

What do you think is more important than that?

No, I have an answer to that.

I have answers to that, that I probably can't say on the air, but what's, what's interesting

to me is your spin at this is, is abandoned, let go of the thing that possibly was working

because you're really more interested in, in getting to the, this disciple making angle

as opposed to the, the community of, of, of that.

Stan, do you want to like even just dive into that a little bit?

Why, why, why is small groups of lid?

There were definitely some small groups that we would say they accomplished what we wanted

them to accomplish.

And there were many that absolutely became a lid when we would do the hard work of saying,

okay, which groups are actually thriving?

They're on mission.

They're doing the stuff we want.

I mean, the numbers would go down from 30.

We could find five that we really thought had it going on.

And out of a church of 1500 in Northern Virginia, where there's 3.2 million lost people in our

backyard, five groups to get it is not, is not good enough.

It's not going to cut it.

That doesn't make a dent in our darkness out here.

And so we had to really wrestle with, um, with that part of it and say, okay, in many ways,

small groups are a lid.

So we either need to figure out how to do groups better, or we need to, we need to do something

differently.

I, I see potential for the house churches to become the place where all of this takes

place.

Not only are they finding their community within the studies and because I mean, within it,

there are studies and stuff that come along with it and there's DBS and there's all these

things, um, but they get their community within it, but they're also living together on mission,

specifically the mission to make disciples.

So now they're not only, um, not only are they engaging in, okay, how do we serve our school?

How do we serve a local family?

How do we, whatever, but they're actually doing it from the perspective of, okay, where

is God giving us an Avenue in to share the gospel so that the gospel is the light so that

we can actually multiply and grow and, and, and disciple other people.

Uh, and so I, I think maybe we have been trying to get our hands around some sort of a, a mix

in the two of those.

I'm not, I'm not really sure exactly what that looks like yet, but, um, but as we develop

them, we're trying to say that the house church could, again, you go back to acts two and you

read through those, you know, acts two 42 to 47, or you can even start back up to verse

36 and you get those healthy functions of a church.

And we'd say, okay, we, we don't want just somebody to, to your point earlier, uh, put

out the bean dip and hit play.

We want somebody to take responsibility for that community.

And how do we get them to look like an acts two community in their living room so that

there is, you know, worship happening, community happening, disciple making happening, evangelism,

like all this stuff.

Like, how do I get that out of the living room?

Uh, is, is really for us the difference and moving away from just, okay, I know this is a

hot button issue.

Uh, here's your next Beth Moore book for the next study.

Here's your next John Maxwell study.

Here's your next, like, let's walk away from that.

Um, let's train people how to, how to, how to make disciples out of their house.

Yeah.

And I think that seems intriguing for a lot of churches.

I think what a lot of churches kind of struggle with is how slow that is.

Right.

And so kind of, and that's right.

Like just being real, that's where a lot of churches struggle.

Like, they're like, we want to, we want to grow, like we want to grow deep, but we also

want to grow wide and we want to do it fast.

So what does this process look for you guys as far as time, just realistically, just to

say like, Hey, this is what we put in.

This is the investment and this is what we've yielded.

Um, realistically, it looks different for every single person we invest with.

Um, there are some people that we invest with.

I I've got a guy that I met in a Panera parking lot two years ago who was disconnected from

God, raised Christian, but disconnected from God.

We started a conversation.

He is now my student guy and is leading a house church, uh, that has, uh, multiplied into

two more house churches and is about to make some trip to Indianapolis to baptize six people

or something because of the connection that he's got, uh, through these house churches.

That was, that's one guy two years ago.

That happened very quickly because of who he is, how he's wired, what God was doing with

him.

Um, partly his personality.

And then I've got other people who get it and they're doing exactly what we want them

to do, but it's a slower process because of who they are.

God wires everybody a little bit differently.

And so out of the house church, we don't say everybody should be able to do what Gerald

can do.

But when I get my hands on a Gerald, I want to push him as far as I can, as quickly as

I can, because he's, he's a, what we call a super spreader.

Like that dude, that dude's going to do a bunch and it's going to be awesome.

Uh, but the reality is, um, that even, even, uh, Paul writes, uh, in, in the book of Acts

a lot about spending a lot of time with people.

And sometimes it does just need to slow down.

We have a tool we use to help filter people out.

Uh, we talk a lot about fatzos, uh, people who are faithful, available, teachable, sendable,

and obedient.

And when we find those people, we run with those people, everybody else, we, we say, Hey,

keep coming, keep simmering.

We'll pray for you.

Like be a part of what, what God's doing.

But when I get my hands on a fat, so I'm running with them, uh, because they're, they're going

to be the ones that push the movement forward.

So we try to filter people, uh, through, through tools as well.

So it's gotta be the first time I've ever heard someone say they're running with a fat.

So just, just throwing that out.

Cold blood, Tyler, cold blood.

So, so looking at that, and I, and I know this is tough, right?

Because even in the book of Acts, right?

Like there's seven chosen, there's one Stephen and there's one Philip.

And we don't hear about the other five.

It's not that the other five aren't faithful.

It's not that they're not available, trustworthy, et cetera.

You know, it's not that they're not those things.

It's that these guys are some of those super spreaders that you're talking about.

And yet whenever churches kind of want to launch these things, they want more super spreaders.

So as far as like the people who aren't the super spreaders talk about that investment in that time too,

because that's where it's like, there's a lot more of those.

And how do we hone in and even deal with some of the slower growth that we see there?

And so for instance, some of my house church leaders or the people that are actually helping

me run with some of this stuff, I tell them to go as deep as they can with those people

as possible.

As far as they will let you take them, you go deep.

I want them to, again, go back up to the top of the thing.

I want them to be master swordsmen.

I want them to be master prayer warriors, and I want them to be master trainers.

If the only thing they get out of it, if someone comes into the process and they never start a house church,

but they know their Bible backward and forward, they're memorizing scripture,

they can tell their story to anybody who will listen, they're abiding with Christ daily,

you can do a lot with that foundation.

So I will say, just go as deep with them for as long as they will walk with you.

I have to remind them periodically that Jesus walked with 12, and all 12 ultimately fail him

completely when it counted, mattered the most.

Few are restored, 11 are restored, and they run later.

But I mean, we have to understand that there's going to be some people, not to the extent of

a Judas, but there are going to be some people that don't walk that path completely.

I have to be prepared to walk, in some cases, for years with some of those people.

Now, do I invest time differently with that group versus the house church leaders that are running and doing?

Yes, I, as the campus pastor, as the leader of the thing, yes, I invest my time differently for those people.

But the reality is that we have to run with those that are going to run and hope that we can train as many people as possible to share the gospel,

share their story, and to train them to be that three-tier kind of person that I was talking about earlier.

I would love to actually hear this from both of you.

How do you find these people?

How do you find somebody that's faithful, available, teachable, sendable, and what was the other one?

Obedient.

Where do you find them?

How do you grow them?

How do you multiply them?

Like, even start with the find.

I'm sure they're in your church, but how do you find them?

So, this is, I don't know if it's a, I don't know what kind of gift this is, but my wife and I, we flip a lot of houses.

That's, like, what we do in our ultra spare time that we just have all the time.

But I've, since I was a little kid, I've been able to look at, like, old things and broken down things and see, like, potential in that.

And I don't know why that that's a gift that God has given me to be able to do, but I can do that with people as well.

We had Brad on this podcast before, and when I met Brad, he had no electricity in his house, was a drug addict, and was basically using what money he would have paid rent and electric for to buy drugs.

And I looked at him and realized, like, he's a people person.

Eventually, I'm, like, I want to do everything I can to lead this dude to Jesus because I can see potential in him.

And now he's leading, like, a microsite that's 300 men, and he's helped multiply that and start other microsites out of it.

So I don't know how to develop that ability, but that's just something I've always had is the ability to see that in people.

Beyond that, though, it's been a lot of just casting the vision behind Church Anywhere for us, and a lot of people have just approached us.

So I don't want to take credit beyond, like, one person.

But most of our leaders out of, like, the 19 have just caught on to the vision of what we're trying to do with this smaller multiplication and more of, like, an empowering kind of faith.

And they just want to be a part of it.

So once they approach us, then we can put them through our process of training.

Yeah, say something similar.

I mean, we definitely, as a part of the process with our training, we train people in really specific questions that they can utilize.

Once somebody's been trained how to abide in Christ on a daily basis and how to share their story and how to share the gospel, we give them a safe place to practice and to get comfortable with those tools.

And then we hand them a couple of key questions to kind of help them get started.

For instance, one that we give people is we say, hey, whenever you find yourself engaged in a conversation somewhere, you know, maybe this question will be useful to guide the conversation towards something spiritual.

The question is, if God could do a miracle in your life for you today, what would it be?

And what's really interesting about that question and why I like it so much is because you immediately figure out who that person is and what they're looking for and what they want and the answer that you have to provide.

For instance, I asked a girl that question at Panera one time, and I spent a lot of time at Panera, I'm finding in these stories.

So I asked a girl at Panera one time, and she said, if God could do a miracle in my life today, he would bring my mother back from the dead.

She was murdered a year and a half ago, and she proceeded to tell me the story.

And what I heard in that answer was she needs hope.

She needs hope that there's more to this.

And it gives me the stepping stone of the conversation, the spiritual conversation, to know how to direct it.

I also discovered very quickly if that person is a fatso or not, whether or not they might be willing to walk with me.

When I had the conversation with Gerald, it was obvious because I actually tried to scare him away.

I was on my motorcycle, and he approached me in the parking lot and said, that's a nice bike, man.

I'm like, yeah, we start talking, and I asked him what he did for a living.

He told me, and I knew that when you ask that question, somebody's going to ask you what you do.

And everybody's always scared when you say, well, I'm a pastor.

They all freak out, and they run away like you're going to catch them on fire or something.

But instead, I told Gerald, I said, well, what I do is I walk with guys.

I train them how to hear God's voice and obey.

It's basically discipleship.

I disciple you.

You interested in that?

And he went, yes.

When can we meet?

I mean, it was like that quick.

I'm like, okay, well, I've got a fatso.

Now I know because I've asked just enough.

I've told just enough that I know.

So we help people identify that.

We say, you know, praying for your neighbors, praying for God to go before you in the conversation.

And the reality is you may bring it up.

You may share your story.

You may share the gospel.

And they may go, nope, not for me.

I don't want anything to do with that.

Keep it to yourself.

Now I know.

I know that I can pray for them.

But they may not be in that particular part of soil that Jesus talks about as being receptive just yet.

They're not the good soil that's quite there.

But if I cast that enough times, if I share with enough neighbors,

if I talk to enough people that I bump into out in my world, in my sphere of influence,

enough soccer coaches and PTO members and teachers and whoever,

eventually I'm going to find somebody that says, I want whatever that is.

Whatever you've got, that's what I want.

And now I have a fatso I can run with.

It doesn't mean we give up on the other people.

It actually means in our training, we tell people to keep a couple of lists.

And one list I call the simmer list.

And you're just praying for them.

And you're letting them simmer.

And they just kind of simmer in the pot waiting for you.

And you just keep praying and praying and praying.

And hopefully someday they break down.

Something happens.

And they want to know more.

But then on the other side of the list are your fatsoes, the people that are running.

They want to know more.

They call you.

They text you.

They bug you.

What's next?

What can I do next?

Now what do I do?

I did my homework.

Now what?

Now what?

Those are the kinds of people.

And those people are out there.

I think sometimes we, I think it goes back to my issue with kind of the build it and they

will come mentality and people thinking they need to go find the pastor for the answer.

As opposed to, no, actually God is preparing our people to go out and do this, to be disciple

makers in Tyler's language, to be the pastor of that, their community, their group.

God's got a lot of people he wants to release to do that.

And it's not just the Bible college educated seminarian at the top of the organizational

food chain.

So we've got to do a better job training and releasing people.

So let's dig in there, Tyler and Stan, level of comfort.

Like how do you get to that level of comfort where you're ready to release?

Because that seems to be scary because, you know, obviously like talking business, right?

Like we're sending them out with the church brand.

We're sending them out with you represent us.

And it's that kind of responsibility that, that I think tends to freak a lot of people

out in terms of, okay, they're going to be an extension of us, but how comfortable are

we with that?

And how, how is that going to come back to bite us on the rear end if things go wrong?

After our training process, the last thing that they do is sign a 90 day commitment with,

with us to be paired with a coach who has already been through this.

So that's, that's a little bit of a comfort thing for us to, um, one that we have their

full commitment to, to be all in to doing this.

Um, we've already, they've already went through our training process.

And then two, we have a mentor that walks them through, um, starting microsite.

And so that's, that's helpful for us to, to think like, okay, not only are they reporting

back to, um, our staff, but they're also have a coach that's like the training wheels for

them, um, so hopefully they won't do anything that is off of, off brand of who we're trying

to be.

Um, also I don't have a Bible college education.

I went to school for audio engineering and mostly just to play football.

So, um, they have just as much education as I do when it comes to that.

Obviously I try to, to, to better myself as much as possible, um, within the scriptures

and to be discipled by, um, my mentors, but I don't have that sheet of paper that says

like, I'm holier than you or whatever that stands for.

So, um, they're pretty much on the same playing field as me.

So it's really that commitment, um, putting them with a coach and then like just getting

over myself and relinquishing control.

Yeah.

I mean, for us, it's in many ways, it's similar.

It's, um, it's recognizing that God, that if, if, if every follower of Jesus Christ has

the Holy spirit, then the Holy spirit wants to do something through that person uniquely

individually.

I just need to help them have the tools to get there.

So for us, I mean, the example of Jesus, it seems was to train a little bit and send

them out and see what happens and then bring them back in and coach them back up and then

send them back out and see what happens, bring them back, get feedback, coach them up where

they need it.

And they did this all the time.

They'd be walking with Jesus.

They get 10 feet away and all of a sudden they want to know which one's the best in the

kingdom.

They come back and Jesus has to coach them right back up.

Uh, Mount of, you know, when Jesus goes up to the transfiguration, he comes back down.

This awesome stuff has happened.

Peter, James, and John are just like, dude, Jesus was like, uh, you know, this, whoa, do

you guys see that?

And they're freaking out and they come back down and the disciples are struggling to cast

out a demon.

And Jesus is like, oh man.

Okay.

Well, so you guys have to pray.

Now, if you're going to cast out a demon, you got to pray.

We got to start.

Like, it just seemed like Jesus didn't have the same, again, I don't know what it is, but

for me, it's, it's just something about the American version of church to control an institution

so that it grows a certain way.

Um, Jesus didn't seem to have that.

And so for me, if, if you were to step into a training for me where like, for instance,

I walked through a tool on the great commission called the eight commands.

We just walked through the great commission.

We break it down into eight things that Jesus commands of us.

Um, the very first one you do the very first week you'll leave.

And your first homework assignment is to share your story of how Jesus has changed your life

no less than three times with someone in your life, a friend and a, just go do it and see

what happens.

We are transformed.

I believe we are actually transformed through our obedience.

We're not transformed because we have more knowledge that comes our way.

We're transformed when we obey, we hear God's voice and we just obey.

We're not responsible for the result of that, but I am responsible for my obedience when God

calls.

So the very first week you're with me, you're going out and you're practicing in the field.

What, what happens with, um, uh, uh, Jesus and the, uh, the Samaritan woman, she, she goes

right into the harvest immediately after Jesus talks about all the stuff he does with her.

And she goes immediately to the harvest and shares.

And I think a lot of times we actually find Jesus in the harvest more than we find him in

other places.

We find Jesus in the harvest because we're walking in obedience doing what he asks us to

do.

Um, and so people, my people come back with some pretty interesting stories and there

are some stories of failure and that's okay.

Guess they're, they're going to come right back into group the next week.

They're going to be picked right back up.

They're going to be discipled.

They're going to be trained.

They're going to be loved.

They're going to be cared for.

Then we're going to go right back and do it again the next week.

And we're going to try it again.

Then the next week out of that is, you know, is more.

Yeah.

Let's lean in there for a second.

Would you, either of you mind sharing like one of those stories where things didn't go so well

and maybe what you would have done different.

Cause it's easy to point out like the success stories.

You know what I'm saying?

And I think everybody wants to jump on board with that, but I think a lot of pastors want

to hear, man.

All right.

So realistically, man, we had some failures too.

I mean, one of my failures to be honest with you was the lady I talked to at Panera who,

uh, who I tried.

I took a tool that I was learning and I tried to have the conversation, but when she answered,

it didn't hit me until later what she was really saying.

So that conversation ended super awkwardly as I tried to walk away from a conversation

with a woman who was talking about how her mother had been murdered two years ago, a

year and a half ago.

Um, and, and it, it honestly freaked me out.

I was like, okay, God, I'm trying to do what you want me to do.

That's the first person that's going to respond that like, I, I don't know what to do with

that.

And then I had to go back to my guy and say, here was the answer I got.

What do I do with that?

How do I handle that?

You know?

Um, and, uh, that just didn't go well.

That conversation never, uh, never went back to anything else.

It never turned into, Hey, would love for you to come and be a part of some of our community.

Uh, never turned into a, Hey, let's follow up.

It just died right there.

It was just like, Oh my gosh, what do I do with this?

And it just fell apart.

Um, but I mean, what better place to, to learn than, than out there actually, actually doing

it.

Um, so that, I mean, that was at least one for me.

It sounds good at the beginning with the question, but man, that it died pretty quickly

because I didn't know what to do with it.

But yeah, I'm, uh, if you're familiar with the Enneagram, I'm an eight.

Um, so for me to say, I would like to relinquish control in this is like the exact opposite of

my actual personality.

Um, so early on when we started micro sites, um, I had a really, really hard time with that

specifically.

Um, and so I'm, I was talking this big game about how like, we're going to empower people

to, to pastor these people.

And then I ended up being the pastor in every location.

Um, so that was like an overall fail for like a whole year until I finally got over myself.

Um, so that was the first one.

Second one is very, very much more specific.

So we had, um, that you guys are familiar with, we have an orphanage campus.

Uh, we do a microsite and orphanage and, um, it's a really awesome ministry now, but when

it first started, we put together a team of people with a volunteer campus pastor.

Um, all of them were huge personalities.

Um, they're all really solid individual volunteers, but it would be like putting, um, like every

diva in the NBA in a starting lineup.

Um, and I don't mean that they're divas individually.

They just all have really good, they're like five talent kind of people.

And so there was no leader.

Like I threw this leader to the wolves and they were all, um, parents who had already

gone through parenting.

So like almost all of them had at least like the youngest kid was like a senior in high

school that they had.

And so they went into this orphanage with one, um, a bunch of alpha dogs, uh, in, in a group

and two wanting to parent these, uh, orphans who had been in the foster care system their

whole lives.

Like they would parent their own kids.

And, um, I, I saw it, I saw it coming, um, and I didn't do anything about it and it did

not go well for like the first six months of launching this campus.

It ended up like just ticking kids off or ticking off the leaders because they wanted to parent

them and discipline them and, uh, came to the point where it made us really reevaluate

if, if we're keeping the main thing, the main thing.

And so that made us change our philosophy a little bit on how we went into microsites in

the first place, um, with the idea of less being about, um, like the structure of how things

work and more being about making sure we present Jesus first above all else.

And so I, like a big fail on my part and on sending them out and then them coming back

and coaching the whole, like Jesus philosophy that Stan was talking about, uh, was when they

came back, they felt beaten up.

Like the kids hated them and they hated each other.

And so, uh, we had to shift the mindset to keep the main thing, the main thing.

Yeah.

I mean, that's, it's keep the shift is, is so important with that because sometimes we

get lost in other expectations, other ideas, other, this is what church is, even a, a, a,

a minimal ecclesiology of what church is.

And are we okay with that?

And even conversations, you know, just recently I've had with the church that it's like, you

know, Jeff, I don't know that our people are okay.

That a pastor is leading and that not a non-pastor is leading communion.

I don't think our people are going to be okay.

That a non-pastor is going to be baptizing.

And so, you know, the, the, the priesthood of all believers, even some of that stuff,

um, there, there are still churches that, that, that are struggling with some of this.

And it's interesting, Stan's kind of wincing, uh, in the view.

I can see it on zoom, but it's, it's, there are some churches that are like, oh my gosh,

we settled that like 30 years ago.

And there are some churches that are like, dude, that is still an issue right here today.

And, and it's really because of the expectations, um, that we have walking into it.

Put it in a digital context too, like now that all of our micro sites aren't launched

specifically out of our physical location, like that's so much harder to, to manage.

Whereas before, like I could send somebody out, try something, they come back, like they

literally are coming back.

I can send them right across from them face to face.

Now, like take it to Rhode Island, which is where we just, uh, launched our latest micro

site.

Like I can't drive to Rhode Island and talk to Rick, the guy that's leading it.

Um, so the best case scenario is we zoom call or text message.

That's just, uh, you guys know how it is.

It's a lot harder to get a feel for and coach someone just over zoom and just over text message.

So the digital side of that makes it even more challenging, but it's also a chance to be

more creative and innovative.

You've got the opportunity to engage, uh, lacrosse long distances.

Well, let's do this because, because let's, let's turn the table here because they're,

there are churches right now.

Um, and let's, let's figure out how to make this practical.

There are churches right now that are wanting to do something.

Their lead pastor saying, Hey, we got to figure this out.

Yeah.

We can do a short term watch party for caught three months, six months, maybe the entire

2020 until we can get back into our mega buildings, our large venues and get back to a,

a normal expression of church.

But that's not today.

So yeah, we could do watch party short term, but I got to believe there are churches that,

that are interested in, in forming a discipleship system coming out of this and having these

micro locations, having these fat shows, um, running around, um, in, in new ways that are

wanting to empower and mobilize these people.

Tell me how, how do they get started?

Point them in the right direction.

Give me some practical steps.

How do we go from nothing to developing fat shows?

Walk, walk me through some, some ways to get started.

My recommendation would be to take the low hanging fruit.

Um, we know, we know that as followers of Jesus Christ, we are supposed to abide with Christ.

And yet the research over and over and over shows that most pastors and church leaders are

not spending any time with Christ.

Um, and their time with Christ is primarily sermon prep, uh, for instance.

So for me, I guess if I'm going to start moving the needle in that direction, I, I have to lead

by, I have to be able to do that myself.

So I think, I don't know who all is listening to this right now, uh, the prime audience here,

but I have to spend time with Christ daily, not for my sermon prep, but I have to be in

scripture being fed by it, being transformed by it.

I'm getting to know Christ, to know and walk with God, to hear his voice and obey.

I have to do that.

Um, and then from there, depending upon your organization, um, my next thought, I guess,

as a leader would be, you've got to influence your influencers.

You've got to lead your staff.

You've got to lead your, uh, your leadership team that direction.

You've got to start putting the stuff out and lead that way.

Um, and, and then you can start working it down from there.

But I mean, at a super high level, I, I mean, I just think it's some of those, the little

things that we've got to get right that I, I don't know that we have right right now.

Um, and it's as simple as, as me spending time with God, uh, outside of my, outside of

my sermon prep, being transformed by him and then sharing that with someone else and beginning

to flow it down through the, through the organization.

That's where I would start initially.

Tyler, what do you recommend?

I feel like I've asked you this question before, but if not, just tell me anyway.

You, yeah, you guys have, uh, you guys have actually talked with Randy, our senior pastor.

Um, he's a former college basketball coach.

He basically runs our church like a basketball team.

Um, so it's, it's fun to watch him do that.

Um, and I can't imagine starting anything at all remotely close to like micro communities

or anything like that without actually having a vision for it.

So I, I, I've been talking to lots of churches as well.

Jeff, I know you and Ray have, um, during COVID-19 season, cause everyone's like, what do we do now?

And a lot of their solutions are like what you've been talking about.

Let's start micro sites right now.

Let's start watch parties right now.

Let's do this.

Let's do this.

Uh, but if you don't have any kind of vision for where you want to go, then you can't do anything.

So, so many churches are wanting to start these, uh, these big projects that, um, are trendy right now, but none of those are short-term projects.

And so without any kind of vision, without any kind of, um, clarity from the leadership, they're going, they're probably going to fail.

Um, and so the first thing that a church leader, especially a senior pastor has to wrestle with is like, what is the vision of my church?

And how does this big project we're going to have somebody take on, how does that fit within that vision?

Because if it doesn't like, don't do it or change the vision, um, because that's, that's just, it's not going to go well.

Um, that sounds probably really harsh.

I mean, it's grounded probably in a historical background.

I mean, I can even tell you in my life at the times where, uh, we tried to implement something like this.

It was, it was very hard and, and, and truthfully, and this isn't a, the criticism of the church, the church didn't have the vision for it.

And so I was fighting tooth and nail for this, you know, your words, big project, this, this idea, this vision, um, leadership didn't back it.

Leadership didn't understand it or wasn't in their vision.

That's, that's not a discredit.

They, their discipleship process, the things that they were doing, they were doing it a different way.

And so, you know, at the end of it, it was, okay, leadership doesn't see it.

So we're going to, we're, we're going to move on.

And so it's kind of understanding, hey, we want to align.

And we've always said this church online needs to align to what's, what's happening.

Physical needs to compliment, needs to work together, uh, mission and, and vision, uh, doesn't change whether physical or online strategy may adjust, especially in this COVID season.

But hopefully it's, it's aligning towards working together towards it, getting lead pastor, getting, uh, discipleship, getting your local missions guy, getting, it's funny within the organization.

When I was doing that, that micro location stuff, I was hanging out more with like the, the global missions guy, uh, and the local missions guy than I was anybody else.

Cause I was learning from them and getting them to help me in the projects more than I was anything in worship and production.

And even on the, on the campus pastors, cause it was just this completely different thing.

So have conversations with those guys and start to wrestle with, there's nothing wrong with the watch party in the short term, but grow and develop something, especially if you're wanting to do it long-term beyond COVID, grow beyond that to have a higher expectation.

Ray, it looks like you got something.

What do you think?

Yeah.

Keeping that in mind, what would you guys suggest would be like the bare minimum commitment that a church should be willing to be vested in this before they went for it, even in this post COVID season.

Like so that it doesn't just become a side project because everybody's getting very ADD right now about how to reopen, about how to do what's next or whatever else.

And so if you were to tell somebody, Hey, don't do this unless you're in it for five years, 10 years, what would be like the right timeframe where you would say, Hey, don't be in on this unless you're willing to commit this long.

I mostly just meant the clarity of that vision.

I think it's fine to have a bandaid of watch parties right now, make that clear that that's your bandaid and don't make it to be like this huge launch that we're going to launch these watch parties.

And then three months from now, we're not going to have them.

But that wasn't clear upfront because that's when it becomes confusing.

That's when it becomes hard to communicate to your people.

So I'm not sure there needs to be a minimum commitment other than there has to be a set clear vision for what you're about to start.

Because many churches have come and said, we want to start watch parties.

And I'll say, well, what happens when you come back in person?

And they're like, Oh, well, they'll just probably go away on their own.

But what happens if there becomes like a community of believers at that home site?

Are we okay with them not coming back to the church?

Because that's working.

And that's where the vision becomes not clear.

And then your people don't buy in and they're confused.

And that's the part that's intriguing right now, right?

Because a lot of people are fearful that many people will stay online for the foreseeable future.

That they're not going to come back no matter how hard they beg them to come back into their locations.

And then if they have an in-between step, and don't communicate that as just an in-between step, then odds are people who feel comfortable there, right?

Like, I would stick.

I would be like, hey, this environment is working for me, right?

Yep.

So within this crisis became opportunity for us to cast vision, except many of us went into like shutdown survival mode and just tried to get it going, rather than like taking a breath, and then regrouping and casting a vision throughout this time period.

And we've run the danger of now having online, plus microsites, plus still trying to get everybody to come back to the building.

And it's just this never-ending cycle of disappointment within every single realm.

Yeah, I was going to say something similar to Tyler, especially on the watch party type approach and all that.

I think you communicate, this is an experiment.

We're going to try this.

We don't know how long, but I think you have to communicate it the way Tyler said.

If you come out like it is your church's lifeline for the next 10 years, and you get a bunch of people connecting to it, and then you cut it off in three months, you're going to have a serious problem on your hands.

We've had people say, man, I love this church at home thing.

I didn't realize how much I could get done on a Sunday morning.

I mean, we know there are some people that no matter what amount of begging we do may not come back to an in-person gathering for the foreseeable future.

So we have to try to prepare for that and understand that.

Worded maybe a little too harshly on some of this stuff, I love pastors with all my heart.

I believe that some of my future is going to be training and equipping pastors.

I love them.

I really do.

But sometimes I don't think we know what a disciple is, and then we run out and chase and throw a bunch of stuff at the wall, spaghetti noodles and darts, and throw whatever we can and hope something sticks.

And we have no idea what we're aiming at.

We don't even know when we've produced it.

And yet we demand immediate results.

And we don't even know if we've hit the result because we don't know what it looks like.

Most pastors have, in most cases, have been trained up in Bible college or seminary, and they've got a certain level of head knowledge.

But they've not even been discipled themselves to the point where they can do some of this.

And so from a discipleship and a disciple-making perspective, I think a lot of pastors need to slow down in this season and wrestle with what in the world is a disciple of Jesus?

What's it look like?

How do I even know if I've made one?

I've got a lot of people coming to my church, but did I make a disciple?

Like, I mean, that's a big one, too.

And the defining of it goes back to Tyler's point about the vision.

It's really hard to cast a clear, compelling vision for something you don't know what it looks like.

So there is even some more underlying work there to say, what am I trying to hit?

And do I really think I can pull that off in three months because I throw this experiment at the wall?

And even if I did, would I know I hit it or not?

There's a lot of foundational work, I think, that needs to be done.

And some of it stems right from the question, what does the disciple of Jesus look like?

Do I even know what this is supposed to look like coming out the other side?

I don't know if we have a real good grasp on that.

Yeah, I mean, that's, especially when we're evaluating pre-COVID, a successful church is the number of butts in a seat.

The nickels and no's is a joke that we make all the time.

Hopefully, we're learning something, you know, in this season.

Maybe not, you know, I had a church here in South Florida tell me they had 500,000 viewers online for their Easter Sunday service, online and TV.

I told the story a couple of times.

Wow.

500,000.

Connection cards that they actually had to engage to follow up with people, they had 11.

And so, you know, the butts in seats, the viewing of your corporate worship service in physical or even digital, you know, the content, content's not changing the world.

Content's not changing lives.

Content needs to lead towards relational.

I've had Mark Vinty at church home tell me the goal isn't physical, the goal isn't digital, the goal is face-to-face as soon as possible.

And whether that's done virtually or physically, but it's through these relationships that we're beginning to see that, which is why I love everything that we've been talking about here.

Because at that, when we empower people and get them as a disciple-making mindset and send them out, mobilize them, they are now like that front wave of faces.

And they're reaching their ones, their circle of influence, either neighborhoods or affinities or whatever, towards it.

I love everything about this conversation.

This has been awesome.

But unfortunately, we've got to wrap.

Real quick before we go, Tyler, 30 seconds.

You're doing some interesting stuff in Church Anywhere.

Tell me about the podcast.

Tell me about what you're doing.

Yeah, man.

So we started a podcast mostly just to compete with you.

So...

The more the merrier.

Listen, come on, let's do this thing.

It's a big world out there.

We had just launched a fully digital church.

So a separate entity under the umbrella of First Capital Ministries.

Church Anywhere is like a thing now.

So I get to be the lead pastor.

And we've got three other staff as well.

So an engagement pastor, a family ministries pastor, and an administrator who's like been the bomb.

She's helped so much with a bunch of staff.

But we're basically just documenting our journey to start a digital church, which has been really, really fun to talk through some of the stuff that we're doing.

We launch officially on the 21st of this month.

So all of our content has been produced for a while, all of our strategies and all that good stuff has been being worked on for a while.

And I'm excited to really launch it.

That's awesome.

So digital-only church from Church Anywhere.

Super excited to see what he's doing.

If you're not following Tyler on social and tracking with what Church Winner is, Church Anywhere is doing, you really should.

These guys are nailing it.

Stan, of course, with everything he's doing at NLCC, which, by the way, you're the third staff person from NLCC to be on the show.

We've had, of course, we've had Tom and Jake with the digital-only church has been on here several times and excited about what Jake's doing also as digital-only church.

By the way, Stadia, we're doing a hard press on this digital-only church.

We're starting cohorts in church planning processes.

Our hope is to be launching digital churches by the end of the year.

So if you're interested, if you're tracking with some of the stuff with Tyler, what he's doing with the house level or Jake with video games or DJ Soto with virtual reality,

I mean, that's literally my job is to help people like you plant digital-only churches.

That is my job title.

So however I can help you, let's get together, let's talk on social media, put a link in the show notes, and we will go from there.

But, hey, we're going to wrap the podcast for Tyler, for Stan, for Ray.

This is Jeff at The Church Digital.

Thanks for jumping on here, and we'll see you next time on the show.

You all have a good day.