EP056: Daniel Im - No Silver Bullets & How to Disciple Online

episode 56 of the church digital podcast powered by stadia church planning i i gotta tell you

stadia's planted over a thousand churches and we are out there right now trying to make sure those

1 000 churches are stable safe and sound and we're not really just drawing the border at those 1 000

we this is what i love about stadia we're creating resources and helping churches beyond trying to

figure out how to master this this digital church this church online thing by the way check this out

there there's a facebook group the easiest way to get there is if you go to the church dot digital

slash coronavirus on that there's a number of resources we've created but one of the best

resources we have out there today is is a facebook group that's that's managed by by us but also

managed by a bunch of stadia people where they're getting in there churches are getting in there

they're talking about what they're experimenting with whether it's working whether it's not working

and encouraging us together as we're out there trying to figure out how to beat this corona virus

thing uh and by utilizing digital tools and church online so if you're not part of that uh it's you can

look for uh church online and coronavirus and facebook or head over to the church.digital slash

coronavirus and find the link there on that page well i gotta tell you i have been sitting on this

podcast for a couple weeks we've recorded this probably the day before the coronavirus you know

i hesitate to say the word outbreak before everything exploded moving off the west coast

more towards the the east coast here in america and i have been itching itching to share this this

podcast interview with you because this has been you know the ed stetzer podcast that an interview

was fun this one i was more fun than ed because it really um i honestly i felt like i was talking to

like a a clone copy of of me we were so on this same page with a number of different things so the

interview is with daniel m uh who is uh in canada he's uh works with lifeway he does a number of things

he's written a number of books and and honestly the heart of this is we really delved into his

book called no silver bullets now this is an older book we're going back to 2015 but honestly just

recently i read it uh there's a church i'm working with and they're having some some discipleship level

issues within the church how do we keep people on mission what does discipleship look like we're having

issues with kind of taking people to that next deeper level and and really i i just i i delved into this

book like i said in the podcast it was stuck on my kindle i bought it years ago just never read it

uh and and as i read it honestly my heart just leapt and and i caught this vision for for what a

discipleship movement in a church could be if it was done with intentionality but on top of that i kept i

caught a larger vision of what a discipleship method could be if it was executed digitally to complement

churches that are out there and so the more that that daniel in his book talked about discipleship the

more that i had this greater understanding of what it could be in a digital environment and that made me

very happy so we're having this conversation with daniel m and it is literally on the eve of the

coronavirus explosion that that has happened uh here in america and around the world here with this global

pandemic so there's definitely application points that we talk about here about how to get people on

mission um but it also it talks to a lot to the heart of what it actually means to be intentional

towards making disciples in a physical environment as well as a virtual one it's been a great podcast a

great conversation here with daniel m lifeway as not well as a number of other uh resources and

connection points no silver bullets for church online that's the name of the episode here at the church

digital podcast here y'all go hey jeff hey how are you doing i'm doing nice to meet you nice to meet

you too hey i i want to thank you for jumping on this this podcast it's been uh it's been a hectic

uh couple days uh no kidding or so for for all of us i'm sure um but man i i just i wanted to thank you

for um for sticking with this and and allowing this conversation to happen it'll be good i'm looking

forward to it yeah i i want i want to sing your your praise and i'll do this on the podcast a little

bit but um you know i i bought your book several years ago and uh it sat on my kindle uh as you know

typically books do uh i got the app we'll get there eventually later maybe sorta and uh you know one of the

churches i was working at christ journey church uh starting to run into some discipleship issues and

and some things it's like yeah there's there's there's got to be a better way to do this we

haven't figured it out and there's this no silver bullets book i just i want to go back to that and

it really um i've read it and i was like oh this is so good this is exactly what they need

and and i t i tend to be an extremist kind of alarmist type of guy like we have to do this

like now yeah and i made key staff read it and they're like oh this is so good and and it and it

really helped kind of pivot the culture or at least bring awareness to that and and i know you're not

even i know it's not even like the thing that you're like pushing and promoting it may be old school

compared to some of the other stuff but it's like i'm in this moment and um and i'm like man i really

want to like just explore this and and talk uh with with daniel more about it so thanks for like

kind of going old school here revisiting 2015 a little bit

dude man yeah i love talking about it and and even when i wrote it you know it was this commitment

to say okay do i believe enough about this that i'm willing for at least the next 10 years to talk

about this topic so yeah and it's yeah i love it so i'm glad glad to talk about it well you picked a

really good topic to talk about at least from from a relevancy standpoint because we're seeing culture

shift more away um from the buildings but here with the the church digital podcast we talk a lot about

church online uh in in digital church i've actually taken a role recently i honestly i think this is

even since uh we scheduled the podcast with you but i'm i'm with stadia church planning where i'm

director of digital church planting we're looking at a digital only expression of church that doesn't

exist in physical it's it's more of a digital virtual biblical ecclesiology of what does an actual

church look like that would be digital only and and which really is a fascinating conversation for me

that's centered more around a discipleship driven model a discipleship process discipleship pathway

a lot of these words that i just keep resonating over and over with and honestly like in the back

of my mind i just going back to no silver bullets i'm like i have to write this book i'm gonna have

to write this book i haven't found anybody to really say what i want to say yeah then i read no silver

bullets and i'm like yes i don't have to write the book i don't have to go through all this struggle

because my man here daniel m's already said it and it's starting to roll through it so um i love how

what you're talking about with this intentional discipleship i think is it's a it's a wake-up call

for churches yeah or it's getting more on board with that today being intentional with it as opposed to

being lackadaisical and and some of those things but even in context of online using uh church online to

create some of those uh intentional points to foster that development and growth is is so good um and so

man just just thanks for jumping on here i just i have to know this yeah yeah uh and we'll we'll dig in

right uh yeah this will be good how where did where did this the idea of of no silver bullets and and

and just even the the four quadrants if you want to highlight that like where did this come from

yeah okay so the the or the old school original where the whole thing was birthed it was when i was doing my

masters at fuller and it was a ma in global leadership and basically my final project was

it was and it's all contextual to your church uh the way they they did their thing so for me then

i was trying to figure out hey how do i create a discipleship pathway that's scalable within a multi-site

context thinking also post-christian too being in canada but just a sense of a of a of a scalable multi-site

discipleship pathway that yeah that can actually that that works in different sizes of churches

right where you have maybe two thousand people gathered in one location a hundred in another

four or five hundred in another so what would that look like and and that's really the origin of it

around the ongoing steps the first steps the next steps but man that harkens all the way back to like

2013 and it's just kind of it it it was great put it to the side ended up moving down to nashville

moving to lifeway uh co-writing planting missional churches with ed uh and basically a uh an acquisitions

editor was like hey do you have do you have like a solo book in you and i was like well there's this

thing i've worked on that i worked on but i just kind of i never finished it because i didn't think

anyone would want to read it so i sent her well what it was and they're like okay well here's a

contract so that that's basically what what got it kick-started again and multiple years later it was

a reassessment of okay does this still work is this timeless and then how do you actually communicate it

how do you communicate it well so it was just further research that then got me into doing some research

around the quadrants and had a conversation with dr robert coleman around that too i mean

the guy right master plan of evangelism discipleship and i was like okay if he can get

on board with this then i'm okay so he was my he was my gut check he was my am i out to lunch

and he yeah he i mean he endorsed the books right so i mean it was cool cool to have that conversation

with him that's awesome i i could try to explain the i'm gonna be honest i could try to explain the

quadrants it would take me eight minutes and i'm willing to bet you've got a 45 second version of

the quadrants that you can just nail real quick and roll through this seriously though just give give

us a brief some brief synopsis because i'm sure you're more succinct than i would be okay okay so

imagine a and maybe we'll put in the show notes right but imagine the uh a square with four quadrants

and you have a copycat church a silver bullet church an intentional church and a hippie church right so

if we're looking at all four you know these four quadrants what is the difference between each and

every one of them you have the copycat church uh that views discipleship is all about getting to

a destination and that's actually what what the copycat and the silver bullet church shares there

it's it's all about getting to a destination so discipleship is about knocking those check boxes

off and and doing this program doing that program and and the the difference between the the copycat

church and the silver bullet church is the copycat church it's literally you know go to that conference

we're gonna copy this model oh it didn't work four months later go copy another model so there's a low

sense of accountability there okay um the the silver bullet church is like the copycat church where they

still see view discipleship as checking that off uh these external markers but the difference is

accountability wise systems wise it flows and everything looks good but the metrics for maturity are

different it's actually incorrect the way that they're viewing the metrics for maturity and then you have

move it up right you then have the intentional church and you have the hippie church both

actually the biggest difference between those ones and the bottom ones is that those ones actually view

maturity from a directional standpoint right so it's not necessarily the destination you get to

it's more the direction you're pointing in so there's a key difference a fundamental difference as to

what maturity looks like and what the discipleship process looks like is it destination oriented check

the boxes or is it the direction you're pointing in and the difference between the hippie church and the

intentional church the hippie church it's kind of like the copycat church low culture of accountability

going from one to another so these are the churches that essentially are like oh oh you want to like

you don't want to you don't want to meet together you just want to listen to worship music and go hike on the mountain and

and instead of gathering together for worship oh yeah that's fine that's that's fine right or or you you

don't have to read the bible just read a devotional about the bible that's the same thing right so it's

very lackadaisical as long as you're pointing in that direction toward christ you're fine whereas the

intentional church yes it is directionally focused but there's a clear pathway to getting to discipling

people and and getting people along moving in the right direction so that's that's those are kind of

the the four quadrants uh summarized yeah it's it's it's really interesting this this idea of destination

and and and for for for for me with the the the the church that that i'm regularly working with like

that was that was the radical connection for us uh previous to that it was you know it was it was the

rick rick uh warren baseball diamond and and far be it for me to be overly critical of that because i

think that was revolutionary at the time and really helped a lot of churches yeah move forward churches

that i've been on staff with and worked with but the reality is is is that that 401 that home plate

that people being on mission like nobody ever makes it to that class it's amazing everybody does

the 101 you lose 20 for the 201 you lose 20 for the 301 and and by the time you get down to to the 401

you know it's it's like oh this is the for people who are going specific on the global missions trip

let's just make that to 401 and it's it's a far minimal um audience percentage of people that are

attending but as a result of that we're really you missing this opportunity to have people be on

mission where you know on mission may be defined as something like um you know and once again i don't

want to be over critical but hey let me serve coffee here or let me be um you know guest services or

something and all these are important but when it comes to personal evangelism when it comes to

disciple making with with the things where we look at today's culture we realize wow like the best way

for our church to be impactful is not our physical building and doing these events in our buildings but

it's all about empowering people to have spiritual conversations that go and share their faith and then to

disciple others life way like the place where you work and this is an older stat but i quote it all

the time by the way if you guys could update this stat i would really appreciate it 2000 uh 2016 life

way uh 63 of people are are no longer interested in going to the buildings to to learn about their

faith and at the same way that that i myself i'm not interested in going to a mosque i i think i figured

out what i know at the spiritual level and i'm not really open to more conversations 79 of people are

open to talking about faith with their friends if they see that faith is important to their friends

and so you know for me when i look at the opportunity of of church online it's let's utilize this online

technology let's utilize it to create a discipleship pathway a direction that creates in people this

desire to be a disciple maker to be a multiplier of others it's not a consumer level thing as much as it

is is a multiplier aspect of that um man just hearing some of that like what do you what do you think of

that what are some challenges what are some wins what what about utilizing technology in this way to

to create to multiply disciples yeah yeah in in my book no silver bullets i i talk about this idea

of a of a high tech and a high touch approach to leadership development and in the book i i really

focus it in and around leadership development but when it comes to discipleship right there there has to be

the touch component to it right i mean we're there there has to be the interaction focus to it now i

think that doesn't mean it has to be in person uh i think there's a sense of are you and is this active

or are you is it a is it a passive approach right so as it relates to a high tech and a high touch approach

especially with church online there is a sense of okay am i a passive consumer of this or is there

active interaction like you and i this is very active for you and i for the listeners it's passive

right so that's that's the big biggest difference so as it relates to discipleship and the sense of

okay what does a high tech and a high touch approach look like it can very much be hey as a small group

we are going to gather together on zoom right and we are going to yes it's high tech and yeah we're not

in person but it's active right so i think there's this whole sense of we need to have a and a proactive

approach rather than this passive approach especially as it relates when we're leveraging

technology but especially especially as it relates to discipleship so yeah i i love the fact that that

you referenced high tech high touch i actually read a book 20 years ago i think i was in college

called high tech high touch by larry nesbitt okay i guarantee you've never been in a podcast that

referenced larry nesbitt he was a business guy it was it was early on it was like before y2k

but it was it was this general principle that technology is and i forgive me like i'm old i don't know how

old you are but i'm not so old to be like the the grumpy old guy get off my lawn aka ed stetzer we'll

talk about him later he's fun i love it yeah uh we did a podcast with him recently and it was awesome

but this high tech high touch with uh with larry nesbitt you know the principle was is that technology

by itself left to itself is cold it's isolated uh and so it's it's very easy when you don't pay

attention to the high touch level i think you are guilty we as a church are guilty of utilizing church

online to create consumers yeah in that so if if we leave it isolated if we leave it unto itself

we are people who are creating content for consuming as opposed to building relationships it's it's funny

actually do they get off my lawn that's literally a quote from ed stetzer when he was on my podcast

we'll link to it in the show notes it was yeah it was episode 49 um and and i'll tell you this daniel

it was i don't know that i've said this publicly but it's cool um ed ed ed i love you if you're

listening ed ed we i'm friends with ed we used to work yeah yeah yeah christian miami and um and so

ed told me that very well yes oh yeah yeah yeah he told me he's he's like don't ask me questions on

church online and i'm like why not and he's like you're not gonna like my questions if you ask me on

church online yeah and i'm like come on ed can i get like constructive criticism can i say challenges

and allow you to give me some feedback or and he's like just you know you can ask me if you want but

just you're gonna get what you're gonna get and i told ed this i gave him this pitch of online to

offline that the gospel we hear in the online world it has to affect our offline relationships and it's

and it's a multiplication tool and it's funny ed stetzer as as soon as i was done literally he's like

if you're a pastor hearing what jeffrey said you should do this yeah um you know and it's like

he's never heard this idea but it's it's like let's not be

consumers in creating this consumers where we're being negative towards this but let's be intentional

that's why i love your book so much let's be intentional towards disciple making and i would

just would add a little you know wrinkle to it let's figure out how to use the online tools

to get there yeah and you know another thing that that that i love for your book and i want you to

kind of stick to speak in this and set this up you used the term social space yeah did you set up for

me just and for the listening audience what social space is and how it kind of relates to this

discipleship process definitely definitely so let's go back to the 50s 1950s edward t hall anthropologically

he was doing research called proxemics and he was trying to identify how do animals he started with

animals uh realized okay how do do animals gather together and does this then relate to humans so fast

forward quite a bit he basically identified four spaces that humans naturally connected you got your

public space yeah your public space um like all the public spaces that are now being closed down because

the coronavirus so 100 plus people right so there's that side you got the social space which is that

20 to 50 person sized space so think stand-up reception before a wedding so these kind of fluid spaces

and then you got these um you got these personal spaces which is the third one that's like

eight to 12 people like a small group and you have the fourth space which is the intimate space one or

two people the research basically stated that hey in all four spaces and all four spaces we experience

community but one space it's not necessarily that one space is more important than the others

they all have their unique benefits advantages and disadvantages and a different roi for each and

every one of them but the important thing to understand is we actually experience community

differently in all four spaces so if this is naturally how humans connect uh how are we leveraging these

four spaces uh so joseph myers in his book the search to belong i think it was like early 2000s he

was one of the first ones i believe to introduce this concept into the church conversation and you know many

people have written on it thus far um since then so when you think about that social space it's that idea like

how i think as churches we do this small the personal space well right small groups we do that well

and some churches especially with d groups and accountability groups or ltgs or however you own do

it more and more churches are doing this one to three person size space well because those are the

spaces where you can open up those are the spaces where you can create trust and build those relationships

and and a lot of churches do the large public spaces well i mean that's that's kind of like corporate

worship gathering that 20 to 50 person size space that's the space that's often under utilized and

here's the interesting fact post writing the book um if you're a church of under 200 people i don't think

there's as much of a need for a formalized 20 to 50 person sized space program or an approach to

programizing this because naturally a lot of these spaces will just be there you'll naturally have

them if you're over 200 though that's when you actually need to intentionalize these 20 to 50 person

size gatherings oh totally like you know and we we've talked about i think you may know the exact

stat but something like 80 of churches at this point are under 200 the average church is what probably

72 73 it seems like uh yeah in the states it's uh it's about 100 the average yeah in canada it's

under 80 yeah okay yeah so um but for for the the the mega and the giga church it's easy to get

to get lost in that and if you're not connected into that um that that smaller group the one that's

down at the personal space area um you're you're lost in in accountability almost and the church has

lost that and so i i love this idea of that social space that the 20 to 50 number you know if i'm

putting on on my online pastor hat and you know digital strategist i'm looking at that 20 to 50 number

thinking man what would it look like if we if that was like house churches or micro locations yeah um

around and i'm looking at like you know elevation church with their watch parties um the home

gatherings that saddleback does we even talk about you've probably never heard of this but a church

called first capital christian in cordon indiana um it's a small i'm going to tell you the story

daniel's yeah this this right here is is exactly why churches need to understand discipleship at a

deeper level this one it's it's in cordon indiana you've never heard of cordon indiana have you no no

so here's the deal it's a small town of about 3 000 people and first capital christian and this is

their words i've had the lead pastor we've done a couple podcasts with them on it's on the wrong side of

town on the outskirts of town on the like the no one's around no residential area like that they

bought the property decades ago and instead of the town going towards the church it went away from the

church okay and so this church has every excuse to just dry up and die yeah for some reason this church

has over a thousand people um regularly attending no no i want to make sure yeah do the math bro

so i'm like wait a second you're telling me you've got 30 percent attendance in a small town in indiana

right at the kentucky border this doesn't honest to god i'm flying out there um in june in june i'm

going to speak at a conference and and i'm like i love you guys i want to see it for real and i trust

them um and so like the people on tyler samson's a good friend uh he's he's the engagement pastor over

there but here's where sacred space fits in um the the story and we talked about this in the podcast a

lot where there was a nurse who worked at a hodgkins huntington's rehab center basically it's a terminal

disease um with that and so she was working on sundays and she was really annoyed that she couldn't get

off sundays because she wanted to go to church she doesn't want to work sundays but what she would

do is she would grab her ipad go sit in the community center with the ipad on her lap and

just engage watching the church service online and then one sunday like two people gathered around her

and started watching the church service a couple weeks later four people a couple weeks later eight

people 12 16 there's a photo i've seen it with like 20 people gathered around this woman holding an ipad

at a all in like the robes of hospital gowns that is experiencing this church and she takes this

photo text the the church leadership and says can you help me do ministry here this small church they've

they've literally discipled 18 volunteers intentionally grown 18 people to be volunteer campus pastors at 18

micro locations around incredible it's it's things like prisons it's things like um uh orphanages

they're literally adopting people children and to be part of the family solving within this small town they're

getting uh 500 to 600 people engaging in these micro locations so i'm bad at math but they're roughly

a thousand roughly 500 maybe 1500 okay maybe they're getting some crossover but in a small town at 3000

that's incredible dude the vision of our church is to reach one percent of edmonton it's just one percent

and we're running a few thousand on a weekend right so it's just one percent that is incredible

and and what you get from this is this is the power of of empowering someone with the gospel and saying

you go the thing that i i love is the people that are the campus pastors um the volunteer campus pastors

the unpaid people yeah they're out there doing the ministry the locations they often go to they have a

personal heart for it's not like the the pastor is running around trying to find all these locations

and manage this stuff it's like what are you passionate about go disciple make disciples yeah

grow in that area and let let us the church first capital christian let us help you with that

man it's so awesome a phenomenal story and a challenge for i think a lot of churches out there

that if we could kind of release the priesthood to the believers let them run equip them with the

power to do this man we'd see some phenomenal things happen with multiplication and growth in our city

amen are you a preacher

that's a funny story it depends on who you ask

i'm a technology guy um who had a midlife crisis and realized right there so we need to uh we need

to do some awesome things for the world yeah and technology high tech high touch is a part of it

so hey i want to keep i want to keep rolling with this because once again in the book they were like

i'm like this is incredible this is incredible you introduced a new term to me and uh and you got me in

trouble with my marriage i'm gonna i'm gonna call you out because i asked my wife about this who has a

masters of education and her response was not worn back uh and so you guys talked about flip the

classroom yeah um why don't why don't you just give me a little insight talk to me you know about flip the

classroom uh okay so uh apologies if you got in trouble with your wife oh it's okay we'll think

into it in a second i do have a marriage and parenting podcast so give that to her um no all that to say

the flipping the classroom idea is long story short right just super long story short it's basically

the idea of okay instead of and this is within a church setting um instead of saying hey everyone's

gonna gather here and listen to this talking head and then and it's primarily let's think about a

leadership development so you're training volunteers okay training volunteers everyone's in a room

you are speaking here's the lesson and then everyone goes away and you know maybe you pray together

or whatever but then you're done your training so that's it the problem with that though right is that

it's hard to get 100 of your volunteers to that training environment it's just

with scheduling and all that stuff it's just it's just super hard so the idea of flipping the classroom

is hey instead why don't we give the lesson at home or via video and then when you get together

right you're flipping it you then do the work together so within the school setting this is i mean

think back to a world before youtube

like i live that world i know it yeah like 2005 if you shot a video how did you share it with a friend

like how did you share it with anyone else before facebook youtube or anything right it was just so

hard whereas now it's like oh of course it's easy to share stuff so the whole idea was basically in a

school classroom these teachers who got sick and tired of trying to catch up sick you know kids who

are sick who missed the class and having to redo the lecture over and over again they basically did a

voice over over their powerpoint lecture powerpoint slides voice over and they put it up on this new

fandangled thing called youtube and they said hey instead of me reviewing and recapping everything

hey just watch it and then more kids watched it and more kids watched it and more and then it started

you know people who weren't even in that class or that school started watching it so they're like

oh maybe we're onto something so within the school environment it was basically this idea of hey

when you're gathered together in a classroom instead of the teacher teaching let's flip it

so that the lesson is done at home and the homework is done at class rather than the lesson in class

and homework at home so that's that large that's the concept in a nutshell yeah so my my wife let me

finish the story on my side my wife has a master's of education uh she's a uh uh she's the smart one in

the marriage by far i'm the i'm the the dummy and my kids are brilliant all because of her dna nothing

to do with mine and so like i i'm i'm on a plane and i read your book and i'm like this is awesome

actually i bought the book flip the classroom that that you referenced there's lots of different ones

out there but i actually read the specific one the two chemistry teachers and their their story

and it was phenomenal super short read definitely impactful great things just for me even processing

you know what this looks like and of course i'm thinking digital discipleship what it means or even

church online like processing outside of it you know i've had conversations with

um you know high level organizations working through how to do discipleship online it's like

don't watch the videos when you're on zoom with everybody yeah nobody wants to do that watch the

videos in advance and take opportunities to dialogue and discuss that's far more effective

and so like organizations are saying this is awesome and this is even before i read the book like

everything's going great i'm like this is awesome we're swinging momentum i actually now have a book

it's called you know or the i can have proof hey here are the guys who actually came up with this

concept daniel m said it's great yeah so i asked my wife when i got home uh dinner one night after

reading the book on uh on the plane hey amy have you ever heard of this like flip the classroom thing

and uh i love my wife uh and she was not positive in her response back no um and and the response was

was more centered around yeah those are just teachers being lazy and uh now what's interesting and and

there's there's a lot of heart yeah i mean she's an educator maybe there's some of and and i've told

my wife i'm having these conversations so like people are like i can't believe you're saying this about

his wife we're fine it's good but there's there's this place of you know she's defining who she is by

the performance yeah um but not necessarily having the best mind of what's around for the for the

kids and and whatever is best for the kids maybe we need to break the paradigms of what we're doing

so that the students are able to get what they need yeah and there's and i think there's an opportunity for

us even within the church you know i i i mentioned this to uh in a previous podcast and and uh in a

digital pastors at a multi-site churches oh i've i've heard that lazy comment before people talk about

that all the time when they're talking to pastors who do uh video teaching to multi-site campuses yeah

oh the other campus the other pastors are just being lazy when in fact uh video teaching pastor

the campus pastors that don't have to prep a message my gosh they've got so much more time to be

yes pastoral shepherding involved in people's lives disciple making there's a reason why that model is

effective it's not the perfect model and i'm not saying necessarily that it is but there's a great

opportunity for us to do something different yeah how have you seen flip the classroom be effective i

want to hear this yeah yeah that's awesome that's awesome so um how it's very beneficial within a

school environment and not let me just do that and then i'll go to the church environment how it's

super beneficial within a school environment and also when you're training leaders in your church

is that in in a group of 20 people typical classroom 30 people what level do you teach to

not everyone's at the same level so you have to generalize it as a teacher in some sense or fashion

and there are going to be people who are on par listening engaged there are going to be some people

who are like this is i know everything why this is such a huge bore and they're going to be others

who just don't really get it and that's just naturally when you have that many people it's hard to

customize and personalize the lesson the beauty of flipping the classroom is that uh if you get the lesson

and you and you're one of those kids who get it and you're like yeah i don't need to sit in a lecture

then just fast forward through it you don't need to watch the video at home a lesson just fast forward

but you need abs and this is this is so key you need some sort of comprehension oriented assignment

so it is some sort of homework but it but it needs to be some sort of assignment to um to indicate

that's the accountability side to indicate that you watched or you got the concept right now if you

didn't get the lesson you can rewind and watch again if you did if you if you're on par then you watch it

all the way through so the beauty is when you're actually together because learning learning and you

look at all the bark right bark as a model of um visual or all you know all the different ways that

people learn not everyone listen not everyone can learn via auditory as well or there there might not

be as much retention that happens through this passive learning but a lot of learning happens when we're

teaching a lot of learning happens when we're engaging so when you flip the classroom and the kids are all

together what do you do with the kids who don't get the lesson you as a teacher you don't teach the kids

who don't get the lesson you pair the kids who get the lesson with the kids who don't get the lesson

and the kids who get it are teaching the kids who don't get it because what that is one of the most

effective ways to learn when you teach right and you're saying hey can you help joey here you get it

and that kid the learning goes even deeper there and then the kids who get it you know they're doing

interactive projects together so here's the thing right math why like i did kuman right and

you know there's a lot of different drills a lot of drills that happen it's like okay why am i doing

geometry why am i like it's just drill drill drill you need to learn the formula what if instead we said

hey uh we're gonna build uh we're gonna build out of toothpicks or out of something we're gonna build

this building but we're gonna map it out architecturally to make sure it works and that's

why geometry matters and we're gonna do and you know so the majority of the class they're working on

these projects doing the calculations because they're building a building out of toothpicks it's

not just trial and error no you got to do the calculations first and then the kids who really

don't get it that's the one those are the ones the teachers can personally help right personally help

because they have the time to do it so within a church context it's exactly the same you have a group of

30 small group leaders why do you think it's effective for why do you think it's an effective

use of their time and your time for you to just for 30 minutes teach them how to connect or or how to

deal with over talkers right how do you know that they're actually going to be competent in their

ability to deal with over talkers just by listening to you you don't they need to practice it so give

the lesson at home right via video here watch this 10 minute video and that's the other thing right

you lecture in front of a live audience it's typically going to be way longer than a video because you

need the you need the stories you need the inflections you need all that stuff it's a

if it's a video just go straight to the point five ten minutes bam done right and people are okay with

that medium and that and that and that way of communication because if there's too much fluff

people are going to fast forward anyway right so having said all that give the lecture at home

come together right that's the flipping the classroom give a five minute recap envision them thank

them encourage them what you can do in person and then say okay we're going to do we're going to

we're going to implement we're going to do this project together or we're going to have these

conversations together we're going to pair you up here's a case study and you guys work this and

and you're the over talker and you're the group leader and and work it out so that people can actually

grow in their proficiency so that's obviously on the leadership development side post writing the book

i also have done this on the discipleship side where as a small group now we would do book studies and

and then we would also do video based studies so i was like man this is this is like this is dreadful to

just sit together watch this together and now our discussion is uh we don't have a lot of time for

discussion and we don't have a lot of time for prayer so i was like hey guys let's all watch this at home right and we were using uh

smallgroup.com from lifeway and right now media and i mean there's all these platforms right so

we were using it watch it at home come together now instead of 15 minutes for discussion and five

minutes for prayer we now had an hour for everything or an hour and a half for everything

and and instead of trying to you know gulp down our food in 15 minutes it was more time for food

more time for connection more more time for everything way more margin and there's a lot more connection

and yes you're right a hundred percent of the people did not watch it yes however however what was

fascinating to me is that there was actually there's vertical accountability and horizontal accountability

right vertical is from the leader downward what i realized is as the leader i didn't have to do the

vertical accountability everyone was keeping each other accountable and if someone didn't watch it

it wasn't actually me pointing them out it was someone else in the group horizontally be like dude just

put it on your phone while you're driving like you have no excuse and i didn't have to say that other

people were doing it because they're like come on man you're like you're wasting our time and it was just this

neat dynamic that built rather than me having to you know come down with the ruler i love i love that

accountability from uh from the level playing field not not from above hey uh you you said something i

want to back up because i i there's a difference or i'm interested in your take because you said that

one model was was more towards the during the book you were addressed it more from a leadership

development side and then you don't delved into more of a discipleship post the book i i just would

love what's the relationship between discipleship disciple making leadership development i would

love as somebody at life voice somebody with with your experience what's your opinion on that just give

me a couple minutes yeah yeah okay so vision strategy values in a church vision strategy and values vision

it's where we're going and this is great commission great commandment right regardless of how you word

it out strategy is what you do to get to where you need to be strategy in every church has to be it's

like a double helix like dna and this is all in the book too um it's it's a double helix of your

discipleship pathway or your leadership pipeline right those are the two strands in your strategy every single

thing that a church does this is the what strategy is the what to get to the where vision and values are

how you do what you do to get to where you need to go so um in every church everything that a church

does it's either going to leadership pipeline equip the saints for the work of ministry or it's going to

on the discipleship pathway side mature them toward christ this directional point of view so when it comes to

flipping the classroom when it comes to everything a church does if we simplify it down to the sense of

hey this activity is it either is it is it more focused on the discipleship pathway side or the

leadership pipeline side and a lot there's going to be there's going to be inter linking of a lot and

that's why it's a double helix that's why it's a double i mean there's a lot of interrelation but

here's the thing your leadership pathway and your or a pipeline and your discipleship pathway are not the

same thing and it's so important that we recognize that they are not the same thing and i even heard

people say oh leadership is just advanced discipleship and it it's i can't i can't emphasize how important

it is to understand that they are not the same thing there's a lot of interrelatedness that's why it's a

double helix but they're not the same thing and here's why here's why and this is post book as well

right uh what you believe on one you will begin to assume on the other if it's the same thing what you

believe about one you'll actually begin to assume on the other so here's what i'm talking about your

leadership pipeline you can check off the box and actually say i have displayed proficiency

on this competency i know how to do this i didn't know how to do this and now i've learned how to do

it knowledge experience coaching that's that transformational sweet spot i have now demonstrated

proficiency and i now know i'm done i'm good great that is awesome for your leadership pipeline

discipleship doesn't work like that you don't go oh i've checked off patience i've checked off

love i've checked off humility i've checked off no no no no you are growing and on this side of

eternity right it never ends it never ends and even on the other side of eternity it doesn't end either

right we're always growing in our knowledge of christ always maturing in our knowledge of christ so

if they're the same thing if they're the same thing what you believe on one you'll begin assuming on the

other and just like you can check off competencies on leadership pipeline you'll begin to check off

your discipleship pathway and then you'll go down the road of program you'll go down the road of yes

i've done this look look at all the studies on my shelf see how mature i am yeah no it doesn't work

like that we've got such an opportunity to to impact people in different sides um i i know personally

like in some of the churches that i work with it's very easy to meld the two together the the the helix is

is is is is a beautiful picture where it it it intersects where there's opportunities for it

to work together but there's urgency on each side for different reasons towards that um is there

from a practical standpoint just just give me give me a couple things here but from a practical

standpoint how do you separate between the two like ed says this is ed you know ed's okay everybody we're

doing a weekend service that's awesome we're doing a um uh we're doing small groups that's great we

need a third thing you know the the i'm gonna drop another guy's been on the podcast the eric geiger

simple church boiling it all down to two things yeah probably wasn't a good idea culturally where we are

now making fun of eric i love eric too we need a third thing so let's go ahead and add um let's add

add a discipleship intentional discipleship thing that's what that's what ed's ed's looking for

he's like sunday night service wednesday night something but an opportunity for that deep bible

exposure driving people um so now if i'm separating leadership development is that a fourth thing like

how many more things am i throwing on this you know like what what is it what does it practically look

like to create a a church that's developing disciples and at the same time growing leaders

okay so last chapter of no silver bullets we have your we have our ongoing steps our first steps and our

next steps right so ongoing steps are those things where as a mature follower of christ

it's the practices that jesus practiced it's the things and that's where the research of here are

the inputs here's 80 20 here's the inputs that make the biggest output so that's that's that's

core and that's not programmatic that's just that's the life of a follower of christ programmatically

yeah you got first steps you're brand new do alpha you're brand new come to here you're you know

communication wise and i mean we can do a whole probably episode on echo chambers and how that affects

church life and everything because that was definitely i've done a huge deep dive on that post this book

because it was just it's crazy how it's affected discipleship so that's on another note

and then you got your next steps so what you were just talking there deeper life next steps you

know i'm we're gonna be doing these things called master classes right uh it's just this whole idea

of what is that close to christ christ-centered class to just go super deep uh because there is

a sense of yeah everyone needs to be a self-feeder but as a pastor there's a sense of hey

we need to really pour into and mature our people so that's all great leadership it's not another

thing because it has to be just in time type of training right and and churches that programize

leadership that's and and here's why digital is so important right because inevitably

in and sorry i'm i'm there's a lot of there's a lot of things going on uh my latest book you are what

what you do and six other lies about work 11 life it's gig economy right i'm the premise is the gig

economy is here which is side hustles so all that to say people have asked me so if you've written

this book on how the gig economy has affected us lives as christians and as people what does this have

to do with sundays like does this does this actually have something to do with the lack of attendance on

sundays uh because 36 35 of the american workforce is a part of the gig economy that's 57 million people

in america right and that's it's the same percentage in a lot of different countries so

the the answer is i don't believe the gig economy affects sunday morning attendance but what it does

affect is your volunteer hours what it does affect is midweek because now with the gig economy every

hour is a billable hour every hour is a billable hour now right so now instead of saying oh i work my

part-time job for this person i have to put in hours no every hour is a billable hour so for volunteers who

would say oh yeah you know i would yeah whatever i got lots of free time i got lots of free time yeah

i'll go help you do that i'll do this and these days it's shrinking more and more and more because

every hour is a billable hour right it's like i could be doing this or i could be ubering for a

couple hours or doing you know this contracting and i could earn a few hundred dollars and then i could

do this and go on this vacation so i don't know if i have as much time anymore pastor right so here's

where this all loops together where it all loops together going back to your original question

as it relates to leadership pipeline leadership classes all that stuff in your church for every

new volunteer that you have you need to think onboarding how do we onboard well and that onboarding

is not a class the onboarding is just in time here's how to you know apprentice wise or online wise here's

what you need to know and let's get together and i'm going to coach you and we're going to work it's

on the job training but for every church you need onboarding but you also need ongoing training you need

ongoing training onboarding and ongoing so an onboarding is immediate ongoing is you need to develop the core

competencies of your people and of so that they can move up your leadership pipeline so the ongoing

training the only way that ongoing training is going to be effective is if it's delivered online

because the worst thing that you can do is doing a leadership development 101 class on another sunday

evening or after church and it's one more thing when every hour is a billable hour one more thing that

people don't want to go to and number one it they don't want to go to it because they don't have time

and every hour is a billable hour number two it's like what does this have to do with my life and me

serving as a small group leader because it's so generalized it's so generalized so but it's important

core competency training is critical to move people from volunteers to leaders to leaders to coaches

coaches to ministry directors and other so the reason online is so important is now flipping the classroom

you can highly specify the training so it's just in time within relationship to that department and it's

very focused and it's not another night out it's literally on the commute to work and then coming

home from work hey let's talk on the phone right it's just yeah so no this is you can know i've been

thinking a lot about this right i love everything about this like i'm i'm so excited by this what's

what's interesting to me is i see what you're describing i see churches who do what you're

describing and and and and just in my context yeah they're church plants they are church plants not

with staff people but who are like there's a pastor who is who's the paid guy maybe or it's they're

still fundraising and it's a completely volunteer team they are the ones that are more driven by all this

virtual technology and so normal zooms for the meetings like and it's like the the the larger

organizations where no let's just get everybody together the multi-site church that it's like yeah

let's drive everybody in to like have these these conversations because we just we need to be in the

room for it but i love the fact that when uh when i meet and through stadia just meeting more and

more of them a lot of these guys it's like well yeah of course we think we can do discipleship online

we do everything else online like it's not that far of a jump i know our culture here's the tipping

point in my in my estimation because online's been around for a long time right especially training and

all that stuff i think the tipping point was when linkedin bought lynda.com what was it like for

two billion dollars or something like that a few couple years ago yeah honestly i think that was the

tipping point you're gonna have to explain that because that sounds really deep i tell tell me why

why is that the tipping point um so online's been around for a while and there's a sense of uh you

know the educational world is has definitely lagged behind but the church world has lagged even more

behind i mean obviously you got guys like leonard sweet who are just like living 50 years in the future

and half-life and there's all that stuff right i mean the guy's brilliant but he is literally from

another century uh like he is so ahead of us right so yeah in light of all that he's got he's got the

doctor strange powers where he can like see all the alternate realities yeah 4.7 million and this is the

one this is the one i love leonard sweet keep going i know i know and and by the way i mean cplf

church planning leadership fellowship uh stadia comes to it but you should definitely come in july

and we can he's going to be speaking with us it's all it's church planning stuff so we can talk awesome

yeah love it but basically um the reason i believe linkedin buying lynda.com was a tipping point is

because you had all of these online training platforms forming lynda.com professional services and

you got skillshare and ministry grid and right now media and you had all these different online kind

of platforms out there educationally wise moodle blackboard was way behind way behind right and then

you had canvas kind of startup and it was like oh it looks better but it's kind of just a facelift and

so all this was stirring right all this was stirring and then linkedin bought lynda.com i i could be

incorrect but i think it was two billion dollars but i mean i might be way off but i know it was a lot of

money a lot of money when that happened you began seeing a tipping point where around that time youtube

then invested into youtube education ted did create this platform right so then and then master classes

which was which was i mean this is high end online training where they're i mean i did the malcolm

gladwell writing one i was gifted that right and you can learn or you can learn you know cooking from

gordon ramsay and you're it's just like but literally the amount of money that was poured in the venture

capital investment that's now being poured into master classes and all i mean it was just a

right it was just so fast but i found it was ticking along very slowly up until that point

and then you know zoom is not like who doesn't use zoom i mean we're using zoom right now but it was

just it was just yeah so i think within the church world we've gotten to that point now where everyone

in like online you know development every if if someone's in a white collar kind of job even if

they're in a blue collar job development ongoing development is important certification is important

and it's more and more and more online so why are we lagging so behind as a church i i i love

everything about this this entire conversation this has been the highlight of of a crazy couple weeks

yeah i want to ask i want to ask this yeah yeah thank you i want to ask this one question because

i'm really interested you've set this question up so perfectly i don't even need to really except

i want to educate you on on my terms okay through stadia they hired me to be director of digital church

planting we are literally trying to figure out what a digital only expression of church looks like

as part of that we're wrestling with the biblical ecclesiology of of what are the biblical functions and not

how do we mirror what happens in physical space and do it virtually but how best can we do virtually

what the bible calls us to do so example teaching we're doing a 40-minute sermon on a platform well

is is a 40-minute sermon the best way to communicate teaching i actually had had a guy tell me hey you

know what paul um wrote when he taught that means that writing's okay why don't we just write and i'm like

wait are you telling me that teaching could be blog format like that nobody has i have never heard

that but somebody just kind of and this is a guy i trust jason morris from west side yeah uh family

and just and so we're we're having lots of these fun conversations in process to try to figure out

how a church can function 100 digitally there's guys like and and i may throw some things out that

you don't know but dj soto is doing vr church i don't know if you're familiar with him yeah um jade

earhart is uh doing a video game uh church is that moving in that direction but he's got a discipleship

platform from through discord literally discipling video gamers who are going out and witnessing

while playing xbox video games yeah winning people to christ while winning destiny 2 it's just it's

crazy stuff so here's my question to you okay because the average person had just explodes well

i talk about a lot on the podcast so if they listen regularly they've already exploded and it's old

news but for you i want to ask this question what are the challenges what what what's the direction

what advice because we are pioneering towards this digital church thing you obviously through the

past hour have a very good understanding of discipleship and digital which are two of the

things that i am building this foundation of digital church on i would love to know your knee-jerk reaction

and would you be willing to think about it and come back and have another conversation later

we can get to number two later but number one what's your knee-jerk reaction uh when i talk

about a digital only expression of worship yeah okay so i've i've done a lot of thinking around this

too um obviously obviously not as much as you yeah so but when it comes to this here's the thing

the role of the preach right the role of the preach the role of that community i i still honestly do

believe that that's a very important thing for the formation of our people so yes we need to be

self-feeders yes we need to from the research really be focusing on reading the bible and being in

community and all that stuff but that gathered expression that gathered expression is such an important

piece of formation that honestly i don't you're right i don't think it has to be in person

but there is and praise the lord we're protestants and we you know when it comes to communion it's

just get your own juice and crackers and you know let's do communion together i think that's fine in

fact our church my church here beulah it's 99 years old uh used to do radio preaching back in like

the 30s 40s where it would be printed in the newspaper hey get your bread and your crackers right

or your bread and your juice ready because we're no kidding this sunday over the radio yeah they were

doing bring your own communion in like the 30s and the 40s exactly yeah that is a phenomenal story

i love that yeah that's great so and my church here i mean over 60 church plants since origin so it's i

mean i love multiplication i love being back here in canada but having said all that um yes the gathered

experience is so important we can do it online i believe it can be i don't know i haven't heard a lot of

expressions of it being done well really well online and i think the technology is still growing it's

still advancing and there's that it's that tip i don't think the tipping point's been met yet on this

piece on this piece who knows what the coronavirus is going to do um like literally i i just i really do

wonder what the coronavirus is going to do to church online and how it's going to be moving how it's going to

advance a lot of that too but all that to say i think the jury's still out in terms of what's the

most effective way to do it but let's experiment so i'm not taking that as a roaring endorsement but i

am taking that of hey it'll be interesting to see how far you get yeah here here's the reality is and

and i love stadia for doing this is there hey we want to throw some research and development behind

this and even the posture of when i work with when i talk specifically with churches that we're looking at

to plant these it's it's hey we're experimenting come be part of the experiment with us actually i want to

one of one of the pastors shot me an email and this this may be a bad thing but he he's like whether or

not we're actually successful in this we feel like god's calling us to because where we fail and where

we succeed someone else will come behind yeah and so the the posture of stadia which i love is we're

going to experiment and we're going to learn through this process and if we're successful awesome the

people behind us are going to have a better shot and somebody you know hate to say somebody's got to be

first but i feel like honestly like i've i've been wanting to do this and i don't mean to overstate

here but it's literally been 20 years i graduated from college in 1999 started a dot-com right there

in the dot-com boom towards helping churches work through this stuff back in like in 2000 right after

y2g man here oh yeah man and and it's like i'm trying to find somebody and uh man just the band

dance dance dance back and forth between gigs and stadia's like hey come over here let's let's let's

talk yeah and seeing how they've they've run with this has been exciting that's cool i hate to i hate

to say it like i'm gonna call you out like i'm building some of the stuff around the principles of

what you're doing and you're you're not showing me enough love back that's cool i love you i still

want to have these conversations i still want to come to the conference in july um i'll have you

speak at the conference in july this will be good that's awesome is it is it in canada you don't have

to think is that oh wheaton oh that's awesome very very cool yeah well if we're allowed to travel who

knows i yeah i was about to say there's a bunch of things happening but hopefully hopefully we can get

it figured out then yeah um yes so listen seriously and and i'll turn the corner thank you for this

podcast this has been uh in in a world of corona virus that is just inundating um the ability to

laugh a little bit here to talk about things that aren't corona sensitive yeah um i hope i hope my

audience who hopefully has a similar sense of humor as i do they seem to enjoy these things i hope they're

enjoying this in a lot of the conversation so thank you for this uh just as we're landing the plane

daniel any any closing thoughts in anything that that you want to say or or reference or hit on my

church we live stream um the number one how i'm using how we're using the live stream and leveraging

the live stream i really don't care if people watch it around the world the one thing i really care

about is those in edmonton and using this as a front door and moving people from that to a

gathered location so i do believe that church online can be leveraged and should be leveraged

especially when the front door is your is instagram or for i don't even think the front door is your

website anymore depending on the age it front doors it's your instagram account uh depending on the age

or it's your live stream or you know for certain generations it's your website so uh leverage how do you

leverage that as the new lobby to get people into community and saved and pointed toward christ

and discipled so yeah i love it i love the work that you're doing and the thinking that you're doing

toward this so thank you for doing that man awesome and as long as that front door leads

into an intentional discipleship process that's utilizing online to make disciples i love everything

that you just said uh and and so and and you're literally the guy that wrote the book so who am i to

question that we're all about um you know the the no silver bullets you mentioned briefly and let's just

let you tag on it what was the you've got a more recent book that that you published what gives the

decent details on that yeah so it's called you are what you do and six other lies about work life and love

so it's a book basically on the fact that the gig economy is here side hustling is it's not the

questions move from have you heard of side hustles to what is your side hustles so it's just an increase

it's a fast growing phenomenon and i address seven lies that have risen to the surface because of this

gig economy and it's it's a fascinating take i believe on here's our world is changing this is the gig economy is

affecting work it's affecting life it's affecting relationships and here are seven ways that it's

doing that so it is a discipleship tool but first and foremost it really is a tool that i'm hoping

that people would use toward evangelistic uh evangelistic means because it is that sense hey

here's the you've heard it was said but now i say to you as it says you know matthew 5 with jesus so

yeah that's kind of the premise of the book your listeners can definitely look it up if they want

awesome we'll throw some links on the show notes to both the books of course no silver bullets as

as well as the the six lies is what stuck with me yeah yeah yeah you are what you do yeah you are

what you do which by the way i'm not gonna yeah it's a lie i mean i'm not going to show it to my

wife because i don't want to have to relive that conversation so we're we are doing very very well

so daniel thank you very much for your time uh we're going to wrap here for the church digital

podcast audience out there thanks for listening hope you see you next time here at the podcast you have

a good day