EP050: Biblical Function of a Digital-Only Church, Part 1

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. I'm going to love saying this next part for a long time to come.

You ready for this? Powered by Stadia Church Planting. That's right.

The Church Digital, the Church Digital Podcast is now powered by Stadia Church Planting.

In case you didn't hear through the podcast and through the blogs that we put up,

I, Jeff Reed, have taken a job with Stadia Church Planting, where I am now their director of digital church planting.

What's a digital church? Awesome. Put a pin in that. We'll come back to it in a second.

By the way, this is our 50th episode, 5-0, here of the Church Digital Podcast.

I didn't think I'd make it past episode 5. Honestly, I didn't think I'd make it past episode 5.

And here we are with episode 50, and I've loved the content. I've loved the guests.

I've loved the conversations that we've been having here on this podcast.

So you, listening audience, I want to thank you for joining me in this ride, in this journey,

as we're discovering more about what Church Online really can be, what it should be,

and what digital church will be. So thank you for that.

And I want to publicly thank Ray DeArmis, guest host here with the Church Digital Podcast,

for joining me on this ride. Honestly, I didn't think any either of us would make it to episode 50.

And here we are.

So the conversation here that we're going to bring in is, what is a digital church?

And that's a great question to ask.

There are all sorts of models of church here in the world today.

You've got your mega church. You've got your giga church. You've got your multi-site church.

You've got your small church. You've got your big church. You've got your high church. You've got your low church.

You've got your cowboy church. Yeah, there's a cowboy church.

I actually attended a cowboy church in Texas. It does exist. It's for cowboys. It's a thing.

All of these different models of church are just it.

They're models of the gathering. They're models of the biblical ecclesia.

But the important thing to realize is they are models.

There's really not one out there today that is the perfect example,

the perfect mirror image of what we as a church are called to be biblically.

They're just models. They're attempts to get there.

Now, some are better than others, but all of them have strengths.

All of them have weaknesses.

All of them have different characteristics that are towards the direction of biblical ecclesia.

They all have strengths in their ecclesiology,

but all of them fall short and are limited in some area.

I hate to tell you this, but none of them are a perfect match.

And so to that end, we're going to create another model of church.

Not that it's the perfect model, because I don't think the perfect model exists

this side of heaven.

But it's another model. It's another opportunity.

It's another way to connect people to the saving grace of Christ.

Because I think there are people out there in the world today

that will not be reached by the current models.

And we as the church need to do something different.

And to that end, ladies and gentlemen,

I want to talk to you about this idea of digital church.

What's a digital church?

Well, let me show you our definition of digital church.

And the awesome thing is nobody's really talking about digital church.

So we, Stadia Church Planning and the church digital,

we get to define what this digital church is.

A digital church is a church that exists digitally before it exists physically.

Or maybe it doesn't even exist physically.

Now, that may just explode somebody's brains.

How can you do church without it being physical?

Here's the deal.

I think you can.

I think if we really look at the ecclesiology of what a church is,

I think if you look at the biblical functions of how the church existed years ago,

I believe that the digital expression of church

can match the biblical functions that are in place.

I believe that we can create an ecclesiology of a church

that very much matches what the biblical model of church is

operating in a digital environment.

And so that's the challenge.

And honestly, that's the challenge of this podcast.

I grabbed a list from well-known sources,

and we start to talk through this list of biblical functions.

When we look at what the church is, how it functions biblically,

can we even do that in a digital environment?

Is it possible to start to operate

and to have this ecclesiology that operates

and these functions that operate in a digital format?

Could you even operate as a biblical church in a virtual environment only?

Not a physical environment, a virtual environment only.

And to that end, we brought in experts from all over the country

to be on a panel to start this conversation.

Yeah, we grabbed a bunch of online pastors and said,

hey, come over here, let's have this crazy conversation.

You know the best part of the conversation, straight up?

At least four times in this podcast, somebody made this comment,

I hope I'm not going to get fired because of this, but.

Because there's this fascinating conversation

where all these online guys are like, this is a great thing,

but it's a completely separate thing.

It's a new thing.

And that's the beauty of a digital church.

Because it's not tied to a physical church model

where you're trying to recreate what's happening physical in a virtual space.

You get to just swipe the slate clean and start over

and create a model of church that just operates virtually,

the way that virtual is supposed to function.

And that is a beautiful thing.

So here's who's involved in this panel.

We're bringing in Ian Kirk, Generations, community pastor, online pastor.

We're bringing in Jason Morris, Westside family, no stranger to the podcast there,

of course, Global Innovations pastor.

We're bringing in Joey Santos, online pastor with Christ Church,

as well as Ray Diarmus, of course, guest host regularly here on the podcast,

as well as digital pastor out of Christ Fellowship in Miami,

and myself, Jeff with the Church of Digital,

in a conversation that I'm calling Biblical Functions in a Digital-Only Church.

Episode 50, everybody, here you go.

Jason, what ears are you wearing?

Those are interesting to me.

These are like some knockoff Chinese brand that Panasami or something like that.

But hey, they work.

I got them for Christmas.

Actually, I gave them to my son for Christmas,

and it was somehow, it was beneath him.

And so I'm like, okay, I'll use them.

And I like them.

Love it.

We were going to do a conversation centered around language,

and I think somewhat it'll still maybe feel that way,

because part of language is really at the core of the philosophy of Church Online.

I was, so I've taken a new job, and this is like grounded in fact.

Joey and I spent, I don't know, two or three days,

a couple days back in November out in Colorado with an organization called Stadia Church Planting.

And they actually just launched their, just planted their 1,000th church.

It's taken them 17 years to launch 1,000 churches, but they celebrated that.

What's interesting is with the current growth trends that the organization is going through

and how they've been accelerating, they're going to hit the next 1,000 churches in three years.

So they'll go to 2,000 churches in three years and are very quickly escalating along.

And so the reason that Joey and I got pulled into this conversation is they were really trying

to wrestle with what a digital church is.

And what's interesting is like, we started the conversation.

They got really excited about some of the stuff we were talking about.

I really got excited about some of the stuff that we were talking about.

And at the end of this like two-day Think Tank Blue Sky thing we were doing,

we just kept the conversation going between Stadia and I, and effective this week or late January.

I'm like director of digital church planting for Stadia, which is like awesome and scary and everything in between.

And people are like, so what's a digital church?

And my response back is, what do you think a digital church is?

Because we're literally getting to define some of those things right now.

So here's what I want to do.

I want to like be very particular with some terms here.

So what's a digital church?

For me, I'm wrestling with three things.

I'm wrestling with a church planter that wants to plant a church digitally that will eventually turn into a physical location.

So that's one model.

I'm talking about a church planter that's planting a church in a digital realm that may stay digital.

And so like I'm referencing here a DJ Soto with VR Church, or I'm referencing a Jay Earhart with what he's doing with Love Plant,

where the end game of it is not for it to grow into a physical,

but to keep it in that virtual, in that digital community.

Now, there's challenges.

Some of these things that I'm going to go through, like I was reading a book here today.

I was reading the, what is this called?

The Flywheel.

What is this called?

The Movement Flywheel.

We'll put it in the show notes.

But it's a free e-book from Leadership Network and Exponential Conference.

And some of the things that, even when they're talking about this stuff, I'm like, I don't really know how to do this digitally.

Maybe it's not possible.

Maybe it is possible.

Maybe we just need to kind of think about it.

But it's not like in this podcast, in this one-hour podcast, we're going to solve all the world's problems as much as, hey,

there's some challenges here that we really need to pour more into.

So let's do this.

Let's take a moment.

Let's bounce around the podcast.

Ian, let's start up with you.

And I'll just comment, just maybe 15, 20 seconds, who you are, your ministry, what you're tied to,

and what the heart is of church online and that for you.

So I'm at Generations Community Church in Marysville, Washington.

I am the online campus pastor.

And we've been doing this for about a year.

In fact, I got the official title in about, the anniversary is just about now.

And basically taking us from zero to broadcast.

And now we're starting to expand to online groups and figuring out how that's going to work for us.

And I also write daily devotionals for the entire church, which sort of fits into this, I hope, for our online groups.

But right now we're really starting to wrestle with how online groups are going to fit into the church context.

Because in our area, we have Boeing and other organizations that work seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

Church on Sunday doesn't fit in a lot of schedules.

And so we want to expand that from just worship, you know, just broadcasting worship to having small groups and discipleship online so that people feel connected to the body.

Joey, why don't you go next?

Well, I'm in Mason, Ohio, Christ Church.

And I've been here for two and a half years now.

And we start from ground zero.

Also, with the online church, they had nothing before I got there.

And we really, our main purpose was how we create an online environment that provides full engagement.

So the idea was literally to, if our next door neighbor from our church doesn't want to come to a building, but they engage online, we're okay with that.

So, and that really opened the door for many possibilities.

So we are, we've been experiencing the full engagement.

We call it campus because it's really treated as a campus.

It's a separate campus, even from financially.

So the giving that comes through the online campus is treated separately from the physical church.

And we're expanding that now.

Like we're, we'll talk more about it, but we, it has been really fun experience to be able to have this presence at a bar and, and have the church there.

The church is flourishing.

It's great.

Yeah.

I'm sure we'll tie into the church in a bar.

By the way, episode 45 on the church digital podcast.

We spent significant amount of time.

Joey's no stranger to the podcast here.

He was on that one and got to dive into that.

And we've got the OG down here, Jason Morris from Westside family.

So going all the way back to, I don't have it in front of me, but it's probably like episode seven or eight, six, maybe.

It was in the, it was in the top 10 early days of that.

But yeah, yeah, I felt like it was, was right there.

Maybe five or six.

I'll look up while you're talking, but Jason, man, just Westside family.

What's, what's the heart of church online?

What's the heart of digital?

What's your heart?

What's, what's going on down over there?

Well, what we do is we help people.

Our, our mission statement at Westside is loving Jesus, becoming like Jesus and sharing Jesus.

And what we do online is help people do that exact same thing using online tools and then leveraging on part of the thing that I do is we leverage that digital expression of Westside to catalyze global church planning movements.

And so like, for example, tomorrow, I'm going to be headed out to Thailand and Laos where we're going to be meeting up with a bunch of church planters and church leaders that we're bringing in from South Africa and India.

And at last count, the, we've had a, the, the honor to participate with some really good partners that at last count is like over 1200 churches.

Something like that.

Not in the same way that one would think of as a church here in the States with a building paid staff, that sort of thing.

It is a different expression of church, but what we're doing is we are leveraging the digital resources that we're creating and allowing that to give people on the ground,

on the tools that they need to create contextualized versions of Jesus church, wherever they happen to be.

So our heart is to make that happen because the way I see it, Jesus said, go into all the world and we're just giving it a shot.

So that's what we do.

So you're literally getting on a plane tomorrow to travel over that.

That's cool.

Appreciate, appreciate everybody taking the time to jump in on this.

Hey, Ray, you want to give us a 30 second on, you don't get to talk about CF much, like just really the heart of what you guys are doing over there.

I mean, really it's, it's continually changing and, you know, God's allowed us these digital tools as a way to reach people and how to disciple them.

And even on into the future and eventually Jeff and I'll talk about this because Jeff, Jeff and I both sit on the board and work with different organizations and how a lot of this is kind of taking shape.

You know, but everything from, we lead small groups online, we have community online, we have, you know, we do services online and expanded even now into missions and how we can do missions online.

And pretty excited to talk about that on in the future, but God has really used this in a great way and just great, been grateful to be here all the way up through episode 50.

It's been really cool to be part of the church digital, but really at Christ Fellowship, it's been quite a ride and quite an experience to allow digital tools.

And my role is expanded. I'm not just online campus pastor anymore.

Like I'm basically our digital strategist overall now and kind of helping find a way to allow all those tools to work together to help us reach people in a digital world, but also recognizing, and we've used this word here on the podcast in the digital world, where the people who attend our campuses and the people who attend our online campus in a lot of cases are one and the same.

And I'm sure we'll get into some of that discussion today as we talk about what it means to be the ecclesia or the gathered online.

Yeah, it was funny. I got called out on Twitter. I can't even remember who did it to me at this point, but a couple, and it's Twitter, Twitter, Twitter.

And it was all nice, but Jay Crandall over at Saddleback tagged, tagged Ray and I, evidently he's got somebody from his church that's moving down to Naples, Florida.

And he was asking, you know, Ray and I via Twitter, hey, do you know any churches, any, any, he said, anybody who's doing anything in, in Naples.

And, you know, Jay being the online pastor over there, I just, I replied back, are you looking for online or physical church?

And somebody, somebody will tell me, we'll put, we'll link to it in the show notes, but somebody busted me and they were like, does it matter?

And I was like, okay, touche, well done. I appreciate the shot, you know?

Yeah, it does in this context. I want to know who to recommend to, but, but anyway, yes, physical or virtual doesn't matter.

We're all, we're all all the same church.

I want to hone in because part of me is like, I love that. And the fact that we are all the one church and in the different parts and things that come from that.

What I want to propose though, is that there's different models.

And so I may want to like segue the conversation a little different here because like, for example, you know, Jason, Jason, talk to me about what, what's going on at the churches.

Like what does a church look like where you are, where you're heading to literally tomorrow?

Well, that varies a lot depending upon the location. It could be a gathering of, you know, two to 300 in a storefront somewhere, or it could be, you know, three to five believers meeting in a bamboo hut or under a tree.

So it, it takes lots of different forms and much of that has to do with the context that they're in.

In some cases they're in persecuted places where they have to function in underground, which causes them to be forced to be small and reproducing, which we've found actually works better from a gospel saturation standpoint.

In a leadership development standpoint, then amassing large gatherings that are more difficult to replicate and, um, tend to, I mean, they, they all have all the different expressions have their own strength and weakness, but one of the weaknesses of a larger gathering is the leadership development pipeline tends to weaken.

And the gospel saturation in a given area tends to weaken, um, um, versus other expressions or other forms.

Cause you're talking about different forms of church, right?

So like megachurch is different than house church, but they're both church, right?

It's just a different expression of what the church is.

And when you're talking about digital church, I think it's another thing.

It's another expression of church.

And one can't say, Oh, megachurch is bad or house church is bad.

Well, a lot of it depends on the context and who you're trying to reach.

Um, just like I was, you know, listening to Joey, you know, talk about the vast majority of people that are in his digital expression of church are within the geographic reach of his physical campuses.

And that tells you something that there is a demographic or a group of people that could possibly only be reached in more of a digital context or in a more hyper local context than what we're thinking, because they're thinking, no, I don't want to be in a building.

And if you hear that person, like if the customers that we're supposed to be, or the people that we're supposed to be reaching, if those people are saying, I don't want to be in a building, we need to listen to that because our job, you know, according to Jesus is to go into all the world and make disciples, right?

Teaching them to observe everything we've commanded you.

And if those people tell us that they don't want to be in a building, and yet we're forcing them into a model that requires one, maybe we need to rethink our approach.

That's all I'm saying.

Yeah.

And the idea of different models certainly comes into play.

Korea, Korea is almost seeing borderline revival as a result of a giga church movement.

Some of the largest churches on the planet are coming out of Korea, whereas India and China is seeing a movement on a much more house church level.

We've had Mike Christian on the podcast.

Mike has literally launched 400 churches, 400 micro churches, house churches, so much so that he was removed from India.

The Indian government literally kicked him out of the country because he was a threat to national security.

He was so effective in planting these reproducing churches.

And to say, well, no, the giga church is better or less or more powerful or not, I mean, that's an irrelevant conversation because in the end, we're not judging how many butts in seats or how much revenue is coming in or what the money is.

You're judging how we are at fulfilling the Great Commission of empowering a disciple to go.

Thank you very much, Jason Morris, for that.

Well, there is a facet that I think maybe should be considered, and that is in the same way where the primary expression of church in the first century that you find in the Book of Acts was not in large gatherings.

That happened later.

That's not to say that large gatherings aren't effective.

They can be an effective tool, and we have seen them as effective tools, even in regions where the primary expression of church might be a house church or a smaller gathering.

The interesting thing that I see about the digital church, though, is that it is in some ways neither mega nor micro in that it is a networked church where you could have smaller or asynchronous exposures to the church.

Not a church service, not a church service, but perhaps, but done in a networked fashion where the net effect is greater than the sum of its parts.

Yeah, you know, the tough thing that I see, and this is something that we're all struggling through when we talk about the age that we're coming into in terms of digital churches.

You know, for some time, for quite some time, you know, we validated Sunday morning because it was something that we can count.

It was something that we can kind of control.

With digital tools, we have less and less of an ability to control that.

It's more virally spread.

We can spread out content further and faster than ever, and it can reach people of all sorts of different means, different economic statuses, different neighborhoods, et cetera.

And people can access content from different pastors who aren't even in their own city, and so in that way, it gives them the ability to be shepherded by people that they may never meet, never see, which is something that the mega church movement was already kind of doing.

Because even though I could see my pastor on a stage, the odds of us having a relationship in a 2,000, 3,000, 4,000-member church, slim to none, you know?

And so now when we start talking about church as how we know it, now we've got to get down to some of the nitty-gritty stuff, which digital, in my opinion, can actually do better.

And I'll get to that in a second in the sense of accountability, actually being in relationships, being in somebody's life.

And here's why.

With digital landscapes and with digital tools, I can be in somebody's life every day.

We can stay in communication every single day, and we can keep in accountability, and that person can keep me accountable to things like scripture reading, to prayer.

That person can be in my life, and the praises, you know, and the good, the bad, the ugly, all that stuff.

A lot of that can happen on digital landscapes where face-to-face interactions can't happen as much.

And so, you know, the example, and I've used this before on the podcast, that kind of launched me in this direction, seeing how this could be real.

My wife's been part of the same text thread with other Christian mommies for about 10 years.

And they've been there through the good and the bad, holding each other accountable through the birth of babies, through some of them, their divorces, through remarriages, through all sorts of stuff.

Praying for each other, keeping each other accountable, encouraging one another, doing all the things that we would expect the people sitting in our pews to do.

And doing it more effectively than I had seen in some face-to-face small groups, where it was like a shallow relationship, but hey, they're meeting together every week.

So check my problem.

So I've got a question on that, Ray, because I think you're touching on something that is overlooked many times.

The question I have in that environment, where I think one could actually do more ministry because it's more constant.

In that texting group that you've described, do they ever or do the members ever get together physically?

They do, but it's not as often as you would think.

It's maybe once a year, maybe once every two years, because now they're spread out.

Some of them, one of them is living in Canada.

A couple of them are living in the Carolinas.

And so they've spread out on this scale, but they're very much in each other's lives every day.

It was kind of funny because at some point, I was in what I've considered accountability groups.

And I would be sitting down with my wife, and I would just hear, like her phone would be going off.

I'd be like, what's going on?

She's like, oh, it's just the girls.

And I'm like, well, man, what's going on?

Hey, so-and-so is going through this thing, and we're all praying for her.

And I'm like, man, you guys are in.

And I mean, some of this is just me being a guy and her being a woman and just them being better at communication in general.

But I was like, man, you guys are in each other's lives much more than I am with my own men's accountability group.

Like, yeah, we'll talk about some signatures or some different stuff.

But you guys are bringing the day-to-day to each other.

And that's a big deal.

The trend that you mentioned and the way that that texting group has expressed itself as the church is a growing trend that I see happening,

where on-site, face-to-face conversations happen less frequently but are more meaningful because of the gaps that are being filled on a more constant basis through a digital means.

And perhaps it could be that that trend can be seen not only in church world but in every other sector of society.

So that being said, perhaps our ministry model could adapt to that cadence where, who knows, we could have an on-site gathering, you know, once every quarter or something of that nature.

That's really big, really awesome, highly excellent, and not able to be repeatable every single Sunday because that's too much of a grind and would suck too much resource and energy from the actual ministry that's happening in a digital means on a more frequent basis.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, that actually kind of aligns with, if you guys read the book, and Daniel M. talks about it in No Silver Bullets.

It's called Flip the Classroom.

Are you guys familiar with that term?

Where essentially, it was two chemistry teachers who wrote the book.

And the philosophy is out there.

And since, and I'll talk about my wife later in the context of this book, because my wife said Master's in Education, and when I said Flip the Classroom, she got really upset, which was funny.

I mean, we'll get to it.

But what Flip the Classroom is, is these two chemistry teachers, instead of being focused on lecturing in the classroom, they flipped it.

So they would lecture, like pre-recorded, upload it to a video server somewhere, and the homework was watching the lectures.

Instead of the teachers feeling like they had to perform four or five classes a week, their word, perform four to five classes a day, excuse me, they would do it once for online, and the students would watch it once.

If there were questions, they'd back it up, they'd pause it, repeat it over and over again.

And then that was the homework, the actual, like, application point where they do the homework, where they ask the questions, where they're going through the labs, like, that's done in the classroom.

Teachers are able to then engage with the students without having to worry about the performance, without having to worry about that, but more of person to person building that community.

Students' scores skyrocketed as a result of that also.

The teachers felt they better understood who the students were and what their needs were, because instead of them performing their word over and over and over to them, they got to listen and understood who the students were.

Now, my wife has a master's of education, and it was funny.

I just, I asked her, because I read the book on the airplane recently, and I got home, and I was like, hey, have you ever heard of this?

You ever, like, you know, heard of these guys this book?

And she's like, no, but I hate Flip the Classroom.

And I was like, really?

You know, just tell me why.

And she's like, oh, well, the teachers are just being lazy.

It was my wife's response.

And I was like, oh, that's interesting.

And I was like, because I really, I'm interested in this in context of church and discipleship, and maybe even changing how we're creating disciples, what that process looks like.

And she says, oh, no, I totally think you should do it from the church level.

I think it would be awesome at the church level.

I just think teachers are being lazy.

So I don't know what that does for my wife.

If somebody wants to speak into that, I can give you my wife's email address, and you can speak with her directly.

Because Lord knows, I was like, cool, I'm going to let that one go, and we're going to move on.

Your wife's reticence to that approach is fascinating to me.

At the end of the day, my question is, what is the point of education?

Is it so that the teachers can have meaningful activity, or so that the students can learn something?

And if test scores are going up, who cares if the teachers are more lazy, even if that's the real reason?

If it's more effective, who cares?

So in my mind, that really kind of parallels some of the other things that I feel like people are struggling with when it comes to new ways of doing church.

You'd need to know what your goal actually is.

Is it activity?

Is it programs?

Is it events?

Or is it results?

What are those results?

And if you're driving towards those kinds of goals, then who cares what kind of methodology you're using?

Just do whatever's effective.

You know, that same criticism that Amy would give of the teachers.

And I would never go against the great Amy Reid.

I'm a big fan of Jeff's wife.

She does such awesome stuff as a teacher.

I'm not getting you in trouble, Jeff.

Don't worry.

Thank you for that.

I appreciate it.

Keep going.

Yeah.

But here's the deal.

That's the same criticism I've heard of pastors who have even gone to video teaching or churches that have gone multi-site that have gone to video teaching.

Oh, that's so lazy.

That's something that churches should not want to do.

And it's like, well, hold on.

And this is like I was the campus pastor at a physical location before I became the online campus pastor.

I did a lot more ministry, like actual ministry, on the weeks that I was not teaching because we were rolling the video.

I got to be in somebody's life.

I got to go do hospital visits.

I went and did funerals.

I went and did a bunch of stuff.

On the weeks that I was teaching, I spent 30 to 35 hours in books and working on a message and doing that because that's what was needed of me that week.

And I felt like I was more in ministry when we were leveraging the technology properly.

Joey, you've been quiet so far, man.

What are you thinking?

This is fascinating.

And I say that because I know this is going to sound cheesy, but, man, I cannot believe I'm in the same podcast with Jason because I met Jason for the first time at a very small online pastors conference in Dallas a few years ago.

And, I mean, he was incredible.

He shared information.

We got, we were sharing meals.

And he has been a great, like, I follow his church and then his Twitter accounts and see, you know, he shared what's going on online.

And I'm like, I'm here in the podcast with Jason right now.

That's pretty incredible.

So, man, I pray for you, brother.

I appreciate what you do, your leadership.

I really do.

That's great.

I really believe that the future of the online church is going to be away from the online streaming of the Sunday service.

And because that, to replicate what happened on the stage, it's still not, it's still, that's still to me not the identity of the real digital church.

And I really think that because all we're talking about online, we're talking about content distribution with the only difference is with the relational aspect of it.

And we have the ability to really broadcast content 247 and connect with people anytime today.

I agree with Ray.

I experienced more ministry in the last two years than the 10 years prior in a physical church.

Literally.

You know, when, when you got a guy from California who never walked in a church before, he never walked in a church and he found our church through a Google search.

And he, and he, and he just go through all the steps of, you know, I want to know what's next.

And we go through foundations class.

I don't want to know what's next.

And we go through online Bible study one-on-one.

I was there just one-on-one.

I said, we don't have to join a group.

We're going to be me and you doing this all the way to, I want to get baptized.

And he flies all the way from California to Mason to get baptized.

And that was the very first time every day he stepped foot in a church.

Wow.

Wow.

And if you don't understand, like people don't understand the power of that moment, you really don't understand the power of just, and he, here's the deal about it.

The first time he watched a service was a Tuesday morning in California.

It was not a Sunday.

He watched a pre-recorded service.

So I really think that, one, and I'm going to run the risk to really get myself in trouble here.

It's my podcast.

You'll be fine.

I know.

And I just going to repeat what I said in the last podcast.

I think churches, the physical churches are a little lost in a sense of, you know, we got this big building and we got to have people come in and we haven't have enough programming that people are happy enough to give them money so we can now pay the bills.

So churches are becoming this big real estate business instead of being a place where we can just distribute content and facilitate relationships.

So in our church, we shift the conversation because we're seeing people come in and I'm a big data guy.

So I can look at data all day long.

And the reality is people are not coming to church because of the preaching.

They're not coming to church because of the music.

They're coming to church trying to find relationships, meaningful relationships with the community.

I visualize, I don't know if it's off the subject, but I visualize that the physical church is going through a season of adjustments, of trying to rediscover its identity in today's culture.

And the digital church is just in place to be able to fill that gap.

So I think for pastors listening to this, the digital church is not here to compete with your church.

The digital church is here to actually support what you offer.

Now, you've got to just look in the way more objectively how that engagement happens so you are able to distribute content with the relational piece involved.

It's like if you can add the relational piece to it, it makes a complete experience for the people participating in it.

Yeah.

And there's an awesome opportunity for church online's, the online broadcast, the online community of a physical church to complement that.

Ray mentioned this idea of physical, a combination of physical and digital within one.

And like there's, believe me, I could go off that, we all could go off that pitch and help pastors understand that.

And we've all have enjoyed the joys and sorrows of trying to convince someone of the other way on that.

Here's, and I truly do believe this, the physical church growth model or whatever you want to call this, the mega church, giga church, multi-site, the typical church that you see today in the physical space.

I think they're going to get bigger and I think they're going to get smaller.

The model of the large church is going to continue to grow.

I don't think that it's going to crash and burn.

I don't think it's set for doom.

If anything, and I do think that it's serving its purpose for the kingdom.

There are people that do connect to that.

Just like it would be ill of me to rip a giga church in Korea or a house church in India.

Those physical models exist to serve the purpose that they do.

Now, there may need to be something complimentary to help get beyond what they do or to reach the type of person that those buildings are not set to reach.

We've all experienced, and Joey, you know, you've alluded to some of them with your church online where, you know, there are people who don't want to set foot in the building.

As of right now, LifeWay stats, 63% of people aren't interested in going to your church building.

80%, 79% are interested in having a conversation about faith with their friends, as long as faith is important to their friends.

And they see that faith is important to their friends.

So, there's an opportunity, I would suggest, for a new model.

We've talked about this, and this digital church model that's driven more towards a discipleship-oriented type structure is what I'm suggesting,

where we are discipling people to engage within a community, whether that's a physical community.

Maybe it's a neighborhood or a couple blocks around somebody's house.

Maybe it's a historical neighborhood, meaning it's the circle of friends that I have in context of what Ray's wife's doing with everything that she's got with people all the way up in another country still engaging in several states represented in that.

Or maybe it's something like what Jade's doing, Jade Earhart, where, dude, the guy just loves video games and wants to utilize his passion to try to reach people for Christ.

And to say, oh, man, that's not a church.

Well, I think there's some biblical standards and some mandates that we need to look at and to say, okay, this is when we look at what church is and the ecclesiology of church.

These are functions that a church is supposed to do.

And, you know, do we see this?

And just in some great examples, do we see this with Jake?

Do we see this with the WhatsApp group?

Honestly, that all of us are in.

We are all in some sort of a WhatsApp group similar to that.

I've got a guy in California that's been blowing me up today.

I swear he typed something and I almost wanted to crack him a joke back.

I'm like, are your thumbs tired?

Because that's like 2,000 words right there, bro.

And I know you don't have like a computer WhatsApp thing.

Like this is the actual like on a keyboard.

That's a lot of work, man.

But, you know, God bless him and God bless the groups that are doing that.

But does that hold up to the ecclesiology?

Does it hold up to the functions of biblically what, you know, I'll add them.

What exponential conference and what leadership network says, hey, this is the minimum ecclesiology of what a church should be.

So let's just roll through this.

Let's have some fun and kind of see where we land with some of this stuff.

All right.

So there's, I don't know, it's probably 10 or 11 on this list.

Number one, worship.

So in a digital expression of worship, church, how do you worship?

Arguably a better question would be, what is worship?

I mean, I guess the traditional way, and for many of you who broadcast your services, the first thing you're going to say, hey, you know, we broadcast the songs that we do on Sunday morning.

But, you know, Jeff's question of what is worship is kind of an expansive thing that every worship leader loves to discuss, but everybody just kind of takes a pause.

You know, we kind of identify the worship as primarily the singing portion of church and the fact that we're singing and engaged together.

But the reality is, is whenever we say that worship's a lifestyle for some reason, that tends to take a dive once we try to talk about church in the context of online, because we want people still to gather in physical spaces and sing together.

Truth is, it doesn't matter if they're singing privately, you know, in a room.

It doesn't matter if they're singing amongst a group of other believers.

They're still engaged with God, and worship can take on so many different forms within that.

Now, that being said, we're looking for our traditional form of singing.

Yeah, you know what?

They're watching the broadcast, and they're singing along.

Like, that is happening.

In a lot of cases, man, folks have even engaged in the chat, like, hey, man, my hands are raised right where I'm at.

And that's a powerful thing when God can do that, no matter where they're located.

You know, and I love the idea of the weekly gathering.

And Jason, you've alluded to this in a past podcast, and actually, you connected me with Neil Cole's Church 3.0.

We talked about that the last time that you were on.

And that book, along with some others, really started to reshape kind of how I was viewing church.

Answer this question for me.

When did church become a weekly expression?

Do you know historically, or does anybody know?

Like, I mean, obviously, we're seeing God speak, Jesus speak to large crowds, feeding of the thousands, the Beatitudes.

So he's doing this.

We see it in the letters to the church.

So we know that smaller works.

But when did it shift to, like, every Sunday we're doing this thing?

One of the things that you find in Acts is that daily they were doing all these things.

So that actually falls into more of a frequency that most of us experience in the digital church, where daily we are, you know, breaking bread, dedicating ourselves to the apostles' teaching, to prayer, and to the word.

Those sorts of things, we don't, I think, if I remember correctly, and I might be wrong, but I think around 300 A.D. is when you start seeing the more traditional or temple-based expression of Christianity.

That was kind of centered around the Nicene, I don't want to get historical here, but the Nicene Creed, all that was kind of in that.

Okay, so, like, there's this idea of where it shifted to a periodical tentpole as opposed to moving away from this lifestyle thing.

I would suggest, man, even, like, popping in the AirPods here, jamming out to a Hillsong.

Yes, it's not corporate worship, but it's worship to God.

But we're losing in the digital church environment.

We are probably losing a little bit of that corporate.

What do you guys think?

How can we overcome that corporate loss that we're feeling there?

So, but actually, I think something like what we're doing now on Zoom would be effective, where you can see one another and respond to one another corporately and still be in the digital expression.

I'm on a number of different Facebook groups, and we all discuss liturgy, you know, old school, your hymn services, modern worship, not, you know.

And the struggle that, and that's what I pull into this, is I'm bringing into that liturgy mindset, is that it, liturgy means the work of the people gathered together.

And I think we're going to have to struggle with that, I think, like the Zoom calls where people become more comfortable with that, or Skype, or Hangouts, or whatever other thing you want to do.

I don't know that we're going to get to that corporate mentality, not that we should either.

But I think the microsites, where you have three or four people gathered together, is sufficient to meet that corporate need, rather than have this huge expression of these huge buildings.

Hope my senior pastor is not listening to me.

Where you, that is what needs to be done, is this huge building, this huge gathering, which is not sustainable, certainly in the current cultural environment.

I just want to add it to it, because he made a point, and Jason pointed out something there from Acts, that I think seals the deal for me, right?

The Bible said they add to the numbers daily.

And I think what's interesting about that is, when you ask the question, what worship looks like in the online campus, you're trying to translate what happens in the corporate building, in the corporate worship in the building, into the online.

And to me, it's like, there's no connection there.

Like, I don't want to replicate, that's the thing I really don't want to replicate in the digital church.

I want the digital church to be this very personal, intimate opportunity that I have to have with God and with others that wanted to be with me at that moment.

And that's not going to look like a man-made, we can service experience.

And I just lost half of your audience right there.

So I...

I was losing them anyway.

Don't worry about it.

Let them go.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, so I think that the tradition, the traditional way of looking at the weekend service is not going to translate into the digital church.

Yes.

I really firmly believe that.

So, sure, I can get my worship team put in a studio a week long and we can record all kinds of songs that we want to do together just for digital church and have the library available on my online church and say,

hey, if you want to set aside some time to listen to some songs and pray, I mean, I can create my own programming online.

Well, and there's how much assets now available.

Exactly.

I mean, if, get a $10 Spotify account, there's how much?

I mean, it's ridiculous the amount of resources that are out there.

I was actually having the conversation the other day.

What happened to, like, normal Christian music that wasn't, like, praise and worship?

There used to be, like, bands like DC Talk and Audio Journalin that would do, like, just music and everything.

And I'm not ripping it.

It's not necessarily bad, but it's, like, there is no more, like, general genre.

It's all Christian, praise and worship, which is just a ton of more resources and assets that we can do.

Now there's a business model.

Why do they do that?

Because it's cheaper to – anyway, but that's a whole other thing.

We're not eliminating community, right?

That's the battle.

Pastors in local churches, they firmly believe that what we're trying to discuss here is a way to eliminate community.

Here's the problem with that, because their mindset is, the way we're talking, I can just – I don't need anybody around me.

I'm just going to go online, listen to my music, listen to my message, and not talk to anybody about it.

That's not what we're talking about.

We're just talking about take the content where people are at, which they're mobile devices, because that's where they are at.

Now, we open up opportunities for them to connect with people through it.

That's the point.

And I think the battle, the resistance that we end up facing with many churches is that, no, it's not – I mean, I literally heard a pastor say this just at the end of last year.

When he opened the – he was starting the message, he was like, you know, I love that we can broadcast online, but here's the deal.

If you're in your house right now, you could be here, you should be here, because you're not in church if you're not here.

And he just said that on camera.

Another thing, it was people that post on social media talking about their online church.

They say, if you cannot be in church today, watch online.

And to me, it's like, how that doesn't make sense?

But because the perception is not there, right?

Because you are the church where you are.

That's why our house campuses, we have this big t-shirt, this really big, I am the church.

Awesome.

Because of that, because you're the church where you are.

I think the concept of worship in a model that the physical church produces might not be what worship is going to look like in a digital church.

That, to me, that's really the bottom line.

Let's segue, because I want to get through some more of this list.

And we thought worship was controversial, wait for the next one.

And I'm going in their order.

This isn't me choosing this order.

Teaching.

So what would teaching, what could teaching, what should teaching look like in a digital expression or a digital expression of church?

Now, here's whatever we assume it is in the physical, we have an opportunity to start from scratch.

This is not a physical church doing a church online, doing their ministry in a virtual space.

This is a digital church that's planted just for the purpose of growing and multiplying digitally or physically.

But what should teaching look like in a digital church?

Jason's laughing because I know he's got something.

Whenever I try to answer that question, I try to go back to the most primal expression of church that we know of.

And that's found in scripture.

So I feel like if the apostle Paul felt it was okay to teach via his letters, in other words, via text, then it's okay for us to teach that way, too.

Wow.

You don't have to have, and you have like, I just finished up the book of Romans, right?

In the last chapter, it's fascinating because he sends greetings from afar, right?

So he's disintermediated already, but yet he's sending greetings, trying to maintain the connection of community after having taught for 15 chapters.

So the way I see it, and the apostle Paul never saw the church in Rome.

It was a group of five house churches.

But he was teaching that church without actually being physically present, even though he wanted to be.

I mean, that was his desire to be, but he wasn't.

And so I think that tells us a lot of what could be done when it comes in the digital space, because it's already been done.

So we should just go with that.

Well, so here's what I would say, you know, in Joel chapter two is like, all of this is being forecasted in terms of what the future church would look like.

It was a lot about how they would teach each other, because the spirit of God was moving in them.

And so once again, in the context of community, there's something so powerful about the fact of, hey, listen, we can all watch good sound teaching, good sound content, whether it's coming from the outside or whether it's somebody delivering it from the inside.

And then we can actually discuss something that we can't do on a Sunday morning in a physical space.

We can discuss how it's applicable to our lives and discuss and confront one another about, seriously, like, can we live this out?

You know, let's go to the simple and yet tough to follow commands of Christ.

You know, something like loving my neighbor as myself.

All right.

So it's one thing for one person to teach it from the stage.

It's another thing for me to talk about and practicality about how it's supposed to be lived out and to discuss about how I don't do it all the time and how there are times where it's hard to love my neighbor or to ask the question, well, who is my neighbor?

Just like it was asking Jesus.

And to unpack that with one another.

Those are the kinds of things that can be done in digital spaces that can be done powerfully, where I can learn from other people's experiences, where I can, you know, rethink and have.

Some reshaping of my own mind and my own thoughts by the impact about how the spirit of God is moving into other people's lives and not just my own.

That's something that can happen in digital community very quickly.

Oh, I think one of the things about message, I think really has to do with when you talk to an online audience, you're talking with a global audience.

I think one of the advantages that pastors have from the stage is that they still preach into the local church and the local audience right there.

And to make the shift, it's, it's not easy.

It's, it's not easy.

I mean, put them in a really bad spot.

So, it's interesting because if you're going to do a Bible study online, online group, the Book of Romans, you're pretty much just talking with people in your church or Christians that know what Book of Romans is.

Whereas, if I'm going to do a Bible study or a group, I'm going to do a group on leadership, leadership and principles of leadership.

It's going to be based in the Book of Romans.

But, I'm going to, I'm going to tell you exactly why you should do this Bible study by introducing a title and a theme and a reason that is not the language that the church, the local church is used to.

And I think that's a big challenge.

That's one of the things, it was very clear to us when we started Church of the Bar.

Because we started, we started Church of the Bar in the worst possible sermon series that we can start, Book of Revelations.

So, so, I mean, there is not much practical thing that you can really tell people, go to work tomorrow and leave this out, right?

So, it, it's, it was just incredible.

And out of that, I'm, I'm at the bar and I'm watching people watching the service and it's like, I don't know.

But, and immediately, and one of the things I'm considering soon is, I'm saying, let's record the message that actually speak a language of the people that go to the bar.

That's incredible, practical.

It's incredibly life-living, what you can do.

So, you break down in a way, in a language that when people listen to it, they can actually turn the TV, the computer off, and actually, I can do something with this.

Listen, with, when I'm sitting in a chair in my church, yes, I want to learn the Bible, I want to learn.

I mean, it's just, it's just, that's a part of going to church, right?

The pastor's going to teach, you're going to, you're going to keep developing in discipleship in the church.

That's part of it.

But, online, the audience is so global that church language doesn't fit.

I lost the other half of the audience right now.

Let me ask this, because, because, because I'll either bring them back or I'll chase them all away.

Is there a model, and is there a, and this is legitimately me asking, I am wrestling with this right now.

Is there a model of a digital church where there is no sermon?

What do you guys think of that?

In other words, it's so group-based, it's so relational-based, that you don't even have a, and maybe we need to watch the message sermon label, but the person lecture style is not even a part of it.

So, yes, I think that's possible.

The key here is that scripture still needs to be a foundational piece of whether it's discussion or whether it's something else that's going, that's happening there.

I do think that an element of scripture needs to be a foundational piece.

And so whether it's not somebody from the traditional lectern or pulpit delivering it or even from video teaching, as long as there's scripture at the center of a discussion or whatever else, I think that can take place or shaping what can happen.

Now, you know, and this is where, you know, many of us have been part of prayer services and this kind of thing where there wasn't like a formalized serving.

Okay, that's cool, but I guarantee you somewhere woven in there, there were scriptural elements as part of those gatherings as well.

So I would say, hey, scripture is somewhere in there.

I think we'd be good to go.

Ian, did you have something?

No, I don't think that there is a model that we should bind ourselves to in digital church.

That's exactly one of our problems because we, when we ask these questions, we're, keep looking back to the methods that we're accustomed to.

Going back to how you opened up the question, how should the church teach?

And it's more of what are the essentials that need to be done to teach and let it go from there?

Because flipping the classroom would be a key point.

What are the essentials?

You know, and Ray covered it too.

The scriptures are the essentials.

But why do we continue to bind people to a method or even multiple methods?

Because each digital group cohort is going to have a different way of connecting with one another.

Let's keep moving.

Number, let's call it number three.

And I hear this one.

I do.

This is one that hurts.

This is one where physical is not required or mandated, but it's going to be a challenge.

The sacraments, baptism, communion, child dedication is not one of them.

But those things that were held, you think, you think it probably is, but it's not.

It's not.

Only in Baptist circles, guys.

Only in Baptist, yeah.

So, you know, sprinkling, whatever, not doing that.

I'm a Southern Baptist at heart.

It's cool.

Moving on.

Maybe a little bit liberal Southern Baptist, but not.

Anyway, it's another conversation.

For us today, baptism, communion.

What does that look like in a digital church?

All right, since this is a digital podcast, I can't ask everybody to raise hands, but how

many people here, give it an I, have baptized somebody as a result of online church?

I.

All right.

Two, three.

All right.

So, the answer is three of four, 75%.

All right, man.

So, it is possible, not granted.

And, Jeff, we've talked through some of the different ways and challenges that this kind

of thing has happened.

Everything from folks finding a method in their household and doing it via video chat into a

bathtub to, Joe, you referenced somebody flying across four states to get baptized or, you

know, whatever it was, half the country.

I mean, that's a big deal.

And so, as far as that sacrament, I think we can kind of give a solid check mark to that.

Lord's Supper.

And this is an idea that I stole from Cranda and Saddleback Church, encouraging our folks

to prepare in advance with all the materials and to take it at home alongside of us.

Check.

And we've done it.

Yeah, it is a great, and that's actually one of my biggest struggles, and it's where

the Church of the Nazarene, which is my denomination, struggles, because we have a more sacramental

aspect of it.

And in our case, by rule, an ordained elder has to officiate the sacraments.

Now, what was interesting is the, oh, gosh, now I feel really sad because I can't remember

their names, but there's a group that does the PTZ cameras, and they did a worship thing

last Friday or something like that.

And actually, there's a Lutheran church in preparation for their communion.

They send it out via mail so that people take communion, but it obeys their rules so that

everyone can partake together.

It's a very, that was eye-opening to me.

Yeah, it's okay within church, I'm going to use the word bylaws, theory, practice, if the

church mails the grape, the little shot glass worth of cracker and grape, as long as they

mail it and postmark it from them, that is crazy.

It was surreal.

I have to acknowledge that it was surreal.

It was, it kind of broke my paradigm there.

You know, that's a challenging thing, and I'm grateful that they were at least willing

to take it to that step, and here's why.

They were so willing to help somebody take part in the sacraments.

They were willing to jump over the hurdles to get there.

You know what I'm saying?

And that's what, to me, that's very much the center and the heart of what it is that

we're doing.

We're willing to jump through and break through a lot of barriers just to bring somebody

to Christ.

Right.

And I think, or to connect them with the body of Christ.

And so that right there, Ian, I think that's a powerful example of, hey, you know what,

man, we'll find a way.

We'll find a way.

We may not have the answer, but we're going to find a way.

Very cool.

I will say this.

I've had more interest from some of that higher ecclesiology church, some of the higher

church in doing church online.

Previous years, it's been more contemporary, less traditional, but more traditional, starting

to get wrestling with those and trying to figure out how to get past that.

That whole mail your communion juice, that's a thing.

It has to be grape juice because you can't mail alcohol over state borders.

I know this because of, well, I'm not going to tell you that story now.

We'll visit that on another podcast.

There went all your bachelor's credentials.

There went all your bachelor's credentials right there.

It is interesting, Jeff, that there is something I think that needs to be thought through if there

are denominational obstacles is to figure, is to get those defined because, you know, Ian, you were

talking about that an ordained minister has to administer the elements, right?

Well, it would be helpful, I think, for you guys to define at what distance does that officiation

stop?

Is it 10 feet, 30 feet, 100 feet?

You know, or 1,000 miles, in which case, if you're doing a live stream of it, they could

be officiating at a distance, right?

Exactly.

Those are the types of things that, that's what Ray was talking about, is once you establish

what the obstacle actually is, other than we've just never done it that way, then you can figure

out what kind of workarounds you can employ, because if your, if your obstacle happens to

be, it has to be blessed by an ordained minister in the moment, he's got to physically touch

it and see it, well, then fine, let him do that ahead of time and then mail him out.

You just got to figure out what, what the real minimal ecclesiology is, and then create your

workaround so that you don't eliminate people in the process.

Jason, you actually brought up exactly something I was thinking of is,

even before I was hearing the Lutherans, this Lutheran church doing that, was it makes some

sense if we are actually watching in real time, why that's not officiating, and of course,

I'm sure someone will ask for my credentials after that, because I just said that, but the

reality is, is what is real time?

What is gathering?

That's the whole question of what is church, digital church?

I think we're going to entitle this podcast, yeah, we're all crazy.

It's crazy, but it just might work.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

We're all like resigning here, all we're doing is just, you know, talking Bible here

in church, and anyway, it's, it's really, it's fascinating, and I hope you guys all keep

your jobs.

Hey, yeah, so this has been a great podcast, and I've, honestly, I've got probably another

seven or eight things to, like, go over here.

We're going to have to get the group back together and do this, because I want to continue

this conversation.

I know Jason's getting ready to go off to Laos.

Where are you going, Jason?

Yeah, yeah, he's muted, but he's shaking his head.

Yes, yes, Laos, so that's fine.

So yeah, we will, when he gets back, we'll, we'll do part two of this, bring the group

back together, and then finish the dialogue through this.

And so I want to, I'm going to kind of stick in the order here, because part two is going

to be a lot more, like, this is really, I'll just read through it, fellowship, disciple

making, compassion, how does the church, digital, how does the digital church show compassion?

It's interesting.

Justice, how does the church, digital church, show justice?

Mission, people being on mission, literally doing a global mission, there's a fascinating

conversation surrounding that, body ministry, which I'm assuming is, like, the body serving

in a context, and so we can, we can unpack all of those, I think, on part two of the podcast.

But I want to land on this.

The last one that we want to talk about today is prayer.

So what is a digital church, a digital-only expression of church model, how is that driven

celebrating, showing, empowering prayer?

What do y'all think?

Oh, I think that, I think it's already happening, right?

I mean, there's several apps that you can do prayer, you can be a prayer community, but

even the simple thing is text messages, like Ray just exemplified earlier, I think it's

happening more.

That is the, I think that is the beauty of this digital environment that we live in today.

I think there's a lot of activities already happening.

I think we have not formalized that yet, like in the digital space, as a way of, like, okay,

then the digital church, here's how we pray.

I think we have, I think maybe we have not done that yet.

I think in a very, like, official matter.

I think it's just, there's a very word that you use a lot, organic way that things are

happening, that people are texting each other, they're sending emails with prayer.

Today, I just got a message early this morning, a text message from somebody from our church

that was taken to the hospital.

She's in the ICU, she had a kidney transplant, well, I don't need to wait until tomorrow morning

to let everybody know.

I was able to just send an email to 140 volunteers to have them all pray for her immediately.

It's happening.

And people reply back the email.

Listen, I heard a lot of things, good things in the podcast today, but Jason landed on a whole

thing about Paul in writing the letters in Romans, and you're just like, if you don't get online

church after that, I don't know what to do, man, because, you know what I mean, like, that's

it, like, we're living it out.

So, I think prayer is happening, I really think.

I think it's, we're having Night to Shine next week, and what we do for the online church

to participate in Night to Shine, we ask them to pray at six o'clock when it starts, and

at 8.45, when they do the crowning moments, we go live so they can see what they pray for.

Oh, that's awesome.

So, I mean, we push prayer a lot.

Prayer online, we talk a lot about it, but I think it's just, you continue to push the

idea that you can, you don't need a specific platform to do it, it's in your hands already,

it's that phone you have in your hand.

Find somebody to pray with.

I would totally agree with Joey there, and most people who would push back on digital prayer,

like Joey said, are already doing it anyway.

I don't know of a pastor who doesn't pray over the phone with somebody when they can't

be there.

That's digital prayer.

I don't know what you do about that.

It's just, it's just using, in some cases, a different tool, or in some cases, the exact

same tool as any other pastor would use to call someone up and pray for them.

Yeah, I'll be texting with somebody, and just like a one-off conversation, and I see they're

going through a hard time, or Facebook Messenger, and just instead of the, I pray for you, you

know, let me pray for you, or I'll be praying for you, just type the prayer, and it's amazing,

just even the reaction from that person.

I've had people come up to me days later, thank you for praying for me, and it's just,

I've never had anybody pray for me via text before, and how you're able to utilize that piece.

By the way, the coolest feature that I've seen in the digital scope in context of prayer,

Crossroads out of Cincinnati is doing right now.

We did a podcast with them a couple episodes back, and so tied into their mobile app, they've

got the ability for people to post prayer requests, either, you know, anonymous or, you know, stating

their name next to it.

But then they also have the option for it to be public or private, and if it's public, other

people see the prayer requests and can tag that prayer request and say, I'm praying for you.

The person gets a push notification every time that prayer request is tagged.

And so there's this immediate, you know, the feeling, the physical feeling across a digital

medium that, wow, people are praying for me right now.

I'm part of a larger community.

Now, that's cool, but here's the cool thing.

Down the road, once that prayer request gets answered, yes, no, whatever the answer is,

the person who has the prayer request can go back in and mark it answered and then say how

it was answered.

And when they do that, that's pushed out to every person that ever tagged it saying that

they were praying for it.

There's this option of within the church app, within their, they are creating community.

My gosh, centered around prayer.

What better thing should we build our community around than prayer?

18 months ago, I prayed for this thing, and now God's brought it to be.

I'm part of that.

That church sees 115,000 prayer requests a month through this system because they're, and

it's, it's a big church, but still, it's not that much large adoption in context of mobile

app.

Not everybody's on it.

So there's that much people identifying, connecting with prayer because there's a communal feel

around it.

And they're getting that physical interaction across a digital medium.

One of the things that, as I was listening to you guys, it's, it's fascinating how we tend

to think about a church meeting, a gathering, an assembly only in ways that we have experienced

it, instead of looking at the way that scripture kind of defines it in a more looser form.

And maybe this could be a springboard to be thinking about the next time we get together.

But I'm looking at 1 Corinthians 14, 26, and it says, well, my brothers and sisters, let's

summarize.

When you meet together, it doesn't say how, like, I think we're in a meeting together right

now.

When you meet together, one will sing.

That's interesting.

Just one.

One will sing.

Another will teach.

Another will tell some special revelation that God has given.

One will speak in tongues and another will interpret what is said.

But everything that is done must strengthen all of you.

And I think if we concentrate on that and do whatever we need to do to make that happen,

I think that's probably a pretty good church service, regardless of the size, place, or form.

That's awesome.

Well said, sir.

We're going to wrap up here episode 50 of the Church Digital Podcast.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for being a part of 50 and looking forward to the next 50 and everything that happens

there as we continue to talk through digital church, church online, and everything in between.

So for Ian, for Joey, for Jason, for Ray, this is Jeff.

Thanks for being here.

We'll see you next time here on the podcast.

Y'all have a good day.