EP041: Six Lessons Learned from 2019's THE CHURCH DIGITAL PODCAST

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Church Digital Podcast. My name is Jeff, and it is a pleasure to

have you join us today. We are on episode 41 of The Church Digital Podcast. This is the last

episode of 2019, and I'm glad you all have joined us today. I've got Ray DeArmas, of course, guest host

joining us. Hey, Ray, want to say hey?

Hey, everybody. It's good to be with you again. Happy end of 2019. On to the next decade. Let's go.

Yeah, so hope Christmas was good. And we wanted to wrap up 2019 in style here. As we want to just

reflect back, we've done 41 of these episodes. And there was a gentleman's bet between Ray and I

if we'd actually make it past eight. And so we're 41 in. I'm not going to tell you who won the bet,

but actually I think it was Ray. It was Ray. It was not me at all. But we have done 41 of these. And

just Ray and I were having a conversation, just all these lessons that we've learned through these

conversations. Because Ray and I, when we started this podcast and doing this, we didn't know what

we didn't know. And it was fascinating to listen to all of these different people with all of these

different perspectives talk about what Church Online is and how they are executing their piece of

church online, maybe at the churches or with the companies where they are at. And so Ray and I just

came with this idea of, hey, let's do a podcast where we talk about six lessons that we've learned,

three of each of us, from this podcast in 2019. So going back, hey, if you're like a sitcom guy,

this is the highlight reel. We're going to go back. We're going to visit some old content.

We're going to talk about it and highlight it. So you can get a chance maybe to go back and listen

to these episodes as well. So Ray, you want to share anything on that?

No, this is perfect. And for those of you jumping in, we're going to refer to past episodes that

you'll be able to take a look at the show notes and just check out the links if you want more

information about that. And let me tell you, I learned so much this past year because until Jeff

and I really started doing this, I mean, we knew that people were doing things out there and they

were trying things. But when you start to hear from different voices from people all over the United States,

even some all over the world and just kind of engaging with them and finding out how they're

using digital methods to disciple people. I mean, it's just amazing. It's powerful. And so let me

encourage you, go ahead and core back through some of those old episodes, get engaged with it. You

know, right now, some of you are probably on the drive. And so it's a good time to just binge listen

to like a bunch of episodes. Go ahead and do it because you'll be surprised at some of the things

that you'll unnerve, some of the gold that you might find for your church and how to disciple

people online. It's good stuff. That's awesome. So we're going to kick it off.

Number six, we're going to start from the bottom and work our way up. Ray, why don't you go first

here? So what's one of the lessons that you learned listening or doing the interview, doing these

podcasts in 2019? Let me tell you, Jason Morris's episode on the importance of a discipleship pathway

for church online was so big because Jeff, you know, some churches are putting their sermons out there

online. They're putting their messages out there. Some are streaming full-blown services. Some people

are even dabbling in small groups, but not everybody is thinking step by step by step discipleship

pathway in terms of how they're engaging their people online. And I'm telling you folks, this was like

episode three or four for us. If you go back and listen to it, just hearing Jason's passion

about discipleship. I mean, he's running the entire episode. I mean, he pretty much did all the content

for us. It was amazing. Um, but just hearing his passion come out about helping people in their next

step each. And I mean, going down to the minuscule small next steps in faith for people who are engaging

online. That was just very powerful for me. And I want to encourage people. Are you thinking through

that? Because for sure, Jason is. Yeah, I tell you, Jason, we commonly call him one of the OGs of

church online, original gangsters, because he's been doing it for a long time. He's one of these guys

that's been doing church online for 10 plus years and has gotten a lot of respect in context of his

church and how he's been leading. I think his, his, his title's unique. It's not online pastor. It's

like, it's global innovations pastor. That's literally how this man approaches and has been

able to approach digital and church online and technology through the, the, the church out there

at Westside family. And so he was key on episode six and you're, and you're right. He was a hundred

percent passion coming in and talking about all, a lot of this stuff. And also on episode 32,

where we talked about redefining the why of church online, which was tied into the church IT network,

phenomenal thing. And really Jason hones in on that discipleship pathway, which is so key

for a church online to move beyond just broadcasting the services to really connecting to the larger piece

of why are we doing this broadcast? Why are we doing this ministry online? Is it not just to create

consumers? It really should be to create disciples. I'll, uh, Matthew 28. Uh, and so I love Jason's

passion in their work. And a lot of that, he really came down to, instead of designing this like

massive complicated system that may or may not work, disciple the people that you have crack open the

Bible and take them through it. It was really, I was expecting, I was the, really the surprise for me.

And that was, I was expecting a much larger, this is, this is crazy plan that he would bring to the

table, Mr. Global Innovation Pastor. And instead it was really a very simple message of disciple the

people that you have online and God will bring you more. And so Jason for that, thank you very much.

That was an awesome lesson to go through for me. And we'll call this number five, um, Eric Geiger.

And this is a man who's very special to both Ray and I, uh, we had him on for a combo of episodes,

uh, nine and 10, but really the, the heart of the conversation that we ended up talking about,

we kind of veered off a little bit, which that's always where the fun is. Not when you stick to the

script of what you want to, but when you really like get into the, into the beat of something.

And so we really wanted to hone into, okay, lead pastor who may or may not have some issues with

church online and definitely has maybe a different vision than, than some others. Like what is the

issue with church online as a lead pastor? What are other issues? What are the issues that are out

there that other lead pastors have? So help us understand. Cause, cause honestly, pre this

conversation with Eric Geiger earlier this year, episode nine and 10, I could not answer this question.

Like when I would drill into, I don't understand why you don't see how church online can work.

And, and Eric very simply and eloquently helped me understand, okay, there's a, uh, theological issue

that some churches will have with church online. And there's a practical issue that some churches,

some lead pastors will have with church online. Now the theological, you know, this is like

ecclesia defining the coming together, the gathering of believers that is in biblical times that's defined

within physical space. And of course, you know, they didn't have zoom in a biblical time. So I don't

know that the Bible context really figured out how to define community virtually. Um, and I think

culturally community is being defined in a much different way in 2019 than it was, I don't know,

you know, in the time of Christ or shortly after, uh, with, with the early church. And so, you know,

wrestling with some of that and realizing, Hey, you know what, if, if your lead pastor really has a

theological issue with church online, it's going to take a lot of effort, um, to shift that. And arguably,

I don't know that you can. Um, and so feeling that tension now, now a more, uh, a more practical

issue. Maybe the lead pastor doesn't understand how technology can help community come together.

Maybe there's a misunderstanding or just the unawareness of how that can work and function.

If it's a practical thing, that's a much easier conversation to have with, with a pastor

than necessarily like a major, uh, theological issue. So Ray, what'd you, what'd you pull from that?

You know, it's funny because just today I was having the conversation with somebody as far as

where I considered my church community to be. And what I told them was, I didn't consider my church

community to be there on Sunday morning. And this is actually somebody who's part of my church at

Christ fellowship. Cause they were asking, cause obviously it's church online pastor. They're like,

so how do you do church? And I was like, I do church both online, but I also do it in person.

But I told him, honestly, my real community is in my small group. That's where my people are.

And that kind of a shift from where our true community lies is something that church in general

still struggles with. And I think that's a conversation that even Eric was comfortable

with because in our large gatherings on Sunday mornings, it's too overwhelming. Even if you're in

a church plant of like 50 to a hundred folks for an introvert like me, that's still too many people

to get to know really. And so I can't necessarily plug in and do life with people there or feel known,

like truly known or feel truly mentored and discipled. And so, you know, helping pastors see

that in online environments, yes, there are large spaces that are overwhelming and where it could seem

like people are disconnected. That's true in person and online as well, but there are also smaller

environments that can take place through digital pathways in which people can be known. They can be seen.

They can be heard and they can be discipled. And it was great hearing Eric just kind of engage with

some of that from an honest perspective, because so often many people would kind of shy away or some

folks might come on a podcast and not necessarily want to engage with full on honesty with some of

their, you know, with some of their issues regarding some of those digital pathways. But I felt like

Eric was honest with us. He was very open-minded and he was great. And I can really see Mariners

experimenting with some of this stuff as they move forward, leveraging digital pathways to disciple

people. Probably the thing that stood out for me in the conversation with Eric was this idea of

consistency, making sure and helping your lead pastor maybe see some of where he is being

inconsistent. Example would be, yeah, if you're doing multiple services, then like on any given

Sunday or even like a Saturday and a Sunday service, then this idea of ecclesia is loosely defined.

In biblical context, ecclesia was the physical gathering in one place.

When you go to a two service or when you go to a multi-site model, and Jim Toberlin talked about

this with the podcast as well. It's like when you start to do multiple within the same gathering, you're

actually stretching that model of what ecclesia already is.

And so if your pastor, I mean, I just, I kind of bang my head against the wall sometimes, honestly,

when I talk to like a multi-site pastor who's like, yeah, I don't believe in church online or I have an

issue with church online. I'm like, you've got six campuses all over the city. You've already shattered

this idea of what biblical ecclesia is. And you won't acknowledge that it can work in a virtual

environment. It's no different than what you're doing in these other areas. And so that's where,

you know, kind of coaching and helping them through it and Geiger helping to show some of that and even

how to help communicate with, with the lead pastor through that, you know, was, was really key.

Absolutely. The next, the next learning part for me, which we would consider number four would be

our conversation with Danielle Hicks regarding development of watch parties and even watching

watch parties become campuses, like in the case with Elevation Church and what they did with

Melbourne. That was pretty amazing. Mind-blowing even. And the fact that they even have the

discipline, mind you, to keep a lot of watch parties just as that, as watch parties. And we're

talking about like over a hundred people gathering in coffee shops or yoga studios to engage with the

service, but also to be part of small groups and real life church community. And I think this is a

safe space to say this. You know, when a lot of folks look at Elevation, they think of just

Stephen Furtick or they think of just the worship team, but they're not necessarily looking at

Elevation as actually striving to gather these people into groups and disciple them. And that's

what Danielle is really bringing to the table. I mean, on a huge scale. And it was so inspirational

to see them have both the discipline because even in, you know, Southern Baptist churches or in

different churches, as soon as they start hitting those numbers, they're thinking, oh, let's,

let's launch another campus. It takes a lot of discipline to pull back and say, no, no, no. We

need to continue to develop leaders, to disciple more, to make sure that these people are actually

in biblical community. And that's something that Danielle brought to the table that was very,

very inspiring for me. Yeah. I got to tell you, Danny's was, was one of my, my favorites of the

year as, as well. And I, it was one of the first exposures that I had had to like the inside

behind the scenes of, of Elevation Church. And it was not at all what I, what I was expecting.

A lot of the humility that she showed in that. And it was, for me, it was, it was, she was one of

the first people that I heard say a phrase that I heard a lot afterwards. Hey guys, what we're

doing right now, especially with like this micro location stuff, honestly, we don't know what we're

doing. Yeah. We're experimenting with some things and what we're doing today, we're probably not going to

be doing in six months because we're just learning in this thing. And to hear a big church, a giant

church, one of the giga churches that are out there say, Hey, we don't know what we're doing.

And kind of admitting that upfront to me, that, that gave me excitement for some of the smaller

churches out there that, that are saying kind of the same things. Hey, we don't know what we're doing

either, but just, okay, take that next step. Experiment, try, give it a shot, get the tires on it,

do something. Um, and so it was really, it was a great episode there with, with Danielle episode 21.

So be sure to check that out. We'll have the link in the show notes for that as well. So for me,

um, the next episode that I wanted to hit on for the lesson and talking about humility,

this is by far the most humble lead pastor I've ever talked to in my life. And this is Randy Kirk,

who's up at first capital Christian church in Corden, Indiana. This is Tyler Sampson's church.

It's the church anywhere program. We've talked about these guys a lot, but we actually did like a,

a deep dive, a three episode, uh, span, uh, with, uh, the people of Corden, Indiana,

first capital Christian, where we talked with a lot of their volunteers, uh, who are basically campus

pastors doing the, the micro locations, being the pastors at these micro location services

in Corden, Indiana. We talked with their discipleship team, who's creating this, uh,

discipleship pathway. But this episode with, uh, with Randy was really where we delved into the,

um, from a pastor level. So Randy's on the older side of life. Like, I'm not saying the man literally

resigned on the podcast, but if you listen to it, you will hear him literally resigned on the podcast.

And, and, and I got to tell you, like that kind of blew me away a little bit. So here's an older guy

who's part of a movement, part of a church leading a church who's launched 18 plus micro locations.

Amazing.

And around the city, the church itself reaches about 1200 people within physical buildings. Last

I heard they're reaching 800 people outside of the physical building in micro locations around this

small town in Corden, Indiana, by the way, Corden, Indiana is about 3000 people. So like 1200 in the

main building, 800 outside of the building. There's not a lot of overlap between like the physical and

in the micro to reach in at least half the town as a small church. And as a, and as a lead pastor,

to see him have these conversations humbly, uh, to, to making statements like, this isn't my kingdom.

Um, this is God, this is God's kingdom that he's given me. I have to listen to the young leaders.

I have to listen, man, what a challenge for, for lead pastors, for executive pastors, for leadership

teams that are out there to not look at the church through just your own eyes, but to start to look

at what can be and to start to empower some of these younger people like Tyler Sampson, who's doing a

phenomenal job to step up and to bring in a new life and a new opportunity to reach people in a unique

way. Yeah. What'd you think, Ray? And you know what, you know what, Jeff, I mean, so much of that was so

powerful because I remember Tyler was super excited for us to talk to Randy and you don't often see

that with the young guy, you know, older guy, kind of a scenario. Like normally he's trying to like

stash him away. Like, Oh man, he's kind of not for this, but Randy has proved that age ain't nothing

but a number. Let me tell you his missional mindset and his willingness to get out there and to try

these digital pathways and to be so kingdom minded, Jeff, you're so right to be so kingdom minded to

say, man, they never set foot in the door of our building, but if they're being reached for Christ

outside the room, then we will have done our job is just so amazing and impactful. And I would pray

that, that when we get to that stage of life, that we have the same both guts to keep trying new things

and willingness to do so. But at the same time, the same kingdom mindedness to one throw the keys to

younger leaders like Tyler, the guy like Tyler could go anywhere, but he's following Randy. You

could see why just from that interview. I mean, it's just an amazing kind of thing where Randy's

empowering and he's saying, no, go take it. Like continue to push the ball forward for kingdom

practices and kingdom methods, man. And it's just a phenomenal thing that they've got going on over

there. And so for sure, go back, take a listen. It's impactful. It'll change your perspective as far

as, oh man, folks who are older in your church, whether or not they'll be pro church online. Listen,

we've seen it over and over again in the podcast, and we've even seen it over and over again in real

life. Folks who are entering what I consider this new era of being a grandparent, they're not afraid of

technology. They're not afraid of tech. I mean, you can go listen to the episode where we interviewed

Jeff's mom. You've heard me talk about my father and how he's interacting with tech, like often on the

show in terms of his engagement with YouTube and all sorts of stuff. Let me tell you folks,

Randy is a prime example. The age is nothing but a number. And we have a lot of people in our

churches that want to reach people and they want to do it online. So it's a powerful thing that's

going on. Amen. I want to, I want to take a note since you brought it up. I publicly apologize to my

mother for not including her in this list. Linda, you're, you probably are listening because I think

you keep up. I'm sorry. You're, you're, you're number seven of the six. So just consider, okay,

you're number eight, because the seventh lesson is really Jay Cranda does not have a Disney Plus

account, or at least it took him a month plus to get there. Jay, publicly, once again, calling you

out. You're listening. I know. Thank you. All right, mom. Sorry, Jay. Sorry. Let's go.

And Linda, you are, you are our best small group leader at Christ Fellowship. All right. That being

said, uh, so, uh, our number two, it was Jay Earhart. And let me tell you, I I've been a gamer ever

since I was a kid. I did not realize that people were using gaming platforms to reach other people

for Jesus. That, that for me was, it was a game changer. Okay. I thought that Jeff and I, that we

were doing some innovative stuff, that we were doing some cool stuff with church online when Jeff worked

at, at Christ Fellowship and we were doing, and we don't get me wrong. We were doing some cool stuff,

but what Jay was doing to reach people, leveraging gaming platforms. And even the fact that he is

actually discipling people, leveraging gaming platforms and using discord in order to do so

for me was just one of the most mind blowing and innovative things. I mean, I think I talked to

everybody I knew for the next two weeks about what Jay was doing with discord and the fact that he was

leveraging gaming platforms to disciple people online. And Jay's stuff about leveraging discord as a lobby

area for church online for me was so impactful because yeah, you know, we can game and we can talk and we

can kind of have some fun. But the fact that he was trying to get to that next level of relationship

and that next step with people and helping engage them and helping pull them in for, as an evangelistic

method, that was so powerful for me because even, you know, churches struggle in person, leveraging their

lobby area in church in terms of connecting with people. I mean, you know, church world, you guys

know this, we do conferences based on how to get that connection card or that next step card from

people. We, we do all sorts of things just to get that contact or how to greet people, how to get that

next step. And here, Jake's doing it inside a chat room, a gaming chat room to leverage and to reach

people. I mean, it's powerful how he's using gaming platforms to disciple people for Christ. Jeff,

how are you impacted by Jake? Because for me it was big. Yeah. Jake's been a guy that I followed up on and

we're going to have him on the podcast in January because I want to unpack this one thing that he's

working on. He's literally going through a church planting program right now. So his church that

he's at, they do a lot with exponential conference. And so they have a church cohort, a church planting

cohort where they take physical churches through it. Jake's going through it because he and his core team

through this Love Clan group that meets on Discord, they've been fled to create a digital church.

They don't want to just be a discipleship group that's doing something, but they're trying to

gird up their theological selves so that they can be operated by the standards of what a church,

a biblical church is. Now, some of you out there, your heads just exploded at this idea of, wait,

what's a digital church? He's going to do what in Discord? And we've had conversations with like DJ Soto,

with VR Church. We've talked a lot about this idea of creating a digital expression of church in a

virtual space that aligns with the biblical standards that are held. And Jake, in his 20s,

has set himself out and said, hey, I want to go through this training to understand wholly and

completely what a physical church is, because I want to adopt it and adjust it to work in a virtual

context. And so him being wise that way to even examine himself so that he himself is grounded

theologically, able to lead a church at that level, man, is really exciting to me. And it's one of the

things that I just, I love what this kid's doing. I say doing that, but it's like 20 years younger

than me. So I love what this kid's doing and want to see him continue to do some great things.

Yeah. And I want to give a quick shout out to the Robloxians, because that was another,

you know, that was another thing that just kind of blew my mind that through Roblox, that they're

doing what they can to disciple people. And so it's just a beautiful thing. Folks are using gaming

platforms to disciple people. I just, I can't, it's just amazing. Go back, check out these episodes.

I'm telling you, blow your mind. Yes. Jate's episode is number 13 and Daniel Aaron talking about,

that's another one, man. We just hit that last week, episode 40, but Daniel and how at 11 years

old, dude, this guy had this dream of like, hey, and I'm not even doing like spiritual vision or

anything. Like the guy's like, hey, this is Roblox. This is a cool thing. What if we did church in

here? And like eight years later, he's got a board of directors helping him structure a church. He's

figuring out how to do discipleship in the area. And he's touched 26,000 people through this church

in Roblox. Like that's, that's no small feat. And it's amazing to see how God is doing some things in

some of these digital churches and some virtual spaces. Yeah. They need to get strengthened. Yeah.

They need to get some sort of a discipleship process and structure in place. And, but don't stop.

Let's adjust the model to keep it going. That's right. And, and I'll be honest for me, episode

one, my, my favorite, um, Ray and I were talking off air before this thing. And I just, I just

started writing down, uh, names. Like there's so many lessons. There's so many things that, um,

that's like, man, I wish we could do this. A bunch of this, the stuff that we did, the church

it network kind of recording, uh, the, the micro campus talk, which was awesome to start with.

Why? That was awesome. Jim Tolmerlin dropping all this knowledge when it comes to the trends of

multi-site church over the past 20 years and how church online's starting from the cool thing to

become the common thing to become the mainstream thing. And to see how that idea grew in the multi-site

world and how church online's not that far behind, maybe a decade behind that same process, Mark Bente

with all the stuff they're doing at church home. Uh, man, it was, it's beautiful to hear him say,

yes, we're, we're called to be a church and, and we're girding ourselves up theologically to make

sure that we're holding to a biblical standard. But honestly, when it comes to like how we're

progressing or how we're building, we're looking more to corporate America to help us figure out

how to do the management in the church, because the church is so far behind in some of these areas.

Like it was, it's eyeopening to have some of these conversations, see leaders out there

who are leading a lot of these big churches, even, even small churches with, with Joe Radicevich

and trying to figure out how to take next steps for, for all these organizations to grow their church

online. That being said, my favorite conversation and the one that I think had the, um, the most

impact on me actually really had nothing to do with church online. And this was Seth Muse talking

about from a communications perspective, how we communicate things digitally. Now, Seth's the

communications director, um, uh, in, in Dallas, Texas was, was at, was at Hope Church for, for a while

and, and does a lot of communicating and, and seminary of hard knocks podcast. A lot of you guys may know

him or be connected with him there. But what we really honed in on is this idea of how we

communicate things online and, and whether, um, we're communicating about ourselves or if we're

communicating in a way that's engaging and listening to what others are saying. You see, in, in church

online is, is very guilty of this, but the church in general is as guilty. We don't understand what

engagement is. We've lost what that meaning is. Uh, and so rule number one, talking about your upcoming

sermon series on Facebook is not engaging. You are, you are disseminating information about your church

in hopes that others will hear you. Now, chances are your people who are already connected to your church

will listen to that information and that will be engaging to them. And they may even respond to it.

But if you're trying to connect with someone who's not familiar with your church, you're trying to connect

with someone who's outside of the general area, uh, that you see any given Sunday, maybe somebody who's cold to

the idea even of Christ that sermon series, just as an example, that sermon series post on Facebook,

ain't doing you Jack. No. And what it's definitely not going to do is it's not going to get you

engagement back where they are going to respond back and forth. See engagement really comes not as much from

talking as much as it is listening to the people and then responding and building online relational equity

with people. That's where engagement should be. Yeah. Ray, what are you thinking on that?

Yeah. You know, that's, it's powerful, Jack, because so much of this with what we do with digital platforms

should be built around conversations that we're having with our people. And to your point, churches more often than

not, you know, in our struggle to communicate things, we have so much of a struggle that we want to talk at

people than necessarily talk with people. Um, everything about our churches, even an in-person experiences are

built from a stage platform. Our sermons aren't engaging or worship isn't necessarily engaging. You know, we want them

singing repeat after me kind of stuff, you know, and that's not necessarily helpful when it comes to online

platforms. So when we approach online spaces, we shouldn't be surprised when even large mega churches have a

struggle with, Hey, how come this only got like 10 likes, or how come this only got like 15 views when there's no

method, when there's no reason for people to actually engage with the information, to actually have a

conversation with what's going on. And so for churches, you know, that's, that's, uh, content was so good because it reminds us that we have to be more

conversation oriented in terms of how we approach people online. And so as we restructure our communications,

as we look on into the future, make sure that even take a look at some stuff, like some of the things

that has helped us out, uh, maybe some of you have seen this Brady Shearer put out like a list of like

30 to 40 some odd questions that churches could just post up online and just start conversations with

people. That's been a game changer at Christ Fellowship, as far as our social media is concerned,

because we went from like having two comments to like all of a sudden starting a bunch of conversations

on our Instagram and Facebook feeds. And it all starts with a question. Why? Because questions

invite people to be part of the answer. We're not talking at them. We're talking with them. And then

whatever else happens after that question, we're responsible for. If they want to keep engaging with

us, we have to continue to engage with them. Yeah. Remember this Billy Graham in the nineties, uh,

preached the message. That message was bounced off of 34 satellites and was heard by 1 billion people

around the world. 1 billion people heard a single message simultaneously around the world. And that was

in the nineties. And so if that's what you're using your church online for, dude, that was like 20, 30

years ago. There's gotta be something better than that. We're wasting the technology. If all we are

doing is yelling our message out there and not listening, by the way, the culture of the 1990s compared

to 2000, now 20, guess what? Completely different. You may be screaming from the rooftops, but ain't nobody

listening. And if they do by any chance hear you, you're definitely not connecting with them going that

approach. So utilizing the social media, utilizing technology, utilizing church online to be more

engaging, to be more listening, to respond. These are the things to look at. And you can definitely listen

to that podcast. A lot of wisdom got dropped on that. It's episode 28 there with Seth Mews and

redefining engagement. Uh, so that has been awesome. Well, man, Hey, like that flew. So we're, we're what

we're six episodes in six lessons, uh, with that. So right, man, like what, what do you think? Let's just see

what happens here. What, what do you think the future is going to, what do you think 2020 is going to look

like? 2020, um, you know, for the church digital, I think it's going to be great because in a lot of different

ways on our site and through different methods, you guys are going to hear from a lot of different

voices, um, you know, from us. And so I think that's going to be great. Really the big thing, uh, for

church online and even for the way that churches interact with digital platforms, I'm so excited

for how more and more pastors are taking an interest, you know, in the least they're curious.

And so I want to encourage you if you're here and you either have a senior pastor who's curious,

or you are a senior pastor who's curious, or even you're a senior pastor or your pastor and you're on

the fence, let me encourage you, stay curious, continue to, to delve into some of these things

and think through it with an open mind and think through how you can engage people online.

Because I'm telling you the reward that's out there is greater than the risk. The risk is actually

minimal at this point. It may seem large for you. It may seem, but what if people, what if we fail?

What if people say X, Y, and Z? I'm telling you guys, this is small. This is almost as if you could

have bought AT&T or Apple stock in the eighties, you know, and you're going back in time near DeLorean.

And you've got all the information because it's only going to go up. So you have the ability to

engage people online. It's never been cheaper. It's never been easier. And so today just start

exploring new platforms, start thinking of new methods and new ways that you can engage, not just

your people, but your community online and see how God will take it. Jeff, what about you? 2020

online, what do you think? Do not be afraid to experiment. Always get out there, kick the tires

on things and learn lessons. When experiments fail, that doesn't mean the idea entirely failed. It means

learn your lesson from that and try again. There's a nugget here. There's an opportunity here.

There's, uh, the road that we are on, uh, online technology, church online technology is only going

to get better. The culture engaging in community virtually is only going to get, uh, more effective,

uh, more influential. And the church needs to be in, in that space, whether doing a physical church or a

virtual church, either way, get your, get in the game and get going with church digital, man, we are

going to open up a ton of different stuff. We've got more writers who are going to be creating content

on a regular basis. We've got more video content and podcast ideas and things. Uh, 2019 was a phenomenal

year. Uh, but it was just the beginning of something much greater. There's even some partnerships with

some organizations that, um, if God is behind this and all this works out, there's going to be some

phenomenal things coming forward for the big C church coming out of, out of the church digital Lord

willing. And so to that end, man, continue to pray for this year. Pray for us as, as we are praying for

you church out there, uh, who is wrestling with this stuff, who's asking questions, who's kicking the

tires, who's experimenting, who's asking questions of leadership that leadership doesn't know the answer

of. We understand you. We've been in your shoes and to that end, don't give up, keep pressing and start

heading towards what, uh, to 2020 is going to hold for you. Hey, so we're going to wrap right here. Ray,

man, any, any closing thoughts as we're landing the plane? Go back through some of those episodes.

I'm telling you, take a binge, listen, uh, have some fun and kind of go back in time through 2019

with us and see just how God may inspire you to try something new in 2020. Awesome. Hey, so we're

going to land the plane on there. 2019 is in the rear view mirror heads up 2020. It's going to be

awesome for Ray. I am Jeff with the church digital, and we're going to call it here. Thanks everybody.

Uh, see ya next year. Awesome. Talk to you later. Bye.