EP038: Jay Kranda & The Natural Way to Build Microlocations @ Saddleback

Hey, this is Jeff with The Church Digital. We're going to get started with the episode here in just a minute, but before we get there, we all know Stadia, the organization that's been powering The Church.Digital.

Well, guess what? Stadia is opening up some learning communities. We've been doing this for a while now. We've got about 70 churches that are actually part of these learning communities.

They're learning how to thrive, grow, and multiply, not just physically, not just digitally, but digitally, the combining of physical and digital.

And it's been a beautiful, beautiful thing. We've got content coming in from churches like Crossroads, from Saddleback, like Church Home.

But guess what? It's not a content thing. Content's nice. Content doesn't change your church. Let's just say it. It doesn't.

I'm a podcast operator. I understand this. It's not going to change your church.

The ability to walk with someone and to help you understand some of the guidance, some of the accountability, the community of connecting with other churches, engaging with them,

conversations with people as you wrestle with some of these things to try to figure out how to make your physical church and your online church authentically you that lines up with your missions, visions, and strategies,

or maybe is even tightly intertwined that maybe some of that strategy changes to get more online.

This is what Stadia is trying to create, an opportunity for you to learn and to dialogue and to change your church to thrive, grow, and multiply.

It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Hey, the learning community starts in August.

So right now, go to stadiachurchplanting.org slash digital.

P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L.

Stadiachurchplanting.org slash digital.

And more information will be there for you to learn about these learning communities.

This has been great. It's been fun.

But let's go ahead and get you now to that podcast episode.

Episode 38 of the Church Digital Podcast.

I'll be honest, anytime I talk with this guest, I feel smarter.

I don't know about you, but I just have this natural inclination that I am smarter than I was when I started the conversation

because I am always, always learning something from this guy.

Jay Cranda, online pastor from Saddleback Community Church, just a small church out in SoCal.

You may have heard of it before.

Lead Pastor Rick Warren, Purpose Driven Church, Purpose Driven Life, Purpose Driven whatever it is out there.

Jay has been doing a great job with Church Online out there for years,

and it's really helping utilize Church Online as a platform to expand some of the mission and the vision

of what Saddleback is trying to achieve.

And as a result of that, it has really been paving the way for other churches

to realize the importance of online small groups,

even micro locations and home gatherings and some of the things they're working on now.

Now, what I love about this interview and this conversation that we had with Jay

is Jay's honest enough to tell you, like, some of the stuff that he was doing didn't work.

Actually, if you go back to episode four of the Church Digital Podcast,

you'll hear Jay talking in detail about some of the things that he was trying maybe six,

nine months ago, it was April 2019.

And he observed in the time since then, hey, some of these aren't working.

Or it is working, but it could work better if.

And rather than sticking with the horse on the trail that it's on,

he opted to change, change strides, change the model, shut the thing down and start over.

And so what this conversation here is, is the home gathering model from Saddleback Church

and what it looks like for a church online to create physical locations,

to create biblical communities all over the country utilizing online technology.

Now, the amazing thing here is he was able to actually stop, stride, re-aim, and then go again.

And there's lots of things in that culture and there's lessons to be learned there.

But this is a very rich, very informational, very heavy conversation that gets into the heart of

the role of church online into not only impacting the online world, but to actually impact the offline,

to impact the physical world, a digital church that impacts the physical realm.

It's good stuff here.

So here in the conversation, I'm bringing, of course, Jay Cranda from Saddleback.

I'm bringing in Ray Diarmus, guest host once again from Christ Fellowship Miami, online pastor there.

Myself, Jeff, and the church digital with a conversation on the natural way

to build micro-locations at Saddleback.

Hey, everybody, here you go.

Man, so how's life in California?

Very sunny, like Florida.

I haven't even looked.

How's LeBron doing this year?

I don't care about that.

He's doing amazing.

He's killing it, dude.

He's killing it.

Yeah, he's amazing.

I'm impressed, man.

Homeboy in his 40s is not going to slow down.

He is legit going to be Tom Brady out there on the court, man.

Yeah, the Lakers got the best record right now.

No, I will say, though, we have a very easy record.

So we've played a lot of average teams.

But that's what everybody's feeling.

But we haven't had a ton of hard.

We've had some hard games.

Our hardest game was game one, which against the Clippers.

But anyways, so yeah, LeBron's doing great.

Are you at least the best team in Los Angeles, or are the Clippers better than you?

I think technically, we have the best record.

But I will say that if you, the whole team, the Clippers technically are a better team in the sense,

like I think every, like the whole team.

But the one thing that I think the Lakers have, obviously, we have, I would say, the two top three players in the NBA.

But the other thing is that we have a lot more vets.

And that's ultimately what's going to matter come playoff time.

Right.

Are you prepared for the Lakers to fire Frank Vogel?

Because you know that's coming.

It's part of the LeBron package, the firing of the head coach.

It is.

You know, like we stayed it off at the Heat, because that's the whole culture thing.

They were like, we're not getting rid of Spoh.

Stop with the baby stuff.

Yeah.

But it's part of the LeBron package.

Yeah, I don't really care who the coach is when it's LeBron.

So I don't have any, I'm not any loyalty to Frank Vogel.

He's a great coach.

He came for the Pacers, and he's awesome.

You know, the topic that I really wanted to hit on today is to really focus on, Jay, the

stuff that you're developing and talking about with, I know you're doing some training with

small groups.

I know you guys pushed the poker chips in hard when it came to micro locations and starting

to really develop that micro church model.

I'd love to spend a little time here, just maybe picking your brain.

What is Saddleback learning?

What are you observing?

Kind of what does this trend look like as you've really focused on this within the past three

or four months?

I know Ray, asterisk, really is excited about Disney+, and wants to really dive into this.

We've seen you talk about some stuff on social media, and so he's got something he wants to

get to.

I have not signed up.

I have not signed up.

Wait, what?

You're the one guy in America.

I know.

I know.

I was watching, I'm watching a show on Netflix right now, and I'm like, I just finished it

today.

And so I was like, I don't have time to go sign up yet.

So I think I'll probably sign up today or tomorrow, but I have not signed up.

I got to, that's my confession.

So I was going to ask you, like, how's the Mandalorian?

Like, I don't even know.

I know things because of the internet, but I don't really know how good it is, or I don't

even know when it gets, I thought it was Sunday night it got released, but it looks like it's

not.

It's tonight?

It's Friday.

It's Friday.

Oh, it's Friday.

So, and we're three episodes in.

Okay.

See, I see.

I'm already, I've, I've jumped, I've jumped ahead, but wow.

I'm just, I'm sorry.

That's awesome.

Jake Heranda.

I'm saying two words I've never said before in my life to you.

I'm disappointed.

I really, I'd expected more out of you.

So Cal boy out there soaking it in.

Not doing Disney plus.

You know, this with, with being in a sunny area, you know, there's, I'm not stuck inside.

So, you know, like I don't, you know, and it's, and we, I just, I get into a show and

then I, I don't have, I don't, I like to finish things.

So that's, so I've, I'm, I have some time and I do, I do like Star Wars, but I've not,

I'm, I was waiting to kind of see how I'll figure it out.

But yeah, microsites and online.

Let's dive into the microsites community.

Cause what's some of the stuff you guys are doing in context with Saddleback.

I mean, you're, you're, you're putting while the rest of the church is arguing whether or

not they can do biblical community online, you guys have paved the freeway and are inviting

as many people as possible to take advantage of it.

So what are you guys doing currently?

What's some of this new trends?

What are you, what are you exploring in this idea of community online?

For anybody that I've talked to, or if you kind of even probably talked about this

when I was first on this show, the, which I think I'm one of the OGs on this podcast,

I had to be like the first five.

So I will, we'll call, we'll call you out.

You were part of the first four episodes we launched with, with this podcast.

Well, the, the big thing for us at Saddleback has always been about kind of why are we doing

what we're doing in, in being conscious about where are we leading people?

And so something that I found out, especially being at a larger church very quickly is that

we had people watching in all sorts of places that didn't have a church down the street.

And so trying to problem solve that, I think, you know, maybe if you're just kind of getting

this on, I get going in the online space for the most part, you know, you're going to be

very local focus, but as that audience grows and more people share, you'll have these opportunities

where people will be like, I live in this remote area, what's going on?

And really there's starting to be this population of people, I would say an hour outside of a

large town or a large city that wanted a church.

And it was really hard for them to, to drive into a city and, and, and engage.

And so we started to really think about this and we've had all sorts of iterations, even

before I was in my role, Saddleback has done this.

This is not something that's just limited to my space.

It's, it's limited to every, everybody's had tests and we're always putting hooks in the

water, trying out stuff.

And so, so the most recent iteration has been something we're calling home gatherings.

And the whole concept was around how do we make it so that anybody could start something

in their home and do like a pop-up church service in their home.

And part of the learnings was we did something that was a little bit larger and a little bit,

I would say, get a crowd focus.

And we call those extensions for a period of time.

And some of the learnings out of that is that it does work, but it took a lot of staff time,

even travel time, even resources.

And there was high burnout because it was typically one leader focus.

And so I think that model still really works, but it's not something, we're not going to

launch a hundred of those or 10 of those.

We only really could do maybe one of those every year.

And I wanted something that was a little bit more lay driven and I wanted something that

we could, especially because we're very, I would just say like our team is kind of small.

And so I'm trying to think, how do we do this?

That's sustainable.

The other thing is when you get a group of people in a room and you get 50 people, they

start expecting more too, because they're growing rapidly.

And we didn't have some of the mechanisms in place at the time to kind of, I would say,

figure that out.

And so we started this home gathering concept, which is more, have three small groups partner

together.

So there's a bunch of people that are, have incentives to kind of pull off this pop-up

service.

And then do a lot of evangelism training.

And really it's about creating a core of people that can execute this easily.

So if one person leaves or is out, you can still go on and create a culture of sharing

your faith.

And our goal is to get these two very quickly, get them to about 25 people and they're meeting

regularly.

And those long-term for the online campus directly, those become regional hubs.

This is our plan to, that we can go travel to.

And so the idea is when somebody wants to get baptized or want some kind of training, instead

of them doing that by themselves or training somebody there, which we would do, we would

have a Saddleback home gathering, you know, within, you know, a day's drive essentially

everywhere in the world.

And so part of that is we did a beta, you know, actually in your guys' backyard in Florida

that we're testing out right now.

It's been going.

And then we got, we just started to roll out promotion of it like more heavily.

And we've got about 20 or so people interested in it.

And we're having phone calls with those people as we engage and come Christmas, we're doing

something that, you know, I first heard from Elevation Church like five, six years ago,

but we've done this a couple of different times, but we're kind of bringing it back.

We're doing a Christmas watch parties where they're going to watch together.

And the idea is that the watch parties will be kind of a cross step to a home gathering.

So maybe twice a year or three times a year, you do a watch party and those become warm

leads for permanent home gatherings.

And so, yeah, so it really, it's about just empowering anybody to do something and then

figuring out where we can do this and how can we really get out of the way?

Because I found we, our church, and I'm not involved in this directly, but we know how

to plan a church, but it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars, takes people, it's all

this stuff and we're looking at something way more lean and this model we're praying is,

is, is the model that can work for us.

But we are just now in, I would say this is the third iteration of the online campus trying

this and we could do it, but I don't like the scalability of our previous models, to be

honest.

So the first, the first model was staff driven, is that correct?

Or what was going on there with that?

Yeah, essentially it was because it was taking about 10 hours of my week to kind of manage

an individual location.

And that was up in the San Francisco area.

We had one, we had groups come together and do something and I would go up once a month

because it's San Francisco and I'm in Southern California.

It's an easy flight, but it was, you know, it's taxing.

It wasn't something that, and it was working.

The other thing is what's really hard and my pastor says this all the time is that it's

it's really easy to turn a crowd into a core, but not a core into a crowd because there's

like culture and different things that kind of, kind of build up.

And one of the things I found is we had built up a core of people that were really just showing

up to a service every week and they weren't really executing on it.

So I had like probably four or five people that would do it.

But what happens is, just to be honest, one of them, we had about 90 people in this room

up in the Bay Area.

I rented this hotel room and we did a pop-up church services all through my laptop.

And this was about three and a half years ago.

And it was amazing because it was all online campus driven.

It was awesome.

But, you know, every other person would come.

I goes, when's Saddleback coming here?

And there was this very clear, this is an overstatement of it, but there was this consumer

type of model.

I had it, we did not have like a loyal group of people that were willing to do whatever

it took.

We had about 30 people that were really in, but we had a larger crowd.

And I realized is that had a peak.

And those people, if you don't deliver a campus within a certain time frame, they're going

to leave.

And I think I figured out, I was figuring out just as a young leader, like, how do you

deliver vision with understanding what they are expecting and not disappointing them?

And I think we, that was one of those things that I learned a lot.

And this is why the home gathering, we're really focusing in on you building something with a

group of people you want to do life with.

And there's not an expectation of a campus coming there.

It's, we want you to live out the vision of the church in your area with a group of people.

And that group of people will be your home gathering that you meet regularly with.

And then you have a small group during the week.

And that's kind of the framework.

So a lot of our language, we're trying to make it so it's not so weekend focused, I would

just say.

And we're trying to make it so it's more small group focused.

And those small group, being small group focused allows us to care people on an easier

model, like on scale.

And it also builds leaders that can help us execute.

Because that's the other thing is, we had a couple of times we had, you know, one person

and one couple.

And, you know, anybody who's been had a friend who's planted a church or you've been part of

a planting, you know, not every week, you don't grow every week.

And so once they experienced, let's say, six months, and maybe they had two really big

months and it dipped down, there's discouragement.

And this is why they say when you plant in church, you do it with people, you do it with

a team, you don't do it alone, because you'll get discouraged.

And I think we're trying to build some of that into this.

But I think one of the quotes that I kind of stood out to me recently from Ray Dalio's

book, Principles, he was talking about this idea of like, not everybody understands, like

if you have success in something.

So some people are part of some point of success, but they don't necessarily know the cause and

effect of that success, and they can't replicate it.

Some people can, I would say, understand the cause and effect, but they can't replicate it.

And some people can replicate this.

And I think what's happened, especially with the online space, especially with the house

church movement type of space all around, is there's a lot of people that have been in

roles that stuff has happened.

That doesn't necessarily mean that you understood or understand what happens.

And it doesn't even mean you know how to scale it for somebody else.

And I think as I've talked to people, I've seen that.

I've seen people do it both in the online space and also reading books.

Sometimes it's like, well, churches are scaling in China or India.

And it's like, so that might be true.

But do we even know how to replicate some of that over here?

Is it possible?

I think these are the conversations.

And I'm not as worried about, we could hire somebody full time and maybe go do something.

And I'm trying to figure out, how do I get it where it's more lay driven?

And I think that's where we're really motivated to kind of dive into.

Yeah.

So you, I want to follow this rabbit trail for a second, see how far we go.

So you had an idea a couple years ago.

It wasn't working.

It was too heavy.

It wasn't, ultimately, it sounds like it just wasn't scalable.

And so you, you trashed it.

So you trashed an idea.

You went back to leadership.

You developed a more scalable idea.

And then you got them to execute that.

So the question I want to ask is how?

Because oftentimes when you trash an idea, oh, that didn't work.

Let's not revisit the concept and move on.

It's that just didn't work.

Let's try something else.

Online's not going to work.

So what you've managed to do was somehow transition.

This was a bad execution for online.

There's other ways to do online.

Let's keep experimenting to find the right balance.

What is the culture?

What is the environment?

What does that look like?

What did that conversation look like when you're talking with leadership?

Were they like, hey, you know what?

It's just, let's just broadcast services.

Was there any of, to that extent, let's just abandon ship and move on, cut our losses?

Or were they into the point of wanting you to experiment more to come up with a workable model?

Yeah, so that's a great question.

I would say, first off, I think most people understood what had happened

particularly in two locations that we were kind of focused in on at the time.

It was a success in the sense that it worked, this idea there's something here.

So I don't think I really had to work at, did it work or not?

The question was, it worked, but it wasn't scalable.

And we weren't willing to kind of take it to the next level.

We had to do it almost like a second round of investing had to happen.

So it's like, hey, you know, you raise money and then you want to go to the next level.

And it's, you know, you either decide, is it worth the second round?

And I thought it could be worth the second round.

But I think we just as a church decided it probably wasn't the right time to invest in the second round of this.

And honestly, what's interesting, and I still remember, I had this thought for about a month when I was going through some of this stuff.

It was, I remember it was, I mean, this was three and a half years ago.

So I remember being up in the Bay Area for one of these events.

And I think there were some things our church were, was really excited about with online community and some stuff, there was still some pushback.

And I remember being in a hotel room meeting space with everybody.

And, you know, you have 90 people watching a service that's running from your laptop on rented gear.

And I'm thinking, I started to really think about it that time around like, what am I, how am I shepherding people?

Because now I felt a sense of responsibility for all these people in this room, you know, like, and I'm either going to, with this idea, I'm either going to, I'm gonna have to kill it real quick.

Because, like, we can't continue this on, or I need to do something else.

And I remember, I actually felt, it really stressed me out, because it was like, this online church thing is, you know, it's not online, it's people.

And I'm funneling people to something.

And I think it made us ask some very serious questions.

And I think, if I'm remembering right, there was, it was a little bit of an open question of, you know, Jay, you can continue this, if you want.

Because I don't think it was impacting, like, there wasn't too much issue with what we were doing.

I could continue it.

But I thought some things needed to happen in order for it to go to the next level.

And I felt like it would slowly die if we didn't just kind of end it now.

Because I was like, either we do this, and if we're not interested in this, that's okay.

Like, I'm not, you know, I'm just iterating on this idea.

I'm trying to think about it.

But I don't want to continue down this line if we're not interested, or if you can't deliver on certain things.

And I think it forced the question at our church at the moment to kind of, do we really want to do this?

And our church is at a place, our church is one of those places where people are given tons of freedom to iterate.

And our pastor really challenges us to fail.

And sometimes, you know, something can work, but maybe it's not for that season.

And, you know, one of the more famous ones at our church is we had a Wednesday night program for, you know, 15 years.

And it was successful.

And we killed it when we launched small groups and homes.

And we did not kill Wednesday night because it was not successful.

It was working.

But in order for small groups to go to the next level, we didn't want people coming on Sunday nights, Wednesday nights, and doing something in the home.

That three days on top of serving and missions.

And so we killed Wednesday nights.

And that's what led to the explosion.

And I think we were having one of those moments of, like, I don't think this is scalable.

And, you know, I'm asking people to gather together and do church.

Like, this is a huge thing.

And we can't casually do it.

And so we allowed it for a little bit.

And we started to get more interest in other areas.

And I think we just, we had to pull back.

And I think that's part of it was I just went to leadership and I said, I don't think this is going to work with the way.

I don't think we can scale this the way it's currently built.

And so I think we should pull back, hit the reset, and just have a lot of conversations.

And what that looked like was it was about a year and a half of not doing anything really in that space.

It was just kind of letting it simmer.

Managing people.

You know, I had a lot of people that were, you know, upset that we had to manage.

And then go back to the drawing board.

And I think this most current iteration, there's still a lot of questions to be answered.

We just had, I just had somebody that came to me just this past week.

And they have a church building and they want to do something with us.

And this is not the first time I've encountered that.

But, you know, something with a church as big as ours is we have tons of opportunities.

And what I've learned from really wise people at our church is, you know, it's acting on those responsibilities.

It's because that's going to be a tax on my time and tax on vision, and it's going to hurt us in different ways if it's not part of our direct strategy.

And so it's answering some of this stuff.

And so it's still something to be figured out.

I will say we dialed in during that time with our leadership, the vision a little bit more clear, drawing the lines a little bit more clear or where the lines don't exist.

I just heard something recently they talked about, you know, sometimes some jobs need to have clear definition.

So like a marketing communication, you need to have clear lines.

But if there are no lines for your job, don't draw the lines until you know where the lines are.

And I think when we first did this, we didn't know where the lines are.

I think now I know where the lines are.

Child care is a line.

And then legality is a line particular.

And what is actually, is it us doing it or is it somebody else?

And is there any type of contract?

And I think some of those, we are drawing the lines a little bit more clear.

It doesn't mean we have all the answers, but I think I want to have a very defined sandbox to know what's successful this time around.

I admire that heavily because it takes a tremendous amount of discipline to look at the 90 and say, well, yeah, success here.

But we're going to go ahead and move beyond that because that's not about what we are as an organization.

Dig in a little bit more about that, like what that meant for you guys to look at the perceived success and say, no, that's not what we're going to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I, you know, in one, and the biggest motivator too personally was I was at the time, I don't, I didn't have any other staff on my team and it was just me.

And I was like seeing these churches pop up, these two locations that had 90 plus people.

And, um, the care that was going to require, I didn't think I could really do it.

Like I was like, we need something else.

And so it was a motivator of just what was, what was healthy.

I think for me and for our team and our church.

Um, and at that, at that moment, it was, I needed to tap into, um, our, our team that plants churches and just go, Hey, are you guys interested?

And at the time they weren't at that moment and that was, you know, there's part of it that was not fun.

You know, I was like, well, what do I do?

I got to go back to these people and say, like, we're not doing this.

Um, and trust me, I learned, you know, there's a bunch of stuff I could have done better.

Um, I, I could have been better on being very clear on the vision.

I could have, you know, I do think naively, I thought if I got it, if, if our, if our team got it up to about 90 people, I thought certain people would be more interested.

And, um, and that's, and part of it was like, no, and because there are real reasons why you go to different areas.

Like there's strategic reasons to go to different cities and areas.

And one of the hard learnings, I will say that I, I didn't, I was not aware of, um, just because I hadn't really had any experience outside of reading books and having friends that have planted churches was, um, people will go to something once a month, but it doesn't mean they will go there weekly.

Um, and so just because I have 90 people doesn't mean that's a 90 person church.

Um, and particularly with the Bay area, we had people coming in from all over the Bay once a month.

Um, and that could be a 45 minute to an hour and 10 minute drive.

And the learning for us was great.

We have tons of people in the Bay and we have, you know, we can probably go anywhere and get 30 people, but we're not trying to reach those people.

We're trying to reach their friends that don't go to church yet.

So their friends who don't go to church, aren't going to drive 45 minutes to an hour and 10 every week, especially if they have kids.

Um, and so we needed, so if we were going to zero in on one area in Northern California, we would automatically be like exiting out 90, you know, 70 people.

Um, and I think those are some of the learnings about being like focused in certain areas was a big deal.

Well, and something as, as I mapped out our, a lot of our small group data and online member data across the country, particular, not just the world, but just looking at the United States is we don't have a lot of high concentrations.

Um, it's very spread out.

Um, and so, yes, we might have a bunch of people in the Phoenix area, but they're all around Phoenix and Phoenix is a huge city.

Um, and so it's like, I think, I think that's one of the pros and cons of the internet.

You could just reach all sorts of people, but just, you know, from afar.

And I've, I, when I've used mapping software, I use a, a batch geo a lot.

Um, it's, it's a service that you can use to map, uh, stuff pretty easily.

And, you know, we'll say, oh, you have 90 people, like, let's say in Chicago.

And then you zoom into the map and it's like, oh my goodness, like this is spread out.

Um, and I think a lot of people are like, use internet to plant churches.

Great.

But it doesn't automatically mean that there's a focused area, um, that makes a ton of sense.

Cause, um, and I think that learning of like, your friends are not going to drive, you know,

there's this 10 minute radius thing.

And so it's like reaching.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I, I think some of those, yeah.

So some of that stuff, it's just still stuff we're processing through.

And the most current iteration, I think kind of to help frame this conversation too, is we

really leaned into our churches knows how to plant, like almost like saddle, uh, I would

think of it as like Starbucks locations, like franchise locations.

And we wanted something that's more like the proudly brew Starbucks model where it's like

it would be popped up in a hotel.

And those are two different types of experiences.

You do expect less from, you know, if you see proudly brew, you're like, this is probably

not going to be that great.

Um, and so we're trying not to hit that bad of a, of a, of a barrier, but, um, you know,

like there's a reason why I'll go to a, uh, a Starbucks that's outside of a target

versus inside of a target.

Those are two different expectations.

Um, and I think we're trying to figure out what does the lower expectation, lower expectation

look like so that anybody could almost anybody, um, can do it.

And really looking at our success with small groups, I think is our ultimate deal.

Success with small groups is very open-minded.

Um, we can't be as open with this, but it's something we're thinking about.

Are you intentional at all about where these are being located at?

Like I know in previously you were very honed in on the Bay area, you know, you're talking

about maybe some things in Phoenix, like, are you putting any thought into, Hey, maybe

this area is Dallas, Texas, where there's like 1.2 million Baptist churches.

I'm kidding, but not really like there where maybe, you know, you don't focus on that area

or is it really just more viral and organic wherever God plants seeds, you know, they're,

they're starting to grow.

Yeah, I, I definitely am not as motivated in areas that already have established, you know,

uh, communities like that.

You know, Dallas is one of those.

Um, but I will say that we are more focused on finding evangelists or gatherers.

Um, and I think that's actually the number one, like learning from, from doing this is that

there's a difference.

I, I think I get too many emails and phone conversations with people that ask me the question,

is there anybody in my area who also watches our online services?

And they think that's the golden ticket to building community.

And, but I don't think it's natural for a stranger to just come over to your home or

meet you at a Starbucks and hang out.

Um, what's more natural is for you to invite friends over.

And so, yeah, we might have, you know, if you pick Portland, Oregon, we might have, you

know, you know, 50 people in the area.

But if I email those 50 people and say, come hang out with you, like, they're going to be

like, who are you?

And they think there's a brand, you know, and, and obviously our church being larger that

there, there is that type of exposure, but you know, people hang out with you, do life

with you because of who you are.

And I think we're trying to, um, we're trying to figure that piece out.

I think a lot of it has to do with training.

Um, but I think ultimately we want to be this, this needs to be more organic because my team,

my team directly is not responsible for planting churches.

Like, that's not what I do.

So I don't think right now, if, if, if a team came to me and said, Hey, these are areas

we're interested in, then there would be a partnership.

Um, and, but right now it's very much, I'm just looking for the person or the team that

is very motivating and can do it.

Because if I find a gatherer, somebody that knows how to build a, get a group of people

together, I want to get behind that.

That that's, yeah, I think that that's a, that's a big thing for us in this model.

Absolutely.

And that person is very hard to identify, aren't they?

Especially considering an online campus.

I mean, a lot of folks who are, who are watching church online typically aren't, aren't that

kind of person, unless it's somebody who is in your community that, you know, got because

of transient reasons, work reasons, maybe got moved to a different area.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, and, and this is why it's, it's built on our existing discipleship kind of, you know,

pipeway here is that it's, we move people from our services into our class one-on-one

and class one-on-one is when they start to learn that out.

I will say that, yeah, there's a large percentage of people that watch regularly that aren't

necessarily gatherers.

But I, but I, I do think I've noticed, especially in the last year and a half, I'm seeing a lot

of almost like early adopters that are, are moving away and are in, you know, especially

with a lot of people moving to more rural areas directly because of housing issues.

Um, they're, they're wanting larger spaces and they're realizing they can do that.

Now that also brings a new dilemma is if you live in a more remote area, you're not going

to have the density that will allow you to reach people easily.

So that, you know, again, every new opportunity has new problems.

And so I think, um, I, I personally am motivated by the strategy and the scalability of these

things.

And so I definitely leaned into what, you know, kind of gets me excited.

And I think the idea of allowing a person, um, to kind of start a church, um, with not having

to think about the weekend content, but just building the community and using some of our

church's paradigm stuff with small groups and classes, that's all preexisting and just focusing

in on building that group and expressing those purposes in your, I love that.

And I do think it's scalable.

I will say that we're going to continue to see, and I've already seen it, people launch

churches without as much resources, you know, just like, Hey, the idea is, you know, I, if

I want to, if I want to see if being in retail would be fun, I could go start at Etsy store

and go do it.

And I can spend very little money and have a very small failure.

Um, the same way, um, I think planting a church should have a similar type of model experience.

And I think, um, this type of experience could see if you have it in you.

And again, that's why there's so many church plants that fail, um, because a lot of people

just realize, you know, they're just not necessarily built for that.

And I want, I think something like this, along with what other people are doing, I think we're

going to see this.

It's, it's yeah.

And, um, I, that gets me excited.

And I think there should be now the other part of this is training people in the digital

space is a big, there is a gap there.

There's a gap in training.

Um, but I, yeah, yeah.

Well, let's ask that question.

Cause that was actually on my, on my list.

So you've got somebody in, I don't know, Saskatchewan doesn't matter somewhere, Timbuktu

USA.

They want to do a, um, uh, uh, what was your term?

It was a home gathering.

So they want to do a home gathering.

How are you equipping them, training them, empowering them?

What, what does this process looks like from identifying someone as, Hey, I am a gatherer.

I am a, uh, personable evangelist.

I have relational equity with others and turning that person into a, what do you call them?

Like a, a shepherd, a pastor, a leader, like what's your, what's your terminology for this

home gathering leader?

Yeah.

Essentially we use the word leader, um, at the moment.

Um, but the process right now is to, to take our training.

So we have some training that we've created.

It's about an hour long.

Um, there's some theology and very practical type of elements.

And we go through everything about leaning into, you know, you know, the context of what a church

is biblically, and then really to encourage them that this, this is church.

And then you don't need to think less of it because it's smaller.

And that's something that we really focus in on that training.

And then looking at practically what does it look like to execute this every week?

And so it looks like getting a leader.

You need somebody, um, to be more hospitality who's caring for people.

And then you have somebody that is logistics that's, you know, pull downloading notes, printing

them, sending us attendance every week.

And so the really out of that training, they fill a commitment card out.

And it's, it's a kind of like a covenant where they commit to aligning with us.

And, and part of what we give them is you could show our weekend services for free.

You know, you can just go, um, but you are aligning with us theologically.

And, um, and so they take the training, they sign that commitment, and then we set up

a call.

Um, and that call is really about, tell us how you got here.

Why are you interested in this?

Where are you at?

And then that first call is normally around, do you have any questions about the strategy

or anything that we said?

I usually ask something about theology very directly.

I go, is there anything about what we believe that, um, you just wanted to clarify?

And then, um, we, most of the time it's, do you have two other people to help you?

And so, and then I say the first part is for you to get to other people.

So, um, if ask people in your small group, if you're not doing a small group, you need

to do that first and then get to other people.

And once you have those two other people, have them go through the training.

They don't need to fill out a commitment card and then let's have a three-way conversation

around, or, you know, let's have a four, a four member conversation around the next steps.

And normally that conversation is about, um, doing some evangelism training.

So I want them to kind of read our book, um, that our pastor wrote on purpose-driven, uh,

church.

So you kind of understand how we frame things.

And then I either encourage them to read through the book of Acts together to kind of structurally

understand some things, but really I'm trying to get them to, and this is something we're

actually still deciding.

I had a group that I'm just walking through this right now where I'm picking some evangelism

training that I think is better and kind of, you know, forcing them to, to really share

their faith.

And a lot of it's just answering that.

And then we pick a start date.

They start inviting people.

We, we problem solve some things, you know, as simple as, you know, one of the things is

we, we had a group that was gathering together that was using Roku to watch the services and

the service once or twice bumped, it got a little choppy and it's a little awkward with having

15 people in the room is choppy.

So as simple as I said, I would buy a very long ethernet cable and hard line that

baby, you know, and those are just simple things that, you know, we're just, we're talking

through.

And then long-term it's, I set up a monthly meeting with their team and which is just an

hour, an hour a month.

And I'm trying to build it right now.

We only have a couple of these.

And so I'm trying to build it long-term.

I'm going to build, I probably come February when we have, you know, about 15 of these going

is I want to do two things.

I want, I want to build like probably a Facebook group where everyone's learning together.

And then the other thing is probably have a large, make that call, not individual, but

a large call.

Because we did not, we should, I shipped one thing to this, to the one outside of Orlando

actually, where I, I bought a, I had a banner made online and I just, it was like 60 bucks

and I mailed them a banner through an online resource.

And I really did not want to get in the business of mailing anything.

And so they are, they are going.

And so it's, it's a very, it's, it's very motivated to try to get them to get going quickly,

but the training, the call, and then get two people, have them go through the training and

then let's start setting a date and then talking regularly.

And I'm in this process right now with, with, with a couple where I'm just, I'm meeting with

monthly.

And I met with one of them on, on Monday and we were problem solving that ethernet thing.

I was like, okay, here's, and I'm now working on some digital rights stuff with our church.

Can I give them something that's downloadable on Saturday nights?

Um, and you know, some of that's easy.

Some of it's, some of it, we have some rights things that we have to navigate and, um, yeah.

So all the fun stuff and, and part of this beta was to, as I have, I have about 20 people

interested in doing this in all sorts of places.

I've now, I'm doing it really intently with one.

And now I'm, I'm taking these learnings and I'm going back and going, Hey, if we want to

do this large scale, we need to figure out this stuff.

And so it's beta, beta, beta.

Awesome.

And so, but a lot of what you're describing is, is centered around that one hour on Sunday,

you know, and, and you alluded to earlier.

Yeah.

Um, you know, there's more than just the one hour you killed this.

Wednesday thing to make the small groups push and homes happen.

So like when it comes to some of those next steps, when it comes to groups, when it comes

to money, you know, where, where tithing, where does that go?

Like how, how are you structuring some, some of that?

How is Saddleback answering those questions?

Yeah, that's a good question.

So the money one in particular, we, we have, we don't have a clear answer.

Um, and my argument to my leadership right now, and I think this is a good learning for,

you know, anybody doing this is I pretty much said,

can you give me some space to try this out?

And instead of theoretically talking about it, let me bring an example.

Um, and that's where we're at right now, where I had, I had this with the other, um, with

the other locations where we started to have money, where it's like people were giving.

Now it wasn't coming to our team.

It was going out to the world, but I was like, Hey, we have money here.

So something as simple as my budget, for example, every year, I have a budget that's given to

me once a year.

These locations kind of started popping up.

I was doing travel.

I was doing some things and I was draining my own online campus budget to execute this.

And I was like, but I know there's resources coming in.

It doesn't mean those resources don't solve all the problems, but we needed something that

was, that was more helpful for them.

So for example, in these locations, we've said it very clear upfront that, you know, when you're

under 25, you're not going to have a lot of financial needs.

Um, and so you guys, you guys treat your money, um, you know, give towards Saddleback, but if

you guys have something that you need at your area, treat that as a tithe.

Now, the only difference is there's not a tax incentive, you know, but like, you know, if

you had a hundred dollars and you're going to tie that to Saddleback and 20 of it got used

on food for an event, you know, technically you are tithing, you're tithing to God.

Now you can't give us a hundred and, and you can't give us 80 and we're going to give you

the a hundred back because we have to flow that money back.

Um, but we're, we're not going to be a pass through essentially at this stage.

Um, and, but I do think once you have a hundred, 150 people, you have to have very clear lines.

And I think, um, that's part of one, a couple of these locations we're trying to figure it

out because that, that comes in that staff time.

Those are some, that all takes, that gets in the way of scalability.

And I think we're trying to, I'm trying to build a case right now of like why that's

worth investment because we are talking about it, but it's not like, it's like, is anybody

really want to do this?

And right now it's, I had this with, with class one-on-one where, um, when we launched

membership online, I remember my, one of my leaders said, does anybody even want to take

it?

You're pushing it.

Um, and I was like, yeah.

And I remember I, I built a waiting list.

So instead of just theoretically thinking about it, um, it was like, oh, look, I have a hundred

people waiting to take it right at this moment.

And I think that's why try to, try to have, try to define a sandbox where you can experiment.

And then instead of theoretically talking about bring a user case.

So my hope is in like six months, I'll have this case in, you know, somewhere in Florida

where I'll be like, Hey, we have 25 people and they're tithing every week to the main

Saddleback website.

And it's, it's tens of thousands of dollars.

Should it, some of that flow back here.

And shouldn't we figure, you know, and I think those are the things we have to figure out right

now.

A lot of it's just theoretical to be honest, because if you're under 25, you really don't,

you don't need anything.

Like it's very little, um, and it's very community focused, which is part of our incentive.

But I think as we get more over a certain size, the only ones that are larger in

our model are more prison based, which are unique.

Um, and they're not going to, they don't have money and, um, they're not going to turn into

a church long-term and like how we would define that.

So that's a different, a different model altogether too.

There's an interesting opportunity, you know, even the, even the 18, 20, 25, the money to come

in to pour it back into the community instead of supporting the mothership or a portion supporting

the community, some of their local mission opportunities, or, you know, maybe to your

point, maybe they're, they're withholding the tithe to the church and tithing to the organ,

you know, and, and that's, that's an option.

Although it sounds kind of sticky, even when you say it, uh, a hundred percent, it does.

And trust me, it's, it's something that we've, you know, every group will ask that of me of

like, what do you, and, and, and I said, pretty much I'm, I'm pushing the ball down the road.

What I have found in each iteration of these things, you have tons of these questions that

kind of start to pop up of what do you do with kids?

What do you do with money?

What do you do with legality?

And, and there's two things you could either wait to have all the answers.

And I have found that you will be waiting a very long time.

Um, and, and, and it's not how I tend to work.

Um, and so for me, you can't, we've decided at least in this very small, like piece of the

pie that we've carved up of what I can experiment with on the online campus team is I said, let

me just experiment over here.

We're going to lean into the gray a bit.

We're not going to scale it yet.

We want to scale it, but we're going to test it.

And so that means typically, you know, just having a couple of people, we haven't fully

unleashed this model yet because I think some of these questions do need to be

answered, or at least there needs to be some fog removed.

And so right now, um, the reason why I don't talk about it on the weekend much in the sense

that I'm not, I'm not calling these things churches.

I'm not, it's because we're still figuring it out.

Um, and so I think you've got to figure out what that looks like within the context of your

church, um, for sure.

But I think having examples is way better than just saying theoretically, because, you

know, I just had a conversation with one of our leaders a couple of days ago about

this and he was, uh, he was asking me, uh, some stuff about our church and, you know,

well, Jay, you can do this.

You can do this.

And he was kind of up upper.

And I just remember going like, nobody has the answers for this.

And so you are, you know, you're having this, you're asking me what to do.

But if I wait for your answer, I'm going to, I'm going to get old because I, like I, I, and

I get it.

It's a good question.

But if we don't have clarity, I think sometimes with no clarity, you have the opportunity to

proceed forward.

It's like the classic yes, no, or not yet.

And I, you know, to me, I've heard not a no, I, it's a not yet.

And I haven't heard a yes yet.

And so I'm leaning forward on the not yet.

Um, and I'm just going to say, okay, if I've told I can't, if I don't need to stop, then

I'm just going to keep pushing forward.

And it doesn't mean I'm going to find the answer, but I at least want to just continue

to, to explore, um, for sure.

How are you making sure that, cause those are obviously like the big picture things.

How are you making sure that the Saddleback DNA is still there?

Like the five purposes, the whole nine, that those are kind of the driving factors there.

Yeah, that, that, that's a big, that's something we heard from a lot of different people, um,

who had planted churches, um, particular, like that, that's something that's really important

because our prime candidates are members that have moved away, members of our local church,

um, because they get it.

Um, now it gets a little harder when you have people that have never been here physically

that want to do this.

And so for us, what that looks like is, it's obviously going through some of our training.

The other thing is, um, I think there's two elements of this long-term one is we're going

to ideally ask each leader of a home gathering long.

These, this is a long-term strategy, uh, as we've talked about this out loud, it's come

to a, one of our yearly purpose-driven conferences once every three years.

So as you know, let's say hypothetically, we have a hundred of these down the road.

I think the ask would be, you come to one of, one of these every three years.

I'm not saying every year, every other year, I'm saying one every three years so that you

understand our culture, you're here.

And I want you to kind of get us the other thing, um, that I think is, is really going

to be important.

Long-term is us visiting these locations, uh, occasionally.

Um, now I, I am motivated too, for this solution because as somebody who has groups and members

in, you know, 500 plus cities in every state.

And in, in like, I, last time I checked, I think it was 40 different countries.

Um, it's really hard to map out a plan to visit people.

So I am selfishly building this kind of web, or at least I'm trying to work towards this

web is that if I could have regional hubs that I could say, Hey, by the way, once a quarter,

we're going to be here.

And I could tell everybody within a hundred mile or 300 mile radius, we're going to be

here on this date.

I think it's a better way for us to scale our care geographically, um, with our time as

staff with staff presence.

So instead of me driving, I mean, I did this, I was, I think this was four years ago.

I did like a tour on the East coast and over a course of like five or six days, I start,

I landed in Boston and I left from DC and I went to all these different places and we did

like meetups.

Um, and I remember I drove from New York down to, um, was it Africa?

Anyways, I drove into Connecticut, uh, into Connecticut essentially.

And I said, I was going to be at this coffee shop at noon is the only time I could meet at

this place.

And I did have a couple of small groups, like in Connecticut area, but it was a noon, like

on a Thursday.

So it was kind of a hard time for people to meet.

Um, but I had, I had two people show up and I couldn't have been of more random town in

Connecticut where I was at, um, because it was, I was passing through essentially.

But the idea is that that would have made more sense if I had something, I, you know, my geography

is a little off in my head right now, but I've had something in a larger city and they knew

in advance once a quarter, we kind of do these rounds.

I think that could be scalable hypothetically.

Um, one thing we don't want to do is we want to, we're not trying to, I don't naturally,

I'm not, there might be unintended consequences here that I'm not thinking about with like

denominational stuff because I don't want it to turn into a denomination thing where I'm

like building some kind of infrastructure.

But I think these are all the things, this is part of it.

There's, there's these pros and there's just cons, but one of the cons of online ministry

is not really been able to visit people and, um, and it's not just, I've, I've done multiple

trips where I fly places and, you know, the problem is most of the time, the best time

to meet people are on the weekends.

And that means you only really can go one place, um, typically.

Um, and so I can't really, cause I've done it where I've, I've hit multiple cities.

I did this in Texas where I, in a course of a day, I was in San Antonio, Dallas, um, and

Austin, I did different, like a morning lunch, uh, dinner thing.

You know, when I'm hitting morning in Austin, you know, only some people, the people that

are working or typical jobs, you know, they're not going to be able to meet.

And so this is hard.

This is why if I go all the way to DC, I probably need to be there on a Saturday night or a Sunday

morning and be there.

And that means I can only be in DC.

And so, um, I think some of these regional hub things, I think we're trying to figure out

maybe could this be a, a web for us to kind of connect with people.

And I heard you mentioned earlier that you're even looking at like baptisms and maybe some

of the utilizing some of the ordinances within these regional hub meetups, right?

Yeah.

So like we, we have a ton of people that want to get baptized and we train people to baptize

each other and it happens, but I don't think it's the, it's not as scalable as I want.

Um, I, I don't have a, I have people, you know, every other week that say like, I want

to get baptized.

And then I say, Hey, do you have a small group member?

They can baptize you.

And, you know, maybe one out of 10 say yes to that, um, because it's weird.

And so it's like, so I, I know it's an option and people do it, but it's most people want

to be baptized by somebody who's a, they want to get baptized by a pastor and maybe a leader.

And I think these leaders of these home gatherings could potentially be that.

And I think that's part of our hope is maybe these locations could be places where we hold,

you know, things like that.

We, we do trainings, we come in, I did, did this in the Bay area, went up one time and did

a one, our membership class in person up there.

And it was very fruitful.

And we had more people, um, engage on that than I think the previous three months.

Um, so we had, you know, and so, yeah, so I think some of this stuff, that's the hope.

Again, this is all, I can't tell you how much of this is very, it's theoretical in the

sense that, um, you know, we think a lot about it, but, and there's learnings out of past stuff,

but you know, we're very, uh, being aggressive in iterating on top of these thoughts.

So there's a lot of thoughts.

So I think this is a perfect for this type of podcast is kind of, this is where we're going.

This is what we're thinking.

It's not, it might change next week.

Um, yeah.

So what's the theoretical success?

You don't know, you don't know where the finish line is yet.

You're still trying to figure it out.

We're still theoretical.

What's the win?

When are you going to look back and say this worked or this didn't like what, what's the

tipping point for you?

I think in, we've, we've put it down in six months.

We want to have, uh, well, I would say in 2020, we want to have 20 of these locations.

So by the end of 2020, I think we'll build a home, a 20 separate home gatherings.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I think by then we'll build a no very quickly because our church is moving into a

big campaign push here in January where our church is going to be going through this curriculum

and I'm going to have a ton of people interested.

Now the question is, does the training work?

Is it something people want to do?

I think that's the one thing people really overlook is, you know, what are you actually

asking people to do?

Like I'm asking them to host church in their home.

Do people want to do that?

So like, really, do they really want to do that?

And, um, and there's all sorts of reasons why they want to do that.

And it's filtering out that.

So I think by the end of 2020, I'll be able to know if there's, if a large percentage of

this idea really works.

Um, and, and that, that's the part I think most people that have been doing anything with

online church in that is that they've been able to do one or two times the success rate,

but I don't think they've been able to scale it to what's, if you look at how many people

are attending every week and how many people are engaged in your home gatherings or your

extensions or your anywheres, I don't think that there's this correlation that is as tight.

It's, it's not the same.

I mean, I don't know if it's going to be the same type of retention, but, um, I think that's

something I think a lot about.

Um, and I, I've probably said this on, on the past, the past podcast is I think the most

glaring number for me in our strategy is that we have tons of people attending every week.

We have tons of small groups.

We have tons of salvations and people in our Facebook group, but we do not baptize that

many people every year with our online community.

Um, and so I think we've baptized about 19 people or 20 people the past year, um, which

is a lot of people.

And that's God, God's honoring that.

But I think when we go from, you know, let's say, I think we've, we're at like 300 people

have indicated some kind of salvation in the past 11 months or something.

And maybe regular attendance about 20,000.

If I kind of look down the road, I go 19 people.

That means the physical community stuff is still a problem for us, that it's still, there's

still a gap there.

One of the things that I'm working on, uh, is this idea and I've talked with you about

it, I think in passing, maybe not even this idea of planting a digital church, a church

that lived fully in a, in a virtual expression.

Like I'm talking DJ Soto VR, maybe as, as a pioneer in that area, it does not have to

be VR there's Jade Earhart, who's doing stuff with, uh, uh, video games and, and discord

creating a discipleship movement.

And he's in the process of planting a church there.

Um, yeah, and there's others that are, that are doing that.

What you've also been talking a little bit here is this idea of, of needing that physical

touch, maybe to go alongside with a digital, uh, discipleship plan or a digital, uh, expression

of, of worship.

So what, what in your mind, just briefly, I know it's a big question in a short amount of

time, but what is that, that tension between doing things digital, um, having it live out

in, in the physical realm, online to offline kind of thing?

What, what does that look like, Jay Crandon?

Yeah, that's a, that's an interesting question.

I, it's funny, I get, I'll get that question every once in a while.

Someone just asked it to me on Twitter a couple of weeks ago where, why don't you talk more

about just a purely digital church?

You're so focused on offline, offlining it essentially.

Um, and I've talked to DJ about this too, um, where, you know, he's all, he's all digital

for very clear reasons.

Now he also does physical stuff cause he meets up with people and, and it's part of his travel.

I, I, I, I, you know, I'm not sure how to answer it because I feel like some of that stuff is

still being figured out.

Um, but I, I know personally, I find if, if I have people close to me, things become easier.

And I do think that theology is a little bit simpler.

And so, um, I feel like sometimes, and this is part of just the, the swings of these conversations

is that politically this happens where you're like the country becomes too rigid or let's

say like the patriarch happens.

And then people are like, Oh, this is way too controlling.

We need to swing this way.

We go to left and then we go right.

And I think sometimes in the online conversation, people swing too much into what is possible

and they don't think about the unintended consequences.

And I think I understand the exceptions of why online church is church.

Like I totally understand that, but I don't think that means, I don't think you build a

theology on the exceptions.

And I think this is, this is the, the example of, um, kind of just seeing how the world is

dealing with this.

It's like Facebook is, is, is a great example of Facebook is hearing two things from the world

right now.

We want you to crack down.

Um, oh no, we want you to be out of our personal conversation.

Stop listening to us.

And they, people want privacy.

And then they're hearing crackdown on child pornography.

These are mutually exclusive concept.

Like Facebook needs to listen to your conversations if they're going to crack down on other people's

private messaging.

And so the conversation in most countries happening right now is, is encryption good or bad?

Well, it's bad in a country where we have freedom because essentially we don't want people

engaged, but, um, it's a good thing if you're in a suppressive country where the government

is regulating religion, sexuality, and all these things.

And so I think the, I think theology is having some of these conversations that they'll say

nothing is possible online.

And of course, and, and obviously you're belittling the church, you're belittling God's power.

When you say that on the flip side, it's, you know, it's, we have to understand the value

of face-to-face community.

So like, I think in the planting of purely digital church, I don't, I don't feel like that's

a true statement.

Like I don't feel like, cause the church is, but my, my most, one of my, one of my early

blog posts on this is the internet, even though it's fully internet, it's ultimately dependent

on physical servers sitting on ground.

Even the internet itself is not fully digital.

It's relied on physical devices on the ground.

Now it's decentralized.

So I think that's a model for us as a church.

So I would always, I would always go, I would always come around somebody who's doing something.

I go, I get it.

Like DJ is an evangelist.

So I understand the motive and I understand what he's doing.

And I, I'm a fan boy.

I'd go do it.

Because I also know he cares about physical too.

Like I, it's not that he doesn't care about it.

So I, I, to me, I, I struggle with that tension.

I struggle with that tension.

And I tend to default to physical because most of the people like that I hang out with

are probably more digital than they need to be.

And so I think that's why I go that way.

Because if somebody is engaging in the church online, then I'm over, you know, typically there's,

there's a reason why they're engaging online.

And I need to remind them of why they can't abandon the physical areas.

And I get excited about the vision of kind of turning on people in a city all around the

world that we have people from all around the world.

And I can kind of, I can't almost like, it's almost like a good terrorist, you know,

it's like a religion where you can turn them on and they get to impact that area for your

churches.

That's probably a bad example, but you get, you get my point.

Yeah.

I'm not, I'm not putting good terrorists on the webpage.

Like that's Google will flag me and it'll be all over.

I'm waiting for guys in suits to start busting down our doors at any moment.

No, we're going to get the SWAT.

That's the Twitch SWAT thing.

People are going to come in and rate us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I was going to say that, that is a struggle, Jay, as far as maintaining that line.

And we've talked about it in the podcast of digital in terms of the relationship between

physical and digital church and how a lot of that's supposed to work out.

What is in us that really wants to swing to pendulum sides on this?

And why can't we seem to find like good, good lines to walk in the middle on how a lot

of these things can work together as opposed to separating them and thinking them, oh, these

are two separate worlds.

I mean, I think the obvious is because they're two different things.

They may be linked and they may be, you know, motivated by each other, but, you know, any

type of fusion word or even like online, offline, like essentially online and offline are two

separate things.

Now we may be expressing ourselves on both of them in similar ways, but I do think we have

to, I think I'm just embracing the differences is going to, is helpful.

And I, that's why I always push back on words that kind of fuse them because I don't, I understand

that I myself, just like my spirit, I'm expressing myself in multiple ways and you could do all

sorts of interesting things.

But with kind of the terminology and examples it's honestly, I just think it's a struggle

of just the complexity of us.

It's the, I mean, you take something as simple as like, I say simple, but you think of something

as defined as like the Trinity.

This is why they say there's no illustration that is like not heretical when you talk about

the Trinity because it starts to overemphasize one over the other.

And I think online and offline, it is true.

Like we are, we are who we are and we are expressing ourselves in all those things.

And I think that tension, I think once you start to, once you start creating new words

and trying to fuse them, I think we're kind of missing, I think we've kind of overthought

it and I think we just need to understand the differences.

And part of it is I haven't seen something that like, I love that.

I will say, I see a lot of stuff I don't like, which is the reverse of that, that is helpful

for defining.

So I love when people attempt to define stuff because I think it allows me to go like, I

didn't like that, you know, or I love that.

And it's, again, it's always easier to criticize when you're not trying.

And so, and I've said a lot of stuff.

I've been writing about online church since 2013 and I've said a bunch of stuff that I've

removed from the internet.

At least I thought I have.

And so my thoughts are better.

And I know in, you know, it took me forever for my pastor to get me on Facebook, let alone

now I think about what I do now.

It's like funny.

And so, because I am, at the end of the day, I know my personality, I'm super pragmatic.

So you tell me, you know, I don't care if it's big, powerful, how can I use it?

Like something as simple as like a TikTok, like TikTok's popular.

I don't use TikTok, like, and I'm not using TikTok, not because I'm not trying to not do

something.

I just, I don't use it in my daily life.

And so, and I'm not motivated by a bunch of people.

Now, at one point, I know in two years, if TikTok continues to evolve, I might do that

because I've done that with other platforms.

I've done that with Snapchat.

I've done that with Instagram.

I've changed my mind.

And I think all this stuff is just confusing, but I tend to like the differences of online

and, and, you know, digital and physical or online and offline.

I like the differences because I do think that they are different.

So TikTok pastor, we're not, do you already have your account set up reserved for the side

for, for later on or what?

I do, I do have an account.

So there you go.

So I do have an account.

So it's there, but I, I, uh, yes.

So mainly I have account because of my kids.

Cause I'm like, they've started to want to watch stuff and I'm like, what's happening here?

And so, uh, so yeah.

Yeah.

But the Saddleback Online have the account yet.

Does Saddleback Online have the account?

Are you already laying the groundwork?

Are we breaking news here on the, on the, on the, we do not.

I don't think Saddleback has an account.

That's a good question.

I don't think we do.

We're going to end the podcast on four words.

Rick Warren, music video.

We got to find a way to make that happen.

Drop that on TikTok, blow up the internet.

Well, man, I tell you what, Jay, uh, thank you for the time, man.

I always, I always love talking with you and having you on the podcast and learning.

There are lots of people that have been doing church online for a long time and, and you

being one of these guys, but that also have the, the freedom with the leash to think ahead,

to, to, to, to, to plan ahead, to really run, um, uh, taking advantage of, of some of that,

even just to pause, ask questions, evaluate and say, Hey, this isn't working like it should.

Why don't we trash the trash, the model and, and, and rebuild like that's, that's phenomenal.

And what you're learning is, is great.

Thanks for sharing that with us, uh, man.

So just thanks for the time and being here.

Yeah.

Um, Ray, man, just in closing thoughts, anything as we're landing the plane, he didn't even

get to talk about Disney plus.

So we, we next time, next time.

There's another episode in this.

It's going to be, there's another, well, dude, you killed me when you were like, we didn't

even, you don't even have an account.

I'm like, not even going to go there.

I could trash, I could trash YouTube, but yeah.

All right.

I love you.

Anyways, I, I, I just wanted to applaud, uh, how disciplined you guys were that you're not

just going to stare down success and say, well, this is, this is reason enough to keep it

around.

And I think if more organizations had that kind of discipline, I think churches in general

would be in a much better place if they learned what they centered on and what they define

the success and continue to work the beta over and over and over again, to not give up on

something.

Kudos to you guys, man.

Well done.

Yeah.

I, I don't know a lot of churches that have trashed one model and are still sticking around

to go to another, at least in online context.

So I just, to me, that's the one takeaway of this.

Yeah.

The model's awesome.

What you built the first time pluses and minuses maybe had issues, but as you've learned

from that into ingest that into another model is great.

Jay, man, any thoughts as we're landing the plane?

I just say, uh, don't be like me and sign up for Disney plus.

Okay.

So I just, I think they need more users.

That's how I'm going to end.

Yeah.

They're a small upstart of a company.

They need all the help.

They need all the help to beat Netflix.

So I say sign up for Disney plus.

They need the money.

So we're going to end the plane on that.

Disney plus, ladies and gentlemen, thank you.

Hey, this has been the church digital podcast for Ray, for Jay, for a 40 year old LeBron

James still playing the game at the top of his game.

I am Jeff at the church digital.

Thanks for being here.

And, um, can I say go Lakers?

Is that appropriate?

Yes.

Yes.

All right.

Fine.

Go Lakers.

I got to drop a go heat.

All right.

Thanks everybody.

Have a good day.