EP026: Tom Pounder in Apple, Innovation, & Discipleship

All right, listening audience, you're probably going to realize that episode 26 here of the

Church Digital Podcast, I, Jeff Reed, am a little more hyped up than normal. It's a little more of

a passionate subject than normal for me, as weird as it may sound, as much as I love church online,

because I am Apple's number one fanboy and have been for close to four decades now. And

unfortunately, some of the things that I've seen recently have brought me pause to the point that

I started saying some things on social media, on how the company just is struggling with this lack of

innovation, and how I will no longer be an Apple apologist for this company, and some of the

decisions that it's making, because I'm releasing them of their innovation call in my life. Yeah,

it does sound kind of angry and passive aggressive and bitter, even when I say it. But hey, it's my

podcast. It's cool. So here's what I'm doing. I'm bringing in Tom Pounder from YM Sidekick Podcast.

Tom's been a great guy. We've been on each other's podcast off and on, but we really want to dive in.

Here's where we are. We both have a passion for church online. I can guarantee that. I've never

breathed the same air as Tom Pounder in my life, and I know that man is passionate about seeing church

online happen. And so I'm bringing him in, and we want to have a conversation about Apple. We're going to

talk about innovation, and we're going to talk about discipleship. And all this is going to fit

together, and I promise you it's going to be an awesome podcast. So here you go. Tom Pounder,

YM Sidekick Podcast, online pastor, youth pastor, a man of many, many talents, and myself, Jeff Reed,

with The Church Digital, in a conversation in Apple, innovation, and discipleship. Here y'all go.

Hey, everyone. Today, I am with my friend Jeff Reed, or Jeff's actually with me. I mean,

we're together online today, and we are talking about innovation, and we're talking about the church.

And to give you the context of this, you know, Jeff and I are big Apple fans. We love Apple.

Well, we used to be. Or I don't know. Maybe I used to be. I'm not really sure how far down the

rabbit hole I'm going, but I'm not happy. So there's always that.

And see, Jeff is talking about this right now in the context that he is, he has his AirPods in right

now, and I'm sure he's recording this from a Mac or whatnot. But yeah, so Apple just had their big

iPhone event, and they released some new iPhones. They released a new iPad, a new watch. And Jeff,

let's just start with you. How did you feel about this recent event that Apple had?

So like, and I want to put it into context. You're right, Tom. I have probably six different

Apple devices within arm reach of me sitting here at the table. Everything from my iPhone, my iPad,

my Apple Pencil, my Mac computer, my AirPods, my Apple Watch that I'm wearing. If there was like

Apple underwear, I would probably be wearing it at this time. I do own Fruit of the Looms if you are

worried and want to go that deep. But here's the problem is that, and I posted on social media

that I'm done being an Apple apologist. Because for years, Apple has been doing this incremental

update, incremental update, incremental updates, and just bits and pieces rolling out some minor

updates within their product lines. And that's nice. That's great. Ironically,

my phone dies every couple years. So like, it's very appropriate timing for me to go out and buy

the next phone. I've got the XR, by the way, because I refuse to spend $1,000 on a phone.

$750, I guess seems to be okay. But this is part of the thing, because Apple at the end of the day,

has figured out almost as good as any other company, maybe Disney aside,

to separate money from you and your wallet. Because at the end, they are, they have more cash than any

other company out there. Their brand is higher ranked than anybody else out there. But here's the

newsflash. They haven't really done anything innovative in years. I mean, so the AirPods that I now have in my

ears, which sound phenomenal, guess what? They're freaking $20 earbuds with the cables cut off. If I

didn't have these AirPods, I'd have a little tiny eighth inch cable connected to my laptop. Actually, I

wouldn't because Apple took away the adapter, forcing me to buy the AirPods so that I, because I can't hook

them up straight to my laptop. My Apple Watch, they come out with a new feature and they make the old one

older. The new iPhone, hey, you know what? We're going to take away, we're going to make it more

expensive. We can make the old one a little cheaper, but we're going to add, guess this, we're going to

add a third camera. So this way you can do super slow motion selfies. The iPad itself, the best

selling 9.7 inch business, the one that's awesome, the pro level iPad, we're not going to sell that one

guys anymore. Sorry, we're going to make it a fraction of an inch bigger, jumping it up to 10.2.

And we're going to charge you as much, if not more money for it. This is an innovation. And this is

what's got me exploding. And it's already the stock boomed as a result of the meeting. Because at the

end of the day, Apple, the only thing that they're judged by is how much money they're making. And

honestly, just transparently, we're sheep in this process, buying this stuff. Now, I have bought this

stuff my entire life. My first computer was an Apple IIGS. That was even before the Macs. So like,

if some of you old school guys, you can buy into that Apple IIGS with a three and a half inch

disk drive on it. And I used to code using that computer. And so I've been Mac my entire life.

There was that stretch where Steve Jobs left the company to go do next and was with Pixar and doing

all that stuff. I got to confess openly, I wavered a little bit during that time. I experimented with

PCs. I didn't like it. I didn't like the way that it felt. But I did. I experimented with Steve Jobs

came back and it was great. I've been a stockholder with the company since 2000, maybe 1999. But at the

end of the day, where we where that company is, it's not innovative anymore. And I'll just go ahead

and say it. They're incremental updates on what they have. And the real question that I'm asking

and struggling with is they're spending all this money on research and development. But I don't

understand where it's it's going. Yeah, the biggest innovation they've got is they're going to be a

Netflix competitor. Guess what? Like I'm not looking for a Netflix competitor. And if I was Disney Plus

has already like got it. Yeah. I'm not going to spend money. I'm not going to get excited. I'm not

going to become a fanboy over a Netflix competitor. It's the innovation that has me jumping head over

feet for this. And Apple just hasn't done that in a long time. Well, what would you say would be the

last thing the Apple innovated? Because I will say this, like when the when the AirPod, I mean,

the iPod came out, man, that was innovative that I mean, because you took something that was people

were messing around with cassette players, the MP3 players, nothing was really good. Then that the iPod

came out and man that like we were not, my family was not Mac fans until the iPod. Then we went to iPod

and we bought a Mac and we're like, this is gold. Okay. So what would you say would be probably maybe

the last thing they innovated? The last thing that I was like, this is something that I've never seen

before. It was the marriage of a iPad Pro with an Apple pencil. And so like I bought this and I'm a

writer. So like, and I've had probably three or four different versions of iPads in my life. And I would

always download either GoodNotes. GoodNotes is actually what I use right now. Once again, I'm kind

of a hypocrite. I totally acknowledge that. GoodNotes. I've used Evernote maybe a dozen times in

my life. And if you are an Evernote apologist, I don't understand you because I can't figure out

that software. But I've always been trying to write it because in the end, I'm like an analog guy using

digital technology, writing out my notes, even the notes for this podcast that I wrote on my iPad.

And as a result of that, the marriage of the pencil and that released with the iPad Pro,

the smoothness of like the 650 megahertz refresh rate that you're seeing on that, it was phenomenal.

It was something I'd never seen before. Anytime I try to write with a stylus, with a pencil,

it's jerky, it's jagged. Like a second or two seconds later, you see the letter,

the iPad, the pencil little tip tip is like falling off. And it just, it never worked well.

And so this did, Hey, congratulations. That great. The year was like 2016 when that released.

And so once again, I'm a hypocrite Apple, it's been three years. What else you got? I mean,

I'm sorry. I credit card. Hey, great. Apple's helping us get even more in debt by charging a

3.5% interest rate just so we can get a really cool feature on our phone where it'll show blah,

blah, blah. Like I, I don't understand where we went from this company that was,

that was innovative, that was edgy, that was working in garage, that was tackling companies

like Microsoft, like Microsoft, usurping them, challenging them, utilizing almost guerrilla

warfare tactics to release products like the, like the, the iPod. That was phenomenal. That,

that was better than anything else on the market. Do you remember what else was on the market MP3 wise

back then? It was, it was, it was like those, was it Sonos? No, it wasn't Sonos, but it was like a 32

megabit card MP3 reader. You could literally load one CD on a digital music player. You could load one

CD or you could carry around 500 songs in the pocket of your hand on a, on a hard drive. That was like

the first iPod. Brains are exploding. Nobody's exploding on this. It's a third camera that does

slow motion selfies. So I can be really slow when I'm doing. We're getting, we're giving kids more

opportunities to be creative with their selfies and their Snapchat stories and Instagram and everything

like that. So, all right, well, this is, this is good. I love this rant. And I will say anybody who

listens to Jeff and says, okay, well the pencil, no big deal. Everyone, every tablet's got a pencil.

Well, not all pencils are created equal actually, because I've experimented with this. The Apple

pencil is by far the most superior pencil or pen that you can put on a tablet. I I've had a variety of

different ones that I've tried to use on iPads or tablets before. They're just not as good as that

pencil. So I would say it is very innovative and it continues to be that way to this day. So, okay.

But again, you and I are not here just to talk about Apple innovation. We want to translate this a

little bit into, uh, into, um, uh, church innovation and, and in particular where you and I are both,

uh, fan favorites of, of online innovation. And wait, Tom, are we doing a bait and switch right

here? Do we just Jesus juke this podcast? We just Jesus juke. Hey, listen, that's the story of my

life, man. I do. I like, Hey, I tweet out something. Hey, learn what this, what happened with the

Superbowl this week? And then I juke them into talking about our Superbowl party or something

like that. So yeah, I do that all the time. Um, but so, okay. So let's talk about church and

innovation. What, what is your thought on this? Are, is the church innovative enough right now?

Are, are we failing in this area? Are we succeeding? What, what do you think from a general context here?

So I think the church is innovating in certain areas. So the church defines itself right now by

the one hour service that happens on Sunday, the majority. And I don't, I don't mean to be

insultive, but the majority of effort of staff, people, volunteers across this country, the majority

of the effort goes into producing that one hour on Sunday. And, and I do believe that the church is

being innovative in context of that. Like let's pair it, let's parallel to Apple. I, we're making fun of

the three cameras and that's, and I love that Apple. Hey, let's slap a third camera on there and see what

can happen with that. So Apple's being innovative with their devices. Similarly, I think the church

is being innovative within that. Hey, what if we introduce cameras in here and include iMag and

worship with multi-site movements, streaming to video teaching to different, different campuses.

Churches are, are trying to be more expressive in context of, of, of lighting, of creating worship

environments, of utilizing drama or other videos. Uh, pastors even, I remember, uh, maybe 10, 20 years

ago where a pastor would show a movie clip, like in a sermon was like, um, really controversial idea.

And now more and more pastors are being more and more visual, um, with that, trying to connect culture with,

with the message that they have. And so I do think there's been innovation within that, that one thing.

The, what I would challenge though, is that churches more than just the one hour on Sunday, Apple, there's

more potential than just what's happening with your, with your iPhone. And so what, what if the church

expanded, use that innovation in other areas, not just to reach that one hour on Sunday, but to really

reach and impact people 168 hours a week? What if instead of just creating that worship environment

church, what if you were innovative to try to create an opportunity to disciple someone, to train a

disciple who's capable of leading others to Christ and discipling them? What if we created a series of

disciples that were capable of making disciple makers out there? The money and the effort and the

innovation into that one hour on Sunday wouldn't be necessary. And interestingly, we see that culture

is changing that way. People don't want to go to your church to learn things spiritually because they

don't want to learn things spiritually. They're not interested in learning from you, church body,

church building. What they are interested in, they are interested in having a spiritual conversation

with their friends. We know this from Lifeway 2016. So empowering your church body, providing

innovation for them with evangelism and empowering them to go out there and share and invest it with their

friends. That's how the church is going to grow in the future. That's the innovation that we have. But as a

church, we're afraid of that model for whatever reason.

Yeah. Well, you know, it's really interesting. It was actually really empowering. I think for me, in my

perspective, that our church really put an emphasis in the past year or so, we've always talked

discipleship, quote unquote, discipleship. But we've never really said, okay, go out there and go and make

disciples. You know, we've talked about, okay, let's talk about discipleship. Okay, now go, let's figure out

what's happening on Sunday. And we make Sunday a very expressive form. And we use the lightings, the smoke

machines, the movie clips, the great things. We go online. You know, we're trying to be creative and

innovative that way to reach those people. But it's only that one hour of the week, like you said.

And so what was empowering recently was when our senior pastor said, who are you investing in? Who are the

people that you're investing in? And how are you reaching them? And then I've spent more, honestly, like when I first

started out doing ministry, it was so great for me as a student minister, a young guy, to go out and be with

students. Like that was my job, to go out and be with students. And now I feel like my job is to go sit

in my office and figure out the best lesson to do, who I can email, yada, yada. And I've really gotten

it back in the mold lately of saying, okay, who are the two people I'm hanging out with today? Who am I

taking out to lunch? Or who am I meeting up with in working on discipleship that way, both from a

leadership perspective, but also from a student ministry perspective where I'm hanging out with kids? Like it

is like, I think we get trapped and we're like, well, we're going to be innovative on Sunday, but then do

nothing during the rest of the week. And that's why, actually, that's why honestly so many people I feel

like ask me, hey, what do you actually do? Is your job actually full-time? And I'm like, yeah, it's full

time. I do lesson preparation and write a talk and what else do I do? Like I thought that before. I'm

like, that's where I need to go out and be with people and disciple other people. Yeah. And sadly, a lot of

churches out there, Tom, and we've both felt this, you're not evaluated on that discipleship piece.

You're evaluated on the weekend and what happens on the weekend. Success is measured on the weekend.

I went off on this tirade and it wasn't that bad. You can find it on social media. It was out of

character for me. And so like I had people calling me, texting me, honest to God, wanting to make sure

that I was okay because it was so out of character for me to start slamming Apple because I am a number

one Apple fan boy. Yeah.

My mother calls me and she's really worried. And my mom's been on the podcast, Linda. Oh, that was

awkward. I just called my mom by her first name. Mom, I love you. It's great. But she emails me a Fox

News article the next day. And it says a stock store as a result of Apple's announcement. And okay,

and she's, and her response was, and she's a business woman and this makes sense. Her response

was, well, Apple must be doing something right. Right. And what's interesting is, yeah, if Apple

is being measured on generating cash, launching a credit card, launching a Netflix replacement,

moving to a service model instead of a product model, you're right. If that's the end game there,

that's making sense. And here's the thing, church, I want to challenge you with. If all you're being

evaluating on, all you're evaluating is that one hour on Sunday. Yes. Then what you're doing may

be making sense, but that doesn't make it right. Right. Right. Yes. I love this. If Apple is measured

as an innovation company, then innovate. If you are no longer an innovation company and you just want

to, just going to be measuring off the dollar, Tim Cook, businessman, I'm kind of talking to you,

although I doubt you're listening, measuring yourself as by the dollar, then that's a completely

set of rules. And what you're going to lose is fanboys like me, who for decades have been drooling

over the phrase, oh, one more thing coming out of an Apple announcement. They're not, they're not

happening anymore because they're not trying. Yeah. And church, let me spin it to you. If all you are

doing is trying to boost or struggling to boost the attendance records that are happening at your

physical campus, because you're measuring that metric as opposed to creating disciples,

then we're measuring the wrong thing. You need to evaluate and maybe some of your innovation doesn't

need to go into creating a more flashier show Sunday, 9 a.m. And instead figuring out how to motivate

people and how to train and equip and empower people to be a disciple 168 hours a week.

Yeah, I love this. And we're going to talk about one thing specifically that you had heard recently,

but I want to say this. I've often said about student ministry, because I've been involved with

student ministry over 20 years now, is that my biggest success in student ministry is not

what happens when I'm there with high school students. It's the kids that are now adults and have

families of their own that I'm still in relationship with and still in contact with, that I am marrying

when they're getting married. They're inviting me to, when they're drunk and wasted and down on their

luck, they're calling me. I view that as success. Why? It's because I've been that positive Christ

living example to them that they know that they're missing Christ in their life. And so that's why

they need that. And so I feel like discipleship isn't just on a Sunday. And it's not just when you

have them in your church or your program. It's a lifelong mission. It's the loving them one day at a time

and seeing how God works in their life. And I think there's lots of different ways that we can be

innovative in empowering people. Now, you've talked about this on your podcast before. I've talked about

this on my podcast before. You know, we've had Ray talk about it as well. You know, there's lots of

different ways to do it. And you had just heard something, or you were just on a call with someone

from Seattle about ways that they're trying to empower people. What is a cool, innovative thing

that you've been hearing about recently? There's an organization, it's called Church Home.

It was created by, it was a church, it was out in Seattle. And I think San Francisco is California and

Seattle. It's a five campus, multi-site church spread out across two states. And I was talking

with their staff, and I'm going to have them on the podcast. It was just a prerequisite call.

But here's the deal of what this church did. They're literally doing a burn the ships mentality here,

where they're moving away from more campus growth. And instead, what they did is we want to create

a discipleship strategy digitally that can help people who are engaging us online, but also help

them help people who are engaging at the physical campus. And so more than a church online strategy,

it's a mobile church strategy, where utilizing this mobile app, not only do they have access to sermons,

which are a vital, but not holistic approach to church, but there's discipleship resources to help

challenge them with the different levels of what somebody needs to be a disciple, even to the point of

training them to share their faith with other people. And so the goal of Church Home out there is to

challenge someone to become a disciple to the context of creating other disciples and utilizing

the home as the centerpiece, people's houses, to create micro locations to start to gather them

together. So instead of, in Church Home's context, and they've not been the only one,

Mech Church is another one who's on this road, instead of trying to build more campuses and grow that way,

they've gone to a digital approach, utilizing homes to reach people, to disciple people, and to grow

people, and to, for the point of multiplication, to create a disciple who's capable of creating more

disciples. Now what was interesting, and this hit the news maybe six, nine months ago, and we were

actually talking on it on the call today. Like when this came out, Fox News was pushing articles, CNN,

like here's a pastor who's like pastoring online, Judah Smith. And I got to tell you, from the church,

the response wasn't good. Instead of like honoring this guy for trying to experiment with something and

doing something new, one tweet, and this is just one that stuck in my head, I don't know what the F-bomb

you think this is, but don't call it church. That's literally the tweet. And so, but this has been the

attitude from the church in response to a guy who's trying to experiment. Right. And what's funny,

when you actually talk with the church, they'll even tell you, hey, what we're doing today,

we may not do in three months. We're experimenting as we're going with this. Instead of trying to figure

out what the finish line is, we're just going to go learn as we go and adjust. And that's the thing

that the church gets stuck with. Yep. The church needs to know for whatever reason. And I mean,

I need to wrestle with this. The church needs to know the finish line before they go. Whereas any

given corporation in America, hey, let's go down this road. Let's see. And let's evolve. There's more

freedom to kind of adjust, but we're too afraid of. And it just makes me wonder, like Acts 1,

when Jesus left, went away, and the people prayed, and they prayed continually. What if they were

afraid? What if they didn't pray? Would the Pentecost of Acts 2 have come? Would it have stopped right

there? Because they didn't know what to do. Hey, the work's done. Jesus is done. That go make

disciples. I don't know what that means. So we're just going to stop. Right? Like, could you imagine

if this church died right there before it even got started because they were too afraid to figure out

what the next steps were? Yeah. Well, listen, I agree with you 100%. It's so funny because as you're

talking about it, when companies innovate and they try new experiments or try new things,

they get applauded by people. Like, look what they're trying to do. Look at this great idea. But when the

church tries to innovate, there's so many people. It's almost like the Major League Baseball. When

Major League Baseball tries to change a little bit, all the traditionalists, no, you can't do this.

That's not how it was supposed to be. And it's the same way with church. No, no, you can't go online.

No, you can't do videos. No. And then it's like, oh, okay, it's not so bad after all. I mean,

you know, it's this weird thing. And I think we've got to continue to push the envelope. And who knows,

maybe it won't work. But if we never try, we're always going to, we're always going to be wondering

what if. Church, we've got to experiment. I mean, just bottom line. What if Paul, it's like,

hey, you know what? All these other people out there, I don't care. That's not my church.

What if he didn't do the missionary journeys? What if he didn't write the letters to travel

along the Roman road? The most technological advanced thing in the time, by the way, the Roman

road, when it was first built. What if he's like, you know what? Screw it. I really don't care.

What if Martin Luther was like, hey, you know what? I'm not going to put this up on the thesis. And by the

way, those 95 theses that he posted, the 100 theses posted on the wall, he sent them to area towns as

well. So the revival didn't just come out of his one church. It was surrounded areas because he cared

enough about it to make sure. By the way, it's actually one of the first things printed on the

printing press. Send it around to others. Talk about another one. The printing press itself. Talk about

innovation. What if he's like, hey, you know what? I don't care about you all and what you need of the

Bible. I'm just going to print for like my family. And it just walks away. No, he did the printing

press so that everyone could have it. At Billy Graham, Billy Graham preached to a billion people

at one moment, one message bounced around a bunch of satellites. Billy Graham hits a billion. What if

Billy Graham's like, hey, you know what? I don't care about the people in Africa, in Asia, in Europe.

I don't even care about the people in Seattle or on the other side of the country. I'm just going to

preach to my small little church here in North Carolina. Where would that leave us? The fact is

that we need people. We need churches to push, to be innovative, to ask questions, to challenge

standard quo. We don't need incremental updates on platforms that already exist. If we want to reach

new people, we need new methods. And we need churches to step up and start to experiment in these areas

beyond something that some traditionalist is going to say, hey, are we sure we want to do that?

While traditionalists are challenging that, guess what? Churches are out there and are being highly

effective in reaching new people by doing something different.

Right. No, that's exactly right. And I think as we kind of wrap up, I think you're exactly right.

If we don't try, we're always going to fail and we're always going to be wondering what if.

And the best way we can reach more people and beyond Sunday morning is to try to innovate,

be creative, invest in people. That's always a great formula for success. Because again,

it's kind of like back when you look even at Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Church, not Purpose Driven

Life, but Purpose Driven Church. He talked about how the transition was you were sitting in pews at one

point and now you're sitting in chairs. I mean, can you imagine if most of us were sitting in pews

still? I mean, that's just so uncomfortable, but that we've got to change. We've got to innovate.

And if we want to reach more people in this day and age, we have to do that.

Yeah.

All right, Jeff. Well, it is always great to have you. Well, actually, this is a combined podcast,

so I'm on yours, yours, own mine. And so this is, it's always great talking to you, man.

Yeah, we'll have to, we'll have to do this again. Next time though, you get irate about something on

social media and I'll be like, hey, let's, let's get together and blow off some steam and talk about

it on a podcast. Okay. Like, well, you know, I actually get irate all the time on social media,

so I can totally see myself doing this again about something. Honestly, next time, like something stupid

happens in the cinematic universe or Marvel and Spider-Man actually goes back, then we can go

back and talk about how smart a thing that was. But that day, sadly, will probably never, ever,

ever come. So we can, we can always hope, man. We can always, always, always hope. Hey, Tom, man,

thanks for this. This was a great idea. And for, by the way, my audience, if you've not hit up Tom

Pounder, hit up to see the show notes and there's be all sorts of links in there for that. And I'm sure

Tom will probably have the same on my side, but this has been, been a great time. Appreciate the

convo. So, Hey audience, this is Jeff and we're going to wrap the podcast right here. Episode 26,

talking about Apple innovation and discipleship. I hope it was worthwhile. I hope it was fun.

Pray for me. I am still a struggling, recovering Apple fan boy who now needs another place to locate

his fan boy ism. And so we'll have to just figure that out. I'll go, I'll have to ask my kids what

the cool thing is right now and just kind of adopt that, I guess. But Hey, church in a serious note,

it's time to find something new. Um, the methods that we've been using have been reaching the same

amount of people, the same number of people, the same type of people. And there are people who will

not be reached with these methods. If we want to reach new people, we need new methods. It's time

to expand our product line away from just Sunday morning and start to figure out how to be more

effective, how to reach out and engage people in a different way where we are. The message Christ

stays the same. The messaging, the method needs to change. So that's the challenge church. Get out there,

experiment and figure out what's next. Follow the, the, the ideas of the church homes or the saddlebacks

or the elevations or so much of what we talk about on this podcast. And there's lots of excellent ideas

that are out there, but the best idea has yet to been discovered. And right now it's out there in

somebody's head saying, what if, and if that's you, and if you're saying that, what if step up and figure

out how to do it? Let's go. Hey, this has been a great podcast. Uh, and I am looking forward to

what's next. We'll see you next time here at the church digital podcast. Y'all have a good day.